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AjN \Z r t SK*-*—*— DECEMBER, 1900 Qettysbtiir Mercury CONTENTS The End of the Nineteenth Cen-tury, 205 Pennsylvania College at the Close of the Nineteenth Cen-tury, 206 The Belles 208 The Mysterious Picture, . . 211 Father Hawkin's Observations, 215 King- of Reformers, . . .217 An Old Camera, . . .220 Editor's Desk 222 Elements of Inspiration in the Earliest Greek Poets, . . 224 Words add Things, . 228 A Financier, . 233 Book Review 236 Among Our Contemporaries . 236 FAVOR THOSE WHO FAVOR US. For Fine. Printing go to Tk J° Co Wile Prifltiig ftwe CARLISLE ST. GETTYSBURG, PA. C. B. Kitzmiller Leadership Dealer in Hats, Caps, Boots and Douglas Shoes GETTYSBURG, PA. R. M. Elliott Dealer in Hats, Caps, Shoes and. Gents' Furnishing Goods Corner Center Square and Carlisle Street GETTYSBURG, PA. IN THE CLOTHING and MEN'S fURNISHING Business It is strictly here—everybody knows it. Testimony'! The stock itself. The pen suffi-ciently nimble to tell all the good points of our ::::::: FALL AND WINTER. SUITS AND OVERCOATS has not been found. We will keep you dressed right up-to-date if you buy your Clothing and Furnishings here. : : : EDGARS. MARTIN, F^CIGARS AND SMOKERS' ARTICLES Chambersburg St., Gettysburg ST McPherson Block. No. li BALTIMORE STREET THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY, The Literary Journal of Pennsylvania College. Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter. VOL. IX. GETTYSBURG. PA., DECEMBER, 1900. No. 7. THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. "Old Time's great clock, that never stops, Nor runs too fast nor slow, Hung up amid the worlds of space Where wheeling planets glow; Its dial-plate the orbit vast Where whirls our old earth free— Has pushed its pointers round again And marked a century." «^2> 'T'HE century ends. The startling records of to-day are being ■^ stamped upon the last lap of the scroll. Marvelous have been the achievements of the last ten decades. Strange are the inscriptions on the escutcheons of the nations of the world. May the American not cease to hallow the ground where rest the ashes of the sages, patriots and warriors! Remembered be the deeds of the fathers ; long live their admonition ! Soft be the breeze that sways the trees on the famous fields of battle! Forgotten the strife that stained our soil with blood! Firm be the future grasp of Labor's callous hand—recognized, in every sphere, the noble and the true! Appreciated be the heritage of the fathers ! Bared be every arm in defense of our common, sacred trust! Solid be the phalanx in freedom's holy cause! 206 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE AT THE CLOSE OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. E. S. BREIDENBAUGH, SC. D. T N this last issue of the MERCURY for the nineteenth century it *■ is proper to consider Pennsylvania College in connection with the present condition of higher education in our country. While not attempting a complete survey, a few glimpses of the field will be a source of congratulation and encouragement in our work, and may be an incentive to further effort for advancing the interests of our college. During the last third of the century there has been a large in-crease in the number of college students, proportionally a larger increase than the increase in population. There are no available statistics to show whether the number of Lutheran young people in institutions of learning has grown in proportion to the growth of our church membership, there are sufficient facts to show that there has been a very decided increase in the number of our young peo-ple who are having the advantages of the higher education. This increase in number of college students is due in part, if not wholly, to the growing conviction that a higher education is advantageous to men in every field of activity. While formerly the college graduates rarely entered any other profession than the ministry, law or medicine, we now find a minority of all the college graduates entering these professions. In our own college we find in recent years an increasing number of our graduates entering on business or technical pursuits. This change in the life work of college men has accompanied and has been in part the cause of and in part the effect of changes in the college curriculum. There have been introduced into the curriculum many important subjects, which in the early part of the century were hardly thought of in connection with a college education. This large increase in number of subjects taught has necessitated the introduction of electives into the requirements for entrance to and graduation from college. The same conditions have lead to the opportunity being given to the student to substi-tute for Greek, L,atin and Mathematics, which formerly occupied nearly the whole of the college time, Modern Languages, Natural and Physical Sciences, History, Politics, etc., thus giving the student the choice of subjects in which he may specialize. At the same time the requirements for entrance and graduations have THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 207 been notably increased. In all departments of study there have been changes in method of work which increase the labors of the teachers and require more and better study on the part of the pupils. Pennsylvania College has enlarged her courses of study —has adopted to a fair degree elective courses of study—and in every department has increased the requirements for graduation. These changes in subjects of study and methods of work have necessitated an increased teaching force and enlarged equipment. Our college has in recent years somewhat increased her teaching force and added laboratories of chemistry, biology and elementary mechanics. We have also greatly improved our accommodations for class work in new and convenient buildings. The duty of our college is not rivalry with our neighbors, nor is it at present to do university or technical work, but is to do the best possible for our constituency in providing a sound college training such as is demanded by the present times, to this end we need, and we need greatly, additional teaching force, increased facilities for laboratory work and larger library equipment. Our professors are required to teach too many subjects, and other subjects barely included or not included in our curriculum require attention which cannot be given them. While there has been no increase in the personal interest teachers have for their pupils, there has been a change in methods which requires more immediate individual work between teacher and pupil. This personal teaching in all subjects, while greatly benefiting the student, is a great drain on the vital power of the teacher. As the number of pupils increases the personal attention to individual pupils must lessen unless the teaching force is in-creased, thus enabling each teacher to have fewer subjects and a smaller number of pupils. Co-education has been adopted to a limited degree by Penn-sylvania College. If we desire to enlarge this work, which can easily be done, we must have suitable accommodations for the young women. There has been in our colleges a great change in the dormitory and other accommodations for students. What thirty or forty years ago was regarded as excellent is now deemed wholly inadequate by parents and pupils. In some places these provisions have grown to extravagant proportions, while Pennsylvania College 208 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY has not developed to such a degree, we are in these respects fully abreast of the times. We find the college student yearly taking a greater interest in matters outside the college curriculum—this when properly guarded, is wise and of educational advantage. Our students have shown reasonable activity and had fair success in many of these enterprises, such as athletics, musical clubs, publications and debating clubs. With all these changes in college work—with the greater pressure of material things, with the ever increasing claims of study on the energy of the student and the accompanying greatly increased personal freedom and self-control of the individual student there has been an equally increased interest in religious subjects—this is shown in many ways, not the least being the activity of the College Y. M. C. A. and the accompanying Bible study. In this brief summary of the changing conditions of college work—and we believe they are changes for the better—we find that Pennsylvania College has been advancing in the same direction as the general educational world, and while there is always room for fuller growth, we feel encouraged with the past and are hope-ful for the future. These improving conditions are due to the diversified and united labors of trustees, presidents, professors,students,numerous liberal friends and the general loyalty of the alumni of the college. It is in reliance on the continued energy and loyalty of all these friends that we are assuredly hopeful for the future of our college. THE BELLES. J. B. BAKER, '01. Hear the singing of the belles— Choir belles! What a world of vanity their rhapsody foretells ! How they wrinkle, wrinkle, wrinkle, All the muscles of their bite 1 While the gems that oversprinkle All their tresses, seem to twinkle With a hyaline delight; THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 209 Keeping time, time, time, In a faintly falling: rime, To the nasal proclamation that so dissonantly wells From the belles, belles, belles, belles, Belles, belles, belles— From the singing and the ringing- of the belles. II Hear the flippant summer belles, Giddy belles! What a string- of soda bills their coquetry foretells ! Throug-h the balmy air of nig-ht How they draw us out of sight! From their starting, darting eyes All aglow, What a funny feeling hies To the bosom of the lover, while he spies Not the bow. Oh, from out those spheric cells, What a gush of repartee extravagantly wells ! How it swells ! How it dwells On the future ! how it tells Oh the philter that impels To the flushing and the blushing Of the belles, belles, belles, Of the belles, belles, belles, Belles, belles, belles— To the flushing and the blushing of the belles. Ill Hear the loud alarum belles— Infant belles ! What a train of muffled oaths their noisiness compels ! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the sire, In a mad expostulation with his warm erratic ire Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor To resign the job forever That he undertook alas, too soon. Oh, the belles, belles, belles What a tale their horror tells Of the crier! 210 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY How they squirm, and kick, and roar, What a horror they outpour On the palpitating bosom of the sire ! Nor the father fully knows, By the wiggling-. And the wriggling, How the sulphur ebbs and flows ; But the mother t'is who tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking and the swelling in the squealing of the belles,- Of the belles— Of the belles, belles, belles, belles, Belles, belles, belles— In the squealing and the reeling of the belles. IV Hear the moaning of the belles— Ancient belles ! What a world of sympathy their monody compels ! Through the day and oft by night, How our tears spring into light, At the melancholy mumble of their tone ; For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the lovers—ah, the lovers— They who go and wed some others, Altar prone, And who strolling, strolling, strolling, By discarded belles alone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither false nor true men— They are neither brute nor human— They are fiends, And their king the devil, tolls, And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A threnode from the belles ! And his scaly bosom swells With a threnode from the belles! And he dances and he yells ; Keeping time, time, time, In his Tartarean grime, To the threnode of the belles— Of the belles; Keeping time, time, time, THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 211 In his Tartarean grime, To the throbbing- of the belles— Of the belles, belles, belles,— To the sobbing- of the belles ; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In his Tartarean grime, To the groaning of the belles— Of the belles, belles, belles,— To the moaning of the belles Of the belles, belles, belles, belles— Belles, belles, belles— To the moaning and the groaning- of the belles. THE MYSTERIOUS PICTURE. STANLEY C. FOWLER, '04. 44QPEAKING of mysteries reminds me of a very curious, yes, ^ startling experience I had when a struggling young artist in Paris," said Wilbur Cutting. " What was that? " we asked. " Go ahead, let her rip, said Coleman, the irrepressible, "we're all attention." Wilbur puffed at his favorite corn-cob pipe and we all drew our chairs nearer the grate fire which burned cheerily and lighted up our cozy club-room. Presently we heard Wilbur's voice from behind a cloud of tobacco smoke, saying: "I was searching for a new model to pose for my 'Abraham.' I had been told of an old, patriarchal Jew, living in one of the many by-ways in the Latin quarter. While walking down a dingy, narrow alley, my attention was attracted by a picture lying on a heap of canvasses, in an old curiosity shop. Drawn by an irresistible impulse I entered and purchased it from the shop-keeper, a queer, little, old Orient, who seemed eager to dispose of it. I took it under my arm and hurried back to my studio, in-tending to retouch it. I placed it on my easel and scrutinizing it closely, marked what a peculiar face it was. Pure oval, the fore-head low and square, eyebrows high-arched meeting over a long, Roman nose, the nostrils were contracted, the mouth, tight shut, was cruel and sinister. The eyes had been scratched through the pupils, completely destroying its expression ; the hair, long 212 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY and black as a raven's wing, was painted as though blown by the wind and finally blended into the deep crimson background. The head had the appearance of flying through the air, for there was neither shoulders nor neck. I failed to recognize the style and searched in vain for the artist's name. "I was soon at work on the eyes, hoping to complete them before the arrival of Archie Armstrong, a young American, who, attracted by the gayeties of Bohemian life, had adopted them as his profession. He had a rich, indulgent, spinster aunt, living in Paris, who descended periodically upon his studio, which was across the hall from mine, and purchased all his masterpieces. To tell the truth, the only parts of them not painted by me were his signatures, which he persistently painted in the brightest colors and in the most conspicuous places. He was expecting a visit from his aunt that afternoon and was about to make a raid upon my studio and carry off all the paintings, finished or not. "As I painted the eyes, it seemed as though an invisible hand was guiding or directing my brush. They were soon finished and I stepped back to see my work. What an expression ! Simply hellish. The eyes seemed like living coals of fire. They burned and blazed and seemed to pierce one through and through. I felt a most peculiar tingling sensation. "I looked at lny hands. No longer were they covered with oil and paint stains, but were changed to long, slender white hands with tapering fingers. My velvet jacket and paint covered trous-ers were changed to an evening suit. Even the studio had changed to a drawing-room elegantly furnished. "Stepping over to one of the mirrors that adorned the wall, I looked in. I started back with a cry of surprise and alarm. The face that had stared at me from the canvass now gazed back at me from the mirror. Could it be possible? Was it I? I raised my hand to my face and when the glass reflected the action, I knew then that I had changed. "Presently I heard footsteps and turning, beheld a young man advancing towards me with outstretched hands to welcome me. I hastened to meet him and he led me into an inner room where a young woman was reclining gracefully on a high-backed, old-fashioned seat. She blushed prettily as we entered and he presented me to her—his wife. As I bowed low and kissed the tips of her dainty fingers, I had an uncontrollable desire to kill THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 213 her, take possession of me. I cannot explain it. It seemed as though I must kill her or myself. "The young man took me to his "den" where we were soon drinking her health. I took up a jeweled dagger from a table and told him of some murders I had heard of done under hypnotic influence. He asked if I believed in hypnotism and I replied in the affirmative, saying, that I could hypnotize him if I so desired. He seemed startled but continuing to drink heavily was soon in a stupor. "Seizing the dagger I stole into the room where his wife was; I raised it aloft and struck with all my might, again and again. As I felt the blade sink into the soft flesh, I could not refrain from laughing exultingly. I knew that when he was aroused from his stupor he would believe himself guilty of the crime. I think I must have been changed into the devil, for I chuckled and gloated over the misery that would come to the young man. "I stole away still gloating over my crime. Suddenly my face grew warmer and warmer. It seemed that flames were creeping slowly over my head. I screamed aloud for agony and then I must have fainted. "When I regained consciousness, I found myself in my own bed with Archie leaning over me and the.morning sun pouring in the window. " 'What has happened ?' I asked. " 'Blamed if I know,'said Archie, rubbing his head. 'Icame yesterday afternoon and nearly banged my fists off, trying to make you let me in. I heard you sputtering and as time was valuable, I pushed the door in and found you staring at the queerest picture I ever saw. You turned around to me sputtering gibberish and I took you into your room. I thought you had been indulging too freely. In the night you stabbed your lay figure with your pallet knife. You'll have a nice job replacing that gown. You had it spoiled before I discovered you. You've been raving until you screamed just now,' said Archie, looking disgustedly at me. ' 'I looked at my easel. The picture was gone. "'Where's the picture?' I asked. Archie looked sheepish and said: 'Well, auntie would have it. There's the check on the table.' % % if. ■%. % "That afternoon as I was relating my experience to Archie, the 214 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY door flew open with a bang and in stepped his aunt with head erect and fire in her eye. Without returning Archie's greeting, she opened hostilities thus: " 'What do you mean by selling me that picture, sir ! I don't believe you painted it at all! I think the devil did ! ' " 'Why, auntie, you surprise me. What's the trouble,' asked Archie. " 'Trouble! Humph! I should say so. Trouble! There's been nothing but trouble since I brought that thing to my house. Why, when I had Henry hang it in my saloon with the rest of your paintings, he acted like a lunatic. Tried to stab me ! He raved so all last night about that picture that I took it down this morning and threw it in the fire, and as I did so, it shrieked! My nerves have had such a fright that it'll be months before they'll get quieted again. How did you ever get it, tor I don't believe you painted it? ' she finally asked Archie. " 'Well, I'll confess I didn't paint it. My friend Wilbur bought it in an old shop and I thought since you liked it, you know, when—er—that is—I thought you would like it better if you thought that I painted it. I am sorry that I deceived you, but shan't do it again,' said Archie, looking very penitent. " 'You'd better not, for I am very shrewd. I thought you didn't paint it,' said his aunt, and turning to me said: " 'Mr. Wilbur, if you would turn your attention toward art, as my gifted nephew has, and paint a few pictures like his, it would be better than tramping around buying such things as that picture and calling them your own as I guess you were going to do. I hope this will be a lesson to you, Archie. Don't follow in your friend's footsteps again or attempt to deceive me again, for I am too shrewd for you !' and off she stamped, followed by Archie, whose face was purple with suppressed laughter. I was in deadly fear of the eruption and heaved a sigh of relief as they disappeared. "All those symptoms Archie's aunt attributed to his shame and mortification he felt at being caught trying to fool her. "I made inquiries afterwards at the shop about the picture. All that I could learn was that the shop-keeper had bought it at the auction of the art treasures of a young man who had killed his wife and died crazy. It was said that he had imported the picture from the Orient, where it had been, probably, for many I THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 215 years. It was the shop-keeper who had scratched out the eyes, for he said they haunted him. Whether or not I should have died mad, as did its former possessor, had it not been destroyed, I can't tell." e^pj FATHER HAWKINS' OBSERVATIONS. CHAS. W. WEISER, '01. Well, Lizer, I'se been up ter town, Ther college fur ter see, And talk about yer country Jakes— Ther same as you and me. Of bildins fine I saw a heft, That's fine as ever I've seen, And trees, and signs—"Keep off ther grass' I guess because its green. The Profs' got lots of larnin, And plenty fur ter spare ; But me thinks they need it all, Ter train thim fellers thare. So guess we'll send our Kier, Ter eddicated be, Fur he must have more larnin, Than ever you an me. I saw thim fellers go A stragglin long ther walk, Ther one he looked so strait ahead As any line of chalk. He looked not ter ther right er left, But just strait down his nose, And where that little nose did point, He always surly goes. Ther one did run his hands, Inter his pockets deep. With hangin head and crooked back, He ter the class did creep. His knees did knock each other gainst, And pigeoned were his toes. Well such er sight I niver seed Where ever I do goes. 216 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Another one went walkin long, A lookin at ther cloud ; His nose er pointin in ther air, His heels er stumpin loud. He wore er collar high er enough, Fer any six months calf ; And tie like my red handkichief, That made er feller laugh. And one he said "Wha don chu knaw" I took my "cut" ter day ; Another one he got er "zip," And wished he'd stayed away. They say they "horse," and "make a stab, An some times make a "break." But if I had them in my field, I'd make them take a rake. When yer do hear a college chap, Yer don't know what he says I guess its Latin—but don know, In all my born days. We send our men from off ther farm— They have some common sense ; Ther "city's" call them "greenies" But grapple for ther pence. But soon they larn to shporty dress, And know ther college slang, They come back with swellin heads, Too fine ter help er lang. They think they know a heft of stuff, And flaunt it in yer face, But 'fore ther thro' ther college course, They've set another pace. But don't cher know, I often see, Ther boys from off ther farm, Who think ther "dad" has got ther "mon," Make oft ther shports—yes marm. And tho I kin not spaik mam Like eddicated men I'm not so dull as ruff mam Tho' kin not hold ther pen. And so they musn't judge mam, 'Cause farmin is our lot, THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 217 That we are slow and kin not tell Ef they're er man er not. They ortend fur ter be mam, More than thay really was, But live ter what ther trained fur, And not make sich a fuss. " KIING OP REFORMERS." GEO. W. NICELY, '01. Honorable mention Junior Oratorical. HPHE sixteenth century gave birth to the most remarkable man A the world has ever known. Welcome must have been the change in all Germany, created by the reformation. " From Germany proceeded the power which caused Rome, the once proud mistress of almost the whole world, to tremble, even when she was at the zenith of her potency. And from Germany also proceeded the power which shook the triple crown of the most artful religious and temporal usurper at modern Rome, and brought her to the very brink of inevitable ruin; it was in Ger-many where the morning dawn of a pure worship of the Supreme Being, and of a wise liberty of conscience was destined to arise." In order to realize, to some extent, the magnitude and im-portance of Luther's services to mankind in promoting the cause of freedom and progress, as well as in reformiug the church, it is necessary to recall the condition of the civilized world at the time he appeared and began his career on the stage of human affairs. In the beginning of the 15th century the church was almost universally corrupt, and popes and bishops and people were alike involved in the general demoralization. For a hundred years before the papal chair was occupied by princes, most of whom attained their elevation by intrigue and bribery, and some even by assassination. " It was an age of monasticism." Thousands of men and women in all countries had renounced the world and entered into monasteries and convents to lead lives of superior holiness, but these retreats from the world had changed from their original character and many of them were now places of in-dolence and sensuality. Guiler Von Kaiserburg declares that convent life had become a mere mockery. Infessura, a Roman 218 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY historian, says: "Everyone in Rome knows, alas, that monas-teries have now become dens of corruption.'' Such was the general character of the clergy, from the pope down to the lowest priest; and such also was the condition of religious teachers. Ignorance, superstition and immorality prevailed generally among them. All who questioned the authority of this complex despotism, or denounced its usurpations, were soon silenced or crushed. John Huss and Jerome Prague suffered martydom at Constance for preaching the truths of the gospel a hundred years before Luther; Savoiiavola, at Florence, met a similar fate in 1498. Thousands of others were persecuted, imprisoned, assassinated, tortured to death; hunted down like the wild beasts, or burned to the stake, for worshiping God according to the dictates of their own con-science, for reading the scriptures or for exposing the wickedness and usurpations of the clergy. It was under this state of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, when corruption and profligacy were dominant in the church, and ignorance and superstition prevailed among the people, that Luther appeared and entered upon the great work of reform, for which God had prepared him. It is difficult, if not impossible, at the present day to appreciate the magnitude of that work. All sources of power and influence in church and state; all customs and habits of the people for generations; all existing institutions and the entire structure of society were against him, and had to be assailed, confronted, overthrown and reformed. The word of God was buried in the Latin vulgate version, which only the educated few could read, and copies were so dear and scarce that they were inaccessible to the common people, even if they had been able to read them. " It was one of the achievements of Luther, and a service of ines-timable value to the Germanic nation, that he translated the Bible and gave it to the people in their own tongue, so that all could read it and know that the doctrines he proclaimed were the living truths of the living God, before whom popes and kings and priests and all men were alike accountable." But Luther's work was not confined to reforming the church and furnishing the Bible to the people. It was not only the overthrow of usurped ecclesi-astical power and the restoration of religious toleration and free-dom in Europe. It was all this, but it was also more. There is not an interest or reform affecting human welfare in modern civilization—whether educational, social, industrial or THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 219 political—upon which Luther did not shed the light of his great intellect and soul, enlightened by the word and spirit of God. He taught that it was the duty of the state to educate all the children of the people in order that they might become intelligent and useful citizens; and thus he was the pioneer advocate of uni-versal education four centuries ago. In quelling the outbreak of communism in Germany, known as the "peasant war," he de-clared it to be the duty of all to be subject to " the powers that be," and to acquire property, not by the plunder and robbery of others, but by industry, frugality and honesty. In an address to the princes and nobles of Germany, he taught the reciprocal duties of rulers to their subjects, and of subjects to their rulers, suggest-ing the fundamental principle announced in our Declaration of Independence, that governments, though " ordained of God, de-rive their just powers from the consent of the governed." " I will call this Luther a true, great man," says Carlyle. " Great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity, one of our most lovable and precious men; great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, so simple, spontaneous, honest, not set-ting up to be great at all; therefore quite another purpose than being great. A.h, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens; yet, in the clefts of its fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers ! " "In my judgment," said Senator Wellington of Maryland, " Luther is the greatest man that hath yet lived." "Challenging the license To make gain of sin, Luther nails his protest; Listen to the din. "Striking with his hammer— How the panels shake— How the gateway trembles— How the timid quake! "Blows on blows resounding, Echoed from afar; How the world is shaken, How the churches jar. "We to-day are feeling Heart and conscience thrill, And throughout the ages Men will feel it still. 220 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY "Till the death-stroke's given To all force and fraud; For the striking' hammer Is the word of God." AN OLD CAMERA. P. W. EYSTEB, '03. A BOUT twenty years ago there lived in Dowingtown, about •**■ thirty miles west from Philadelphia, a young man by the name of Warren, whose ambition it was to succeed. He started out in life by teaching school in his native town. So, during the school term he was busy, but during vacation he did all kinds of work about his home. His neighbor was a photographer, and business being dull, he sold his old camera to Mr. Warren at a small price. After young Warren's school had closed, he packed up his camera and left the town, visiting the small villages and towns, to take the pictures of buildings and family groups. Finally he came to a small vil-lage called Pleasant Hill. There was at the time a small show in the place, and as Warren was strolling over the show grounds, he saw an Italian organ-grinder, and a curly-headed boy about six years old on whose face were the features of an American parent-age. Just then the intoxicated assistant-manager of the show came out of a nearby hotel, and tossing to the organ grinder a dime, said, "Make the little rascal dance." The organ grinder, after a few kicks and cuffs, got the boy to dance. The photographer, Mr. Warren, was among the onlookers and took a picture of the Italian and the daucing boy. Warren went to his lodging place, and after developing the picture, put it with others in his traveling case, forgetting all about it. Not meeting with much success at Pleasant Hill, he went to Ardmore, a suburb of Phila-delphia. He took the pictures of the pretty houses and beautiful scenes to be seen in and about Ardmore. One morning as he was stopping before a large sandstone house, preparing to take a pic-ture of it, a handsome lady, on whose face were signs of inward grief, came walking across the lawn, and commenced to talk with the photographer. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 221 This was the house of Mr. Sheffield, a wealthy Philadelphia banker, who lived in Ardmore, and conducted his business in the city. About five years before, his little only son, then one year old, had wandered into the street and was kidnapped. Mr. Shef-field offered a large reward to any one who would make known the whereabouts of his child, but was not successful. Mrs. Shef-field, who admired children, was so grieved at the loss of her only child that she, at times, came near losing her reason. She would every morning, at the time the child was kidnapped, walk across the lawn as if looking for some one; and she Could frequently be heard repeating a low prayer, in which she asked but one favor from God—the return of her sou. This accounted for her pres-ence on the lawn at this time. Mr. Warren invited her to look over the pictures in his travel-ing case while he was fixing the camera. She examined them all till she came to the last, the picture of the organ-grinder and the curly-headed boy; and as she recognized the boy's picture, she exclaimed , "Oh, my boy, my dear little George," and fell over fainting. Just then Mr. Sheffield came; arid Mrs. Sheffield soon recovered sufficient to hand the picture to Mr. Sheffield, He took a long look at it, and judging from the tears that rolled down his cheeks, one could easily tell what his feelings were. Mr. Sheffield asked young Warren where and when he had last seen the organ-grinder and the little boy. Warren gave Mr. Sheffield the desired information, and in less than four hours the police in every town and village in eastern Pennsylvania were looking for an organ-grinder and a little boy, who answered the description of those on the picture. Both were soon found. The organ-grinder, who was the kidnapper, was dealt with according to law and the child was sent to the home of his loving mother. The boy grew up to take part in his father's business, and to-day the Philadelphia firm of Sheffield & Son is well known. The young photographer received from Mr. Sheffield the reward which gave him a good start in business. At present Mr. Warren lives in Baltimore as a retired mer-chant, and he often tells his friends about the old camera stored on the garret of his house. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY. Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg as second-class matter. VOL. IX. GETTYSBURG, PA., DECEMBER, 1900. No. 7. Editor-in- Chief, S. A. VAN ORMEK, '01. Assistant Editors, W. H. HBTEICK, W. A. KOIILEH. Business Manager, H. C. HOFFMAN. Alumni Editor, REV. F. D. GARLAND. Assistant Business Manager, WILLIAM C. NEY. Advisory Board, PROF. J. A. HIMES, LIT. D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M. D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD. D. D. Published monthly by the students of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, One Dollar a year in advance; single copies Ten Cents. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address'must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors, and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Business Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE GETTYBURG MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORS' DESK. "VVTE hear with regret of the death of Business Manager Hoff- " man's father. Mr. Hoffman was summoned home some weeks ago on account of his father's illness, and accompanied him to a Philadelphia hospital, where an operation to save his life was performed in vain. The MERCURY extends sincere sym-pathy to the bereaved family. Since the close of the foot ball season there is a noticeable in-crease in interest in the work of the literary societies. Special programs were rendered in both societies last evening (Dec. 7)— THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 223 in Philo, "An Evening with Kipling"; in Phrena, "A Mock Trial.'' Both halls were filled. It is to be hoped that enthusiasm in and the healthy rivalry between the two societies will continue increasing as time advances. A college man is expected not only to talk intelligently on the current topics of the day but also to meet his adversary in debate with clean-cut, forcible arguments. Men are needed who can think accurately and think on their feet. That Gettysburg men may be the better able to meet these de-mands, a course in Argumentation has been provided for. It is in charge of Professor Klinger, whose enthusiasm and magnetism will prove a source of inspiration to the members of the class, which, added to a knowledge of the principles of Argumentation and practice in the application of these principles, will amply pay for the time and energy expended. As this is the last issue of THE MERCURY for the year and for the century, we wish to bespeak a continuance of the kindly feeling and hearty support of the journal on the part of the stu-dents, alumni and friends of the college. We wish all a pleas-ant vacation, and hope that all may return with renewed ambition and high ideals. When we shall have been transported by the machinery of the world into a new century, may we behold a "New Era" that con-tains bright visions for the coming years ! *3^ab Do not look for wrong- and evil, You will find them if you do; As you measure to your neighbor, He will measure back to you. Look for gladness, look for gladness, You will meet them all the while; If you bring a smiling visage To the glass, you meet a smile. —Alice Cary. 224 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY ELEMENTS Of INSPIRATION IN TME EARLIEST CREEK POETS. C. M. A. STINE, '01. "VVTHAT do we mean when we speak of a book as inspired ? " What is the signification of the word inspiration? These two questions present themselves at the very outset of the subject. The word inspiration means, literally, a breathing into, that is, it is the breathing of God's spirit into the mind of man. When we speak of a book as inspired we mean that it makes the divine will known to man, or contains some great principle or truth in regard to the life of man. It is in this sense of the word that we use the terms inspired and inspiration. In considering the elements of inspiration in the earliest Greek poets we naturally inquire what these elements are in order that we may know what to look for. Let us consider the subject from three standpoints: first, the revelations of God and of the hereafter which they gave to their readers ; second, any prophecies which they contain ; third, their influence upon Greek morals and civilization. Homer and Hesiod are the earliest Greek poets of whose works we have any definite knowledge. The great epics of Homer and the "Theogouy" and the "Works and Days" of Hesiod may fairly be considered as representative of this earliest known period of Greek poetry. Hesiod, in his "Theogouy," as the name indicates, endeavored to harmonize and systematize the numerous myths in regard to the gods b}' arranging the gods themselves in the order of exact genealogy. Homer portrays the gods as grand in the strength of their passions and in their power, yet they leave the impression of being scarcely more than human beings endowed with great power and with immortality. In the Iliad they take sides against one another. Zeus at first is not favorable to the Greeks, and they realize that without the favor of Zeus it is useless to fight. They therefore prosecute the war by wiles and by spies till Zeus has been propitiated. The power of Zeus is recognized, but there are none of the attributes portrayed as pertaining to him which belong to the true God. In his portrayal of the character of Athena, Homer gives the loftiest conception of the Deity. Athena is mind personified. She is without the lower attributes and the petty jealousies which attach to the. other gods. Athena, "the flashing eyed," is essentially the goddess of the keeu-witted THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 225 Greeks. It is necessary that the Greek be constantly on the lookout not to offend the Deities, and if by some mischance a god or goddess is offended, it is necessary that the offended deity be placated at any cost. The various divinities have their favorites over whom they watch and whose actions they direct. In the first book of the Iliad Athena is represented as restraining Achilles by his yellow hair when he is about to draw his sword against Agamemnon : ***** jiffy g> •AOrjvrj ******* * * * l-avOTfi $k ho/ir/i HX* TTTjXziwya, (II. I. 193-201.) Again, in the Odyssey, she assists Teleuiachus to set out from Ithaca in search of his father, and watches over the wandering Odysseus. But how far is all this from the love of the Christian Jehovah ! There is a power spoken of against which it is useless to strug-gle or to appeal to the gods. The decrees of the fates are unalter-able. Even the gods themselves are subject to them. As com-pared with the Christian idea of God as the supreme power there is a wide difference to be noted here. Homer gives a high con-ception of God, when it is remembered that he was a pagan, but the Zeus of Homer and of Hesiod is far indeed from the God of the Christian. From the foregoing we see, first, that there is no clear revela-tion of the attributes of God; second, that there is no idea of Provi-dence; when a guiding hand is revealed it is still within the limitations of stern fate. As to revelations of the future life, the hereafter as painted by Homer is gloomy and forbidding. Instead of regarding the soul as the real ego, and the body merely as a fetter from which the soul is freed at death, the soul is regarded by him merely as a "shade," the shadow of the physical body. This life is all, and there awaited the Greek after death a joyless exist-ence in a gloomy twilight at best, and perhaps even the tortures of Tartarus. He makes the shade of the great Achilles in Hades to say: "I would be A laborer on earth, and serve for hire Some nian of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, Rather than reig-n o'er all who have gone down To death." Od. XI. 489-90, (Bryant's Trans.) 226 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY Such a conception of the hereafter must certainly be regarded as unfavorable to the attainment of the highest and noblest life. As to the revelations of God and of the hereafter as contained in these poems we may say that God never reveals half of himself, or in contradictory lights, nor can an idea of the hereafter be for a moment entertained as the correct one if it is hostile to the attainment of the noblest life and the fulfillment of man's highest ideals. Second, as to the element of prophecy as contained in these poems. Prophecy, strictly defined, is "a prediction under divine influence or direction." We ask then, what predictions are there in the works of these poets and what indications do these predic-tions give of having been made under divine influence or direction ? These poems contain not a single instance of this kind of prophecy. It is true that Homer represents predictions as uttered and later on as fulfilled, but there is no prophecy made by either Hesiod or Homer in regard to the future. The predictions of oiacles are mentioned, and later on we see the fulfillment of these predictions worked out as the action of the poem moves on, but in no case is a prophecy in regard to future ages uttered. We come next to the influence which the works of these poets had on the morals and civilization of the Greek people. It is from this third standpoint that we are most likely to speak of these poems as inspired. The"Theogony" of Hesiod moulded the vast number of myths which we find to have existed in that early period into an orderly, polytheistic theology and was accepted as authority by the Greeks. Any book which brings the idea of God nearer to a people and gives more definite form to that idea, whatever form it may be, will have an influence for good upon the morals of that people. In this way such a book as the "Theogony" must have influenced Greek morals. Hesiod's "Works and Days," however, came nearer home to the hearts of the common people. This poem is a sort of a farm-er's calendar, and in addition to the enumeration of the various lucky days for sowing, etc., it contains a collection of precepts, ethical, economical and political. While the style is homely and unimaginative there is a lofty and solemn feeling throughout, found-ed on the "idea that the gods have ordained justice among men, have made labor the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 227 the year that every work has its appointed season, the sign of which may be discerned." A poem of this character certainly had a beneficent effect upon the minds of the people. It is before the immortal Homer that we must pause in wonder and almost in awe. The influence of the Iliad and the Odyssey upon the Greek mind can hardly be over-estimated. Tbe char-acters which stand forth in his poems, with their matchless symmetry and trueness to life, even to this day, twenty-five hundred years after the writing of the poems, play a part in the formation of the ideals of all who read them, and cannot but enoble the reader. Nausicaa, the loveliest of Homer's female creations, is a character which, in her innocence and her queenly maidenhood, has scarcely ever been equaled. Penelope is the ideal of a con-stant wife, faithful and unswerving in her affections through the most trying experiences. Hector is an ideal of a loyal, unselfish patriot. While no less brave than the fiery Achilles, he is yet more human than that mighty warrior, who has been rendered by the gods practically invulnerable. The appeal of the white-haired Priam for the body of his son will never fail to touch human hearts. With characters such as these ever before them in the lofty poetry of Homer, Greek minds could not fail to be purified and ennobled. Their influence upon the general culture of the age must have been very great, and they are therefore treated as one of the great factors in Greek civilization by many historians. To sum up, we find that while these early poems failed to give the highest conceptions of God, contain nothing of the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and were entirely lacking in the element of prophecy, they, nevertheless, were of the greatest value in the education of the Greek people and the advancement of civilization. In this third aspect, at least, they do not fall short of that lofty ideal which we expect an inspired work to fulfill. While we are not warranted in conclud-ing that they were inspired, yet so long as either Hesiod or Homer are read, the homely truth of the former and the superb genius of the latter must command our highest admiration. 228 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY WORDS AND THINGS. D. C. BUBNITK, '01. I ANGUAGE is God's gift to man. The lower animals pos- *~* sess memory, will and intellect, and in a few cases even the ability to repeat words; but to man alone has the Creator given the power of expressing his thoughts in words. This dis-criminate use of words is the most prominent mark of difference between man and beast. The value of language is realized when we try to imagine man without it. How limited would be his knowledge and how nar-row his range of thought, for he would be unable to receive from his fellows one single idea with which to compare his own thoughts, and thus arrive at new conclusions. Nor would reason have any value without words to communicate to others its re-sults. What would be the extent of scientific knowledge today had Copernicus, Newton, Franklin and all the host of discoverers been unable to preserve their results in words? "Thoughts without words are nothing." * Words are valueless without a knowledge of the relations they bear to the things for which they are the symbols. But an ex-tensive knowledge of their significance is inestimable, for upon this foundation rests all learning—that alone which can procure true appreciation of life and its blessings. Acquaintance with the real meanings of words is necessary to scholarship. One must be able at a glance to discern that which lies back of a word, the thing for which a word stands. He must have appropriate terms with which he can readily give accurate expression to his own thoughts. "A word fitly spoken," says Solomon, "is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." T_et us attempt to substitute one word for another in a passage of Milton, and we destroy the effect of the whole. It was Webster's accurate selection of words that placed him in history. How do we acquire this ability to join the right word with the right thing ? This faculty, like most other endowments, develops with age. The infant hears a word and learns by mere observa-tion what thing it represents. He wishes to denote an object or express a thought, and his elders supply him with the necessary words. And this process of obtaining the meanings of words may be pursued in this same manner all through life. No con- *Max Muller. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 229 scious effort in this direction need be made in order to prosper, but to pass into the sphere of education one must apply himself to the work of definition; he must faithfully consult his dic-tionary. The student's vocabulary is also increased, as in the case of the infant, by being supplied with the ideas before he is given the corresponding terms. That is, a definition may precede the word it explains. This is the modern inductive method of teaching, especially in the natural sciences. By it we are lead first to form a conception and then given the appropriate word. By repeated use every word whose meaning is understood be-comes a complete possession. But not only mere definition and repetition suffice to procure for us in all cases true appreciation of the meanings of words. The things for which some words stand must be experienced before their real significance lies open before us. Who knows what the word "sorrow" really means but him who has had trouble ? The mild tempered person can-not realize fully what lies back of the word "anger." The true meaning of "ocean" is inconceivable to him who has never be-held its beauty. Words are living beings to one who has expe-rienced the things they represent. One of the greatest obstacles to retard our progress is the lack of this absolute requirement for advancement—total command of the words in common use. We wonder why this is. Of course some of us lack original capacity to understand words, and some of us have not had sufficient opportunities to obtain a good vocabulary. But most of us have this capacity and have had the best of chances, and yet we are deficient. The failure to understand and use words in their true import can generally be traced to the habitual disinclination to do that which requires .special effort; in short, we have been lazy. It is surprising how few of us are willing to attribute some of our fail-ings to that cause. Many of our present shortcomings are owing to wilful neglect in the past. In the case in hand we have failed to perform the fundamental process. We have procrastinated, deferring the definition of unfamiliar words till "the next time." We have done this again and again, and now when we attempt higher pursuits, we find our error. An exceedingly large proportion of persons are in this condi-tion. And it is to be deplored that a very large part of those in 230 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY this plight do not seem at all anxious to remedy their condition. How shiftless and inaccurate is their use of words. How feeble their attempts to argue, or even to hold intelligent conversation. The artisan must have materials with which to work. He who would make his thoughts known must have suitable words. But these persons are satisfied with their poor attempts, both to ex-press their thoughts and to understand the thoughts of others. "The world," says Paschal, "is satisfied with words; few care to dive beneath the surface." How true this is. We see it everywhere. Where it is possible the student uses his memory. Words, empty words, are all he tries to obtain; and, sad to say, he gets what he is after. He fails to see beyond the narrow present into the broad future. He strives for present reputation and marks, and he gets them; and that is all. He soon loses words, and he has never received their corresponding ideas, and all that is left is a record "on the books," which in these days of the survival of the fittest, counts for naught. But then there is that large class of persons who do thoroughly realize the necessity of greater command of language, who do want to make up for past neglect. How can we accomplish this ? "There is no royal road to learning." The rudiments of any study must be mastered before there can be advancement. We must now do what we have before neglected. We must use our dictionaries and weigh the significance of each word before we attempt to use it. To attain the highest use of language we must not pass by a single word without thoroughly understanding the thing it stands for. Extreme care must be exercised in the selec-tion of words with which to express our thoughts. Constant watchfulness is the price of success. This work of improvement is an arduous task, the performance of which persistence alone can accomplish, but the end fully repays the effort. Who that has reached this goal would trade his accomplish-ment for all that man could offer? With this possession one dwells upon a higher plane than that of his less intelligent fellow. By it he is brought a step nearer to the Being with whose help he obtains it. No other acquirement can produce such pleasure as this knowledge of the relations of words to things. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 231 THE REFINING FIRE IN NATURE. J. R. STONER, '01. A T that period of the year when the process of oxidation is **• going on more rapidly than at any other, preparing nature for a state in which she may resume anew the forms of activity and life,—look out over the landscape ! The autumnal equinox has ushered in another season to succeed the vanished summer, and the robe of verdure is changed into the beautiful golden garb of autumn. The forest and the grove reflect a hue of amber and gold as they lie in the distance, bathed in the rich sunlight against the blue background of the sky. It is but the flame of this burning process in nature now fanned into a great conflagration consum-ing all that has flourished in the past year that is no longer of value in the economy of nature, except it be decomposed into its elements and taken up in the formation of other substances. But all is not consumed. The golden grain and the fruit of the tree; that which at one time appeared but as an obstructed growth of leaves, now contains within its narrow shell the capability of un-folding in another life. By its persistence in complying with the law that turns all hindrances to good effects, while it could not assume the beauty and prominence of a leaf in the bright robe of the herb or the tree, but submitting to its allotted destiny, it grad-ually developed into the permanent kernel, able to survive in the test under which the leaf must perish. We see all around us the work of nature purging the earth of all that is useless at the end of a period of creative activity or growth, preparing for another period of vigor and work. By means of this oxidation or slow burning "all effete substances that have served their purpose in the old form are burnt up" and only that which has the promise of life and usefulness passes un-harmed through the ordeal. Without this conflagration by which the earth is swept in autumn, there could be no.new, fresh growth in nature. Through the amber flames of autumn comes the pure, fresh verdure of spring. Everywhere is this refining fire purg-ing the universe of all that is worthless, perpetually tending to bring it into a purer state. Even the rivulet, whose crystal waters have been made foul by the natural contamination of the soil over which it has flown, is made purer by being thrown into a state of agitation as it ripples down over the obstructions in its way. The grand column that dashes precipitately over the awful 232 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY cataract and is separated into multitudinous particles of spray reaches the plane below in a purer state ; because the molecules have been bathed in the refining element of oxygen pervading the atmosphere. Thus we see that hindrances or adversity in nature are the means through which all great and phenomenal feats are brought about. And may not this principle be traced into the ethical life of man ? Surely all great heroes of the past, whose deeds are worthy of immortality, and whose careers merit the height of fame they have attained, have been disciplined by the stern school of adversity. They were men who met the hindrances with a de-termined will that would not flinch, when faced by difficulties, or cower in the presence of misfortune, their destinies were not moulded by circumstances ; but circumstances were controlled by their high destiny, the goal of their illustrious lives. And as a consequence the hindrances they met and surmounted prepared them to survive in the refining fire of trial, and instilled into their very sinews pure and noble principles of life. Thus estab-lished in character, they came from the ordeal all the more beauti-ful for having been submitted to the test. Arduous accomplishments that require an extraordinary amount of perseverence, patience, tact, and earnest toil should not be looked upon disparagingly. They are but the means, the testing fire, as it were, by which those who are fit to rise high in the walks of life, to take charge of responsible positions and to wield the sceptre of influence over the world in a manner to di-rect it in the channels of righteousness, are separated from those who are frivolous, trifling, insignificant idlers. And like the evergreen,—fitting emblem of the eternal that it is,—as it stands robed in its brilliant garb, unscathed by the withering effect of the autumn frost and the snows of winter, an object of life stand-ing out in sharp contrast with the seemingly lifeless world around it; so shall those, who have stood the test, be clothed in immor-tality though all things else may perish. CQgj 111 fares the land to hastening' ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. —Goldsmith. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 233 A PINANCIER. FRANK 8. FITE, '01. \ HAD the rare privilege, some forty years ago, to make the ac- * quaintance and to be favored with the confidence of a finan-cier who had risen to eminence from the lowest social grade. As a beggar boy, his exceptional talent for begging had roused the enthusiasm of a set of elderly maidens, who were attracted by his peculiar cry of helplessness and his boast of honesty. They put him to school. He learned there the fundamental principles of arithmetic, and little else; but his aptitude for trade was devel-oped in a marvelous degree. All the spending money of the scholars was invariably found at the end of a vacation in Chaucey Alcott's pockets. Yet, no boy could say that he had been cheated. All the fellows felt that their bits of silver coin had mysteriously disappeared in their various business relations with Alcott; but still they reluctantly confessed that everything had been "fair and square." He was said to be "on the dead level," yet plucked them, it would seem, pitilessly; but he stood by his own contracts, as he compelled them to stand by theirs. No act of positive dishonesty was ever proved against this plausible, cautious and relentless trader. The boys declared that he was shrewd, cunning and hard, yet he was "so obliging!" They disliked him, and at the same time accepted his services. Could they have caught him in any act of rascality his life would have been made a misery, but he was so discreet in his early preparation for his future career that, at the age of ten, he already gave promise of the great merchant and banker he eventually became. On leaving school, young Alcott found that his possessions amounted to thirty dollars. Instead of rushing at once to the elderly maidens who had helped him he went to the city and offered himself as clerk in a wholesale fish house. The senior partner was attracted by his evident talent and felt his youth renewed in looking at the youngster; he gave him a position in his counting room at once with a salary of fifty dollars a year. The keen youth, seeing at a glance that his employers were pious misers, instantly became, to all appearances, a pious miser himself. But in the course of five or six years he astonished the firm by show-ing that he knew more about the wholesale fish business than they did, and had made some money by quiet speculation of his 234 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY own. They oSered to double, treble, quadruple his salary, but nothing would satisfy Alcott but a partnership in their question-ablegaius. This they refused and Alcott promptly set up for himself on a small capital of money but a large capital of knowledge and intelligence, and soon cornered his former employers in a few heavy dealings and put them into bankruptcy in twenty-four months after he had left them, with the skillful use of their own methods. In the course of a few years he ventured cautiously but surely into other departments of commerce. He became a general merchant and at last assumed the dignity of ship owner and shipped his o-oods in his own vessels. He had two grand qualifications for business: his mind was quick and his heart was hard. In all financial panics he collected what was his due relentlessly, regard-less of the suffering it might bring upon nobler people than him-self; and paid all his own notes punctually as they fell due. To "fail'' was to him the worst of crimes. Almost everybody detested him, yet all knew that they could rely both on his word and his bond. Such a merchant, perhaps, should be judged by his own prin-ciples ; he had no sympathy with the great body of merchants of the country and laughed at all such sentimentality. "Get the better of 'em," was his motto. About this time he was a little wearied with commerce and bonds and stocks held for him the charm which merchandise had lost. He had obtained about two million dollars and amazed the moneyed world by a rush into Wall street, where he became a gigantic stock-jobber and banker. Here, as in school, the same shrewd, cunning characteristics were manifest, and slowly at first, but surely, his fortune increased and he obtained big commissions on the doubtful and worthless securities he sold; but just as his school-mates, those wbo relied on him could not assert that he had done anything to forfeit his reputation for honesty. It was at this point that I happened to have the honor of being one of his clerks, and in a short time his confidential one. I at once noticed his profanity. Everybody and everything interfering with his business designs brought forth a volley of oaths. There is probably no greater shock to the mind of an honest, well-intentioned country lad who is sent to confront the tempta- THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 235 tions of a city, with a mother's prayers hovering over him, than when he finds his employer is a rascal disguised as an honest man. Shall he also become a rascal ? Shall he stoop to scoundrelisms which his inmost soul abhors ! His behavior under such circum-stances is a test of his character ; his father, mother and sister, if he is fortunate enough to have a sister, combine all their moral energies to help him. There is no reason why the boy should have more privileges thau the girl, but the fact that he has is too evident to admit of a doubt. The denial of sisters to advance their brothers is one of the tragedies of human life. The re-verse SHOULD be the case, but unfortunately is not. But to return to my theme. As soon as I found out Mr. Al-cott, I began to look upon him with a certain horror. He had the greatest confidence in my honesty and even allowed me to sign his name to checks, but when I suggested that my services were worth more than I received, and that fifteen hundred would but partly recompense my unceasing work in his journal and ledger, he used his favorite formula and cursed me and my ser-vices roundly. He really thought that my services were due his pre-eminent position, though he was aware that I might ruin him in a single day had I chosen to "skip" at the close of business hours with his stocks and bonds. It is curious that I never had the slightest temptation to use the vast powers with which Mr. Alcott endowed me, for I might easily have become a millionaire in some European country had I chosen, like my employer, to become a rogue. I witnessed, as do clerks every day, the process of plundering, without any desire to plunder the plunderer. His wife, a meek woman, whom he swiftly scared into the grave, left him a daughter. She appeared to me a foolish, gig-gling creature, with large black eyes, a pug nose, and a complex-ion which was red to the point of ignition. A younger clerk in the office, much to our amusement, with a salary of five hundred dollars a year, declared that he was madly in love with her and convinced her of his sincerity ; as it was ridiculous to suppose that the father would consent to such a match, the clerk and heiress eloped and were married. When Alcott heard of it, he blasphemed with a savage fluency that was Wonderful even in him. His son-in-law was a bright fellow, however, with some rich connections, and with their backing, soon appeared in Wall Street. He made money, backed as he was, and Mr. Alcott went deliberately to work to ruin him, but at first he didn't succeed, as the son-in-law, in an early "corner in Erie," took eight hundred thousand out of his father-in-law's pocket: but this only stimu-lated Mr. Alcott and he ventured his millions without stint in an attempt to "corner" his son-in-law. [Continued.] 236 THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY BOOK REVIEW. Quicksand, by Hervey White :—Small, Maynard, and Co., $1.50. QUICKSAND is the life history of a family with many more downs than ups. It is divided into three parts, in each of which a particular member of the family is the central figure, although all the members of the family enter into each divi-sion. The birth, boyhood, education, marriage, struggle for literary fame, and tragic death of Hubert form a conspicuous current in the narration. The varying dispositions of the members of the family, the appearance of the Indian, Maude, and the faithful hired man give an abundance of variety. The characters are depicted in striking detail, and the descriptions of the three homes (which the cover-ing of shame made necessary) are complete. The effect of a number of follies (crimes in some instances) are so clearly brought out as to emphasize the necessity of straight forward living. AMONG OUR CONTEMPORARIES, TT has not been the policy of THE MERCURY to devote much *■ space to an exchange article, but we feel it our duty to say something at intervals of those journals of other institutions, the reading of which gives us much pleasure and is profitable. The fact that an exchange article was crowded out of the November number explains why, in a few instances, reference is made to October numbers. The University of Virginia Magazi?ie is one of the most com-plete literary journals on our table, and the November number is an especially good one. It contains an article on "Keats—A Conscious Reformer of English Poetry," that is worthy of study. "The Quiet Indian's Ghost" in the November Touchstone is a well written story. The editor makes a strong appeal to the "men of Lafayette" in behalf of the literary journal of the insti-tution . The recent changes in the form and general get-up of the Pharetra make it the neatest and most attractive of our exchanges. The material is of a high grade, and the pen-sketches add ma-terially to its attractiveness. THE GETTYSBURG MERCURY 237 "The Living Relic of Barbarism" in the October Ursinus Col-lege Bulletin is decidedly above the average oration in beauty and in force. An increased number of pages of literary material should accompany the change of The Bulletin from a biweekly to a monthly. The November Midland contains in its literary department a poem by Longfellow and one from the Denver News, an article by an alumnus and one by a student. Will this encourage liter-ary work among the students at Midland f The Dickinson Literary Monthly has materially raised its standard and, in general, does not suffer in comparison with the best; but the November number contains a partisan article that is unworthy a place in a college journal. Those interested in the educational condition of Puerto Rico will find an interesting article by Dr. M. G. Brumbaugh in the Juniata Echo for October. The Echo is to be congratulated on being able to publish these articles. We regret that the Novem-ber number did not contain one. "The Spanish Arnaida," an outline with explanations, by Stanley Ecker in The Western University Couranl reflects credit upon the author and the journal. It is the result of effort and thought. The poetry of The Lesbian Herald is an important feature of the publication. A well written article on "The Sun's Eclipse," accompanied by a photograph of the total eclipse at Centreville, Va., May 28, 1900, appears in the last issue. ««*£> "Over and over again, No matter which way I turn, I always find in the book of life Some lesson that I must learn ; I must take my turn at the mill, I must grind out the golden grain, I must work at my task with a resolute will, Over and over again." PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISERS. C. F?. SOLT MERCHANT TAILOR Masonic Bldg., GETTYSBURG Our collection of Woolens for the coming- Fall and Winter season cannot be surpassed for variety, attractive designs and general completeness. The latest styles of fashionable novelties in the most approved shades. Staples of exceptional merit, value and wearing durability. Also altering-, repairing-, dyeing and scouring at moderate prices. .FOR UP-TO-DATE. Clothing, Hats, Shoes, And Men's Furnishing- Goods, go to I. HALLEM'S MAMMOTH CLOTHING HOUSE, Chambersburg St., GETTYSBURG, PA. 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The Century Double-Feed Fountain Pen. Fully Warranted J6 Kt. Gold Pen, Iridium Pointed. GEO. EVELER, Agent for Gettysburg College PRICE LIST. No. 1. Chased, long or short $2 00 No. 1. Gold Mounted 3 00 No. 3. Chased 3 00 No. 3. Gold Mounted 4 00 Spiral, Black or Mottled |2 SO Twist, " 2 SO Hexagxm, Black or Mottled 2 SO Pearl Holder, Gold Mounted S 00 THE CENTURY PEN CO., WHITEWATER, WIS. Askyour Stationer or our Agent to show them to you. Agood local agent wanted in every school ^Mirmm^fr^wmmwwMmmmmmmwmm^ Printingand Binding We Print This Book THE MT. HOLLY STATIONERY AND PRINTING CO. does all classes of Printing- and Binding-, and can furnish you any Book, Bill Head, Letter Head, Envelope, Card, Blank, or anything- pertain-ing to their business in just as good style and at less cost than you can obtain same elsewhere. They are located among the mountains but their work is metropolitan. You can be convinced of this if you g-ive them the opportunity. Mt. 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Issue 68.2 of the Review for Religious, 2009. ; Mission and Ministry Renewing Religious Traditions Reviewing Outward Signs QUARTERLY 68.2 2009 Review for Religious fosters dialogu~e withGod, dialogue with ourselves~: and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according ~ iocharisms of~Catholic religiouslif¢. As Pope Paul Vl said, our way of being Church is todqy the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034o639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Mail: reviewrfr@gmail.com ¯Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2009 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any inaterial (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribution, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. ~ gournalof Catholic ~pir~ual~y Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp . Paul Coutinho sJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen HughesRSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 68.2 2009 contents prisms 116 Prisms 118 132 144 mission and ministry ~ ~_ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principle,s: A Missioner's Reflection James H. Kroeger MM shares with us ten "mission principles" valid for Paul of Tarsus and for today's Pauls as well--the result of his own reflections as a missionary and a meditative reading of St. Paul. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion A Franciscan Approach to Ministry Daniel P. Horan OFM ~eflec~s on Francis of Assisi's life and writings and suggests that the five characteristics that emerge provide a helpful parad!grn for all pastoral ministers in the church. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion Discipleship and Walking by Faith Damian C. Ilodigwe, along with Abraham and the apostle Thomas, shows that discipleship needs deep faith daily. Review for Religious 152 168 renewing religious traditions Reparation and the Sacred Heart: A New Intrepretation Virginia M. Herbers ASCJ suggests a new understanding of reparation which speaks to the lived reality of the Body of Christ in a global community as well as to the Christian mission to live a life of service. Being Heard, Being Healed: Learning from the Quaker Tradition James H. Schimelpfening SM shares his refreshing experience of community that came from a series of six seasonal retreats based on the Quaker tradition and the work of Parker Palmer. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion 181 192 reviewing outward signs Religious Habits Reconsidered Doris Gottemoeller RSM looks over changes of habit and other changes and raises some thoughtful questions about what is now past, having been passed with a view to the future. On Wearing a Habit, from My Perspective Patricia McCarthy CND shares her experience of responding to God's grace in giving witness to her religious consecration in order to help us all to question our freedom in responding to God's grace in our own call. departments 204 Scr.ipture Scope: The Gospel of St. Paul 208 Canonical Counsel: Response to the Role of Law in the Church 214 Book Reviews 68.2 2009 prisms 116 T celebration of the Pauline Year has stimulated a large number of books on the person and writings of St. Paul. As a theologian I have been most taken by the importance of the Holy Spirit in Paul's Letters. In dogmatic development, it will take a few centuries before the church can articulate a theology of the Trinitarian God, and so Paul's writings about the working of the Spirit are all the more arresting. One of the titles that we give to the Holy Spirit in our Nicene creed is "Giver of life." That title is one of the best summaries for how Paul describes the Spirit in the life of the individual Christian and of the Christian community. In his Letter to Titus, Paul makes a summary statement about how much the Spirit is truly the Giver of life. "[God] saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior." Through the image of the Spirit being poured out, all the specifics of this new life find their font. Early on in his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul asks "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" He then goes on to say "for the temple of God, which you are, is holy." But Paul becomes more creative and copious in his description of the Spirit's gifts when he employs the image of the human body. That we all are members of the Body R~vie~ for Religious of Christ receives its most detailed description in this Letter of Paul's. We are all baptized into the one Body in the one Spirit. The Spirit is the Giver of the many different kinds of spiritual gifts, and at the same time "to each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit" (1 Co 12:7). What we might take for granted, Paul assures us, is the Spirit's gift. Paul's example is "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Co 12:3). Surely our sacramental words, "I absolve you," "this is my Body," "I baptize you," are Spirit-filled and Spirit-given words. But more simply, our expressed desires--"teach me to pray," "Lord, for-give me," "Lord, here I am"--are the continuing daily pouring out of gifts of the Spirit. That the total health of the Body depends on each and every one of us being open to the gifts of the Spirit and so sharing this divine life remains central to Paul's theology of the Spirit's gift-ing both to the individual Christian and to the Christian community. In Paul's Letter to the Romans we receive the rich-est understanding of our prayer as Christians. "The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" (Rm 8:26). Our very effort to pray--sometimes feeling so dry and empty--is always a gift of the Spirit. Perhaps our own sense of futility in praying excites the gifting of the Spirit's groans within us all the more, and within the groanings of the community praying as well. Paul's insight gives us consolation in our daily effort to pray. From these few examples, perhaps we will be stirred to greater gratitude for Paul's own gift of in.sight into the Spirit as the Giver of life as we celebrate.the Pauline Year. David L. Fleming SJ 117 68.2 2009 mission and JAMES H. KROEGER Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles: A Missioner's Reflection ministry The apostle Paul is considered the greatest missionary of all time. He is called the Apostle of the Gentiles since he was mainly responsible for the spread of Christianity into the Gentile world. The church owes much to Paul for its growth; he pioneered its early expansion by his mission labors and his theological reflection. A brief synopsis of Paul's life includes the following approximate chronology: 5-10 (birth at Tarsus), 15-20 (studies in Jerusalem), 36 (conversion), 36-39 (Damascus, Arabia, Jerusalem), 39-43 (Tarsus), 43-44 (Antioch), 44-48 (first missionary journey), 49-50 (Council of Jerusalem; Antioch confrontation with Peter), 49-53 (second missionary journey), James H. Kroeger MM, a missionary in Asia (Philippines and Bangladesh) since 1970, is professor of systematic theology, missiology, and Islamics at the Loyola School of Theology; Ateneo de Manila University; Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights; Quezon City 1108; Philippines. jkroeger@admu.edu.ph 53-58 (third missionary journey), 58-60 (prisoner in Caesarea), 60-63 (voyage to Rome, prisoner in Rome), 64-66 (Spain? Rome? elsewhere?), 66-67 (prisoner in Rome), 67/68 (death in Rome). This brief chronology provides the context from which Paul's dynamic mission principles emerge; they are the result of both mission praxis and deep theological reflection. Paul's letters and the Acts of the Aposdes provide much insight into Paul's missionary thinking and methods. Over the centuries many authors have tried to digest Paul's mission thought and praxis, emphasizing the "central ideas" of this aposde. This effort may be admi-rable, but can result in a certain selectivity. Thus, this author is chary of claiming to capture the "essence" of Paul's insights. One cannot compose a "CliffsNotes" or abbreviated version of Paul's thought. His letters were written over a span of ten years; they were based on a lengthy ministry of preaching the gospel message in an extraordinary variety of circumstances and to diverse groups of people. Readers, consider this pie.ce a long-term ad gentes missionary's :personal reflections based on a medita-tive reading of St. Paul. Through an interaction of this writer's personal experience and the profound thought of Paul, ten "mission principles" took form. Emerging from Paul's life and refracted through the experience of a contemporary missioner, these insights are, I think, valid for the church's missionary activity today, twenty centuries after Paul's birth. Depth Awareness of Vocation. In Paul's mind there was no iota of doubt about his calling, his vocation; for Paul and all missioners, mis-sion originates in the call of God. Several passages in the 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles book of Acts portray this: "The Lord said to [Ananias], 'Go, because this man [Paul] is my chosen instrument to bring my name before Gentiles'" (Ac 9:15). "The God of our ancestors has chosen you . . . because you are to be his witness before all humanity, testifying to what you have seen and heard" (Ac 22:14-15). "I have appeared to you for this reason: to appoint you as my servant and as witness of this vision in which you have seen me" (Ac 26:15). In addition, the majority of Paul's letters begin with a firm assertion of his identity as a chosen instrument of God. "From Paul . . . an apostle who does not owe his authority to men or his appointment to any human being, but who has been appointed by Jesus Christ and by God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead" (Ga 1:1-2). "From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus who has been called to be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News" (Rm 1:1). Several other let-ters begin with almost the same words: "From Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus" (2 Co 1:1); see also 1 Co 1:1, Ep 1:1, Col 1:1, Ph 1:1, and others. Writing to the Corinthians about Christ's resur-rection, Paul categorically states: "I am the least of the apostles; in fact, since I persecuted the church of God, I hardly deserve the name apostle; but by God's grace that is what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless" (1 Co 15:9-10). Radical Commitment to Christ. Paul's experience on the Damascus road was, in fact, only the starting point of a lifelong relationship; mission envisions a totally Christ-centered life. Paul expresses this in various ways: "Life to me, of course, is Christ" (Ph 1:21). "None of us live to ourselves, and none of us die Review for Religious to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Rm 14:7-8). "I have been crucified with Christ, and I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Ga 2:19-20). All of Paul's writings speak of his love for Christ, his identification with Christ. So intimate was his rela-tionship that he could even advise the Corinthians: "Imitate me as I imitate Christ" (1 Co 11:1). Paul tells the Thessalonians that they can follow his example: "You observed the sort of life we lived when we were with you, which was for your instruction; you were led to become imitators of us and of the Lord" (1 Th 1:5-6). Paul, writing to the Philippians, makes a moving com-parison of his previous life to his newfound existence in Christ: "I believe nothing can happen that will out-weigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him" (Ph 3:8-9). Voluntary Acceptance of Suffering Not relying on words alone, the apostle Paul preached the gospel by his life and example. In a par-ticular way, vulnerability and acceptance of the cross authen-ticate mission. In imitation of Christ who gave himself up to death even for sinners (Rm 5:8), Paul considers his suffering for the sake of the gospel to be a participa-tion in Christ's sufferings (2 Co 1:5-7). Paul saw him-self as sharing in Christ's kenosis (Ph 2:6-11). Writing to Timothy he says: "Join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling" (2 Tm 1:8-9). 121 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯Paul'$ Dynamic Mission Principles Paul recounts his numerous trials in the service of the gospel; he mentions his imprisonments, beatings, shipwrecks, travels, robberies, hard labor, sleeplessness, hunger, thirst, and nakedness (see 2 Co 11:23-27). Paul also mentions that he had to bear "a thorn in the flesh" (2 Co 12:7). Yet, he notes, "I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong" (2 Co 12:10). Of course, this vulnerability is intimately linked with the paradox of the cross: "Continually we carry in our bod-ies the.dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed" (2 Co 4:10). Like Paul, all missionaries need to say, "May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Ga 6:14). Insightful Mission Methods One can affirm that all Paul's energies were mission-focused, yet one can also point out that he employed dis-tinct methods to achieve his purposes. Mission demands creative, inculturated, ever-renewed approaches to evange-lization. Paul sought various occasions which would facilitate his proclamation; he attempted to connect his preaching with people's daily lives and worldview. Paul's approach at Ephesus (Ac 19) is exemplary; he would preach in a synagogue or a nearby house and attempt to link th~ Jewish faith with Christian revelation (see Ac 13:5 & 14, 14:1, 17:1). Acts 17:22-31 narrates Paul's famous speech in the Areopagus, the central assembly place in Athens, the cultural capital of the Greek islands. Paul mentions their altar to an unknown god; he refers to the philoso-pher- poet Epimenides (vv. 23 & 28). Although many mocked Paul, his intelligent method won some followers Revie~v for Religious for Christ. Paul, the "practical" missioner, moved from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the unknown to the known. Pope John Paul II has exhorted missionaries to move into new mission frontiers, "the modern equiva-lents of the Areopagus" (Redemptoris missio, §37). Paul's missionary sensitivities are manifested in his conviction that adaptation (inculturation, in today's parlance) is essential when mission meets a new situa-tion (Ac 15). He vigorously opposed the imposition of Jewish legal traditions, cultural observations, or external religious practices on Gentile Christians; these could hinder the spread of the gospel into the Gentile world. Paul even withstood James in Jerusalem (Ac 15) and Peter in Antioch (Ga 2:11-14). Paul articulates his "inculturated" method of becom-ing "all things to everyone" (1 Co 9:19-23). He adapts himself to the Jews, to those outside the law, and to the weak. His vision is crystal clear: "I have made myself the slave of everyone so as to win as many as I could. ¯. I made myself all things to everyone in order to save some at any cost; and I still do this, for the sake of the gospel, to have a share in its blessings." Urgent Gospel Proclamation ~. Paul did not understand "preaching" as giving a spir-itual reflection in a liturgical assembly. Integral procla-mation means heralding an urgent message from God that profoundly affects the destiny of all humankind. Mission has lost none of its urgency in the contem-porary world. Paul's words possess an authentic ring-- even in our ears today: "For, if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Co 9:16). For all Christians, evangelization must be a 123 68.2 2009 Kroeger ¯ Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles "daily preoccupation" (2 Co 11:28). As Pope Paul VI noted, "the presentation of the gospel message is not an optional contribution for the church. It is a duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus" (Evangelii nuntiandi, §5). This Pauline "mission principle" is actually a call for an examination of conscience on the part of the church. Have many local churches placed too much emphasis on administrative efficiency, pastoral management, eco-nomic accountability, liturgical practice, canonical and catechetical orthodoxy--all to the detriment of dynamic programs of renewed evangelization? Have inward (ad intra) concerns vitiated the church's outward (ad extra) mission commitments? Paul's words contain a challenge to all churches and religious communities: "All the way along, from Jerusalem to Illyricum, I have preached Christ's Good News to the utmost of my capacity" (Rrn 15:19). Paul wrote these encouraging words to Timothy: "Make the preaching of the Good News your life's work, in thoroughgoing service" (2 Tm 4:5). 124 Deep Love of the Church In examining Paul's apostolic methods, it is enlight-ening to probe his view of the church. Paul primarily understands the church as a local community of baptized followers of Jesus Christ; he was not opposed to a uni-versal church, but in his day the local congregation was central to his experience. Mission and love of the people who constitute the church go hand in hand. This principle echoes the thought of an elderly Maryknoll missioner who never tired of repeating: Mission is people. Paul had great love and concern for the ecclesial com-munities he founded with painstaking effort. His writ-ings frequently and spontaneously express his affection: Review for Religious "It is only natural that I should feel like this towards you all, since you have shared the privileges which have been mine: both my chains and my work defending and estab-lishing the gospel. You have a permanent place in my heart, and God knows how much I miss you all, loving you as Christ Jesus loves you" (Ph 1:7-8). When the churches Paul established with patient apostolic ministry were in trouble, he shared their pain; he speaks of his "daily anxiety" for them (2 Co 11:28). He wonders aloud: "I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted" (Ga 4:11). "My children, I must go through the pain of giv-ing birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you" (Ga 4:19). Although the Corinthian community had many internal problems (divi-sions, immorality, idolatry, etc.; see 1 Co 1:10-13, 5:1-5, 10:14- 22), Paul, the affectionate missionary, loved them dearly: "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all" (2 Co 3:2). "Keep a place for us in your hearts . As I have already told' you, you are in our hearts--together we live or together we die. I have the very greatest confidence in you, and I am so proud of you that in all our trouble I am filled with consolation and my joy is overflowing" (2 Co 7:2-4). His writings frequently "and spontaneously express his affection. Close Collaboration with Coworkers The apostle Paul, though a strong personality, was a team worker in the task of evangelization. He under-stood that all apostolic ministry is enhanced through collab-orative efforts. Some few examples show that Paul saw 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles great advantages in working together with other apos-tles. On his first missionary j6urney, Paul was accom-panied by Barnabas and Mark (Ac 13-14). Timothy and Silvanus were his trusted coworkers in Corinth and else-where (2 Co 1:19). Titus was his appointed deputy in dealing with difficulties in the Corinthian community (2 Co 8:23), Among other coworkers and fellow aposdes were Luke, Erastus, Aristarchus, and Tychicus. Paul considered teamwork and collaborative minis-try important for a variety of reasons. Apostles working in partnership presented a visible image of the church as community; it gave the people an example of common witness. A variety of apostles working for a common goal presented a more balanced picture of the church than Paul alone could have given. In addition, the gifts of vai'ious individuals were put at the service of gospel proclamation. Paul frequendy expressed his admiration and appre-ciation of his collaborators; he called Timothy his "coworker" (Rm 16:21) and tenderly describes him as "my dear and faithful son" (1 Co 4:17) whose "worth you know, how like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel" (Ph 2:22). Paul referred to Titus as "my brother" (2 Co 2:13) and "my partner and coworker" (2 Co 8:23). Even if disputes occasionally arose, Paul sought to promote communion in mission. Paul offers contemporary ministers a model of cooperative ministry. Commitment to Social Transformation Paul preached a gospel of freedom and liberation along with his manifest concern and love for the poor and the suffering. The gospel message of human dignity and equality, if embraced, leads to social transformation. Revie~v for Religious Paul firmly believed in the transforming power of the gospel message, and he proposed to his communities the model of Jesus Christ: "Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty" (2 Co 8:9). And, for gospel credibility, Paul himself imitated Christ. Though he possessed citizenship in the Roman Empire, to show his social concern and commitment he chose the lot of ordinary working-class people and labored with his own hands for his livelihood (1 Th 2:9, 1 Co 4:12). Paul challenged many of the social, racial, religious, cultural, and economic barriers of his times. One brief example illustrates Paul's social message. In ancient times, there were three great blessings pronounced in the Jewish synagogue: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, . . . who hast not made me a Gentile, . . . who hast not made me a slave,., who hast not made me a woman!" Paul certainly had these barriers in mind when he expressed the new unity of those baptized in Christ: "There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Ga 3:28). All, without dis-tinction, are to gather around the Eucharistic table, that great center of unity. Numerous additional examples of Paul's social con-sciousness readily come to mind. He struggled to alleviate the suffering of the Christian communities in Jerusalem and Judea during a severe famine (1 Co 16:1-4). Paul laid down ~a clear apostolic principle: "The only thing insisted on was that we should remember to help the poor, as indeed I was anxious to do" (Ga 2:10). Paul converted the runaway slave Onesimus and then demanded that he be accepted "no longer as a slave but something much bet-il, 27 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles ter than a slave, a beloved brother" (Phm 16). In a word, Paul preached authentic liberation: "When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free" (Ga 5:1). 128 Effective, Exemplary Lifestyle The apostle Paul was always careful that .his per-sonal life would encourage and facilitate the spread of the gospel and never become counterproductive. The witness of a Cbristian life is the first and oj~en most effective proclamation of the gospel. When Paul speaks of imitation in his letters (he is not being arrogant), he believes that Christians can encourage one another through their Chrisdike words and deeds. An exemplary lifestyle is a very effective mode of proclamation. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Co 11:1). Paul commends the Thessalonians because "you were led to become imita-tors of us and of the Lord" (1 Th 1:6). Paul, the exem-plary missioner, is seeking to draw people to Christ, not to himself, through his encouragement to imitate model Christians: "I have sent you Timothy. he will remind you of the way that I live in Christ" (1 Co 4:16). Several of the foregoing sections of this presenta-tion refer to key elements that coalesce to form Paul's life-witness as an apostle: Christocentric spirituality, voluntary vulnerability, innovative mission approaches, evangelical urgency, collaborative ministry, social engagement. To these elements one could add additional virtues, as Paul himself does in his lists of spiritual gifts (see 1 Co 12 & 13, Ga 5:22). In a theology of mission today, the holistic approach to mission that Paul's life shows would be termed "inte-gral evangelization." Paul consistendy strove to run the race successfully and fight the battle successfully (see 1 Co 9:24-27). He kept his eyes fixed on Christ; he told Revie~v for Religious the Philippians: "I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me" (Ph 3:12). Total Reliance on God's Providence Paul had full confidence in God's everlasting love and fidelity; the guarantee of God's salvific love is Jesus Christ. Paul asks: "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?" (Rm 8:31-32). Mission always remains "God's project" and evangelizers seek to be God's faith-filled, humble instruments. Paul cooper-ated with God's grace so willingly and generously because he was firmly convinced that he was doing God's work. He asserts that he is only a servant of the gospel: "I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God made things grow. Neither the planter nor the waterer matters: only God, who makes things grow" (1 Co 3:6-7). Paul lived his apostolic life with great confidence and full trust in God, whom we can call "Abba" (Rm 8:15, Ga 4:6-7). His life wasfilled with many sufferings, hardships, and challenges; he even faced Spirit-given "roadblocks" in his missionary journeys (Ac 16:6-10). Fully convinced that his life and mission were dependent totally on God and the Spirit's guidance, Paul labored unceasingly, always ascribing any missionary success to God. "By the grace of God I am what I am . I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the Paul labored unceasingly, always ascribing any missionary success to God. 129 68.2 2009 Kroeger * Paul's Dynamic Mission Principles grace of God that is with me" (1 .Co 15:10). Paul asserts: "The love of Christ urges us on" (2 Co 5:14), "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Ph 4:13), "The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness" (Rm 8:26). Paul was a man of faith. The dynamic aposde Paul is undoubtedly the great-est missionary of all time. Based on his mission experi-ence and profound theological insights, this presentation has proposed ten "mission principles," valid for Paul of Tarsus and for today's Pauls as well. Paul burned' with the flame of God's love that was enkindled in his heart at his conversion; that flame pervaded his whole existence, even to the final hour of his martyrdom in Rome. It is good for us to notice that, even in the face of all the afflictions and sufferings he endured, Paul was a fulfilled, joyful, Spirit-guided missioner. Paul over-flowed with the Good News, and spread God's saving love everywhere. His awareness of God's transforming grace given to him in abundant measure enabled him to joyfully proclaim Jesus as Lord (see 1 Co 15:10). Paul, exemplifying a genuinely missionary attitude, was filled with deep joy, not because of personal grati-fication or external success, but because he saw many communities accept the person of Jesus. He wrote to the Philippians: "My brothers and dear friends, do not give way but remain faithful in the Lord. I miss you very much, dear friends; you are my joy and my crown" (Ph 4:1). To the Thessalonians Paul wrote: "What do you think is our pride and our joy? You are; and you will be the crown of which we shall be proudest in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes; you are our pride and our joy" (1 Th 2:19-20). The Corinthians received this message from Paul: "I have the very great-est confidence in you, and I~ am so proud of you that in Review for Religious all our trouble I am filled with consolation and my joy is overflowing" (2 Co 7:4). Paul's exhortations need to be heard by the mission-ary church today: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice" (Ph 4:4). "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Th 5:16- 18). "My brothers, rejoice in the Lord" (Ph 3:1). "Shine in the world like bright stars, because you are offering it the word of life" (Ph 2:15-16). Pastors, missionaries, catechists, religious, all ministers of the church, imitate Paul, the joyful evangelizer. Selected Resources Alien, R. Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962. Grassi, J. The Secret of Paul the Apostle. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978. Grassi, J. A World to Win. Maryknoll: Maryknoll Publications, 1965. Matera, E Strategies for Preaching Paul. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001. Murphy-O'Connor, J. Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007. Smyth, B. Pauk Mystic and Missionary. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980. Srampickal, T. "The Secret of Paul's Missionary Success," Third Millennium 10 (2007): 41-66. Witherup, R. I01 Questions and Answers on Paul. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion What principle(s) of Paul, identified by Kroeger, most caught your attention for use in your own mission? If you were to list your own mission principles, how would they compare with Paul's? 131 68.2 2009 DANIEL P. HORAN A Franciscan Approach to Ministry 1321 During his final days St. Francis of Assisi reflected on how he had lived his life and spent God's time. To preserve his recollections of the birth of his new religious order and leave a record of his hopes for the future, he dictated his Testament to some of the fri-ars who were caring for him. In it he recalls his conver-sion to follow Christ and shares what it means to be a Franciscan: to live the gospel. Today Francis continues to inspire people in all parts of the world and every faith tradition. His Testament is the last of a series of writings by Francis that reveals his vision of ministry. Beyond what people often call "Franciscan spirituality" stands his vision of ministry in the church. It is a manner of living in the world, being in relationship with God, and serving our sisters and brothers. The year 2009 marks the eight-hundredth anniver-sary of the order's founding. As we celebrate this mile- Daniel P. Horan OFM has written on Franciscan theology, philosophy, and spirituality. His address is Holy Name College; 1650 St. Camillus Drive; Silver Spring, Maryland 20903. horandp@gmail.com Review for Religious stone, it is good to consider Francis's example and reflect on his vision, which serves as inspiration and guidance. In this article I will highlight five themes that emerge from Francis's writings to form a ministerial ethos that is particularly Franciscan. One does not need to be a Franciscan, a Poor Clare, or a secular Franciscan to adopt a Franciscan approach. Any pastoral minister can benefit from the insights of one of the greatest saints and reformers in Christian history. Everything Done in Humble Service When Francis started his work for God, having renounced his worldly possessions and aspirations, he did penance and followed the gospel as he felt led by God.~ Soon others sought to imitate his efforts and fol-low him in what Franciscan scholar Thadd~e Matura calls the "Franciscan project." This project, while ini-tially not the goal of Francis himself, quickly grew to include thousands of friars and hundreds of sisters,z What made them follow in the footsteps of this medi-eval man and renounce property and adhere to a life of obedience and chaste celibacy? One element of the Franciscan project that emerged early was radical adherence to subordinate positions in society. Francis's early followers saw the humility of a man who left behind the life of a wealthy merchant to live among lepers and outcasts. In his Earlier Rule, Francis had instructed them where among the social strata they should strive to live. He says, "Let no one be called 'prior,' but let everyone in general be called a lesser brother. Let one wash the feet of the other." Francis continued by enjoining his brothers to be "lesser ones" always "subject to all.''3 This spirit of humility is the foundation for all the 133 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ ~ Franciscan ~pproach to Ministry characteristics of a Franciscan ministry. Francis was less concerned about what someone did in the world than about how someone did it. Here we see his admiration for Christ's humility as central to his spirituality: to be Francis was less cbncerned about what someonedid in the world than how someone did: a Franciscan is to live the gospel by following in the footprints of Jesus Christ. Michael Blastic summarizes this well: "As Jesus turned toward those around him, so Francis and Clare in contemplation and com-passion incarnate the praxis of Jesus as they follow him in their world by turning to those around them.''4 From his incarnation and birth to his death on the cross, Jesus' life served as Francis's model for humble service. Perhaps the most succinct articulation of Francis's image of humble service is found in Admonition XIX. Here Francis says: Blessed is the servant who does not consider himself any better when he is praised and exalted by people than when he is considered worthless, simple, and looked down upon, for what a person is before God, that he is and no more. Woe to that religious who has been placed in a high position by others and [who] does not want to come down by his own will. Blessed is that servant who is not placed in a high position by his own will and always desires to be under the feet of others,s 134 Humility is a virtue of ministry, being of service to and among people, that Francis often wrote about. Besides being a reoccurring theme in his Admonitions, humility becomes a constitutive characteristic of the Franciscan way of life when it appears three times in his Review for Religious Later Rule. In chapter 3 we read, "I counsel, admonish, and exhort my brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ not to quarrel or argue or judge others when they go about in the world; but let them be rrieek, peaceful, modest, gende, and humble, speaking courteously to everyone, as is becoming." Two chapters later in the same document, Francis exhorts his followers to always work humbly as servants of God and disciples of poverty. Toward the end of the Rule, Francis again reminds his followers that even amid persecution, hardship, and infirmity they are to have humility and patience while loving those who persecute them.6 Francis echoes the theme of humility at every opportunity because in this way Christ served his brothers and sisters and in this way he desired to serve. Thaddte Matura makes a keen observation about the importance of humility in Francis's way of life and in the movement he gave rise to. Matura believes that Francis was.well aware of the temptation, perhaps within him-self, for pastoral ministers to consider themselves better or above those whom they served.7 It is possible that his concern about friars judging others and seeking special privileges was rooted in his own experience as the son of a wealthy merchant, a well-off young man who was disgusted by lepers and people of lower social status. Regardless of Francis's initial motivation, we are the inheritors of a vision that inspires ministers to always put others before themselves.8 In a world that is fraught with self-centeredness and material accumulation, where even devoted ministers are tempted to seek personal reward, a humble approach to ministry remains prophetic. Relationship Takes Priority Francis's way of being-in-the-world followed the example of Jesus Christ. Michael Blastic insightfully 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ A Franciscan Approach to Ministry connects the divine humility that Francis recognized in the incarnation with God's outward movement toward humanity.9 It was in humility that God incarnate, Jesus Christ, entered into relationships with the people around him. All four Gospels tell of Jesus' encounters with many people: the marginalized, outcast, wealthy, powerful, average, violent, peaceful, and so on. Because he lived a perfectly humble existence among his sisters and brothers, Jesus could meet people as they were, rec-ognizing the inherent dignity of each human person. For Francis, this became a major component of his way of life and remains a Franciscan characteristic today. Vv'hile most of the preserved writings of Francis are letters, prayers, and admonitions or guidelines addressed to large numbers, we have one letter that was written to a particular minister. His identity remains anonymous, frustratingly so for many, but the anonymiW allows us to stand in his place and receive personally from Francis his wisdom concerning ministry, a touching wisdom straight from his heart. Francis is concerned about this friar's attitude and disposition, and he says: I wish to know in this way if you love the Lord and me, his servant and yours: that there is not any brother in the world who has sinned--however much he could have sinned--who, after he has looked into your eyes, would ever depart without your mercy, if he is looking for mercy.~° Mercy trumps justice. Relationship remains the pri-mary way for people to understand all their encoun-ters. Vghile this observation may appear obvious, the reason is that we are already familiar--if only subtly and indirecdy--with the Franciscan way of seeing ministry. This was not always the case. The Franciscan historian Joseph Chinnici describes the early Franciscan move- Review for Religious ment as a radically new form of "penitential human-ism." He applies this term to the Franciscan movement's effort to bring people together peacefully amid "social discord and violence." This approach to ministry puts relationship and com-munity above per-sonal journeys of faith and conversion. One's own conversion, if it is a Franciscan one, should lead toward others and away from one's own self.~ It ~ is for precisely this reason that Francis insisted that the friars be mendicants, not monks, and live with the whole world as their cloister, not limiting it to a monastery's four walls. Franciscan ministries are not simply good methods, skillful implementations of model practices. Rather, they are a project that seeks to unite those who are separated by the violence of social, political, and ecclesial dissent.12 To stress relationship as the primary approach to minis-try, Francis often used familial terms. In his Earlier Rule, he says, "Let each one love and care for his brother as a mother loves and cares for her son."13 In Francis's spirituality, such a familial understanding of relation-ship extended even beyon.d human relationships to include all of God's creation. In his most famous work, The Canticle of the Creatures, he addresses all elements as brother or sister. In an age of heightened ecological awareness, our relationship with the earth and the rest of creation can influence our ministry positively. We are called to minister to all with a deepened sense of our One's own conversion, if it is a Franciscan one, should lead toward others and away from one's own self. 137 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ ~l Franciscan ~pproacb to Minisl~ interdependence and relatedness as children of God and brothers and sisters of all God's creation. Avoid Attachment There is great wisdom in a mendicant model of life. In a life of detachment from personal property, pasto-ral ministers become less preoccupied with their status, their control, their "things." If a particular ministry does not "belong" to a particular minister, one becomes a curator, a caretaker, one who takes good care of some-thing of value not one's own. This contrasts with the oligarchic approach, a small group's limited vision often preventing a ministry's expansion or creativity. Francis was quite convinced that appropriation of anything, including one's work as a minister, would lead to other problems. His Earlier Rule is filled with admonitions and warnings about the danger of attachment. In chap-ter 7 he says, "Wherever the brothers may be, either in hermitages or other places, let them be careful not to make any place their own or contend with anyone for it." He goes on to say, "Guard yourselves against the anxieties of this world and the cares of this life," and summarizes by saying: "Let all the brothers strive to follow the humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let them remember that we should have nothing else in the whole world except as the Apostle says: "Having food and clothing, we are content with these" (1 Tm 6:8).14 While today most ministers, including professed Franciscan women and men, would find it difficult to live in this world strictly observing the instruction above, the key to Francis's insight is found in the word "strive." We understand this as a more perfect vision of an imperfect manner of living in this world. It is the Review for Religious model that pastoral ministers should have in their work, striving in humility and poverty to not appropriate the work as their own. Thy Will Be Done Naturally, the divestment of property and ownership of even one's ministry leads to the question: Then to whom does it belong? For Francis the answer is simple: M1 good things come from and belong to God. It is in the perfect prayer of Christians that we find the source and purpose of our ministerial endeavors, "Thy will be done." When our efforts in ministry become more about our will, our ambition, or our desires, then we have left the realm of ministry and entered some level of self-centeredness. Closely linked to Francis's view of attachment is his understanding that all ministry is the work of God for God. This understanding affirms and renews people's vocation to service. It directs the gaze of ministers from themselves back to God as the source of their inspiration to follow their ministerial vocation. Francis often wrote about God's will in connection with his own ministry and that of the Friars Minor. In his Letter to the Entire Order, Francis reminds his broth-ers of their vocation and its connection to God's will. He writes: "Give praise to him because he is good; exalt him by your deeds; for this reason he has sent you into the whole world: that you may bear witness to his voice in word and deed and bring everyone to know that there is no one who is all-powerful except him.'ns Matura highlights this thought of Francis when he says, "Anything good that we have or do, no matter how personal it is, comes to us from God, and we are only administrators of that good, as it were.'n6 In addition to the proper attribution of our gifts and vocation to 139 68.2 2009 Horan ¯ A Franciscan Approach to Ministry God, this thought frees us of the weighty burdens of self-sufficiency and responsibility. Unhampered by the pressure ministers frequendy put on themselves, we are free to be God's instruments, working in partnership with Christ and others. In this way we leave the world of "lone rangers" and enter the community of Christians working toward the kingdom. I'40 Pray without Ceasing A Franciscan approach to ministry must always flow from a life of prayer. Those who adopt this approach are not just people who pray, but people whose words and actions are also prayer. This lived prayer is con-stant openness to conversion, allowing God to enter and transform lives from worldly concern and triviality to authentic gospel living--in Christ's footsteps, as God's instruments of peace today. In a brief letter to St. Anthony of Padua, Francis responded to his request for permission to teach the-ology. This was a new initiative, for up to this time Franciscans had largely avoided academic ministry. Francis was cautious of higher education because of the tendency of the educated to think better of themselves, look down on others, and move away from the charac-teristics of ministry we have examined above. Francis knew of Anthony's gifts, however, and knew that many friars had asked for his instruction in theology. Francis told Anthony, "I am pleased that you teach .sacred the-ology to the brothers providing that, as is contained in the Rule, you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' during study of this kind.''17 Even a ministry as basic as training other friars for pastoral ministry was viewed as secondary to prayer and devotion. Francis writes in his Earlier Rule that those who Review for Religious come after him are to love the Lord God, who has given everyone everything, with their whole heart, soul, mind, strength, understanding, powers, effort, affection, feel-ing, desire, and wish. This is not to be an occasional experience or portion of time apart from the rest of life, but the modus operandi of ministry. Later in the same text Francis writes: Wherever we are, in every place, at every hour, at every time of the day, every day and continually, let all of us truly and humbly believe and hold in our heart and love, honor, adore, serve, praise and bless, glorify and exalt, magnify and give thanks to the Most High and Supreme Eternal God, Trinity and Unity.'s This is another echo of the Franciscan understanding that one's entire life should be given back to God as prayer. Such a life naturally nourishes a vocation to service and ministry. When one's actions are directed back to God with humil-ity, with relationship as the priority, without encumber-ing attachments, and with recognition of everything as God's work, then life is transformed into prayer. Ministry then is not a person's self-motivated effort or effectiveness, but the outpouring of God's gifts received prayerfully and gratefully and sharbd with others. Eight hundred years after the first Franciscan began to do ministry in the small town of Assisi, we find our-selves inspired by Francis's example to continue the mission of God's work in our world. Regardless of our particular manifestation of God's work, all pastoral min-isters can find renewed life and purpose by reflecting A Franciscan approach to ministry must always flow from a 'life of prayer. 141 68.2 2009 Horan * .4 Franciscan AIqn'oacb to Ministry on a Franciscan approach to ministry. Humility keeps us approachable and ready to give loving service. The priority we give to relationship brings us to places where we can best foster loving unity among our sisters and brothers and grateful respect for all of creation. Detachment helps to seek the right things, without being distracted by worldly concerns. Recalling that God is the source of all our gifts and our personal voca-tion puts our work into perspective, while bolstering our purpose to work hand in hand with God. Finally, more than just say prayers, we strive to live lives that are prayers, lives that help bring God's love to our world. Notes i Francis of Assisi, "The Testament," verses 1 and 14, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William Short (New York: New City Press, 1999), pp. 124 & 125. Further citations of this first volume will be noted as FAED followed by page numbers. 2 Thaddde Matura, "Francis of Assisi and His Posterity Today," in Gospel Living: Francis of Assisi Yesterday and Today, ed. Elise Saggau (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1994), pp. 263-267. Matura compares Francis to Jesus while explaining similarities of the Franciscan orders and the church. While Francis is held as the founder and model for the three Franciscan orders (much as Jesus is for the church), he is not credited with intentionally founding a new movement in the proper sense (see p. 264). ~ Francis of Assisi, "The Earlier Rule," 6:3-4 and 7:2, in FAED, p. 68. 4 Michael Blastic, "Contemplation and Compassion: A Franciscan Ministerial Spirituality," in Spirit and Life, vol. 7, ed. Anthony Carrozzo, Vincent Cushing, and Kenneth Himes (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1997), p. 172. s Francis, "Admonition 19: A Humble Servant of God," in FAED, p. 135. 6 Francis, "The Later Rule," 3:10-11 (emphasis added), 5:4, and 10:7-10, in FAED, pp. 102-105. r Thadd~e Matura, Francis of Assisi: The Message in His Writings, Review for Religious trans. Paul Barrett (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1997), p. 167. s St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan saint and doctor of the church, later wrote about the importance of humility in the evangelical life, beginning his treatise Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection with that topic. See Works of St. Bonaventure, vol. 13, trans. Thomas Reist and Robert Karris (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2008). 9 Blastic, "Contemplation and Compassion," p. 153. 10Francis, "A Letter to a Minister," verse 9, in FAED, p. 97. 11 Joseph Chinnici, "Penitential Humanism: Rereading the Sources to Develop a Franciscan Urban Spirituality," in Franciscans in Urban Ministry, ed. Roberta McKelvie (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2002), pp. 119-122. ~2 See Chinnici, "Penitential Humanism," p. 123. 13 Francis, "Earlier Rule," 9:1 I, in FAED, p. 71. ~4' Francis, "Earlier Rule," 7:13, 8:2, and 9:1, in F~IED, pp. 69-70. is Francis, "A Letter to the Entire Order," verses 8-9, in FAED, p. 117. 16 Matura, Francis ofAssisi, p. 132. 17 Francis, "A Letter to Brother Anthony of Padua," verse 2, in FAED, p. 107. 18 Francis, "Earlier Rule," 23:8 and 23:11, in FAED, pp. 84 & 85. Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion 1. What model or approach do I currently use in my pastoral ministry? 2. In what ways do Francis's insights speak to me today? 3. What characteristics of a Franciscan approach to ministry do I live particularly well? Where could I strive to improve? 68.2 2009 DAMIAN C. ILODIGWE Discipleship and Walking by Faith God never deceives us. When we entrust our life to him and allow him to direct us, he ensures that all goes well. We may not know where he is lead-ing us. We only see the present, and nothing beyond it. Indeed, even the present is sometimes not clear, and in any case it reaches beyond itself into the future. The present invites to us to keep moving despite perplexity. Here our faith is our strength. Faith propels us forward. So long as we know that God is with us, we can afford to take the next step. We need not be apprehensive. We can be certain that we shall reach our destination even if we have to move slowly and sometimes with some frustradon. Without faith we do not see that God is leading us. If we step out into the unknown future at his bidding, it is likely that we will persevere to the end (see Heb 11). Damian C. Ilodigwe last wrote for us in early 2008. He is a priest and lecturer in philosophy at Ss. Peter and Paul Major Seminary; P.M.B. 5171; Secretariat P.O.; Ibadan, Nigeria. dammychuks2000@ yahoo.com Review for Religious We should trust God at each step, even when we do not know what lies ahead. He shows us his plan piecemeal. An aspect of faith is trust. We can think here of chil-dren and mothers. Usually young children are wholly dependent on their mother. She gives instruction, and the child wonders about it. But this wondering does not prevent the child from carrying out the mother's bidding. He may ask questions, of course, but unless he is simply seeking some clarification he will not get very far. He will not be permitted to ignore or resist what his mother asks him to do. Usually children know, for their own good, when they had better obey. Usually they carry out their mother's instruction even when they do not fully understand. What is true of the relation between children and their mother is true of our relationship with God. Like little children, we need to give God our utter trust (Lk 11:5-13; 18:1-8). Because our faith tells us that God acts in our best interest, we can afford to follow his bidding no matter the inconveniences we feel to be associated with it. A childlike simplicity in our relationship with God is an index of vibrant faith and of maturity in this relationship (Lk 12:22-31). The' Case of Abraham In the life of Abraham we find an example of this childlike faith. He is ready to do the Lord's bidding even when this involves a great deal of sacrifice. Many instances in his life illustrate his utter commitment to God. Consider the divine request to leave his country for another land: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name so famous that it will be used as a blessing. I will 68.2 2009 llodig'we ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith In the life of abraham we find an exa ple ff bless those who bless you; I will curse those who slight you; all the tribes on earth shall bless themselves by you" (Gn 12:1-2). How could God ask Abraham to do a thing like this?1 The demand appears extravagant and even ridiculous. Is it reasonable to leave his native place, where all his friends are? He is established here. He has security here. To leave means leaving good memories and property behind and beginning all over again. As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It is foolish to abandon what has proved itself over the years without a good clear reason. That rea-son would be that the change will certainly make things better. But, for Abraham, the future is a clouded certainty. All that is certain is that he should leave and that he will be shown another land. Regarding the particulars of the promised land, he knows nothing. He is told, though, that from him will come a great nation. That promise appears less attractive than it might because of its general vagueness. Yet at another level it provides a certain motivation because it comes from God, from Abraham's faith in God. It is only faith that can quickly overcome the disenchantment pr0~oked by lack of information about this promised land. Abraham is certainly a man of faith. For, in spite of the obvious per-plexities associated with this directive, he. takes the bull by the horns. He understands that it is the Lord speak-ing and that he knows what he is doing. Consequently he sets out as the Lord has told him to do. Scripture tells us that Abraham is seventy-five years old when he Review for Religious leaves Haran. He takes his wife, Sarai, and the people they.have acquired in Haran. Their journey takes them to Canaan (Gn 12:4-5). Abram's age of seventy-five is significant, emphasizing the great inconvenience of this movement. He is not a young man eager to be off on his own. So in a sense it is a blind journey. God guides him. As is always the case, the Lord does not ask us to do something and then leave us to our own design. He does not leave us on our own. He provides for us one step at a time. The entire picture can never be available to us all at once. As Abram journeys, he comes to Shechem's Oak of Moreh, in Canaan. The Lord appears to him and says he will give this land to his descendants. Abram builds an altar there. He proceeds to the hill country east of Bethel and then to the Negeb (Gn 12:7-9). Although Abram has stepped out into the unknown, he is never alone. He knows in faith that the Lord is with him through all the stages of his journey. And so he is our father in faith (Heb 11:8). He is wholly sub-missive to God, and God does not fail him. Abraham becomes the father' of a multitude of nations. The Challenges of Discipleship and Our Contemporary Situation At this juncture we may ask what we can learn from Abraham's experience. We can learn much regarding the challenges of discipleship. Our life, too, is a journey, a journey of faith towards God's kingdom. God calls each of us out of our various backgrounds to pursue a special life journey, a pilgrimage to a distant destination. The fundamental truth about this is that God is with us all the time, even when we do not take cognizance of him. His presence empowers us to be what he wants us to be. '147 68.2 2009 Ilodig~ve ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith Without evidence we are likely to feel discdnnected, His providence sustains us and guides every.aspect of our life. We need to let this truth have an impact on the way we live our life each day. We need to entrust ourselves completely to that providence. "For those who --~ love God, all things work together unto good." We may not understand just how they fit together now or will fit together in the end, but we cannot doubt that they do fit together. God's love, acting as a redemptive principle, inte-grates every aspect of our experience, bringing every-thing into God's ultimate plan for us all. The practical implication of this truth, then, is that we must learn to walk by faith rather than by sight.2 There is a world of difference' between walking by faith and walking by sight. When we walk by mere sight, we are all the time looking for visible, tangible, measur-able evidence of what we should do or should have done. For many purposes and many aspects of reality, there is such evidence, but for other purposes there is none. We may feel that without that kind of evidence there is no reality. If so, we are likely to feel disconnected. We are likely to feel we are living within limited horizons, likely to have a vague feeling that we are missing something. Not enjoying that feeling, we give oursel~es a warrant to deny there is any reality behind our vague feeling. We decide not to let ourselves be affected by what we claim is unreality. We refuse to be open to it. On the other hand, our admittedly limited knowl-edge even of the physical world should persuade us to see and affirm that the fullness of reality is far broader 148] Review for Religious than, say, the empirical data we have of the astrophysi-cal universe or the jungles of Brazil. We may lack the resources to fully penetrate such real worlds, and the world of faith as well, but we do not have reason to deny their reality and the impact they can and should have upon us.3 We need not deny spiritual reality even though we lack tangible and visible data that serve as empirical evi-dence. Spirituality's reality is accessible to faith. Faith transcends the evidence of the empirical sciences. When we walk by faith, we find ourselves in some sense at home in all of reality. The experience of Abram challenges us. Because he walked by faith, he was able to see far beyond the lim-ited reality of his time and place. Ready to journey with the Lord, he stepped out into the unknown that in some way he could actually see. In time he realized much of the promise he had. received. Abram's faith was his sav-ing grace. In our dealing with the Lord, some tension remains between the way of faith and the way of mere sight. . Sometimes we may walk ahead of the Lord or far behind him, and thus miss some of what we would have received from him. When our faith is stronger, we are better able to synchronize our mind and heart with God. We see better what he sees; we dream better the dream that he dreams for us; we see a road even when our ordinary sight sees no road. In short, our world of possibilities becomes larger; we live our lives more abundantly. Thomas's Encounter with the Risen Lord Consider Thomas. He did not believe when the other apostles told him they had seen the Lord. He insisted that unless he touched Jesus' wounds he would 149 68.2 2009 llodigwe ¯ Discipleship and Walking by Faith 1501 not believe (Jn 20:24-25). His predicament is under-standable. He cannot transcend the inclination to walk by sight. He demands empirical evidence in a matter that requires faith. The reality of the risen Lord is not accessible to, cannot be contained in, the limited world of empirical evidence. This becomes clear to Thomas when the Lord grants his demand for evidence. "Put your finger here, and look at my hands; then stretch out your hand and put it in my side. Stop your doubting and believe." Thomas says, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus says to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!" On 20:26-29). Thomas wants empirical evidence in order to believe, and he is granted the rare privilege of touching and seeing. But the Lord does not fail to make clear that this privilege is not really necessary. Indeed, it is argu-able that it is not the empirical evidence that generates Thomas's confession. Thomas could have touched the Lord and still not believed. There is another factor, the factor of grace. One cannot come into the presence of the risen Lord without being positively affected. That is what seems to have happened in Thomas's case. It is clear that what really matters is faith, not sight: "Happy are those who believe without seeing me." Without empirical evidence they believe, and this is what makes them blessed. The experience of the risen Lord is paradoxically a reward for their faith. It is their faith, not empirical evidence, that opens them to the reality of the risen Lord. Faith is a gift. through and through. God's gift, the presence of God, is received and perceived through faith. If we turn again to the experience of Abraham, we note that he avoids the tension between the way Review for Religious of faith and the way of sight. He does not ask for evi-dence as Thomas does. He is ready to step out into the unknown simply because he believes it is the Lord speaking. Faith sustains him on his travel. Faith brings him to the promised land. But before this ever comes to pass in time, faith has already enabled him to realize the promised land spiritually. The claim of faith is certainly one we cannot afford to ignore in our everyday struggle. We need to keep in mind the distinction between the way of faith and the way of sight. So as to realize our full destiny in the Lord, we must cultivate the habit of walking by faith rather than by sight, bringing faith into every aspect of our existence. It will enrich our vision of life and increase our ability to deal appropriately with all that occurs in our day-to-day living. In carefully fostered faith, the unthinkable becomes thinkable, the impossible becomes possible, and our entire life will be lighted by the glory of God. Notes I Even more extravagant is the later demand that he sacrifice Isaac, the child of promise. Here, too, Abraham's response marks him as a model of faith. See Genesis 22. z See Ralph C. Martin, Called to Holiness (Mumbai: St Pauls, 2001), pp. 101-117. 3 Faith and reason complement each other. Indeed, as Pope John Paul I! famously remarked, "Faith and Reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth" (Fides et ratio, §7). 151 68.2 2009 VIRGINIA M. HERBERS Reparation and the Sacred Heart: A New Interpretation renewing religious traditions The conciliar decree Perfectae caritatis was pro-mulgated in 1965 to guide renewal "in order that the great value of a life consecrated by the profession of the counsels and its necessary mission today may yield greater good to the church" (PC §1). Thirty years later John Paul II affirmed that "the consecrated life has not only proved a help and support for the church in the past, but is also a precious and necessary gift for the present and future of the people of God" (Vita consecrata, §3). In fidelity to the council's call and in response to the pope's call for authentic interpretation of founding charisms, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have in recent years striven to understand Virginia M. Herbers ASCJ is vocation director of the Aposdes of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and director of Queen of Apostles Spirituality Center; 800 Montebello Camp Road; Imperial, Missouri 63052. svhascj@yahoo.com Revie~ for Religious authentically the role and relevance of reparation within the Sacred Heart devotion. This effort has led me to believe that, just as religious consecration still has significance in the world today, so too does reparation. I affirm Karl Rahner's claim in 1966 that devotion to the Sacred Heart is not a dated, old-fashioned piety, but rather is quite relevant today. He later insisted that this devotion is indispensable "since the future of the church was decided by the love of the heart of Jesus in dying and depends on the final decision of Our own hearts."' I think Rahner is correct. I would add that consecrated life itself can be understood as a lived interpretation of Sacred Heart devotion, and that the religious profession of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart demonstrates the proper understanding of repa-ration in the Sacred Heart devotion. This community's charism illuminates a unique aspect of God's love, pro-viding for the entire church a renewed understanding of our baptismal vocation (see PC §1). To appreciate this charism of reparation, a brief look at the religious vows and the Sacred Heart devotion will provide helpful background. Let us take them in turn. The Evangelical Counsels Vita consecrata asserts that religious vows are not an initiative of the individual religious, but a response of the individual to God's call: "The experience of this gracious love of God is so deep and so powerful that the person called senses the need to respond by unconditionally dedi-cating his or her life to God" (VC §17). The profession of poverty, chastity, and obedience is the consecrated person's response of love to the One who loves her infinitely. Hearing the call and responding to God's love is not unique to those in religious life; it is implicit in 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart baptismal consecration. Profession of the evangelical counsels does not set religious apart from the body of the faithful as holier, closer to God, or more perfect. It is not a consecration differing in essence from baptismal consecration. Rather, it is rooted in baptism. It is an intensification of baptismal consecration for mission; it is a specification of the baptismal call.2 As such, it is a sign to all the baptized of what and who we are called to become as followers of Christ and members of his Body. "Religious life 'clearly, strikingly, astonishingly' ¯ . . leads the church to see what the whole church is called to by baptism, to see it clearly and strikingly in a public and communal embodiment that helps people toward realization.''3 Profession of the evangelical counsels is thus a rec-ognition by religious of the fullness of God's love for all, and a response to that love with the gift of their entire lives. Through the vows of chastity, poverty, and obe-dience, religious center their lives on the "God-quest" and proclaim that "I commit my whole self, everything and forever, to the undying love that has claimed me for the transformation of the world." Profession of vows is thus "a unitary and unifying act, a solemn, formal, and public act, by which a person takes her whole life into her hands and freely disposes of it in self-gift to Christ and his Body within the congregation."4 Sacred Heart Devotion Devotion to the Sacred Heart has traditionally been understood as an icon of God's love for humanity, devel-oping direcdy from incarnational theology,s Humanity recognizes God's love in the love of the God-man, Jesus Christ, as shown specifically in his heart. The incarna-tion allows human beings to experience God's love in Review for Religious tangible human ways. The heart of Jesus reveals the heart of God, embodied and enfieshed. This capac-ity has implications for all who follow Christ, for "the only Son of God, in becoming incarnate, takes on a human heart [and] we are called to share in this love and to receive through the Holy Spirit this extraordinary capacity to love.''6 Devotion to the Sacred Heart, then, is not devo-tion to an abstract symbol, but devotion to the per-son of Jesus and his love for each human being. The incarnation gives humanity access to what was formerly inacces-sible, God's very self, during Jesus' earthly life and now in his Mystical Body, the church. In the heart of Jesus, God calls us to "become what we receive"7 and to incarnate God's love ourselves as members of Christ's Mystical Body. What, then, does the heart of Jesus teach us about the incarnate love of God? Devotion to the Sacred Heart encompasses four characteristics of God's love: (1) Christ's heart shows us that the incarnate love of God is a continuing, dynamic reality, not an abstract theory or historical event; the heart of God is enfleshed in the body of Jesus and continues to beat in his Body, the church. (2) Christ's heart is a heart wherein two natures--human and divine-~coexist in perfect harmony. (3) Christ's heart is on fire with love for all humanity, both in general and in particular. (4) Christ's heart is an Devotion to the Sacred Heart has traditionally been understood as an icon of God's love for humanity. 68.2 2009 Herbers ¯ Reparation and the Sacred Heart open, broken heart--opened by the soldier's lance after the sacrifice of his human life, and broken by human sin, weakness, and error. The Religious Vows: Returning Love for Love Given the understanding that religious vows are a response to love and a sign for all the faithful of our common call to share in Christ's mission, and given the understanding that Sacred Heart devotion is (a) an ongoing dynamic expression of God's incarnate love, (b) exemplified in the love of Jesus' heart, which is in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit, (c) con-tinually on fire with love for us, and (d) still wounded by humanity's rejection of divine love even while revealing through the open wound the ultimate gift of his life, we now turn to the modern relevance of the religious vows as a distinct and poignant means of living Sacred Heart devotion. The consecrated religious professes vows as a return of love for Love, as a response from her heart to the outpouring~of God's love upon her. The very act of con-secrated profession can be interpreted as a profound act of Sacred Heart devotion, as attested by John Paul II: "Through the consecration of the religious vows, you desire, through the love of total giving, to fill your souls and your bodies with the spirit of sacrifice . In this way the likeness of that love which in the heart of Christ is both redemptive and spousal is imprinted on the religious profession" (Redemptionis donum, §8). Acknowledging and accepting the love of God and responding "in kind" are not enough, however. The Sacred Heart of God incarnate is not a mere image to be worshiped or just a pious practice to be encouraged. The encyclical on Sacred Heart devotion, Haurietis Review for Religious aquas, quotes Thomas Aquinas on this point: "Religious worship is not paid to images, considered in themselves, as things; but according as they are representations lead-ing to God incarnate. The approach which is made to the image as such does not stop there, but continues towards that which is represented.''8 In a similar way, professing vows in the church as a response to God's love commits religious to loving service of the church and, not stopping there, to loving service of the incar-nate Word of God. Our acceptance of God's love in baptism transforms us; in religious profession this baptismal transformation shapes our likeness to Christ, compelling us to return his love by following his example of ministering self-lessly to all those in need. Pope Benedict XVI expresses this directly: "When we practice this devotion, not only do we recognize God's love with gratitude but we con-tinue to open ourselves to this love so that our lives are ever more closely patterned upon it . The experience of God's love should be lived by men and women as a 'calling' to which they must respond. Fixing our gaze on the Lord. helps us to become more attentive to the suffering and needs of others.''9 Interior devotion is thus manifested in ministerial outreach. The three vows constitute a unique expression of Sacred Heart devotion, corresponding to specific char-acteristics of incarnate love. The heart of Jesus is a heart both human and divine, the heart of a man and the heart of God. Within one heart, two natures coex-ist in a mysterious unity that leaves each distinct yet undivided. Jesus' human heart beats in rhythm with the heart of God; his human will is perfectly synchronized with the will of God. The desire of the man corresponds completely with the desire of God for the man. 157 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and tbe Sacred Heart In this lies the kernel of religious obedience--to have our hearts beat in time with the heart of God. Consecrated persons who vow obedience strive to desire what God desires, to will what God wills, to attune their hearts to the heart of God. "To want the same thing, and to reject the same thing, was recognizeff by antiq-uity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought,m° Genuine obedience is not confor-mity to an external authority nor submission to a will foreign to our own. The vow of obedience "in its deep-est roots is a dedication to freedom, not to subjection or servitude . True freedom is to be found in union with the will of God."1' The vow of chastity expresses devotion to the heart of Christ by expressing his love for all people. Just as the Sacred Heart is "a heart on fire," so by vowing chastity do religious enkindle the fire of love in their own heart. Sandra Schneiders insists'that the vow of chastity "must be based on a deep religious experience of being loved by God in Jesus and an experienced per-sonaL fulfillment in returning that love." She adds that this vow "leads the person toward personal transforma-tion in love and allows the person to participate mean-ingfully in the emergence of a new, whole, and loving world characterized by equality, responsible intimacy, and mutuality."12 Clelia Merloni, the founder of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart, describes the "fire of love" kindled by the apostle's vow of chastity as holy zeal: "You see, daugh-ters, wherever the fire of divine love is, it cannot remain hidden or idle, but at once it manifests itself as the liv-ing flame of a holy zeal . Remember, daughters, that zeal must be active, untiring, gentle, and prudent: zeal Reuiew for Religio~.s does not inflame the heart without manifesting itself in works."13 By vowing lives of consecrated celibacy, reli-gious perpetually submit to the consuming fire Of God's love, which in turn impels them to share that love with everyone she encounters in an inclusive, not exclusive, way. Professing chastity enables religious to fan into flame a love that embraces all, recognizing in each face the face of God. As Benedict xvI wrote in Deus caritas est (§ 15), "The concept of 'neighbor' is now universal-ized, yet it remains concrete. Despite .being extended to all mankind, it is not reduced to a generic, abstract, and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment in the here and now." The vow of chastity calls us to embrace each while embracing all, to love particularly w~ithout loving restrictively, to love universally and specifically. Pierre Teilhard de Chardifi described the source .and the consequence of this type of loving as fire: "Under the symbol of the Sacred Heart, the divine assumed for me the form, the strength, and the properties of an energy, of a fire . Through its power to become universal, this fire proved able to invade and impregnate with love the whole atmosphere of the world in which I lived.''~4 By professing poverty, religious make yet another return of love for Love, mirroring the woundedness of Christ's heart. John Paul II says that "on Golgotha Jesus' heart was pierced by a lance as a sign of his total self-giving, of that sacrificial and saving love with which he 'loved us to the end'" On 13:1).15 By accepting death at the hands, of humanity, the God-man sacrificed all for love. "From the infinite power proper to God, the heart of Christ did not retain anything except the unarmed power of the love that forgives . In the heart of Christ are encountered divine riches and human poverty."~6 68.2 2009 Herbers ¯ Reparation and the Sacred Heart In the profession of poverty, devotion to the broken heart of Christ is made tangible also through responding to the suffering ofhis heart in the poor of .today's~worl~d. 160 This kenosis, this. self-emptying, is the expression of Love to which the vow of poverty responds. In accept-ing death Christ accepted all and gave all. In professing poverty religious do likewise--accepting all that is given them from the hand of the Father and giving all in a return of love for Love. This is devotion to the open heart of Christ. In the profession of poverty, devotion to the broken heart of Christ is made tangible also through respond-ing to the suffering of his heart in the poor of today's world. For vowed reli-gious, devotion to the Sacred Heart includes recognition that his heart remains broken, suffering as people continue to betray and reject love, to ignore and neglect the hurt-ing, to strike first. The world's physical, emo-tional, psychological, and mental pain con-tinually shows the heart of Jesus suffering in his Body. Clelia Merloni insisted that "The heart of Jesus, disguised as this particular sick person, calls you to a mission of charity, since the sick make up the very body of Jesus.''17 Clelia exhorts her sister apostles to recognize that where there is sickness, pain, or suffering, there is the open, broken heart of Christ. The profession and living of poverty expresses solidarity with all those who are wounded in and by society, and expresses union with Christ's broken heart suffering today. By professing evangelical poverty, con- Review for Religious secrated religious commit themselves "to eliminating structures of oppression and to promoting projects of solidarity for the benefit of the poor" (VC §89). Only as the poor can we hope to alleviate the suffering of the poor.~8 Through their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi-ence, consecrated religious express their love with the entirety of their lives. This threefold consecration uni-fies all religious communities. Their distinctive charisms are demonstrated by their various ways of expressing this consecration. The founder of my congregation, Clelia Merloni, was entrusted with a particular charism within Sacred Heart devotion--a charism to be apostles of the Sacred Heart. Her apostles were to be characterized by zeal and charity, but more importantly by one aspect of Sacred Heart devotion: reparation. She pleads with her apostles to make their lives relevant to the church's mission in the world: "Our congregation needs subjects who are strong and robust in virtue, not pious statues!''19 Sacred Heart devotion, for Clelia and her apostles, always implies responding to the living heart of Christ through lives of reparation. Zeal and charity are insufficient for those professing vows as Apostles of the Sacred Heart. Only when we are motivated by a spirit of reparation can we be seen clearly as apostles of the Sacred Heart devo-tion. What, then, is the nature, meaning, and relevance of the reparation this congregation fosters? A New Interpretation of Reparation Theologically reparation has often been mistakenly equated with atonement and expiation. Atonement is "an act of divine love that effects a new state of things, the peaceful relationship between God and man. Man is reconciled to God. atonement is effected through the 161 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart blood of the cross . man is placed in a new relation to God.''2° Atonement, therefore, is effected once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Christ's death and resurrection made humanity "at-one" with God, reconciling a broken relationship, correcting and reversing the effects, of human sinfulness, thus mak-ing humanity's "atonement" not only unnecessary but impossible. Expiation is closely related to. atonement in that it is appeasement by sacrifice, specifically the sac-rifice of Jesus' death, which appeased God's justice and "remove[d] the cause of the sinner's alienation from God in. order to restore him to holiness and divine favor.''2' Taken to their logical ends, these notions of atone-ment and expiation .seem to perceive "the love of God given us in Christ Jesus" as either correction of a rela-tionship gone awry or Christ's willing acceptance of the penalty of death due us. In this context, the practice of reparation seems to be about "repairing" broken-ness, "atoning for" sinfulness, and "making up" for wrongdoing as we model our life on Jesus Christ. This is the vision of reparation in Pius XI's 1928 encycli-cal Miserentissimus Redemptor (§18): "Whosoever of the faithful have piously pondered on all these things must needs be inflamed with the charity of Christ in his agony and make a more vehement endeavor to expi-ate their own faults and those of others, to repair the honor of Christ, and to promote the eternal salvation of souls." This "atoning" and "expiative" sense speaks of a need for humanity to repent, convert, and wor-ship, but nowhere does it speak of the invitation given to humanity to love in the face of brokenness, that the heart of God may be loved and not rejected. I propose that, in the context of Sacred Heart devotion, reparation speaks direcdy of this invitation: "The focus of God's Review for Religious ¯ forgiveness in Christ is less on a word that is spoken to assuage guilt and more on a transformation of relation-ships-- with God and with other human beings."22 As seen above, religious consecration is a response of love prompted by the recognition and humble accep-tance of the unconditional, sacrificial love of God. Each of the vows has been shown to uniquely manifest, in the light of devotion to the Sacred Heart, a particular aspect of our loving response. Reparation, as a dis-tinctive response of love, is a particular expression of Sacred Heart devotion. It is a response of love to the broken heart of Christ, as when we see someone we love (and also Someone) hurting, broken, bleeding, and in pain, and want to--need to, are impelled t0--respond in manners worthy of love. William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, claimed that the motive for reparation is that we not "go on wounding one who accepts our wounds like that; we are filled with fear, not the old craven fear of punishment, but the fear of wounding the tenderest of all hearts.''23 Reparation does not necessar-ily seek to repair the wrongdoing (for we may not be responsible for it), but seeks to respond to the broken heart of our loved One by offering concrete, tangible acts of love. This authentic healing power of reparation '~"The focus of God's forgiveness in Christ is less on a word that is spoken to assuage guilt .and more on a transformation of relationships-with God andwith othe~r human beings." 163 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart 164 was understood by Aquinas: "When one. is in pain, it is natural that the sympathy of a friend should afford con-solation., because, when a man's friends console him, he sees that he is loved by them, and this affords him pleasure. Consequently, since every pleasure assuages sorrow, it follows that sorrow is mitigated by a sympa-thizing friend" (ST I-II.38.3). To extend this idea to how human acts of love serve as loving reparation to Christ, John Paul II said in another place: "In the heart of Christ the human heart comes., to unite filial love for God with love for the neighbor. In this way--and this is the true meaning of the reparation asked for by the heart of the Savior--on the ruins heaped up by hatred and violence can be built the civilization of love so greatly desired, the kingdom of the heart of Christ.''24 For the Apostles of. the Sacred Heart, it is imperative that they understand rightly their mission in the church and their ministry in the world. Their witness of repara-tive love can show all the faithful what their response to the brokenness of our world must be. Reparation, far from being an obsolete relic, is an essential component of Clelia Merloni's charism, and a unique way for her apostles to live their vows of poverty, chastity, and obe-dience. Experiencing Jesus as God's incarnate love, they are called to respond as incarnate love to his open heart still broken in the woundedness of his loved ones. In respond-ing, they are not merely practicing their own personal spirituality; they are engaging in their ministry. As Pius XII said in Haurietis aquas (§112), "In show-ing devotion to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the external acts of piety have not the first or most impor-tant place; nor is its essence to be found primarily in the benefits to be obtained." Rather, reparation must be a dynamic response of love, reaching out to the broken- Review for Religious ness of humanity--at any given moment, in any given circumstance. "The practical good that emerges in the event [of reparative love] is seen not only in the inward realm of personal and spiritual values, but in the trans-formation of the material order through which the val-ues are expressed.''25 Living her congregation's motto, "Caritas Christi urget nos!" (2 Co 5:14), consumed by the love of God given her in Christ Jesus, an apostle the Sacred Heart "returns love for Love" by the gift of her life of vowed chastity and reaches out to ev.eryone in selfless service. By her vowed obedience she matches her heartbeat to the heart of God. By their vowed poverty she is free to give her all to the broken hearts around her. She accepts humbly the gifts she receives from the incarnate, inflamed, obedient, and open heart of Jesus and returns them as her gift to his Body, the church. The reparative value of these gifts lies in its heal-ing power for the broken heart of Christ in the church and in the world. Reparation from this n~w perspective is most assuredly, then, not merely valuable for those among the faithful who may be attracted to it as a pious practice, but a vital mission entrusted to each mem-ber of the church. Reparative love is the love of God poured out through us, incarnate in the members of Christ's Body, embodied in real hands and real hearts. Reparative love speaks a word of selflessness to a world broken by hatred and individualism. It lives a life of generosity in a world broken by selfishness and fear. It breathes a promise of forgiveness for a world broken by resentment and injustice and gives a hand of compassion to a world broken by suspicion and greed. Reparation is anything but old-fashioned piety entrenched in sen-timentalism or self-derogation. Rightly understood in the brokenness of our contemporary experience, repa- 165 68.2 2009 Herbers * Reparation and the Sacred Heart 166. ration is the tender answer of hearts on fire, yearning to express themselves boldly, so that brokenness and woundedness may always and only be answered with all-consuming love, centered in God, reaching out to every one of God's beloved people. Notes I Quoted in Annice Callahan, Karl Rahner's Spirituality of the Pierced Heart (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 108, 110-111. 2 See Patricia E Walter, "Religious Life in Church Documents," Review for Religious 51, no. 4 (July-August 1992), and Nadine Foley, "The Nature and Future of Religious Life," Origins 19, no. 13 (1989): 212. 3 Michael Himes, "Returning to Our Ancestral Lands," Review for Religious 59, no. 1 (January-February 2000): 18. 4 Sandra Schneiders, Selling All (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), pp. 108, 114. s It is important to be aware of this rich history as we examine Sacred Heart devotion from a modern perspective. For a more com-prehensive examination of the history of the devotion, see Timothy O'Donnell's Heart of the Redeemer (Manassas, Virginia: Trinity Communications, 1989) and Joseph Stierli's Heart of the Saviour: A Symposium on Devotion to the Sacred Heart (New York: Herder and Herder, 1958). 6john Paul II, "Letter to Bishop Raymond Seguy, Bishop of Autun, Chalon, and Macon, June 22, 1990," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, ed. Carl J. Moell SJ (New York: Crossroad, 2004), p. 210. 7 Augustine, Sermons on the New Testament 7(7). s Thomas Aquinas, ST 1/-1/.81.3 ad 3. See Pius XII, Haurietis aquas (1956), §103. 9 Benedict xvI, letter on the fiftieth anniversary of Haurietis aquas, 15 May 2006. 10 Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est (2005), §17. '~ Sandra Schneiders, New Wineskins (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 109. ,2 Schneiders, New Wineskins, pp. 105, 106. ~3 Clelia Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, ed. Pierpaula de Farias (Rome: privately printed, 1992), pp. 167, t73. Review for Religious ,4 Quoted in Christopher E Mooney, Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1968), pp. 28-29. 15 John Paul II, "Homily during Sacred Heart devotions and beati-fication of Father Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski, at the Aviation Club in Torun, June 7, 1999," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, p. 112. 16 John Paul II, "Homily at the Polyclinic of the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, June 28, 1984," in Holy Father, Sacred Heart, p. 47. 17 Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, p. 167. ,s James Alison poignandy elucidates this idea with his concept of the "intelligence of the victim." See Knowing Jesus (London: Ashford Colour Press, 1998). 19 Merloni, Spiritual Anthology, p. 334. 20 Kenneth E Dougherty, "Atonement," in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), vol. 1, p. 837. 21 Lucien Richard, "Expiation (in Theology)," in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 5, p. 565. 22 L. Gregory Jones, "The Craft of Forgiveness," Theology Today 50, no. 3 (October 1993): 356. 23 William Temple, The Faith and Modern Thought, quoted in Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of Atonement (New York: Scribners, 1951), p. 80. 24 See the letter of John Paul II to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach sJ on the Canonization of Blessed Claude la Colombi~re SJ, in UOsservatore Romano, English edition, 27 October 1986, and referred to by Benedict xvI (see note 9 above). 25 G.W.C. Thomas, "Reparation: The Sevenfold Pattern of Redemption," Church Quarterly Review 158, no. 327 (April-June 1957): 165. ,167 68.2 2009 JAMES H. SCHIMELPFENING Being Heard, Being Healed: Learning from the Quaker Tradition We cannot change the world by a new plan, project, or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice, and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, lay side their occupations and preoccupa-tions, and listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center. --Henri Nouwen1 168 Community is a word that is tossed around a lot, but is hard to define. My own religious order and those who share in the Marianist tradition embrace community as a constitutive part of our mission and identity, and thus we engage in countless conversations discerning its meaning, the place it has in our lives, and how it is to be an instrument of mission. After thirty-five years of religious life and after living in communities on four continents, my experience of community is all over the board. Sometimes I am most grateful for it, but other times it has been quite the opposite. James H. Schimelpfening SM lives at Marianist Community; Meyer Hall; 4435 East Patterson Road; Dayton, Ohio 45430. Review for Religious Recently I experienced community in an utterly refreshing and transformative way. I participated in a series of six seasonal retreats based on the Quaker tradition and the work of Parker Palmer. The Center for Courage and Renewal, partially funded by Lilly Endowment, offered these retreats for clergy and con-gregational leaders) The approximately twenty partici-pants represented a variety Of religious denominations, including a young Jewish woman and myself, the only Catholic. That in itself made the retreats interesting and delightful. These retreats, spread over eighteen months, opened up and stretched my idea and sense of community. I want to share with you something of the enriching, grace-filled, contemplative experience that the retreats were for me. Welcoming the True Self One of the principal resources for the retreats was Parker Palmer's A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey toward an Undivided Life. He portrays community as "one that knows how to welcome the soul"--or true self--and how to hear its voice within oneself. He refers to this kind of community as a circle of trust, a revealing name. Such a community, he writes, allows us to reach in towards our wholeness, out towards the world's need, while living at "the intersection of the two.''3 This intersection is sometimes a daunting place to be. One needs to be with others who, in the right sort of way, support and encourage each other in their moving inward and outward. Often, at least in my experience of community, issues and concerns are discussed, debated, and at times argued; then votes are taken, and there are winners and losers. Tensions, often subtle but barely hidden, may 169 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed remain. As a result, people keep trying to fix each other or straighten the others out. Advising and rectifying implies that one knows what is good for others if only they would acknowledge it. Community harmony and peace become elusive, and passive-aggressive behavior comes to the fore. Life in community has taught me that violence has many forms that give pain and raise suspicion and result in protective walls. Often persons are diminished and given less respect in favor of group-think or the institution itself.4 Life in community some-times fails to lead persons to wholeness or holiness, and when such failings occur the mission too falters. Touchstones In the series of retreats that I was part of, there was a quite different style of community and way of being present to one another and ultimately to oneself. I have experienced it also in other religious and church com-munities, but only rarely, and even more rarely as an intentional way of being together. In each retreat of this series, one of the first things we did was review the Circle of Trust Touchstones, the guidelines for all of our time together, not only when we were "sitting in the circle." We would: ¯ presume, extend, and receive welcome. ¯ be present as fully as possible. ¯ offer by invitation, not demand. ¯ speak our truth in ways that respect other people's ¯ not fix, save, advise, or set each other straight. ¯ learn to respond with honest, open questions. ¯ turn to wonder when the going got tough. ¯ attend to our own inner teacher. ¯ trus~t.and learn from and in the silence. ¯ observe deep confidentiality. ¯ know that it is possible to leave the circle with Review for Religious whatever you needed and that the seeds planted could and would keep growing. To live these touchstones intentionally takes work and demands attention, but something good happens and a different environment is created. These touchstones were practical and crucial for our community because we were so diverse. We were men and women, ordained and nonordained, Christian and Jewish, various races and ages, formed in different religious traditions with different doctrines and creeds, coming from all over the country, and having various personali-ties and committed relationships. It was only by living these touchstones that something new and deep could be born, so that we could move beyond differences that would normally keep us separate. Living these touchstones introduced ways of being together that led to deeper respect for persons and enduring bonds of friendship and trust. It is all too easy to focus on what is different and what is perceived to be "wrong," instead of expe-riencing what is right. This environment made it pos-sible to speak and listen in a gender and more attentive manner. It is all too easy tofocus on what is different and what is perceived to be "wrong," instead ,of experiencing what is right. Circles of Trust Parker Palmer calls such a community a circle of trust. The name, in my experience, is descriptive. We would sit in an unbroken circle with no one coming first or being 171 68.2 2009 Schimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed 172j last, no beginning or end.In the center of the circle would be a small table with a candle and flowers that would serenely hold our attention, and hold us together like the hub of a wheel. When speaking we would "speak to the circle," not across the circle as groups may do and thereby tend to debate and break down the sense of the whole, of community. That happened to us once, and the feel of the group changed and became charged with something that we recognized as not helpful, not what we desired. We returned to speaking to the circle, not across it, and the environment healed. "Speaking to the circle" is speaking from one's own inner self to the center of the circle, where all that is said is held attentively and respectfully. There is no speaking from one ego to another, nor is it about try-ing to impress or persuade. It is simply about expressing oneself, a kind of sharing that is less stressful and much more peaceful,s Trust is what constitutes the circle; without trust there is no circle. Trust makes the space safe for sharing one's truth without fear of judgment or criticism. This trust grows deeper over time. As I share these reflections, I realize that a circle of trust can seem like avoidance of conflict, blind acceptance, lack of discernment, or some such idea. It might even seem "new age" and shallow. My experience, however, is just the opposite. A circle of trust and living the touchstones allow for something deep to emerge and grow and bear fruit. Circles of trust allow more truths to come to light and authentic relationships to form. It is interesting and even important to note that Quakers do not avoid diffi-cult situations, but instead are present to them differently. That is why historically Quakers have often been present where thorny social issues like justice, peacemaking, and reconciliation are being pondered and evaluated. Review for Religious A circle of trust forms a community that allows per-sons to be attentive to their inner self, what we often refer to as one's true self. This true self can surface in an enviroriment that is encouraging, one that is respectful, silent, attentive, and caring. As Parker Palmer points out, a circle of trust is focused on an inward journey and invisible yet very real pow-ers. The purpose of the circle is to support each person's inner journey. A circle of trust lives the paradox of "being alone together," of being present to one another as a "community of solitudes."6 Solitude and community, rightly understood, go together; they are not opposed. In truth, everyone needs both the interior intimacy that comes from solitude and the otherness that comes from life in community. The purpose of this community is to allow the true self, the self in God, to present itself. Unfortunately, however, too many "communities" do not provide this environment; instead, they scare the true self away. It withdraws into the shadows because it does not feel safe to come forward. We wear masks and do not share what is most truly our own. Too often we do not even know what is most true within us. A circle of trust community is made of people who know how to sit quietly and wait for the soul, the true self, to show its face. The relationships within it are "not pushy, but patient; not confrontational, but compassionate; they are filled, not with expectations and demands, but with abiding faith in the reality of the inner teacher and in each person's capacity to learn from it." In my experience, it is atypical to find a community that has people who have the capacity for this kind of presence to each other. "The people who help us grow toward true self," Parker Palmer writes, "offer uncondi-tional love. They don't judge or try to change us. They 173 68.2 2009 Schimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed do offer and hold hopeful expectancy, creating the space that safeguards and encourages the inner journey."7 This is an incredible gift to offer one another, and within this form of community we find, I believe, the greatest potential for growth and transformation. What most people desire is to be heard and honored. As one fellow retreatant commented, "To be heard is to be healed!" Too often in community and in conver-sation we do not feel we have been genuinely heard or respected, and this only deepens wounds and pro- ~_ duces greater alienation. In the circle of trust, deep ¯ .~.L listening to one another, as well as to oneself, is paramount and happens rather naturally. Listening deeply is a nonviolent act; it is an amazing gift to offer. Patient listening, and forming circles of trust according to the touchstones, moves against the .grain of our habitual culture--both secular, and religious. Circles of trust are about listen-ing, expectant listening. This kind of listening only goes deeper with time and is all about God. God is the one who makes such listening possible and who gives us the hunger and thirst for it. God beckons, and we soon dis-cover that all that is good comes from the hand of God. Ultimately, God is the goal of our listening, for in so doing we can discern and do the work of God.s The content is simple, and its purpose is to open us to deeper listening and reflection. We would use poetry, stories, songs, or reflection. Metaphor plays an important part in this kind of sharing because images, allegories, allow us to approach from a slant, not head- What most people desire is to be heardand honoredl , Review for Religious on; they bring into play much more than the intellect. Metaphor has a way of surprising, even seducing the heart and soul, while tricking the mind into taking another look and discovering mystery in the process. We all belong to numerous kinds of groups and com-munities, each offering something unique and respond-ing to different needs. Circles of trust, however, generate within me a longing for such a community within the church and in religious life. Such a community, it seems to me, creates an environment that encourages and sup-ports deep growth and leads to holiness. Circles of trust might not seem to be as useful or as practical and func-tional as other groups might be, and so one considers circles of trust idealistic, utopian, unrealistic, even for religious or church communities. I would disagree. If we strove towards such deep trust and respect, many of the functional things we now squabble about would sim-ply disappear, and other practical details of life would take care of themselves. If they had to be dealt with, conversation and decision making about them would be quite different. We too easily forget that even our busi-ness meetings have a spiritual component and, hope-fully, necessitate a listening for truth.9 The experience and outcome would be a lot healthier, and life together would be more amiable, more authentic, and even more reflective of the gospel and Christian living. Circles of trust and community are not about numbers, but about the quality of the space created and shared. As Parker Palmer notes in A Hidden Wholeness, we live divided lives. We live alienated from our true selves, and end up feeling depressed, aimless, anxious, or angry. We feel the pain of being alienated from our own truth. We yearn to be centered,1° and a circle of trust creates the space where centering can happen and foster wholeness. 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed A Spiritual Experience Although not always described this way explicitly, circles of trust are a spiritual experience, and the retreats I participated in were, beyond doubt, retreats. They were days of communing with God, with the Spirit of God very much alive and present within us and among us. The retreats were distinctly reflective and contempla-tive, with time for being alone and time for sharing with another or with the entire circle. The environment of the retreat center itself was ideal,ll The Tibetan chime would draw us into silence and into the circle. I found it easy to recall that, where two or three are gathered in God's name, God is truly present. The entire environ-ment was charged with the holiness of God. It was an experience of the shekinah of God. Clearness Committees Those familiar with the Quaker tradition know that forming Clearness Committees is an important part of their life. Each of our retreats set aside time for the work of Clearness Committees. I found myself refer-ring to them as Quaker discernment, a way of listening for truth, truth that is .not imposed from outside, but arises from within. This was one of the most important experiences of discernment that I have ever engaged in, most especially with a group, and was for me a highlight of our time together. This discernment is not done fir us, as sometimes occurs. Instead, in a circle of trust, in a safe, reflective space, we are engaged in our own dis-cernment, in our own way and time, with the encourag-ing and challenging presence of people who really and truly care for us)2 Clearness Committees help the focus person (who has asked for its help)13 to walk an inner iourney. They do so by their presence, asking open and Review for Religious honest questions, not interpreting or offering advice, not judging or fixing, but treating the person carefully as he or she looks and listens deeply. There is no con-flict of agendas or egos; there is only one focus person with one agenda. Just as the circles of trust offer a new way of conceiv-ing community, so the Clearness Committees offer a new way of helping persons make decisions about the direction of their life. I found here an incredible respect for the person and belief in the action of God. Instead of decisions, especially the more personal decisions, being made by others, a Clearness Committee allows for a form of listening and obedience that holds promise of greater life for the person and also, in the long run, for others and for ministry. Clearness Committees were a primary factor in draw-ing me to the seasonal retreats, for I was doing discern-ment in my own life. A series of circumstances along with much that was moving within my own heart and soul had made me wonder where the Spirit might be leading me. I needed and desired some form of guidance, and I needed to enter more deeply into a process of discernment, but I did not want someone or a group telling me what to do. I was desperately seeking someone or a group willing to walk with me, providing the safe place where I could be open and vulnerable in my discerning reflection. In my own religious community this did not seem possible. My superiors were likely to approach my questions as an administrative concern and decision, but did not seem able to walk with me in the way I needed. The seasonal retreats, however, with the circles of trust and the blessed opportunity to be the focus person of a Clearness Committee drew me like a bee to nectar. I asked for a Clearness Committee to sit with me not 177 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening * Being Heard, Being Healed Such d cision ,making; demands great patienee, and a strongcom i m n once but twice. The experience was powerful because of the safe, caring environment and the confidentiality, the love and faith, that were present. The immediate experi-ence was powerful, but I was surprised and delighted by how it continued to reveal truths in the following days, weeks, and months. Did I receive an immediate answer? No. Were there "aha" moments? More later, than at the time. Was clarity received? Yes, but much more came long after the experience was over. Such decision making demands great patience and a strong commitment to the process: it can take time for the truth to come to light. Quakers are good at waiting and supporting one another in this invest-ment of time and pres-ence, doing so in the belief that a truth can and will come to light and, when it does, can be embraced with one's whole self. One lets the work of God pro-ceed and reveal itself. This "Quaker discernment" takes as long as is needed. It is exceedingly countercul-rural in our quick-fix, fast-food, I-want-it-now culture. If, as religious communities, church, and church min-istries, we could learn to discern in this way, I believe that both community life and ministry would be a good deal richer. Going Home As a high introvert when I first began attending the retreats, I was uncertain about it, but, having read A Hidden Wholeness the year before, I was curious enough Review for Religious to give it a whirl and see what would happen. After the first couple of retreats, I felt completely at home, and, although I never knew what the experience of any particular retreat would be, I soon learned to trust the Spirit, believing that whatever would happen would be grace--and I was never disappointed. It seemed that each retreat was its own "peak" experience that helped me go deeper and deeper into my soul while being sup-portive of others doing the same. Many retreats, even when powerful, are one-shot experiences, but this series of retreats, organized accord-ing to the seasons of the year, allowed for sacred remem-bering of what happened previously and delving into it once again from a slightly different slant, so that further truth could be discovered. On top of everything else, this was a wonderful ecumenical and interfaith setting that opened many wonderful doors. The most difficult part of each retreat was returning home to community and ministry. Although I would return deeply renewed, I saw that my recent experience of community would not be present back home. Every three months, as the next retreat drew near, I would look forward to it with great anticipation. My challenge now is to live the expe-rience and find ways to invite others into these circles of trust so that they too may have the joy and benefit of entering them that I have had. As I noted earlier, there are many different forms of community and many different definitions of commu-nity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Community is not an ideal; it is people."14 1 believe that what the Quaker tradition and Parker Palmer offer is worth exploring and experiencing as a very practical way of forming and being community. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35). r179 68.2 2009 Scbimelpfening ¯ Being Heard, Being Healed Notes ' As quoted in Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live An Authentic Life (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005). z Center for Courage and Renewal, www.couragerenewal.org. 3 Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: TbeJourney toward an Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2004), pp. 22, 25.4 The word person is used intentionally; not individual. The distinction is critical. 5 Palmer, Hidden I~oleness, pp. 118-119. 6 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, p. 54. 7 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, pp. 59, 60. 8 Michael Waida, Expectant Listening: Finding God's Thread of Guidance (Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill ~ublicationsi 2007), p. 16. 9 Wajda, Expectant Listening, p. 22. ,0 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, pp. 45-46. " Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California. 12 Palmer, Hidden Wholeness, p. 27. ~3 The focus person asks for Clearness Committee assistance regard-ing a question or issue that he or she is struggling with and seeking light about. ,4 Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 35. 180] Personal Reflection and/or Group Discussion What has been your own occasion of experiencing the kind of "words of trust" that animate community life? Have you or has your community developed your own special ways of deepening the trust and faith-sharing integral to religious community living? How would you describe it and how often is it used? Review for Religious DORIS GOTTEMOELLER Religious Habits Reconsidered Years ago, when we were just beginning to wear secular dress, a sister friend remarked to me that she never noticed what anyone else was wearing. The remark struck me because I thought she was missing an important commu-nication from others. But, upon reflection later, it seemed likely that she meant that everyone deserves our respect, whether clad in rags or riches, in style or out--a conviction that I share. Also, I thought, she ,was probably indi-cating she is less sensate than I. As the years passed, however, with religious habits less and less in ,evidence, I have occa-sionally thought of investigating the topic more deeply. Comments such as these persist: "If you wore a habit, you'd get more vocations" and "Real sisters wear habits." They imply that our Doris Gottemoeller RSM last wrote .for us in 2005. Her address remains Catholic Healthcare Partners; 615 Elsinore Place; Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. 1181 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller * Religious Habits Reconsidered transition in dress is symbolic of an abandonment of val-ues or identity. It is hard at times not to feel defensive. No doubt there is scholarly literature available about the significance of dress through the ages. Dress as an indicator of social class and status, the change from toga and tunic to trousers and dresses, the influence of climate and occupation, and the development of new fabrics and methods of production--all of this has prob-ably been studied. I have not consulted any of it. First, I want simply to recall and describe this period of change. Then I will reflect on the significance of a religious habit for women and of the many decisions to forgo it. I will close with some questions for reflection and dialogue. Some readers may assume that there is noth-ing to be learned from the decisions made so long ago, but I think that some reflection can bear fruit for our present and future. What a Habit Is Not A religious habit is not a costume, a dress that tempo-rarily provides a new identity, either for dramatic effect or for fun. Costumes are worn in stage productions and at Halloween parties. A disguise is another form of temporary identity, one intended to deceive people. A vestment is worn to temporarily designate that one is performing a sacred function. Nor is a religious habit a uniform. Commentators ask, "Vv'hy don't you wear a uniform like airline atten-dants, nurses, and police personnel?" These uniforms signify professional qualification and a certain authority. In given situations their wearers are entided to respect because of their official function. Note, though, that uniforms often admit of variations. The attendants on a plane may be wearing slacks, shorts, or skirts, with or Review for Religious without coordinating jackets or sweaters. They are all in uniform, but they choose different forms of it. Nursing uniforms, too, admit of variation, even within the same department or on the same floor of a hospital. In contrast to any of these options, the religious habit was a permanent and unchanging garb. The cloth-ing ceremony at the beginning of novitiate signified a new identity, which one intended eventually to make lifelong. As we dressed each morning, we said prayers specific to each item of clothing. For the habit itself we prayed, "Clothe my soul, 0 Lord, with the nuptial - - robe of charity that I may carry it pure and undefiled before Thy judgment seat," The prayer for donning the cincture was "0 Lord Jesus Christ, who became obedi-ent unto death, even the death of the cross, grant me the true spirit of religious obedience." In my experience there were no optional choices around color or design or style, very litde adaptation to climate or occupation. Permission to wear a white habit in nursing care and in the tropics is the only possibility I can recall. The clothing ceremony at the beginning of novitiate sig nified a new identity. The Mandate to Change Before the mandate of Vatican Council II to update, our habit was the only dress we wore. In my experi-ence each sister had two habits, a heavy pleated wool serge version for Sundays and feast days and an every-day version in a lighter fabric. Neither was really wash-able. We wore a knee-length black veil, inner and wide outer sleeves, a leather cincture to which was attached a 183 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Habits Reconsidered 841 long rosary, and a starched white cotton coif and guimpe which we changed on Sunday and at midweek. Heavy black stockings and black oxfords completed the ensem-ble. Going out in winter required a shawl or a long black cloak with a heavy black veil pinned over the house veil. This habit was worn 365 days of the year, from rising in the morning to retiring at day's end, in the convent, the classroom, or the hospital, at work or recreation, at home or abroad. The habit was everywhere recognizable and, when clean and pressed, somewhat graceful and attractive. It was also economical: the daily habit lasted several years and the Sunday habit for many years. Thus it was a witness to poverty. The design had remained essentially the same for over 130 years. But, despite its familiarity and attractiveness, the habit was unsanitary, unsafe, and ill-suited to the climate in many places. It was also impractical for many occupations such as housework or recreational sports. Furthermore, all of the parts had to be sewn by hand. Keeping perspi-ration from the starched linens which encircled the face in hot weather was another challenge. Considerations such as these prompted the conciliar directive: "Habits should be simple and modest, at once poor and becoming. They should meet the requirements of health and be suited to the circumstances of time and place as well as to the services required by those who wear them. Habits of men and women which do not correspond to those norms are to be changed" (Perfectae caritatis § 17). This directive prompted the first genera-tion of modified or updated habits. Chapters reviewed designs, and each congregation chose one which seemed to embody the desired improvements. For the Sisters of.Mercy of the Union, this transition occurred in the summer of 1968. The new habit was mid-calf in length Review for Religious and could be purchased from a manufacturer's catalogue in an array of sizes. A veil which came just below the shoulders was attached to a white cap which left some hair exposed in front. The habit was washable, and nothing was starched. From Modified Habit to Secular Dress Why didn't this updated habit, which responded to the conciliar mandate, last? Here the story becomes more complex. As the decades passed, most congrega-tions loosened or eliminated their requirements that everyone wear a habit, even for professional or formal occasions, I would suggest that the following are some of the f~ctors that led to this evolution. First, the change of dress coincided with other changes that brought us into new settings and new cir-cumstances. Permission to travel without a companion and to drive an auto-mobile were two sig-nificant changes. No longer~did we have to depend on employ-ees or volunteer lay-persons to chauffeur us to professional meetings, doctors' appointments, the library or grocery, or a museum, movie, or sporting event. Freedom from the need for a sister companion encouraged individual choices about where to go or what to do with one's discretionary time. Some outings were with only lay friends or relatives. Individuals did not necessarily want to stand out in such settings. The introduction of personal budgets was another change Why .didn't this updated habit, which re.sponded to the conciliar mandate, last? 68.2 2009 Gottemoeller ¯ Religious Habits Reconsidered that facilitated variation in dress, as individuals could choose where they wished to shop and what they wished to buy. Another limit to the success of updated habits was the matter of style. As long as we were in 18th- or 19th-century garb, there was no relationship to any contem-porary style. But an adaptation to "circumstances of time and place" suggests at least some relationship to what other people are wearing. Hemlines are a case in point. Should they be adjusted upward and downward with changing styles? What about the size and proportions of the individual sister? The traditional habit swathed her in so many yards of fabric that her figure was effectively concealed, but the modified habit was more flattering to some than to others. Does everyone have to wear the same color? Do you wear the same thing for scrubbing the kitchen floor, lecturing before a class, attending a board meeting, and playing tennis on Saturday after-noon? Considerations such as these meant that individ-uals almost immediately began modifying the modified habit and also acquiring supplementary wardrobes for occasions when a habit was deemed inappropriate. The question of a veil comes in for special consid-eration. Questions of comfort, ideology, and style inter-mingled. In the old habit, when no hair was visible, we usually cut it very short for comfort. As soon as some hair was visible, it had to be styled. And not every style looked good peeping out from a veil. Keeping a veil anchored on one's head was sometimes a challenge. More significandy, the veil signified for some a femi-nine subservience to men. (Around that time, women gave up wearing hats and veils in church, and nurses stopped wearing caps with their uniforms.) Some argued that the veil was intended to symbolize virginity. Well, Review for Religious if it did, then shouldn't male religious who take a vow of celibacy also wear them? As we began to experiment with lay dress, some continued to wear the veil for a time, leading to some unfortunate combinations of flowered dresses topped off with veils. (Interestingly, the appearance of Islamic women clad in burqas and veils in Western cities was still too rare to invite a com-parison.) Another circumstance that promoted individual choice of dress was the movement toward individual-ism overall in Western culture. This is a phenomenon that would require books to chronicle and critique both its lights and shadows, but the point here is khat we were not immune from its influence. Religious life is essentially a communitarian commitment, but in many ways--not only choice of dress--it has embraced, or at least permitted, a wider expression of personal choice. While we were experimenting with dress, we were also exploring new ministries, new living arrangements, and new prayer styles. Much of this was a healthy reaction to practices which had encouraged immaturity, but some of it has diminished our corporate identity and witness. Nevertheless, choosing how to present oneself on a particular occasion or in a particular setting can be a revelation of one's personal judgment and self-iden-tification. Looking Back on the Changes in Dress The first thing that can be said is that the changes described here proceeded without a lot of self-reflection. We lacked the critical distance necessary to analyze the consequences of our choices or their interaction with other choices we were making. At times we hesitated to raise the issue in community for fear of seeming

Issue 59.1 of the Review for Religious, 2000. ; Vowed Life Featur~ Religious Mission ~ Finding God Living Celibat,ely Balkans Report JANUARY FEBRUARY 2_000 VOLUME 59 NUMBER I Review for Religious helps people respond and be faithful to God's universal call to bollness by making available to them the spiritual legacies tbat flow from the cbarisms of Catholic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: foppema@slu.edu Manuscripts, books for review, aud correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP P.O. Box 29260; V~rashington, D.C. 20017 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. 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Such pertnission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. restrictions, in a world of hate and division, of civilian bombings and life-snuffing concentration camps, this iournal spoke about dialogue and intercommunication, about ministries of love and service, about vocations to align oneself with God's peaceable king-dom and to pray for that kingdom to come. I am thankful for the gift this journal has been to the church, to religious life, and to the spiritual-life developments of our times. I thank God for raising up and inspiring the founding editors to begin the dialogue--something not common in the 1940s--across the different spiritual heritages which are represented by Catholic religious congregations and which continue to feed the spiritual life of church members everywhere. I am grateful for all the writers who have shared their insights, raised questions, instructed in prayer and in ecclesial history, and inspired our ministerial efforts. For all that has been---Thanks! With this first issue of the year 2000 a new-look cover greets our readers, along with a revision of our secondary title. For the previous eight years, because of the creative contribution of the advisory board and the staff, the journal had this shorthand way of stating its content: Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living. After more discussion with current board members and staff, we now state our content even more simply: Living Our Catholic Legacies. Our mission statement, too, has found new expression for things our journal continues to have in view (see inside front cover). This is our way of saying Yes as we look to the future. While we say "To all that shall be--Yes," I have some con-cern about a shrinking subscriber list. We know that the primary readership--women and men religious--continues to grow less in number in the United States and in European countries. I would not like to say Yes to a declining subscription number without encouraging all of you tostir up your own efforts to increase our readers, hopefully even our subscribers, among your own congre-gation members and associate members if you are a religious, and among friends and colleagues who share spiritual companionship and ministry with you. Review for Religious remains a unique journal in the English-speaking world for our continuing educa-tion, formation, and inspiration in living the rich Catholic legacies that form our church spirituality. I hope that you, our readers, share in our appreciation and enthusiasm. "To all that shall be-- Yes!" allows plenty of room for our best efforts. David L. Fleming SJ Januaty-Februa~y 2000 MICHAEL HIMES Returning to Our Ancestral Lands feature I am a little more daunted than I usually am because you are vicars for religious and you bring me in, a dioce-san priest, to talk to you. I can plead two things. One, I lived, during my happy years at the University of Notre Dame, at Moreau Seminary in the company and with the hospitality of the Congregation of Holy Cross and came to have the greatest affection and respect for them. I am now living and working with the Society of Jesus at Boston College and have the greatest respect for the Society of Jesus. My brother, and sometime col-league, is a Franciscan. And so, though I am not a reli-gious, I shared a bedroom for years with a religious, my brother Ken. Besides these attachments to and connections with religious communities, I plead that your having a pas-sionate outside observer may be useful. That is what I come to you as--a concerned, passionate, outside Michael J. Himes, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and formerly on the faculties of the University of Notre Dame and of the Seminary of the hnmaculate Conception (Huntington, New York), is currently a professor of theol-ogy at Boston College. He presented this paper (here some-what revised) in March 1999 at the 32nd assembly of the National Conference of Vicars for Religious, in whose 1999 Proceedings it was originally published. His address is Boston College; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467. Review for Religio us observer of religious life in the church. I am going to talk with you from the perspective of history. My field is the history of Christianity, with a particular interest in ecclesiology. I am going to be looking at both the history of religious life in the church and at its connection with the mission of the church at large. I took my title from Leviticus. The passage in Leviticus on the jubilee year says to mark the jubilee year by returning to our ancestral lands. In Leviticus the reason for doing this is appar-ently that, because every clan, every group, in Israel's history is of importance in God's plan and in the working out of the covenant, no family, no clan, should be allowed to disappear from the land of Israel. And so, if a clan or family gave up its land, within fifty years it would get it back again. I suggest that some of those same themes are true of religious life in the church today. There are too many important, vital, necessary experiences, images, sources of wisdom which have grown up in religious life in the Western church over the course of fifteen centuries to allow them to be lost to the life of the church. We need to go back periodically and reclaim those ances-tral lands, To do that, I want to discuss three issues--and so there will be three parts. Part One: I want to say something about the nature and pur-pose of religious life in the Catholic tradition, but I want to say it from a somewhat unusual perspective. I will explain what that is in just a moment. Part Two: I am going to offer you a thumbnail history--and it is very thumbnail history--of the development of religious life in the Western church. There is quite a distinct history to the development of religious life in the Eastern church, but up to the present moment in the Western church, I suggest, there have been three central moments in the development of religious life. We may be at the end of number three and the start of number four. In Part Three I am going to make some observations about what can be done to reclaim ancestral lands. How do you reclaim values without trying to resuscitate forms? How do you reclaim the value without saying we have got to replicate the history? Nature and Purpose of Vowed Life Let me say something about the nature and purpose of reli-gious life--of vowed life within the Christian community and espe- January-February 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands cially within the Catholic tradition--from a somewhat unusual perspective. That perspective I take from an immensely productive, distinguished, and influential figure in Protestant theology and philosophy of religion at the beginning of the century that is now ending--a man named Ernst Troeltsch, who died back in 1923. Before the First World War, Troeltsch produced his masterpiece, a thick volume titled The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. The tide may be misleading to us. You may say to yourself, "All this is well and good, but I do not see what bearing it has on the topic." Let me explain. Just when you least expect it, over the hill will come the topic. Just at the point that you have given up hope of ever hearing anything relevant to your interest, lo and behold, it will make its appearance. Today, when we hear a title like The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, we might expect that it is going to be about what we have come to call social teaching, namely, the teaching of the Christian community about the nature of political and eco-nomic justice within society. That is not what Troeltsch meant by his title. By the Christian churches' social teaching, Troeltsch meant what they taught about tl~eir own natures as societies. I mean, here you have different communities, different societies of Christians that have come together and organized themselves in very different ways. How did these various Christian societies explain themselves? What is their teaching about their own nature as a society? To trace the development of how different church communities and traditions in the history of the Christian tradition have structured themselves as churches, as communities, Troeltsch approached it in a very interesting and important way. He bor-rowed an idea from a colleague of his at Heidelberg, where he was teaching at the time: one of the great fathers that you may very well know if you have an interest in sociology, Max Weber. Troeltsch borrowed from him the notion of an ideal type. Weber's ideal type means this: You explicate different ways, different models of how a community could be organized with-out reference to any concrete existing community. Then you look at the existing communities--at the actual communities as you find them--and ask: Which of these communities is like type one? Which is like type two? Which is like three? He found this to be a particularly fruitful way of getting people" to look at com-munities and raise questions about them which they might not ordinarily raise. Review for Religious Well, Troeltsch took that notion of an ideal type and sug-gested two ideal types as ways of digging in, as tools for analyzing how different Christian communities have understood their own role, how they structured themselves. Those two ideal types he refers to as church and sect. Sect, let me emphasize, is for Troeltsch by no means a bad word. For us today in America it has come to have all sorts of bad connotations. He means none of those connotations. By sect, Troeltsch means a community of people who come together in fidelity to their under-standing of the gospel, who are united first of all by a powerful, dramatic, and deeply personal experience of conver-sion. So, for Troeltsch, one of the hall-marks of a sect type of community is (1) that all of its members are people who have personally experienced some deep and often strikingly dramatic con-version experience. You have to experi-ence being born again into Christ. You must personally "accept Jesus as your Savior," to use language that is familiar to us from some sect types of community in this country. Another hallmark is (2) that these communities see themselves as peculiarly and specially commissioned communities. There is a vibrant sense of mission. There is a kind of urgency about the fact that you have been called, you have been chosen, you have been commissioned to perform an extremely important work in the name of the gospel. So there is a striking and urgent sense of mis-sion in a sect community. Often a sect community (3) sees itself in terms of being over against the larger community. You are the people who have been called upon; you have been set up as a city on a hilltop, as a light for all the world. You are commissioned in a way that is not true of the community-at-large. You may be called to serve them, but you are different in some way from that larger community, and there should be a clear difference between you and that larger community. The sect community (4) is frequently radical in its vision of what needs to be done in the larger community. That is, it takes positions which the larger community may find to be too diffi-cult, too dangerous, too uncomfortable, too impractical. The Different societies of Christians that have come together and organized themselves in very different ways. Janual~-FebruatTy 2000 --10A Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands smaller sect community can advocate radical reform and radical movement. The problem with the sect community, however, as Troeltsch points out, is that it seldom survives beyond the second or at most third generation because the first generation (who have had this striking, personal experience) cannot guarantee that their chil-dren's or their grandchildren's generation is going to have that same striking experience. Very often, then, the sect begins to evap-orate or split up in various ways. My favorite image for that may be seen in one of Flannery O'Connor's letters. She has a wonderful description of why she liked to travel in the south on local trains, trains that made every stop. She said you could always, back in the 1940s and 1950s, see such interesting things. She says: "Why, you stop at one little town and you look out the window and there's a white clapboard church. And out in front of the church is a sign that says 'First Church of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of All Humanity, Coming Again in Glory to Save All People Who are Faithful to Him and Moved by the Holy Spirit.' The train goes five miles down and stops at the next little town, and there is a white clapboard church with a sign in front of it that says, 'Church of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the World and of All Humanity, Coming Again in Glory to Save the Living and the Dead and MI Those Who are Faithful to the Gospel and Motivated by the Holy Spirit, Reformed.'" And she said, "You knew there was a history here somewhere even though you could not tell quite what it was." There's a tendency for sect communities to splinter or to evaporate. By contrast to the sect community, the church-style community is a community that (1) sees itself as incorporating all sorts of peo-ple into the Christian community. It does not claim that all of its members are equally, highly, or deeply motivated--depending on your point of view. It does not claim that all of its members have striking personal experiences. It allows for the fact that there are different levels of membership, not official membership perhaps, but in terms of involvement in the community. Not everyone is at every moment of her or his life equally fervent or actively engaged in the life of the church. A church (2) does not see itself as necessarily over against the world. There are all sorts of things in the world-at-large that the church wants to embrace and celebrate. You cannot imagine, for example, says Troeltsch, that a sect is necessarily going to embrace Review for Religious the world of the arts and sciences, whereas the church commu-nity will. It embraces the artistic values and the scientific hopes and dreams and goals and methods of a community at any given time. In comparison with a sect, there is a much greater sense of collaboration between people in the church and people outside it. It tries to build bridges. It is a community, therefore, that is much more stable than a sect community. You can be born into a church community; you have to be reborn into a sect community. The idea, for example, of an infant baptism or an infant initiation into a sect would be simply impossible, whereas it is perfectly possible for a church community. The church community sees itself as a process of lifelong nur-ture, whereas the sect community emphasizes radical, dramatic conversion experiences. The danger for church-style community, says Troeltsch, is of course that it can become too secular, it can end up being, as it were, a tool for social stability used by the soci-ety- at-large. Notice that he is not claiming one is better than another; he is setting up--and I am just giving a thumbnail sketch--he is setting up two types of community that he can use as tools with which to examine the history of various church communities. He wants to ask: What is this like? Is it more like a sect? Is it more like a church? In what ways is it like a sect? In what ways is it like a church? Now, why do I propose to you that this is an interesting way to think about religious life? Because Troeltsch makes, almost in passing, one of the most suggestive comments that I have ever seen about religious life in the Catholic tradition. The Catholic Church--certainly back in the first decade of this century when he was looking at it from his own vantage point--is one of the purest church types of organization. He says, however, that the Catholic community has had for many centuries a peculiar and brilliant way of incorporating into itself the most vital, most insightful, most valuable elements of sects that grow up within the ambit of the Catholic community. It makes them religious orders. I suggest to you that--if you think of a community gathering around Anthony in the desert, gathering around Benedict or Scholastica, gathering around Francis and Clare, gathering around Dominic or Ignatius Loyola--you certainly can see those groups as matching up very closely with what Troeltsch has to say about sect communities. You cannot be born into these groups, you have Janua~. -Feb~wa(y 2000 Himes * Returning to Our Ancestral Lands got to choose to join. It is a matter of discerning a vocational call. There is a radical break with a previous kind of life in order to enter one of these groups. They are marked by clear and certain images of what mission is and what goal is, and how you shape people to accomplish that goal. The goal includes seeing this com-munity as being very much over against the community-at-large. The group is not simply part of this world, and it is marked as not being part of this world by a kind of rejection of this world's dom-inant values. The danger here is that, if the group is not in some way stabilized by the structure of a church, it can melt away in two or three generations. Troeltsch, of course, pointed out the other danger too. The problem for the Catholic tradition is that, although the church model stabilizes the sect model by "turning sects into religious orders," in Troeltsch's phrase, it can suddenly turn the religious order into simply another branch of the church model--and thus lose the vibrancy of the sect model. I suggest that, if we are going to reclaim ancestral lands, one of the things we have to do is look to vital religious communities to be sects in the Troeltschian sense of sects. We have to look for communities of people who see themselves as personally called, called to a clear and decided mission, and who see themselves as in some way in contrast to the community around them, even in contrast to the church-at-large around them. Now, for how that happens, let me move to Part Two. Some History of the Development of Church Life I would like to make a hundred thousand qualifications, but, so that you can go to bed tonight, let me just give a very general description. I suggest to you that, up to the present moment, there are three stages to the history of religious life in the Western church. The first stage in the Western church--quite apart from the origins in Egypt and Syria and Asia Minor in the East--runs for about seven hundred years, from the middle of the 5th century to the middle of the 12 th century, roughly from A.D. 450 to 1150. If we are looking for an example of that first period, it is the Benedictine movement. What is religious life? Religious life for those first seven hundred years of the Western church is first and foremost a community of persons who have come together and Review for Religious pledged themselves to a life of poverty, a life of celibacy, a life of prayer and contemplation done in community. Why is it so important that it be done in community? Well, there are two versions of St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony of Egypt. We do not know which is the real one--whether the shorter one is due to somebody's cutting it down after Athanasius died or whether the longer one includes stuff that somebody added after his death. But the longer one, whoever wrote it, has a striking comment. It says: "Anthony went out to the desert to lead a life of radical devo-tion, deep prayer, and obvious poverty, and in doing so he became a source of wonder. But, when a community of others gathered around him, then he became a sign." That is a very perceptive comment. Living out your life in a radical gospel way makes you a source of astonishment, but what validates you as a sign to the church is that you can do this in a community. Let me put this another way (much less eloquently than the author of the longer life of Anthony does): It is possible to be poor, chaste, obedient, and nuts. We all know that. What guarantees that you are poor, chaste, obedient, and sane? Your ability to live with other people without either killing them or being killed by them. The community is what validates the vows. So this idea of living in community is very important and was very important in the Benedictine tradition from its outset. Clearly there are multiple variants of the monastic ideal throughout those seven hundred years, but that is the image of religious life that dominates the first stage. What is religious life? It is a community of people who come together to live lives of poverty, of celibacy, of devotion and prayer and contempla-tion- and often study too--and who do it in community. That is religious life. That reality has something brand-new added to it in the middle of the 12th century, and for a very practical reason. A whole new class of people emerges in Western Europe in the 12th century: the urban poor. One of the things that marked the end of the ancient world was the collapse of cities in Western Europe. In the early Middle Ages, society is essentially rural, A whole new class of people emerges in Western Europe in the 12th century: the urban poor. Janualy-February 2000 2 Himes ¯ Returnin~ to Our Ancestral Lands largely agricultural. There are no great cities for very obvious reasons: the barbarians. Let me remind you here, when we talk about the barbarians, not to picture Jack Palance with a mustache and a horned helmet swooping down to burn and pillage cities! That may have hap-pened along the way too, but, when we talk about the barbar-ians, all of us who are English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish, Scandinavian, German, Polish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Sicilian, or northern Italian (from anywhere in Europe but a little piece of land stretch-ing from Naples to just north of Rome)--when we talk about the barbarians we are ta!king about grandma and grandpa. The bar-barians are our ancestors. As they moved into Western Europe, as the empire collapsed, these ancestors of many of us were not stupid. They knew stuff. They knew it takes a lot out of you to burn and pillage. A really good pillage takes a lot of energy. You are not going to waste your time burning and pillaging little one-horse towns. You are going to burn and pillage big cites--that is where the loot is to be got-ten. Since the inhabitants of the Roman empire in its last days were not stupid either, they quickly realized it is much safer living in the little towns than in the big cities: you are less likely to get sacked and pillaged. So, at the end of the ancient world, all over Europe, there is a sort of massive flight to the suburbs. Cities decline, lots of small towns spring up. In that world, how did the church care for people? Well, it was not a money economy. If you were going to found a parish, you were not going to do it with cash. Cash did not mean any-thing in the Middle Ages. Value was in land: it was the land's produce that could support a parish. So some wealthy donor says, "In this town I am giving this field to support the church. It can support two priests so that they can minister to the needs of the people of the town." The problem is, of course, that land is not easily transferable. At the start of the High Middle Ages, from around 1050 on, small towns began to decline in population as people moved back into big cities. In towns where once there were a hundred house-holds, now there were twenty, but there still were two priests for those twenty. Other towns were growing as centers. Where there used to be a hundred households, there were now five thousand households, but there was still only one priest, who was supported Review for Religious by the land donation from centuries before for that town. It is not easy to adjust parish boundaries and clergy resources. So there were growing numbers of people in the major cities of Western Europe who were largely unchurched. Nobody was preaching to them, nobody was teaching them, nobody was lead-ing them into the Gospels, nobody was celebrating sacraments for them. Who was going to tend to these people's needs? New reli-gious communities appeared, communities dedicated above every-thing else to the service of the urban poor. What do they need? Do they need evangelization? We preach. Do they need teaching? We teach. Do they need nursing? We nurse. Whatever they need, that is what we provide. If Benedict and Scholastica are the obvious figures of the first stage, Francis, Clare, and Dominic are the great figures at the start of the second stage, approximately I 150 to 1550. In the course of the Catholic reformation, both prior to and as a response to the Protestant reformers, the church realized that it was going to have to do much better regarding the challenges of a new world. One of the reasons that Luther had such an immense impact--besides the fact that he was immensely insightful--is that he wrote well. He wrote in German and, with the printing press available, turned out lots and lots of copies of relatively short books in the vernacular. Why was it that people like Cajetan and Eck did not have much luck responding to Luther? Because they were turning out thick books, in double columns, in Latin. Nobody was going to read them, even other professors, and so Luther had an impact, whereas initially much of the Catholic response did not. For this third stage we needed a new way to respond to people's needs. Although nobody calls it this, one of the ways was, in effect, the division of l~bor. What we needed was to streamline our styles of pastoral ministry. Instead of communities of people doing what-ever was needed, we were now going to have communities of peo-ple, both women and men, who specialized. We taught young women, we taught young men. We went to the foreign missions. We did nursing. We took care of the elderly. It became clear that different communities had unique apostolates. That model--and I think one can take the Jesuit~ as in many ways the example of this third stage, the embodiment of it--has lasted with great power and great success right down into our own lifetimes. Let me point out something that pertains ~o both the second and the third stages. Something enormously important shifted in Janua~:y-February 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands the course of the 12th century and, after more than eight hun-dred years, is still decisive for today's religious communities. It still affects what members do: we do this ministry to the urban poor. We do this particular kind of ministry for those who "need" it. What does this presuppose? It presupposes the situation during the second and third stages of Western religious life; it presup-poses people in need. It presupposes a world, and a church, in which the laity were essentially passive. Who was going to do the teach-ing, the preaching, the nursing, the caring, the evangelizing? It was going to be people in religious vows. The simply baptized members of the church--they were the recipients of ministry, they were not people who ministered themselves. An enormous shift happened when Vatican Council II called for a truly alive, energized, and ministerially responsible laity. Because of that shift, inevitably there was going to be some sort of identity crisis for religious life. If what makes me a religious is that I am one of group of people who perform such and such a ministry, and if nowadays other people who are not in vowed life, who are not celibate, and who are not living in community are doing the same ministry that I am doing, then what makes me a religious? Previously the identity of the religious--and I could make a similar case regarding the clergy--has been: "We are the people who do x, Y, and Z, and the laity are the people who have x, ¥, and Z done for them." The laity have been essentially passive recipients of ministry. The moment one begins to talk about the church as a community of people all of whom are called to some kind of ministry by baptism .(and not primarily by religious pro-fession or ordination), then everything shifts. That is why I suggest that we are at the end of the third stage and the beginning of a fourth stage. What does the fourth stage look like? Well, I have not a clu& Actually I may have a clue, but it is nothing more than a clue. Let me hasten to say that one of the occupational hazards of people who pretend to know something about the past is to think that they know everything about the future. With that caution in mind, I speak now with a good deal of self-suspicion, and you should hear it with even more suspicion. It is at least possible that a mark of the next great stage of development of religious life in the Western church--it may look more like the first stage than like stage two or three--is that there is a recentering on the nature of living vowed life in community rather than on any apostolate or mission of ours. That, perhaps, is Review for Religious the characteristic of the next stage of religious life. If that proves true, then a category that may be helpful for religious to consider more deeply and theologically is sacramentality. I am not referring to the great seven public and communal sacraments. I mean the much wider and in many ways much richer notion of sacrament, with a small s. And what is that sacrament called? What does sacramentality consist in? I give you Himes's handy-dandy definition of the sacra-mental principle. I have given it often, and it seems true. (After I hear myself say something long enough, it seems to me that it is true!) The definition of the sacramental principle is, I think, this: Whatever is always and every-where true must be noticed, accepted, and celebrated somewhere, sometime. Those things which are always true, those things which are constantly present to us, are almost always ignored. You do not pay attention to the oxygen in a room until it starts t6 go stale. While you have been reading this, you have surely been blinking periodically. Unless you have found my words altogether boring, you have not been counting your blinks. A couple of years ago ] got hit with a bout of Bell's palsy. I could not move anything on the left side of my face, and I could not blink. Throughout the day I had to periodically pull and hold my eyelid down, and tape it down at night. You become very aware of blinking when you cannot do it. When you can do it, when it takes care of itself, you do not pay any attention to it. In order to accept something that is there all the time and make it effectively present, to us, we have to learn to attend to it, to say yes to it, and to celebrate it. What is omnipresent to us? Well, God is: the self-giving of God. That self-giving of God we call, with the benefit of theological shorthand, grace: the self-gift of God's Trinitarian life outside the Trinity itself. It is everywhere. The whole world is just dripping with it; the whole thing is satu- A mark of the next great stage of development of religious life in the Western church is a recentering on the nature of living vowed life in community rather than on any apostolate or mission of ours. Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands rated with grace. But, precisely because that is true, it can be ignored. What is always present is seldom noticed. Whatever calls you, whatever person, place, thing, whatever sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, whatever experience leads you to he aware of, to attend to the reality of God's self-offering to you at that moment, to be able to say yes to it and to rejoice in it-- that is a sacra-ment. All told, how many sacraments are there in the world? How many things are there in the universe! That is what I mean by sacramentality. In that sense of the word--and this is where I am going to pick up the theme from Troeltsch in Part One--in that sense, religious life is a sacramental state within the church. We do not recognize that this is a sacramental state the way we recognize marriage as a sacramental state within the church. But it is in fact sacramental because, after all, religious are called to a deep sense of poverty, to a deep sense of responsibility toward and obedi-ence to the needs of those around us, to a responsible use of celibacy that recognizes our dependency on one another and on God. Is there anything there that everyone in the church is not called to by baptism? Why, then, do we need religious life so much? Because religious life "clearly, strikingly, astonishingly" (in the words of St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony) leads the church to see what the whole church is called to by baptism, to see it clearly and strikingly in a public and communal embodiment that helps people toward realization. Sacramentality is something that may be crucial for everyone's lively understanding of whht religious life is about and what its relationship to the church-at-large is and can be. How to Be More Sacramentally Aware How do you enliven this sense of sacramentality without repli-cating past forms? How do you rescue age-old values? How do you reclaim ancestral lands without simply going back to old build-ings or forms or structures? What can be done? I begin with a perceptive definition I learned from Jaroslav Pelikan, the distinguished historical theologian recently retired from Yale University. In his Jefferson Lectures at the University of Virginia a few years ago, he said: "We must be very careful to dis-tinguish between tradition ahd traditionalism. Tradition is the liv-ing faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Review for Religious One is the continuing, living, vital faith that energized those who have gone before us; that is tradition. Traditionalism is faith main-tained by some among us that in fact is already ossified, entombed, embalmed; there is nothing left in it that is energizing. It is the dead faith of the living. How do we begin to reclaim the living faith of our ancestors? I know that this is going on in religious communities at this moment; it has gone on for a good deal of time. But I urge that it continue, and continue precisely in terms of sacramentality. How do we reflect on the meaning of the vows again? Is it possible that the fourth stage of religious life in the Western church into which I believe we are entering is more like religious life in the first stage than the second or third? As a word of preface, let me say that I have thought about this a good deal. Though I am not a religious, I do share with you a vow of obedience and I do share with you a vow of celibacy. I do not share with you living in community, although in fact I have lived in community. My brother Ken lives in a community of Franciscans with only six other people, and I lived in a house at the seminary in Huntington with fourteen other priests and sixty-five seminarians. I used to tell him: "You became a Franciscan and live in a rectory. I become a diocesan priest and live in a monastery." It is wonderful how God moves things around! The thing that has led me to think about this most is the vow I do not have, the vow of poverty. I find that the things I have vowed are not something I have to think about. I know what obe-dience means. The bishop calls me up and says, "I want to see you about doing x, Y, and Z." And I. say, "Okay, bishop, let me come and talk with you." There is'a structure to that. I do not have to get up in the morning and think: What does it mean to be obedi-ent today? That is taken care of. I do not have to think about what it is to be celibate. I know what means: that is taken care of. There is a structure to that too. What is not structured for me is poverty, and so it is a real problem. What does it mean for me as a university professor to talk Much as been written about poverty in recent years that is very powerful, but it is useful rhetorically more than actually real. Januat3~-Febrtta~y 2000 Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands about poverty when I do not have a vow of poverty? How, then, as a baptized member of the Body of Christ, do I incorporate poverty? That is a big issue, and I have thought about it. This is my pref-ace to what I am now going to say about the three vows. Much as been written about poverty in recent years that is very powerful, but it is useful rhetorically more than actually real. It assumes that poverty is about identification with the poor--I am convinced that it is not. I expect some people to say "Oh, but it is.t" I wish it were, but I do not think so. My reason is this: There is an enormous difference between my deciding "I will not eat today" and actually having nothing to eat. If I decide not to eat (even though there are tons of food in tt(e refrigerator) because I want to identify with the poor by going to bed tonight with an empty stomach, I am forgetting something. For me there will be break-fast tomorrow morning, but overnight the poor are thinking: "I would love to have eaten today and I couldn't, and God knows whether I will get anything to eat tomorrow morning." These are simply totally different experiences, and I think it is nothing but self-serving romanticism to say, "Isn't it wonderful that we have identified with the poor!" I think that is just false, and I think it is dangerously false because it is overly romantic. 20 What Is Poverty? I turn to my brother's tradition. Who is the wisest one to have talked about poverty in the Western church? Francis of Assisi. Nobody is wiser on it than Francis. And I suggest that what Francis saw is very much in a line that starts with Augustine. But Francis saw its implications in brand-new ways. What is the most famous line from Augustine? What line does everybody know from St. Augustine? "You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." (A pastor in a diocese not far from here famously used to get up on any saint's feast and say, "Ah, today we remember St. Cuthbert of Auxerre, who is famous for that wonderful statement of his, 'You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless . '" According to this pastor, every saint had said it--or must have said it.) Well, what is Augustine saying? He is saying that all crea-tures- not just all human beings, please notice, but all creatures-- have one deep characteristic. That was what Francis saw so clearly. That deep characteristic is this: At our core, at our heart, we are Review for Religious empty. There is hunger, there is restlessness. The characteristic human experience is "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but more!" You have never known a human being who did not want more. The totally satis-fied, totally fulfilled human being is dead. If you want to see a totally filled human being, drop into your local cemetery. The fact is that what marks us as human beings is endless restlessness, end-less hunger--more, more, more, more, more. I say sometimes to students: "If somebody you know ever says, 'I have everything, I am everything, I know everything, I have experienced everything that I could possibly want, I am perfectly and totally satisfied,' ask the person this: 'Would you like it to last?'" If you had everything, what you would want is more time. There is never a moment when we do not want. That is the characteristic of being a creature. This is what Francis saw and recognized as uniting us with all of creation. That is what Francis saw in the mystical marriage with Lady Poverty, and it is what motivates the Canticle of the Sun. V~y is it Brother Sun and Sister Moon? VVhat is it that makes the moon and the sun, earth and water and air and fire, what makes everything my brother and sister? The fact that we all are marked by one great family resemblance: we are all poor. We did not make ourselves. We are all ultimately dependent. Nobody is fulfilled. If that is true, then poverty is what unites us with all other creatures. If that is so, then I suggest that poverty is the key value in the vows. My own reading of the relationship of the vows is that there are not three. There is one, and two further explications. The cen-tral vow is poverty. Celibacy and obedience are ways of being poor. But poverty is the central one. And the point about poverty is: It is not a social condition first of all, it is not an economic condition first of all. First of all, it is metaphysical; it is what makes you you. To embrace poverty publicly is to embrace, publicly, being a human being. Being poor is being human publicly. It is to embrace the human condition. It is to recognize that there are radical limits on me, limits of time, ultimately. A time is going to come when I will breathe out and think "Gee, I'd like to breathe in"--and it will not happen. There is going to come a time when I will say, "I would like just to get to tomorrow morning," and there will not be time for me to get there. There are limitations on time, there are limitations on energy, there are limitations on strength, there are limitations on courage, there are limitations on wisdom, there are limitations on knowledge. Ultimately I have to look at that and say, "And it is a good thing! I embrace it." Poverty is central. Januao,-Februa~y 2000 '-3! Himes ¯ Returning to Our Ancestral Lands Celibacy is a way of saying that very publicly. I told you that I think there is an overly romantic element in much that has been said about poverty in recent years. I think a huge amount of fatu-ous slop has been written about celibacy. I think that much of what has been done on celibacy in recent years is the most patent non-sense. We have all sorts of stuff saying it is perfectly possible to be celibate and a completely fulfilled and happy man or woman. Junk! The fact is that 99.999 percent of the human race has found, does find, and presumably always will find that the most significant relationship in their lives is being someone's spouse and someone's parent. If I come along and say: "Well, I am no one's spouse and I am no one's parent, and it does not matter a hill of beans. I am just as happy as can be. I am just as fulfilled as you can get. What 99.999 percent of the human race thinks is so important really is not important at all"--well, that is arrogance, stupid arrogance. The whole point of celibacy is, of course, that you are unfulfilled. But, if you can be publicly unfulfilled and still be an intelligent, free, responsible, loving, brave, wise, concerned human being, then your life suggests that maybe "fulfillment" is not what human-ity is about. Your life is a public witness to the fact that unfulfill-ment is what is characteristic of being a human being. To go around saying "Oh, we're all fulfilled" is to make hash of the whole of the Franciscan tradition. It is to make nonsense of Augustine's restless heart. Manifestly the human race is unfulfilled, and so, when some-body says "Here I am, a publicly vowed celibate," he or she loudly proclaims: "I am unfulfilled, and that is okay. We are all unful-filled. I am just publicly noting the fact. I am a reminder, a clear picture, of the fact that you are as unfulfilled as I am. I am just publicly acknowledging that fact in a particularly striking way." The same thing is true with obedience. Obedience has nothing to do--or almost nothing--with the submission of one person's will to another person's will. That is anti-Christian thinking. The whole point of our relationship to the will of God is that I do not subject my will to God's will. I discover that God's will really is my will, that God's will is what undergirds my will. It is not a question of "Gee, I want this and God wants that and, by hook or by crook, I've got to pull myself around to want what God wants." That is a misunderstanding of God; that is a destructive picture of God. What does obedience mean? Above everything else, it means poverty in the face of facts. Obedience is, above everything else, a responsibility to what is: not what you would like, not what you had Review for Religious hoped, not what you wanted, not what you wished, not what you feared, but what is. I used to tell my students that, when you are talking about obedience to a superior, when you are talking about obedience to a bishop, the point is this: You are newly ordained and you get assigned to a parish. You are just the best thing that ever happened to kids. John Bosco looks like a piker. This is just the best thing that ever happened to teenagers. You are gung-ho to work with kids. It happens, however, that at the moment you are needed in this parish. There are not a lot of kids; younger fam-ilies have moved out; it is, in fact, a very elderly neighborhood. If you say, "Well, I just don't work with the elderly, I work with kids," you are being disobedient. You are not being disobedient to the bishop, you are not being disobedient to the pas-tor, you are being disobedient to facts. The fact is that these are the people who are here. You are the person on the spot--serve them! If you find yourself saying inside, "Well, you know, I am not really good at serving them," let yourself hear them saying "Yeah, I know. We've noticed." And then notice that you are the only one there. If the Titanic is going down and you are the nearest ship, do not say, "Well, you know, it would crowd breakfast so terribly to take on these other passengers." The ship is going down. Get over and save them! That is obedience to facts, and it is poverty. It is the recogni-tion that, hey, there are some things I am good at and some things I am not good at. Sometimes I am in positions where what I am not good at is what is most necessary. Then I have to give it my best even though it is clear that I am not going to do very well at it. I may also have the responsibility to say, "Somebody else in here might be a lot better at this than I am." But until that happens I am here, and I will get to work. That is real obedience. It is, once again, poverty. It is a recognition of the limitations of our histor-ical placement. I have been given this time and this place. I would have been just a knockout in the 18th century. In the 18th cen-tury I would have been just wonderful. But there was a problem: I was not begotten until the middle of the 20th century. So, no matter how great you would have been in the 18th century, you What does obedience mean ? Above everything else, it means poverty in the face of facts. January-February 2000 Himes * Returning to Our Ancestral Lands were not there. Likewise, you might be the best thing that could ever happen to the church of the 24th century. But, unless you have really good genes in your family, you are not going to be there. This is the only century you have; this is the one you bet-ter relate to even though it might not always be the one you wanted. That is the experience of poverty. Celibacy, obedience--both variants of poverty! Why is it so important that religious life seize that value of poverty and be a sign of it for the whole church? Because it is the experience of being a human being. It is the deepest truth about us as human beings. It is what the rest of us, in all sorts of ways, come to grips with or else try to hide from ourselves. Amid all these human beings, there should be communities of women and men who say in the strongest, clearest, and most striking way: "I, too, am poor, and it is good. This is what it is to be a human being." Now, how do you convey that truth to people? Well, it will he different from person to person, from community to com-munity, and from place to place. You cannot replicate the past. If you had known Dominic or Francis, Scholastica or Teresa of Avila, if you had known Ignatius or Vincent de Paul or Jane Frances Fr~myot de Chantal, perhaps they would have said, "I never had a disciple as good as this." But, you see, they never said that. You are not a contemporary of theirs; you are a con-temporary of mine. Francis of Assisi does not need you, but I do. So do not try to relate to Francis of Assisi or Jane Frances, but make a good attempt of getting to me. When, by retaining or recovering important values we "return to our ancestral lands," we are not thereby called to sow the ances-tral crops. Ancient lands can bear new crops, and new crops are needed for a new generation of people. I predict that, in the next fifty years, religious life is going to experience an explosion of growth. It may look different than we expect. Some older com-munities may die or merge--or meld into newer communities. Not every community will experience an explosion, but there will be an explosion of people living publicly vowed lives in community as sacramental signs to the rest of us of how the Christian tradition understands genuine humanity. I predict that sects, in Troeltsch's meaning, will be powerfully witnessing to the church so that the church is not allowed to become a hidebound and ossified insti-tution. This explosion will happen because the church could not survive without it--and we have the Lord's word that the church Review for Religious will survive. But I do not know how it will happen. The how ques-tion has never been the forte of the church, which, in its own poverty, only just manages to keep going. These observations are those of a passionate religious watcher. In some new ways, religious life will still be there in the future, for the church needs you. I have no doubt that, if only I could live thousand years longer, I could write a whopping good book about that future. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. What elements of religious life have been eclipsed in recent years and need to be reclaimed? 2. How do we reclaim values without retreating to past forms? 3. Where do our particular religious communities fit in the development of vowed life in the church's history? 4. How can we establish community in religious life when the community is not its own center? Blink I like to think of thegn sledding, graceful, flying down some swift hill, the white in their hair only snow, bright gloves flashing in the wind above the aluminum board not as this aged couple she scarved in purple, taking careful steps in ankle boots, clutching a brown grocery bag, he shuffling two steps ahead, the long cool silver ironing board tucked beneath his arm. Doretta Cornell RDC January-Februmy 2000 religious mission JOHN KLEIN Transforming Mission: A Spirit of Adventure On 22 March 1999 a headline appeared in the New York Times reading: "Voyage End Brings Crew Back Down to Earth." The article recounted the voyage of the first two balloonists to circle the globe, aboard Breitling Orbiter III. The trip lasted nineteen days, twenty-one hours, and fifty-five minutes and covered a total of 29,054.6 miles. During their news conference one of the adventurers, Dr. Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist, reflected upon their experience: "It was not a matter of setting records; it was a fabulous metaphor of life. To try is the only way to survive." His compatriot, Brian Jones, a former member of the British Air Force, added: "We are not heroes. We just proved that dreams could come true.m Later in the interview Dr. Piccard admitted that the journey posed significant risks, struggles, and sacrifices. Confined in their 16.5 foot-by-10 foot capsule, freezing cold, and often lack-ing water, the adventurers nearly abandoned their effort several times. Piccard said, "When one of us was about to give up, the other would support him." This Magellanesque journey offers us a fabulous metaphor for our lives as religious leaders. Like Piccard and Jones, we find ourselves on a journey demanding John Klein FMS gave this presidential address at the August 1999 assembly of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM). His address is Marist High School; 1241 Kennedy Boulevard; Bayonne, New Jersey 07002. Review for Religious that we move beyond preconceived boundaries, one that forces us to tap into unsuspected personal and corporate resources, one that calls us to risk and trust and sometimes upset the status quo, one that invites us to dream of new possibilities and challenges, one that beckons us to move from the center to the margins. Religious leadership today is truly an adventure extending Jesus' mission to proclaim the kingdom and to make God known and loved. Mission is a description of Jesus, the Son of God, who invites us to be adventurers and dreamers with him. The daily realities of our work, however, do not permit us to escape being administrators, managers, fund-raisers, therapists, legal experts, and arbiters. Who has the time and the energy to dream and to participate in an adventure? How can we become "unstuck" and move forward the renewal of religious life? The church historian John W. O'Malley SJ has said, "It is more diffi-cult to reform a religious order than to found one.''2 Our expe-rience during the past thirty years certainly confirms this. Nonetheless, our role as leaders offers us a wonderful opportu-nity to influence and design the future, remembering that this project of religious life is God's work and not ours. With hope, like Jacob waking from his dream at Bethel, we can say of our time and our struggles, "Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it" (Gn 28:16). With confidence, like St. Paul in his Second Letter to Timothy (1:6-7), we can remind each other that "God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but rather a spirit of power and of love." It is in this spirit that we can face the future and set out on an adventure not of our design, but God's. John Gardner in his book Self-Renewal offers a sobering pre-diction if we opt to respond otherwise. He says: "If people are apathetic, defeated in spirit, or unable to imagine a future worth striving for, the game is lost.''3 We cannot lose this game. On the contrary, we need to see our present situation as opportunity. We need to articulate a high level of expectations for ourselves, the members of our congregations, and the institutions we own and sponsor. We are called to do this in a culture that does not share our values, but rather extols individualism, tends to privatize reli-gion, and fails to engender a true sense of community. Archbishop Rembert Weakland recently highlighted this challenge, asserting that "one of the most difficult pastoral tasks of our day., that has challenged the renewal at every turn is precisely how to overcome the cultural bias of our age toward the individualistic. ''4 Janumy-February 2000 Klein ¯ Tran~fomning Mission Our religious communities have not remained immune from these societal influences. On the contrary, society has tended to co-opt us and has led many religious to make private accommo-dations to religious life. This cripples our mission, diminishes a sense of esprit de corps and solidarity, and saps our energy and possibilities for the future. "The Nygren and Ukeritis study already warned that, despite their language of prophecy and sol-idarity with the poor, many religious in the United States may be far more accommodated and assimilated into the dominant cul-ture than they like to believe. The penchant for individualism and self-fulfillment so characteristic of this culture has found a ready berth in many religious communities. Self-determination has eroded communal and institutional commitments.''s Given this situation, how are we as religious leaders called to respond? I believe that we can discover the answer by reflecting on the example that Jesus provides us. The Letter to the Hebrews (12:2) refers to Jesus as the pioneer. He is the one who goes before us to offer the example and then returns to us to point the direction and to reassiire us that he is always present with us. Jesus is the adventurer calling us to join with him in mission and to fan the embers our commitment into a flame spreading new life and hope. Like us, Jesus found himself engaged in mission, searching for ways to engender new life, struggling and sometimes discour-aged with a disparate band of disciples, and confronting a society at best indifferent to his values and vision. How did he respond? What was and is Jesus' mission? How did he endeavor to foster new life? How did he pursue his mission and commitment? How did he accomplish the transformation of the lives of his disciples and the many others whom he touched as well? By probing these questions we will begin to perceive ourselves as part of a unique adventure that will transform our mission and foster new life. However, we do not probe the questions alone. This effort must be a collaborative and communal one. While we do not need everyone in our province or congregation to participate in this effort, we do need a "critical mass" of people to share the adventure. Only this will move our mission and our group for-ward. "What we dream alone remains just a dream, but what we dream with others can become a reality.''6 If we willingly dream together in faith, then our mission will be transformed and we will have the confidence that our best years are ahead of us. In all of Review for Religious our efforts together, Jesus, the pioneer, presents the lens through which we can discern our course of action and catch a glimpse of the religious life of the future. This is particularly true in three aspects of his mission that challenge us today: Jesus' deep spiri-tuality and relationship to his Father, his commitment to mis-sion at the margins of society, and, finally, his formation of an intentional community of disciples to carry his mission forward. Our following his response in these areas will, I believe, offer the compelling ways through which we will discover our unique role in society and the church. Jesus appreciated better than anyone that to be in close, intimate relationship with God inevitably makes people countercultural and dis-tinctive. It places them in a dangerous situation, making them as disciples part of a cultural minority. This minority cannot help seeing the world and society through different eyes, the eyes of Jesus. This vision encourages those who follow Jesus to choose new life by loving the Lord, our God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him (Dt 30:15-20). Seeing reality this way meant new life for Jesus also, for his profound spirituality caused him to turn society's values on their head and, in the process, made him a dangerous person. We see this clearly in Jesus' table fellowship. He ate with scribes and Pharisees, with the poor and destitute, with tax col-lectors and sinners. By breaking boundaries, risking disapproval, and "imaging" the reality of God for the people of his time, Jesus made his mission, the proclamation of the kingdom, tangible. It was in food-and-drink situations that he revealed the divine gifts of joy (Mt 9:15), pardon (Lk 7:47), salvation (Lk 19:9), and super-abundance (Mr 14:15-2 I). It is at table that we witness the trans-forming conversion of Zacchaeus, Jesus' example of servant leadership, and the opening of the weary disciples' eyes at Emmaus. It is therefore primarily at his table, at his Eucharist, where we religious will find new life for our mission. It is at his table that we will encounter him through the lives of sinners and outcasts, our brothers and sisters, realizing that the margin is our home too. In his message for the World Day of Peace, Pope John Paul II exhorted us to "recognize Christ in the poorest and the most marginalized, those whom the Eucharist--which is communion What was and is Jesus' mission ? Janualy-Februaly 2000 Klein ¯ Transforming Mission in the body and blood of Christ given up for us--commits us to serve. As the parable of the rich man, who will remain forever without a name, and the poor man called Lazarus clearly shows, 'in the stark contrast between the insensitive rich man and the poor in need of everything, God is on the latter's side.' We too must be on this same side.''7 The side of the poor and disenfran-chised is the side where the religious man and woman must be found. Whether or not we work directly with the poor, we can-not escape the imperative of seeing the world with the eyes of the poor. This attitude, then, will inform our prayer, our work, and our lifestyles. The Gospel of Luke reminds us that the sign that Jesus is "the one who is to come" is that the poor are having the Good News proclaimed to them. In this Jesus gave flesh to his kingdom and illustrated that the reign of God is now. Our mission as reli-gious leaders represents the continuing participation in his incar-nation. Our mission calls us to illustrate that economic and social boundaries are artificial, made by human hands. Our mission proclaims that, if "we truly want to see the glory of God, we must move downward with Jesus. This is the deepest reason for living in solidarity with poor, oppressed, and handicapped people. They are the ones through whom God's glory can manifest itself to us. They show us the way to God, the way to salvation.''8 To ignore the sorrows and needs of others is to ignore the flesh of Jesus and to deny the incarnation. For us to make the "option for the poor" a reality will mean a conversion of mind and heart. It is a conversion that will find its source in prayer, reflection, and Eucharist. It is a conversion that demonstrates itself through simplicity of lifestyle and sensi-tivity to those less fortunate than we. Too often we have claimed the adjectives prophetic and countercultural for ourselves. It would be far better that others attribute them to us after seeing the way we live and work and pray. They will do so if we make certain that our rhetoric and our reality coincide and that our lifestyles reflect charism rather than just personal choices. Johann Baptist Metz once wrote that "religious orders are a kind of shock therapy. ¯ for the church as a whole. Against the dangerous accommoda-tions and questionable compromises that the church . . . can always incline to, they press for the uncompromising nature of the gospel and the imitation of Christ. In this sense they ire the insti-tutionalized form of a dangerous memory within the church.''9 Review for Religious Our mission today is to be dangerous as Jesus was and to make Metz's description of us real. This mission is by its very nature a communal one, and I believe that new life for the mission of Christ will be found, not necessarily in endeavoring to enliven already existing local com-munities, but rather in forming new intentional communities within our groups. In addressing the obstacles to refounding a religious community, Gerald Arbuclde acknowledged that efforts to "move" or "change" a group inevitably encounter significant resistance. Hence, he says, "The new belongs elsewhere." These communities, similar to the one Jesus formed with his disciples, have mission at their center and heart. Mission conse-quently operates as their chief source of connectedness and energy. Members of an intentional community realize that they cannot minister to others outside unless they live in a community founded on inter-dependence and a mutuality informed by faith. This faith life sensitively balances the needs of the community and those of each individual and finds sharing of faith to be indispensable to its life. This inevitably leads to a high level of trust that allows mem-bers to challenge one another's behavior in light of a commonly accepted vision and goal. While these intentional communities meet some of the emotional, social, and intellectual needs of its members, they are in no way therapeutic support centers. An intentional community is "a group of religious living together who feel the need to be supported in their ministries and willingly commit themselves to develop a gospel-centered intimacy to be expressed in shared faith, ongoing conversation, and shared action."1° In short, an intentional community is one that has a clear and visible and easily identifiable way of life. Such a group offers the world what it does not find elsewhere: a community of faith, friendship, and mutual support engaged in an adventure larger than itself. In writing about his hopes for Dominican communities, Timothy Radcliffe OP, the master general, highlighted the impor-tance of such communities for the future of religious life. These groups, he maintained, carry within themselves seeds of new life. Communities similar to the one Jesus formed with his disciples have mission at their center and heart. January-Februaty 2000 Klein ¯ Transforming Mission "Unless a province plans the building of such communities, then it dies. A province with three communities where the brethren flourish in their Dominican life has a future, with the grace of God. A province with twenty communities where we just survive may well have none." it To say the least, we religious at the threshold of the new mil-lennium face significant challenges as we participate in Jesus' adventure. Allowing God to transform our mission and ourselves will not be a process devoid of risk and some pain. Nonetheless, to do otherwise would rob our religious families of the new life necessary to bring them into the future and, as a result, would put at risk our contribution to the mission of Christ. In the conclu-sion of Vita consecrata, the Holy Father asserts that religious "have not only a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history still to be accomplished! Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things" (VC §110). A real test of our faith and gospel hope is our belief in the truth of John Paul's words. Martin Heidegger once compared the journey of life to a person walking in a huge forest where it is pitch dark, where it is raining and thundering, and one has completely lost the way. There is a bolt of lightning and for an instant the way is clear. Then it is dark again. All one can and must do is keep going in the direction one saw illuminated by the lightning flash. This is our challenge and our opportunity: to keep going, to trust that God is faithful, to remember the way in the light of those key moments through which God intervenes in our lives. Most of our life we must move ahead in darkness, sustained in our faithfulness by what we once glimpsed when, if only for an instant, everything was clear.12 Notes ~ New York Times, 22 March 1999, p. 8. -' John W. O'Malley SJ, Tradition and Transition: H#torical Perspectives on Vatican II (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1989), p. 97. 3 Albert DiIanni SM, Religious Life as Adventure (New York: Alba House, 1994), p. 108. 4 Rembert Weakland OSB, "Liturgy and Common Ground," America 180, no. 5 (20 February 1999): 9. s Robert J. Schreiter, "Challenges and Directions of Religious Life at the Turn of the Millennium," Address given at the inauguration of the Center for the Study of Religious Life, 21 June 1998, p. 11. Review for Religious 6 Ronald Rolheiser OMI, "Religious Life in America Faces a Change of Epoch," paper prepared for the Inter-American Meeting in Toronto, May 1999, p. 13. 7 Pope John Paul II, "Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace," 1 January 1999, p. 21. s Robert A. Jonas, Henri Nouwen (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998), p. 35. 9 Gerald A. Arbuckle SM, From Chaos to Mission: Refounding Religious Life Formation (Strathfield, N.S.W.: St. Paul's Publications, 1996), p. 11. ~0 Arbuclde, From Chaos to Mission, p. 15 I. " Timothy Radcliffe OP, Pastoral letter "The Promise of Life," 2 February 1999, p. 3. ~2 John Fullenbach, Prodaiming His Kingdom (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1992), p. 190. The Joys of January Beautiful month of the cold, clean slate: nothing mars its pristine glare. Starlings stare, perched on empty limbs shaking in their purity. The air bears thoughts of ice. Wind cuts through whispers. Walls show us where twigs scrape messages: deliver words, deliver us: bend, blow beautifully, winter stems. Wake us. The dark recedes, we see our breath, a flickering. Light. Mary Kennan Herbert Janua~. -Febmtmy 2000 A. PAUL DOMINIC Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy Spurely, in the Indian experience, joy has not been a strong oint in religious life, in fact or in principle. This came to me as a rude shock twenty-odd years ago during a chat with a couple of sisters. As I was leaving their place, one of them made a particularly religious sort of request: "Father, will you please pray for vocations to our congregation?" I replied at once, though with some inner hesitation, "Why pray? If you are all happy, the girls will simply flock to you!" When I said this, I did not know I was echoing the mind of Pope Paul vI revealed in his 1971 apostolic exhortation Evangelica testificatio (§55). I must not have impressed them, for one of them said to me later, "But you must know we are religious!" Though that was not a recent event, attitudes of this type do not change in a single generation--though I would like to be proved wrong. Incidentally, the rumor of joyless religious life is not an exclusively Indian phenomenon: most of the religious con-gregations here have been transported from the West. Why, the very fact that a paper on consecrated life as anointed with joy was read in 1998 in San Antonio, Texas, at the annual confer-ence of vicars of religious implies that even modern American religious are not above the need of awakening to joy in their life of consecration.' A. Paul Dominic SJ last wrote for us in November-December 1995. His address is Satyodayam; 12-5-33, S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. Review for Religiota This sad state of affairs in religious life is a reflection of Christianity in general, which has been accused of joylessness by both Westerners and Easterners. Nietzsche, for instance, has ridiculed the claim of Christians to have been saved by Christ. If it were really so, he argues, why could they not look joyful instead of appearing so remarkably gloomy? The Indian Shree Rajneesh, quite celebrated in his way, has been no less categorical in his attack on Christian attitudes. "Christians say that Jesus never laughed!" he alleges, and counters: "Now this seems to be the ulti-mate in stupidity. Jesus . never laughed? Then who else can laugh? . . They have made his picture very sad-looking, long-faced, burdened. This is not possible. This is utterly wrong.''2 All this non-Christian aspersion may well serve as a goad, particularly for us religious, to discover or rediscover the characteristic joy of Christ and enter into it (see Mt 25:21 and 23) and thus be evange-lized, that is, "gladdened by the good news" of our redemption. The Oil of Gladness It is heartening to observe that, in the biblical experience, there is a joyous anointing, besides several others. This joyous anointing is bestowed on the righteous king, that is, the king who loves justice, producing the pleasure of the people without seeking his own fortune (Ps 45:3-8). Who can this joyously anointed king be but him whose very name is Christ, meaning, of course, "the anointed one"? He is the one who, as no other, can witness to his joy in this fashion: "I was beside the master crafts-man, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth, delighting to be with the children of men" (Pv 8:30-3 I). If, by virtue of baptismal consecration, every Christian shares in the life of the joyously anointed Christ, what may we conclude about those consecrated further by religious profession? Being anointed with the oil of gladness is no doubt a charism person-ally received; it is, however, not to be enjoyed as a private pos-session, but to be ever passed on for the surprise enjoyment of others. If religious are genuine enough, they will necessarily make their anointing evident, for the joyous enhancement of others. Leading lives of contagious joy" because their God is the joy of their never ending youth, they will liberate the masses from their oppressed lives and lead them into the same joy. January-Febrnary 2000 Dominic ¯ Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy All truly enlightened persons, whatever their religion, would share in this lofty, uplifting, and truly religious sentiment of theirs. People's innermost recesses would be affected, and there-fore the social fabric too. For instance, among the Hindu Tamil saints was Tayumanavar, who prayed out of the abundance of his holy joy: "That all should be happy is my one wish, Almighty One! This is the only thing I know!" The Christian ashrams here in India have, in proper inter-religious spirit, followed suit in earnest and have introduced, somewhere at the beginning of Lauds, the singing of the Sanskrit sloka "Lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu," which means "May all the world be happy!" This vision of joy, flowing to us from God and necessarily flowing to others from us, is certainly wonderful. How do we make this vision vivid to ourselves and transparent to others in a practicable, communicable way? The Religious Way of Joy The way to experience joy in God is, first and foremost, to enjoy our life, basically and paradoxically, in its human and of course ecological dimension. There God will be available, not absent. For one thing, where joy is there will be no room for complaining. Complaining is a root of the atheist's mindset (see Ph 2:14-15). Habitually complaining persons construe everything as wrong, in sharp contrast to the divine intention exhibited in creation and providence (see Gn 1 and Mt 5:45), and so they can-not subscribe to any belief in God. Even if they claimed to believe, their belief would be the result of some psychological or religious conditioning and so only superficial, if not spurious. Rajneesh warns against such joyless nominal faith, advocat-ing an increasing enjoyment of life as the way to find God-given joy in ourselves. He says: Any small thing is full of God! So love this life . Eat, enjoy the food, and let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound ¯ . . as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him . Just open yourself as much as possible--to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands¯ Open yourself wherever you are; absorb, and gratitude will arise . And you will not know towards whom this gratitude is arising. When you don't know towards whom., it is towards God) Review for Religious Does this not read like a poetic rendition of the Contemplation to Attain love offered by St. Ignatius at the very climax of his Spiritual Exercises (§§230-237) to train people to find the joy of God no less outside their retreat than in it? Again, does this not evoke the following bold and originally controversial remark of St. Paul? "If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Co 10:30-31; see also Col 3:16-17). Again, does this not read like an expository commentary on the praxis and pronouncements of Jesus? He, whose mission was to make known the heart of God to humanity, did not speak explicitly about God as much as he spoke about the happiness people longed for. He assured them that they were des-tined for joy, and, to prove it, he went about doing good for them in ever sur-prising ways. He fed them in their hunger without being asked, and he sat-isfied them. In that way he led them to discover for themselves that it was God who fed them to their heart's content. He healed them of their many illnesses and gladdened them and in that way enlightened them about how God meant them to be healthy and happy. His teaching was new precisely in proclaiming that they were at the threshold of an altogether new blessedness, thanks to the unique intervention God was initiating in humanity. He declared a new law, the law of beatitude (see Mt 5:1-10), for all, but particularly for the poor, that is, for those who longed for blessedness (see Lk 10:23-24). All this would have been offensive to people who abided by their fixed religious ways without, however, conspicu-ous happy living. To those who made much of fasting, for instance, he declared himself against it unless times and seasons made sense of it and demanded it. Indeed, he approved of feast-ing before fasting, gladly characterizing himself as one who came in the spirit of God's new time, eating, drinking, and partying in marked contrast to his predecessor, and not fighting shy of the The way to experience joy in God is, first and foremost, to enjoy our life in its human and of course ecological dimension. .~anualy-Februa~y 2000 Dominic * Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy nicknames "glutton" and "drunkard" that some hurled at him. Because he found the joy of God in feasting in God's name, he could also, paradoxically, find the God of joy while abstaining from any feast. Is it not quite revelatory, when we come to think of it, that the word feast denotes both a lavish meal (as at a wed-ding) and a periodic religious observance? Christ was persuaded . that God himself was feasting, and so he would urge people undertaking a fast to present an appearance of joy (Mt 6:16-18). Whatever delightful stories of God he told had invariably the magic spell of joy in life. The stories suggest that only those who have known the joy of a wedding feast, or a bumper harvest, or an unexpected catch of fish, or giving birth to a child, or finding a lost coin or son, or stumbling on a treasure, or seeing and being a child, and so forth, could understand and delight in God. They as much as say that anyone who has known none of life's ordinary joys would be unable to know, let alone enjoy, God in their life-- even though God, as the source of all other joys, is a joy well above life's mundane joys. So Christ's call to joy was constant and compelling, encouraging us to be open to unnoticed joys around us and then to greater joy: Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do no worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?". Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (Mt 6:26-32) All who have known and enjoyed God thus in life will hope-fully carry this, their basic thrill of happiness, all through their life and will further develop their happy character through life's tasks, trials, and temptations. Anointing Others with Joy Like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, the more we become what we are (namely, anointed with joy) by growing in the joy that abides in us from our looking at Jesus, the pioneer Review for Religious of our joy, the more we shall be able to anoint others with joy. Sensing this dynamic of joy, how does one move in this mission of joy (evangelization, translated literally)? Basic to any move in relation to others is openness to all so that all may have life. The joy within us, if genuine, will be free from all conditioning by others and will contrive to make every-one welcome indiscriminately. This is what Christ did. He who said "Let the little children come to me" in an age when they counted for little had much the same attitude of welcome towards all, Jew or gentile or Samaritan, Pharisee or Sadducee or rogue, man or woman, young or old, high or low, rich or poor, clean or dirty, learned or illiterate, virtu-ous or sinful, and so forth, irrespec-tive of all segregations prevailing in his day. When he did make choices, however, it was doubtless towards the poor of all sorts, showing compas-sion for the multitude that was like sheep without a shepherd, saying that he had come for sinners, not the virtuous, and that the Spirit had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, to prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. And so they, the poor masses, who Jesus sadly foretold are with us always (more glaringly now than ever before), have the greatest claim on our mission of joy. How do we set about this privileged mission? Thefirst move must be to initiate or maintain solidarity with people in their joyless situation, following the incarnation's prin-ciple of bringing joy to the world. We need to be one with them as far as possible. Ideally, of course, we should be so much one with them that nothing differentiates us from them in sur-rounding society. Meanwhile every attempt we make in this direc-tion will be an opening of joy to the unfortunates with whom we seek to share our own joy. During my turn as chaplain at a home for the aged, the day I began eating with them at their own table (something they had never seen before) was a matter of undreamt-of joy for them, far more beneficial than my liturgical or homiletic performance. The ontological principle actio in distans repugnat is no less sociological and evangelical. When Jesus sent his disciples The joy within us will be free from all conditioning by others and will contrive to make everyone welcome indiscriminately. January-February 2000 Dominic * Evangelization as Religious Mission of Joy on mission, what was he doing but bridging the gap between the teaching tribe and the taught? In his clear instruction to them to stay and eat happily with their hosts, what was he aiming at but their insertion into their very midst? When he himself was at home in the company of the sick and suffering and sinful, what was he exhibiting but his identification with their milieu? The second move must be to respond to the felt desires of those whom we have chosen to serve foremost in the promotion of joy. The Bible has as much to do with this as with the worship of God (see Is 58:6-10, Am 5:21-24, Mi 6:6-8). However much we may have identified with various persons, we may be mistaken about their drives and urges. That is why we have not had in great numbers the likes of St. Peter Claver and Blessed Katherine Drexel in the history of slavery, or of Bishop Romero and Corazon Aquino (once president of the Philippines) in the much delayed popular struggle, or of Little Sister Madeleine of Jesus and professor-turned-preacher Peter Reddy pitching their tents on the fringe of society.4 To work today toward a better future, it would on our part be best if we had people spell out their desires and then responded to them. Though at times Jesus' benefac-tions were a surprise to the beneficiaries of them, often he led people to be aware of their needs and then proceeded to respond to those needs, and bring joy (see Mk 10:46-52, Jn 4:4-42, Jn 5:1-9, even Mt 20:20-23). Besides this, he was quick to sense and fill the deeper spiritual needs they felt in spite of, or along with, their physical or social ones (as in the cases of Mary of Magdala and Joanna, Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan outcast, and the Gerasene demoniac). Unlike him was the North American priest working in a South American parish who, to his dismay, discovered from his old cat-echist that his people, whom he had raised economically to a sat-isfactory level, were leaving him for a newfound evangelical pastor because they wanted to hear the glad news of the gospel. The third move in our mission will be, therefore, to lay bare the hidden needs of the spirit, at whatever level people may be, and to bring them to a higher level that engages their own inner resources. There is a time and reason for attending to and filling their mate-rial needs, and also for sensitizing themto higher needs and, with the conviction learned from Jesus, inviting them to higher joy: "But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Mt 6:33). Review for Religious Reality may seem to fly in the face of this assurance, but can-not negate it altogether. People like Paul, who by God's grace knew a deep joy in penury as well as in plenty (Ph 4:11-13), show the truth of Jesus' words. In declaring that God has a higher claim on people and fills a deeper need than ordinary earthly liv-ing makes them concerned about, Jesus was not being naive. Well aware of the problematic reverses of human life, he was aware too of the privileged reserves of the human spirit. And so he would train people in tested, mature happiness by his winning counsel: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows" (Mt 10:29-31). This stance leads us to the fourth move, namely, to encour-age and fortify people caught in suffering to rise above it and emerge in joy. Would this work in life? It can and does, because it did in Christ's life. Even though all through his public life he encountered opposition from many quarters and faced threats to his life from authorities like Herod, he carried on his work with joyous determination and courage that were the mark of his unflinching faith in God. When his disciples were sorely troubled by his uncertain future, he reassured them emphati-cally: "Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy" (Jn 16:20). He urged them to ask the Father for any-thing in his name and to count on receiving it so that their joy might be complete On 16:24). The fifth move will be to witness to the revelation of how exceptionally suffering people may anticipate their joy in their very suffering (as Jesus himself did), and not in spite of it. At the end of his life, when the worst of his fears were to overtake him, he made a celebration of his last meal, carried himself with joyous strength of an unusual kind, and imparted to his dis-heartened disciples his sure vision of their future mission of suc-cess with words of comfort: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete" (Jn 15:1 I). He concluded by asking the Father that his distraught disciples might have his own joy made complete in their very selves (Jn 17:13). From his personal experience he could witness to the joy of the persecuted poor, not only in principle by declaring them Janumy-Februal~ 2000 Dominic ¯ Evangelization as Religious Mission of ,yoy blessed (Mt 5:10-12), but also in practice by bringing public recognition to people who were quietly but surely joyful, such as the poor widow who made an offering to God of all her sav-ings with sure, spontaneous, though unglamorous, joy (Mk 12:41- 44). The most moving story of this kind that I know is this: A woman took a priest to her home to" show him a secret of hers. Hidden in a corner was her bedridden eight-year-old son, with the body of a child and the head of an adult, with a darting tongue like a snake's. Seeing the sight he groaned; but she did not hear it, for she was saying, "Father, I have looked after this child for eight years now. He knows only me. I love him very much. Almost no one knows about it." In speaking thus warmly of her son, she did not hesitate to speak happily about her God as well: "God is good. God is our Father.,,s The more such secrets are known, the more joy will abound on the earth! The sixth move in evangelization is to declare, after due dis-cernment, how the good and glad program of God for humanity is being carried out even at the social level. Christ began his min-istry of joy at Nazareth, making precisely such a discerned dec-laration to his townsfolk. More than Jesus' proclamation of the good plan of God for their welfare, what pleasantly surprised them was the accompanying announcement of its effectiveness then and there in the very workings of their society (Lk 4:21). All through his later ministry, too, he was intent on making peo-ple recognize the growing social implementation of the divine plan carried on through the mediation of works of gladness done by himself (Lk 7:18-22 and 11:20) and like-minded others, whether among his explicit followers or unattached admirers (Mk 7:1-9, 9:11-12 and 38-40, and 12:34; Lk 10:i0-11 and 18-19). In our evangelization, therefore, we need to be on the watch to dis-cern and broadcast the divine reformation and revolution willy-nilly taking place in the world, thanks to our cooperative works, small or big, and those of many, many others, done--in the spirit of the Servant of Yahweh--quietly, steadfastly, and effectively (Mt 12:19-21). Even as we rejoice and lead others to rejoice in the magnalia Dei present in contemporary society, we also know and cannot deny the ungodly contradictions that afflict our web of life covertly and overtly. The best move in this situation--and this is the seventh and last move in our task of joy--is to channel into our world the spirit of the Book of Revelation, namely, a mood of Review for Religious faith and hope: faith in God revealed in the great works of joy already experienced, and hope in God preparing greater works, of which our mind has not conceived but of which there has been an earnest within our experience. One of the most fervent expres-sions of such an experience is the ancient song that nevertheless sounds new: "Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food,.yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation" (Hab 3:17-18). Mary, Mission of Joy What is the Magnificat but the above ancient hymn sung in a new melody? Surprised by joy, Mary celebrates God in her new song for all his works of gladness wrought in her and her society of the lowly, down through the ages. She rejoices in her own deeds of happiness, too, which God inspired her to perform for the benefit of the lowly and indeed of all humankind. She inspires and urges all those interested in similar works to become part of the hopeful, joyful movement to which God gives increasing momentum for his glory and our bliss. Following her Son in all matters of life, she precedes us religious like a wise guide in all matters, even in our evangelical mission. Notes ~ See Review for Religious 57, no. 6 (November-December 1998): 605-620. 2 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, I Say unto You, Vol. 2 (Pune, India: Rajneesh Foundation, 1980), p. 172. 3 Rajneesh, I Say unto You, pp. 217-218. 4 Reddy (1895-1958), a convert, renounced his professorship in a Jesuit college in Tamil Nadu and became a pilgrim beggar and vagrant preacher. See J. Cherupallikat, Witness Potential of Evangelical Poverty in India (Immensee, Switzerland: Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionnaire, 1975), pp. 117-121. s See Leonardo Boff, The Lord's Prayer (Indore, India: Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra, no date), p. 88. January-Feblvtary 2000 finding God ROBERT % COSTELLO Discovering God in Gaps Joseph Cardinal Bernardin influenced millions of peo-ple. As I read accounts of his life and watched the tele-vision coverage of his death and funeral, I was intrigued by a paradox. Cardinal Bernardin wrote, shortly before his death in November 1996, that his last years were the best and worst of times. He said he loved being Joseph to his people and seeking to build bridges between diverse church elements. He told of struggling to free himself from a "need" for success, a "need" to avoid criticism; he told of struggling to trust. He said he was whipsawed by groups asking him to carry their diverse banners. Then came the shocking conspiracy to brand him for sexual misconduct. After displaying immense courage amid the harsh publicity, he gained a growing respect and influence during the slow onset of the cancer that brought his death. Joseph Bernardin's influence peaked in his vulner-ability to the plot to defame him, his care for his false accuser. His example suggests a paradoxical experience in leadership, one which raises engaging questions. Are there implications for church leaders in the cardinal's Robert T. Costello SJ, onetime professor of psychology at Rockhurst College and former provincial superior of his order's Missouri province, currently does retreat work at the Guelph Centre of Spirituality; Box 245, Station Main; Guelph, Ontario; N1H 6J9 Canada. Review for Religious behavior? Is there even a hint for a spirituality for others beneath the dramatic circumstances he found himself in? Several experi-ences of mine have suggested an answer. The Southdown Institute is a residential treatment facility for priests and religious and offers monthly workshops for provincials, diocesan chancellors, and council members return-ing for aftercare with former residents. Asked to be a party to those sessions while on staff, I found myself filtering their expe-riences through memories of previous ~:esponsibilities of mine. This led me to sense that Bernardin's curious enhanced power had meaning for other leaders in the church. The leadership participants spoke of their stress at having to make choices about subordinates while pulled between conflicting values and options. They had to decide between what was empathic and tolerant on the one hand and firm and objective on the other. So it seemed to them. I describe this situation as "being in a gap" between an objective managerial function and an empathic pas-toral inclination. It is as though there is no one to turn to when a decision must be made. The cardinal was in a contradictory sit-uation or gap between defending his personal reputation and addressing what he learned were the spiritual needs of his accuser. I believe that this experiential dilemma, this gap, is worth exploring. What is involved in a church leader's experience of the gaps in administration? What Is a Gap? I define the gap as the tension a leader experiences in choos-ing between opposing goods such as compassion and impartial-ity. Should one postpone a difficult decision until there is more information, follow an intuition, or get on with a community's organizational needs? I consulted journals to better understand a paradox I felt was present in gaps. I also shared my quandary with three peo-ple presumably well versed in gap pressures. A general's assis-tant said that the gap issue deals with a leader's spiritual sensitivity to find God in the stressful situations. An assistant to the late Pedro Arrupe likewise suggested that gaps involve the spiritual meaning one disc6vers in the ministry of leadership. The provincial of a large community recalled being pulled by uncertainty and yet needing to act with determination. These January-Februa~7 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps responses added to my interest in the paradox that unintended influence emerges when a leader experiences a "centrifugal" effect from weakness and strength. Church leadership is a hybrid role of prophet and executive, of inspirational guide and money manager, a role which is bound to involve the kind of gaps we are discussing. It is different from the role of a business or professional leader (Nygren and Ukeritis, 1993). Empathy is an obvious part of the job description, but so is resolute confrontation. Workshop participants at Southdown spoke of pride in their organization's history, joy in their work, but also pain in conflicted relations with members. They said the stress was to be patient and challenging with fragile personalities while remaining focused on pressing tasks like building commu-nity consensus. One participant recalled that a lawyer's advice about a personnel issue seemed heartless but persuasive. Such circumstances required taking valuable time to address inappro-priate behaviors, being supportive of the person but still pursu-ing larger organizational issues. The research data of Nygren, Ukeritis, et al. (1993) broad-ened my notion of the gaps church leaders encounter. The authors uncovered nearly a dozen pressures which both pull and restrain religious leaders. For example, there is a strain between cultural individualism on one hand and the gospel values calling to relationships on the other. They wrote that leaders should be partners in the process of renewal, not initiators. Leaders also needed to establish mutual relationships. Their research found that generosity in some members was being eclipsed by self-pre-occupation. They noted that fewer religious espoused a prefer-ential option for the poor because of responding to personal calls for self-determination, making assignment difficult. This litera-ture, however, did not address an aspect of the leader's experi-ence I sensed in the life of Cardinal Bernardin and recalled, in a way, from my own years as a provincial. I found myself curious about his power. Eventually I had a clearer sense that there were unique tensions or gaps in the power differentials of leaders and community members. I originally had an unexamined, even patriarchal, conception of power: it produces effects. Thus the religious leader buys or sells property, approves vows. She can influence events in for-eign countries. Power makes things happen for individuals and a community and can be a unilateral influence. I also mistakenly Review for Religious suspected that leadership's authority was in the office or person. I believed that ideally Bernardin's considerable power would leave him unaffected if he exercised it adroitly. In .other words, good leadership could, should, and would produce a win-win result. I recalled, though, having nagging doubts after making some deci-sions. Those are what I was coming to recognize and identify as my gap experiences. A second conception of power grew out of curiosity about how the cardinal remained so influential aJ~er the conspiracy to besmirch his reputation collapsed. There was power and influence in how he allowed himself to be unaf-fected. I could understand people admiring his humility, but the pro-found impact his dying had on people puzzled me because I thought media frenzy would stain his integrity and reputation. I finally saw that there was power in how he allowed himself be affected. Power was being both active and passive, doing and receiving. When a Southdown workshop participant recalled a member's death from AIDS and the scandal which developed, I found his empathic reaction powerful. Gradually I saw that this second conception of power was a pas-sive reality that makes church leadership both personally demand-ing and spiritually challenging because church structure expects spiritual meaning to be acknowledged. Authority, then, seemed somehow to be a mutual influence. As the publicity swirled about him, Bernardin's stature seemed to increase with each gentle assertion, of his innocence and his belief that somehow the truth would appear. He pressed on with his plan to develop greater harmony in the Catholic Church of the United States while continuing to empathize with his accuser. He was in a wrenching gap. After he was exonerated of sexual impropriety, he threw himself into work only to be diagnosed With terminal cancer, but that is another story and a different stressful situation. Nygren, Ukeritis, et al. say that leaders viewed their source of power as residing either in themselves or in others. A leader who assumes personal authority is able to be assertive, while a Church leadership is a hybrid role of prophet and executive, of inspirational guide and money manager. January-February 2000 Costello * Discovering God in Gaps leader who considers the source of power to be in others becomes more interdependent or tentative. Note here that these sources of power are not mutually exclusive and inevitably result in the internal struggles (gaps) that are at issue here. For example, a leader who stands on his or her own authority and is objectively assertive in dealing with members may generate resistance and be labeled autocratic. A leader who sees his or her power as derived from others can become paralyzed by members who disagree and resist consensus. A conception of passive power I found most enlightening was that of Bernard Loomer (1976). He described it as relational power. His concept helped me understand the paradox of Cardinal Bernardin: giving and receiving influence. This kind of. power is not an either/or capacity, like deciding to act or not act in a certain way. With Loomer's guidance I will digress on two faces of power: Power results from being influenced and Power preserves rela-tionships. Power as being influenced is not a contradiction. One workshop participant spoke of selling a building that had great symbolic value for her community and openly sharing the pain of it, thus leading the community to "get through it." A second par-ticipant spoke of compassionately confronting the stony silence of a member who violated a fiduciary relationship. Such gap expe-riences are clearly intense--but how are they powerful? The Challenge of Gaps Gaps challenge leaders to expand in "size," that is, to make room in their minds and hearts for opposing realities, such as the limits of human adaptability juxtaposed with situational demands. Gaps stretch leaders, and the power is displayed in the manner in which they embrace what is needed but only possibly achievable. Gaps pull for courage and commitment to the uncer-tain benefit of another, and this edifies and empowers. Cardinal Bernardin exercised power by being mortified on CNN over the accusation thrown at him of sexual abuse. He gent-ly absorbed the humiliation of being asked on television if he was sexually active. He also showed the size of his heart by refusing to countersue his accuser, while at the same time working (in what must have seemed another world) to build consensus among divergent elements in the church. Size is prodigal power because Review for Religious it demonstrates that stress is absorbed for the uncertain benefit of others. The cardinal's power was shown also by his refusing to unleash a legal assault on the conspirators with his available resources and by his believing that this conspiracy could not crush him. Size deals with the interior authority of the person; I find it godlike. A second face of power is manifest in someone who actively preserves relationships. In Loomer's view here, power is the capacity to sustain the mutuality of giv-ing and receiving. Individuals with per-sonal problems often refuse .such mutuality by erecting rigid boundaries as a way of securing whatever power they have. Bernardin's relational power consisted in the months of effort he spent trying to establish a vulnerable connection with his accuser, not in any brandishing of his status, with its vast legal resources that would only have cre-ated a wider gulf. In the end, both men contributed to and were nourished in the relationship because of thee inequalities of power. This was for me a surprising real-ization: one of the greatest influences anyone can have on another is being influenced by that person. Therein lies the power available in gaps. As I spent time musing about this issue, I came finally to a new understanding of some of my leadership experience. I grasped that my deep pain over the shrinkage of religious life was sad-ness over others' "poor discernment" or "lack of courage": "If only those departing had consulted more astute advisors, they could have fallen out of love and remain and resolve their issues" ¯ . . "If only they had more grit, things could be as they were-- and we have such need of their gifts!" I was helpless in the face of diminishment, but also hopeful there could be unimagined surprises in it. And yet I conceived these gap experiences as noth-ing more than stress due to my personal limitations. Cardinal Bernardin believed that meeting his accuser just might set the man free. He actually went to the man, faced his understandable resentment, brought about reconciliation while pressing on with the archdiocese's business. That demonstrated Gaps pull for courage and commitment to the uncertain benefit of another, and this edifies and empowers. Jannary-Februa~y 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps his size. The cardinal seemed detached from the scandal, and it appears his anchor was in spiritual meaning he attached to this ordeal. He "knew" the truth would appear, that he was innocent and it was possible somehow to be vindicated. He recalled that Jesus pledged his life in the interest of others in the face of their mis-understandings and abandonment. This was the quintessential experience of absorbing the stress in a gap for the benefit of a dream or a commitment. It was relational power. The paradox I sensed in Cardinal Bernardin's life connected with two other men whose conversions influenced me: C.S. Lewis and Ignatius Loyola. Lewis wrote that as a child he was "stabbed" by intense feelings of joy. He seemed obsessed with recapturing this experience and spent years trying to re-create it by exploring the riches of the arts and nature. He suspected he was trying to cook up emotional thrills. After years of frustration in this quest, he concluded he was seeking the wrong quarry. He had confused the affective experience of joy with its object. The sought-after emo-tion was only a cheap reminder or a footprint of a presence. An extraordinary realization. There was no other answer because all his introspection dissatisfied him until he accepted that the value of joy was in its object, in something else, in a presence--in God. While admitting I am on uncertain ground, for me Ignatian detachment means that in leadership as well as life we must hold ourselves in a kind of balance before all things, insofar as we have a choice. In the present context, whether a gap ended with pos-itive feelings would not be the issue; rather, it would depend on which alternative led the cardinal to greater self-donation and compassion. This detachment, no matter how experienced inter-nally, calls forth a more loving response to life's circumstances, which is a presence even if experienced as stress. In my view, this interpretation describes the experience of gaps religious leaders often have when detachment produces negative feelings which demand that they increase in size. My mistake was to attribute stressful feelings to the "cost" of leadership, nothing more. I had focused on my experience of stress, not its object. I think, as well, that Ignatius considered the actual feeling in spiritual consolation to be unrelated to a venture's success or failure. This was enlightening in the face of how hard it is to associate the stress or occasional bitterness in gaps with anything like God's confirming presence. I had supposed that God is sup-posed to be present in consolation (involving joy), not in uncer- Review for Religious tainty or regret (due to my painful limitations). I recall a con-soling sense of satisfaction after a community meeting that went well--who would not feel deep joy in a win-win situation? But sit-uations of angry conflict that emphasized one's own poverty in coping with it seemed altogether different, as they did for par-ticipants at the Southdown meetings. As I was learning, though, Ignatian consolation can coexist with stress and uncertainty when there is a conviction of possible benefit for others. The conflicted stress that people in leadership positions experience seems to be located between what is possible for them and what is unimaginable. Leadership routinely deals with possibil-ities and constraints in people or situa-tions, and so gaps are inescapable. My own experience and comments of others at workshops convince me that Ignatian detachment and consolation give these gaps further meaning: gaps are a time of the Spirit's presence in the stress. Ignatian consolation is an affective experience directed toward God and the world and away from self, an experience that can be stressful--as when one hopes that one's own experience of a difficult interpersonal exchange may just possibly be for the good of the person and the situation. No person in history staked as much as Jesus on the merest possibility that fidelity to his convictions could be redemptive for people, notwithstanding experience to the contrary. The stakes were so high because one side of the gap meant Jesus could be deluded while the other side presented only a flimsy possibility that the kingdom he desired would ever eventuate. The stake seemed to involve the exhilaration of wagering it all, staying in the gap, believing and hoping in the possible. From this perspective, the continuing power of Jesus is the unbounded size he mani-fests because there is room in his heart for all. More humbling than finding oneself in such a gap is a sus-picion that some leaders get about themselves. They wonder whether they seek to walk this way of possibility or rather are sought by God to walk it. In my reflection I admitted, without comprehending why, the possibility of their being sought. And Ignatian consolation can coexist with stress and uncertainty when there is a conviction of possible benefit for others. January-February 2000 Costello ¯ Discovering God in Gaps that makes all the difference when they make their stake to walk the way of possibility to the end, because they believe this service will be redemptive., for someone. Just like Christ's stake. References Bernardin, Joseph Cardinal. The Gift of Peace. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1997. Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Loomer, Bernard. "Two Conceptions of Power." Process Studies 6, no. 1 (Spring 1976). Nygren, David J., CM, and Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ. "The Religions Life Futures Project: Executive Summary." Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-51. Nygren, David J., CM, Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ, et al. "Religious- Leadership Competencies." Review for Religious 52, no. 3 (May- June 1993): 390-417. Ordinary Time Hoarfrost ages the discarded Christmas trees. Fog mutes the soul, and dampness chills the heart. In ordinary time we wait, like puffed-out birds, upon a frozen limb of time and seek for solace in the hearing of the Word. Ed Block Review for Religious DENNIS J. BILLY Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality Ln some parts of the Catholic world, this article may draw w readers and perhaps outright protest. Among some reli-gious today, "Father" as referring to God might well be under-stood as an ideological catchword linking a speaker or writer, regardless of his or her intentions, with a slew of suspected atti-tudes (clustered around "patriarchy") about which questioning and disapproval would likely arise. Confronting Our Experience In such situations the anger evoked by an uncritical refer-ence to God as Father can be intense and highly vocal. A reaction to such anger could itself be a mirror image of the original--but in the opposite direction. "Every action has an equal and oppo-site reaction," as the saying goes. If care is not taken, this coun-tervailing process of action/reaction can spiral out of control and leave members of the believing community "poles apart." In such instances, division and animosity replace the dialogue and mutual respect that should characterize the believing com-munity. We should be saddened by such results, but not surprised. Human beings are weak and fragile. Even with the best of inten- Dennis J. Billy CSSR delivered this paper (here somewhat revised) in spring 1999 at the Institute of Spirituality of the Angelicmn in Rome. His postal address is Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma; Italy. Janua~y-Febrt~my 2000 Billy * Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality tions, they can easily allow rancor and strife to get the upper hand in their lives. The same holds true for the communities people form, even religious ones. As the world gets smaller and smaller, I would not be surprised if the local Christian commu-nity and the local religious community reflect more and more of these complex and highly charged emotional tensions. Such is the nature of a world where technological advances have made mass communication practically instantaneous and where the communication media purvey religious sentiment for a society increasingly definable as a consumer market. Anything goes, if it will sell--better still if it will sell quickly. Package it well enough and you will get a large enough following to support your ideas. Besides, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Right? If so, then we can call God whatever we please. Why not? I would be astonished if, among the readers of this journal, there is not a wide spectrum of strong emotional responses to my topic. Indeed, some of us may experience the full range of these intense emotional reactions in our own hearts. Some of us may have no problem whatsoever about referring to God as Father. Some of us may feel a certain ambivalence about the term and not quite understand why we feel the way we do. Some of us may feel guilty for feeling that way. Some of us may be confused and uncertain and may wonder h6w a simple phrase like "Our Father" can evoke such strong and conflicting emotional reac-tions. And some of us may be dead set against using such a term, regardless of what we say at Mass and regardless of what Scripture and Tradition, the pope, the magisterium, and even Jesus have to say about it. A reason for the vast array of reactions may be the ambiva-lence (and, in some cases, outright hatred) some people harbor toward their own fathers. Social historians speak of the weak-ened role of fatherhood in Western society due to tremendous upheavals brought about by the Industrial Revolution. As Western society became industrialized during the 19th and 20th centuries, the population gradually shifted from rural, agricultural areas to the cities and their outlying areas. Fathers went off to work in fac-tories, sometimes traveled long distances to get there, and returned home tired and hungry at the end of a long day with little energy for anything else. Over the years.this resulted in a culture with largely absent and disengaged fathers, who spent most of their time away from home and who had little direct Review for Religious contact with the inner workings of family life. Their job was to provide shelter and to put bread and butter on the table. Nothing more; nothing less. The image of the distant and detached father reading his evening paper, smoking his pipe, sipping his evening pint, oblivious to the needs of those around him, especially his children, is deeply embedded in many people's minds. In this century, advances in technology alleviated the situation some-what, but have created new demands on people's time and energy. These same advances, moreover, have brought much of the world under the sway of both the positive and the negative influ-ences of Western culture? If that is not enough, some people had fatherless childhoods because of war and disease. Imagine growing up without a father. People may not show it externally, but some of them have grown up feeling devastated, feel-ing abandoned by their fathers and perhaps even by God. Today households exist where the father or at least a strong fatherly influence simply does not exist. One wonders what calling God "Father" might mean in such a home. Of course, when fathers fail to take their roles seriously, when they neglect their children or abuse them with physical and psychological violence, even sexual misconduct, there is another problem about calling God "Father." Tensions grow and family situations worsen. No wonder that some people find it difficult to address God as their Father. Why should they think God would be anything but detached or remote or even violent toward them? How would you feel if you were in their shoes? Perhaps you already are. This is just a sampling of the wide range of feelings our topic can evoke. If we wish to understand what devotion to God the Father means for religious spirituality today, we need at the out-set to recognize and confront the wide range of sad experiences of fatherhood that people have had and do have. If we do not handle these problems regarding human fatherhood, theologians may look into possible new names for God and talk about them engagingly, but the names will very likely fail to make that all- We need to recognize and confront the wide range of sad experiences of fatherhood that people have had and do have. January-February 2000 Billy * Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spiritlutlity important journey from the mind to the heart. Proposed names that seem "theologically accurate" and "politically correct" are not likely ever to fit the mystery which sustains us and the world we live in from one moment to the next. If the words we use for God in prayer are somehow false, then the images they call up and our prayers themselves are likely to go awry. Defining Our Terms What does devotion to the Father mean in religious-life spir-ituality today? We have looked at various tensions to which use of this name for God gives rise in different people. Now we will clarify some of the terms of the discussion. To begin with, I follow Thomas Aquinas's understanding of "devotion" as "a ready willingness to give oneself to the service of God"; it is an act of religion, one of the allied virtues of jus-tice, and manifests itself in people's deep desire to serve God in whatever way asked of them (see ST2a-2ae.82.1 and 2). I use the word Father not in the Roman sense of paterfamilias (that is, "the patriarchal head of a household"), but in the Aramaic sense of "Abba" (that is, "Pap'a") that Jesus used to express the loving, compassionate face of God. This term has deep roots in the Christian psyche and expresses what experts in male spirituality refer to as "the deep masculinity" of God.2 Jesus himself explains this v.ery well in the Gospel of Luke when he says, "Be compas-sionate as your Father is compassionate" (Lk 6:36). By religious I refer to the way of life recognized by the Catholic Church that seeks to follow Christ through life in community and by the pub-lic profession of the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.3 This way of life has deep roots in Christian history, belongs to the charismatic dimension of the church, and forms an integral part of its life and holiness. By spirituality, in many ways the most elu-sive of the terms I am dealing with, I mean "how individuals or groups understand and carry out the ultimate meaning of their life." It can be discussed on three levels--the experiential, the doctrinal, and the analytical--and embraces both theoretical and concrete, practical issues.4 To quote a circular letter of Joseph W. Tobin, the Redemptorist superior general, "spirituality is con-nected with basic and often unsettling questions: Who are we? Why are we? How are we to live?''s Having clarified 'my terms, I can now express the question Review for Religious posed by my topic in the following way: What are the practical consequences of lifestyle and identity for those of us in the church who seek to give ourselves in service to God, our merciful and compassionate Father, through life in community and the public profession of the evangelical counsels? This question yields no simple solution. It is very difficult and complex, one that holds no instant solution, but must be pondered and contemplated by each community of religious and by each individual religious over and over and over again. I offer some guidelines to help in this process. Naming the Mystery Before we begin to do that, however, we must note the lim-itations of human language and its inability to exhaust the mys-tery of the divine. Language conceals as much as it reveals, perhaps even more. As Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us in The Divine Names: "God is . . . known in all things and as distinct from all things. He is known through knowledge and through unknowing. Of him there is conception, reason, understanding, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name, and many other things. On the other hand he cannot be understood, words can-not contain him, and no name can lay hold of him.''6 The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§370) affirms this when it reminds us that we are created in God's image and not vice versa: "God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective 'perfections' of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband." In other words, the names we give God express something of who God is, but also fall infinitely short. Kataphatic (or "posi-tive") theology and apophatic (or "negative") theology go hand in hand. God is "Abba, Father," as Jesus teaches us, but also "our loving Mother," as the 14th-century anchoress Julian of Norwich reminds us in her Showings, and "inmost ground," as Meister Eckhart proposes in his German works.7 God can be referred to by these and a host of other religious appellations, some of which we can readily identify with, others not so readily. Perhaps it is only the "coincidence of opposites" which best expresses the mystery of God, who is known in the midst of our unknowing and who cannot be confined by our meager attempts to express the inexpressible. Janua~. -February 2000 Billy ¯ Devotion to God the Father in Religious Spirituality Theological language is fundamentally analogical in nature. That is to say, any word we use when speaking about or naming God expresses, at one and the same time, both a proportional likeness and difference. This holds true even for the word which the Word made flesh himself used to address God. Jesus calls God "Abba, Father," not to tie God down, define him, create an image of him in our heads, or (worse yet) exhaust his mystery, but to assure us that compassion and love rather than confusion and chaos lie at the heart of existence. This is precisely what the Spirit tells us when it cries out "Abba, Father" deep within our hearts and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words (see Rm 8:15-27). Something rings true in our hearts when we call God "Abba, Father." We know that God is very much more than this two-syllable word can convey, but somehow it seems all right. We sense that God hears us, understands us, and assures us that all shall be well. A Revealed Religion Why is this so? We already have a received a glimpse of the reason above when, referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§370), we noted that we are created in God's image, and not vice versa. Notice the passive voice. We are created. It is not we who do the creating. God is not a function of our language and systems of thought. We do not somehow "create" God by the names we give him or the theologies we concoct to express his divine mystery. If this were true, then theology itself would just be a sophisticated form of anthropomorphizing. In fact, God takes the initiative and reveals to us the nature of the divine. The ini-tiative is not for us to take; we are receivers. God uses human instruments, of course, which themselves are weak and fallible, but he takes the initiative. We must not forget that Christianity is a revealed religion. When it comes to naming God, it recognizes that human reason and human imagination can only go so far. On our own, all we can come up with is the recognition of the weakness of human lan-guage to express the inexpressible and the necessity of using many names so as to

Issue 29.5 of the Review for Religious, 1970. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gailen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to R~vxEw FOR l~mcxous; 6t2 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63to3. Questions for amwering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 32i Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania tgx06. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright ~) 1970 by REVIEW FOR R~LlCIOU. at 428 East Preston Street; Baltimore, MaC/- land 21202. Printed in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland and at addiuonal mailing offices. Single copies: $1.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $5.00 a year, $9.00 for two yeats; other countries: $5.50 a year, $10.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be ¯ accompanied by check or money order paya-ble tO RZVXEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions, where ex¢ora. partied by a remittance, should be sent to R£vI~w FOR RELIGIOUS; P. O. ~OX 671; Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Changes of address, busine~ correspondence, and orders not a¢¢ompanid by a remittance should be sent to REvll~W l~Ol~ RELIGIOUS ; 428 East Preston Street; Baltimort, Maryland 21202. Manuscripts, editorial cor-respondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIEW ~OR RF.LIOIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building ; 539 North Grand Boulevard: Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. SEPTEMBER 1970 VOLUME 29 NUMBER 5 ,!111; JOHN W. O'MALLEY, S.J. History, the Reformation, and Religious Renewal: Pluralistic Present and New Past Even the most cautious historian would probably be willing to subscribe to the sweeping generalization that Roman Catholicism has changed more radically in the past four years than it had in the previous four hundred. A sense of uprooting and upheaval is inevitable under such circumstances, and we should not be surprised that the resulting tension has been felt most acutely in religious communities. These communities presumably" are the places of keenest religious sensibilities and, at least until recently, the places where the traditions of the past were professedly cultivated. But the changes have often shattered these traditions and have inter-rupted the sense of continuity with the 'past. The conse-quent confusion has forced religious to turn, sometimes somewhat desperately, to any quarter which promises rescue. Somewhat paradoxically, religious even turn to history, in the hope that the long narrative of the Church's pilgrimage will throw light on the present crisis. Often the specific focus of their interest is that other era of history well known .for its religious tension and tt~rmoil, the age of the Reformation. This focus is at least in part due also to the !fact that the theology and spirituality of the Reformation era had been protracted in the Church to the very eve of Vatican II. In studying the sixteenth century many religious were to some extent ~tudying themselves. The present author, as a practicing historian of the Reformation, has frequently been asked by religious in 4- ¯ Fr. John W. O'Malley, S.J., is as-sociate professor in the department of history; University of Detroit; Detroit, Michigan 48221; . VOLUME 29, ~.970 ÷ ÷ ÷ 1. W. O'Malley, $.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 636 the past several years to answer the following question: Is not the present upheaval in the Church very similar to .the upheaval of the Reformation era? The following pages will attempt to answer that question and to use it as a focus to explore the unprecedented nature of the aggiornamento we are experiencing today. It is to be hoped that such an exploration will be helpful to reli-gious in trying to understand their present situation in history and in describing to them the drastic creativity which is required of them in the renewal of their own communities. "Is not the present upheaval in the Church very simi-lar ~o the upheaval of the Reformation era?" The ques-tion begs for an affarmative answer, and such an answer is indeed suggested by many obvious similarities between the sixteenth century and the twentieth century. Both centuries,, for example, experienced a challenge to papal authority; both centuries tried to revise the forms of religious life, saw large numbers of men and women leaving religious life, and so forth. However, in spite of the many similarities and in spite of the measure of consolation which an affirmative answer might bestow, the fundamental reply to the question has to be a re-sounding negative. The present upheaval is radically different from the upheaval of the sixteenth century. It is important for us to see just how it is radically different, for only then can we cope with the practical repercus-sions which such a difference has on our own lives. In order to explore this topic we must first expose two assumptions which are the basis of the discussion which is to follow. These assumptions are simple and familiar to us all, but they bear repetition because they are so fundamental. First of all, behind every action there is an idea. Ideas are power. They are dynamic in character and even the most abstract of them tends eventually to issue in action and to influence conduct. Therefore, to study an idea is to study the energetics of social change. Secondly, behind every idea there is a culture, a fabric of thought and feeling of which any given idea is a partial expression and reflection. The idea may even have been created by the culture in question, for ideas are not eternal. They are born at some particular time and in some particular place. Or if the idea was merely inherited fxom an older culture, it is modified and changed by the new culture as the new culture accepts it as its own. In the study of the history of ideas, sensitivity to the total cultural context is an absolute prerequisite for discerning an idea's birth, de-velopment, and even total transformation, in the course of its history. The idea towards which we shall direct our attention is the idea of Christian reform :or renewal. As an idea it has its own history, which is a reflection and expression of the various cultures where it was and is a vital force. This history until recently was not much investigated by historians, but it is now receiving more adequate atten-tion. We shall try to trace this history very briefly, with special emphasis on the Reformation era, in the con-viction that such an endeavor will be enlightening and helpful for us in our present crisis. In particular, we shall contrast the cultural framework which undergirded the idea of reform in the age ,of the Reformation with that which undergirds aggiornamento today. Recent studies on the origin and early development of the idea of reform in Scripture and the fathers of the Church have shown that in those early'centuTies reform meant the transformation of the individual Christian into God's image and likeness. It had not as yet occurred to Christians in any very c6herent fashion that the Church as an institution--or rather that institutions in the Church--might be subject to reform and revision. The idea of institutional reform surfaced for the first time during the so-called Gregorian Reform or Investi-ture Controversy of the eleventh century. During this period the functions and allegiances of the episcopacy were at the center of the bitter contest between pope and emperor, and it was the papacy which wanted to change the status quo by returning to what it felt was an older and sounder tradition before bishops had become sub-servient instruments of royal and imperial policy. With the Gregorian Reform the idea was inserted into the Western ecclesiastical tradition that the Church it-self was subject to reform. The impact of this idea upon later history is incalculable. From the eleventh century forward the idea would never again be absent from the story of the Church; and at some times, as in the early sixteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries, it would come to dominate and profoundly disturb that story. By the early years of the sixteentll century we can honestly say that a reform hysteria had set in. Reform had become the common preoccupation, almost obsession, of the age. What is to be said about [ireform in the sixteenth century? Perhaps the first thihg which strikes our at-tention is the almost limitles~ variety of reform ideas and reform programs. We see stretched before us a chaotic panorama in which it is hard to find order, progression, or consistency. The figure of Luther, of course, dominates the scene, and he to some degree influenced, at least by way of reaction, all reforms in the century: But we are really hard pressed to find a very obvious intellectual affinity between him and a refbrmer like Michael Servetus, who denied the Trinity and ÷ ÷ VOLUME: 29,' 1970 6:~7 I. w. O,M,a~y, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 638 who taught that the corruption of Christ's doctrine, which began with the Apostles and which was furthered by the fathers and scholastics, was brought to inglorious constimmation by contemporary ~eformers like Luther. And what direct relationship was there between an Anabaptist quietist like Conrad Grebel and an Ana-baptist visionary like John of Leyden, who made polyg-amy obligatory at Mfinster and maintained himself there in voluptuous, polygamous opulence? Even within Catholicism a great gap separates Gasparo Contarini, the conciliatory Venetian nobleman and friend of St. Ignatius, from the fierce and rigid Gian Pietro Carafa, at .whose election to the papal throne even Ignatius blanched. The more we learn about the sixteenth cen-tury the more clearly we see how complex and variegated it was. Generalization seems impossible. And the at-tempt to compare it with the twentieth century seems even more impossible, for we are all keenly aware of the variety and even contradiction which characterizes contemporary ideas of reform and aggiornamento. We have set ourselves an impossible task. ¯ On the other hand, if what we said earlier about cul-tural patterns is true, all of these reform phenomena should be able to be studied as manifestations of a common culture. There should be somewhere, if we dig deeply enough, elements manifestative of a common intellectual and emotional experience. These elements, though distinguishable from one another, also com-penetrate one another, so that in speaking of one of them we to some extent are also speaking of the others, since all are facets of the same cultural reality. We are justified, therefore, in our undertaking, especially if we keep clearly in mind how precarious it is and how subject to exception is almost every generalization. In our comparison of the sixteenth with the twentieth century we shall concentrate on two elements or phe-nomena which are particularly significant for out topic and particularly revelatory of the character of the two cultures. The first of these phenomena we shall designate as the cultural parochialism of the sixteenth century and the cultural pluralism of the twentieth. The cul-ture of the sixteenth century was a parochial culture. The great controversies of that century were carried on within what we now see to be the narrow confines of the Western intellectual tradition. One reason why the sixteenth century was an exciting century in which to live was that it initiated through its voyages of dis-covery the new age of world consciodsness which we experience today. But only the faintest glimmers of. this world consciousness had penetrated to Europe by 1517. It is true. that in the Italian Renaissance, which to some extent was contemporaneous with the Reforma-tion, there was a greater awareness of cultural diversity. Moreover, there was an attempt to come to terms with it. Both Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino speak of the splendor which comes to religion from the diversity of rite and ritual which God permits throughout the world. But such tolerance and breadth of vision was not characteristic of the European intellectual scene as a whole. Indeed, even where these virtues were. operative they eventually tended to be snuffed out by the harsh polemics of the religious controversies. The very dictum "Scripture alone," which we associate with the Protes-tant reformers, is symptomatic of what was happen-ing. No matter what is to be said of this dictum as an expression of theological principle, from the cultural point of view it suggests narrowness and constriction of vision. The Catholic formula, "Scripture and tradi-tion," is broader and suggests an urbane and mature consciousness of complexity, but it, too, implies more restriction than the ideas of Cusa and Ficino. The re-formers--- Protestant and Catholic--railed against what they felt were the paganizing tendencies' of the Renais-sance, and we often echo their judgments even today. But much of this so-called paganizing can be more be-nignly and more accurately .interpreted as a serious at-tempt to broaden the cultural base of Christianity. The cultural parochialism of which we have been speaking was made possible and even fostered by the slow and inadequate means of communication which the sixteenth century had at its disposal. More im-portant, these slow and inadequate means made it possible for sects to develop and for governments to impose a particular and rigid religious style on whole populations. In other words, it was still possible to ex-clude those factors which would tend to develop re-ligious and cultural pluralism or to operate for a more broadly based unity. German Lutheranism, Dutch Calvinism, Spanish Catholicism could continue to perdure as distinct and seemingly relentless cultural .phenomena only because they were protected from fac-ing the challenge of cultural and religious diversity. We today have no such protection, and we cannot construct barriers to keep out what we find offensive and disturbing. In the modern world pluralism is the very air we breathe, and it is one of the most signifi-cant factors influencing us and marking us off from all men who have ever preceded us on this globe. Modern means of communication have introduced the otherwise-minded into our very homes, and we have no instrument to muffle them. We must come to terms with diversity. ÷ :÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 639 4. I. w. o'Mo~, s.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 640 Our: Christianity, therefore, and our style of renewal must come to terms with it. Ecumenism, for instance, is not simply an accidental adoi:nment to our religious and intellectual style. It is not simply a good idea that we concocted and then tried to thrust down the throat of an unwilling Church. We perhaps cannot describe it as inevitable, but we cer-tainly can describe it as symptomatic of the culture in which we live and urgently required by it if we genuinely believe in truth and honesty. Our experience of pluralism has forced us all to admit the possibility of different, complementary, con-trasting, and at times almost contradictory insights into the same data. It has forced us to realize that each of these, insights may have some validity and that no set of categories can capture any reality in all its splendor and multiplicity. This realization, has not made us gkeptics, but it has made us cautious in our judgments and aware of how relative our insights might be. Our experience of pluralism has thrust upon us a new epistemology. In the sixtbenth century the assumption which under-lay religious discussion was that truth was one and that orthodoxy was clear--clear either from Scripture or from the teaching of the Church. Cultural parochialism fostered this assumption. It allowed beliefs to perdure untested by confrontation with different beliefs. The epistemology of the sixteenth century, parochial and rigid with the academic rigidity of the scholastic de-bates, made little allowance for the possibility of plural-ism of insight. It insisted upon the exclusive validity of a single insight, with a consequent insistence upon the exclusive validity of particular categories and concepts. Truth in such a system is not multifaceted and ever some-what beyond our grasp, but monolithic and subject to our despotic contro!. It is de jure intolerant. Its particular formulations are so many weapons for use in battle ¯ against other equally parochial formulations. Polemic, therefore, is its appropriate literary style. The theology of the sixteenth century is quite cor-rectly described as polemical and controversialist theol-ogy. We perhaps fail to realize how appropriate such a style of theology was to the cultural experience and epistemological presuppositions of that century. To an intolerant truth corresponds an intolerant literary form. No other form would be honest. The only possible explanation for a person's refusal to accept the true and orthodox insight must be moral perversity. Hence, orthodoxy and virtue, heterodoxy and vice were the two sets of inseparable twins. Significantly enough, the characteristic literary form of the Italian Renaissance was the dialogue, the form which implies an awareness of diversity and a willing-ness to live with it. It was an awareness too delicate to be able to contain the religous resentments which ex-ploded in 1517. But it is not too delicate today. Dialogue is the literary form required by our epistemology, which has been conditioned by our experience of cultural pluralism. Dialogue and rapprochement are not arbi-trary creations of the ecumenist. They are necessary corollaries to being intellectually honest in the latter half of the twentieth century. Our style of renewal, therefore, cannot be apodictic, autocratic, intolerant, or suffused with old-time single-minded zeal. Our culture--that is to say, WE, as prod-ucts and creators of that culture--require something else. Our style is radically different. It is groping and tentative. It is experimental and participati~ve. It is even somewhat double-minded, for it realizes that even re-ligious reform must keep an eye on secular realities precisely as potential for religious values. The second phenomenon manifestative of the cul-tural divergence of the sixteenth century from the twentieth century is perhaps more important: the sense of history operative in the two centuries. Here, es-pecially, we must beware of giving the impression that each individual in the sixteenth or twentieth century thinks about his past in precisely the same way. In the sixteenth century, in fact, historical thought ranged from the subtle understandings of persons like Fran-cesco Guicciardini and Desiderius Erasmus to the crudest forms of apocalyptic. However, we can say that, by and large, sixteenth-century thinkers discerned some consistent and coherent pattern in the historical process, and they saw this process as directly under the divine influence. They usually arrived at their formulations of such a pattern by a very arbitrary fusion of historical fact with metahistorical speculation which they drew from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The result was often a hodge-podge of myth, metaphysics, and unsub-stantiated historical data. From this was constructed a pattern of expansion or decline or cycle or cataclysm or culmination which was presented to the reader as God's design. Thus the author was able to rise above history's mystery and to protect himself from history's terror. There was one very important consequence of this approach to history: it tended in some fashion to absolutize the past. The religious thinkers of the six-teenth century all tended to see past events, especially religious events, as issuing from God's hand and as under His direct influence. They were not particularly Renewa/ VOLUME 29, 1970 641 ~. W. O'Mall~, S.~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 642 concerned with the singular, contingent, concrete hu-man causes which produced particular phenomena. They were concerned rather to see them as products of di-vine providence, as r~eflections of the divinity, as neces-sary elements in a predetermined pattern. They thus tended to endow them with an absolute value which defied reconciliation with the contingent historical cir-cumstances under which they had come into being. The contrast of this style of historical thinking with our own is dramatic. We all have acquired to a greater or lesser degree some measure of historical conscious-ness ~s defined in terms of modern historical method and hermeneutics. What this means is that we approach the past as a human phenomenon which is to be under-stood in terms of human thought and feeling. Each person, event, doctrine, and document of the past is the product of contingent causes and subject to modification by the culture in which it exists. Everything in the human past is culturally conditioned, which is just another way of saying that it is culturally limited. Such awareness of cultural conditioning distinguishes modern historical consciousness from that which pre-ceded it, and it is an awareness which has been growing ever more acute since the nineteenth century. The text of Luke's Gospel could have been produced only by first-century Judaic-Hellenistic Christianity. Fifteenth-century humanism would have created a completely different text, different in concept as well as in language. Awareness of such cultural differentiation helps make Scripture scholars today much more keenly conscious of how Scripture is the word of man than they are of how it is the word of God. Until quite recently the very opposite was the case. What modern historical consciousness enables us to understand more clearly than it was eve~ understood before, therefore, is that every person, event, doctrine, and document of the past is the product of very specific and unrepeatable contingencies. By refusing to consider them as products of providence or as inevitable links in an ineluctable chain, it deprives them of all absolute character. It demythologizes them. It "de-providential-izes" them. It relativizes them. The importance of such relativization is clear when we consider the alternative. If a reality of the past is not culturally relative, it is culturally absolute. It is sacred and humanly unconditioned. There is no possibility of a critical review of it which would release the present from its authoritative grasp. For one reason or another an individual might.reject a particular institution or set of values as not representing the authentic tradition of the past. But. there is no way to reject the past as such. There is no way to get rid of history. The two styles of historical thinking which we have just been describing radically condition the idea of re-form. If we were to describe in a word the funda-mental assumption which underlay the idea of reform in the sixteenth century, it would be that reform was to be effected by a return to the more authentic religion of a bygone era. Somewhere in the past there was a Golden Age untarnished by the smutty hand of man, an age when doctrine was pure, morals were upright, and institutions were holy. It was this doctrine, these morals, and these institutions which reform was to restore or continue. According to this style of thinking Christ somehow or other became the sanctifier and sanctioner of some existing or pre-existing order, and that order was thus imbued with transcendent and inviolable validity. For centuries many Christians thought that such an order was the Roman Empire, and that is why the myth of the Empire's providential mission and its duration to the end of the world perdured many centuries after the Empire ceased to be an effective reality. According to this style of thinking all the presumptions favor obedi-ence and conformity. Protest and dissent can only rarely, if ever, be justified. There is no way to see Christ as contradicting the present and rejecting the past. Such a style of thinking is foreign to our own. Even though as Christians we attribute a transcendent mean-ing to the person of Jesus and therefore attribute a special primacy to those documents which resulted from the most immediate contact with him, we cannot see the first Christian generation as a Golden Age. Scoiologi-cally speaking, it was the charismatic generation. His-torically speaking, it was a generation like all others-- human, contingent, imperfect, relative. The formula-tions of Christian doctrine in the great early councils must be subjected to the same radical criticism. We do not easily find in them a harvest of eternal and immu-table truth. Intellectually, therefore, we repudiate the sixteenth-century's historical style. Emotionally, however, we find a certain satisfaction in it of which it is difficult to divest ourselves. What satisfies us in this style is its fufidamental premise that somewhere in the past there is an answer to our questions and a solution to our prob-lems. If we could only get back to the ':true mind" of somebody or other, how easy it then would be to im-plement our reform. How easy it then would be to save ourselves from the risk of having to answer our own VOL:UME" 29, 1970 643 ~. W. O'Mallt'y, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ¯ 6,t4 questions and solve our own problems. This is the emotional consolation which such a style of historical thinking provides. We neatly fit ourselves, for instance, into a preconceived pattern of homogeneous develop-ment, and then we dip into the Golden Past to discover how to behave as the pattern unfolds itself. We are secure. We have been saved from history's terror. No such salvation, however, is open to us of the twentieth century. Modern historical consciousness has relativized and demythologized the past, thus liberat-ing us from it. But we are liberated only to find our-selves on our own. The past has no answers for us, and we face the future without a ready-made master-plan. It is this fact which makes our style of renewal radically different from every reform which has ever preceded it. We are painfully conscious that if we are to have a master-plan we must create it ourselves. In spite of certain superficial similarities, therefore, the problems of the sixteenth-century Reformation are not those of twentieth-century aggiornamento. Underly-ing these two reforms are two radically different cul-. tural experiences, which have radically transformed the idea of reform. Our twentieth-century idea of reform has been conditioned by our experience of religious and intellectual pluralism, and this has transformed it from pronouncement to conversation. Our idea of reform has also been conditioned by our modern historical consciousness, and this has divested us of the consola-tion of a past which answers our questions and tells us what to do. The implications of the foregoing reflections for re-newal within religious communities should be obvious. First of all, our problems will not be solved from on high by some sort of autocratic decree. Before any reasonable decision is reached on any major question a certain amount of open discussion and communal dis-cernment is an absolute prerequisite. The exercise of "obedience" is thus so drastically changed that we can well wonder if the word, with all its connotations, is really an adequate expression of what we now mean. In any case, participation and tolerance of diversity of viewpoint are now such pervasive realities of the cul-ture in which we live that there will be no viable + solutions to any problems without taking them into ac- + ¯ count. ÷ Secondly, although we do want to get back to the "true mind" of our founders, we must realize that we are in a very different cultural context than the founders were. We have to be bold in interpreting their "mind," and we must realize that even they do not answer our questions in our terms. Keligious renewal today, for the first time in the history o[ the Church, is more con-scious o~ its break with the authentic past than it is of its continuity with it. This may not be a very consoling realization, but it is one which we must constantly be aware o~ as we try to face the ~uture. Indeed, we face a new future because to a large extent we have created ~or ourselves a new past. j. DOUGLAS McCONNELL Good Stewardship Is Management and Planning J. Douglas Mc- Connell is a mem-ber of the Stanford Research Imfitute; Menlo Park, Cali-fornia 94025. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Thank God for the courage and wisdom of the fathers of the Second Vatican Councill Their decree, Perfectae caritatis, charging all institutions and orders to under-take renewal, may have provided a means that will en-able the talents of both men and women religious to be developed more fully and utilized more effectively in serving the People of God. It may also be the means by which some (not all) orders will survive in the years ahead. There is no need here to discuss the declining numbers of[ novices, the increasing numbers not taking final vows or opting for exclaustration, the growing costs of retirement, and the trend in age distributions. These are symptoms, not causes, and their disappearance rests entirely on how the orders adapt themselves to this, the latter third of the twentieth century. Historically, the least practiced parable within the Catholic Church has to have been the parable of the talents, and this is particularly true insofar as orders of religious women have been concerned. They have truly been hand-maidens of the Church; they have occupied subservient roles and have been encouraged to remain in secondary roles--interpreting kindly the motives and action of others, shunning criticism, and avoiding evaluation of another's fitness for her work or position--yet they possess tremendous capabilities. For the better part of a decade Stanford Research In-stitute (SRI) has undertaken research projects in the area of corporate planning, and for many more years in the field of management. In that time, working with members of the Fortune 500 and numbers of relatively small businesses, SRI has developed a philosophy or a set of principles that underlies the physical tasks in the planning process and exercise of management functions. In the last three years we have been privileged to work with the following orders in assessing their present and future status: Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana; the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Joseph, Cincinati; and the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent, New York. The 'philosophy of corporate planning has proved to be as effective for religious orders as for corporations. We do not have "the answer," and we are the first to admit that our approach evolves a little with every study and improves; but we do have a system that is logical, comprehensive, participative, timely, and oriented toward results. The system SRI follows is outlined here because we believe it offers sound means of planning for. the future, of implementing change without chaos, and of exercising true collegiality and subsidiarity. A number of sisters have even called it "the key to survival." What Is Planning? All of us plan to some extent whenever we think ahead to select a course of action. But this is a weak way of defining planning. SRI prefers to define effective planning as a network of decisions that direct the intent, guide the preparation for change, and program action designed to produce specific results. Note that the emphasis is on goal-directed action. Ob-jectives can be determined and achieved if properly planned for. The network of decisions recognizes the in-terrelationships between internal and external factors and that earlier decisions may greatly influence later ones. On more than one occasion I have heard of a diocese "giving" a high school to an order. The deci-sion to accept, in at least two instances, has meant a considerable drain on the human and financial re-sources of the orders concerned and effectively com-mitted them to that apostolate for many years, irrespec-tive of the priorities of the sisters in the congregations. Throughout our private and corporate lives we make decisions under conditions of uncertainty; and we trust, with varying degrees of probability, that the outcomes will be as anticipated. The formal process of planning described briefly here does not guarantee success, how-ever that may be defined, but it considerably enhances the probability. SRI does not talk about short and long range planning as separate functions. Planning is the function that ex-tends into the future as far as is considered desirable. If a college operated by an order requires 50 percent of its faculty to be religious (so it can provide Christian wit- 4. 4- + Stewardship VOLUME 2% 1970 647 ]. D~ .McConnell REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS '648 ness and remain economically viable), the retirement pattern for the next six or seven years determines what type of graduate fellowships should be offered for both the coming academic year and the several that. follow. The awarding of fellowships in its turn requires that other decisions be made.This year's budget and deci-sions should be determined on the basis of their con-tribution to the long range objectives of the institution or order, and not be de facto determiners of the direc-tion the organization takes. The Genius Founder Our research studies and project work concerned with the nature of organizations, corporate development, and successful management have indicated that, in almost every case, successful organizations of all kinds have been the brainchild of a single person or, in rare instances, of two in partnership. Names such as Vincent de Paul, St. Ignatius Loyola, Elizabeth Seton, Catherine McAuley, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, Baden Powell, General Booth, Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan-Charles Kettering, Gen-eral Wood, Hewlett-Packard, the Pilkinton Brothers, Andrew Carnegie, and H. J. Heinz come readily to mind. By analyzing the attributes and state of mind of the "genius founder" of the business enterprise, SRI devel-oped a framework of tasks designed to re-create the mental processes of the genius entrepreneur within the management team of the corporation. Let me explain further. As we see it, the success of the "genius founder" is in large measure caused by his un-swerving dedication to setting high goals and .to reach-ing for them. He has vision on which he bases his own objectives and sets his own goals. And he does this not simply on the basis of last year's results plus some growth factor or what has always been done, but on the basis of his own perception of his own capabilities and the drive to satisfy his own needs. These attributes of vision and ~ommitment in goal setting are most impor-tant. Other distinguishing attributes of our "genius founders" appear to us to be: oA willingness to assume risk oA sense of inquisitiveness or unceasing curiosity ~Insight into relationships between concepts, objec-tives, needs, and needs satisfaction; the ability to see implications or utility ~Ability to make sound value judgments as to what is central and peripheral to attaining his objectives ~Creativity, be it in the area of product, technology, or a new marketing approach oFeasibility judgment based on foresight, experience, and a problem-solving ability oAbility to marshall the resources needed to accom-plish his objectives and goals oAdministrative ability to organize the resources to accomplish his goals and satisfy his inner needs. Organized Entrepreneurship To translate the "genius founder" or "genius entre-preneur" concept to the complex organization, SRI de-veloped a methodological framework that we call "or-ganized entrepreneurship." This framework provides a process of planning that meets the criteria of compre-hensiveness, logic (including provision for retraceable logic), participation by the corporate membership, time-liness, generation of rapid understanding based on a common frame of reference, and an orientation toward results, that is, the decisions reached can be acted on and managed. Through a series of tasks it also repro-duces corporately the distinguishing attributes of the entrepreneur. Let us now briefly go through the planning steps with their various tasks to show you how they fit together in a logical pattern. Step 1: Determination of Corporate Objectives Many institutes and orders have approached the question of who they are and what they want to achieve in overly simplistic terms. Too often purpose is expressed only in broad conceptual statements such as "the glorification of the Lord," "mercy," and "charity" and in terms such as "care for the homeless, the sick, and the aged," and "Christian education." Motherhood statements of a broad nature serve a unifying purpose but tend to let the members of a congregation under-take any work whether it really fits the primary purposes of the order or not. What a congregation is and what it is about are com-plex issues, and definitional statements formulated must take into account the expectations of the several stake-holder groups, the corporate skills and resources, and environmental change. One implication of this is that objectives have to be reviewed periodically. The end result is a family of objectives or, as people like Grangerx and Boyd and Levy2 have termed it, a hierarchy of objectives. a Charles H. Granger, "The Hierarchy of Objectives," Harvard Business Review, May-June 1964, pp. 63-74. ~ Harper W. Boyd and Sidney J. Levy, "What Kind o£ Corporate Objectives?" Journal o] Marketing, October 1966, pp. 53-8. Stewaraship VOLUME 29, 1970 64:9 ÷ ÷ ÷ ]. D. McConnell REVIEW FOR'RELIGIOUS 650 When defining the broad purpose of an organization, one has to recognize the sometimes conflicting interests of the stakeholders, that is, the members, the diocese(s),. the suppliers, and the customers (parishes, students, pa-tients, and the like) and yet resolve the conflict. Be-neath this broad umbrella a hierarchy of objectives is formulated for each stakeholder group, apostolate area, and the generalate of the congregation. As one goes through the hierarchy, the objectives become more specific in their direction, their distance, and the rate at which they can be achieved. The specification of objec-tives also facilitates the development of key criteria for evaluating performance and, sociologically, it recognizes the reality of the situation. The refusal of many clergy to accept Pope Paul's ruling on birth control was really a move to realign those matters considered to be within the realm of individual conscience, those .considered to be within the realm of the clergy, and those considered to obe essential to the faith and therefore within the realm of the Holy See. The present thrust to clean up the environment is an expression of the expectations of the-community stakeholders whose objectives have not been accorded rightful emphasis in the past by a society that has acceded too often to the claims of industry. To develop this hierarchy of objectives it is necessary to undertake a series of analyses. Stakeholder .4 nalysis The typical stakeholders in a congregation of religious are the members, .the diocese(s), functional or apostolate groups, customers, suppliers, financial institutions, and the community within which it operates. For each stakeholder group the governing board at-tempts to answer the following broad questions: oWhat does this group want from the congregation? oWhat expectations does this group have for the con-gregation? ~To what extent are these expectations being met? ~To what extent can the congregation meet them, recognizing .that it is impossible to do everything? Expectations will relate to such items as number and quality of services provided, fees charged, availability, citizqnship, jobs provided, behavior, ethics, and morality. The analyses should take into account the present balance and reconciliation of stakeholder interests, rec-ognizing conflicting interest and expectations as well as attempting to assess what is changing that will affect future expectations. A realistic stakeholder analysis within most dioceses would reveal the extent to which the expectations of local parish priests are being met at the expense of sacrificing the interests of the other stakeholders--the students, the parents, and lthe teachers (lay and religious) staffing the schools. An~ interesting commercial example is the Unilever Company in Africa, which made realistxc stakeholder analyses and surwved the nationalistic fervor of transition fromI colonies to countries by becoming a manufacturer rather than a trader, an economic developer of local resources rather than an extractor, and a partner rather tha~n an oppo-nent. Today, Unilever has a stronger position than ever in African markets. Special studies are almost mandatory because the senior corporate managementI group can hardly be expected to know the basic underlying factors determlmng expectations and perceptions of the stake-holder groups. The provisional stakeholder analysis for ~any commu-nity would include such factors as the percentage of families directly employed by the ~nstxtut,e; the con-gregation's contribution to and percentage of local taxes, if any; the number of members in religiohs teaching, social, civic, and political jobs (full and pa~t time); the annual contributions by the congregation Ito area or-ganizations; sponsorship of local groups; pol~itical action (lobbying, testifying regardxng leg~slatxon) at all levels; and local community attitudes toward the institutions of the congregation. In overseas operations it should also include studies of such factors as ~he political climate, stability of government, acceptan~ce, cultural variables, and attitudes toward overseas-based congrega-tions. Customer analysis will vary by type of apostolate. An orphanage would have different criteria froth those of a college or a retreat center, for example. Nevertheless, all analyses should include estimates for each class of serv-ice, the total potential "customers," the actual numbers served, the "market" share by value and volume, and an evaluation of quality of service as perceivec.lI by custom-ers. As is readily apparent, data on stakeholtler expecta-tions have to be gathered from a wide variety of sources: internally within the congregation, from independent appraisers, and from those actually served. Determining Corporate Potential The final component of this first task of ~tetermining corporate objectives is the establishment of a level of ~ . aspiration in the form of the corporate potentxal. Henry Ford estimated his potential as prowd~ng e~,ery Ameri-can family with an automobile. William Hesketh Lever wanted to make cleanliness commonplace in an era when Queen Victoria took a bath "once a week, whether she ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 651 4. 4. 4. ~. D. McConnell REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS needed it or not." Our genius entrepreneurs have al-ways reached high, and this has been true of religious like Saint Vincent de Paul or Martin Luther King. The SRI approach is to treat potential as an expres-sion of the governing board's attitude to the congrega-tion's future. Potential can be expressed both in Ford's and Lever's conceptual terminology and also in more pragmatic terms such as the amount of patient care pro-vided, number of students educated, social work case loads, financial soundness, professional hours contrib-uted, and average Sunday morning attendance at Mass. Corporate potential is based on all key-planning issues derived from studying the social and economic outlook, the apostolate areas in which the company is interested, the opportunities for more effective resource utilization, the likely effects of important stakeholder expectations, and a congregation's own conclusions about its level of ambition and strength of commitment. As we see it, the determination of potential stimu-late~, motivates, and enables speculation about its attain-ability. Projected results are not predictions in the com-monly accepted sense but are simply estimates of what could happen when the assumptions made turn out to be valid. The concept aims at stimulating the setting of ambitious congregational and apostolic goals. The result of this phase of the planning process is the setting of a hierarchy of corporate objectives, including a set of ambitious yet realistic human resources and financial objectives. For an order of women religious today to expect to maintain a membership of 1,500 highly qualified professionals by recruiting 50 to 60 novices a year is totally unrealistic. Sound corporate ob-jectiv. es, together with a clear concept of what religious life is all about, should enable a congregation, however, to arrest and then reverse the currently familiar down-ward trend. Step 2: The Assembling o[ In[ormation The assembling of information consists of four main tasks: An in-depth evaluation of what is being done now, an analysis of the skills and resources of the con-gregation, an evaluation of environmental change, and an appraisal of planning issues. The goals and objectives of the congregation and its apostolate areas are explicated to obtain sets of criteria for the evaluations that have to .be undertaken. Once the criteria are established, it is relatively simple (1) to de-ten- nine what information is needed and the data sources necessary for an objective in-depth analysis and evaluation, (2) to develop instruments to collect data not already in existence, and (3) to put all these to-gether. Analysis of the skills and resources of the organization requires three studies: one of government, one of human resources, and one of financial resources. SKI suggests the development of a computerized personnel inventory. This enables detailed analysis and projections to be un-dertaken, as well as aiding in matching skills and in-terests to apostolic needs. Studies of environmental change can and should be obtained from a number of sources. They may be as broad as Kahn and Wiener's ,Economics to the Year 2018/' .~ or as specialized as a local city planning com-mission's forecasts of school population. Most congrega-tions are largely unaware of the amount of information on environmental change that is available just for the asking. In planning the future staffing for elementary schools in a diocese, one order learned that a school would disappear completely within fi~e years because the city planned a freeway through the area, which would mean the razing of almost all homes in the parish. The trends in the age distxibution of an area may indicate the development of different needs in future health care (less obstetric and more geriatric and cardiac care, for instance) and types of social services offered. Undertaking environmental analysis is one thing; ensuring its acceptance and use by management is an-other. One large sophisticated American company un-dertook a test market study in Japan to see if a market existed for a type of convenience snack food. The cor-porate management were ethnocentric about this prod-uct to the point that they refused to believe unfavora-ble test market results the first and second times around and insisted the study be replicated a third time. Busi-ness has no monopoly on this form of myopia, and much of the Church's attitudes toward parochial education appears analogous. The final task in the assembling of information, the appraisal of planning issues, is undertaken by the planning group. Following house or apostolate briefings, planning issues are solicited from those judged to have "management perspective"; to contact all members of the congregation has been our rule to date. Each mem-ber submits as many issues as he desires on a standard-ized form. In the first planning cycle the issues tend to be highly oriented to the present, but experience shows that in subsequent cycles the time horizon expands con-siderably. Typically, the submitted issues identify the 8 Herman Kahn and Arthur J. Wiener, Economics to the Fear 2018 (New York: Macmillan. 1967). 4- 4- St~ardship VOLUME 29, 1970 1. D. Mc~onne// REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 654 ~functionM point of impact on the institution or con-gregation, the nature of the impact, whatever supporting evidence exists, and suggested ranges of possible action. Issues are then grouped into families of issues that have common causes, that yield to a common solution, or that can be assigned to a single responsible person. You may ask: "Why solicit planning issues from mem-bers as a major basic input to the planning process?" The underlying assumptions are that people will do only what they see is of interest and importance to them and that each individual's perception is his reality. Members of a congregation cannot be expected to devote time and energy to matters they do not consider relevant to them as religious. The system also provides government with an excel-lent upwards channel of communication and, by per-mitting every member to participate and contribute ac-tively, enhances the probabilities of acceptance of the plan and a commitment to achieve it. This participative philosophy is touched on again later in this article. Step 3: Development of Planning Actions The major superior and the members of the governing board then read through each family of planning issues, screening out those where action has already been taken or is imminent, or where incorrect perception is in-volved. In these cases executive action is indicated. Each family of issues is then reviewed in the light of the corporate objectives, special studies' highlights, the analysis of resources, and the "real" message indicated by the issues. The members of the governing group then take each family of issues and identify the kind of action it suggests, what is at stake in terms of costs and benefits, the costs (both out of pocket and opportunity) of taking action, the degree of urgency, the first and second order implications of the kind of action sug-gested, and the management personnel who should at-tend to it. These individual efforts in translating issues to responses are then reviewed by the whole of the ex-ecutive group whose discussions strive to combine re-lated actions into broader, more fundamental actions and to identify important actions still missing. Use of a task force to assist in this process may be helpful. Suggested actions emerging from this review should then be tested by whatever means deemed appropriate. Feasible actions are then grouped by three or more levels of priority. Step 4: Preparation of the Provisional Plan In this s~ep of the planning process the proposals for action are translated into specific action assignments that, when completed in detail, provide the goals, action, and controls portion of the provisional plan. This provi-sional plan corresponds with the marshaling ability of our "genius entrepreneur." We suggest the use of a specific form that, when ap-proved by the assignment group and accepted by the action assignee, represents an authorization to proceed and a cohtract to perform the specified action in the terms stated. One important set of Form 3s, as we call them, relate to the continuance of present operations and thus ensure that all aspects of the congregation's activities form part of the plan. Before final approval the Form 3s flows through the finance and planning offices, where calculations of total costs and benefits are made for each priority level and are compared with total resources available. This pro-vides the governing board with a means to decide how many and which tasks can be undertaken within the planning period. The actions, tasks, or projects selected are then built into estimates of benefits and costs to see the effects on congregational performance and where the plan will posit the congregation with respect to its current per-formance, intermediate goals, and movement toward at-tainment of the longer range objectives. At this point the planning group updates the special studies' highlights; assembles the draft statements on corporate objectives and key assumptions; and produces summaries of the action programs in terms of timing, pro forma financial statements (operating statement, balance sheet, cash flow), and resource requirements (manpower, equipment, facilities, and capital)--broken down by organizational units, priorities, and whether they are current or developmental operations. The natural advocate of each action proposed then describes it and leads discussion within the governing board to double-check the plan in terms of the realism of goals, schedules, and cost/benefit estimates, of agreed-on performance standards (that is, the rules of the game), of interdependence among organizational units, of effects of unrealistic goals on the rest of the congregation, and of whether each action proposed is justified in terms of the congregation's objectives. This may sound like a detailed process that takes a lot of central government's time, and it does. But it ensures that: oThe government group understands all aspects of the proposed plan. oWithin the context of the emerging corporate pur-pose and strategy there is a review of program con-÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 655 ÷ ÷ ÷ ]. D. M~mme~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 656 tent, a rank ordering of programs, and anallocation of resources in accordance with priorities. oAn appraisal of various program combinations oc-curs, highlighting the relative emphasis on continu-ing present activities and developing new ones, the magnitude of effort required to reach each poten-tial, and the timing and sequence of interrelated programs. oAfter final decisions and allocations are made, the provisional plan is put in final form and presented by the major superior to the board for approval, and then approved programs are channeled to ac-tion assignees. The first year o£ the plan is the congregation's budget. The congregation is now at the point of managing by plan, which parallels the "genius entrepreneur" charac-teristic of administrative ability. It has succeeded in rep-licating the characteristics of the "genius entrepreneur" in a corporate framework. In subsequent periods the congregation recycles through the planning process, and the family of plans is updated and reissued. The first year of the plan as up-dated becomes the operating budget and the final year of the plan is extended. Here perhaps a word of warning is in order. Remember that lead time is an absolute necessity. It takes three to five years before major moves have a real impact on a corporation, and SRI believes that the same will hold true for congregations of religious. Maior in-depth evaluations are probably required only about every five years. In the interim period the special studies, updating of stakeholder analyses, and solicitation of planning issues from members are all that is likely to be required. Conclusion Our experience has been that the organized entre-preneurship model works. In the five years (this is the sixth) that SRI has been conducting executive seminars in business planning, more than 600 executives from over 300 companies representing every continent of the globe have participated. Many corporations, such as Coca-Cola, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Lockheed, Merck, and Cyanamid, have been using one or more variations of the model with considerable success. The model de-scribed here is the adaptation that has been developed for congregations of religious despite the difficulties of measuring benefits and some kinds of costs when non-financial criteria are applicable. It is too early to say to what degree the orders SRI has assisted with planning have benefited, but there is every reason to believe that they are adapting with the times and will continue to be dynamic forces in the Church and wider society in the years ahead. Highly idealistic, yet realistic, spiritual and temporal goals and objectives have been determined. Honest objective evaluations have been undertaken, recommendations have been made, plans for their implementation have been drawn up, and these are being put into effect. Government has been democratized and strengthened. Management sys-tems have been introduced. And all of this has been done by directly involving some 250 members of each order in task forces and less directly involving all mem-bers through solicitation of information, opinions, at-titudes, and issues important to them. The final plan is theirs and they are committed to it. This motivation alone enhances the probabilities of success. In addition, the management skills of these congregations have been added to greatly. The sense of community has been en-hanced by the reaffirmation of congregational goals and objectives, the open realization of the pluralism inherent in any large group of people, and the translation from concept to action of both subsidiarity and collegiality. Another vital factor that enhances the probabilities of the orders strengthening themselves as a result of the introduction of modern management techniques and planning as part of their renewal is the quality of .their leadership. It takes strong, forward-looking leaders to see the benefits from and to commit their members to a major planning project such as this and then see that it reaches fruition. Good management is good stewardship of resources to attain goals and objectives and to provide the greatest benefits for all stakeholders with the resources available. One essential component of good management is plan-ning. ÷ ÷ ÷ S~ardshi~ VOLUME 29, 1970 657 LOUIS G. MILLER, C.Ss.R. The Social Responsibility of Religious Louis G. Miller, (~,Ss.R., is on the staff of Liguori Publication in Li-guori, Mo. 65057. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 658 It is in the temper of our times that religious who take the vow of poverty are under close scrutiny. The youthful generation has a sharp eye for phoniness, and they are quick to draw attention to the gap that seems to exist between professing a vow of poverty and the actual living of a poor life. The matter concerns the individual religious and it also concerns the religious order or congregation as a whole. The following reflections have to do with one aspect of the problem which, in my opinion, religious communities have, generally speaking, neglected in the past. I mean the responsibility of devoting some part of the community funds to investment in projects designed to help relieve the most pressing social problem of our time: the widening gulf between the haves and the have nots in our society. Before developing my theme, let me state that I am well aware of the self-sacrificing work being done by religious in their parishes and in teaching and nursing programs for the poor and deprived. When a parish staffed by members of a religious order goes through the inevitable cycle and changes from middle-class to low-income parishioners, the people stationed there pitch in, ordinarily, and try to adapt to the new situation that is thrust upon them with energetic zeal. What we are concerned with in this article is social consciousness on the provincial level. In the ordinary course of development, a province will accumulate funds, and it will seek ways to invest these funds. The interest from these investments goes to the support of educational institutions and missionary projects. There are two ways of doing this. A religious community can invest its funds under the single motivating principle that the investments be safe and that they bring the highest possible return. This is the course followed by many a conscientious bursar or procurator, and in the past, few questioned it. Another way of going about .the matter of investing funds would be to look for ways and means of applying them to the alleviation of the pressing social crisis of our time. No one can be unaware that such a crisis exists. It finds expression in the widening gulf between rich and poor, the increasing bitterness in the racial confrontation, and the alienation between generations that seems to result from the other factors. In Vatican II's Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life there is a very apt expression of community responsibility in this regard. After noting that "poverty voluntarily embraced in imitation of Christ provides a witness which is highly esteemed, especially today," the Decree goes on to say: Depending on the circumstances of their location, communi-ties as such should aim at giving a kind of corporate witness to their own poverty. Let them willingly contribute something from their own resources to the other needs otr the Church, and to the support of the poor, whom religious should love with the tenderness of Christ (Number 13). As we well know, the young appear to find it.difficult to put their faith and trust in any kind of "establish-ment" today. They only too readily suppose that an institution of its very nature is so hamstrung by long-standing traditions that it cannot move in the direction of new and imaginative ventures. Over and above the tremendous work being done by religious in, for example, inner city projects; over and above occasional cash donations to worthy causes, I believe we need something in the nature of a symbolic gesture on the level of capital fund investment. I believe this would serve as a large factor in winning the confidence of young people that we are indeed willing to back up our words with our deeds, and that as an institution we can take a forward step. The heart of the social crisis today, most authorities agree, is the housing problem. The United States Commission on Civil Rights calls this the "most ubiquitous and deeply rooted civil rights problem in America." The Koerner Report agrees and makes it clear that its dimensions are so great that if a solution is not found within a few years, the resultant pressures could produce riots far more terrible than those our country experienced two or three years ago. The plain fact of the matter is that while each year 1.5 million new family homes are built in the United States, nearly all of them are on a de facto segregated basis. Since World War II the FHA and VA have financed $120,000,000 in new housing. According to a ÷ ÷ Social l~sponsibitity VOL~bl~ 2% k970 .I. + L. G. MC.iSllse.Rr,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 6~0 survey made two years ago by the American Friends' Service Commission, less than two percent of this housing has been available, kealistically available, to non-whites. Each year we get larger white belts in our suburbs and more compressed black cores in our cities. The black core is continually compressed inward upon itself. Recently in St. Louis representatives of the president's Commission on Civil Rights, under the chairmanship of Father Theodore Hesburgh, after long hearings on the situation there, issued a depressing report that, although legally integrated housing is in force, de facto segregation in the great majority of suburbs is still very much the order of the day. He was quoted as saying: "Everybody we interviewed admitted that we have a grave problem; but nobody knows what to do about it." I propose that we direct some of our provincial invest-ments, perhaps a tithe of 10 percent, to the alleviation of this de facto discrimination in housing. In doing so, we would not of course be pioneers among church groups. There are available for study a number of interesting examples of what can be done and has been done. In Akron, Ohio, there is a nonprofit interfaith organization, organized in 1964, called INPOST, spon-sored by local Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. INPOST has directed several million dollars of investment into a complex of 108 units of low-cost housing, 72 units of high-rise housing, and 28 town houses. It is hoped that this complex will become a model for similar developments across the country. The diocese of Peoria for the next three years will advance $35,000 annually toward urban renewal and poverty programs in their area, with special emphasis on housing projects. We have noticed in the news recently that the Chicago Jesuit province recently made available $100,000 to be used as bond money to try to keep black families from being evicted from their homes. These are families with no equity in their homes even years after purchase at inflated prices, and legally able to be evicted on missing one payment. The Franciscan Sisters of Wheaton, Illinois, have announced an $8,000,000 plan to build and operate as nonprofit sponsors a residential complex for senior citizens and middle-income families in that area. The diocese of Detroit has been a leader in approving at least one $74,000 loan as seed money for testing the feasibility of having houses prefabricated by the hard-core unem-ployed for erection in the inner city. There is a national organization,, with headquarters in Washington, D. C., called SOHI, or "Sponsors of Open House Investment." Congressman Donald M. Frazer is its chairman, and numbered in its long list of sponsors is a host of distinguished Americans of all creeds and a variety of professional competences. It seeks to promote investment by individuals or by non-profit institutions of about 10 percent of their available investment capital in housing that is open to all. The organization does not itself invest. But it alerts indi-viduals and nonprofit groups to investment opportuni-ties in equal housing. It seeks to bring together investors of good will and housing professionals who are com-mitted to open occupancy. It operates on the principle that if a person cannot do anything himself to help solve the housing problem, his funds, if he has money to invest, can be an eloquent voice to help in the terrible silence of the decent in facing up to the housing problem that exists in our Country today. Under the slogan "National Neighbors" it seeks to build bridges of understanding between people, whatever their race or color. The Headquarters of SOHI is located at 1914 Connecticut Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. 20009. Objection to these proposals can be made, of course, on the grounds that there is a smaller interest rate on such investments, and they are not as safe as blue chip stocks. Also, the objector might continue, the religious community needs all the money it can scrape together in these difficult times to support the various projects already in operation. But I submit that this does not absolve us from our social responsibility. If things are tough for us, they are much tougher for a great many people in the have-not group. They are a lot tougher even for people who have the money, but who can't buy a home in a decent neighborhood because their skin is black. If the social problem in our country is not met and dealt with, the most gilt edged investments will not be of much use or solace in the turmoil and violence that may follow. ÷ ÷ ÷ so~d VOLUME 29, 1970 661 SISTER M. RITA FLAHERTY, R.S.M. Psychological Needs of CeBbates and Others ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Rita is chairman of the Department of Psy-chology; C~rlow College; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 662 Today when the value of celibacy--to which so many thousands of priests and religious are committed--is being questioned, it seems important that every facet of the problem be examined. The questioning seems to be the result of: (1) Vatican II's emphasis on the true value of marriage as a way of life that can lead to the highest sanctity and spiritual fulfillment, (9) the research of Biblical schoIars which raises questions about the time, place, circumstances, and even authenticity of those words of Christ which were formerly quoted in defense of celibacy, (3) the difficulty of practicing celi-bacy in a culture that places a high premium on sexual pleasure, and (4) the emotional difficulties that can arise as a result of deprivation of this important physical and psychological need. While all aspects of this problem deserve close study, it is with the last aspect that this paper will be concerned. In spite of all these problems and new discoveries, there are many religious and priests who cannot ignore what they believe is the prompting of the Spirit to live a celibate life. These people who choose to live in the unmarried state are entitled, it would seem, to have this freedom and also to have any help from psychologists or others who can aid them in solving some of the problems that may arise as a result of that choice. Although this study is directed toward the needs of celibates, actually much of the material is applicable to both married and unmarried alike. Basic psychological needs are to a great extent universal, differing only in emphasis and means of satisfaction from one cultural group to another. In studying the behavior of humans, psychologists in general would conclude that all behavior is motivated, that is, it arises from some need within man. Behavior, as defined by psychologists, is an attempt to provide satisfaction for a need. What is a need? What happens when a need is experienced? A need is a state o[ tension or disequilib-rium that results from some lack within the person. When this need is felt, it causes the person to become tense and restless; it activates him to perform some action in order to relieve the need--to get rid of the tension and to achieve a state of ~atisfaction or equilib-rium. A man who is watching a television 'show may not be conscious of his need for food, but he does become restless while watching and jumps up at the commercial and goes to the refrigerator to find something to eat. This behavior is directed towards a goal that will relieve the tension from hunger. Hunger is classified as a physical need, along with thirst, need for sleep, for oxygen, for elimination, for sex, and for many other activities that help to maintain a state of physical satisfaction. Each of these physical needs is tied in with a biological system within the body which in most cases depends on satisfaction of the physical need for survival. One cannot imagine a man being deprived of oxygen for more than eight minutes or deprived of water for more than a week or of food for much more than a month, without dying. Therefore when the person becomes aware of the lack of oxygen, water, or food he becomes agitated and rest-less and gradually filled with tension until he finds a suitable object to satisfy his need. And so it is with all the other physical needs, .including sex, except that the need for sex seems to be the only one which is not necessary for the individual's preservation of life--it is, however, very important in the preservation of the race. For this reason celibates need not worry about endangering their lives, but they must expect a certain amount of frustration and tension resulting from the deprivation of this basic physiological drive which in man is also part of his whole personality. However, physical needs comprise only one of three categories that may be termed human needs. One must also consider psychological and spiritual needs in studying human behavior. Although many psychologists discuss a large variety of psychological needs the five most com-monly mentioned include: affection, security, achieve-ment, independence, and status. Since these needs are more subtle and do not usually lead to loss of life, people are often unaware of the tension created by them. Yet the tension can become very strong and even lead in some individuals to a complete disorganization of personality which could be termed a kind of psy-chological "death." ÷ ÷ Sister Rita REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS TiLe need for affection implies the need to give and receive love. This is very important throughout life, but seems most important during infancy and early childhood, in studies done by Ribble, Spitz and others young infants deprived of mothering, that is, fondling, petting, and other signs of affection have in some cases gradually wasted away in a disease called maras-mus. Older children and adults may not die from lack of affection but they may develop some severe person-ality deviations. The second psychological need mentioned is that of security which Karen Homey defines as the need to feel safe from the dangers of a hostile and threatening world. Physical security is not the important element here as was demonstrated by the children who ex-perienced the terrors of the London bombings during the Second World War. It was found after the war that those who were separated from their parents and sent to places of safety in the country showed more psychological disturbance and insecurity than those who lived through the raids in the city of London while staying with their parents. Evidently the presence of people who love you makes one feel more secure than any amount of physical safety in the presence of strangers. As adults, we experience insecurity when we fear that no one loves us or that those people who are present in a situation we perceive as threatening do not really know us or understand us. The next psychological need is achievement or the feeling that one has accomplished something worthwhile. The individual must be convinced himself of his achievement. Another person telling him that his work is good is not sufficient if he himself is dissatisfied with the outcome. Therefore when one reaches a personal goal, a feeling of real achievement can be experienced-- but often p~ople who are deprived of affection or feel insecure cannot feel a satisfying experience of achieve-ment. The anxiety that is generated by deprivation of these other psychological needs may either paralyze their efforts so they cannot achieve, or if they do achieve, the results are rendered personally unsatis-fying. Once a person can achieve, however, he usually wants to become independent. The need for independ-ence involves the ability to make decisions and take responsibility for one's own actions. During adolescence this need gets very strong and continues throughout life. One can never be considered a mature adult until he has achieved an independence of "though.t, decision, and action. Finally the need for status or a feeling of self-worth must be considered as probably the most improtant psychological need found in humans. The need for status includes the desire to be a worthwhile person-- to be a good person. Everyone has this very basic need to see himself as a person who is worthwhile. Anyone who views himself as bad, inferior, or inadequ.ate does not satisfy his need for status. More Americans are visiting clinical psychologists today because they "hate" themselves, than for any other reason. If this need for self-worth is not fulfilled the person cannot be really happy. A final category of human needs is not usually men-tioned in psychology books but should be noted here, that is, spiritual needs. These include a need to believe, love, and worship an absolute Being--someone outside of man who is infinitely good and powerful. Spiritual needs also include the need to "live for others," to go out to others, to have a meaning for one's life. Depriva-tion of needs in the spiritual area are less perceptible, that is, many people can seemingly go for years without showing tension over these needs. However, because these needs are most subtle does not mean they do not exist or that they are less important. Since psychology is a relatively new science it is understandable that very little investigation has been conducted in this intimate but obscure area of man's personality. Victor Frankl and other psychotherapists are writing more often these days about existential neurosis, which is a frustration and anxiety caused by a lack of purpose in one's life. Those individuals who see no purpose in life or reason for living may very often be suffering from a deprivation of spiritual needs. Now in considering the problems brought on by these needs one must remember that they can be operating on a conscious or an unconscious level. A man may be aware that he is hungry and go in search of food, or sometimes he may be unaware that the frus-tration, tension, and even depression he experiences could be eased by eating a good meal and perhaps getting a good night's sleep. So, while most physical needs are consciously felt, sometimes needs for food, sex, sleep, and so forth may be causing tension for which we cannot account. The psychological needs are much more likely to operate on an unconscious level, perhaps because many people would be loathe to admit their needs for affection, approval, status, and so forth. It is possible for a person to be aware that he needs to be loved or esteemed by others, but it is more likely that he would repress this, thereby causing the need to operate on the unconscious level. Finally, spiritual needs are most likely to be 4- 4- 4- Need~ o] Celibates VOLUME 29, 1970 665 Sister Rita REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 666 repressed and many people go through life not realizing that they have a human need for God--a need to depend on an all-powerful Being for love and help. One might ask how a discussion of these needs js involved in the problems of celibates. It is the thesis of this paper that many celibates can stand the frustration involved in a deprivation of the sex need if other needs are adequately met. For religious it is likely that the physical and spiritual needs are satisfied more often than the psychological ones. Because of faulty training in the areas of friendship, detachment, and obedience a number of celibates ex-perience extreme frustration in areas of at~ection, security, and independence. Because of a fear of engendering pride or a false concept of humility many religious practices have also deprived individuals of a feeling of self-worth. Rarely in the past was praise given for work well-done, and it is the unusual person who can satisfy his need for self-esteem unless he sees others regarding him as a good person. In the past some celibates ma~ have been able to maintain some feeling of worth and goodness based solely on the assumption that celibacy was a "higher" form of life than marriage. Now, postconcilar writers are emphasizing that all states of life can lead to sanctity and that all Christians are called to lead a life of perfection. By thus equalizing the various states, the only prop that some celibates had for a feeling of self-worth (admittedly it was a poor onel) has been pulled away from them. Also in the past the People of God tended to look to those leading a celibate life as somehow being better than non-celibate Christians. Now there is a tendency in Catholic books, articles, and newspapers to question the value of celibacy. This questioning accompanied some-times with a kind of ridicule and cynicism may even-tually cause some celibates to become skeptical about the celibate commitment they have made. Those religious and priests who are abandoning the state of celibacy and seeking dispensations to marry are not necessarily suffering primarily from the deprivation of the sex need. It may be that a person who feels lonely, unloved, and unappreciated may seek in the marriage state the companionship, love, and appreciation that could legitimately have been given him in a loving Christian community. On the other hand, it must be admitted that some celibates may feel it necessary to invest their love in one person of the opposite sex, and thus realize that marriage is the only solution for them. In a recent study cited in the International Herald Tribune (March 10, 1970) the results of a Harvard study conducted by James Gill, S.J., showed that in the case of the 2500 priests leaving the United States priest-hood each year, celibacy does not seem to be the major causal factor. Father Gill indicates that he finds that the priests who are leaving and marrying are very often depressed. The priest dropout was most often a man who found himself taken for granted in a crowded system that sometimes denies the human need for approval. This discovery has caused some of the Church's most dedicated and talented priests to become sad, lonely, disillusioned, and resentful. As one examines these findings of Gill, one is reminded of a similar syndrome that psychiatrists have found in many young business executives--men who find themselves caught up in a structure filled with activity but which leaves the individual disillusioned with a system that deperson-alizes him. It is likely, then, that the American culture is a big factor in the working structui~e of the Church in the United States and that the same conditions that operate in the society to dehumanize the individual are also operating in the Church structure. In a personality analysis, Gill found that many of the priest dropouts were task-oriented men, who were raised by their parents in such a way that the achieve-ment of goals, particularly difficult ones, appealed strongly to them. They tended to go about their work in a compulsive, perfectionistic way, not seeking or enjoying pleasure from it, but aiming unconsciously at the recognition and approval they would gain from those they served. Father Gill goes on to show that when this recognition and approval are not experienced, the priest is in deep emotional trouble. It takes between five and fifteen years for a priest like this to experience the disillusion-ment that will eventually lead to some kind of a crisis. The priest then begins to feel that he is being taken for granted, that nobody seems to care how hard he has worked. Usually priests like this have so consistently performed in a better than average manner that bishops and religious superiors simply expect that they will do a good job. Since applause and approval come less frequently with the passing years the priest gradually feels more and more dissatisfied with himself, with his role in the church, and with his requirement of celibacy, At this point in his life, he becomes an easy prey to emotional involvement with the first sensitive woman who comes into his life. It is evident from Gill's study and those of others that celibacy or deprivation of the sex need is not necessarily the principal problem. Many priests and VOLUME 29, '1970 religious who leave to marry are probably seeking satis-faction for basic psychological needs that could legiti-mately and rightly have been satisfied in a celibate community, or a group of Christians Who practice charity by looking out for the needs of their fellow-man. Celibates must be capable of interacting on a deep personal level with at least a few people. Through. these friendships they will be able to love and appreciate themselves, which in turn enables them to love others. ~In the past, authority figures were looked to for approval and recognition which would lead to some psychological satisfaction and a feeling of self-worth in the celibate. In the light of the findings cited above, it would seem advisable to educate all members of the celibate community (and eventually all the People of God) to a clear understanding of these emotional needs. Only in this way will it be possible for the celibate to receive from some of his peers th~ affection, approval, and sense of self-worth which is so necessary if he is to sustain the frustrations of living in a celibate en-vironment. New ideas about love, friendship, and obedience must be given to all sectors of the community, young and old alike, if the celibate is to survive psychologically. Also the value of the celibate life must be rediscovered, not as a "higher" kind of life, but as a life that can lead to a rich, happy existence as one spends it living for others and thereby living for God. ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister Rita REVIEW FOR" REI;IGIOUS 668 THOMAS A. KROSNICKI, S.V.DI The Early.Practice of Communion in the Hand Travel in the United States and Europe has reen-forced my impression that the practice of Communion reception in the hand has already become quite com-mon. Understandably, the reaction that it causes is quite varied. On the one hand, it is labeled another liberal innovation; on the other, it is seen as the. result of an honest endeavor to make the reception of the Eucharist an authentic sign. In any case, and this is the purpose of the present article, we should realize that this practice, now officially permitted in. Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland, is not an. unprec-edented development in the liturgy of the Church.1 Synoptic Considerations The Synoptic accounts record the institution narra-tive as taking place in the setting of a meal which was almost certainly the Passover meal.~ The bread that Jesus used at the Lord's Supper would have been the unleavened bread (matzoth) of the Jewish Passover rite. It is interesting to note, however, that by the time the evangelists set about to record the institution event, they simply used the Greek word "artos," or leavened bread. This is understandable since it is generally accepted by Scripture scholars that the words of institution in the Gospels present the tradition concerning the Lord's Sup-per as preserved in the very celebration of the Eucharist in the early Christian communities. It seems, therefore, that when the Eucharist was celebrated outside the Thomas A. Kros-nicld is a member of Collegio del Verbo Divino; Ca-sella ~.Postale" 5080; Rome, Italy. VOLUME 2% 1970 See "Taking Communion," Worship, v. 43 (1969), p. ~440. Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22-3; Lk 22:19. 669 ÷ T. A. Kromicki, $.V.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Passover week, leavened bread was commonly used by the early Church) We should also note in this context the word used to describe the distribution of the eucharistized bread. Jesus simply gave it to those who were present. "Take and eat," Jesus said to his apostles. The verb used is the Greek Xa~/3~vo~ which is a generic verb indicating the simple act of taking (with the hand) as is seen from the use of the same verb in Luke 22:19 where Jesus "took the leavened bread." (K~d Xo~v &prov). Frbm these considerations, though no direct proof is established, two points can be asserted. In the Apostolic Church the Eucharist was leavened bread and was dis-tributed in the ordinary manner of giving. A few selected texts ~om the writings of the Church fathers will clearly demonstrate that hand reception of the Eucharist was practiced in the first centuries. Tertullian to Cyril of Jerusalem We would not expect to find in the writings of the fathers an exact account of the mode of Communion reception that was common at their time. There was no reason for them to explain such practices. The most that one can find in searching through their works are oc-casional references to the practice. These indications point to hand reception. The oldest witness we have that the faithful received the Eucharist outside of the solemn liturgy and, in fact, in their homes, is Tertullian (d. 220). At the same time he is an implicit witness for the early practice of hand communion: A whole day the zeal of faith will direct its pleading to this quarter: bewailing that a Christian should come .from idols into the Church; should come from an adversary workshop into the house of God; should raise to God the Father hands which are the mothers of idols; should pray to God with the hands which, out of doors, are prayed to in opposition to God; should apply to the Lord's body those hands which confer bodies on demons. Nor is this sufficient. Grant that it be a small matter, if from other hands they received what they contaminate; but even those very hands deliver to others what they have con-taminated. Idol-artificers are chosen even into the ecclesiastical order. Oh wickednessl Once did the Jews lay hands on Christ; these mangle His body daily. Oh hands to be cut offl Now let the saying, 'If thy hand make thee to do evil, amputate it,' (Mt. 18.8) see to it whether it were uttered by way of similitude (merely). What hands more to be amputated than those in which scandal is done to the Lord's body? * ~ Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible (New York: 1963), pp. 697- 702; Joseph M. Powers, Eucharistic Theology (London: 1968), pp. 60-1. ~ Tertullian, On Idolatry (PL, v. 1, col. 744C-745A; trans.: Ante- Nicene Fathers, v. 11 [Edinburgh: 1869], p. 149). In Tertullian's To His Wife which discusses the dangers incurred by a Christian wife even with a "tolerant" pagan husband, we read: Do you think to escape notice when you make the Sign of the Cross on your bed or on your body? Or when you blow away, with a puff of your breath, some unclean thing? Or when you get up, as you do even at night, to say your prayers? In all this will it not seem that you observe some magical ritual? Will not your husband know what it is you take in secret before eating any other food? If he recognizes it as bread, will he not believe it to be what it is rumored to be? Even if he has not heard these rumors, will he be so ingenuous as to accept the explana-tion which you give, without protest, without wondering whether it is really bread and not some magic charm?" The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) goes into even more detail when giving prudential advice about home (and understandably hand) reception of the Eucharist: Every believer, before tasting other food, is to take care to receive the Eucharist. For if he receives it with faith, even if afterwards he is given something poisonous, it will not be able to do him harm. Everyone is to take care that no unbeliever, no mouse or other animal eats of the Eucharist, and that no particle of the Eucharist falls on the ground or is lost. For it is the Body of the Lord that the faithful eat and it is not to be treated care-lessly. o Cyprian's (d. 258) exhortation to the martyrs en-courages them to arm their right hands with the sword of the Spirit because it is the hand which "receives the Body of the Lord": And let us arm with the sword of the Spirit the right hand that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices that the hand which, mindful of the Eucharist, receives the Body of the Lord, may embrace Him afterwards to receive from the Lord the reward of the heavenly crown.~ When the same author speaks of the lapsed Christians, he says: On his back and wounded, he threatens those who stand and are sound, and because he does not immediately receive the Lord's Body in his sullied hands or drink of the Lord's blood with a polluted mouth, he rages sacrilegiously against the priests? ~ Tertullian, To His Wife (PL, v. 1, col. 1408AB; trans.: Ancient Christian Writers, v. 13 [Westminster: 1951], p. 30). ' 6 Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition, cc. 36-7 (Bernard Botte, ed., La Tradition apostolique de saint Hippolyte [Miinster: 1963], pp. 82-5; trans.: Lucien Deiss, Early Sources o] the Liturgy [Staten Island: 1967], p. 68). ~ Cyprian, Letter 56 (PL, v. 4, col. 367AB; trans.: The Fathers o] the Church [hereafter = FC], v. 51 [Washington: 1964], p. 170 where the letter appears as Letter 58). 8 Cyprian, The Lapsed (PL, v. 4, col. 498B; trans.: FC, v. 36 [1958], pp. 76-7). ÷ ÷ ÷ 2". A. KrosM¢~, $.V~D. REVIEW FOR RELI@IOUS Moreover, Cyprian gives us two accounts of persons who were not worthy to receive the Eucharist in their hands. He writes: And when a certain woman tried with unclean hands to open her box in which was the holy Body of the Lord, there-upon she was deterred by rising fire from daring to touch it. And another man who, himself defiled, after celebration of the sacrifice dared to take a part with the rest, was unable to eat or handle the holy Body of the Lord, and found when he opened his hands that he was carrying a cinder.D Hand Communion reception was certainly practiced in the time of persecution as we know from Cyprian, but Basil (d. 379) is our best witness to this fact: Now, to receive the Communion daily, thus to partake of the holy Body of Christ, is an excellent and advantageous practice; for Christ Himself says clearly: 'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting.' Who doubts that to share continually in the life is nothing else than to have a manifold life? We ourselves, of course, receive Communion four times a week, on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays,. and Saturdays; also on other days, if there is a commemoration of some saint. As to the question concerning a person being compelled to receive Communion by his own hand in times of persecution, when there is no priest or minister present, it is superfluous to show that the act is in no way offensive, since long-continued custom has confirmed this practice because of circumstances themselves. In fact, all the monks in the solitudes, where there is no priest, preserve Communion in their house and receive it .from their own hands. In Alexandria and in Egypt, each person, even of those belonging to the laity, has Communion in his own home, and, when he wishes, he receives with his own hands. For, when the priest has once and for all com-pleted the sacrifice and has given Communion, he who has once received it as a whole, when he partakes of it daily, ought reasonably to believe that he is partaking and receiving from him who has given it. Even in the Church the priest gives the particle, and the recipient holds it completely in his power and so brings it into his mouth with his own hand. Accordingly, it is virtually the same whether he receives one particle from the priest or many particles at one time?° There is reference here to more than hand commun-ion. Since no priest or deacon was present, in this case the persons communicated themselves. This was not, however, limited to times of persecution, as Basil points out. Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) gives us the clearest ac-count of the manner of hand communion common at his time. In his Mystagogic Catecheses addressed to his D Cyprian, The Lapsed (PL, v. 4, col. 500B-501A; trans.: FC, v. 36 [1958], pp. 79-80). Cyprian notes the practice of taking the Eucharist home and the reception of communion outside of the liturgical celebration. The Eucharist was in this ease reserved in some sort of a box. ~ Basil, Letter 93 (PG, v. 32, col. 484B-485B; trans.: FC, v. 13 [1951], pp. 208--9). catechumens we read: When you approach, do not go stretching out your open hands or having your fingers spread out, but make the left hand into a throne for the right which shall receive the King, and then cup your open hand and take the Body of Christ, reciting the Amen. Then sanctify with all care your eyes by touching the Sacred Body, and receive It. But be careful that no particles fall, for what you lose would be to you as if you had lost some of your members. Tell me, if anybody had given you gold dust, would you not hold fast to it with all care, and watch lest some of it fall /and be lost to you? Must you not then' be even more careful with that which is more precious than gold or diamonds, so that no particles are lost? u Augustine and the Early Middle Ages As we see from the above excerpts, the method of Communion reception up to the time o[ Augustine at least, indicates the practice of hand reception. With Augustine (d. 430) two innovations become apparent for the first time. The men are told to wash their hands; the women are instructed to receive the Eucharist on a white cloth, commonly called the "dominicale]" laid over their hands.1~ In Sermon 229 he writes: All the men, when intending to approach the alt~r, wash their hands, and all the women bring with them clean linen cloths upon which to receive, the body of Christ, thus they should have a clean body and pure heart so that they may re-ceive the sacrament of Christ with a good conscience.~ The same practice is mentioned in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles.14 The first witness that this author was able to find, giving an explicit example of mouth reception of the Eucharist, was Gregory the Great (d. 604). The case in question is the reception of the Eucharist by an invalid from the hand of Pope Agapitus (535-536): While he [Agapitus] was passing through Greece, an invalid who could neither speak nor stand up was brought to him to be cured. While the weeping relatives set him down before the man of God he asked them with great concern whether they truly believed it possible for the man to be cured. They an-swered that their confident hope in his cure was based on the ~a Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogic Catecheses (PG, v. 33, col. l124B- 1125A; trans.: Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass o[ the Roman Rite [London: 1959], pp. 508-9). ~ In 578 the Council of Auxerre stated the same in Canons 36 and 42 (Mansi, v. 9, p. 915). Canon ~6: "A woman is not to receive com-munion on the bare hand." Canon 42: "That every woman when communicating should have her 'dominicale.' If she does not have it, she should not communicate until the following Sunday." ~Augustine, Sermon 229 (PL, v. 39, col. 2168A). The sermon is probably by St. Maximus of Turin (Sth century). x~ Caesarius of Aries, Sermon 227 (Corpus Christianorum, v. 14, pp. 899-900; trans.: Andr~ Hamman, The Mass: Ancient Liturgies and Patristic Texts [Staten Island: 1967], pp. 242-3). ÷ ÷ ÷ Communion VOLUME 29~ 1970 673 4. 4. T. A. Krosnicki, $.V.D. REVIEW FOR ~ELIGIOUS power of God and the authority of Peter. Agapitus turned im-mediately to prayer, and so began the celebration of Mass, offering the holy Sacrifice to almighty God. As he left the altar after the Mass, he took the lame man by the hand and, in the presence of a large crowd of onlookers, raised him from the ground till he stood erect. When he placed the Lord's Body in his mouth, the tongue which had so long been speechless was loosed.= It would be difficult to conclude from this one example that this was the common practice of the time, for it is known that on occasion the Eucharist was applied to parts of the body as a form of sanctification of the senses or as a cure.an Agapitus might have preferred in this incident to place the Eucharist on the tongue of the invalid since, as Gregory relates, the man Was mute. Gregory also notes: "When he placed the Lord's Body in his mouth, the tongue which had for so long been speechless was loosed." In the eighth century writings of Bede (d. 735) we come across another example of hand reception of communion. Describing the death of a brother, he writes in his Ecclesiastical History: When they had lain down there, and had been conversing happily and pleasantly for some time with those that were in the house before, and it was now past midnight, he asked them, whether they had the Eucharist within? They answered, 'What need of the Eucharist? For you are not yet appointed to die, since you talk so merrily with us, as if you were in good health.' 'Nevertheless,' said he, 'bring me the Eucharist.' Having re-ceived It into his hand, he asked whether they were all in charity with him, and had no complaint against him, nor any quarrel or grudge. They answered, that they were all in perfect charity with him, and free from all anger; and in their turn they asked him to be of the same mind towards them?' Periods'of Transition The transition from the reception of the Eucharist in the hand to that of the mouth as we know it today, seems to have begun at the end of the, eighth century and is allied to the change from leavened to unleavened bread. Alcuin of York (d. 804), the learned friend and counselor of Charles the Great, seems to have been the first to indicate the use of unleavened bread,is But even then, it is unclear whether he intended to state that the bread should be unleavened or merely indicates its usage. He does, however, clearly show that unleavened ~ Gregory the Great, Dialogue 3 (PL, v. 77, col. 224B; trans.: FC, v. 39, pp. 116-117. la Plus PARSCn, The Liturgy o[ the Mass (London: 1957), p. 23. 1T Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England IV, 24 (PL, v. 95, col. 214C-215A; trans.: A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History o[ England [London: 1912], pp. 280-1). ~ R. Woolley, The Bread o/the Eucharist (London: 1913), p. 18. bread was used. Along with this change to unleavened bread came the introduction of the small round wafers which no longer required breaking or chewing.19 It seems that this fact influenced the change to mouth reception of the Eucharist as well. The use of the un-leavened bread with its capability of being more easily preserved became a matter of greater convenience. The Councils of Toledo and Chelsea show that there must have been some common irreverefices on the part of the clergy when using ordinary bread for the Eucharist. The best way to obviate such disrespect was to require a special bread, other than the everyday domestic type, for the celebration of the Eucharist3° Another reason for the change to unleavened bread was to forestall any confusion between the Eucharist and the common bread of the household. The change to mouth reception became a matter not only of practicality but also as the result of the misun-derstanding of the sacrality of the individual Christian. Due to the thinking of the times, the Christian was no longer considered worthy to touch the Body of the Lord with his hands.~1 With exaggerated sentiments of humility and unworthiness, the faithful received the Eucharist on their tongues. The eucharistic practice had also been influenced by the overemphasis on the divinity of Christ to the almost exclusion of his humanity. The mortal, sinful man dare not touch with his hands the all-holy, powerful God. All of this led to the point where by the ninth century hand Communion was no longer the practice. The Council of Rouen (878) explicitly condemns hand Communion reception on the part of the lalty.~ The tenth Ordo romanus, dating from the ninth century, describes mouth reception of communion not only for the laity but even for the subdeacon. Priests and deacons, after kissing the bishop, should receive the body of Christ from him in their hands, and communicate themselves at the left side of the altar. Subdeacons, however, after kissing the hand of the bishop, receive the body of Christ from him in the mouth.~ The eighth and the ninth centuries were then the 19James Megivern, Concomitance and Communion (Fribourg: 1963), p. 29. ~0 WOOLt.EY, The Bread, p. 21. ~a See K. Bihlmeyer and H. Tiichle, Kirchengeschichte, v. 2 (Pader-born: 1958), p. 120: "In this period [the Middle Ages] in order to avoid irreverences as much as possible, in place of bread to be broken, small wafers ('hostia,' 'oblata') were introduced. For the same reason the holy food was no longer placed in the hand of the faithful but directly into the mouth." m Council of Rouen (Mansi, v. 10, pp. 1199-1200). ~Andrieu, Les Ordines romani du Haut M~yen Age, v. 2 (Lou-vain: 1948) p. 361. ÷ ÷ ÷ Communion VOLUME 2% 1970 675 periods of transition from the hand to the mouth recep-tion of the Eucharist. For a time both methods must have been in use. Once again, we find ourselves in a similar period of transition. The mouth form of recep-tion is still the more common practice but no one can deny that the practice of hand reception is becoming even more common especially among smaller groups and at Masses celebrated for special occasions. From this brief and admittedly sketchy glance at his-tory, it can be readily seen that hand Communion is not really an innovation for .it seems to have been the ordinary manner of reception of the Eucharist for al-most eight hundred years. + ÷ ÷ T. A. Krosnlcki, S.V.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS EDWARD J. FARRELL Penance: Return of the Heart The theological literature on penance has been en-riched by writers of the stature of Karl Rahner, Bernard H~iring, and Charles Curran; and we have, as a result, an enlarged understanding of its significance for our own day. I do not propose to speak so much of theology as of experiences and to invite you to reflect with me and to think into the mystery of penance. I speak to you as an expert to my fellow experts, as an authority among fellow authorities, because each one of us is an authority on penance. We have long lived it and we cannot have lived so long and celebrated the mystery so frequently without in some way becoming experts, authorities, or at least persons with much experience. Living itself is an experience of penance. One thing is certain; penance is alive, and anything alive changes. One of our deepest hopes is that we cim change, be-cause penance is concerned with change--not the kind of change which we sometimes call spontaneous, which we can so easily speak of in words, but a change in a much deeper level of being and action. The sacrament of penance, or penance itself which we are experiencing today, has an aura of Spring about it. There are certain seasons, certain times, certain patterns to the Christian life even as there were in Christ's life; and we follow those patterns. Christ was buried. He arose. And the truths of Christ will not be unlike Himself. There are forgotten truths in our faith, in our life experiences which have been laid aside and buried. We can become so familiar with particular realities that we forget the language. Even our relationship with Christ can be diminished. But there is always a resur-rection, always a rising. They are like bulbs which lie bur.led and forgotten in winter's chill grip, but still are there, waiting, until, mysteriously, Spring comes and we discover them. There is an expectancy about Spring. ÷ ÷ ÷ i~.dwa~d J. Fartell is a stuff membe~ o~ 8a~ed ~ea~ 8emi-n~ y; 2701 Chicago Boulevard; Detroit; Mi~igan 48206. VOLUME 29, 1970 ÷ 4. l~. ]. Farrel~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 678 There is an expectancy about penance. It is a new dis-covery for each of us, something which we have not wholly experienced before and it is important that we understand the why of thii. Penance is ancient, yet ever new. There is a "today" even though we have had a "yesterday." There is in us always a newness and an aliveness. When we were young, when we were very small, we saw things in a particular way. Then we grew, grew up, de.veloped in many areas. There is, however, a certain stabilization that takes place; and if our growth did not in some way level out, we would be sixty, eighty, perhaps one hundred feet tall. Imagine the problems of the environment thenl In our early years we thought that when our physical growth had leveled off and stabilized that our growth was finished. Yet it had only begun. When we grew to a certain size perhaps we returned to the school where we once attended kindergarten and the first primary grades. The old neighborhood looked almost quaint. It looked so small because we had grown so large. This physical growth is a true growth; yet it is after we have achieved it that the real growth takes place, the growth of mind and heart and soul, by which we are led into and beyond the senses, into the arts, literature, history, philosophy, and faith. Even in our day of specialization, as one follows ever more deeply his specialization it becomes in some strange, little un-derstood way, narrower and narrower until at a mys-terious moment it opens into a wholly new horizon. At such a moment one is made aware that this universe is too vast for the mind to grasp. It is, then, in this experience that man slowly and painfully becomes little. It is then that he begins to acquire real knowledge, real humility, that he moves toward maturity. I think that we are on the edge of this kind of growth. No longer do we need the pride and arrogance of adolescence. This humility, or perhaps humiliation, has touched all of us. We become aware of an unsureness, the unsureness of maturity; we begin at last to know that we do not know and perhaps will never know all that we so much desire to know. A pro-found transformation, a growth, an evolution now takes place in us. Now we begin to discover truths which we really had never known, yet were there awaiting our discovery, our awakening to their being. We never knew them at all, we never saw them; they were there but we did not see them. We have heard about these ideas, con-cepts, truths, perhaps even talked about them. Now, however, in this new experience we have no word, no thought, no concept, perhaps not even a theology. Now we become much more people of experienced awareness and all must be initialed with our initial and be ours in our unique w~y; otherwise, we belong to no one, nor do the truths belong to us. We begin to know ourselves in a new context of spiritual knowledge. I think this experience is true especially of the mysteries of Christ, the mystery of the Church-~which is essentially mystery--the mystery of penance, the mystery of celi-bacy; and the mystery of human action, the mystery of your act and of my act. When we do something, it is irreversible. We never can step back and undo it. .There is an act which we call a promise and that act nails down the future. It is an absurdity because who can speak for his future; and yet a promise is possible and is perhaps the most significant act a person makes; for we know, even as we make the act, that it is unpredictable; even beyond that, any act has an ano-nymity in its effect. We do not know what effect it will have, how long it will endure, what changes it will create. Humanly speaking, the past, the future, even the present are so much not in our grasp. Yet in all of our acts the mystery of Christ speaks to each one of these realities. He speaks to tile events of the past, reversing what we have done in the act of forgiveness and of penance, in the act of promise in the future which is involved in the penance, the metanoia, the change that we are seeking. The Gospel very simply summarizes Christ's begin-ning: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom is at hand. Repent, believe in the gospel." How ancient those words are and how new; yet who has heard them? Who has heard them and put them to life? This says something about the mystery of Christ to us and the mystery of His Church which can never be separated from Him. To think of the Church without Christ is to miss the mystery of both. So we move in this deep awareness into the inwardness of Christian mystery, into a knowing, into, finally, a .meaning of penance. And penance, what is it? It is a hunger, a hunger for change; it is a hunger for newness, a hunger for life, for growth; it is a hunger for wholeness and holiness; it is a hunger for experience. Most of all, I think, it is a hunger for being with and to and for. It is a relation-ship that is being sought. It is a togetherness. It is profoundly significant that the command of Christ was: "Repent." Why did He not begin with Eucharist? Is the Eucharist not enough? Was it enough for Christ? He began with: "Repent"; He concluded with Eucha-rist. It is interesting to recall the briefly recorded con-versations of Christ with His Disciples. One day our ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 6'79 ÷ ÷ ÷ ~. ]. Farrell REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 680 Lord asked them: "Who do you say I am?" They are always interesting, both the questions of Christ and the commands of Christ, because they are so personal, be-cause they are asked directly of us throughout the whole of our life, and because these are the call He gives to us. He asked: "Who do you say I am?" To answer for the whole group, one volunteered--Peter, and he called back who he was. At the end of our Lord's mission, after the resurrection, He spoke to Peter again but this time He spoke his name: "Simon Peter, do you love me?"--not once, not twice, but three times. By name, He called him out by namel "Simon Peter, do you love me?" and as a consequence of Peter's answer, He gave another command. He said: "Feed, feed my sheep"- strengthen your brethren. Long ago you all made profession and how many times have you made confession since? What is the re-lationship between profession--confession? You cannot find it in the dictionary, but I think there is a very necessary correlation between profession and confes-sion. Peter's profession of faith and Peter's confession of love--this is what penance is all about. Really, sin is a very secondary thing.'Sin is unimportant to Christ. Penance is about a change, a change in our capacity to love. You made your final profession in words and we are all moving toward our final confession. Each one of us has his own history of penance. Just imagine trying to go over your confessions the last year or five years or ten years; imagine forty years of confessions, and how many confessions have yet to be made? Confession: we know the confessions of Jeremiah in the Old Testament, about the mirabilia Dei, the wonder-ful things of God; the confessions of St. Augustine have disappointed many a reader who was looking for true confessions and there is so little there---eating a few pears, an illegitimate child. Really all he is talking about is the first extraordinary discovery and the ongoing discovery of the love of God for him and the power it effected in him. This is why we can speak of his con-fessions. Penance is first of all a confession, a song of praise to God. How unfortunate we are. We so often have said and perhaps still do say: "I cannot find any-thing to confess." Well, even if we did, it would be merely a partial confession because the first thing about penance is to find something, to find the love that one has received, to sing about it, to confess it. Penance is first of all an act of prayer and of worship, of thanks-giving, a recognition, a discovering of the wonderful love of God for us. But that is only part of it because it is only in the strength of this love that there can be sin. If one has not yet tasted or seen or felt something of the love of God, then he cannot sin because sin is cor-relative to love, and there cannot be any sin except in the context of love because sin does not exist except in the non-response to love. Penance is a discovery of what love is and what it is to love. A sister once commented: "In our community there are so many, almost everyone, who are ready to forgive. There is so much forgiveness but there is no one who can confess her need for forgiveness." It is so easy to forgive. Did anyone ever confront you with the words: "I forgive you"? Have you ever been forgiven by another person, a second or third or fourth or twentieth time. The words, "I forgive," do not make any difference. You can come to me and tell me you are sorry and I can say I am sorry, too--about the book you lost or about the car that got dented, but that does not change. You can tell me you are sorry about the way you got angry and what you called me, and I can say, "I forgive you," but what happens when we say that word? Can we forgive? When we say, "I forgive," we are not talking about the action of God, we are not talking about the grace of Christ or the word of the Church; we are saying: "I am trying not to respond to you as you deserve." That is what we ordinarily mean, and implicitly, there is a warning, "Do not let it happen again," because when it does happen again, we remind them: "How many times?" Forgiveness? There are not many of us who are capable of forgiveness. There is no one of us who is capable of forgiveness in the sense that God forgives and Christ forgives, because when Christ forgives, He is not saying He is not going to respond to us as we de-serve but He reaches into us, to the very roots of that which makes us the irascible persons we are. He does something if we let Him, if we are ready to be healed, to be touched, and to be cured. No person can forgive sin. We can empathize with people, we can say we are sorry that they are the miserable creatures they are, but we cannot change them unless we have the capacity to love them with the love of Christ. Otherwise they are untouched by our forgiveness and this is why there is a need and a hunger to be freed from our incapacity to love and not simply to be excused and accepted and remain unchanged. In the great mystery of Christ's death and resurrection it is the sacrament of penance that enables us in some way to get in touch with Him because without getting in touch with Him we cannot do His work. There is a strange misunderstanding in those who feel that the Eucharist is enough, that they can ignore our Lord's call to repent and forget our Lord's suffering and death. It is as if in some way I can forgive myself, can just ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 29, 1970 681 4. 4. E. ]. Farreli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 682 tell Him I am sorry or we can tell one another: "I forgive you, forget about it." In our non-response to love, our inability to love we experience the fact that we cannot heal, that we do not cnre. As someone said, it is not so much that the community or Church' has hurt them, but it has not healed them and that is why they can no longer suffer in this way. It is a partial truth, perhaps, but it is a truth. So often w~ cannot put this need for healing into words but we do expect, we do expect something. Some of our older brethren in Christ are not, I think, too far off in their intuition about the relationship between penance and Eucharist, pen-ance and community; and I think I would say that there is a correlation between the diminishment irl the cele-bration and experience of penance and the diminish-merit in community. The sacrament, the life of penance which is but the life of Christ lived out continually, is the most personal of all the sacraments, the most intense and, therefore, the most difficult. Perhaps it is the last sacrament we are ready for because it demands so much of us; it demands such maturity, it demands such a capacity to suffer, the most terrible kind of suffering, to really learn who we are, and we will do anything to escape that kind of suffering, that kind of anguish. Who of us is really ready to face the living God? There is so much we do in our life to prevent this happening. We talk a good faith, we even have many theologies, b~t who of us really wants to know himself as the Lord knows him? We do not have many temptations. It is the saints who are the primary witnesses to faith, not the theologians who are the primary witnesses--the saints, unlettered, undoctoral but primary witnesses to love. We do not get tempted too often to express our sorrow in the dramatic gesture perhaps of a Mary Magdalen. We do not to6 often weep over our sins, prostrate our-selves before the Eucharist or the Christian community and confess what we are. We have forgotten and per-haps at times we do not even have the capacity any longer because it has been so underexercised. Yet the life of Christ and the reality of man speak out, and we find an extraordinary emergence today from beyond those who are called to give public witness to the mystery of Christ. We find the phenomena of penance and confession and public confession in those "outside." We see it in Alcoholics Anonymous, we see it in Syna-non groups, in sensitivity groups, encounter groups, where the first thing persofis do is to repent, to bare their souls on the guts level and expose who they are. It is an extraordinary experience to experience our poverty and our honesty and in so many ways our nothingness and it gives a kind kind of game can ever give us. It who are or who have been in a there are no games left any more real. We see this, and perhaps l-IS. of freedom which no is something like those mental hospital where and all they can be is it say~ something to The Lord does not accuse us, the Lord does not call to mind our sins: we are the only ones that remember them. The Lord simply asks us again and again: "Do you love me?" Today one is often questioned on the frequency of confession. Should religious go every week to confession?. I think it is very important to see the sacrament of penance in terms of the totality of the Christian life; it is not something that can have its significance only in isolation and only in terms of sin. There was a valid aspect, I think, to the intuition and practice of the Church in encouraging and calling her priests and re-ligious to confession regularly and I am sure it was not so much in terms of their need for absolution from sin but more in terms of confession of the praise of God, and for a deeper understanding of how priests and religious in a special way are the most highly visible embodiment of the Body of Christ. There was an extraordinary article in Time maga-zine in February on environment and I would certainly commend it to your spiritual reading. In this article some experts say that we have so interfered with the ecological system of the world that it is irreversible and human life cannot continue on this planet beyond 200 years. This was just a small portion of the article but it drove home" the reality that the smallest atom has a history, has an effect that goes so far beyond itself that it is almost incalculable what any act of ours can do. I think it speaks so strongly, about the mystery of human community and how we affect one another not only for a moment but have an ongoing effect; and that nothing is really lost. It speaks so strongly to the awareness we must carry within ourselves of the responsibility Christ took upon Himself for the whole world and for the sin and inability and absence of love in so many. It speaks to the fact that to follow Christ's likeness we, too, must be totally concerned with the conversion and transformation of people and where there is not love, to put love. When religious or priests go to confession, they go first of all to recognize that they are sinners and no one of us gets beyond that basic fact--that we are sinners even though saved. The remarkable thing in the testimony and history of the saints is that the more one grows in his experience of the love of Christ, the more ÷ ÷ ÷ Penance VOLUME 29, 1970 ÷ ÷ E. ]. Farrell REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 684 he realizes how much this love is absent in himself and he is drawn to the sacrament of penance out of his life experience; not from some external "you ought to" or "you should," but because it becomes more and more a need. There is a hunger for it which cannot be satisfied by anything less except being plunged into this mystery of Christ. St. Catherine of Siena spoke so deeply of this mystery in words that sound strange and rather strong to us-- "Being washed in the blood of Christ." But at the same time, these are words that are deeply Scriptural--Isaian --the Suffering Servant--the mystery of the blood of Christ. We need to be. deeply penetrated with them. We need to be aware that when we go to confession, which is a profession of faith, a confession of love, and a deep experience of a need to be touched by Christ and to be transformed by Him, sgmething takes place even though there is no way of validating it in terms of a pragmatic principle. It does not make a difference. ~¥hy bother? We cannot measure it on the yday to day level just as life cannot be measured on that particular level. There are movements within ourselves that per-haps take a long time before they can make their mani-festation in our nervous system, on the tip of our fingers. When we go to confession we need to be aware that a whole community is involved, not just a par-ticular house but everyone who is in our lives. We can pick up the paper and read about the crime and the violence, especially to the young and the old, and the helpless, the war, and unemployment, and we can read it and so what? It does not seem to enter into the very life that we are living. We are called to be that Suffering Servant and to make up in ourselves what is lacking in others, to in some way experience what Paul experienced. When someone was tempted, he, himself, felt the fire o{ it; when someone was sick, he, himself, experienced it--that deep interpenetration of all these people involved in Christ. So, when one goes to the sacrament of penance, it is for one's own sins-- the incapacity, the inability to love, missing the mark so often, but it is also in terms of the sins of others. Christ's whole life was this life of penance. Religious living is and has to be a following in this life of penance, this ongoing change, this ongoing conversion. One of the problems of frequent confession is the confessor. I think we are all caught .in this together. Our theology is usually behind our experience, and there are many priests who have had great difficulty in finding confessors themselves. I do not think there is more than one in thirty priests who has a confessor, has a spiritual director; and there has been a great impoverishment because we have not recognized nor developed this charism. I do think there is a special apostolate that the Christian and especially the relig

Issue 31.4 of the Review for Religious, 1972. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, SJ. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, SJ. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editor, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be .sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Build- ~ 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, M~souri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, SJ.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty me~nbers of the School of Divinity of St. Louis University, the editorial offices beihg located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevaxd; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute, Published bimonthly and copyright © 1972 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Printed in U.S.A, Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copii~s: $1.25. 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JULY 1972 VOLUME31 NUMBER 4 SUPERIORS OF SLOVAK RELIGIOUS WOMEN Memorandum to the Government of Czechoslovakia Editor's Note: Toward* the summer of 1968 .the eyes of the world and of the Church focused on Czechoslovakia as'the Dubcek rdgime tried to put a human face on Communism. More liberty was allowed, sentences' passed prev!ously against priests and religious wdie revoked, and the leaders of the Church there were reinstated. Then came August 21 - the Russian invasion and the beginning of the return to square one. Even after the invasion, assurances were given that there would be no return to the conditions of the fifties: Developments soon indicated.that this is" exactly wh, at was happening. ~, A last-ditch stand was made by the superiors~of religious women in Slgvakia with the hope of persuading the government not to be so drastic"in its treatment of the sisters; their protest was in the form 6f a Memorandum, the full text of~vhi~h is given below. TO the President of Czechoslovakia, L. Svoboda. To the ~Secretary General of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, G. Husak. To the President of the Socialist Government of the Slovak Republic, Dr~ P. Colokta. To the Secretary General of the Slovak Republic Communist Party, S, Sad0vskY. To the Minister of Health of the Slovak Socialist Republic, Mada~ Zvaro. To the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, M, Valek. The provincial superiors of the orders and congregations for women in Slovakia take the liberty of presenting to you in the name of all their sisters the following memorandum: In the latter days of October and the first da3)~ of November we have been called personally before the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs where Comrade Oavlik t~lked with us. The following information was sent to each one of us: (1) The activity of Slovak sisters will be limited to: (a) hospitals for mentally deficients; (b) hospitals for religious sisters and elderly priests; ~ (c) assisting the sick, probably limited at all times, by the Minister of Health, to what concerns psychiatry. ¯ (2) The following will be forbidden to sisters: (a) all help in the houses of pensioners; (b) all social activity for families; (c) catechetical instruction; (d) domestic work in presbyteries; (e) admission of novices who wish to join their institute, all those'who have already been admitted must be dismissed. *With the cooperation of Aid to the Church in Need; Our~ Lady of England Priory; Storrington; Pulborough;:Sussex, England, this Memorandum was published in Supplement to Doctrine and Life, January 1972, pp, 44-9. Review for l~eligious is grateful to both Aid to the Church in Need and the editor of the Supplement for permission to reprint the Memorandum. 518 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 " (3) Comrade Pavlik, already mentioned, vehemently condemfied the.claims of the sisters to the ownership of their dwelling places. It is easy to see that if these decrees are put into effect we shall disappear without trace from the face of Slovakia. What wrofig.haVe we done? What crimes can ~ve be accused of, we who were always ~at the service,of the p~ople, not by high sounding words but by silent and " often degrading work for the m~ntally deficient, the sick, and the destitute? Is it for these services that we merit this chastisement, which will end in the disappearance of our congregations? Are we dangerous individuals for the State and society, or are' we citizens with all the rights reserved ,to those who make up the Party of this State? -The constitution and the laws of the State are stiil in for~ce in our republic. What then is the law we have transgressed? Instead of obtaining 'rdhabilitation and reparation for the wrongs we have suffered since 1950 we are still subjected to deformations of the common law. Are we to be hunted again, considered as "outside the law" and forced to undergo an unjust discrimination? Many of our isi~ters have,lost their lives or their health through su.cl~ injustices. Will such aberrations be renewed? If the work and devotion of our sisters are highly appreciated throughout the civilized world, it should be the same here in Czechoslovak.ia, since our people are considered as among the most civi!ized in ~Europe. In subjecting us sisters to new vexations without a cha~ace to defend ourselves, you are certainly doing nothi.ng to better our position as the people wish it. We call upon the people for whom we work. It is the~ people who have invited us to develop our different activities in the parishes. Consequently, if the people send us away then we shall go. Ask the people, inform yourselves: ask the factory and farm workers if they still want us in charitable and social ,works and still want our help in religious instruction. It is the parents tfiemselves who have expressly asked US. In our towns and villages many people are abandoned, old people are left alone; perhaps the homes cannot accept them; perhaps they do not want to go! What human misery! There are so many such illustrations we cannot possibly descrit~e them! In some areas the sisters are the Only people prepared to devote themselves to caring for these neglected people and to give them a little comfort. we know of many cases of people who have lived, sometimes for years~ and who still live, lives similar to those of unwanted aninials. They end their daysclothed in rags, lying in filth, and living in a stagnant shelter; no State official has ever been in these hovels, but the religious have found the time and sufficient courage to go to the aid of these miserable people., naturally within the confines of the limita-tions imposed upon us! Is this help of ours a crime? Is it to be forbidden as one of the activitieS of which :socialism does not approve? We know of children who have lived in a dog kennel directly under the balcony of a mansion, and Who were found by a sister. We know of a girl covered in.~scabS, living like an animal on the'straw in a dark stable, stooped by her painful suffering, because her parents, preoccupied with money, neglected her. A sister freed her from her horrible environment and got her into the sanitorium at' Vysne Hagy. The local authorities never sent any health or sanitary inspector to these i~nhuman places - they are no longer interested. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 519 In many other cases only the sister has found ways of hastening to these inhuman miseries. Must this be condemned? Let us now move to what ~concerns'public health: On 1 October 1969 a religious happened to go into a state hospital in Bratislava: She was welcomed by a nurse with these words: "Welcome, sister;~when are we going to have more sisters? Have pity on us and come and work with us as soon as possible! I cannot retire because there is no one to replace us in ou~ work. There is no one to take care of t.he heedy or to do night duty." She opened the door of a large ward'and said: "There is no one to care for these poor people. I cannot manage alone; I am worn out by work and age~; the young ones do not have the spirit of devotion and even less do they have the love'needed to give themselves to this service?' As if to confirm what she Said supper was brought just at that moment to a twenty-four year old student Who has lain in bed for two years not even able to lift a spoon to her mouth-. They brought the supper, but it did not concern them how she would eat it. The girl said: ="When there isa visitor, or if one of the other pati.ents comes to help me, then I can eat; otherwise no." We do not want to recall other experiences. We only want to inform you of our good will. Despite all that we have suffered up to now, there are sisters who still have sufficient love of their neighbor and the desire to do good for the abandoned, the destitute, the sick. ~ The ~ajority of us are still weak from fatigue and the hard life we have had up to nosy with the punishments of exile; but we could still do good With the help of the young girls who want to join us. But here again arise new and incomprehensible difficulties, created by your decrees. W'e have never been suppressed as religiou~ orders. In 1950 an arbitrary declaration of our governmental administration prevented us from admitting novices, we were expelled from our convents and dispersed to different places near the Bohemian border; you have sent us to work in factories and on farms and in the kolkhozes. At'the beginning these jobs were very difficult for us; yet we performed them conscientiously. After some time we were transferred to social institutions'where we looked after abnormal children. These poor unfortunates are .very de~r to us. sometimes more dear to us than to their own parents. The result of our efforts are testi.mony enough. We shall continue voluntarily in this field, for we can still do it, but for how long? We have had no recruits to strengthen our ranks for the last eighteen years. During the past year, after the Attorney-General declared that our orders were not suppressed and that as existing institutions we had the right to exist and to develop, we have accepted some young girls. It was Comrade Pavlik himself who said that the girls who were novices or postulants in 1950 could return and that we could receive them as postulants. Thanks to that we actually have some novices who wish to follow the example of devotion of the sisters and to continue the work of ~harity which we can do in our fatherland: caring for the physically and mentally sick. But later, following the conversation mentioned above with Comrade Pa~lik, we were told that all our novices are to be sent away and that we may not accept further postulants. We have asked: "By what law are we prevented from doing good?" He ieplied: "We are not discussing these things; when you receive an order you have to obey 520 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 it?' We heir discoui'ses propounded by the State authorities, by the President, by the Secretary General of the Czechslovakian Communist Party, and we recall that in the past~ Summer the President publicly declared on television: "As long as I am President I will not permit any transgression of the law." The Secretary General has declared several times: "We shall never return to the fifties." In 1950 we were uprooted from Slovakia and transferred to Bohemia. It was hard for us, but then the authorities in Bohemia mitigated our exile. Itis difficult for us to,readjust to these new privations. The social institutions in Slovakia are less well-equipped thfin in Bohemia. There they were Satisfied to have us to serve the people. Here, unfortunately, it is different; ".you wear a religious habit, so you are discriminated against." We hate to say this, but it is true. In the "charitable institutions" of our country we have not found love. They seem like prisons. The directors, placed there by the State, were paid to do nothingand to present obsta'cles to our charitable work. This period seemed to be ended, but unfortunately we now have the impression that the actual situation is in the process of leading to a new discrimination. We ask you, Mr. President, and Ministers, to allow us and the girls who want to follow, us, to live and work fdr our people, for those of our people who are suffering. We are happy that there are still girls with noble hearts wh~ desire to become mothers to the many children abandoned by their mothers, and many mentally retarded ones whose mothers disown them. There are ;till young girls who want to dry the tears of those who lie in hospital beds. Let us not stifle these last and rare ideals of our youth! For our part we e:~d~ort them to leave with these words: "Be merciful, sisters, to all those in need of aid." If all'that we have declared be judged as an offence then have the coui'age to suppress our institutions. We hope that this memorandum will meet with understanding and that we can continue pe~icefully to give help without bias to the social institutions, hosp!tals, and parishes. In this hope, we express our sincere gratitude. [There follow the signatures and addresses of the provincial superiors.] Editor's Postscript: News from Czechoslovakia confirms that the sisters' petition was not acceptable to the civil authorities and has not made them change their decision. The Slovak Minister of Culture for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Valek, was very categorical in a meeting with the bishops and told them substantially the same as Pavlik had told the sisters previously. The bishops would have to co-operate to execute the Minister's orders. This means that the Church representatives would become instruments of the government for the liquidation of the sisters. DONALD K. SWEARER and GROVER A. ZINN Monasticism .East and West, an Inquiry [Dr: Donald K. Swearer is Associate Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College; Swarth-more, Pennsylvania 19081. ~Dr. Grover A. Zinn is Assistant Professor of Religionoat Oberlin College; Oberlin, Ohio 44074.] ~ During* January 1970 a seminar on Buddhism and Christianity was ~held at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. Leaders of the seminar included Rev. Shojun Bando of otani University, Rev. Father George F. Simon of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church (Elyria, Ohio) and Professors Donald K. Swearer and Grover A. Zinn of Oberlin College. A variety of topics were discussed but the study focused on two areas: worship and liturgy; meditation and monasticism. It is this latter area to which this paper addresses itself. Stimulated by the encounter of representatives and scholars of both Buddhism and Christianity, our efforts essay no more than a suggestion or a prolegomenonotO a topic deserving'of more intensive and thorough study. All of us who participated in the seminar were struck by the broad range of similarities to be discovered in both the form and the intent of the institution of monastic life in Europe and Asia. Yet,. these similarities were to be measured in terms of the richness of dissimilarity. Our intent during the seminar and in writing this,brief article was not to equate uncritically the monastic traditions of Buddhism and Christianity. Rather, it" was to examine as sympathetically as possible this crucial aspect of these two great historical religions with the hope of reaching a better understanding of our own faith as well as the "faith of other men." In writing this essay we, as Christians, also intend to imply our conviction that Buddhism and Christianity need to benefit from each other more significantly than has been the case up to this point in time. In particular, we believe that the monastic tradition in the West, which has tended to become ever more peripheral to the mainstream of the life of the church, needs to be rediscovered' and reinterpreted in terms of the religious needs and spiritual chaos of our own day. We are convinced that part of this rediscovery and reinterpretation might better take place in the light of the monastic tradition in Buddhism where, especially in the Theravada and certain Mahfayfana forms (for example, Zen), the monastic life puts into proper perspective many of the central teachings and practices of that religion which has been aptly ~ermed, "The Light of Asia." With the tentative nature of this essay in mind, therefore, we propose to discuss certain aspects of the foundation of monasticism and the development of the monastic life first in Buddhism and then in Christianity. *The article first appeared in Japanese Religions, v. 7, no. 1 (July 1971), pp. 29-50. It is reprinted here with the permission of the editor of Japanese Religions and of the authors.~ 522 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 For most observers of Asian religions monasticism and Buddhism go-hand in hand. Anyone who has visited Burma or Thailand, for example, is struck by the presence of a seemingly endless stream of saffron-robed Bhikkhus oi monks around temple precincts, w~alking meandering streets with beggii~g bowls tucked under their arms or, more dramatically, taking part in social reform or political protest. Even in Japan where the presence of the Buddhist monk is not so visible the visitor cannot help but be awed and inspired by such magnificent monasteries as Daitoku-ji in Kyoto :and Enkaku-ji in Kamakura, or remember being awakened by the deep, gutteral chanting of Zen monks: Moreover, the student of Asian religions is quick to point out that from its inception Buddhism seems to have~ had a "withdrawn" tradition compatible with monasticism. He may even cite the legends surrounding the founder, Siddhartha Gautama, which depict the future Enlightened One renouncing the life~iof the householder in.order to find an ~inswer tO the Problem Of life's.suffering and transience. There are, of course, some difficulties with such easy and facile observations. In particular, it would be erroneous to equate monasticism as it is now seen in Buddhist countries with the quasi-institutional forms of early Indian Buddhism, and it would also be inaccurate to think of the Buddhist monk in any period of history as a recluse'. In regard to the latter, there has been a tendency among some Western scholars to make too sharp a distinction between monk and layman in Bt]ddhism. These scholars postulate that Buddhism is fundamentally a "monkish" religion, at least in its Therawida forms, and this implies for them a group of men who have withdrawn from the world to' pursue the religious vocation. In recent years, however, students of early Buddhism have been interested in,depicting the monastic institution more specifically as part ofits cultural society rather than apart from 'it. One such scholar is Sukumar Dutt whose books, Early BuddhisrMonachism (1924), The Buddha and Five.after Centuries (1955) and Buddhist Monks and Monasteries in .India (1962) have made a great contribution to Indian Buddhist studies. His principal theme seems to be that Indian Buddhism should be viewed not as the practice of .monasticism or as. a cult-sect but as a religion of the people,l Concerning the nature of the monastic institution in India a more detailed examination must be made for which we are particularly indebted to Professor Dutt. At the time Buddhism arosein northern India in the sixth century B.C. there had already developed a tradition of religious truth seekers or homeless wanderers, In the Hindu Brahm~inical tradition they are classed as Sanny~isins (those who have cast off possessions) and are known as the fourth or last of the Four Asramas. Although this class designation was a much later development, in .Upanisadic materials pre-dating Buddhism mention is made of a variety of wandering (Parivr~i-jaka) groups including Sanny~sins as well as Bhikkhus and others. These groups shared certain characteristics which would probably class them as a cult-sect group including an initiation ritual, allegiance to a teacher (Satthh) and his teaching (Dhamma), and subsistence by" begging or alms-seeking as a sign of world-renuncia-" tion. The beginnings of Buddhist monasticism are rooted in the soil of the tradition of these wandering almsmen; consequently, the eremitic monk typical of the earliest 1Sukumar Dutt, Buddhist Monks and Monasteries in India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), p. 24. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 523 stratum of Buddhism has remained .the highest ideal, especially in. the Therav~ida countries of Ceyloh and Southeast Asia;We can imagine the organizational form of early Buddhism to be something-olike the following: the Buddha after his enlightenment wandered about the area ofnorthern India known as Magadha teachifig the truth he had'disco~)ered at his enlightenment; many were attracted b~ his teaching and became his' disciples; together they formed not an actual group with a particular locus but ai~ idealized community ("Bhikkhu-sangha of the Four Quarters") b~und together by~all~egiance to a common teacher and his Dhamma. The eremitic nature of the "early Buddhist community did not mean that they renounced contact with lay society,:~ On the contrary, the very fact of being almsmen meant they were depeiadent on the lay community for their physical well-being. Above all, the, followers of the Buddha's Dhamma were to seek out'that environment where they~co~ald best pursue their spiritual cultivation. AsP the Van.apattha Sutta 'puts it; monks should "dwell in a forest or ~ui't it, or dwell anywhere in ~i village, a township or a country, according as such dwelling is conducive'to his spiritual cultivation or n~ot.2" ~ The practices of the wanderihg truth-seekers included'one abetting the develop-ment of cenobitic habits, namely, the-three-inonth rain-retreat (X)assh~isa) during th~ monsoon' rains. Because of the difficulty of traveling about at this time congregations of monks wotild come- tbgether in temporary dwellings; perhaps in caves oi" residences donated by wealthy l~ndholders. D~ring this time particular forrhs of collective life graduall3~ emerged including the recital of a confessional of "faith" called the Patimbkkha° reconstructed 'from the P~ili" Dhammap~da as, "Forebearance or Patience is the highest~kind of penance -hnd Nibbana is decl~ted to be the highest. (object) by the -Buddhas - for he is never a mendicant who hurts others and he is not a'Samana who molestS: others. Abstinence~ from all evils, accumulation of all that~is good, and purification of one's own mind - this is the injunction of the Buddhas.''3 Other group cer~monies during~the rain-retreats~must have included initiation into the Bhikkhu-sangha and the Kathinaor presentation 6f new robes at the conclusion of the retreat. This period-~lso saw the b~eginning bf an oral ti'aditi0n in which -" teachings of the MaSter were'-memorized in particular settings and with sufficient hanemonic devices to insure their proper retention. Monastic life at this stage still largely emulated the,'mendicant ideal and ~t the conclusion of the three-month period the Bhikkhus went their own ways. As one might expect, however, what was intended to" be originally on13~ a temporary dwelling became more and more permanent. Thus, the ,h, wisa and ~,rama originally ¯ proposed" for limited use were transformed by degrees4nto year-round residential dwellings. There are various illtistrhtions of this' transformation in the P~li texts such as the distinction between monks with a more or less permanent residence at a particular center-(~,wisik~a) and those who came to reside there only temporarily. This trarisition probably.took place within two hundred years after the decease of ¯ the Buddha. The Bhikkhu-sangha becoming a semi-permanent and permanent establishment, obviously necessitated more elaborate living rules. The Patimokkha, initially a °confession of faith in the' Buddha's Dhamma, gradually' became a set of'rul~s. Eventually th~se were standardized into 227 in the Theravada canon although other 2Majjhima NikS.ya, 17. 3Dutt, Budclhidt Monks, p. 66. 524 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 references indicate that earlier lists contained fewer regulations. In sum, the Buddha'st.Truth or Dhamma was now complemented by rules of discipline or Vinaya. As Dutt so succinctly states it, the purpose of this code of discipline ". was ~to unite the Sang,ha on a new basis - not as of old on Dhamma alone and by affirmation and confession of faith in the injunctions (Sasana) of the Dhamma, but on a recoghized and accepted rule and standard of living for monks.''4 The Patimokkha,~while the heart of the monks' discipline, was encased in a body of "law" known as Vinaya. Probably the most impo~rtant a.spect of this law is that the Buddha is made the sole basis of authority. Hence, the Book of Discipline or Vinaya Pitaka contains many rules and regulations which gain the status of law by being promulgated by the Buddha in episodic sequence. With the evolution and elaboration of a unique communal law, the Bhikkhu-sangha became more and more a distinct entity both, in the sense, that it .was dis_tinguished from other Parivr~ijjaka groups such as the Jains and also as a distinct social entity to be afforded the same political protection as other aggregates within the body politic of ancient India. The wandering almsmen were no longer, in fact, the earlier typical follower of the Buddha, nor was the "Bhikkhu-Sangha of the Four Quarters" bound together only by a common faith, a practicable ideal. The Sangha was established as separate and distinct monk-settlements, in large part as a consequence of growth and maturity. Some of th( factors demanding the establish-ment of permanent monasteries included: a probationary period of training before ordination lasting up to ten years; the development of an exegetical and scholastic tradition demanding on-going centers of scholarship ;, and . the continu~ation and development of collective rites and ceremonies,s This did not mean that the mendicant ideal was rejected nor did it mean that this ideal was not practiced by some. However, Buddhism in India prospered in temples ~ and monasteries and continued to exercise a considerable influence in India through such great universities as Naland~i, long after it had been virtually assimilated into non- Buddhist traditions. - The Bhikkhu was the bearer of Buddhism to other parts of Asia - Ceylon and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, China, Korea and Japan. Many diverse forms evolved; yet the monk and monastery in varying manner of cultural dress have never lost their central place. They continue to be the embodiment of the universal truths and ideals of the Buddha and, historically, they have continued as the principal preserver of Buddhist culture. Throughout much of Asia where Buddhism spread the monastery became a massive landholder, engaging ~he monk in many of those very tasks the early Bhikkhus in India had renounced. Yet, at the same time, monasteries degeloped into some of the finest educational institutions in Asia and also afforded quiet retreats where, those who sought.most seriou.sly toemulate the Buddha-ideal practiced various forms of contemplation and meditation. Today in Asia these generalizations are still largely t~.ue. In Southeast Asia, for example, one finds monastic centers which include many ritualistic and cultic functions but which also house Bhikkhu universities and have rows of small cells where the most dedicated monks seek seriously to experience the Truth "seen" by the Buddha. It is.true ttiat the monk is becoming involved in politics (e.g., Vietnam, Ceylon, Burma) and that he is being trained in a variety of community development 4Ibid,, p. 71, 5 lbid,, p. 92. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 525 skills (e.g., Thailand); however, it is also true that in some areas there has been renewed interest in the practice~ of Buddhist meditation both among monks and laymen. In Japan the monastic ideai has been continued by various Buddhist sects but-none has been more important than Zen-shu. In Zen some of the themes of Buddhist monasticism as it developed in India underwent additional transforma-tion. In particular, Zen came to stress the~impottance of work and service in the mundane and practical aspects ~f'life. Many students of Zen account for this particular emphasis in Zen as a consequence of the practical attitude of the Chinese mind and draw such distinctions as that of D. T. Suzuki's: "In India the monks Ere mendicants; when they meditate they retire into the quiet corner from worldly Cares; and inasmuch as they ~are supported economically by their secular devotees, they do not propose to work in any menial employment such as Chinese and Japanese monks are used to. ,6 Even though one can hardly, dispute the transforma-tion that Buddhism underwent in China an.d.Japan, this particular distinction is, we believe, overemphasized. Monks in Therav~ida countries also perfqrm manu~il labor such as housekeeping chores around the monastery alth0.ugh w.6rk probably does not have the same degree of "sanctity" Dr. Suzuki claims for Zen Buddhism. It must also be pointed out thai mendicancy is also prac.ticed by Zen monks to a limited extent and still remains one of th~ ideals of the monastic life. Whereas Zen may differ from Therav~ida forms of Buddhism to the degree in which it ac.cepts the mundane world, the centrality of meditation (Zazen) for Zen seems to be a radicalization of the practice of meditation in Theravfida monastic-ism. If the practice of meditation in Therawida monasteries in S. E. Asia were compared with Rinzai Zen monasteries in Japan, one would conclude that meditation in Zen monasticism is both more important and more rigorous. It is also interesting to note that Zazen forms part of the p~:obationary or testing period for the Zen monk, whereas in Theravfida Buddhism the typical monk has probably° practiced little or no meditation. In the first portion of this essay we have attempted to make some generalizations about the foundation of Buddhist monasticism as well as various aspects of monastic life. Important observations have, ind~e~i, been omitted; however, one concluding remark must not be left out. The Buddhist monk and monastery are not qnly important as embodiments of the ideals of Buddhism or as the principal bearers of Buddhist culture. They are of principal religious benefit to the layman both as ~ symbol of an ideal as well as a type of.repository of merit. In Therav~ida countries, for example, the services performed by the layman for the monk are a principal means of earning merit and in Japan the model to which every Zen monk commits himself is that of the compaSSionate Bodhisattva whose mercy (Ka'runfi) extends to all sentient beings. It is~ true, as observers of Asian religions point out, that monasticism and Buddhism go hand in hand; however, neither in its historical development in India nor in its present form in Southeast Asia or Japan, can Buddhist monasticism be thought of simply as a means of withdrawn life for the single-minded pursuit of spiritual goals. Such a picture is true neither to ideal nor historical forms of Buddhist monasticism. 6Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (New York: Evergreen, 1961), p. 316.' Review for Re!igious, Volume 31, 1972/4 II A monk is a man who has been called by th~ Holy Spirit to relinquish the cares, desires and ambitions Of other men, and devote his entire - life to seeking God.7 In the Christian tradition the monastic life in all 6"f its varied forms has continually presented itself as the truest response to Jesus' radical demand th'at one break with the "world" - its ~mores, a.ttitudes~ and institutions - and devote himself to God and His kingdom. The d~bate Continues wi{hin the Christian tradition'.as to the righ,tness of this claim¯ There are equally good reasons for assuming that Jesus meant to teach an attitude.of mind and not specific actions bye. means of vivid examples such as his commar~d to the rich young man to "sell all~ that you'possess and give it to the poor" (Mt 19:21). Whatever the present judgment of Biblic~al exegetes a'nd theologians, the early Church was of the firm opinion thai J~sus' word~ were to b~ taken as counse!ing a specific lifestyle which included ch~istity and poveroty - for th~ l~ew, if not for 'the many. " This early Christian asc.,,eticism was practiced within the local community and was a matter of'individual lnltlatwe. Every congregation most l!kely had its virgins, continent males, and dedioated widows who participated in thEsocial and liturgical life as far as their asceticism allo~ved. Their renunciaiion was frequently accom-panied by charitable works and care'of the poor. Some of the sterne'f ascetics b'uilt hermitages" near their rill,ages or lived in abandoned tombs~ off the outskirt~'°of towns. They' continued as part of the comm'unity by w.orking in the fields for hire and using their ~arnings to 6uy food and give alms. Inclusi who were-l~cked. ¯ . o in cells were, of course, dependent upon the Cdmmunity for all heeds. ¯ During the latter half of th6 third cent'ury A. D. a radical altera'ti6n'of the asc6tic ideal took place, with the result that Christian monasticism' was born. Men felt it" was no longer possible to remain within society or the Church and totally to devote themselves to the ascetic ideal. The Desert and not the City "offered a proper environment for the s.truggle for spiritual perfection. I.ncreas~ing numbers of individuals forsook society, farhilie.s, and friends to flee into the desolate deserts of Egypt and elsewhere.o T~h.ey sought solitudd. Thus the ascetic became a monk (monos = alone). The life of these first monks, the'Desert Fathers, focused on'foui"points: the isolation of the hermit cell; severe bodily asceticism, ofte~ile.aving th.e body. met6 skin and bones; striving to attain a state of continuous'prayer and devotion; ahd engagement in work, usually "simple tasks such as plaiting palm leaves and weaving baskets. In all of this the obje~l~'was to reduce bodily needs and the Z'materiality" of human existence, with a consequent enhancement of the '~spifitual" nature of man. The idea of work has playe.d, a constant and important role in Christian monasticism, whethdr eremitic of cenobitic. The early monks had no intention "of-becoming mendicants o~ depend.e*ht~ upon gifts in any wa3~. it was a niatter of pride that they lived I~y~the work of their hands. In ' the 'cenobitic i"cbmm~nities of 7Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York: F~rrar, Strahs and Cudahy, 1957), p. vii. ~This portion of the paper ~s particularly indebted to studies by three Benedictine scholars: Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University, 1961); Cuthbert Butler, Benedictine Monachism (2nd ed.; London: Longmans, 1924); and David-Knowles, From Pachomius ro Ignatius (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966). See also H. B. Workman, The Evolution o3~ the Monastic ldeal (London: Epw'orth, 1913). ~ Review for Religious, Volum~ 31, 1972/4 527 Pachomius, Basil, and Benedict work continued to have an important rble, both as an ascetical discipline and a~ a~means for- the support of the community. For Basil the operation of schools, orphanages, hospitals, ~and. other institutions of service provided monks the opportunity' to exercise the virtue of charity beyond ttie bounds of the monastic community. 'Today, as in the medieval period', the "work" of Benedictines varies greatly from the manual labor in the'~'fields in which the barliest Benedictines were engaged; it extends to te'aching,omiSsion work, scholarly researclf, work in arts and crafts, or even pastoral care. It is in the area of"work" that ~some of the ambiguity of the monastic, vocation is revealed, In working to support themselves, the desert hermits sought to be independent~ yet they weie dependent upon the very cities from which they had,fled, for there the goods they made were sold. Likewise, the ,."work" of Benedictines often must qarry them beyond the bounds of the monastic .enclosure, an act which.sets up,a tension with the fundamental vow of stability and the intention to flee the world to seek only God in theY"paradise" of the monastery. ~ . 'The new monastic movement shows, several characteristics associated with sect-type movements by sociologists of religion. The founder,of the monasti~ life was~ not Jesus, the founder of the religion. His teachings contain passages which were isolated and interpreted as. calling for the :monastic life, but the man who stands as the "founding father" ~and archetypal monk is St. Antony (2617-356). Athanasius.' Life of St. Antony was decisive, in promoting and shaping the monastic ideal in. East and West.8 At a time when the Church was establishing the.three,fold norm of Scripture, episcopate, and creed we find in the monastic movement an attenuated use of Scrfpture. It is_cited, but in a fragmented~ proof-text manner. Otherwise, it functions very much as a "sacred" object, memorized in.toto as an ascetic act of pious deed; at other times invoked, via the singing of Psalms, as, a charm against the evil demons. The locus of authority was not situated in, a written text and its interpretation. It was, rather, vested in certain charismatic figures: the elder monks of the desert,especially St. Antony. The .~'Fathers" are sources of life and knowledge, Frequently in the Sayings of the Fathers a would-be disciple approaches a master with the request "Speak to me a word; Father, that I may live." .The tradition upon which the monks relied was of their own creation: The Sayings of the Fathers contains sayings and brief anecdotal narratives of the triumphs and tragedies of the monastic vocation.9 Circulating orally, the sayings and narratives embodied the norms of the movement, such as they were, in, a graphic and easily remembered form. Throughout the history of Christian monastic-ism these sayings along with the. eyewitness account of Egyptian monasticism by Palladius (Lausiac History) and the Conferences of Cassian,1 o claiming to represent the Eastern fathers, provided one of the touchstones to which successive .monastic reformers have° referred. In the West the other touchstones were the Rule of St. Benedict and the practices of the "apostolic community" in Jerusalem in. the firSt years as described by the Book 6f the Acts of the Apostles - especially the 8Trans. by Robert T. Meyer, in "Ancient Christian writers," v. 10 (Westminster: Newman, 1950). 9Owen Chadwick, trs., Western Asceticism, "Library of Christian Classics,',' v. 12 (Phila-del1p0hLiaau: sWiaces Htmisitnosrtye, rt,r S19o 5b8y) ,R popb. e1r3t -T1.8 M9 ewyiethr, e"xAcnelclieenntt i Cnthrroidstuiacnti oWn.riters," v. 34 ('Westminster: Newman, 1965). On Cassian, see O. Chadwick, John Cassian (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1968). 528 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 common sharing of goods. Never in the early period does it seem that Jesus was claimed as an ideal.monk or the direct founder of a monastic community. The eremitic life remains to this day the ideal monastic vocation in the Eastern Church, where monasteries may resemble a conglomerate of individual cells rather than the communal facilities of a Western Benedictine house. Very early in the history of the monastic movement the rigors of isolation and the loneliness of separation were mitigated by the formation of loose and informal communities in the Egyptian desert. Indications are that the first communities were made up of the hermitages of disciples built near the cell of a particularly renowned desert ascetic. The creation of community was incidental in this case. The monks were there $o gain instruction from the master and then set off on their individual quests for spiritual perfection. Nevertheless, the way was paved for a new form of the monastic life, a form in which the individual monk would be isolated in the withdrawn community rather than in personal separation. The monastic enclosure, not the hermit's cell, gradually became the symbol of the aloneness of the monk. It was the aloneness of a community of individuals committed to a life of asceticism, meditation, prayer, work, and finally, committed to obedience to a Rule of life. The first community organized with a rule was that of Pachomius, who had lived as a hermit, but soon realized the benefits, psychic, spiritual, and physical, of a monastic community. The Rule prescribed living conditions, dress, obedience to the abbot, communal worship to be celebrated weekly, and a system of.houses grouping monks following a single trade in a single dwelling. Work continued to be an integral part of the monastic life. The cenobitic form of life was further developed and refined by St. Basil, who like Pachomius had lived as a hermit. He rejected that life as not allowing for o.the practice of Christian charity. He built monasteries near cities so that the monks might serve society through the operation of schools, orphanages, poor relief, and other works of charity. The Basilian Rule dominates the monastic life in the Eastern Church today, with less emphasis on service, to the community. It mitigated the ascetic rigors of the desert ide.al but provided that a monk might, with the consent of his abbot, leave the community to pursue spiritual perfection as a hermit. Today many eastern monasteries have hermit cells attached. In some 'cases the monks leave food for hermits li~,ing in near-by caves. The Rule of St. Benedict is generally accepted as the most perfect presentation of the cenobitic ideal. Originally written only for the 'local monastery of which Benedict was abbot, it gradually became the dominant Rule for monastic life in the Western Church during the Middle Ages. ~While it enjoined the traditional practices of chastity and poverty, the Rule required three explicit vows by the novice upon acceptance by the¯ community:., obedience, stability, and conduct of lifeJ~ Obedience meant obedience to the abbot in all things and to the Rule which laid down the conditions of life in the monastic community. Stability meant that the monk was to remain a member of the local monastic community which he entered upon profession of his vows. Conduct of life meant a continual struggle to acquire virtues and eradicate vices. From the ascetic point of view Benedict's Rule was moderate. Excessive mortification was frowned upon and discipline was focused especially in the idea of obediefice, which was the outer manifestation of true hum1 iIlsietey Bauntlde ro, Bf etnheed ircetinneu Mnocniaactihoisnm ,o Cfh .s IeXl.f-will.12 These latter two attitudes ~,ere the 12Ibid., p. 140. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 529 essence of asceticism for Benedict. The roots of the Benedictine monastery were set deep .in the soil of the land upon which it rested. The vow of stability was a major contributing factor, so that the monastic enclosure became an enduring fact of the~ local countryside from generation to generation. Monks were not to wander about constantly seeking ever-more-suitable spiritual or physical environments. The agricultural base of the monastery's life also strengthened this bond with the land. Originally, work in the fields, workshops, and other occupations was meant to make the monastery self-sufficient and independent. Ideally the monastic enclosure encompassed the fields, sheep-runs, mill, orchards, brewery, and all other necessary appurtenances to provide for the brethren, who were to leave the monastery only under extreme circumstances. Dependence upon the land within the feudal structure of Medieval Europe often brought this ideal into .conflict with a far different reality. In light of the obligations which went with the possession: of land, monasteries and parti-cularly abbots often found themselves owing knight service to nobles, administering justice in courts, collecting tolls, and generally participating in the feudal structure as any other land-holder might do. The holdings and consequently the corporate wealth ~of many houses increased due to the pious practice of giving property to monasteries in order to obtain forgiveness of sins and to insure prayers for one's self and family. Central to Benedictine life is the insistence upon the community as the essence of monastic life. The monk enters a community of like-minded men who have been "converted" from the world to monastic life. His life bounded by the enclosure, the monk shares all aspects of his life: meals are eaten in common, worship is in common, and monks sleep ino one large room, with younger monks interspersed among elder brethren. Such a life stands in direct antithesis to the eremitic ideal of the Egyptian desert monks. There are three primary activities: manual labor; celebration of the liturgy; and devotional reading. Benedict considered the liturgy the most important of the three; nothing was to interfere with it, but all activities claimed proportionate shares of the monk's time. Later developments stressed ones of the three at the expense of the others. The abbey of Cluny (tenth century) so extended the length of the liturgical offices that little time was left for anything else, and the function of the Benedictine monk was taken to be that of chanting the liturgy - and in doing this the monk carried out a religious act in6umbent upon all, but impossible to fulfill for many because of other obligations. The monks prayed for all men. The Cluniac monks were free to pray for they had serfs to work in the fields. In.the twelfth century the Cistercians sought to restore the austerity of the primitive Benedictine ideal, reducing the liturgy, adopting a plain style of life and architecture, returning to the practice of labor by the,monks, and isolating the cloister. In urging devotional reading, Benedict planted a seed which grew into a far different' plant than he intended, for Benedictinism has tended to be an erudite monasticism. Benedict meant for his monks to be literate for they had to .read Scripture and the fathers and to participate in the liturgy. But he never envisioned them as scholars: Reading was to be devotional and focused on meditation and personal spirituality. In the cultural chaos accomPanying the decay of Roman institutions after the fifth century monasteries not only were islands of calm in an often turbulent world, they also were the only centers of learning, They preserved Scripture and commented upon it; they also preserved the Latin classics. Monastic devotion to learning made possible the founding.of Western culture upon.the basis 530 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 of the literature of classical antiquity in later times. This was no small contribution for the cloistered life to have made to Western civilization. ~ Monks who were missionaries and monks who were scholars bore the burden of Christianizing and of educating Europe during the Carolingian epoch. More recently the Congregation of St. Maur (17th century) produced some of the great ecclesiastical scholars of the period and edited hundreds of ecclesiastical texts. Presently, one thinks of such eminent Benedictine scholars as the late Cuthbert Butler, Jean Leclercq, and David Knowles. They represent vital, personal devotion to the Benedictine ideal and. dedication to scholarship that knows no superior. Thus faLwe have said little of the role of contemplation and meditation in Benedictine life. At times it has been obscured by other "active" endeavors: missionary work, educational enterprises, almshouses, hospitals, farming, and the like. Yet these remain incidental to the primary goal of the monastic vocation, which is the contemplative quest. Benedictine monasticism had .and continues to have a strong contemplative tradition. Yet Benedictine practice has united the "active" life with the "contemplative" life of withdrawn reading, prayer, and meditation in such a way that the Black Monks appear to.be more "active" than contemplative. The best expression of the contemplative life is found .in two twelfth-century reform movements which remain vital orders within the Catholic Church: the Cistercians and Carthusians. Both originated in an upsurge of spiritual renewal during a period which has been characterized as open to new experiments and fresh initiatives. The Cistercians sought to re-establish the strict observance of the Benedictine,Rule, without any of the laxity, amplification of the liturgy, pursuit of secondary aims such as education, or involvement with secular society and government which characterized muchof Benedictine pra6tice in the medieval period. The life was, and is, one of simplicity, frugality, isolation of the monastic enclosure, and dedication to meditation and the contemplative life, set within the context of the common life of the Benedictine Rule. It is within this tradition that the late Thomas Merton followed his vocation. The Carthusians returned to an earlier ideal in their renewal of spirituality. The Carthusian enclosure is called a 'desert' and rightly so, for the Egyptian hermit tradition inspired it. The sides of the cloister are lined with individual hermitages; each monk lives in a small two-storied building with an enclosed garden, a workshop, and ~;alk-way on the.ground floor, and with a cell above for study, sleep,,and private meditation. The Carthusian spends by far the larger part of the day in isolation, working at a trade, praying, reading, or ~vriting. Thrice daily the brethren gather for common worship and on set occasions the community goes for walks in the countryside, gathers for discussion, or.shares a common meal; the isolatiofi of the desert is real, but it is wisely mitigated. Of all the orders of the Catholic Church, Carthusians alone can make the claim to be "never reformed, because never deformed." It is within these monasteries that one finds contempla-tion pursued most fervently within the Christian tradition. The Carthusians, like all monks, engage in work, as individuals and as a community. Earlier we observed that the monastic life now plays an attenuated role in the life. of the Church. One must return to the Middle Ages to find a presence and influence of the monastic vocation~ equal!rig in any way the present state of Buddhism. Nevertheless, the present surge of vitality within Christian monasticism must not be overlooked. Monasticism may be a phenomenon on the fringe, 6ut it is a vital fringe. Thomas Merton and the community of the Abbey of Gethsemanirepresent a renewal of Cistercian spirituality, while the bold experiments in art, architecture, Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 531 educ~ition, and liturgy at St. John's Abbey, Colleg~ville', Minnesota, demonstrate the vitality of the BenediCtine ideal in several areas. Monastic life" on the European Continent continues to bear ::fruit in education, scholarship, music, and spiritual renewal. One thinks of the leadership ~f Downside Abbey in England; the scholarship at Solesmes arid Beuron, Belgium; the Abbey of La PiErre qui Vire, France, where Benedictines of the 'Primitive Observance combine art ~cholarship with the creative artistic 'c'i'aftsmanship of L 'Atelier du Coeur MeUrtry; and" La Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the carthu~sian Order, where the silent life of meditation has again~ been'restored. ~ : In our examination of~the .historical roots and some salient features of monastic-ism in Buddhism and Christianity, no attempt has been made to force comparisons. Nevertheless, in examining the historical record impartially one notes some striking, if obvious, similarities. In,,both:,Buddhism and Christianity the monastic life claims to represent an id6al form of .religious commitment~ In Christianity it offers a response to Jesus' call to forsake all for God and His Kingdom; in .Buddhism, the monastic community affords the ideal milieu for pursuing the highest goal, namely, Nirvfina. " ~ In both traditions eremitic and cenobitic form~ of the monastic.life exist. The ,more primitive form of the monatic.life is that of the single individual, isolated in a hermitage (Christianity)or wandering-as ,a mendicant (Buddhism).~An immediate distinction which springs to mind is the differing attitudes toward mendicancy in the early traditions. Buddhist monasticism began as a mendicant order; Christian monasticism in its eremitic and cenobitic forms strongly rejected begging and alms; monks were more likely to give alms and minister to the poor than to be the objects of such a ministry. Only with the advent of an urban economy and the need for a new style of renunciation and apostolic ministry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did mendicancy become an expression of poverty - and with that a new form of renunciation was formed in Christianity: the mendicant orders, which have much in common with the monastic orders, but deserve to be distinguished carefully from them as well. The necessity for rules governing the common life of monastic communities led to the development of sets of discipline which, in turn, were partially responsible for the emergence of different monastic orders. Ther~ are certain typological similarities between the degree of tension existing between the monastic commu-nity and the secular world. In neither Christianity nor Buddhism, however, can monasticism be viewed in isolation from its cultural context. On the contrary, in both religions the monastery has been at one point or another in history, a principal bearer of the cultural tradition in which it was enmeshed. The relationship of the ¯ monastery to the broader religious tradition with which it is identified is a complex phenomeflon. However, in both traditions there is a strong tendency to associate the monastic life with the truly religious life. In Buddhism, although some of the earlier scrit3tures (e.g., Thera and Therigathas) testify to the realization of Nirvfina by laymen and women, the monk soon became the religieux par excellence. Also in Indian, Buddhism the monastery came. to represent or be associated with the main stream of the tradition. In ,Christianity there is no exclusive claim to salvation through monastic profession, but in the medieval period the monastic vocation was the only one judged to be "religious"; all other occupations, including that of the 532 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 parish.priest, were secular, i.e., involved with the world. The priest, while set apart from the laity by his sacramental powers, was nevertheless one. with them in this particular: neither he nor they had been "converted" from life in the world to life in the monastic habit. It must be said, however, that in Christianity the monastic life continues tO claim superiority in its fidelity to Jesus' message. Both Christian and Buddhist monasticism exhibited certain tendencies associated with sectarian m. ovements at the point of their origin. In both, the inonastic life was integrated into a wider'tradition, with more or less success, thus allowing for diverse expressions of religio~us experience and commitment. It remains true, however, that in Buddhism monasticism has remained to this day a substantial bearer of the core of the tradition. This can be illustrated in many ways, but perhaps it will suffice within the limits of this essay to point out that the archetypical monk for Buddhism is the Buddha himself, whereas for Christianity it.is St. Antony, not Jesus. Although in this study we have examined only the origins and some aspects of ~the, development of monasticism .East and West, our concern is not merely historical. Rather, both implicit and explicit in our study is the value of the vision which inspired the monastic ideal in both Buddhism and Christianity. In this age of rapid, change in which the moral values and religious truths of an earlier day are being challenged and crumbling, there is a strong possibility that the well-spring for religious renewal: will not arise from secular models but from the most "radically" religious. Should this be the case, the precedent of monastic life East and West will offer an important stimulus and suggest patterns for lives of holiness. PROTESTANT AND ECUMENICAL RELIGIOUS LIFE [Editor's note: The following three essays originally appeared in Unit~ chr~tienne, February 1972, and are presented here in English translation with~the kind permtssion of the~editor of Unit~ chrktienne and'of the respective authol's. Specific page references to the issue of Unit~ chr~tienne will be given at the beginning of each essay. The English translation of the threat essays was done by R. F. Smith, S.J., of the.~Department bf Historical Theology; D~vinity School of St. Louis University; 220 North Spring Avenue; St. Louis, Missouri.] THE SISTERS DEACONESSES OF REUILLY By Sister Elizabeth~, Deaconess of. Reuilly 4, [This article appeared on pages 30-40 of Unit~ chr~tienne, February 1972. Sister Elizabeth's Address is: 95, rue de Reuilly; 75 Paris 12, France. I ~ The Community of the Deaconesses of Reuilly came into ex.ist.ence in P.aris in 1841. The Community was born as a small thing, but its date deserves to-be remembered because it represented the first attempt at a renewal of ~om. munit3~ life in French Protestantism. The beginnings of this foundation were not able to flc;urish perfectly in the nineteenth century, for the centu~ was too deeply haark6d " by confessional tensions. But with' the ecumenical movement, there cam~ a mbre favorable time. In its deep attachment to.its origins, the Community is untiringly seeking in its origins the meamng of its calling and the secret'of the renewals which pr.epare, and hasten "the coming of the kingdom of ~God." THE ORIGINS The historical events in which the birth of Reuilly is inscribed were (1) essentially, the religious Awakening at the beginning" of the century and (2) secondarily, the social crisis opened by the'industrial era. The spiritual motivations that were involved were (1) an ardent thi~rsting for holiness anda consecrated life and (2) a vision of the Church structured by obedience. Intertwined with all these were the providential circumstances in which the hand of God could be seen=The vocation of the founders (Antoine Vermeil and Caroline Malvesin), their meeting, their mutual accord, the astonishing receptivity of the evangelical Parisian milieu, the finding oi~a favorable implantation site in the midst of the workers' section, the first apostolate of the sisters in the service of women who had just left prison. ¯ The Awakening" ., As Pastor G.Lagny ha's clearly shown,1 the Awakening which aroused.Protestant-ism at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a part of the general movement of Christian renewal which vivified the entire Church - and in a special inanner French Catholicism as it emerged from the trials of the Revolution and the Wars of the Empire. What came forth' was a religion of,the heart in reaction to the rationalism of the Century of the Enlightenment - a religion touched by an: affectivity that romanticism might make suspect, but it was full of spontaneity and warmth and rich in works of all kinds and in innumerable sacrificeS, It was an authentic movemenVof the Spirit. '° 1 In his 1958 work Le R~veil de 1830 ~ Paris et les origines des Diaconesses de Reuilly. "534 Review for Religious,,Volume 31, 1972/4 For the Protestant Awakening historians give a precise date and place 6f origin: 1817 in Geneva with roots, however, going back into the 18th century. If th~ Awakening was begun in Geneva by Robert Haldane, a Metho'di's~ from S6otland, the t~rrain had been prepared by a small Moravian community which had been frequented ,by theological-students. Thus it was that at the origins of the ~w°akening, are found the~ Methodists, those incomparable evangelizers, and the eMoravians,-apostles of the common life and precursors of Christian unity. -- . A native of Nimes and Sprung from old Huguen.ot ~tock, Antoine Vermeil (born in 1799) was a student at Geneva during the years of the Awakening; and his piety was deeply affected by it. Having become pastor, his resolutely evangelical faith was joined to a grefft love of the Reformed Church. For sixteen years at Bordeauxhe 'showed himself gifted in preaching, in teaching, in the care of souls as well as in the coordination of multiple apostolic and charitable activities. In the latter, however, he lamented a lack - the absence "of Sisters of Charity who do so,much good in the Roman Church.''2 Accordingly, there formed in him the idea of one day restoring in the Churches of the Reform "fe'mi]aine religibus orders.'~ Caroline Malvesin was born at Marseilles in 1806. From her childhood her hbfirt ~vas drawn to" the poor and tb children!As an adolesCent, she drear~ed of involving - ~her friends in a life entirely consecrated to God in the service, of~ thos~ who s,uffered most'.'Bnuott h°i"n g" m '" P r:ote'stant"i s.m. corresponded to her asp~: r"atlons." I't "was very ° sad," ~he s.aid,, " t o see no way of entering the service of the Lord." "Since my twentieth year I regretted nothing more than the fact of not being able.to with what joy I would have submitted myself to a rule, to a Christia'n discipline." Later as a teacher at Bordeaux,)Caroline was linked in deep friendship'to Fas[br Vermeil. In 1839 under the influence of the preaching of the great apostle Adolphe Monod, her Christian life was totally renewed. The breath of the Awakening touched her.:The peace she had-.Iong desired at last filled her, soul with a joy and a power that she had not previously experienced. The Holy Spirit rekindled in her j'the ,need to consecrate herself entirely to. the service of the Lord." This need ;'devohred her.". . A Thirst for Consecration ,, In the 4th century when the Roman Empire was at peace, monasticism had appeared spontaneously as a sort of substitution for martyrdom°.'Verme.il did not hesitate to invoke the same argument in favor of a rebirth of religious life in French Protestantism of the 19th century:~ "For three centuries the agitations of the Church under the cross were able to satisfy these needs of the heart and of the expansive faith which seeks self-immolation and sacrifice; but today it is'necessary to open another outlet for them.''3 In the absence of such an outlet, many souls " "will be led toask of other sources the means to satisfy their:.thirst" (that is, they would be attracted to Roman Catholicism)~ -, At the same time the missionary impulse offered possibilities of herbic commit: ment to.Christians in love with the Absolute. Caroline Malvesin introspected herself on this point but found that her calling lay elsewhere: "Reflecting on the pressing needs of our own people, it seemed to me that the good needing to be done was Expressions taken from the founders in their own language are placed within quotation marks; the expressions are ta keii from their corresponce and from a number of brochures." Brochure distrtbuted July 30, 1841. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 535 just as great around us. ; I believe that each of us has his own interior intimation which leads him to recognize the work fitted to himself." Then this cry sprang from l~er: "For myself, I feel that my work will be to strive~by the gra~e of the Lor-d to hasten that blessed moment when there will be but one flock guided by one shepherd." A Vision of an Obedience-structureed Church At that time the Reformed Church oflFrance, which had remained united during the persecution, wa~ threatened with divisions. Deprived by the State of its national synod,:it lacked a center of authority, The separation between the Reformed and the Lutherans (essentially a regional reality'except in Paris) was not the cause. Rather, the real divisions were at the very heart of the Church. On the .level of dogma a gap had opened up and.hostilities existed between the liberal and the "orthodox" tendencies. And on the ecclesiologi-cal level the partisans of free churches (that is, separated from the State) were opposed to Christians who remained devoted to the "national" Church. And almos~ everywhere Methodists were opening their "chapels" under the shadow of the large church buildings. During 1840 Vermeil, a man of peace, was called to Paris in the hope that hl would be a conciliator. Once he had arrived, he was alarmed by the seriousness of the evil. It was then that he had the spiritual intuition that then began to come to realization. What was lacking to such a degree in Protestantism - each one's renunciation of his own will, the sense of authority in the Church, fraternal love - could be incarnated in the feminine order which he had been thinking about for a long time. "But in order that the goal be attained, there would have to be a vow of entire obedience." The "evangelical sisters of charity,!' animated by a spirit of openness, would pertain to all the Reformed communions (a truly ecumenical community before the word was even used) and would thereby be in the midst oL the divisions of the Church a leaven of unity and of a life hidden in Christ,- He wrote at once to his spiritual daughter, the humble teacher at Bordeaux. His ideas evoked a profound response in Caroline Malvesin. From this time on there began an ardent correspondence between the future founders.4 Animated by a genuine spirit of prayer, a sense of disappointment with regard to her own Church led Sister Malvesin to the vision of the Church of Christ in its totality and awakened her to the scandal of the division in the Church universal: "The .Roman Church has disfigured Christianity. but the Reform has also disfigured Christianity." "The more I, think of that project, the more I love it. I love it because of the great deeds that the Lord can grant us to do but al~o and above all because it is a step toward the fusion of the. Churches~ This is a gospel-authorized work that Protestantism has neglected.In applying oneself in a Christian way to the matter, it musf~be-acknowledged that the branches of the trees have been cut off too short and that thereby the traveler has been deprived of salutary fruits and of a greater amount of shade . will the time come when we will not use the words 'Protestants,' 'Catholics,' except to give thanks to the Lord that they no longer exist; when will the time come when the great Christian family will quench its thirst at the source of living water which springs up into life eternal?" 422 letters from February 6 to August 31 1841. 536 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 The Community Beyo~d a sympathetic reference to the "Sisters of Charity" and to the term deaconess borrowed from Biblical vocabulary (Rom 16:1), our founders borrowed nothing. They seem to have been ignorant of the patristic traditions, and they purposely kept away from Catholic sources in the supposition that they were blemished with errors and abuses. They intended to "have no other b~se than the gospel, no other foundation than Christ." Yet, remarkably, by a soft'of spiritual instinct they rediscovered the principles of traditional religious life: - Entire consecration of self to God by union with Christ." "Our Center is the One from whom comes the light; the Center of our captured wills is the Master. May each member derive her life from Jesus alone, her love from Jesus alone, her humility, her contentment, her renunciation, her abnegation, her spirit of sacrifice frorfi Jesus alone!" (Sister Malvesin, Letter to the Community, December 31, 1868). - .4 life of prayer: "My house will be called a house of prayer" was the text chosen by Antoine Vermeil when he opened the sisters' chapel.where twice a day the community would come together for praise and adoration. ~ " - .4 solemn commitment binding one to the service of the Lord)"My sister, do you ~feel penetrated by such a gratitude to God our Savior who has redeemed us at so large a cost that you are unshakably determined to consecrate to Him in the service of the Deaconesses that body and spirit of yours which belong to Him?" (textused from 1884). - Community: The vow of obedience grouped the community around the~sister superior. It included the stages 'of sister-aspirant and'of sister-n~vice before the attainment of the consecration as sister-deaconess. All remuneratiohs were for common use to be shared according to the needs of each. ~ '- "Evangelical poverty"." Antoine Vermeil gave the~ sisters as their rule the apostolic precept: "As long as we have food and clothing, let us be content with that" (! Tim 6:8). - The vision of unity: This vision was to make the community a demonstration of a reality which the Churches still needed. There wa~; however, one hesitation, and this in connection with lifelong consecrated celibacy which seemed too contrary to Protestant principles (though this was taken for granted rather than stated). The commitment of the sisters would be simply for two years and would be renewable indefinitely for the same term. Early Achievements, " Although, as we have seen, Sister Malvesin and Pastor Vermeil were preoccupied with the Situation of the Chuich, they were also tormented by the miseries in society at large. Their charity led them to~meet these miseries on all fronts, o ~ The first' act of the community, and this on the'very of day of its foundation, was the opening on the rue des 3-Sabres of a shelter for women leaving prison. (This was a consequence of the visit to Paris of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker mystic and apostle to prisons:) Thereafter the sisters began to seek' out the. poor who were numerous in the sector of Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The condition of the children- moral debase-ment~ and physiological misery - moved them deeply. They rented two places to take care of them - one for young girls in moral danger, the other for tubercular children. Sick adults also received the compassion of the sisters, and they opened for them an infirmary with eight beds. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 537 In 1844 a large piece of property v~as found on the rue de Reuilly. The shelter (supplemented by a section for adolescents), the two projects for.children, and the infirmary were easily accommodated there. And it was also possible for Sister Malvesin to realize there the educational work which she .had cherished in her heart. She opened the first school for mothers in the sector, the first Protestant primary school, and the first nursery. But her zeal did not stop with this. After the primary school, there was need for an apprenticehood center for young girls, evening courses in reading and writing for women, and an open library for the workers. The work of evangelizatio0 was also pursued in the sector e.specia!ly by means of a Sunday School which, brought together 150 children while Pastor Vermeil organized public gatherings. Soon the first sisters were asked for by the Province. Th~ey went, alone or in small groups, to take charge of orphanages, o~f hospitals, and of old age homes. All of this was undertaken in the Course of the first six years. One may regret this intense activity on the grounds that it compromised the formation of .the first novices and the deepening of the newborn community in prayer and in the religious life. As it turned out, the life of the community was not sufficient to justify the existence of the sisters-deaconesses,, their strange dress, and their "convent" on the rue de Reuilly. As far as Protestant opi.nion was concerned (an opinion that raged over the matter for the ten years from 18,46 to 1856), both liberal and conservative Pr,otestants found in this unwanted group a point of unexpected accord. TODAY- AND TOMORROW Because of the badly prepared Protestant milieu, during the first hundred years of the existence of the community, the aspect of religious life was deliberately played down, and this by the founders themselves in the trouble and sorrow of their consciences. Christian service was giv.en priority over the service of praise and over the building up of the ecumenical Body. But there always remained a number of living realities: - entire consecration of self to God, - the authority of the sister superior, and - a strong feeling of attachment to the spiritual family of Reuilly. And these were to be sufficient supports for the renewal actually going on at the present time.s In the years of the Second World War there came a new g~neration which, e~,en if it was not numerous at the beginning, was deeply desirous of communitarian life." And without downgrading social effectiveness or apostolic zeal, the yearning .for prayer grew. The ecumenical vision that had been lost for such a long time was recovered - and with the greatest joy. The restudying of the documents of its origins (especially the letters exchanged during the prefoundation period) en-couraged the Community to take up anew on its own responsibility the project of religious lif6 that had been insufficiently realized in the past. The appearance in contemporary Protestantism of cenobitic communities (Taiz6, Grand~hamp) was an immense encouragement. Finally - a~d this was a capital point - the theological renewal during the period 5This idea, along with a number of others, has been taken from the paper, La Communaui~ de Reuilly ~ la d~couverte de sa source monastique, presented to the Faculty of Theology of Strasbourg on March 17, 1966, by Sister Marie-Madeleine Handy, Sister of Reuilly. ~ 538 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 was'favorable ~6 communitarian qifd and provided it for the first time within 'the framework of Reformed doctrine a sufficient foundatiom The Theological Foundation Theological 'vigor was wanting in the°religious movement of the"19th century, centered as it was on" the sentiments 0fthe believer and on the needs of mankind. The great wave of the'Awakening which' urged so many women to an eritire consecration of themselves to God in celibacy and in ~ommunitarian life did not find in Europe thesuppgrt of a theology capable ofhnderpinning the life. Orily the Anglicans, nourished by the fathers of the Ctiurch, knew how to~ compose such a theology. The 20th century, on the other hand, recovered the vision of one Church, of the Church as the Body o~" Christ the members of ~,,hich, being organically bonded together, are in mutual intercommunion. Accordingly, this theological renewal along with the liturgical renewal and the ecumenical movemedt favored the blossoming of community life. The little'book of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Life Together, published at the end of the war, opened the way'~o a gre~t deal of reflection. Karl Barth recognized the place in the Church of regular communities alongside parish communities. Then there came the writings 'of Taiz~ and - less known but important for Reuilly - the thought of Louis Dali~re whose charismatic ecclesiology is completely oriented to the nearness of the kingdom of love and of the return of Christ. Theology restored baptism to the center .of all Christian life since it unites us to Christ. Accordingly, holiness no longer appeared a-s bound to the religious life as such but rather to the vow of baptism included in it; and the same could be said of the apostolate. God is the sovereign of His callings; His freedom differentiates them as it pleases; nevertheless, baptism assigns each Christian the same goal - holiness - and the same demand - witnessing. On the common basis of baptism, w~e ciar~d to reaffirm in all their plenitude the three commitments which traditionally have formed religious life' the communalty of goods, consecrated celibacy, and the acceptgnce of authority. The Community as a member of the Church is configured to the Church's image: Christocentric prayer, the sanctificatioi~ of time, unity in love, organic cohesion, dynam!sm of the Spirit, openness to the world in a great diversity of services. The theological movement in this period of the 20th century opened before us the .largest perspectives. : ° The community The essential has been said; t'he only thing left is to live it! T~o reestablish the contemplative dimension of our vocation and to restore integral community life have been our primary obJective~s; and thereby a,. new hierarchy of values became necessary. Through the adoption for daily prayer of the Office of Taiz6, the sisters entered into contact with the treasures of the universal Church and discovered the beauty of the liturgical year. A third time of common prayer was begun in the middle of the day; the Last SUpper memorial became frequent; more time was given to s~iritual retreat and to meditation on the word of God. All ~this was not easy to accomplish. And for most of us, engaged as we are in demanding works, there'is still' a searchihg for a balanc6 in the "mixed" life where Review for Religious, Volume 31, 19~72/4, 5,39~ the Divine Office and the service of the Church are the.,two aspects of the si.ngle service of God. Similarly, we have come to a better understanding of the sl~irit~al dim'ensions of the common life: "We do nbi enter community in ardor to have companionship but in order to give ourselves entirely to God. Before everything el.se the framework of common,life should help us to perseverance in interiori.ty. In place of sa.crificing.the values of communita*rian life in the name ,of the aposti~late, we realize that the radiating ~power of our service depends on the truth~and the love lived among us", (Sister Madeleine-Marie). o ~ .Daily encounter, revision of life, sharing, reflection t'ogether, ~study - it was neces~sary to find time for, all of these. It was also necessary to cease all niggardliness in the matter of the formation of the you~ng members; so too was it necessary tO reeducate the older members by continued religious, apostolic, or professional formation. But this, I think,_is the story of all the active congrega~tions of~our day. But there remains the necessity of, men~tioning matters that were problems peculiar to us. First of all, in the course of the last twenty years the com. munity of Reuilly has gradually~ separated its own identity from that of the works and institutions in which the sisters exercise ih~ apostolate. Moreover,. our statutes have been revised - still, however, imperfec.tly. Furthermore, we have choffen a qgllege of twelve sisters ~ with constant reference to the sister sup.erior.-7~.an.,d .have begun having assemblies of the community. Finally, we have devote._d the~ gre]tes~t attention to the formation of our novices; and we hav~ ~refashione~i- our liturgy, of consecration and the commitments theinselves in order tha~t ,t, ii~ey.may better express the truth of what we are. But we have not finished ali'ihis;.~'and this internal history of ours - always needing'to be reconsidered and never finished - is full'of meaning especially for those of us who are engaged in it. ~ Apostqli.c Commitment. It is a commonplace to remark t'hat we are living in ~a ti~ae of profoiand "change both iq the Church and in the world.,The present is po longer a'fixed thing but in total flux. We could speak of our apostolic engagement by enumerating its concretizations: hospitals, schools, homes for the aged,, parishes, byotherhoods, ov[rseas apbstolate, ecumenism, spiritual retreats, hostels, and so forth. Also we could justify our longstand!ng forms of the apostolate and the reasons for our new forms. But in reality we - like the rest of the Church - are m search of a new spirit. We" are in-progress, not knowing if our life's movement will succeed in one e~ndeavor and be frustrated in an.other. It is clear that in the works that were previously~ famil!.al but W.hich have now. become, in however small a way, true public services, the insertion o~" our~ sisters into the midst of numerous lay workers and the mode of the sisters' presence to'~ those whom they se rye there is in the process of thoroughgoing chg~ge. Wha~ is'the Christian character of such works and how should our witnessing be expressed in. them? Can the gospel _still pass muster and can it still transform a determined institutional milieu? Should the status of the sisters ev9lve towards, salaried. positions? These are difficult and profound problems for which a-solution can be reached only by spirits who are courageously.inve.ntive and, while ~ot losing their own identity, respectful of the vocation of each member of such works: sisters, lay ~.pe.r.sons,, technicians, Christians, agnostics. Is it possible o to attempt~ a common 540 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 project which-goes beyond the religious community without weakening the community and without denying the values that are proper to it? Will we receive the faith that moves such mountains, will we have enough love and enough humility? More than any other age, ours has need of stable places, houses, structures; do we "still know how to provide them? 'In parish work'as well as in the brotherhood apostolate, the position of the sisters it les~ complex and l~ss ambiguous. Parishes expect catechetical witnessing~ contemplative prayer and intercession can flower in the brotherhoods, These ministries are all openness, friendship, approach to people in their daily preoccupa-tions. Doubtless, however, these too pr~esent their own problems 6f insertion and of adaptation. The reasons for the sisters to be in a given milieu and the way of living the gospel there are questions that it is always necessary to ask. Beyond all others, the' real problem is always that of the gospel. How can the gospel be commuhicated to the people of our time? H6w can new modes of communicati6n be found without downgrading the word and without lessening charitable ~,ork? For a long time already the Community has been asking these que~stions. It is now fifteen years since we began our first attempts at "liturgical plays" for the celebration of great feastdays. It was with. astonishment thaVwe have seen our chapel filled with known and unknown friends. Then it became necessary to answer the appeals that °~ame from outside - from Paris or provincial parishes; in'these cases we have presented a cycle of eight days or more, thereby participating in ph~'bchial renewal and in evangelization. Finally, our modest plays as well as our audio-visual "montages" of various kinds became the messengers of our ecumenical devotion: the crypt of the Church of St. Eloi was made available to us for a greater reception of the people of the sector; Catholics included. Singing - it had begun among ourselves - made its appearance along with the accompanying instrumentation. These last summers there have been experiences in camping. In the evening there was much singing of all types together with short montages occasioned by a text of the gospel. We tried mixed teams of sistet:s and young people. The participation of the people gave us a joyous surprise as did the seriousness of their attention. "To ~hare the gospel" is one of the profound needs of our time. But perhaps even more u~'gent is the need to relearn how to pray, to rediscover.the contemplativ~ dimension without which there is no Christian life. Once it had 6ecor6e' aware of its new hierarchy of values, the Community of Reuilly wanted to share with others the grace that had been given it?'A number of room~ were furnished for the reception of persons for a spiritual retreat': Then we began to cherish an important project which was first supported by our prayer and then~ realized in September 1970: the opening at Versailles (rue Porte-de-Buc) of a house of prayer situa'~ed ~in the calm of~a beautiful park and open to receive retreatants, either.individually or in groups. We do not have a "frozen" program on the way of making a retreat; we have learned that fo~ those who come we must be an "open" community. The important thing is that each retreatant be familiarized with the particular realities of the community and .that he have ~he possibility to live with it its lifeof daily praise. Versailles will also be a special place for ecumenical dialogue. And finally for the Communit3~ itself it is the occasion of the spiritual regrounding so necessary for active sisters. Not'~verything has been said here for the Spirit is alwa~ys pushing the Church and o Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 541 communities in spite of their weakness. One last thing, howeve~r, should be sai~ about our commitment to the Third World. For the last ten years there has been a modest brotherhood in Algeria. We are present in Dahomey where we have two sisters in the ,structure of the Common Apostolic Action (an interconfessional and interracial team). In the Fon territo~ of the country and inca fully animistic background wd have an urgent and enormous medical work tl~at must be accomplished with the barest of resources. In Cameroun there has been begun a small African community at Makak; a!ready there are two novices; a community house is under construction. These are small beginnings but they are also the objects of a great hope. Sister,Malvesin in her vision of the tree (letter of February 24, 1~41), whici~ she often appealed to, foresaw a community that was both perfectly achieved (strong trunk enrooted in Christ)" and at the same t.ime.totally ope~n to the~world (many branches attesting the vitality of the $runk). The, dynamism of her vision has not been exhausted. God grant that it will always arouse the renewals that are necessary in the continuity of the Spirit. THE ORDO PACIS By Sisters ofthe Ordo Paeis [This article appeared on pages 41-48 9f Unit~ chr~tienne, February 19"/2. The address of the principal house of the Ordo Pacis: Celia St. Hildegard; Koppel 55 11;D-2 Hamburg l;West Germany.] A Com.munity "under the Peace of Christ" ° ~ Among the evangelical religious orders, our Evangelische Schwesterrischaft O,r.do Pacis [Evangelical Sisterhood of the Order.of Peace] represents ~ somewhat special type since our communit3; include~ women in every state of life: Married sisters live in their families; some celibate sisters live al6ne; and there are some sisters who live in community and form as.is said today, "a community." We are not very numer6us - actually only twenty-four sisters; the community has its residence,- the Celia Saint-Hildegard [Cell of St. Hildegard], in Hamburg; the rest of thesisters live throughout the rest of Germany. The foundation of our sisterhood b.y the consecration of its first eight sister~ took plac~e in 1953 after long years of preparation. From around 1930 the idea of sucha community was formed in the minds of some membe.rs_ of ~the Eva, ngelische Michaelsbruderschaft (founded in 1931 and now having fiv~ hundred brothers but without community life) as well as in the minds, of a group of women eage[ to commit themselves in the Church; but °the idea did not then comd to realization. After the Second World War some of the women made recofitact~ith e~ch other as well,as contact with other women; they intentionally went out to women of~'all states=the married, widows, celibates, deaconesses. This group changed its composition greatly in the course of time; and it also became more and more independent of the Evangelische Michaelsbruders~haft. Over a period of some years the group began to ask itself whether it should respond to a special calling, from God for the foundation of a sisterhood which Would include besides the states of. life already represented in the,.group (m, arried and celibate) the state of a sister committed, to communitarian life. To our knowledge 542 R~view for Religious, 'Volume 31, 1972/4 there was not then ~ind isnot now any other Protestffnt community"which includes Women of all states as full members. This group of women met together.each year for a few days of retreat in order to seek the answer to their self-question in common prayer and in Bible~stud~ together. Two Bible texts,' especially, ~were essential for their consideration'. First, there was the encounter of the two worhen, Mary and Elizabe'th, called by'God to be the im~ige and the type~of every encounter in which Christ is°the center. Secondly, thEre':was th~ appearance Of the Resurrected Christ on.Easter night in the midst of ,.His~Disdiples and with the salutation "Peace" on His:lips. The peace of Christ was to become the determining factbr in the life of each sister as well" as in the life of the small corfimunity that was eventually constituted,at Hamburg in 1956. The peace of Christ is the gift Of the,Resurrected One which we receive in order to give it tO the world in the place we are at -, in our families, in our professions, in any new work that may be undertakeh. The peac~ of Christ is the reality which unites us even though~ we live in very different circumstances and with very.different missions; this is why we have dared to take for our sisterhood .the name of the Order of Peace. We realize that we are only beginners; we have not yet a formulated rule; we are trying to live out only a few fundamental, convictions. The essential thing is that each of us be in reality an "instrument o~" the peace of Christ" as should the sisterhood as a whole. We are c0nvincedl~hat our vocation is this: The peace that has been entrusted to our community. (Naturally, we know that this peace is also entrusted to each Christian' and to the entire Church.) In order for us to actually be an-instrume'nt of peace'in the world and qn complete solidarity with the perso.ns with whom we live and work (our families, our parishes), we have thought it essential that women of all states and of all backgrounds .shou, ld be joined in a single sisterhood with sisters who ~: commit themselves to c~qmm.unity life in order to be perfectly atthe, disposal of God/We have m~any difficulties: The great differences in the life situation of each of the sisters; the considerable disiances that separate us; theJack of time and energy that affects us each day; the temptation we all have to live an isolated vocation; the temptation to see a differhrice of quality between the group of sisters committed to commumty hfe and those who remain in their civil sta~. To' live our common vocation in, spite of all these difficulties requires immense efforts; and we will attempt to describe these in the following paragraphs. First of 'all*, there is the matter of the i~rayer in which'.we live our common vocation. It is prayer that is made each day; it finds its sou'[cd both in a daily meditation on" a pas~.ag.e of the gospel (ordinarily the same passage° for all) and in the various li(e situations of the day that are gwen to tis by God. In this inatter we have learried':and ~are still learning a~great deal~.from the Churches and the ~coinmunities of "the othe{ great ~onfessions'~ and ~for this we are deeply grateful. However, our life in prayer-, our daily life "underthe peace" is basically a most delicate thing to~ describe; we have, however: risked such a description in the second part of this article, always fearful, however, of using expressions,that are too strong for the initial small experiences that we have had up to !he' present. Another part of the'" realization of our dommon .vocation consists i-n the relationship of ehch sister with the entirety of'our sisterhood. Take, for example, the relationship ~with :the sister who directs our sisterhood, who indicates the way along which the sisterhood should advance together, and who makes the de~isions which should correspond to our common goal. It is absolut'ely necessary for her Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 543 ministry that each sister keep her informed of her experiences (both positive and negative) under the sign of peace; each.sister must give the~ director full. trust as well as full obedience. Because of the great distances between us, for most of us this is done by writing or, at times, by telephone. Still another consideration is the special relationship between each sister and another sister, an adviser, appointed for the purpose. This sister-adviser should be closer (not in the sense, of friendship) than the other .sisters and should .represent to the sister the totality of the sisterhood in a simple and concrete manner. It is useful for the sister-adviser to live in the same region (to facilitate visits), to live in the same state of life, and to be more,oor_less of the same generation (to better understand the problems and the situation.of the sister-advisee). But none of these are indispensable. And it is always necessary to make the effort to really break up in ourselves the tendency to ,individualism, to open oursel~,es, to make ourselves "transparent," if we are to realize our common vocation on this adviser-advisee level. Besides the above, each sister sends every year.an account of herself to the spiritual father of our sisterho~od. This is to be an expression, of our common vocation, for what we give an account of is the gift which has been entrusted to us in common.And it should be noted,that the spiritual father of our sisterhood has the role of spiritual and theological counselor~ o_f the community in general and in particular of the sister who directs the sisterhood.,, It is he who conducts the liturgical services at our reunions; and he is also the spiritual director of some of us (since it is often difficult to find one).~ As was the case before the foundation of our sisterhood in 1953, our journey together is marked by the yearly reunion of all the sisters for ~lays of retreat and for days of reflection. The thrust that pushes us forward is to be found in a special way in these reunions, in the Bible study during, the days of retreat, in the celebration of the Eucharist, and in prayer. But, as must be clear, there are many forces which weaken this thrust and which, tempt us to.r.eo~ain where we are instead of advancing forward. A. brief mention should be given to the small community of the Celia Sair~t- Hildegard at Hamburg. The Celia is not our center, but it is an essential part of our sisterhood. The sisters of the community arg committed to a life of celiba.cy lived in a communalty of goods and in the acceptance of authority. Their residence is expected to be a place of prayer, that is, the rhythm of the day is marked by common Offices and by the personal prayer of each sister. The re.sidence has its doors open in two directions: to leave and to enter. Some of the sisters engage in a profession as an expression of real solidarity with the entire world (as well as to provide for the material existence of the community). At the same time the Celia is open to all those who wish to come there. It has a number of rooms available for those who come. And people do come - to pray, to recollect themselves, to rest, to find someone to listen to them, to share in our joy or in our frustrations, to make a retreat (alone or in small groups), to participate in an Office, to take a quick snack; they come for a few hours or a few days depending on the needs and opportunities of each °one. In short, they come to us to enter into the movement of peace which has been given to us to give to others. Prayer and Life in the Peace of C- hrist ~ "The peace of God is with us.'His peace is up6n the earth." This is the ending of all our Offices; and in it in a very concise way is summarized 544 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 the manner in'which we seek to respond to the reality of the peace of Christ. The resurrected One said to His Disciples: "Peace to you!" (Jn 20: 19). What He meant by this salutation was a reality which would henceforth determine their life and the life of the Church. In the gift of His peace the resurrected Lord gave us reconciliation with God, the salvation that envelops each man, all mankind, the entire universe. The peace is "the normal situation of the new creation" (Foerster). Understood correctly, the peace of Christ is not primarily an ideal and harmonious state of the individual; its purpose is not merely the isolated individual. Rather the peace is first of all a "collective grace" (Comblin) which Christ gives to His Disciples as a community and which they as a community ought to receive and let be operative. Peace, salvation, life - this is the gift of the resurrected One with which He sends His followers to the points where there is no peace, no salvation, no order. This is done so that the real victory of the Resurrection might be believed, be witnessed to, and transmitted to the world. In this sense the entire Church is a community under the peace of Christ. It is precisely for this reason that it is legitimate for the Church to contain within itself '~orders of the peace" ~- communities which expressly keep themselves at the disposition bf this peace, thereby grasping and realizing their own particular vocation. In the same way there are other communities (for example, those of Taiz6 and of Grandchamp) who place themselves at tl~e disposition of the gift of unity. To believe in and to give witness to the peace ot~ Christ (that is to say, to give concrete expression to this peace in our world) does not mean to propose purposes of this world (for example, the suppression of war) nor to set in motion impressive activities With regard to some sort of "program for peace." This would be to reverse the order of things. Peace in the Biblical sense is a matter that belongs to God; He it is who leads it to His own end, and to Him is reserved its "program." But He wills in an absolute way to use us as His "instruments." It is a question, then, of ourselve~ as a community in the midst of the world being completely available to the peace of Christ which is itself the real objective force "which Changes the world, society, the order of things" (Comblin). It is necessary for us to be available for that peace of Christ which is a universal force, which excludes no human being from salvation, and which leads all to become one without erasing multiplicity. Finally, we must be available to that peace of Christ which is directed toward the coming of the' Lord and toward the achievement of that new creation in the dawn of which we are ourselves living. These are brave words, given the Church as it exists in the world today, given our small sisterhood, and given the nature of each of the sisterhood's members. But this corresponds to God's way of acting which will always remain for us a paradox: God brings to the world His message and His reality by the "poor and the little"; His victories are not in any evident way linked to human possibilities. We sisters are only beginners in the discovery of the dimensions of our vocation under the peace, and all the more so when it is question of turning our knowledge into obedient action. It is as such beginners that we now try to say simply here how we in our community attempt to make room for the peace of Christ. The realization of the peace of Christ is done first of all in prayer understood in the wide sense of the word. For in prayer God is the center and His action is essential. Prayer is the place of encounter with Christ; it is in prayer that we receive His gifts; it is in prayer that our mission is always renewed; and iris in prayer that we ~nd the power for a renewed obedience. For this reason it is essential that we always penetrate more deeply into a life of prayer. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 545 This means for us the following: living by the Church, participation in the worship and the life of the parish in its plenitude and its poverty, living in the presence of Christ listening to His word and for His will, personal prayer of adoration, immolation, praise, thanksgiving, intercession, supplication, and struggle. In the course of the years our mission under the peace has found expression in a number of prayer formulas. In the morning the prayer of abandon and of intercession of all the sisters is linked to the following prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, You have said: "Peace be to you; as the Father has sent me, so also I send you'; Lord, send us also." The prayer cited above, "The peace of God is with us; His peace is upon the earth," corresp.onds to the message of Christmas;it originated as the conclusion of a special intercession on the vigil of.-Christmas. Now we are bold enough to .m.ake it the conclusion of all our Offices throughout the entire year. And always we attempt to line up our prayer anew with our daily life by professing the reality and the presence of the peace of Christ in the midst of everything that surrounds, occupies, and tires us, of everything that weighs down up.on us and upon others. Then there is a short prayer that accompanies each sister during the day in her work and in her brief moments of recollection; it is a prayer that also helps us to keep at each moment the peace, of the resurrected One as the center of the day's events: "Lord Jesus Christ, You are establishing Your Kingdom in the midst of the world. You are the Peace that has. conquered the world. We pray to You to make a place for Yourself in us and by us." In the intercession whi.ch is an essential.part of our mission under the peace, we try to present to God all men in the variety of their situations, to give and entrust them to His peace. We include both those we know as well as those outside our personal relations or interests. In intercession it is God who wishes to be active; it is His peace that acts in a definitive way. We do not present projects or proposals to God; rather we pray that He may keep a person in His peace or that His peace be victorious over a person wherever he is and in whatever set of determinants, or we pray simply that God may gi~,e a person (or ~e~sons) a part in the joy of His presence. 1.t should be evident that a community which wishes to serve the peace of Christ would be desirous of an ecumenical outlook, of havi'ng contacts with Christians of other confessions, of taking part in the prayer for unity and in the common mission of all the Churches with regard to the world of today. This is why we are gratefully happy to be able to maintain relationships and contacts with a large number of groups, congregations, and communities of different Churches. We are convinced that our mission under the peace is closely and meaningfully linked to the fact .that in our sisterhood itself are to be found members living in very different situations. We are bound to recognize that the two vocations - that of marriage and that of celibacy - mutually complement each other and mutually depend on each other. We must give to each other the freedom for different forms of the imitation of Christ - to one the freedom for communitarian life in a total commitment; to a second the liberty to be a celibate whose life is not fixed and hence ~n a certain way can be mobile, entirely available to the "today of God"; and to a thi~rd the freedom for a life in the bonds of marriage and of the family. We are forced to train ourselves to live under the peace of Christ in the tensions which naturally are not small in' a community embracing so many differences, in age, in backgrounds, in work, in ways of thinking and acting. The practice of the peace does not consist in attempts at "peaceful coexistence" or at harmonization; 546 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 neither is it to be found in an excessive zeal to find principles and clear guiding lines. But it is realized if we hold ourselves in the presence of God, turned always toward Him, ready to accept and to forgive one another, and this not only when we celebrate the Eucharist or pray together but in each situation of our life. '~ Another sphere of experiences for our mission under the peace is where we are at home in our houses or our apartments. These should be places of the presence of the peace of Christ; this is why it is most important that one praYs there. And more and more we are recognizing that in the middle of a world ~'here all order is shattered we should not hope to be able to establish oases around us that represent a sane world. The upsetting of order is not held back for us, for our homes, or for our communities:. It is not a question, then, of realizing the ideal type of marriage, of family, of communitarian life, of professional conduct, or of conquering the difficulties of life. The peace of Christ is present in our places of living when we see our state and that of the world as it really is - without salvation and without hope - and when we a~re ready to take into our empty hands the gift of God, being ready to let ourselves be penetrated by the peace of Christ, by His victory, by His pardon, and by His re-creative power. The profound disorder of our world from which so many persons are suffering today ~vill not be healed by absolutizing forms of an order that are given in advance and then held on to. It is the Working of Christ that Will heal; He has arisen, He has freed us in order that we might establish in our world (which is perishing) the sign of His victory which is already given in plenitude to the entire world. It' is natural for these places of the peace to have their doors Open not only in the sense of a normal hospitality (which shares by giving and receiving) but also to receiv~ persons who are crushed, who do not have peace. In this matter different places will act differently according to whether it is the living place of a sister living alone, of a family, or of the Celia Saint-Hildegard and according to whether the place is in a village or in a small or large city. There is no need to enumerate one by one the possibilities of realizing the peace in the numerotfs relationships, responsibilities, and missions in which each of the sisters is placed in her family, her parish, her profession, and so forth. Let us, however, emphasize here how activity and prayer are mutually founded on each other and cannot be separated. Nor must we deceive ourselves by thinking that our human capa6ities' or our success in a given .place would be proof that we are accomplishing our mission; the peace of Christ is not the result~ofour possibilities nor of human efforts. We must be present to ~the world of today, amazed by its achievements, weighed down by its burdens, affected by its maladies - and yet marked and supported by the reality of the Resurrection of Christ: "Something new has been planted~in the world. What we have to share is not our soul, nor our attitudes towards the world, nor our calm, nor our interior peace. We do not occupy ourselves with'ourselves. We do not have to share or show what- the Lord has done to us. We have only to transmit a reality; a blessing, a grace. This is the meaning of the peace of which Jesus speaks" (Comblin). In thus seeifig the peace as a gift which has been entrusted to us and which we have to accept and to carry into the world in His name, we-are professing a profound solidarity with all men under the universal power of the peace. Accordingly, our encounter with Christ cannot be "private," but together with ourselves it concerns the entire world: "Obtain the peace of Christ'and thousands around you are saved" (St. Seraphim). Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 547 THE ECUMENICAL COMMUNITY OF, BOSE ~ [This ~rticle appeared on pages 59 to 63 of the FebruarY" 1972 issue of Unit~ chr~tienne. Th~ address of the principal hous~e of the Bose Community is the following: Comunit~ di Bosch;' 03050 Magnano, Italy.] ~ ¯ , A't Bose, a section of the Commune of Magnano, amidst the hills of the S'erra in Italy there has existed for the last three years a mixed monastic community, Christians of different confessions, Catholic and Protestant, men and women,,all celibate, have joined together to seek God in poverty and in obedience,to the gospel._ The objective of their life ,together is the work of reconciliation among separated Christians, dialogue with all men, and the aw.aiting of Christ. This community whose, members. .lead an ordinary',life dependent on manual or professional work is not a religious congregation or an ecumenical sect.; much less is it a new Church; it is simply a place for the seeking~of unity among Christians, Birth of:.the Community The adyenture of Bose began in0Turip on the via Piave durihg the years of .1965 and, 1966. ItowaS there that a group of young people fgrrfied the habit ofm.ee~ting with~nzo Bianchi, then a student. The group, which~had ~fo.rmed itself in order to giv~ Christian witness to university students, commenced by sharing with the students meals followed by Bible reading and by prayer in common. These encounters continued in a number of old domiciles and finally resulted i9 a group of Catholics, Protestants, and Wa~cl, ensi ,ans" (partiCulariy numerous in Piedm00t), all of whom joined together in a brotherly search for a ne.w,.wa~y of ~living their Christianity. For the Catholic~ of ,the group, tt~e high point of their spi'ritual life. was ~their dor~estic Eucharistic celebration in the course of an eve.ningdev0ote,d~to praye.r,and revision of life. In time the group grew as did also a sense of a particular vocation.It was in this way that the monastic calling of many of the group came to be realized as welLas.the manner and form which their response to this calling should take.~ For many of th.e group the end of their studies was in sight; ahd they spontaneously .experienced the desire to continue: the valuable experience ~f.lived brotherhood. They~ f~lt they should, choose a p0or~aqd secluded area to establish a common house. Their choice fell on Magnano in the Serra, the extensive moraine that lies betw,een Riella and lvrea. ., In September 1966 they had been members of a work camp for the repairing of a crumbling church near Bose, and they had come to appreciate the locality. The c.hurcti had been sufficiently repaired to allow for common prayer.within it; late.r its restoration would be completed~by the Office of Public Mofiumen~ts. Hence, they decided to establish themselves at Bose; they rented a few small and poor houses and fixed them up suitably without, however, altering their simplicity, At the beginning these houses were used only as "second residences" for living over weekends after thei~ s.chool week or professional week was finished; they used to meet there centered around the,Eucharist and there~by made a first tentative, attempt at partial common life. ~ ¯ ~ . The real community took form ,when Enzo Bianchi met two persons:, a young Swiss Reformed pastor, Daniel Attinger, who was impelled by the same desire for ecumenical common life; and. Maria-Teresa Calloni, a young Catholic girl who also was eager to attempt a:monastic experience in a mixed mode. Common life in a small and. secluded village would not be a matter'6f holidaF 548 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4~ comfort, and 'the "~'aspirants" were well aware of this. To test their endurance, they went .t~hrough a period of novitiate to initiate themselves into the monastic life; they made this novitiate in traditional Catholic, Protestant,, and Orthodox commu-nities.~ On August 6, 1968 - they chose the Feast of the Transfiguration for the birth and the anniversaries of their community - seven Catholic and Protestant brothers and-~sisters began "their life in common. The Life of the Community The members of the community simply wanted to be Christians, that is, to take the gospel seriously and to live it not in an isolated way but together. They are. simply baptized persons who n.ormally live by .their work in' order not to be dependent; but they live~together and share their salaries in order to take care of their ownoneeds and to offer a generous fraternal hospitality, for they wish to keep themselve~ in the j6yous poverty of the Beatitudes. To the measure their professions allow (some of them work in Ivrea), they come together for prayer in the morning, at noon, and in the evening; and they also .take: their~ meals together. But in every event they pass their evenings in community, including guests withwhom they are always ready to share their concerns. It is at the'~e evening sessions that they discuss their problems and make their decisions,~ Prayer In accord with the ancient practice, their common p'rayer is the Office chanted three times a day to thee praise of God and as intercession for o~r brothers. In order~ that" this Office might,be within the grasp of all, our community has taken great care in its composition. We have translated numerous prayers from different traditional Christian liturgies and have adapted them to contemporary spirituality. We have also creaf~d flew 15rayers which take into account present-day sensibilities and the problems of our day which remain present in the heart of modern man in his dialogue with God. " Our community has also made a new translation of the Psalms; the translation, rhythmic as psalmody should be, is expressed in ordinary language which can be understood by persons of little education such as workers and peasants. In this way, prayer ceases to be an alibi, a flight from the world; rather it tends to become not only a means of praising God and of listening to His word but also an instrument that works on the world, a prelude to action. In our evening prayer God is praised and the brothers with whom we have lived and worked that day are presented to Him. There are also presented to Him the events of the world, looked at with reference to the Word'who does not ~gase to enlighten our judgme~nt and to guide our conducl?. Hospitality We offer .to our guests a welcome that is very simple but brotherly. They can share'.the life of the community: work, prayer, meals, dialogues. With us they can live in seclusion for as long as they want to examine their problems and to rethink their commitments. Catholics and Protestants, lay persons and priests, bishops and pastors, believers and nonbelievers, young people eager for reriewal - all these receive the same welcome. In 1970 some five thousand persons came to usTor individual or group retreats or for longer periods of experience of the monastic life. Hospitality is a ministry more necessary than ever in this epoch of ours when modern man suffocates in isolation Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 549 in our depersonalized cities. The absence of dialogue, especially the absence of dialogue between generations, harms modern man cruelly. It is in order to provide. interlocutors for modern man that there are springing up today communities of Christian celibates who are a!ways ready to welcome persons and who keep themselves always free to listen to each one. Our Commitment in the Church We said at the beginning that the community of Bose is not a new Church; all of its members remain in the Churches which engendered them by baptism into the life of Christ. Our community does not wish to substitute for the Church nor regard itself as a model for the Church. On the contrary, the members of Bose put themselves at the service of the Christian Churches, especially in the work of reconciliation of Christians of different confessions. The simple fact of beginning a life together after four hundred years of separation can appear to be an evangelical initiative that is audacious and perhaps a little foolish; but today it can be clearly seen that the communitarian enterprise is fundamentally prophetic - a matter that is visible not only in the interior of the community but also in its work of witnessing. Common life animated by the same~word of God, by the same rhythm of the spiritual life, by the acceptance of the same communitarian will have brought our members to a theology of peace that unites rather than divides us. Besides the "breadwinning" work of our members, the community does work for the Church: preaching, Biblical courses, colloquia between Protestants and Catholics, the sparking of encounters and the coordination of "spontaneous groups" in Piedmont. Moreover, the commun.ity illustrates a renewed form of that service of the Church which is constituted by the common monastic life. Celibacy lived with the interior certainty of a calling from God and in.~availability and openness to others expresses confident waiting for the coming of Christ. During the recent years some new vocations have come to confirm and to enrich our young community which is developing without a rigid 'program and in provisional quarters with a practice of poverty of means and of limitation of initiatives. In a word, our community wishes to be a response to an actual need to renew religious life; it accepts the responsibility of having a prophetic value for the world of today. Our Commitment in the World Commitment in the world represents for the brothers of Bose neither a free option nor a supplementary effort; since they work exactly as all other men do, they are naturally involved as the others are in the same social reality where their work is done. Wherever there is question of establishing more justice, they share the responsibilities, the solidarity, and the struggle of the other workers and with no fear of thereby soiling their hands. Each of the members has the concrete duty of choosing the political and labor methods which concretize this struggle for justice. A member's belonging (though not in a juridical way) to the monastic tradition does not dispense him. from involving himself in a concrete way in the liberation of man in the place where he works, for it is there that man is incarnated in reality. It would take a prolonged effort of creative reflection to locate in a suitable fashion the role of the believer in this work of liberation that he accomplishes in 550 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 union with all other men. "The flight from the world" must not be understood as a: throwing aside or an abandonment of our responsibilities but as a contestation with regard to the methods of the world - those methods which are called power, money,, and success. In our community, freed as it is from constraining exterior rules, the different politico-social experiences are confronted and judged only by the criterion of obedience to the gospel and to the demands of justice. A Community of Contestation? During all this time of ecclesial contestation, many groups and individuals have come to Bose to find a form of solidarity. What did they find there? They did not find that contestation "of the salon" that is nourished by gossiping at the expense of the Church and of authority, nor did they find the contestation that aims at rupture. Much less did they ,find the contestation that is a kind of publicity product and that will pass just as styles change. On the contrary, our ,contestation was intended to be serious and to be constructive, l.t limited itself to the criticism of the nonevangelical and the always increasing bureaucratic manner of organizing the life of the Church. Each time the community raised its voice, it did so with the patience and the charity of the gospel. It modeled itself on the contestation of Francis of Assisi when he castigated wealth and power: intransigent as he was in the matter of conduct, he always showed himself good willing toward men. Some difficulties have arisen between our community and the Catholic hierarchy, but we have undergone these taking them to be a sign of maturation. The Future of Bose Our community wishes to be provisory not in the sense that some day a sudden decision will put an end to it, but in the sense that it wishes "to live the today of God" without worry about a need for continuity. In October 1970 we opened at Turin a brotherhood (the address is: Fraternith Universitaria; Via Piave 8; Turin, Italy) in order to found in the city a place of welcome and of prayer destined especially for the university world. This was done at the reque§t of Catholic and Waldensian communities of the area. As soon as the number of our members permits, we hope to open in Switzerland a similar brotherhood for specifically ecumenical work. If it is possible ~o say it all in a single phrase, we at Bose want to live the gospel by means of the community. SISTER MARY SERAPHIM, P.C.P.A. Feminine Monastic Spirituality [Sister Mary Seraphim is a member of Sancta Clara Monastery; 4200 Market Avenue N.; Canton, Ohio 44714~1 In quest of directives to deepen my concept of the cloistered life and also to develop a spirituality in conformity with it, I began to search~ for some books or writings which dealt with the monastic life for women. To my astonishment, I discovered that practically nothing existed on the subject. Most, in fact all, of the books which had been recommended during my years in formation had dealt with ~he monastic life as monks lived it. The books were written by men about men and although the writers presumed that ~what they said was equally.applicable to nuns, itwas so only in an accommodated sense which left much to be desired. Pursuing my search, I consulted the New Catholic Encycloped.ia only to discover that under such headings as "Spirituality" or~"Monasticism" the word feminine does not even occur. A passing reference is made to the. rise of monasteries of virgins in the .third and fourth centuries'but~ these communities were patterned, on the existing monastic life of monks and had no specifically womanly character. The closest one could come to discovering a distindt feminine style of spiritual living in the early Church were the consecrated virgins who occtlpied a place of service and rank in the assembly of the faithful but who continued to live their dedication within the home. Some few groups~ of consecrated virgins did ,live together; for instance, St. Paula turned her house into a home for widows or virgins in Rome but this life style was not widely propagated.° In ecclesiastical documents about feminine monastic life, I found that while they dealt extensively width the externals of enclosure~ ingress and egress, ,~religious ceremonies, and so forth, very little if anything was s~iid about the spirituality of the women who were to be observing these regulations. The most insightful document, ato least to this writer's mind, which has appeared so far, is' the controversial Venite .seorsum - On the Contemplative Life and the Enclosure of Nuns. Pas~ing over any commentary on the regulations prescribed, I would like to observe that the first section of this instruction treats in an unusually perceptive manner the spirituality of contemplative nuns. However, even this instruction .touches only on some of the broad and obvious characteristics of feminine spirituality. Much more can, I feel, and should be said in this area. Turning to some of the noted women writers of the past, we find St. Teresa of Avila writing with profound insight on the life of the spirit for women, but what she teaches with rel~ard to the development oi~ that life within the confines of the monastic framework for women has not gone much beyond ther doors of Carmel. Has anyone taken her writings and sifted from them what would be applic~able to all cloistered religious ~women? It seems that such a study would be immensely profitable for that half of monast~icism which is female. Looking into my own Pogr Clare tradition I noted that St. Clare had no intention of founding a "monastic" order in the traditional sense any more than did St. 552 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/4 Francis. She accepted (because she was forced to) a modified Benedictine rule and lived it most of her life. But she never gave up her struggle to have her own conception of gospel living approved. Three days before her death a Bull was placed in.her hands attesting ~the approbation of the Church on her unique "Forha of Life:" Throughout the centUries Poor Clares have been classed as a monastic order in the Church; and although this is true from a purely juridical point of view, it is a distortion of the reality from a spiritual point of view. Not "Female Monks" Traditionally, monks are defined as solitary seekers after God who live a common life for the sake of greater freedom from mundane concerns: Now this definition does not sit easily on the hearts of cloistered women. The idea of being solitaries living in community destroys something fundamental in the why and wherefore of feminine community life. A woman cannot live as though she were a hermit even with one other woman, much less a house of twenty or more! She must interact with those around her for it is part and parcel of feminine endowment that she is alterocentric. Therefore a spirituality which does not take this truth into accourit will not meet the specific needs of feminine monastic life. The necessity of developing in writing the style of spiritual life of cloistered contemplative women is becoming increasingly important. For today the Church has asked that ea~l~ order and congregation restudy its sources and examine itself to determine whether it is living according to its own unique charism. As a result of this reexamination,' many contemplative women have become aware of the discrepancy that exists between the spiritual books which have hitherto been considered normative and the fidelity to their special role and calling that the Church is asking of them. Nuns are awakening to the fact that they are not "female monks.'

Issue 57.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1998. ; lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Cbristian lives. The articles in the jou.rnal are meant to be ~nformative, practical, bistorical, or inspirational,°written from a tbeologi.cal o.r spiritual Or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University. by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1998 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creatio.n of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer sJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joe~ Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Pa~icia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 4 contents 342 looking forward Encountering Hinduism: Being Stretched by God Elizabeth Hillis OCD presents her own experience of encountering another religion as a valuable gift and a new way of deepening our faith in God, who is always greater' than our understanding. 354 Towards the Millennium Donald Macdonald SMM ponders the different a'pproaches to the millennium--through our focus on circumstance or our focus on Christ. 368 pioneers Two 17th-Century Women of Wisdom: Mary Ward and Marguerite Bourgeoys Marion Norman IBVM presents, from the changing world of three and four centuries ago, two venturesome women as models of lived wisdom for the church and world of today. 387 A Path Traced Out: Providence in Mother Theodore Guerin's Life Mary Roger Madden SP draws a picture of Mother Theodore Guerin, a pioneer for the missions of the Sisters of Providence in the United States, who will be beatified on 25 October 1998. 33-8J Review for Religious 394 consecrated life Merger Issues and Ways to Address Them Beatrice M. Eichten OSF describes core issues involved when religious congregations seek some sort of merger and offers practical reflections on how to go about it. 4O7 Refounding by Honing the Purpose Concept Nihal Abeyasingha CSSR distinguishes two pursuits, purpose and values, and shows how such careful thinking can help religious in the renewal of their lives together. 419 living together Community: Intentional or. ? Catherine Harmer MMS clarifies the meaning of Christian community, with its four elements of support, challenge, accountability, and discernment. 429 Community Living: A Question of Balance Melannie Svoboda SND, on two continuums, sketches expectations and caring within religious communities and then offers individuals and communities some reflection questions. departments 340 Prisms 435 Canonical Counsel: The Evangelical Counsel of Obedience: Background and Development 441 Book Reviews ~dy-August 1998 Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you shall forgive. prisms One of the most moving moments for me during a meeting with women and men religious in Johannesburg, South Africa, had to do with forgiveness and reconciliation. One of the participants, an Augustinian novice director, observed that, just as the government had set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to bring a certain peaceful closure to the painful memories of the apartheid era, so it might be help-ful in the church and in our various religious congrega-tions to establish a similar kind of commission. He noted: "The differences in policies and practices among whites, coloreds, and blacks--in our memberships and in our min-istries, not just between parish congregations but even within a single province of women or men religious---have caused pain and left scars that a church or religious-life truth and reconciliation commission might go a long way to healing." A deeply reflective silence followed, and then a chorus of voices began to express a universal agreement among the white, colored, and black religious present that this agenda needed to be pursued in future meetings among the conference members. Our life experience tells us that we human beings do not easily come to forgiveness and reconciliation. We even find the gift of forgiveness by God the most difficult of God's many gifts for us to accept. Commonly we try to earn forgiveness; we attempt to "make up" for whatever we have done badly or left undone. Our behavior is just as consistent in our relations with one another as it is with God. It is often evident in the way we offer forgiveness: on Review for Religious the condition that the person--whether it is my brother or sister, my son or daughter, my friend or fellow worker--performs in a way to deserve it. And yet forgiveness is just that: a gift "given for" someone. Jesus made it clear through his parables and his example that forgiveness is first a gift from God--given for us--and then God invites us into sharing the gift by the way we live. God so much wanted us to share in the divine way of acting that in the prayer that Jesus taught, it is the only petition to which our personal actions are connected: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Forgiveness is so far beyond our ordinary human capacities, Jesus seems to indicate, that, we need to pray for the gift in every "Our Father" we say. On that first Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appears to his dis-ciples-- all locked up in fear--and offers first for their peace the gift of his Spirit. With the permanent gifting of the Holy Spirit comes the power for us to forgive. The church for centuries has seen in these very words the foundation of the sacrament of rec-onciliation. But, long before the sacramental system was clearly delineated, the church understood the gifting of the Spirit and the power to forgive as an essential part of our Christian living in peace. Like Jesus, we are meant to stand ready always to forgive. The old saw "to err is human, to forgive divine" is very true. Even with the baptismal and confirmation gift of the Spirit, we more often feel weighted by our human meanness than moved by divine forgiveness. At first we might be inclined to think of forgiveness as being about the past. But, just as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be recalling past happenings only to look towards the future of South African society, so God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of one another always look toward the future--the way we will relate and the way we will act. That is why, as we prepare to enter into the third millennium, we need to invoke the Spirit. For our wbrld of age-old hatreds and fresh hurts cries out for us Christians to give witness to the precious gift of forgiveness. Giving witness to forgiveness--that will be our new evangelization. David L. Fleming SJ ~ly-August 1998 ELIZABETH HILLIS Encountering Hinduism: Being Stretched by God looking forward I am a Christian, a contemplative religious, yet for sev-eral years I have been learning about my God and about my faith from Hinduism. Is this a contradiction? Is it unusual? I do not think so. Religious pluralism surrounds us and allows us to cross boundaries that once set us apart from those who believe differently. Theologians study and write about how other religions experience God and the world; East-West dialogues have been set up between Christian and Buddhist monastic communities; in secu-lar and professional life we frequently encounter Hindus and Muslims, take classes in yoga, read about kundalini awakening, practice Zen sitting. How is the Catholic to grapple with the challenge to faith presented by such encounters? There is no easy answer, but from prayer-fully reflecting on my own experience I have gained some insights into this important adventure. First, I would like to make clear my belief that encountering.another religion is a valuable gift, that it is actually a divine call to open ourselves to a new way of finding ourselves in a world that is growing smaller, a new way of deepening our faith in God., who is always greater than our understanding. This gift may noF be for everyone, and it is seldom something we choose for ourselves. It just happens. Then we have to make room for it in our lives, room which may reorganize everything else. That is how Elizabeth Hillis OCD writes from Carmel of the Holy Family; 3176 Fairmount Boulevard; Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. Review for Religious it was for me, and this article presents some aspects of what I have learned in the process. My first direct contact with Hinduism was through a medical professional whom I met in 1989. From my first meeting with her, I was impressed with something that I felt instinctively had to do with her Indian origin and her Hindu beliefs. What drew me to her seems to have been related to the quality of her silence and serenity. Though busy with her medical practice and busy with being a wife and the mother of teenage children, she seemed to. possess a poise and centeredness, an evenness of mind and judgment, a detached yet focused compassion for her patients and colleagues that was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. She seemed to have a secret source of strength. She once gave this state of centeredness a Sanskrit name, sthita-prajna, and spoke of how she had seen this quality in her own mother the last time she saw her before she died. With her husband and children, she had returned to India to visit her parental home. Her mother had welcomed them joyously, but,. when it came time for them to leave, the mother was equally able to let them go. Her outward serenity seemed clearly to come from serenity within. It was the same quality that I had noticed in this woman. Stbita-prajna, written on a small piece of Post-it paper (that I still have!), was the beginning of my study of Hindu religious texts. My first reading was of the Bhagavad-Gita, probably the most pop-ular and widely read of all the Hindu scriptures, and that which is dearest to many Hindus. There, in the second chapter, I met stbita-prajna again, where K_rishna explains to Arjuna the qualities of an integrated person who can regard all things, persons, and experi-ences equally with detached interest. The Gita states: When a man puts from him all desires that prey upon the mind, himself contented in self alone, then is he called a man of steady wisdom. Whose mind is undismayed though beset by many a sor-row, who for pleasures has rio further.longing, from whom all passion, fear, and wrath have fled, such a man is called a man of steadied thought, a silent sage. Who l~as no love for any thing, who rejoices not at whatever good befalls him nor hates the bad that comes his way-- firm-stablished is the wisdom of such a man. And when he draws in on every side his senses from their proper objects as a tortoise might draw in its limbs--firm-stablished is the wisdom of such a man.~ ~uly-August 1998 Hillis ¯ Encountering Hinduism While this text does not represent the whole of Hindu thought, it does touch on an important element, the yoga (or practice) of renunciation. What is renounced here is not human activity or experience, but the tendency to attach oneself to human experi-ences in such a way that they destabilize the self. These are the "desires that prey upon the mind." Pleasures and sorrows, good and bad experiences, still come and go, but they no longer disturb the person who is established in the truth of the self (atman). Such a person lives in a state of equanimity, stbita-prajna, "steady wisdom" or stable consciousness. My friend had seen this in her mother, and I had seen it in her. In ~ubsequent conversations she explained her understand-ing of a related discipline, what the Gita calls karma yoga or the "yoga of detached action." All work is to be done with detach-ment because it is our duty. Attachment to the reward of our works ties us to what we do; nonattachment frees us from such bondage to deeds (karma). Therefore, detached, perform unceasingly the works that must be done, for the man detached who labors on to the highest must win through. (BG 3.19, p, 55) Furthermore, offering the work to God is a spiritual sacrifice that brings freedom. Content to take whatever chance may bring his way, sur-mounting all dualities, knowing no envy, the same in success and failure, though working still he is not bound. Attachment gone, deliverance won, his thoughts are fixed on wisdom: he works for sacrifice alone, and all the work he ever did entirely melts away. (BG 4.22-23, p. 59) The Gita goes on to teach that the person who is stabilized in self, sthita-prajna, and who engages in d~tached action, karma yoga, has yet another step to take toward complete integration and freedom: devotion or bhakti. This is to make all existence, all action, a means of loving God. The god referred to in the Gita is Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, and it is he who instructs Arjuna: "Let him sit, his self all stilled . . . his thoughts on Me, integrated, yet intent on Me" (BG 6.14, p. 66). Thus the stabi-lization of self and the yoga of detached action are not enough by themselves to bring liberation: one needs to focus the mind and heart entirely on a personal god. Bhakti (loving devotion) is nec-essary; a surrender to the divine being both completes the task of personal integration and makes it possible. Review for Religious The source of all am I; from Me all things proceed: this knowing, wise men commune with Me in love, full filled with warm affection . To these men who are ever inte-grated and commune with Me in love I give that integration of the soul by which they may draw nigh to Me. (BG 10.8,10, p. 78) Steady consciousness, detached action, and loving devotion to a personal god, such are a few basic teachings of the Gita which might be an interesting parallel to the Christian path toward union with God. But I am not sure that the study of Hindu texts alone would have held my interest if it had not been for the liv-ing example and friendship of a contemporary Indian woman who was willing to share with me her own experience of her religion. In addition to our infrequent conversations, I had the witness of her own life, which concretely modeled what I~read. She partic-ularly exemplified the path of karma yoga by making offerings to God of her everyday actions: her medical practice, her care of husband and children, driving a car, shopping. I am not speak-ing here of a woman who was externally "religious" in an obvious way. She was far from any Hindu community where she might visit a temple or gather with others in .devotional rituals. Her home, her clothing, her habits were fully American. Her children attended the local public high school. Yet she was attempting to conform her life to the wisdom of the Gita, to live an integrated life as best she could, to work with detachment, to teach her chil-dren the values and beliefs she had internalized. Did she succeed? It seems to me that she did in a way she never planned. In November 1991 she was diagnosed as having a brain tumor, which in spite of all treatment slowly took every-thing away from her: her medical practice, her power of thought and judgme.nt, and even life itself. In this situation of tragedy, she asked, not (as we all might) "Why me?" but "Why now?" She regretted more than anything that she would not see her chil-dren grow up. Yet at the same time she struggled to live in a spirit of self-surrender, one day at a time, sometimes feeling better, often feeling worse. I saw in her a growing search for a hope that could take her beyond the limitations of her physical weakness. From time to time she asked her husband to bring her to our monastery chapel, where she spent time in silent meditation, sit-ting beside him or with one of her sisters who had come from India to care for her. She brought all of her family to meet me, to Hillis ¯ Encountering Hinduism talk about meditation, or to share her questions on whether to seek further treatment. She asked for the address of a place of prayer where she could make a retreat, though she was never well enough to carry out this i~lan. . For me it is significant that this Hindu woman found in a Christian monastic setting a place where she could experience peace and gain insight again into how to live her life fully to the end. We had never spoken of religious questions with a view to converting one another, and yet, with each other's help, both of us had grown in following our own path to God. I like to think that, just as her %lues and beliefs had deepened mine, the witness of a contemplative religious had helped develop in her the "devo-tion" to a personal god that she knew from the Gita: Whoso at the hour of death, abandoning his mortal frame, bears Me in mind and passes on, acdedes to my own mode of being; there is no doubt of this . Then muse upon Me.always. for, if you fix your mind and soul on Me, you will, nothing doubting, come to Me. (BG 8.5,7, p. 72) I have no evidence that my friend found consolation in this text of the Gita as I do now when I think back to her last months. There comes a time when we cannot accompany those we love in their final journey. But knowing that these scriptures were part of the fabric of her life makes me sure that their content and mean-ing had been internalizeddn the way that we Christians have sim-ilar texts engraved in our memory and our heart: "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest" (Mr 11:28). In~ the end the truths that we live by, and die by, are very simple. I miss Shobha. I know that in some mysterious way my life was changed by our friendship. But it was also changed by the religious encounter that was the context of our relationship. Since her death I have studied Hinduism patiently and perseveringly from many different perspectives, and I know that I shall con-tinue to. do so because, just as it did in the beginning through her, this encounter with another religion still constantly reveals God to me. I have taken some time to detail what "happened" to me. Now I need to question how I have (or have not) integrated it into my life. How do I remain a Christian and deepen my Christian under-standing and commitments by learning from Hinduism? How Revlew for Religious does anyone stay balanced when crossing the boundary that nor-mally sets Christian experience apart from the non-Christian? I have formulated four guidelines for my own use, which could be applied to any situation of interreligious exploration, but which here I apply to my study of Hinduism. They are, briefly: (1) Take seriously the differences between my own tradition and that of another religion. (2) Pay attention to the details that I notice. (3) Follow the questions that naturally arise. And (4) keep looking back at my own tradition. First, I need to take seriously the differences between my Catholic beliefs, theology, and practices and those I see in a Hindu friend or read about in a Hindu text. Great injustice can be done both to my own self-understanding and to my real appreciation of the "other" if I look only for similarity of shared views or experience. We may have much in common, but there is probably a much greater area of difference. To over-look this, or to settle for a vague intuition of universal connectedness, is not helpful. It may even be harmful, and it is certainly not respectful of the other. It is usually not true that we are all saying the same things in dif-ferent words. Very often we are saying quite different things about the divine, about human life, and about the nature of human/divine interaction. I had to keep this realization in mind during my conversations with Shobha. It was necessary for me continually to ask myself what she meant by a certain explanation of her beliefs. I had to go to the texts she quoted and try to understand them as she did rather than separate out inspiring' thoughts that fit comfortably into my Catholic framework. An example is found in the texts quoted above from the Bhagavad-Gita and the Gospel of Matthew. In both places the words "come to me" are used, by Jesus and by Krishna. Yet the context shows that Matthew's Jesus is inviting his hearers to human discipleship in the present life, a discipleship which involves a specific sort of following, a willingness to learn of Christ, humility of heart, and the patient carrying of the burdens of life. On the other hand, the Krishna of the Gita calls the devo- How does anyone s tay balanced when crossing the boundary that normally sets Christian experience apart from the non-Christian? Hillis ¯ Encountering Hinduism tee to an inner concentration on his divine being, leaving behind any attachment to human life which could tie the soul to earthly existence and necessitate further cycles of rebirth. In both situa-tions divine comfort is offered to the person who approaches God in loving trust, but in one case the fulfillment given by Jesus is incarnational while, in the other case, material exis(ence must be transcended for the sake of merging with Krishna in his univer-sal form. On the surface it is natural that the words of Krishna would call to mind those of Jesus, but it must always be kept in mind that Krishna is not Christ, nor is his relationship to the devotee the same as that of Christ to the Christian disciple. It seems best to let the differences simply stand as they are. We can learn from the tension of holding these texts side by side and see-ing both what they are saying and what they are not saying. We also learn the detachment of letting others come to Krishna dif-ferently than we come to Christ. This recognition of difference leads into the second guide-line, to pay attention to the details we notice. It is in the details that we most frequently confront the differences that exist between religions. Although it may seem helpful to generalize about another religion in order to have a coherent way to grasp its tenets and the interrelationship of belief and practice, such generaliza, tion gives a false sense of mastery. It glosses over unwieldy facts which do not fit the pattern that a predetermined theology assigns to "non-Christian" experience. If we really want to take another religion seriously, it is worthwhile to read its sacred writings and hear what its followers have to say about themselves. This means attentive listening and openness to a diversity we might not expect. Unfamiliar mythology will frequently perplex us; moving rituals or insightful texts will possibly attract us; exotic practices may repel us. In one way or another, a good many unmanageable details will keep us aware that Hinduism is vast, complex, and varied in its expressions. It takes time and serious application on our part to identify and unlock the meaning of certain key con-cepts. Patient attention to the details we do not understand keeps us in a position of humility. There is much we may have to leave unexplored and unexplained. This is in itself a most respectful way of approaching the "other"--to acknowledge the mystery and to let it stand as it is. It is God we are meeting in this mys-tery of the other, God who acts in the lives .and values of real people who do not believe or think or Worship as we do, God Review for Religious whose grace is far more extensive than our theological constructs might have us realize. Details lead us to question what we are learning. It is impor-tant at this point to follow the questions that arise and to allow them to open new questions, new vistas of understanding, and new mys-teries of God that we cannot begin to penetrate. When the details make me aware that Krishna cannot really be considered a Christ-figure, that he teaches a very different sort of doctrine than Jesus, then I naturally begin to ask: Who is this Krishna? What is his origin? How is he human, how divine? What sort of deity is he? How do people relate to him, worship him, love him, serve him? Such questions are the heart of interreligious experience, but they probably cannot be asked until we have gone through the pre-liminary steps of taking seriously the other religion. As long as I do not consider Krishna to be an authentic deity for a con-siderable number of real people, there is a danger that I will consider him to be only a fable, a religious fiction that need not be reckoned with in a serious way. The situation becomes even more complex if I .begin to follow these initial questions and find that there is not only the Krishna of the Gita, but also the Krishna of north-Indian mythology and the Krishna of south-Indian devotional poetry. How are they the same deity and how different and how do the various strands of the Krishna tradition combine and intermingle? To find out who Krishna is will lead me to question what a deity is, how mythology is part of every religious figure, how story and experience and ritual play a part in the development of belief. These vast questions have opened up for me simply because I paid attention to details about a god who is foreign to my religious tradition. It soon becomes obvious that, to pursue these questions, one must study seriously. This is an important point because encoun-tering another religion has to engage more than my feelings of attraction or repulsion or my intuition of realities beyond words. I need to use my mind in a careful and persevering way in order to enter into the world of the Hindu, who may seem to have Encountering another religion has to engage more than my feelings of attraction or repulsion or my intuition of realities beyond words. ff~dy-August 1998 Hillis ¯ Encounte~ing Hinduism human feelings of devotion similar to mine, but whose way of thinking about religious truths may be unlike any systematic approach familiar to me. Unless thought is explored by thought, there can be no real understanding of the other. To set ourselves to this task is, in one sense, to pursue an unrealistic goal, because the scope of another religion is so vast and the context so for-eign. Yet the very impossibility of the endeavor to think beyond our categories is what calls us to begin, in whatever small ways we can. To try to think with a Hindu about her beliefs, even by read-ing a sacred text she treasures, to set aside prejudgments that would restructure her beliefs in a Christian framework, to thoughtfully pursue questions about the differences we see, but without ever coming to the end of those questions, is to stumble into the vastness of God with a new appreciation of how very limited is the human grasp of Divine Reality. Vv'hen it is so difficult and time consuming to learn about another religion, why would anyone bother? The reason may be that there is an Other whom we do not know and curiosity leads us to investigate beyond what is familiar and comfortable. The exploration of cosmic space is an example of the insatiable need we have to go where we have never been, to understand what we do not yet know. In the experience of going beyond our bound-aries, an incredible miracle can happen. Our astronauts experi-enced it the first time they walked on the moon. It was the miracle of looking back and seeing the planet Earth as one single unit, not a globe divided into nations and territories. It so changed their view of life that, when they returned home, they were impelled to do all they could for unity among the peoples who inhabit the planet, to share their vision of the whole with as many as could receive it. A similar paradigm shift occurs when we try to step into the world of another religion: we see the human quest for God in a different way than before. It becomes necessary to work for a more reverent view of the religious "other." It is no longer possible to criticize or to compete or even to compare; in whatever limited way we can, we must seek to understand. Boundaries between countries and differences between religions will continue to exist, and such differentiation is healthy. But the boundaries can become permeable; the differences can contribute to increased self, understanding. The last step in the process of learning from another religion seems to be that it leads us to keep looking back at our own tradi- Review for Religious tion. Whether we start our investigation because we are curious, or because it seems a good thing to pursue, or simply because it "happens" to us, we will always find it necessary to look back. We need to be firmly grounded in our own tradition and to be deepening our roots continuously as we look outward. In my case, many years of pondering the Scriptures, the Carmelite mystical tradition, and other Christian mystical writings--and some famil-iarity with theology--give me a stable position for looking into Hinduism. I am spontaneously attracted to the writings of Hindu mystics, and these, in turn, call me back to well-known Christian texts that seem almost parallel in their expression of the search for God. Let us put the above-quoted text from the Gita on detached work alongside a maxim of John of the Cross: Therefore, detached, perform unceasingly the works that must be done, for the man detached who labors on to the highest must win through. Content to take whatever chance may bring his way, surmounting all dualities, knowing no envy, the same in ~uccess and failure, though working still he is not bound. Attachment gone, deliverance won, his thoughts are fixed on wis-dom: he works for sacrifice alone, and all the work he ever did entirely melts away. (Bhagavad-Gita 3.19, 4.22-23, pp. 55 and 59) God is more pleased by one work however small, done secretly, without desire that it be known, than a thousand done with the desire that people know of them. Those who work for God with purest love not only care nothing about whether others see their works, but do not even seek that God himself know of them. Such persons would riot cease to render God the same services, with the same joy and purity of love, even if God were never to know of these. (St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 20)2 When texts are paired in this way, we can look back and forth between one tradition and another and gain from the light each one reflects upon the other. We see the obvious and important dif-ferences and the questions which these raise, but this need not prevent us from letting the two texts illumine one another. Francis X. Clooney SJ, to whom I am indebted for this insightful model of comparison, makes this comment about parallel texts: "As I read back and forth., each keeps showing me a way to the other, ~uly-August 1998 Hillis ¯ Encountering Hinduism and I end up with a doubled insight, a spiritual 'sense that goes beyond either text by itself. Pairing texts such as these creates a visual tension and emphasizes the enhancement of meaning occurring when we take our own tradition and another seriously and reverently, at the same time, together.''3 Such a bringing together of texts provides a way of integrat-ing our previous Christian commitment with any experiences that cross religious boundaries. Each encounter with the "Other" echoes back to something familiar even as it draws us beyond. We learn to look alternately in both directions without criticism or superiority, but in humble and careful appreciation. Actually what seems to take place when we look into another religion and then back at our own over a period of time is a weaving back and forth between the two in such a way that the ideas, texts, or expe-riences complement each other and intermingle fruitfully without distortion of their origin.al identity. We do not try to force par-allels, but merely look back and forth from one text to another where different traditions are attempting to grapple with com-mon questions about human experience of the divine. What I learned from Hinduism about sthita-prajna, about karma yoga, and about bhakti enable me to take a new look at detachment, duty, and devotion and at the freedom I have in sur-render to Christ. My frame of reference is not the same as that of the Gita; I am not a devotee of Krishna, but a disciple of Christ. Yet I believe I am a better follower of the gospel and a better reli-gious because of my contact with the Gita and with a woman whose life exemplified for me her Hindu beliefs. My questions about Krishna and what sort of deity he is lead me to look at what sort of God I worship and love and serve in Jesus. Without the vantage point of Hinduism, without (as it were) standing on the moon, I might not have had the perspective to look back and see in simpler terms the unity of my own Catholic faith and the rad-icality of my contemplative quest. I am certain that, without step-ping outside my own Catholic worldview, I would not have been grasped and changed by the vastness of God, who is very present in Hinduism in a way that will always be a mystery to me. The gift of encountering another religion is well worth the demands it makes on us in time, openness, vulnerability, or patient study. There is risk, but if we look back as well as forward, if we stay poised in the tension created by who we are as Catholic and how we are discovering God in non-Christian experiences, if we Review for Religious pay attention to differences, details, and questions, it is very pos-sible that we will be overtaken by the miracle of finding ourselves anew in a world of faith, where we learn from our non-Christian neighbor how very big God is. Notes ~ The Bhagavad-Gita 2.55-58, trans. R.C. Zaehner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 52. The Zaehner translation of the Gita is the most tex-tually accurate, but I quote with apology for the lack of inclusive lan-guage. The Sanskrit text meant "he" because it was primarily addressed to higher-caste males. 2 The Collected Vdorks of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), pp. 86-87. 3 Francis X. Clooney SJ, "In Ten Thousand Places, in Every Blade of Grass: Uneventful but True Confessions about Finding God in India, and Here Too," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 28, no. 3 (May 1996), pp. 1-42, esp. pp. 2-3. See also his "Praying through the Non-Christian," Review for Religious 49, no. 3 (May-June 1990), pp. 434-444, and his Seeing Through Texts (New York: SUNY Press, 1996). In chapter 5 of this work, Clooney gives many illuminating examples of parallel Hindu and Christian texts. Many foreign missionaries depend upon people like you who donate subscriptions for them to Review for Religious. To start a subscription for a deserving missionary, please send $24 to: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Blvd. ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108 To pay by credit card, phone: 314-977-7363 or fax: 314-977-7362 L353.-- July-August 1998 DONALD MACDONALD Towards the Millennium Ibrecall a series of magazine articles on foreign travel written y people who had never been to the countries they described--this approach would be objective! The magazine was, of course, being humorous. But, in fast-moving times such as ours, we perhaps speak too glibly of the years ahead. Wisely, then, does Tertio millennio adveniente emphasize "preparation for." with a view to being ready for the psychological dynamism of a new beginning should it come. For it is better to examine the present moment with a view to the future than to just dream of what may or may not be. From the Christian perspective, we have the choice of cen-tering either on circumstance or on Christ. I shall sketch briefly what each of these choices means, and then examine them both at greater length. The center of gravity of mature individuals, it has been said, is always to be found where they actually are. Such people accept responsibility for and from the situation in which they now find themselves, even when it is a difficult one. While all of us grow older, not all of us grow up, and so not everyone manages to retain this center of gravity, this poise. We do not automatically mature. People try to avoid responsibility and look for the gap in the hedge. By profession, by publicly giving our word, we religious are considered to have invested ourselves in a group of people who have the intention of identifying with the will of God. Here we are Donald Macdonald S!VIM writes for us the first time eve~ from his native Scodand: Montfort House; Darnley Road; Barrhead; G78 1TA; Scotland, U.K. Review for Religious meant to strike root, and growing maturity should help us exam-ine the present and future landscape from that perspective. In practice, then, our center of gravity is either in circum-stance or in Christ. Present circumstances, like the electricity bill, seem so real as to define reality; they appear so immediate that response to them seems inescapable. Yet, if we are always latch-ing on to current circumstance, reacting to what we think is hap-pening, we should not be surprised to find ourselves with the patchwork personality of a rag doll. It is almost impossible to have a center of gravity in forever changing circumstance. To drive a particular car, the advertiser tells us, means "You know you are a success." Equally the ecology lobby may suggest an indifference to our present environment. Fashions change even in church and religious life. Wise are the religious who never iden-tify wholly with what they are doing at the expense of who they are. To have even a toehold in the present, it helps to have a foothold in the past; "real development is not leaving things behind as on a road, but drawing life from them as from a root.''~ Taking our identity and sense of worth chiefly from present cir-cumstance can never give us such a root; hence, as the millen-nium approaches, there is a sense of rootlessness among many people, people who are subject to the tyranny of the contempo-rary. On the other hand, what is our perspective on life when our center of gravity is in Christ? The ministry [of Christ] has gone on for nineteen centuries and more, and it still goes on. What is the secret of its stay-ing power? The answer of the whole New Testament is that it is the risen Christ himself who is carrying it out. It is very easy for us, who have been brought up in a scientific age, to think of Jesus bequeathing his principles and ideals to his followers and leaving it to them to take up and carry on the task he is presumed to have laid down somewhere about A.D. 30. That is not the New Testament picture at all. There can be little doubt that, if it had been left to the disciples to take up tasks, their choice would have fallen elsewhere . No: the secret of the matter is that it is Christ who picks up the threads, Christ who takes the lead, Christ whose presence and power are one constant inspiration and strength. The resurrection means above all just this, that Christians do not inherit their task from Christ, they share it with him. We are not the successors of Jesus but his com- ~dy-August 1998 MacdonaM ¯ Towards the Millennium panions. That is the measure both of our privilege and our personality.2 Insofar as this insight of faith matures and truly becomes our own, we are taken out of ourselves into a growing realization of the gift of God in Christ in the present moment. This should be an endless source of wonder. We mature as Christians precisely insofar as we realize the wonder of the companionship offered through our baptism into Christ--that we are in the church and with him in the church. Transfiguration into Christ should be seen as a real option. Generations of saints and the genuinely good prove it. There is a world of difference between "succes-sor" and "companion." If we have not matured in Christ, as the New Testament understands it, we shall never understand this, and that perspective will not be ours. We are then unable to see what is there in the present moment in Christ. We are left to look for meaning and purpose in life elsewhere, not least in response to circumstances over which we have little control. A Prey to Circumstance The first thing to be said about approaching the millennium under the tutelage of circumstance is that we may not see it. We may have died. We may, too, be ill or incapacitated. Our limited circumstances will be world enough for us then. Some of us may decide to jump ship to look for a safer berth outside of our order or congregation. This is understandable as a response to circum-stance. Circumstances change and we fear the changes. What will happen to us in the millennium? The thought of sitting among strangers all day in a home for the elderly run by the town coun-cil, with little status and less independence, can really frighten us. Seen as changing circumstances, the millennium means inse-curry. That then, for the first time since our prot~ession, we might find ourselves genuinely "poor in fact and spirit" (Perfectae cari-tatis §13) might weigh little against our fear of radically changing circumstances. We will likely feel bullied and frightened as the coming millennium takes us into an unfamiliar world that we can-not control. We may also be afraid of the changing culture, particularly in the West. The values which to some extent have formed us and to which we have tried to give our lives may increasingly be pushed to the edge. The sales person with a product nobody wants is in Review for Religious a frightening position. Contemporary movers and shakers who set the pace and seem to write the agenda for living may marginal-ize us. The millennium may see us, then, washed further up onto the shore of utter irrelevance. Who are we then? From a Christian standpoint, there is a progressive coarsen-ing of life generally. The positive values of our culture--built on our Judeo-Christian ethic, however imperfectly practiced--have hitherto managed to order relationships between individuals, neighborhoods, bureaucracy, law, and society. Shared assumptions mapped out life around us. This is now changing. The unborn, children, and the elderly are particu-larly vulnerable. The intrinsic dignity of individuals as created by God and redeemed by Christ, along with that dignity's call for respect, is under increasing pressure as the gospel light which illumined human reality is dimmed. Tabloid newspapers and media culture generally appear to be governed by "the bottom line." People are treated cruelly and privacy is invaded as the poor and immature are exploited to make a dead-line. The worldwide picture seems even worse. Power, money, and sex have always been dominant in human behavior, but the pounds, francs, and dollars purchased in that world are often at the expense of the basic currency used there--people. Inevitably, reli-gious whose identity is primarily from circumstance will be influ-enced when not overwhelmed by this. They may approach the coming millennium in a state of free-fall, with numbing fear rather than challenging expectation. Contemporary culture is not wholly negative. The concern for our global environment is a positive value without being made an ersatz religion as well. There is, too, an active social concern to better the lives of people worldwide. But even here, with icons like Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and many a selfless Christian neighbor, the picture painted is often of the church scrambling to catch up with something contemporary and worthwhile whose impetus comes from elsewhere. Whether this is true or not is beside the poin.t to people who take their cue. mainly from the present situation. We mature as Christians precisely insofar as we realize the wonder of the companionship offered through our baptism into Christ. y~uly-dug'ust 1998 Macdonald ¯ Towards the Millennium A further positive value is a growing awareness of transcen-dence and the spiritual. The church, which religious represent and which, one might think, could offer so much here, is again dis-advantaged. A common perception is that the Christian religion emphasizes morality at the expense of spirituality whereas Buddhism, for example, gives primacy to spirituality. It is sad to see this, but in practice it is often the gospel as lived and preached even by committed believers. The Pauline way of centering first on Christ, and then from within that companionship being open to life regardless of circumstance, is far from universal in Christianity as commonly experienced. There is often no real understanding of the motivation for Christian behavior. Religious marked with that lack are handicapped in approaching the mil-lennium. We cannot bring to the millennium values we do not yet have. An increasing desire for the spiritual cannot be met by religious who do not know how to mine that seam from within the past aiad present of their church. Whoever thinks of the future must be concerned with the worrying question of vocations to religious life. In much of the world, families are becoming smaller. The two-child family is not especially suited to being the home of vocations to religious life. And, with family relationships frequently breaking up, the home is not often a likely place for the nurture and support of religious vocations. Against this background the'shortage of candidates cannot just be put down to "bad" men and women religious not living up to the evangelical life to which they are committed. Young people growing up in a sometimes decadent media/pop culture readily get used to being fed on a diet of having rather than giving. "What's in it for me? It does nothing for me! The magic's gone! I'm too young for responsibility!"--such words, all turning on the idea of self-fulfillment, do not create a seedbed for future vocations to any form of adult Christian life. Long-term, open-ended, lifelong commitment is increasingly rare in contemporary culture. Nothing lasts. You are always let down. In nominally Christian communities, many adults do not mea-sure up and do not take responsibility for where they are. The increasing spread of what is held to be politically cor-rect can suffocate an authentic gospel life. The young, especially, need vision and courage if they are not to succumb, in an endless succession, to one or another flavor of the month. Often what is politically correct may not be evangelically right. A newspaper Review for Religious" cartoon, for example, shows a schoolboy buying cigarettes and asking the shopkeeper to wrap them in a copy of Gay News--an acerbic comment on a government policy advocating sixteen as the minimum legal age for homosexual relations while holding to the age of eighteen for buying cigarettes. In webs of circumstance like this, many young people may not be able to hear a call to religious life that is otherwise clear and inviting. Another problem today is that for many young persons the test of reality is how they themselves experience life. No one, particularly no authority figure, is going to tell them how to live their life! They are free! Vv'hat counts is what is trueJbr them. Reality is what they feel it is. Drawing upon a wealth of 20th-century experience, they are chary of giving ourselves to a guru, whether secu-lar or Christian. From the infamous results of "only obeying orders" to the pain caused by religious guides with feet of clay, the path is littered with casualties, and the hurts go deep. What people do not so well defend themselves against--and it can be just as damaging--is losing, unawares, their freedom regarding some contemporary matters, matters about which they adopt unthink-ingly the politically correct answer. The fetters here can hold as firmly as any medieval mindset is alleged to have done, and the damage may be terminal. To vow ourselves to God in religious life means that, to a greater or lesser extent, we commit ourselves to an overarching tradition and to a particular superior. Few people like constraint, and today God, parents, teachers, and other authority figures are often treated with pointed disrespect. There seems to be a com-pulsion for people to assert themselves in opposition to them, whereas nonauthority figures are often worshiped and can take us where they will. If the surface aggression is paramount, there is litde place for trust, and so a genuinely gospel community can-not be built. If this immaturity is carried to the approaching mil-lennium, there will be an inbuilt fault in the foundations of whatever we attempt to create. In the church, superiors are sometimes seen as the unaccept-able face of religion. Yet someone has to be willing to take the The increasing spread of what is held to be politically correct can suffocate an authentic gospel life. J~dy-August 1998 Macdonald * Towards the Millennium responsibility, especially in our unsetded times. It may cost much. The superior, in thrall to circumstance, will suffer particularly, always presupposing his or her own integrity while in office. A for-mer provincial superior, reflecting on his time in office, said; "One loses one's innocence when one is in a position of author-ity. Would it were otherwise"--but he notes that the great major-ity are not the cause of his hurt.3 Cardinal Basil Hume OSB, archbishop of Westminster, spoke of being misunderstood, misrepresented, disliked, criticized, and written off as a disaster.4 (Of course, this kind of thing, in today's jargon, "goes with the territory," but also is not always unde-served.) Yet now he has come to see such suffering as really a blessing. The disguise may seem impenetrable, but the blessing is there. When circumstances chastened and hurt him despite his best endeavors, he found it a marvelous way to grow in the Spirit. In the situation he came to see that only the gospel lasts. Everything else falls away, and ultimately he is graced with the realization that there is only the fidelity of God in Christ to be relied on. St. Paul, writing from prison, would agree: "God. has gra-ciously granted you the privilege (charis) not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well" (Ph 1:29). When we feel hemmed in and hurt by circumstance as we approach the millen-nium, it would help immeasurably if we were at home with the small print of the gospel. It really does translate experience for us--provided that we focus in any and every situation not on cir-cumstance, no matter how immediate, but on our risen Lord. The Company of Christ and Each Other As the basic guide for religious "is a following of Christ as proposed by the gospel" (Perfectae caritatis §2), it follows that to attempt this we need to know how to approach the New Testament, where the authentic portrait of Christ is to be found. We should test the assumption that, come the millennium, we will really know how to do this. It is the claim of Pope John Paul II that, given "the prayerful and meditated reading of the word . . . a humble and loving lis-tening to him who speaks., one's own vocation can be discov-ered and understood, loved and followed, and one's own mission carried out.''s This is a major claim, but the Holy Father rein- Review for Religious forces it when he says "the person's entire existence finds its uni-fying, radical, meaning in being the terminus of God's word." That is to say, if we mature into habitually, instinctively being a terminus of the gospel, all the threads of a situation and the capac-ity of life to shock or puzzle us will be brought together; whatever lies deepest in us will be reached; and we will be given to see pur-pose in life. For many this is but a worthy platitude, notionally true but factually unreal. Yet the claim stands. If we can find our way to becoming a terminus of the word of God, we will not nec-essarily have a trouble-free life, but we will be given a security which jostling circumstance cannot unsettle. We are, as has been well said, then in touch with the Pilot. Imagine if we approached the millennium from within that perspective, knowing it to be true! A cameo, chiefly from a few verses of Philippians 3, gives us a glimpse of how this might be done and of the dividends to be gained from doing it. From prison St. Paul wrote to his people in Philippi to thank them for remembering him there and for gen-erously sending one of their number to help and encourage him. The backdrop to the letter (and, in truth, the foreground to Paul's understanding of community) is soon stated: "I thank my God . ¯. for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now" (1:3,5). Invariably it is "us" with St. Paul, never "me and you" unless he is forced to "speak like a fool" in defense of his stand-ing as a genuine apostle. This fellowship (koinonia) between Paul and his people, which stems from the realization of their oneness in Christ through baptism, is the overall context in which the interchange of the letter takes place. When, as here, it is under-stood and reciprocated, it both thrills and puts new heart into him. He writes from within the strength of that relationship to encourage it and further it. That insight of responsibility for each other in Christ is as valid today as then. If we approach the millennium determined to make our baptismal fellowship real by investing ourselves in the c.ommunity, we will communicate, at a deep level. It should be a priority and is well within the competence of most of us if, for example, it is expressed in a word of appreciation, a word of sym-pathy, a word of encouragement, a word of thanks. These are the building blocks, and the present moment is the time and place to lay them. As we know from experience, a word "in season," when genuinely meant, does really help and might encourage us and ~tly-Augttst 1998 Macdonald ¯ Towards the Millennium those around us to reach and welcome the millennium. "Friends are facts, and the good things you have done to them are facts," said G.K. Chesterton. This is time usefully and evangelically spent. Only insofar as we mature in Christian life will we do this and be able to sense how shoes pinch other people's feet. St. Paul writes of his present situation: "I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things" (3:8). The verb suggests total loss as in shipwreck or business failure. Everything has gone--family, status, career, security, good name. He writes from prison now. Initially he was compelled to leave Philippi after being given the standard flogging for a trouble-maker. His present situation follows the same pattern. Then, as now, circumstances are none of his choosing, but in the situation, as Cardinal Hume and many others found when similarly placed, he finds God in Christ: "for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things., in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him" (3:8-9). He is in fact in prison, but Paul knows that he is in Christ! There is his center of gravity. From the viewpoint of circumstance, his fidelity to the call of God's providence in Christ has wrapped him in rags and insecurity. The same situation, seen from the insight of faith, is altogether worthwhile, for it enables him to "gain Christ and be found in him." This is a superb place to be, with an enviable grasp of reality. What a center to move out from! Religious approaching the millennium would do well to try to make that perspective theirs. Whatever the circumstance, our risen Lord is there. We date the present from the moment of Christ's birth. He is our companion now. Each moment of each day as well as the millennium finds us wanting "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering by becoming like him in his death" (3:10). The verb implies close identity, and again transfiguration is offered as a real possibility. Paul discovered this not by whisding in a cemetery or in a library, but by applying the insight of faith to the circumstances of every-day life, good days and bad. Attempting in such company to become a terminus of the word of God offers us virtually unquan-tifiable dividends. Finally, for our purposes, Paul says, "I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (3:12). Again the situation is prison. Paul writes of racing to the finish of a race Review for Religious when in fact he is not going anywhere without his jailers' per-mission. The marathon of the Christian life which he entered at baptism is not particularly concerned with going from A to B to C, Rather, it means interpreting the present situation through a progressive deepening of understanding of what it means to be in Christ, There is never a situation or circumstance where our risen Lord is not there. Even in the isolation of crucifixion, if life is so cruel, even there we are nailed to the cross with Christ. Paul says that he has not yet fully matured in Christ. There is always more to be sounded in those unfathomable depths. The dynamic here is the wonderful realization that "Christ Jesus has made me his own." He wants to hold as he is now being held. Held within the security of his Lord who rose from a grave to make him "his own," Paul is a driven man. He is aware that his present situation may cost him his life--"I am being poured out as a libation" (2:17)--but it can never separate him from Christ. From this unchanging center, there is much more to be received and, within himself, much still to be surrendered. So, from within the security of his risen Lord whatever the circumstance, Paul is "still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me" (3:14). The imaginative appeal Of the imagery comes from an imprisoned Christian individual writing a letter of thanks and encouragement to his no doubt frightened people. So much seems to go so wrong so often. Yet he would have them think as he does: "Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind" (3:15). Just what does he see? Religious who would be more mature as they approach the millennium could usefully examine their situation from that perspective. Does that insight interpret life for us at any level? Baptism into Christ means an invitation to a present relationship with God through the Spirit, not just loose membership in a particular group. Religious life has no other purpose than to invite us to enflesh that in ourselves by attempting to live for God alone at one with his will. The experience of St. Paul in times past is not without value, but what if it could be mine now? Understood from within a Spirit-graced Christian community, it pays altogether richer div-idends. It is not just an example of what someone did then, but an There is never a situation or circumstance where our risen Lord is not there. Macdonald ¯ Towards the Millennium invitation to consider what we can do now. This is interpreting life in the light of the gospel. Unifying, radical meaning is on offer here to those who try to be habitually open to receive. In Christ ours is a present reality. We are his companions, not his succes-sors trying to make what we can of a long-dead tradition. Accordingly, "to mature" means here that we have Someone to give and someone to be. This is not the least of what we can bring to the millennium. If we stay rooted in Christ, into whom we have been bap-tized, we can come to know that immediate circumstance is not all there is in defining present reality. There is no need to approach the millennium like stunned rabbits caught in the headlights. In Christ there is a vast arc of gospel fellowship among the living and the dead, all held in the present moment. We are one in Christ with so very many; and, if we can mature in their faith, we shall be given to see meaning in life. Rather than consider the millen-nium a milestone to be reached at a future date, a milestone that is being surrounded more and more by the massed choirs of the advertising media, why not stay where we are now in Christ and let the millennium (as indeed any circumstance) come to us? Always to be in the one place in Christ!--our center of gravity, our spiritual focal point, can only become more secure as we more and more see God giving himself to us there in Christ. This is where we are. We can then try to interpret circumstance through our risen Lord, knowing that, whether life is good or ill, we are never without the power of his resurrection or the fellowship of his suffering. Travel Light This is not to ~dvocate the passivity of a cow in the field. How could it when the reality of our life comes from our risen Lord who has made us his own? This is energizing, delightful presence, compelling us to be enlivened by it. Whatever a future calendar date brings, it cannot break that firm bond. Ultimately, it is all there is. We then want to make Christ really our own as he has made us truly his. For religious this should mean a hard look at our rule or founder's insight in the light of the gospel. We may have accumulated much. A mere middle-class lifestyle-- without the potentially maturing presence of husband, wife, or child--will not attract or challenge others. Should we not travel Review for Religious light to the millennium? Circumstances may be stripping us of much that we are attached to and find hard to give up, but we can nonetheless choose to drop even more. More has to be done to make our fellowship in the gospel a practical, reality. Arguably, the word community is heard now more than ever before, although there seems to be less of it. Religious profess to find God's will among a particular group of people. But only insofar as the risen Christ is real to them do imperfect individuals, living among others also imperfect and even dys-functional, have the courage to attempt this. If anything is to come of it, then, Christian maturity is essential. Without it we have nowhere to come home to--and indeed no one to be. It is no small achievement to welcome the millennium in the company of Christ and in full awareness that this company is all we have. How best to have this awareness in changing circumstances and amid lessening numbers is a problem. It is for different people to find various solutions in view of their temperaments and God-given gifts. No one can read the future, but, as T.W. Manson pointed out earlier, we are Christ's companions and the initiative of the entire gospel enterprise lies with him. There is no future for the maverick away from Christ. Inspirational individuals will always be found among those who habitually listen to the gospel, wishing to follow wher-ever it leads. Risk, challenge, and retrenching may be factors in an apostolate for the millennium. Community, it has been said, should be more like a hive than a nest. Ultimately, if the millennium finds us in Christ as the gospel understands this, we shall reflect his presence there. The pres-ence of Christ is the one ageless gift we have to offer. Circumstances change and situations sometimes frighten and even crucify, but the underlying reality for those who see with eyes of faith is the presence and power of our risen Lord. Here is where we live and move and have our being. We let life come and find us here. But we cannot do this complacently. We must foster a growing sense of awe and of our good fortune. The more real this awareness of presence is, the keener are we to share it with others. The sacraments (not least the Blessed Sacrament) are realities of presence, and we should try to share The presence of Christ is the one ageless gift we have to offer. d~lly-Augvtst 1998 Macdonald ¯ Towards the Millennium what we find there. They feed us as our life progresses. They are glimpses of life at the heart of our community, and they reflect mystery at the heart of reality. There is much more here than we can see, even graced by the insight of faith. As companions of Jesus, one with him and each other through baptism, we need to try to bring gospel fellowship to people in ways they can understand. Circumstances had Paul in prison miles away from his anxious people. To encourage him they sent one of their number. To thank them he wrote them a letter. They did what they could in less-than-ideal circumstances. Although cir-cumstances do not allow us to do all that we would like, we should not be discouraged from trying to do what we can with what falls into our hands. Remember, the initiative is from the presence and Spirit of our risen Lord. When we are open to his presence, we find we have a community; we have Someone to share. The millennium offers a challenge, and one of the best ways to meet it is for ourselves, our individual selves, to really make Christ our own and so try to be found always in him--and then to give from that center and invite others to meet Christ there. Our Lady and a cloud of saints once lived this life of faith, and, whatever the reasons for moving their statues from our churches and communities, we should again savor their company now in Christ. In the fellowship of the gospel, they can be real and not static presences. Many a secular idol will be worshiped as we approach the millennium. The Christian community can offer more than that. It was individuals sharing with others what they themselves had been inspired to see of the gospel who thereby inspired oth-ers so that even more followed and formed our various religious orders and congregations. We present-day members, perhaps feel-ing our lack of inspiration or vision, would do well to recognize our situation for what it is. If we are afraid, let us admit it, but let us not focus on fears without bringing to them the faith vision that so helped Paul and his people. For them this was no theo-retical exercise. It. could be equally real for us. "A loving knowl-edge of the word of God and a prayerful familiarity with it are specifically important for the prophetic ministry," says Pope John Paul. This echoes the conviction of the best in the church over centuries. This insight had and has now the power both to form an elite and encourage the frail. Review for Religious i G.K. Chesterton, The I~ctorian Age in Literature (London, no date), p. 12. 2 T.W. Manson, The Servant Messiah (Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 98. 3 R. Rolheiser OMI, "The Last Word," The Catholic Herald (London), 4 July 1997. 4 Cardinal Basil Hume OSB, "Reflections on Leadership" (keynote address at Conference of Religious, 1997), Signum, 20 February 1997, p. 10. s John Paul II, Pastores dabo vobis, 1992. This and the next two quo-tations are from §47. Spirit Prayer Spiritt. Holy! Stirring birds and buds and Buddhists, Moving mothers, monks and Muslims, Turning wheels and churning waters, Shifting rocks and shaking ridges, Sweeping fields and forests, Raising bread and bodies, Spinning dreams and dancers, Whirling clouds and clowns, Filling sails and souls, sifting, Sounding, Singing, Sighing, Spirit, oht. Do what you do, Dance where you dance, Blow when you blow, Move us to move, To break from the laze of our days At the Word we have heard, With the Breath that will lift us from death. Mary Alban Bouchard CSJ j~dy~August 1998 MARION NORMAN Two 17th-Century Women of Wisdom: Mary Ward and Marguerite Bourgeoys pioneers Wisdom, which in biblical literature is usually personi-fied as a woman, is described in Proverbs 8:12-14 as "mis-tress of the art of thought" who shares house with Discretion; hates pride and arrogance, wicked behavior, and a lying mouth; and is a source of good advice, pru-dence, and perception. The Hebrew words for wisdom and wise man (hokhmah, Ex 36:2, and hokham, Jr 9:23) are used in various ways throughout the Old Testament to connote the skills needed to carry out tasks successfully. Hokhmah implies a deeper quality than cleverness, and hokham means not a clever know-it-all but a sage, one who, having acquired knowledge of the world and human nature, can penetrate to the depths of the human situa-tion, seeing it as a whole and then sharing that vision by giving prudent advice or immortalizing it in the form of proverbs or aphorisms. The prophet Jeremiah declares, "Let not the wise man (hokham) glory in his wisdom; neither let the mighty man glory in his might." In rabbinic literature, however, the wisdom of Proverbs has come to refer to the "wisdom of the Torah,". and the wise man now becomes the scholar Marion Norman IBVM (Loretto Sisters) presented this paper, here slightly revised, at the International Mediaeval and Renaissance Conference in Banff in May 1997. Her address is Loretto College; 70 St. Mary Street; Toronto, Ontario MSS 1J3; Canada. Review for Religious well versed in the Torah. The identification of Torah with wisdom dates from Deuteronomy (4:4-6): See I have imparted to you laws and rules, as the Lord my God has commanded me, for you to abide by in the land which you are about to invade and occupy. Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and dis-cernment to other people, who on hearing all these laws will say, "Surely that great nation is a wise and discerning people." Thus, from originally implying little more than technical abil-ity, wisdom took on moral and religious connotations. In time it became synonymous with reverence for the Lord, as expressed in the Book of Proverbs: "Reverence for the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction" and "Let your trust be in the Lord. to show what is right and true" (Pr 24:7, 22). Hebrew wisdom was not alone in leaving its indelible mark on Western culture. Greek and Roman wisdom (usually referred to as philosophy) played a significant role as well, as did the leading Hellenistic philosophers, who claimed to teach their disciples how to live by providing moral instruction about what was right and wrong and how best to carry out their duties as individuals and in social relationships. Early Christianity perceived a certain affinity between its own aims, as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, and those of Judaism and the best Greco-Roman philosophies. All three strains had a great influence on Western culture and, at the time of the Renaissance, came together to provide the intellectual, social, and religious context for the kinds of wisdom exemplified by the two 17th-century women of wisdom who are the subjects of this study. My selection of them has not been arbitrary. That the Bible even more than the Greco-Roman classics has' been the principal source of inspiration for both readers and writers of English lit-erature has long been recognized. Little wonder, then, that the biblical ideal of wisdom was carried over into the conduct of peo-ple's daily lives. This was particularly true of women, who, deprived of formal education in the s~ven liberal arts (reserved almost exclusively for males), relied on biblical primers and the Bible itself as their sole textbooks. We read, for instance, of female servants, shopkeepers, and housewives, especially among the Puritans, painfully acquiring a knowledge of the original biblical July-Aug'ust 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17th-Century Women of Wisdom languages for better access to the scriptural message. And, with the greater availability of biblical texts since the invention of printing and the Reformers' stress on the Bible as the "sole rule of faith," reliance on individual inspiration assumed central sig-nificance. The biblical concept of wisdom saw God as the source of wisdom for individuals seeking humbly to discover and imple-ment it as it was spelled out in the Torah. Each of these two 17th-century women received intimations of the direction in which the Lord was leading her, and, responding with docility and trust, received further clarification about God's plan for her in her own daily living. The response of Mary Ward (1585-1645) and Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700) to God's invitation had implications both negative and positive. It meant, first of all, rejecting the usual pattern of marriage and family in favor of an exclusive conse-crated discipleship, freeing them for the service of the entire Christian community. This, in turn, involved a readiness to leave home and country if God asked it of them. Mary Ward For Mary Ward, at a moment in English history when adher-ence to the traditional religion was proscribed by the state and its preservation imperiled, the immediate need, as revealed to her by God and further discerned by experience, was for a total and free commitment to God that would flow out into love for oth-ers. She felt empowered to reach out to new needs and to devise whatever might be required to meet those needs. Inevitably, how-ever, the wisdom imparted in her close union with God in prayer entailed "the rejection, in whole or in part, of older, conventional patterns and methods that were no longer meeting new needs and situations. The clash between fidelity to divine guidance and official representatives of authority, as in the case of earlier bib-lical prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, was inevitable. Mary Ward's own response, which she constantly urged on her com-panions as well, was single-minded and unequivocal: "After busi-nesses I go to find myself in God, without any will or private interest and with a will only to have his will, which I cease not till I find."1 Mary understood this open and faithful orientation to God's will--desiring solely to love God and refer all actions to Review for Religious him--as adapting to the lives of consecrated women the lifestyle the church had already approved for Jesuits in their Formula insti-tuti. Precisely what this would entail was not revealed to her at once. In the first half of the 17th century, the cultural climate cre-ated by the Puritan and Parliamentary ascendancy brought forth a highly vocal group of educational reformers such as John Milton, John Dury, Marchmount Nedham, Samuel Hartlib, and Jan Comenius. At the same time the new scientific movement-- inspired by Francis Bacon as spokesman and promoted, under royal sponsorship, by the Royal Society of London--put Britain in touch with parallel interna-tional movements in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Voices of dissent were not failing, moreover, to speak out coura-geously on behalf of neglected groups of people--especially children of the poor and girls and women. These asserted, by their writings and actions, the rights of the counterculture against the prevailing climate of opinion, including the tendency to denigrate women. It is in the light of such conflicting views on the aims, con-tent, and methods of instruction that the enlightened and coura-geous leadership of women of wisdom like Mary Ward and Marguerite Bourgeoys should be seen. Although 17th-century politicians, theologians, and educational theorists were united in seeing the inadequacy of the current educational system to meet changing needs and priorities, they could agree on little else. Neither Francis Bacon nor John Milton apparently perceived women's education as necessary or even desirable. None seemed to see the value of preparing future mothers who would be responsible for the basic training of the young as future morally responsible and loyal citizens. For English Catholics the educational situation was particularly critical. Harassed politically, sodally, and economically and denied access to such employment as their rank and abilities deserved, they were crippled by taxes for nonattendance at Anglican services and threatened with imprisonment or death for possessing Catholic The biblical concept of wisdom saw God as the source of wisdom for individuals seeking humbly to discover and implement it. July-Aug~tst 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17tb-Century Women of V~dom books or providing accommodation to priests or Catholic instruc-tors. At an early age their children were forced to seek schooling on the continent, facing for up to nine years the loneliness, the foreign customs, languages, and climate, and the other handicaps of exile. Those without the necessary means were denied even basic instruction, while the care of the needy, the sick, the dis-abled, the aged, and the prisoners was entirely dependent on what-ever could be provided by families or individuals. Little wonder that the principal responsibility for transmission of and instruc-tion in the faith heritage devolved on the womenfolk and that, in the face of growing apostasy and indifference, a sound education for women as well as males came to be of crucial importance. Mary Ward, called by a recent historian "the greatest Englishwoman of the 17th century," was born at Mulwith near Ripon, Yorkshire, on 23 January 1585 (shortly before the defeat of the Spanish Armada) and died 30 January 1645 (shortly before the beheading of Charles I at the height of the Civil War). She came from a family noted for its staunch loyalty to the old reli-gion, which had been proscribed in England for more than sixty years. Failure to swear to the Acts of Supremacy and Succession and to attend services weekly in the local Anglican parish church made heads of families liable to imprisonment or even death. Mary's own parents and grandparents and she herself experienced such imprisonment, and several relatives were executed for their faith. The year before her birth, her fellow countrywoman, Margaret Clitherow, had been martyred at York. Like most children in such devout Catholic families, Mary received her early schooling and religious instruction in her own home and in homes of relatives and family friends. During those years she first felt the call to follow Christ in a life consecrated by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Since the time of Christ and the Apostles (as can be seen in the New Testament), women as well as men had chosen such a way of loving discipleship. From the Middle Ages, too, despite the weight of authority against women's right to education or the exercise of leadership outside their own homes, a surprising quantity of writ-ings by women has survived. Exceptional women like Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena played prominent roles that changed the course of history, notwithstanding the patriarchalism of church and state. Until the early 17th century, however, women's accepted' mode of service of Christ, apart from that of "helpmeet" Review for Religiotts in marriage, was a lifetime spent in contemplation within monas-teries such as those of Poor Clares and Carmelites. After the dis-solution of religious houses in England, that meant for Englishwomen a lifetime of exile in some foreign climate. Prayerful discernment, as well as natural prudence and obser-vation, convinced Mary that the best way for her to give her life to the service of her "Friend of friends" would be, not marriage, but "some other thing., without all comparison more to the glory of God.-2 Further light came in November 1615 regarding the kind of holi-ness which that "other thing" would require. Rejecting the commonly held view that "women could not do good except to themselves," Mary envisioned a different kind of women's vocation, one engaged in education and other works "congruent to the times." Her institute would be one marked by "a singular freedom from all that could make one adhere to earthly things, with an entire application and apt disposition to all good works." Members would "refer all to God," doing "works of justice. [We would] be such as we appear and appear such as we are . Grounded in this, we should gain at God's hands true wisdom."3 Mary defined what came to be called her concept of "the Just Soul" in terms of three kinds of freedom: freedom from attach-ment to worldly values, freedom for all works of justice necessary in this world, and freedom to "refer all to God." Her words for this special kind of holiness ~'evealed to her were "freedom," "justice," and "sincerity" (or "verity"), the qualifies by which we as human beings participate in God's own life of goodness and wisdom, and which, she insisted, we have the right to ask and expect of God. What seems clear is that Mary, considering these three free-doms of "the Just Soul" to be the qualities essential for living out the ideal of Christian holiness as envisioned by Ignatius Loyola, could see nothing to prevent their application to women as well Mary defined "the Just Soul" in terms of three kinds of freedom: freedom from attachment to worldly values, freedom for all works of justice necessary in this world, and freedom to "refer all to God." ff'uly-Aug'ust 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17th-Century Women of V~sdom as men. This became even more explicit in Mary's speech to her companions (1617) describing the virtues required for their way of life, of which a cleric had disparagingly said, "When all is done, they are but women." Mary's speech, because its depth of insight and vision for the future transcend her own institute and pertain to the whole concept of women's discipleship, deserves to be quoted: I would know what you think he meant by this speech . Fervor is a will to do good, that is, a preventing [preve-nient] grace of G~)d and a gift given gratis by God, which we could not merit. It is true [that] fervor doth many times grow cold, but what is the cause? Is it because we are women? No, but because we are imperfect women. There is no such difference between men and women. Therefore, it is not because we are women, but, as I have said before, because we are imperfect women and love not verity. It is not veritas hominum, verity of men nor verity of women, but veritas Domini, and this verity women may have, as well as men.4 Such was the vision that drove Mary Ward (after her two tri-als of the strictest form of women's contemplative life then known, the Poor Clares, both Flemish and English) and her five like-minded companions to cross the English Channel again in 1609. But Mary was a woman not only of vision but of practical common sense and ingenuity as well. Because at-the time both faith and morals were daily being eroded by ignorance and lack of access to the sacraments, the most pressing need seemed to be the provision of instruction for both children and adults. So, at St. Omer in the Catholic Netherlands, where there was a large English refugee population, they began educating, in secular and religious subjects, children of English refugees and the local poor. Their freedom from enclosure and from distinctive religious costume allowed them a helpful flexibility in their min-istry. They would sometimes wear fashionable dress when calling on gentlefolk (such as the archbishop of Canterbury, who had been desirous of meeting these ladies who had done "more harm than six Jesuits"), and sometimes "mean clothing" when visiting the prisoners or the sick (Mary Ward once disguising herself as a maid to gain access to a lady and bring her back to the practice of her faith),s Because adults, too, lacked instruction and often were destitute as well, the sisters extended their ministry to these further needs of those critical times.6 Review for Religious This new concept of religious life, freed of the restrictions of cloister, of government by male superiors, and of older male-inspired Rules, was so revolutionary that it proved both incomprehensible and unacceptable to ecclesiastical authorities steeped in the patriarchal assumptions of centuries. Today, when church and society are still trying to come to terms on the role of women, Mary Ward seems indeed a prophetic woman of wisdom in the Old Testament tradition. Unlike many visionaries, however, this woman had a vigorous practicality about her. What others said, Mary Ward did. Erasmus and Ftnelon said girls should be educated and, if they were above average intelligence, even taught some Latin as the key to all learning (though under male, direction, of course). Mary Ward opened schools in St. Omer, in Rome, and (under the very noses of pursuivants) even in London to provide education for all who desired it and, as far as they could, regardless of social distinctions. Guided but not bound by the Jesuit Ratio studiorum (1599), Mary believed that, since education is for life and a woman's life is not the same as a man's, the content should differ, though a woman's intellectual powers were by no means to be underrated. "God can use only good ones," she said of both teachers and pupils. So, in addition to the liberal arts and, of course, religion, her curriculum included painting, dancing, music (both vocal and instrumental), handwriting, speech training, drama, and modern languages. Language teaching was always a specialty in her schools, and for this no mere smattering would do, but only suf-ficient mastery to read the best authors of each language and to write it well.7 Originally most pupils were English refugees, but, as the schools spread throughout Europe, though English continued to be taught as a second language, the local vernaculars--French, Flemish, German, and Italian--were added. The nuns, who, as Mary Ward's Memorial of 1629 says, included '"Italians, Spanish, French, Germans, Netherlanders, Bohemians, Hungarians, English, and Irish," usually wrote to one another in Latin, Italian, or French (to make things harder for the English government's paid interceptors of mail). Another evidence of the foundress's farsightedness was that the syllabus included, besides the usual subjects, simple mathematics or "accounts." When one recalls that Samuel Pepys, secretary of the royal navy and a university graduate, required special tutoring to master the multiplication Norman ¯ Two 17th-Century Women of VV'tsdom table, this was very avant garde indeed, as was the inclusion of "globes," a combination of geography and astronomy. As her contemporary Richard Mulcaster had urged better training for teachers, so Mary trained hers so well as to attract the favorable notice of civil authorities (according to documents in the Brussels royal archives) and to elicit a request that she set up a training school for others. As prescribed in the Jesuit Ratio stu-diorum, Mary gave high priority to the teaching and supervision of educators. Writing to their novice mistress about two of her young sisters, Catherine and Cecilia, Mary insisted that their Latin studies should have precedence over everything except prayer and, as to fears that such studies would undermine humil-ity, she sensibly added: "This must and will be so common to all that there will be no cause of complaining." As an early memo in the archives expresses it, "The design of gur school being the sanctification of the mistresses who are members of it for the children of their care, they must be. proficient in writing and reading Latin and English."s The consequences of these high standards soon became so widely recognized that, as one Bavarian ecclesiastic expressed it, "The English Ladies. instill into both aristocratic and ordinary children a noble and well-mannered mode of living., so that they are kept with a loving restraint within the limits of good manners and propriety.''9 And, while the harsh treatment of chil-dren in English boarding schools was notorious even down to the 20th century, Mary advised: "In our calling, a cheerful mind, a good understanding, and a great desire after virtue are neces-sary, but of all these a cheerful mind is the most so.''1° Whenever a foundation was made, two schools were opened simultaneously: a boarding school, mainly for English refugee girls, and a free day school, the criteria for both being tractabil-ity, good manners, and the ability to profit from study rather than wealth or social position. In fact, because of the penury of many English refugees, fees were low and often totally remitted; in any case, they seldom kept up with inflation, especially in the countries affected by the Thirty Years' War. For the poorer chil-dren, especially those in the Italian slums, she provided training in skills that would enable them to earn an honest living, so much so that complaints arose that soon there would be none left to run the houses of ill fame. In imitation of what had been done ear-lier by St. Charles Borromeo, her sisters also ran Sunday schools, Review for Religious providing young servants with religious instruction, basic lan-guage skills, and preparation for the sacraments. And in England, where the priests had a price on their heads, both children and adults were made ready to receive the sacraments and opportu-nities were provided for them to do so. For the sake of mission, one member known only to the oth-ers as Sister Dorothea, living like members of modern secular institutes such as the Grail and Focolare, served as maid-com-panion in the home of the wealthy Suffolk gentlewoman Lady Timperley. Her own description of this ministry has a singularly modern ring: "I dare not keep schools publicly, as we do beyond the seas, . . . but I teach and instruct children in the houses of par-ents . Besides teaching of children, I endeavor to instruct the simple and vul-gar sort. I teach them their. Pater, Ave, Creed, Commandments, etc . I tend and serve poor people in their sickness., make salves., endeavor to make peace among those at variance."11 For the apostolate to spread, it soon became apparent that it needed to be put on a permanent basis and also needed official approbation beyond what it had already received from the local church and civil officials. Despite the often vituperative opposi-tion already encountered (especially from certain members of the Society of Jesus and the English secular clergy, who saw in her work a challenge to their authority), Mary set out with some con-fidence to win formal approval for her institute from three suc-cessive popes: Paul v, Gregory xv, and Urban VIII. Despite ill health, poverty, dangers, and cold, she made three trips on foot over the Alps to Rome to plead her cause in person before the committee appointed to examine her Formula instituti (virtually identical with that approved for the Jesuits).~2 But, though she explained at some length her primary purpose ("striving for the defense and propagation of the faith and progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine"), the means (a new kind of women's order without walls or distinctive clothing, engaged in education and other works congruous with the times), and the instruments (women, distinguished by their well-ordered interior disposition and the virtues of freedom, justice, and verity that characterize the "estate of justice"), these were considered dangerously novel ideas Mary gave high priority to the teaching and supervision of educators. ~7~nly-Aug~st 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17tb-Century Women of Wisdom bordering on heresy with which the good but somewhat obtuse legalists of the time felt unable tO cope except by denial.~3 The foundress was imprisoned by order of the Inquisition, and the institute's way of life was declared contrary to the nature of women and a danger to morals.~4 The savagely worded bull of suppression of 1631 destroyed her first institute, and its members' vows were declared null and void. They were offered the alternatives of marriage, joining some other established order, or living as individual laywomen under private vows. When Mary pointed out the state of these young women, homeless, penniless, and in times of persecution unable to return to their own country, the pope offered them a house in Rome and, under his personal protection, allowed them to resume teaching in Rome, Naples, Munich, and even London and York.~s Mary herself, exonerated of all heresy, was allowed to return to her native country, where, in the midst of the Civil War, she spent the last six years of her life. She and her com-panions remained true to the institute and loyal in obedience to the church, and they continued to be highly commended by those for whom they worked.16 After her death at just over sixty, her tombstone in the Anglican churchyard at Osbaldwick bore this touching tribute: "To love the poore, persevere in the same, live, die, and,rise again with them, was all the aim of Mary Ward.''~7 How is the wisdom revealed by God to individuals to be rec-ognized when, as happened in the case of the Old Testament prophets and Mary Ward, it runs counter to legitimate authority by anticipating the future? Diversity, according to R.B.Y. Scott in his comprehensive study of biblical wisdom, has always attended this concept's evolution and its exemplars, the prophets, as well.~8 Inevitably, however, there is conflict when the fulfillment of the vision comes up against more limited goals and values and older ways of achieving them. Such was the case in the 17th century when it became increas-ingly apparent that the well-worn structures and familiar modes of acting were insufficient to meet the sudden and unexpected challenges in the church and in the world around it. Many were unable or unwilling to accept the fact that new kinds of service were needed to meet these new challenges. In particular, the attempt of the Council of Trent to turn the clock backward, in the case of women, by insisting on enclosure, distinctive clothing, and subjection to male authority severely hampered efforts to Review for Religious envision new forms of discipleship that would free women for more effective service of the church. Instead, they were con-demned as "pernicious growths" needing to be eradicated. Their apostolate, however, continued to grow fruitfully and to encour-age imitators. When official recognition finally came at the begin-ning of the 20th century, Mary Ward's institute had spread round the world to six continents. That Mary Ward was truly a "woman of wisdom," discerning, from her intimacy with God in prayer, the practical needs of her time and place and addressing herself to meet them with pru-dence and courage, was belatedly affirmed in Vatican II's docu-ment on the appropriate renewal of religious life, Pe~fectae caritatis, which reads in part: All those who are called by God to practice the evangelical counsels., devote themse!ves in a special way to the Lord. ¯ . . The religious life is intended above all else to lead . . . to union with God. [but] the manner of living, praying, and working should be suitably adapted to the physical and psychological conditions of today's religious and also . . . to the needs of the apostolate, the requirements of a given culture, the social and economic circumstances anywhere, but especially in missionary territories." (§§ 1-3 passim) Marguerite Bourgeoys Marguerite Bourgeoys was born at Troyes in the province of Champagne in 1620, her youth overlapping the latter years of Mary Ward. At an early age she had a similar experience of God's intervention in her life and felt God's gradual imparting of the gift of wisdom. In 1626, to meet the critical need in that war-torn province for religious instruction and care ofthe needy, a saintly priest, Peter Fourier, organized four hundred volunteer laywomen to go out in pairs among the poor. Attached as externs to the cloistered Congregation de Notre Dame de Troyes, they lived lives of prayer as far as their other duties permitted. Under the supervision of Mme. Louise de Chomedey, a sister of Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, the founder and governor of Montreal, Marguerite became one of three prefects in charge of the group. When her desire for the life of a consecrated religious seemed doomed to frustration (both the Carmelites and another cloistered congregation having rejected her application), she pru-dently sought an experienced guide, M. Gendret, chaplain of the J~dy-August 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17tb-Century Women of Wisdom Carmelites. He advised her, while awaiting further light on God's will for her, to consecrate her life by private vows of poverty and chastity.~9 In the spirit of the much-needed religious renewal initiated in the early 17th century by st. Vincent de Paul, M. Gendret had for some time envisaged a form of consecrated life for women adapted to the needs of the time, with a mobility that existing rules of enclosure did not allow. In Marguerite Bourgeoys he now recognized the spiritual and intellectual qualities that would be necessary to lead such an undertaking. A further providential intervention in her life came with her meeting Sieur de Maisonneuve in the home of his sister Mme. de Chevilly. He was visiting France to gather a hundred recruits to work in Montreal. Explaining the need for one teacher to supply the need of reli-gious instruction for his "foolish adventure," he invited Marguerite's help. Realizing partly what it might involve for her as the only woman among male recruits, Marguerite, after prayer and after consulting her spiritual director and the vicar general of the diocese (who gave the plan their blessing), perceived it to be God's will that she should go. Arriving at Quebec on 22 September 1653 and at Ville Marie (Montreal) on 16 November, she began at once a thorough assess-ment of the needs of her new mission, the (pitifully inadequate) resources to meet them, and the obstacles to be faced (such as inclement weather and threats from hostile Indians). Some notion of the risks may be gathered from the warning sent by the French-born mystic Marie of the Incarnation, of the cloistered Ursulines, who had been teaching both native and French children in Quebec since 1639. Writing to the sisters back in Troyes, she said: "If you knew what Montreal actually is like, you would be very careful about sending religious there . . . because of the harsh conditions of the country.''2° Marguerite and her compan-ions not only endured the cold, hunger, and dangers, but also shared their scanty living quarters with the poor, even giving up their own mattresses and blankets. In early-17th-century France, the notion of women religious engaging in apostolic work was only beginning to emerge. To meet the pressing needs of the spiritually illiterate general pop-ulation and the inadequately trained clergy, St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul had enlisted generous, skilled women to serve in education, health care, and social work. At the price of Review for Reh~ious their obtaining ecclesiastical recognition, they had had to com-promise: the Visitandines accepting the restrictions of enclo-sure (and thereby qualifying as a religious order) and the Daughters of Charity becoming a society of apostolic life, a group of pious laywomen living in common under simple vows renewed annually. It was immediately evident to the prophetic insight of Marguerite Bourgeoys that neither alternative was desirable or suitable to meet the needs and living conditions of Montreal. Apart from teaching language skills and religion free of charge to both boys and girls of the French set-tlers and military people, there were native children to be edu-cated; adults to be instructed, counseled, prepared for the sacra-ments; and health needs cared for--along with the constant threat from hostile Indian raiders and rival English colonists to the south. The sisters supported themselves by doing laundry, sewing, and mending for families after the day's teaching in school.21 Declaring their readiness to undertake just about anything required to meet the social needs of frontier life, Marguerite and her companions (their number augmented by recruitment on subsequent trips back to France) determined with prudence and divine guidance to take steps to ensure the permanence of their work. The first step, dictated by Marguerite's solid bourgeois back-ground, was to obtain from the king a civil charter permanently entitling them to their place of residence, the abandoned stone stable given them by the governor to serve as their school and as the teachers' living quarters.22 Next they applied to and eventu-ally obtained from Bishop Laval ecclesiastical approval "to teach anywhere in his diocese." In both of these ventures, they received ample support from the laity, whose openhearted response to Marguerite Bourgeoys and her companions' concern for their family life and educational needs was generous and continuous. Evidence of this trust is seen in the young bride on the morn-ing after her wedding coming to weep on Marguerite's shoulder upon finding what was expected of her in marriage, and also in the The sisters supported themselves by doing laundry, sewing, and mending for families after the day's teaching in school. ~dy-Augwst 1998 Norman * Two 17th-Century Women of Wisdom adoption of a nine-month-old native baby who had been aban-doned by her mother and whom Marguerite cared for till she died at the age of six.23 In their practical attention to every aspect of the life of the church in Montreal, the tiny Congregation de Notre Dame, as they came to be called, was ready to meet needs as they presented themselves: premarriage counseling, witnessing of marriages, vocational training, adult education, home eco-nomics, visiting the sick, and preparing the dead for burial. Though they were intent upon living as religious so far as spirit, purpose, and prayer were concerned, it became increas-ingly apparent that their manner of observing common life and serving as disciples would have to be adapted to frontier condi-tions and to "the strengths and talents of each" rather than to preconceived ecclesial rules of enclosure. "If it is the will of God that I go to Montreal," Marguerite had said in response to Maisonneuve's invitation, "I shall want for nothing.''24 Marguerite's wisdom continued to be manifested in her response to divine guidance and providential care in each new enterprise. Her trust in God's will was, however, severely tested on more than one occasion as the years went on. Though provi-sionally approved by Bishop Laval in May 1669, their lifestyle received his official written approval only as "a community in the state of secular women, that is, not bound by enclosure."~s Their Rule, inspired by M. Gendret, which they had been liv-ing, had still to receive formal approval by the church, and for this Bishop Laval, because of the enclosure problem, was unwilling to apply. As Marguerite's biographer wryly ?emarks, the bishop had difficulty distinguishing between the will of God and that of Francois de Montmorency Laval.26 When, upon her return from France with six new recruits, Marguerite was greeted with the news that her community had disintegrated, she replied with calm confidence in God: "He who brings about its fall can very well raise it up again whenever he pleases.''27 When further contro-versy arose over the admission of new members (born in Canada, not France, and two of them aborigines), she felt no longer trusted and offered to resign. The result was an overwhelming reaffir-mation by the entire community of her leadership and special charism.2s Another aspect of Marguerite Bourgeoys's wisdom is reflected in her response to Laval's criticisms of her choice of new candi-dates and her recourse to experienced persons other than himself Review for Religious regarding the community's Rule. Though submitting with humil-ity, she prudently continued to consult the Sulpician directors of the Grande S~minaire, who fully endorsed her wise decision--a visionary missionary thrust far ahead of her time--not to impose a strange civilization on native converts. Her two guideposts, to imitate our Lady and live in the presence of God, fitted admirably into the concept of discipleship she bequeathed to her sisters as that of following la vie voyagOre of the Blessed Virgin. From M. Gendret's explanations long ago, she recalled the distinctions between the three states in which women could follow Christ and serve the church in these words: that of St. Mary Magdalen. observed by the Carmelites and other recluses and that of St. Martha by the cloistered religious who serve their neighbor; but that the outgoing life of the Blessed Virgin was not honored as it should be, and ¯. even without veil and wimple she could be a true reli-giousfl9 The term vie voyagOre (the equivalent of the modern English phrase "to be a pilgrim") seemed to imply, as Marguerite used it, a certain flexibility and adaptability in the service of others and going out into the world wherever there was need. If the first mark of the truly wise person is charity that reflects her close union with God, then it is especially in time of trial that it can best be judged. Such testing was Marguerite's. First came the disastrous fire of 6-7 December 1683, after which the community was reduced to literal destitution. But, when Bishop Laval seized the occasion to urge them to merge with the clois-tered Ursulines, Marguerite firmly defended the identity of her "journeying sisters," modeled on our Lady, Christ's first disci-ple. 3° When an impasse over business matters occurred, she sim-ply turned the whole matter over in prayer to her patroness with the words "Blessed Virgin, I can do no more.''3~ Again, when a visionary in her own community denounced her publicly as in "a state of damnation" and proposed founding a new institute with herself as head, Marguerite, although ready to acknowledge the possibility of having lost God's friendship, persisted in abandoning herself to his divine justice and charity. Her resignation and her replacement as chief superior by the first Montreal-born member, Marie Barbier, reflected both her humil-ity and her openness of spirit.32 At the same time, in trusting Canadian-born candidates and leadership instead of continuing to July-August 1998 Norman ¯ Two 17tb-Century Women of Wisdom depend on reinforcements from France, she was wisely investing in the permanence of her community in New France. The final ecclesiastical approval of the Rule was again to be made contingent on accepting enclosure, vowing obedience to the bishop, and requiring dowries. Though remaining obedient to the new bishop, Jean Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, Marguerite firmly and prudendy defended her original vision of the congre-gation's members as "daughters of the parish" and of the Blessed Virgin herself as their only superior.33 For the sake of survival, she had for the moment to submit to the bishop, and on 24 June 1698 the sisters finally accepted the approved Rules and next day solemnly pronounced their vows. But before her death (12 January 1700) she took care to record in her spiritual autobiography her original divinely inspired intuitions, 'with shrewd observations based on her lived experience and her hopes and fears for the continued existence of her congregation. Like the Ursulines and many other women's congregations of the Counter-Reformation peribd, this uncloistered community of Montreal agreed to modifications in their original Rule on condition that its underlying principles and, above all, their "out-going life" were not sacrificed. Their charism was summed up in the words of the foundress herself: When he ascended into heaven, our Lord left on earth a type of congregation of women which included all the states. Mary was its first superior . The Blessed Virgin, who was a teacher, included all the other things in her own per-son in an eminent degree. She was mother and teacher to the newborn church, which she formed and instructed in all kinds of good, by her words and by her example. Instruction and edification were her principal characteris-tics., particularly to teach in a way that was all the more profitable for everyone [and] within the reach of all.34 Models for Today What did these 17th-century women of wisdom have in com-mon, and of what relevance are their lives to ours on the eve of the 21st century? For answers we need to look at the very human and very universal situation underlying their lives. Each might be described (in terms applied to Joan of Arc by Joan Chittister, an eloquent defender of Christian feminism) as "a model of con-science development, a monument to the feminine relationship to Review for Religious God, and a breaker of the stereotypes that block the will of God."35 In every age, authority figures (usually male) have busied themselves with telling people what they should do, usually cloak-ing their goals in moral terms. Suddenly appears someone-- indeed, a woman!--who has a mission, someone who is bold enough to claim that God has revealed plans to her that may seem outrageous, someone who confronts them with a question greater than they are able or willing to handle and who is pre-pared to fight and even die for it if necessary so that truth may prevail and others may benefit. Mary Ward and Marguerite Bourgeoys were such women, role models for all who have heard the voice of God calling them to transcend the limitations of the present and enable freedom, justice, and sincerity (verity) to triumph everywhere and for all time. Notes a Mary Ward's Retreat Notes, 1619, unpublished collection. 2 Cited by Catherine Elizabeth Chambers, Life of Mary Ward, 2 vols. (London, 1882 and 1885), vol. 1, p. 227. 3 Letter to Roger Lee SJ, 1 November 1615, cited by Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 346-347. 4 Cited by Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 407-408. 5 Chambers, vol. 1, p. 407 and 217-224. 6 Letter of Bishop Blaise, cited by Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 319-320. 7 Chambers, vol. 2, p. 531. s Chambers, vol. 2, p. 249. 9Winkler MS, p. 20. ~°Cited by Chambers, vol. 1, p. 468. ~a Chambers vol. 2, p. 27. Chambers vol. Chambers vol. Chambers vol. Chambers vol. Chambers vol. 2, p. 387. 2, pp. 289-290. 2, p. 325. 2, p. 325. 2, p. 331. a7 Chambers vol. 2, p. 504. as R.B.Y. Scott, Relevance of the Prophets, rev. ed. (Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1969), p. 13. 19 Patricia Simpson, Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-166~ (Montreal: McGil!-Queen'~ University Press, 1997), p. 46. ~3~nly~Aug~tst 1998 Norman * Two 17tb-Century Women of l~tsdom 20 Cited by Simone Pgissant CND, Marguer~e Bourgeoys, trans. Frances Kirwan (Montreal: Les Editions Bellarmin, 1982), p. 34. 2~ Simpson, p. 160. z2 Simpson, pp. 117-118, 164-165. 23 Simpson, pp. 109, 126. 24 Poissant, pp. 23-24. 2s Poissant, p. 35. 26 Simpson, p. 175. 27 Poissant, p. 36 . 28 Poissant, p. 43. 29 Letter of Marguerite Bourgeoys to Louis Tronson, September 1693, "Ecrits de M~re Bourgeoys," p. 20, quoted by Elizabeth Rapley, The Dgvotes (McGill: Queen's Press, 1990), p. 101. 30 Poissant, p. 51. 3~ Poissant, p. 52. 32Poissant, pp. 53-55. 33 Poissant, p. 57. 34 Poissant, pp. 49-50. 3s Joan Chittister, A Passion for Life (New York: Orbis Books, 1996), pp. 127-129. Review for Religious MARY ROGER MADDEN A Path Traced Out: Providence in Mother Theodore Guerin's Life M~ther Theodore Guerin founded the Sisters of rovidence at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, on 22 October 1840 and left her mark not only: on an extensive reli-gious congregation, but also--through the schools she established and the philosophy of education she fostered--on tens of thou-sands of lay men and women. Born 2 October 1798 in the village of Etables-sur-Mer, in the diocese of Saint-Brieuc, Anne-Th4r~se Gu4rin was the daugh-ter of Laurent Gu~rin, a naval officer in the service of Napoleon, and Isabelle Lefevre Gu~rin. She had two younger brothers, both of whom died in early childhood, and one younger sister, Marie Jeanne. Her mother taught her to read and write and instructed her in the basics of religion. When she was nine years of age, she attended a small school run by a pious laywoman of Etables. Anne- TMr~se learned quickly and was bored by the basic nature of the instruction. She would often slip away to the seashore, hiding herself among the rocks and cliffs. There, contemplating the vast-ness of the sea, she early learned to pray. A distant relative, a young seminarian forced to postpone his education because of the religious upheaval following the Revolution, came to live with the Gu~rin family. He served as Anne-TMr~se's tutor, calling her his "little theologian." Perhaps because of this advanced religious instruction, she was able to receive her first Holy Communion at the early age of Mary Roger Madden SP writes from Christina Hall; Saint Mary-of-the- Woods, Indiana 47876. 3~:uly-August 1998 Madden ¯ A Path Traced Out ten. At that time she confided to her confessor that she wished to devote her life to God. The kindly priest told her to pray and to be a good, obedient child and wait for God to open the way for her. The even tenor of the Gu~rin family life was disrupted when Laurent Gu~rin, on his way home to rejoin his family after being demobilized, was attacked by brigands, robbed, and killed. Isabelle, who had already suffered the loss of her father and one brother at sea and of her two infant sons by fire, was traumatized by this latest tragedy. She went into a complete physical and mental decline, leaving Anne-Th~r~se, then sixteen years of age, as the main support of the family. Anne-Th~r~se cared for her younger sister and nursed her mother back to health while supporting the little family with her sewing. She never abandoned her desire to devote her life to God. In 1823, when the younger sister had reached an age when she could be expected to take Anne-Th~r~se's place, Isabelle Gu~rin gave reluctant permission for her elder daughter to enter the Sisters of Providence of Ruill~-sur-Loir. This congregation, dedicated to the education of youth and the care of the sick. poor in their homes, had been founded in 1806 by Jacques-FranFois Dujari~, founder also of the Brothers of Saint Joseph, known today as the Brothers of the Holy Cross. A small and relatively obscure congregation, the Sisters of Providence were struggling to establish themselves in a country still reeling from the aftershocks of the Revolution. Anne-Th~r~se, who was given the name Sister Saint- Theodore, soon became a valued member of the family of Providence. Her novitiate had to be prolonged because she con-tracted typhoid fever as a postulant. When she appeared to be on the verge of death, the physician, frantic to save her, adminis-tered such severe remedies as to leave her with impaired health. Never again was she able to digest solid food. Because of her illness, her reception of the habit had been postponed until 5 September 1826; three days later she was per-mitted to take her first vows. She was sent at once to administer one of the most challenging of their missions in the city of Rennes. In 1828 the sisters elected her a member of the first general coun-cil to Mother Mary Lecor, the superior general, During the years at Rennes and later at Soulaines, her exper-tise as an administrator and a teacher was recognized by the Academy of Angers (Universit~ de France), which awarded her Review for Religious an honorary medallion in recognition of her excellence as an educator. In the summer of 1839, the sisters were gathered at the moth-erhouse for their annual retreat when they received a distinguished visitor. Celestine de la Hailandi~re, bishop of Vincennes in Indiana, came requesting sisters to teach the children of the pio-neers in his diocese. The superiors asked for volunteers from among the mem-bership. Although many sisters volunteered, Mother Mary found no one among them with the qualities nec-essary for the leader of such an expedition. She favored Sister Saint-Theodore, who, fearing that her chronic poor health would hinder the work of the mission, had not volunteered. On being told that the supe-riors would accept the mission only if she would lead it, she agreed to go to Indiana. After a turbulent journey of three months by sailing vessel, river boat, canal boat, and stagecoach, the sisters arrived on 22 October 1840 in a dense forest of Indiana. Located five miles from the fron-tier river town of Terre Haute, the little settlement had been named Saint Mary-of- the-Woods by Simon Brut4~ first bishop of Vincennes. Oral tradition has it that he remarked at the time to one of his com-panions, "You will see what great things will be done here." Arriving that dark, damp October evening, Sister Saint- Theodore and her five companions proceeded at once to the small log cabin that was both the dwelling place of the missionary priest and the temporary church. A partially completed building was intended by the bishop as a convent, but no school had yet been started. Waiting for them at the farmhouse belonging to the Joseph Thralls family were four young women who had come to join them. ~.~ The Thralls family turned over to the ten women one of the two rooms which constituted their home, along with half the loft. There they spent the first winter learning English, preparing classes for the opening of the school, and instructing the new members in the principles of the religious life. In November, Mother Theodore, as she was now known, with Sister Saint-Theodore, fearing that her chronic poor health would hinder the work of the mission, had not volunteered. Madden ¯ A Path Traced Out the help of the bishop and some of the money obtained from friends in France, was able to purchase the Thralls farmhouse for a Convent. She found the building planned for them by the bishop "too grand" for a convent and decided instead to open there a boarding school and academy to be called Saint Mary's Female Institute. In July 1841 classes began with five students, three of whom were not Catholic. Indiana's. educational system was in its infancy in the 1840s. Good education, especially for girls, was at a premium. Mother Theodore set about filling this need by establishing free schools side by side. with the popular female academies which were open to Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Despite her wretched health, she visited the schools regu-larly, traveling in the uncomfortable conditions of the day, in order to encourage and support the sisters. Their educational endeavors were conducted in the primitive one- or two-room buildings that often served as both school and convent. In order to compensate for the harshness of their living conditions, she brought them every summer to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods for rest, relaxation, study, and spiritual retreat. In the midst of her exhausting labors, Mother Theodore. suf-fered from constant humiliations and misunderstanding from her superiors both in France and in North America. At Ruill~ the superiors, who were never able to visit the mission in Indiana, had no concept of what the sisters suffered from the intemperate cli-mate, the bigoted populace, and the poor living conditions. Mother Theodore's frequent letters, though strictly factual, were dis-counted as "romances." It would be years before the superiors rec-ognized all that she had suffered. She, on the other hand, never faltered in her love and devotion to the French congregation and its superiors. In the United States, Hailandi~re was provoked by her resis-tance to his interference with the internal government of the con-gregation. He had told Mother Mary that he wanted the sisters in order that they might establish in his diocese the French reli-gious spirit. He praised their constitutions when he read them in France, but, when Mother Theodore attempted to put them into practice, he seemed to have forgotten his former approval. He wished to ,be the one to decide on the acceptance of postulants and the profession of novices; to move the sisters from mission to mission; to open and close missions (without consulting the sis- Review for Religious ters); and, in general, to act as the major superior of the congre-gation. Most disturbing to Mother Theodore was his desire to conduct all visitations of the missions, confining Mother Theodore to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. His efforts to remove her from office by holding elections, even in her absence, failed; for the sisters simply united in unan-imously reelecting Mother Theodore. The climax came when, frustrated by her gentle but firm resistance, he went so far as to expel her from the diocese, threatening with excommunication any sister who harbored her or attempted to follow her.- This unjust treatment she bore with remarkable patience. In 1847, at the very hour when she was being expelled, an announcement from Rome arrived, accepting Hailandi~re's resigna-tion as bishop of Vincennes and appoint-ing Bishop Jean Bazin as his replacement. Bazin exonerated her and restored her to her congregatiom Mother Theodore's greatest legacy was the example of her love of God and neighbor, a dynamic self-giving that never flagged or slackened, from her girlhood on Brittany's shores to her death in the midst of the Indiana forest. Only a year before that death, she would write to Sister Saint-Athanase, one of the French sisters who had been a companion of hers in the novi-tiate: "How fortunate we are to have given the days of our youth to that God of love who gives us so much affection, and even more when we are old, infirm, and crippled than when we were young and robust." All her other virtues flowed from this ,one deeply held con-viction-- that God's love for her was unconditional. Her humility makes sense in light of her understanding of the mystery of the incarnation, by which the Second Person of the Trinity, for love of us, came to share our lowly estate. Her confidence in the provi-dence of God was nourished by that love. For her part, she saw the cross that marked her life for over fifty years as the mystic sign by which she rejoiced to return some part of that infinite love. In her concern for the p~oor and the ignorant, in her devo-tion to all her sisters, we see the authentic expression of love of neighbor. The love of God which welled up in her spilled over All her other virtues flowed from this one deeply held conviction-- that God's love for her was unconditional. 1998 Madden ¯ A Path Traced Out into the lives of everyone she met. She quickly forgave frailties of human nature that caused her suffering and endeavored to avoid inflicting similar sufferings on others. The last nine years of her life proceeded in relative peace and prosperity. By 1854 the congregation had grown to almost one hundred sisters, who were instructing over one thousand chil-dren in parish schools, academies, and orphanages in Jasper, Vincennes, Madison, Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, Columbus, and Evansville. At the motherhouse she built a four-story brick con-vent to replace the farmhouse in which they had lived since 1840. The heritage of devotion to the education of women contin-ues to be cherished by the Sisters of Providence down to the pres-ent day, when Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, the oldest Catholic liberal arts college for women in the United States, stands on the site of that first small academy. Physically debilitated by her trials and the hardships of a pio-neer life, Mother Theodore died on 14 May 1856. Reports of her holiness of life spread both during her life and after her death. In December 1908 Francis Silas Chatard, bishop of Indianapolis, instituted proceedings for her canonization. On 11 July 1992 Pope John Paul II, in the name of the church, proclaimed the heroic virtue exhibited by the Servant of God, according her the title Venerable. On 7 July 1997 he formally accepted the first-class miracle needed for the process of beatification to go for-ward. The date of her arrival at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, 22 October, will be celebrated as the feast of Blessed Mother Theodore Guerin, who said of her own life: "This is the path traced out by the providence of God. I follow it." According to Jean-Baptiste Caussade, "The life of each saint is the life of Jesus Christ. It is a new gospel." As we study the gospel God has written in the life of this valiant woman, we are confirmed in our confidence in the mysterious ways of God, which continue to instruct and enlighten us. Bibliography Belsen, Sister Anita Cotter, SP. Soitvenir of the Fiftieth Anniversary or Golden Jubilee of Saint Mary's Academic Institute. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1891. Brown, Sister Mary Borromeo, SP. History of the Sisters of Providence, Vol. I. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1949. Burton, Katherine. Faith Is the Substance. New York: Herder, 1959. Review for Religious Gonner, Sister Laurence, SP. "A History of the First Fifty Years of the Sisters of Providence in America." Master's thesis, Loyola University, Chicago, 1933. Guerin, Mother Theodore. Journals and Letters of Mother Theodore Gudrin. ed. S. Mary Theodosi

Issue 21.3 of the Review for Religious, 1962. ; International Congress on Vocations In the spring of 1960 His Eminence, Valerio Cardinal Valeri, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, announced that there would be an international congress in Rome of the two hundred most famous vocation spe-cialists of the world from December 10-16, 1961. From the discussions and resolutions of such competent men would be formulated a program which subsequently would be put into effect by the Pontifical Organization for Religious Vocations. A year was spent in selecting the speakers and partici-pants and arranging topics for discussion. Then in Au-gust, Father Godfrey Poage, C.P., Director of the Reli-gious Vocation Clubs in America and Delegate of the Conference of Major Superiors, was summoned to Rome to undertake the directorship of the Congress. The Domus Mariae, a beautiful new convention center in west suburban Rome, was chosen as the site of the Congress, and contracts were let for building the displays and exhibitions. Twenty-six nations through their Con-ferences of Major Superiors agreed to demonstrate their materials and techniques used in the promotion of voca-tions. Also the most prominent publishers of vocational materials were invited to participate. The two companies in America so honored were George Pflaum Inc., of Day-ton, Ohio, publishers of the Catholic Messengers and the Paulist Press of New York City, publishers of the zldult Education Program for Vocations. As arrangements progressed, His Eminence, Cardinal Valeri, decided to increase the number of participants in order to extend the effectiveness of this great meeting. Invitations, therefore, were sent to all superiors general in the world as well as to seven hundred and sixty-one selected fathers and brothers provincial. All Conferences of Major Superiors, likewise, were asked to send delegates. 4- 4- 4- on Vocatlo~ VOLUME 21, 1962 Congress REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Specialists in sociology, psychology, pastoral theology, and allied subjects were invited from the principal universi-ties of the world. National directors of youth groups and vocation associations were also welcomed. Thus.during the days of the Congress there were in attendance 7 cardinals, 't2 bishops, 18 abbots, 179 supe-riors general, and 1'~89 delegates and auditors from '[1 nations, making it the largest gathering of authorities in the history of the Church to study one specific problem; namely, the recruitment of more priests, brothers, and sisters. One month prior to the Congress all religious com-munities in the world and all dioceses with vocation office:; were asked to make a spiritual contribution. Over one' million Masses were.offered for this intention, as well as innumerable prayers, sacrifices, and good works from both religious and faithful. Five special Masses were prepared by the Sacred Con-gregation of Rites and released just before the Congress for insertion in the Roman Missal. They are: 1) For the Seeking and Fostering of Religious Voca-tions; 2) For the Seeking of Ecclesiastical Vocations; 3) For the Preserving of Vocations; 4) For the Day of Profession Of Religious Men; 5) For the Day of Profession of Religious Women.1 The solemn opening of the Congress took place on Sunday evening, December 10, 1961, at the Basilica of St. Mary Major. His Eminence, Valerio Cardinal Valeri, offered the special Vocation Mass, assisted by officials of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. Since thousands of posters had been distributed throughout the city ask-ing the laity to participate with prayers and attendance at Mass, the Basilica was filled to overflowing for the func-tion and sermon. As the prelates, superiors, delegates, and specialists ar-rived at Doraus Mariae on Monday morning, December 11, they were directed by a corps of professional ushers to registration desks, identified by position, tagged, given lapel flags of their various nations, programs, and copies of the addresses in the language of their preference. An-nouncements were made in six languages, seating was in order of ecclesiastical dignity, and multi-lingual tran:;la-tors were on hand for discussion periods. All sessions be-gan and concluded promptly at the designated times, .and the addresses of the principal speakers were carried by Vatican Radio. In his opening address Cardinal Valeri pointed out that a generation ago Europe furnished eighty-five per cent of 1 C~opies of these Masses may be obtained from local church good stores or from the Vatican Polyglot Press, Vatican City. the foreign mission personnel. Now European dioceses and communities are not able to maintain their own in-stitutions, much less send out missionaries. "To find ways and means of remedying this situation," he explained, "all present have been invited to discuss the problems involved and suggest a program for the PontificaiOi~gani-zation for Religious Vocations to promote." The first speaker was Dr. Francis Houtart, Director of the Brussels Center for Social Research. He pointed out that while there is a slight increase in the numbers of priests and religious being currently recruited and trained, it is not sufficient to keep pace with the progres-sive growth of the world's population. The annual birth-rate of the world is now forty-seven million---or approxi-mately the total population of Ita!y or Great Britain. Of this number the Catholics are able to reach or influence only eighteen per cent. In the discussion that followed, Father James Forrestal of England, author of a number of statistical studies on priestly and religious vocations, gave the 'percentiles of priests and religious in various parts of the world. In the past year, for example, there were 4,238 priests ordained in the world. Exactly fifty per cent of that number were in America (2,119) and just slightly over half of all the priests ordained in the American Continent were in the United States (1,149). Reports were then made by delegates of all the nations represented. Particular attention was given to the reports of the South American delegates, where Mexico has 4,663 Catholics for each priest; Central America has 6,332 for each priest; and South America, 4,461. To obtain the desired ratio of priests to people, which is one priest per 800 souls; there is an immediate need" for 130,000 priestsl In the afternoon the address was given by Father God-frey Poage, C.P., on the subject "Recruiting and Re-cruiters of Religious Vocations." He explained not only all the means that have been used in the different coun-tries by various recruiters to obtain prospects, but also how to develop new techniques---how to "brainstorm" for more effective recruiting procedures. This was the first time a major address was ever delivered by a Vatican Official before a Roman Congress in English. Afterwards the superiors and delegates present expressed their ap-preciation of the American method with a standing ova-tion. The discussion was led by Father Bertrand de Margerie, S.J., Secretary of the Conference of Major Superiors of Brazil. He pointed out that two great handicaps of the recruiters in South America are ignorance and prejudice. These can be overcome only by proper advertising and public relations. Some of the more conservative delegates ÷ ÷ ÷ Congress on Vocations VOLUME 21, 1962 felt there was no place for "Madison Avenue" techniques in winning souls for Christ and a very spirited debate ensued. The Italians were confident that they would carry the vote at the end, but were dismayed to find they had only the delegates of their own country,. Malta, the North Countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), Spain, and South Africa on their side. On Tuesday morning Father Raymond Izard, Director of the Vocation Center of Paris, spoke on "Pastoral Prac-tice and Religious Vocations." He explained the role of the diocesan priest in fostering vocations and the respon-sibility the pastor has in developing the various religious apostolates. He then explained the French system, where direction of vocations is under the guidance of the repre-sentatives of the Bishops' Conference, while the work of the office is shared mutually with representatives of the Conferences of Major Superiors. In the discussion, directed by His Excellency, Joseph Carraro, Bishop of Verona, emphasis was put on how to achieve greater collaboration between diocesan and re. ligious recruiters. The Archdiocese of Chicago, repre-sented by Father ~]ohn Kennelly, the Archdiocesan Voca-tion Director, was singled out as one of several in the world deserving special praise for being areas in which religious recruiters, as coadjutors of the diocesan clergy, work for the common good of all vocations. In the afternoon began a series of theological discus-sions, which was like a dress-rehearsal for the ecumenic~ll council in that the foremost theologians of the world joined in debate with one another, bishops, major su-periors, and cardinals. On Saturday morning, December 16, at nine o'clock all participants in the Congress assembled in the Hall of Benediction at the Vatican to hear a special allocution by His Holiness, Pope John XXIII, on the subject of religious vocations. The text of the allocution is given elsewhere in this issue of the REviEw. The final session of the Congress was devoted to the business of the Vocation Office and to resolutions which will be implemented by the Pontifical Organization for Vocations in the coming year. Congress on Vocations REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS JOHN XXIII Religious Vocations Beloved sonsl Today's meeting1 and the pleasure it evokes in Our heart dispenses with any introduction. Let Us say only this--and We think it sufficient to prove the intensity of Our interest--from the very beginning Our prayers have followed the preparation and realization of this First In-ternational Congress on Religious Vocations. It now gives Us great pleasure to thank the Sacred Con-gregation of Religious and especially you, Cardinal Valeri, for wanting to undertake such an enormous em terprise, a work which the competence of many experts has brought to a successful conclusion. Sublimity o[ the Religious Vocation This Congress has accentuated a very delicate and urgent problem; namely, the increasing of vocations to the states of perfection in the world today. The simple merition of this theme of the Congress conjures up many images in which there are reasons for profound joy and hope, and at the same time reasons for apprehension and uncertainty. On the one hand We see the different reli-gious families being constantly renewed with young as-pirants because of the fascinating attraction of their in-numerable forms of ordered life. On the other hand, We see the obstacles which the spirit of the world raises against producing vocations-~obstacles of the ever-recur-ring attractions of the threefold concupiscences (1 Jn 2:16) which are diametrically opposed to the vows of re-ligious perfection. Suffice it to refer to the lax mentality which today makes use of the press, radio and television, to defile even the sanctuary of the home. This state of affairs, however, is not something new. It is only more noticed today because of its diffusion and gravity. Moreover, it poses new problems and difficulties for the director of souls and for those who are concerned with recruiting, directing, and safeguarding vocations. ~The following is an English translation of the allocution deliv-ered on December 16, 1961 to those attending the First International Congress on Vocations to the State of Perfection. 4. Religious Vocations VOLUME 21, 1962 179 ÷ ÷ ÷ John XXIII REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Accordingly, We salute with special praise and en-couragement this important undertaking of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. This problem of religious and priestly vocations is the daily worry of the Holy Father; it is ~he intention of his prayer, and the ardent aspiration' of his soul. This is the intention for which We offer the fourth joyful mystery of Our Rosary as We contemplate Mary giying the Eternal Priest of the New Law to the heavenly Father. As We said in the beginning of October: "It is beautiful to see in that mystery our highest hopes regarding the priesthood perennially fulfilled: young students in seminaries, religious houses, missionary col-leges, whose expansion, despite difl~cuhies and obstacles in the present day, is a consoling sight, evoking exclama-tions of admiration and joy" (L'Osservatore Romano, Oct. I, 1961, p. 2). Regarding the training of vocations to the religious and priestly, life, We have already offered paternal sug-gestions in Our discourse to the rectors of major and minor seminaries of Italy on July 29 of this year. We con-sidered at that time the great respon.sibility of this work. We treated the spiritual formation of the young seminar-ians for the priestly and religious life as well as their in-tellectual training (AAS, v. 53 [1961], pp. 559-65). Today, therefore, We wish rather to emphasize the beauty of the vocation to the priestly and religious state. Moreover, the religious congregations of women repre-sented here widen the scope of this meeting. There are countless numbers who through their example show a life hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3), a life of abnega-tion, of zealous service, of following the dictates of God's will. They offer to the world, which is scarcely able to appreciate it, the living example of perfect virginity o~! heart and supreme generosity. This evokes a joyous re-sponse from so many good daughters of cities and towns, who, coming mostly from Catholic Vocation Clubs, are attracted by these ideals and wish to follow them in live~ lived solely for God and neighbor. Many Forms of Total Consecration o[ Self to God Such is the wonder of a vocation that We anxiously and confidently praise those wholesome and virtuous Christian families in which flower the new generation, "the new olive plants" (Ps 127:3) of tomorrow. Particularly do We praise the young men and women who are more aware of the needs for the expansion of the Kingdom of God and are consequently thinking of their own perfec-tion and the salvation of souls. We remind them that the voice of Christ resounds continuously throughout the world, gently persuading those habituated to prayer, apostolic service, and sacrifice to become hunters of souls. Jesus calls invitingly: "If you wish to.be perfect, go,. sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me" (Mr 19:21). This is losing oneself in order to find; it is a giving to Him Who is able to reserve for us in eternal life a hun-dredfold more than we now give on. earth of our energies, talents, and abilities. The innumerable religious families which exercise their apostolate throughout the world give to youth a most complete ideal for which they can well live and die. In these families the Church offers many modes of conse-cration to God, ranging from the ancient monastic orders to the most active modern congregations, all of which in one way or another prolong in time some particular as-pect of Christ's mission. To joifi one of these groups, when called, means to find again His life and imitate it for the spread of the Gospel (Mk 8:35). Sometimes contemplative communities are misunderstood and do not seem to contribute to the apos-tolate. But as Our predecessor, Pope Pius XI, explained: "Much more is contributed to the growth and develop-ment of the Church by contemplative groups than by those who perform the actual labors, for it is they who call down from heaven the vivifying graces to irrigate the plowed fields of the other apostolic workers" (Bull Um-bratilera, AAS v. 16 [1924], p. 389). The fields of religious perfection are almost limitless, since the impulse for the apostolate derives its motivation from the constant seeking after God alone, from fidelity to His grace, and from continual efforts for greater in-terior recollection. Now the fields are ripe for the harvest, needing apostolic hands and helping hands. There is the missionary apostolate which needs many vocations in order to meet the increased contingencies of spreading the gospel throughout the world. Then there is the care of souls in parishes of our large cities where so many re-ligious families are already working with great success. There is also the very speEialized work of the moral and intellectual instruction of youths whose parents with a confidence that will not go unrewarded entrust them to religious men and women. Moreover, there are the in-numerable forms of charity and works of mercy in which so many orders and congregations distinguish themselves, all perpetuating on earth the charity of our Lord, of whom it is written, "He went about doing good and healing all" (Acts 10:38). New Horizons Ior the Harvest o[ Christ These tremendous needs for more workers for the harvest oblige all of us to study and do our utmost that from our modern society, as in the days of the famous ÷ ÷ Religious Vocations VOLUME 21, 1962 ]8] 4. ]elm REV;EW FOR REL;G~OUS 182 founders and reformers, great numbers of youths will respond to our Lord's invitation. New horizons are open-ing in the very near future during the celebration of the ecumenical council. Moreove.r, history teaches that there is always a period of extraordinary spiritual fecundity after an ecumenical council, for the Holy Spirit evokes generous vocations and gives to the Church the right and necessary men. This promise of faith and hope stirs Our heart with a divine yearning. Continue, therefore, your combined efforts to encour-age reIigious vocations by every means, presenting to the youths the beauty and attraction of your life in ways that are more appealing. Make use of the extraordinary means which the press, the radio, and television offer for spread-ing these great ideas. Moreover, remember it is necessary. to work together with order and mutual respect, having always in mind the greater welfare of the universal Church in which there is room for all. Study how. to dis-tribute both priests and religious to those places which have the most need, overcoming understandable preoc-cupations. In a word, exert every effort to increase voca-tions everywhere. The activity which will commence at the Sacred Con-gregation of Religious and in each of your institutes at the conclusion of this Congress will be multiple and de-manding. But We shall be with you in spirit, in blessing, and in prayer. 0 Jesus, send laborers into Your fields, which are await-ing holy apostles, saintly priests, heroic missionaries, gentle and indefatigible sistersl Enkindle in the hearts of young men and women the spark of a vocation. Grant that Christian families may desire to be distinguished by giving to Your Church cooperators in the work of to-morrowl Anxiety [or the People o] the Congo Beloved sons and daughtersl Since We are speaking under very opportune circum-stances in that you represent all the countries of the world; let Us, your Father, share with you a deep sorrow, as if to garner encouragement and renewed confidence from the common sharing of this sorrow. The considerations which We have made have opened. before your eyes promising horizons for a fruitful apos, tolate and generous, charitable service in all countries without distinction, even beyond those barriers where Christianity is not acknowledged. News reports which reach the Holy Father are not all joyful. You know what has been happening for the past fifteen months and especially the past few days in the Congo. In the act of reaping from the tree of political in- dependence those hoped-for fruits of prosperity, prestige, and works of peace, the earth of that blessed country is now bathed in bloodl The people, and especially the youth, are suffering so acutely that the outlook for the future is most uncertain. Having daily contact with the Blood of Christ ~in' the mystery of the Eucharist, We cannot remain unmoved at the sight of so much suffering, such ruin of the moral and social order. The consequences produced by this state of affairs greatly distress Us. Even as you understand my words, beloved sons and daughters, so We are certain that others cannot do other-wise than understand them, wherever Our sad message may reach. The affliction caused by this evil oppresses Our soul. Therefore We turn beseechingly to those who can and ought to intervene, so that with disinterested counsel, ob-jective information, and an appreciation of rights, they may cooperate in reestablishing peace in that country and bring about peaceful and serene days for all. This is the fervent prayer, which We raise to the om-nipotent God through the intercession of Our heavenly Mother. We would like to see all here present and all those of good heart and soul, who would like to be united with Us, to join in this prayer. These paternal desires are accompanied with a special Apostolic Blessing, first to you, Cardinal Prefect, and your collaborators in the Sacred Congregation; for the of-ficials of the Pontifical Work for Religious Vocations; for all here present; for all your religious institutes; and for your own families; and, finally, in the spirit of good-will, to all youths in seminaries and houses of formation, who are preparing to consecrate themselves totally to God, to the Church, and to the service of their fellowmen. Religious gocatiom VOLUME 21, 1962 ]83 GODFREY POAGE, C.P. Recruiting Religious Vocations ÷ ÷ ÷ God[rey Poage, C.P., is the Director of the Religious Voca-tions Clubs in America. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 184 For1 the past eight hundred years Dante Alighieri has brightened men's mind~ and stirred their hearts with the profound and wholesome message of his Divine Comedy. In this great poem the Italian master tells how he was per-suaded to undertake a long journey, first of purgation. then purification., and finally union. His guide the most important part of the way was the incomparable Beatrice, and the closer he approached to Divine Union, the brighter and more beautiful became the face of his guide. Somehow this journey is analogous to the work of re-cruiting religious vocations. We, like Beatrice, are called upon to lead others on a difficult way. First we must take our proteges through a period of purgation and trial-- then we must develop in them habits of virtue and purify them for a new life. Finally, we must bring them to the th~:eshold of the seminary or novitiate and there say, as Beatrice did to Dante, "Turn now and look, for here is found Paradisel" First Step: Setting Objectives To succeed in such important work, we must have clear-cut objectives and practical means of attaining them. To help us the Holy See has outlined the principles and norms that must be followed. The experience of prudent and capable recruiters has shown the practical applica-tion of these directives. If only we combine the two with prayer, success will follow. In the General Statutes accompanying the apostolic constitution of Pope Pius XII, Sedes Sapientiae, we are told that three things are needed to increase vocations: 1) Fervent. prayer to the Lord of the harvest that ]-Ie send laborers into His harvest (Mt 9:38); 1 This is the text of an address delivered to the First International Congress on Vocations to the State of Perfection. 2) the resplendent example of religious sanctity; 3) the ardent and perpetual exercise of apostolic zeal. (Art 23, ¶ l) Through prayer we win for the youths the grace of a vocation and the generosity to respond. Through advertising and .various promotidnal"tech-niques, we acquaint youths and their parents with the na-ture of our life. Seeing our happiness and the good we are accomplishing, they are forced to the speculative judg-ment: "The priesthood or religious life is goodY' But before anyone can make the practical judgment-- "The priesthood or religious life is good for mel"--it is necessary that he see the intrinsic good of the religious state. This good is not immediately evident in itself, so the will must be induced by some force outside itself to make the choice. Helping a youth to make this practical "judgment is the most important work of the recruiter. Sometimes we hear it said that every priest or religious is a recruiter ex officio. The pastor in his pulpit is a re-cruiter. So is the brother in the classroom, the nurse at the patient's bedside, or the missionary in foreign lands. The truth of these statements depends on what we mean by recruiting. The ability to recruit--to inspire and direct youths-- is not something every priest or religious has instinctively. It is a skill that is developed--something a person is trained to use expertly. It is based on knowledge; knowl-edge of how God calls an individual to His service; knowlo edge of how the Church calls a person to the religious life or priesthood; and knowledge of human nature. All this, however, is matter for other sessions of the Congress. Here we are confining ourselves to techniques and pro-cedures in recruitment. Second Step: Contacting Suitable Youths Once our objectives are determined, we then proceed to the most effective means of contacting suitable youths. Recently a report, entitled "Methods of Recruiting," was published by Father Leonard P. Stocker, O.M.I., at the Catholic University of America. It was a compilation of one hundred replies from seminaries and novitiates re-garding the methods they had used to obtain their pres-ent enrollments. Here, in summary, are his findings: Techniques Groups Using Literature: Pamphlets, folders, etc .8.1 Visits to elementary schools .6.5 Visits to high schools .5.6 Magazine advertisements .43 Response from "Vocation Sundays" . .43 Publicity in diocesan papers .35 Faculty preaching on vocations .30 ÷ ÷ + Recruiting VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ Godfrey Poage, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]86 Other paid publicity programs .30 Visits to ho,nes of likely candidates .30 Vocation exhibits . 29 Posters . 26 "Open-House" days at the seminary for prospects . 18 Vocation retreats . 11 Vocation movies . . 9 Vocation correspondence courses for prospects . : . 6 Missions . 4 Seminary bulletin or newspaper .3 Picnics at the seminary for altar boy groups . 2 Vocation talk by bishop at confirmation . 1 Ordination held in home parish . 1 Essay" contest . l By studying how other seminaries and novitiates have obtained candidates we learn what has been done. Some of the techniques we can use; other ideas we can develop. But our vocation work should be more than a simple imi-tation of others. Each one of us should contribute some-thing new to the vocation movement. There should be some way of utilizing the wisdom and experience of all our members, that more effective means of meeting our vocation problems might be found. More El~ective Recruiting One of the great secrets of progress in science and dustry has been the fact that scientists and manufacturers have joined in associations of creative research. The~ have studied not only the how and why of things, but they have also exerted a conscious creative effort to discover new lacts, arrive at new combinations, and find new ap-plications. Our problem as recruiters is not the improvement things, but the improvement of personal relations. We want to obtain better response from youths, greater co-operation from parents, and a deeper understanding the religious life in the laity. But how can this be achieved? Only by prayerful reflection and diligent exer-cise of our God-given facultiesl When we exercise our memories and imaginations in prayerful meditation, the gift of understanding--under the excitation of grace--becomes operative. We see things in a different light; we go deeper into the problem. Some spiritual writers call these insights and inspirations the "lights of prayer." This same method should be used in tackling our voca-tion problems. After prayer to the Holy Spirit for better understanding, we must set about exercising our natural faculties. First of all, we should read as much on the subject as possible. We should fill our memories with the facts and statistics of vocational research. We should study re-cruiters' reports and analyze their surveys. We should visit exhibits to observe the techniques and procedures that have been found most successful by prudent and learned recruiters in various areas. Then in association with our fellow recruiters .we should give our imagination priority over judgment and let it roam around our objectives. We might even mal~e a conscious effort to think up the most unique ways of in-spiring and motivating youths .towards our own state of life. At this point we are simply trying to separate imagi-nation from judgment. With most of us there is a strong tendency, as a result of education and experience, to think judicially rather than creatively. In consequence, we tend to impede the fluency of ideas by applying our critical judgment too soon. On the other hand, if only we defer judgment, we can think up far more alternatives from which later to choose. In his book, Applied Imagination, Alex F. Osborn, President of the Creative Education Foundation in Amer-ica, warns: It is most important to guard against being both critical and creative at one and the same time. Inevitably, if we let our judgment intrude prematurely, we tend to abort ideas which could prove to be the most valuable of all. Therefore, we should consciously defer evaluation until a later period. Thus we can think up more and better ideas. Then later we can screen and weigh these ideas more judiciously. This in no way belittles the value of judgment, for imagination-without-judgment is even more deplorable than judgment-without-imagination. The warning is sim-ply that we use both faculties., but one at a time. This technique has come to be known in America as "Organized Ideation," or more popularly, "Brainstorm Sessions." The system is aptly named, for those who par-ticipate in such a session use their brains to storm a prob-lem, with each participant audaciously attacking the same objective. "Brainstorming" ]or Vocations At a Vocation Institute for the Franciscan recruiters of the United States, held at San Juan Bautista, Califor-nia, in 1958, this "brainstorming" technique was used. Six of the recruiters present were selected as a core'group, and a seventh was chosen as recorder or secretary. This latter religious stood at a large, portable blackboard which had been set off to the side. The conference began very informally--the core group at a table in front, the others sitting in a semicircle. The host provincial began with a prayer. Since I had been asked to serve as moderator of this group, I reminded the participants that, if they tried to get hot and cold water out of the same faucet at the same + + + Recruiting VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ Godf!'cy Poage, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]88 time, they would get only tepid water. "If you try to criti-cize and create simultaneously," I said, "you don't turn out enough cold criticisms or enough hot ideas. You are simply lukewarm. Accordingly, I ask you today to stick to ideas. Tomorrow you will do .the criticizing. Conse-quently, if I hear a belittling or derogatory remark, I will ring this bell before me. Whoever is speak.ing will thereby be reminded either to thinl~ up or shut Earlier in the day we had considered the contribution that motivational analysts can make to our understand. ing of why people think and act the way they do. We had attempted to explore the new science of psychodynamics, known popularly as the "depth approach." Could the insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences, we asked ourselves, give clues to some the problems facing the modern recruiter? How, for ex-ample, with the complexity of orders and congregations in the Church can we account for a young man having a strong preference for one particular group of religious, though he may never have met one of them in person? Why do some good Catholics praise a parent who lets a son go of[ to the brotherhood and in the next breath com-ment: "That boy certainly doesn't love his homel" The use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns persuasion, we know, has become the basis of a multi-million dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon psychological techniques in their groping for more ef[ective ways to sell .us their wares--whether prod-ucts, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind. The recruiters present were'well-primed and ready to go. A time limit from five to eight minutes was set for each subject. The secretary was instructed to write down on the blackboard all the ideas suggested. The list was to be reportorial, rather than stenographic. This was a good provision, for at times the ideas tumbled out so fast that even a short-hand expert would have given up. The first problem considered was the finding of a "key-factor" for Franciscan advertising. In five minutes the core group suggested fifteen themes, ranging from the glorification of the "capuche" to a description of their "soup-kitchens for the poor." In the eight minutes devoted to the problem of how they might get more boys interested in their community, forty-one proposals were given. They ran the gamut from publicizing the "flying friars" to "Franciscan firsts--like Christmas cribs and credit-unions." Since one ef[ective strategy of merchandisers is to have personages of indisputably high status invite others to join them in the use of some product or service, I next risked the panel to name all the prominent national and international ~gures who would willingly give an en. dorsement to the Franciscan way of life. In three minutes they tallied eighteen names. When we took up the problem of how to get more lay brothers, we first admitted that domestic work and clean-ing of monasteries, which is the principal employment of these men, is not an appealing work for modern°youth. It implies servility, meniality, and drudgery. Accordingly, how could the propaganda for the brotherhood bring out a sense of worth and esteem? In five minutes eighteen new approaches were sug. gested. None of them were in direct praise of housekeep-ing, but indirectly they brought out how essential the lay brother is to the life and work of the Order. He is "God's marine in the fox-hole of the cloister," the "hands and feet of Christ," and so forth. Evaluation o[ the Session In just a little over an hour this "Brainstorm Session" covered ten different problems and produced one hun-dred and seventy-eight new ideas. The provincial then recessed the meeting with a prayer of thanksgiving. Later each recruiter present was given a mimeographed copy of all the ideas mentioned, each listed under its proper heading. He was asked to study the suggestions, discuss them with others, add or subtract as he wished. The next day we met for an evaluation of the ideas produced. After the opening prayer, the secretary read off each proposal under its proper heading. All the recruiters now participated: Some suggestions they dismissed with a laugh. Others they tore to shreds and then tried to sal-vage. Some ideas they combined and came up with hy-brids. It was a most interesting discussion and the older and wiser heads seemed to dominate. Constantly we heard re-marks like: "That was tried once before . " "Let's not overlook the effect such a thing will have on other groups," and so on. In the end, the fathers were asked to vote on which suggestion they considered the best in each category. After the merciless screening and discussion that had been given every good proposal, one idea invariably domi-nated. When the votes were tallied, it was found that most of the fathers wanted to put this idea into effect. Thus they gained an unanimity of judgment and a more imaginative approach to their recruitment. Third Step: Conditioning Prospects During the first six months of this year through various recruiting programs, an estimated twenty-six thousand Catholic boys in the United States signed vocation "in-terest- cards" or wrote to a religious seminary or novitiate Recruiting VOLUME 21, 1%2 189 ÷ ÷ Go~ey ~.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS for further information. Of this number just a little over two thousand eventually made application and entered upon their religious training last September. Why were there so many who did not even try the life? As all re-cruiters know, it was due principally to a loss of enthusi-asm. At first the youths were most interested. Then they found out what was expected of them and their enthusi-asm waned. If you had asked these young men why they gave up, they would have replied: "I didn't know it was so hard," or "It wasn't what I expected." Perhaps if we had given more of these promising youths a proper conditioning, greater numbers would have signed up. Many of them needed to be prepared for the life. They needed to be initiated into what would be expected of them in a seminary or novitiate. This conditioning, however, is something very few re-cruiters can handle personally. Besides the fact that those recruiters who are not priests are unable to hear con-, fessions or undertake personal spiritual direction of pros-pects, there is the matter of time and distance. A good recruiter is rarely found at home, waiting for youths to come calling. He is out visiting schools and homes where they are to be found. This often means weeks "on the road." Spiritual direction to be effective must extend over several months prior to the youth's acceptance into a seminary or novitiate and it must be continued with a measure of regularity. Practically the only one capable of giving this time and attention is the youth's pastor or some zealous priest stationed in the area. Recruiters who recognize the importance of this spirit-ual direction invariably refer their prospects to one 0f these priests. They urge the youth to go regularly to this director for confession and counsel. At their Vocational Congress, held at De La Salle Nor-mal in Lafayette, Louisiana, the Christian Brothers drafted a "Recruiter's Rule," which has since become the standard practice for the recruiters in their five Provinces of the United 'States. In this "Rule" they insist that each boy applying to their community have his own spiritual director. The brothers also drafted a plan of spiritual formation which each of their teachers is required to follow. It con-sists of five points: 1) Mental Prayer: After giving the youth instruction in how to make mental" prayer, urge him to devote at least ten minutes to it daily in ~hurch. 2) Spiritual Reading: Recommend reading of the Cos- pels, the Imitation o[ Christ, the Life of Christ, biog-raphies of the saints, and so forth. 3) Examination o[ Conscience: Have the youth make this examination daily and stress the importance of con-trition. 4) Virtue o[ Religion: Inculcate it by daily Mass and Communion, rosary, visits, aspirations, and all other forms of consciously acknowledging God's supremacy. 5) Virtue o[ Generosity: Urge the young man to cultivate it in school and at home, by. pointing out. how he can give himself for others. Vocation Clubs One of the best systems for achieving these purposes is the Vocation Club. It not only strengthens the interest of younger prospects, but also dispels the ignorance and overcomes the timidity of older boys. Through its activi-ties suitable youths are given a systematic indoctrination on all aspects of the priesthood and religious life as well as the regular motivation needed to develop habits of piety and devotion. At every meeting of the club there is some new instruc-tion on what a religious vocation is and how the members can best respond to God's call. Talks are given; round-table discussions are held; and vocational films are shown. On special occasions there are trips to religious institutes in the area, where the youths observe at first-hand the life and work of the religious. At the regular meetings, moreover, there is ample op-portunity not only for group encouragement to more fre-quent prayer and faithful reception of the sacraments but also for private counseling and regular spiritual direction. Thus, as habits of virtue are developed in the youth, he is gradually disposed to' the supreme act of religion; namely, giving himself completely to God. At present in the United States there are affiliated with our National Office for Vocational Clubs over six hun-dred elementary school units and approximately three hundred and seventy secondary school groups-~having a combined membership of approximately thirty-eight thousand boys. There is an even greater number of girls enrolled in similar clubs conducted by sisters. Handbooks on both groups can be obtained at the booth exhibiting American materials. Final Step: Developing a Sense of Vocation During this period of preparation or formation all re-cruiters agree that the youth should be encouraged to go weekly to the spiritual director for confession. Then every two or three weeks there should be a spiritual conference. ÷ ÷ ÷ Recruiting VOLUME 21, 1962 ]9] 4. 4" 4" God,roy Poage, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS During these conferences the director should treat of the love of God, the necessity of sacrifice, purity of intention, the nature of temptation, devotion to the Blessed Mother, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the like. Life in the seminary or novitiate should also be ex-plained. Special emphasis should be given to the possible problems of homesickness, dryness at prayer, fear of studies, and difficulties with companiqns. At the same time the director should try to deepen the youth's aware-ness of the uniqueness of his vocation and elicit a great willingness to make any sacrifice to follow it. During this time, too, the youth should be encquraged to disclose any doubts or fears. The director might ask: "Who put this idea of a vocation in your mind? Where did it come from? Did it come from the devil? Nol Do you think the devil wants you to be a leader in Christ's army? Of course not! The inspiration, then, must be from God, and if He has chosen you, He doesn't demand anything beyond your strength. He simply offers you an invitation. You can accept or reject. What will it be?" It is particularly important that the spiritual director develop in these youths a sense of vocation. Each one should think: "If God is really calling me, then I should prepare myself immediately so as not to lose time in giv-ing Christ the benefit of my capacities, my faculties, my love. I am going to continue in this conviction, until my spiritual director or a religious superior in Christ's name tells me that I have no vocation." Once a boy has reached this degree of conviction, problems of a different nature arise. Sometimes the pros.- pect will say, "I never had any worry about purity until now. Just when I want to do something worthwhile and enter religious life, I start getting all kinds of temptations. I never realized I was so weak until now." This should be a cue to the spiritual director to bring in a thorough explanation of' the reason for temptation. Many youths have the erroneous notion that the moment they put on a cassock or habit, they will become immune to any rebellion of the flesh. The director, therefore, should point out to them that when the devil sees one erl-tering religion he only renews his assaults the more fiercely. Mortification and prayer, however, will quickly rout him. The director s.hould constantly emphasize that what-ever comes, it is but a test of one's love for God. It is a test of one's trust. It is a test of one's absolute abandon-ment to God's holy will. Many of us would have given up the struggle years ago, if we had not been schooled from the very beginning to ask ourselves, "What am I here for? Is it not for God? I expect to suffer like Christ. The more I can take for Him, the more generously I can give in return." With these same thoughts our prospects should now be prepared for the seminary or novitiate, lest they become disheartened later when trials and temptations beset them. Making the Decision ¯ To the inevitable and final question of youths, "Do you advise me to enter?" most experienced recruiters think it best to say, "You must make the decision. It is yourself and your will that you are offering to Christ." Others would go a little further and say, "I give my approval to your decision to enter. You have shown a love of Christ, a desire to please Him and live for Him, a gpirit of sacrifice, of humility, docility, and obedience. Why not offer yourself to Christ saying, 'Here I am, if you can use me'? Trust Him to give you the right answer through your superiors, His representatives. Even if you should leave, your doubts will be settled for all time. You will have gained immensely by the spiritual training and Christ will bless you always for having offered yourself." Most recruiters never have to go this far. Long before they reach this point, they notice that the love for God in the genuine prospect has reached such an intensity that the response is almost instantaneous. There is a generosity that wants to sweep away all obstacles, a willingness that brooks no rival and needs no apology or defense. It is something hard to define, and yet you can see it filling the heart of the youth with an eager desire to do that which is so dit~icult to human nature. It prompts such a one to give up heroically all that the world offers that the divine life within the soul might be brought to a greater perfection. This phenomenon almost defies description. For lack of a better explanation, I can say only that it is like a "light in their eyes." It is something found in every generous prospect for the seminary or novitiate. Our responsibility in all this is very clear. We must encourage, nourish, and protect, this manifestation of grace. For once we have said, "This boy has a vocation," then we mean that we have seen in such an individual an act of devotion in a degree which is superlative. We have found a soul in whom there are strong, firm habits of vir-tue, and that soul now shows a prompt,, eager willto serve God. Like Beatrice with Dante, we must be both guide and guardian to such a favored youth, leading him on to the threshold of the seminary or novitiate. That, in a word, is the role of the recruiter and the purpose of our recruit-ing procedures. ÷ ÷ ÷ Recruiting VOLUME 21, 1962 195 BROTHER JOHN JOSEPH, C.F.X. Challenging Youth to Follow Christ ÷ ÷ + Brother John Jo-seph, C.F.X., is the general counsellor and the general vo-cation director of the Xaverian broth-ers. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Therex is a joyful ring in the word challenge that evokes a responsive echo in noble hearts. This response would almost appear to be a natural reaction of the human heart, for we note it even in the very young. Watching them at play you see how eagerly they respond and "follow the leader" in whatever dangerous exploit he may devise to challenge their bravery. This reaction is equally dis-cernible in the growing youth when he engages in ath-letic competition or similar activities. The recent example in the United States of the call for youth to join the Peace Corps furnishes another proof of the eagerness of young people to respond to a challenge When the purposes are clearly set forth. Likewise, a brief glance down the page of history reveals how responsive men can be when they have found a leader in whom they believe, a cause they really value, or an emergency that brooks no hesitation. Consider the legions of Alexander,, Hannibal, Caesar, or Napoleon, or any other great leader and you will see how men accept a challenge with utter disregard for personal sacrifice. Note, too, the power of men of ideas. Men like Plato and. Aristotle, Mohammed and Marx, have left their imprint on the countless indi-viduals whom they have challenged. In each case we find a forceful man with. a special message which he has suc-ceeded in getting others to spread. Now in our case we find the ingredients for the most attractive and inspiring challenge in the world's history. For the Leader who brings His challenging ideas is no passing general or philosopher but the Son of God made man. And the message which He has brought, the Gospel which He asks men to spread abroad contains the greatest doctrine and the happiest news of all ages. Its purpose is the eternal happiness of all men. But this purpose will be ~ This is the text oI an address delivered to the First International Congress on Vocations to the State of Perfection, achieved only in the measure that the challenge of Christ is accepted and His gospel made known. This achievement demands that men and women be fully prepared to do more for God than Communists or other misguided per-sons are prepared to do for the spread of their causes. With this in mind we ~ish, first, to stress the character-istics which are essential, we believe, both for the re-cruiter and the one who is recruited. Secondly, we wish to explain one proven method of actually reaching our young people. Then, in the discussion to follow, the dele-gates may tell us of other methods equally effective. The method of which I speak is the result, no~ of the study and thought of any one person or congregation, but rather of the efforts and experiences of many different communities over a period of years. The various congre-gations of teaching brothers in the United States, using an adaptation of the general program, have made aston-ishing progress during the past ten years. From the year 1950 to 1960 every community of brothers in the United States has shown a remarkable growth, ranging from twenty-four and two-tenths percent to an almost incredi-ble ninety and three-tenths percent. As a result of this expansion they have established additional provinces and houses of training, opened many new schools, and now find themselves poised for another period of growth which is expected to outstrip that of the last decade. This is the type of progress that is desired and needed everywhere, but it can be achieved only by planning and hard work. Recruits are obtained only by recruiters and the best recruiters for the religious life are certainly those who have themselves lived that life best and found it to be all or even more than they had anticipated. Now since the primary purpose of the religious life is not some activity like teaching, nursing, preaching, or the like, but rather the perfection of the individual religious, those men and women will be the best recruiters who have best lived the religious life. This explains why some of the saints found it so easy to attract the youth with whom they came in contact. Great souls like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Theresa, and Mother Cabrini drew numei'ous young people to the religious state, because the very fire of their own love for God made this state seem desirable. The Blessed Brother Benilde left hundreds of religious to carry on his work after his .death, all his former pupils. Don Bosco, too, was a tremendously suc-cessful recruiter, attracting hundreds of previously neg-lected children to the holiness of the priestly or religious state. We can conclude, therefore, that the better we follow the example of the saints, the more successful we shall be in helping to fill our monasteries and convents. ÷ ÷ Challenging Youth VOLUME 21~ 1962 195 + + 4. Brother John Joseph, C.F.X. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 196 If we wish to attract idealistic youths to Christ we must let the love of Christ shine out through our own eyes. As one successful moderator of boys in New York City wrote me: "The religious himself must personify Christ to the students. Modern psychology reveals how much youth needs a model, a hero. It is easier for a boy to see Christ as a model, if he sees Christ in the religious. To do this the religious must be Christ, not just a spokesman for Him." And if he is an Alter Christus he will be kindly, polite, and understanding, demonstrating without hesita-tion a personal interest in each individual, allowing Christ to appeal through his mediation. Again, a successful recruiter must be the very epitome of enthusiasm. He is, in a way, a salesman, and he will make very few sales if he doesn't believe in his product. His own happiness and satisfaction with the kind of life he is presenting to others must be at the bottom of hi,,; appeal. And this-must be based upon his personal faith in Christ and the divine cause. His basic contentment must never appear dimmed by the minor happenings of a par-ticular day, by a temporary indisposition, a disappoint-ment over some failure, or the dissatisfaction with his current superior. While his feet are on the earth, his head must be above the clouds where the source 6f his enthusiasm never changes. Finally, the man who appears before a group of modern youngsters or who must pass the more severe test of giving personal interviews, must be representative of the kind of person our young people would like to imitate. Surely a poorly dressed salesman for wearing apparel would ap-pear ridiculous. Likewise, a recruiter of future clergymen, educational leaders, missionaries, or nurses must, by his professional appearance and speech, make these callings and the noble religious state itself appear in all their in-nate dignity, as states of life attractive to youth and their parents. But no matter how holy, understanding, enthusiastic, and professional the recruiter may be, success will largely depend upon the qualities he finds or develops in the potential candidates he contacts. I need not enumerate the usual qualities of mind and body required for ac-ceptance. But before considering how to challenge our youth, I must stress the fact that the success of any re-cruiter depends in equal measure on the extent to which the potential recruits are blessed with a love for Christ, solid faith, and a willingness to make sacrifices to prove their love. To begin with, why should anyone give up all pros-pects of success in life, the chance of a happy marriage and family? The only possible answer is that such a one has perceived a greater good. He has realized that Jesus Christ is God and worth following no matter what natu-ral attractions must be sacrificed. This demands faith. Of course, every Catholic has received this theological gift, but unless it is nurtured and strengthened by the solid food of doctrine, it won't support one in a time of crisis, such as when making a choice of one's vocation. This faith must be fed on catechetical instruction, good read-ing, and prayerful thinking on such topics as God's great-ness and goodness, the happiness of others who have served Him, the vanity of earthly achievements, and the like. If our youths have a strong faith, their souls are pre-pared for the encouraging words of the recruiter~ who must never stress the secondary aims of his particular con-gregation to the neglect of the primary purpose of all chosen souls, which is to see God, their end. However, believing is in itself only the basic ingredient of vocation. For it is love that will give the unction and desire to follow where faith points the way. Love removes the thorns from the rose. The lover considers no pain un-bearable, nor any sacrifice too great, if only he can please his beloved. In fact, the more he can suffer for the beloved the greater is his joy that he is privileged to prove his love. And in this fact lies the answer to our principal question: How can we challenge modern youth to follow Christ? The answer lies in the development in youth of a fer-vent love for Christ. But they don't see Christ as they see others whom they love. They discern Him only with the eyes of faith. Accordingly the teacher must introduce them to the love of Christ. Leading them to the Sacred Heart is the prelude to their falling in love with Him. By this, I mean, of course, the strengthening of their life of prayer while encouraging the frequent reception of the sacraments. If a young person prays well, receives Christ frequently in Communion, and visits Him often in. the Blessed Sacrament, thus becoming closely attached to Him, then he is certainly better disposed to make the sac-rifice of self required in the priesthood or the religious life. Finally, youth must face the test of generosity. Many will fail the test as did the young man of the Gospel who loved Christ but would_not give up his wealth to follow Him. Others, however, will appreciate the truth in the old adage: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." They will admit that sacrifice hurts, yet they will take up the cross and follow Christ. For this, though, they must be prepared. They must come to realize that the real challenge of any worthwhile activity lies in the sacrifices that must be endured. Once a youth has really understood how to look up smilingly, though tearfully, to a crucified Christ and to see through His broken Body the Godhead, 4- 4- Challenging Youth VOLUME 21, 1962 197 4" 4. Brother ~ohn Joseph, ~.X. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 198 then will he understand that his wiser choice is not the limited love of creatures, but the all-embracing eternal love. Having now indicated some of the fundamental traits of recruiters and prospective candidates that are essential for a successful contact between the two, we will devote our attention to a concrete program which can be organ-ized within the framework of a religious congregation, particularly if its secondary purpose is teaching. Such a program is already functioning in various organizations within the Church, each adapting the means to its own purpose and traditions. The program brings best results when well coordinated and designed to include every member of the congregation, for the more who are pray-ing, planning, and working, the greater will be the de-gree of success. Accordingly we will consider the pro-gram on the general, provincial, local, and classroom levels, since each level has its own director and particular duties suitable to that level and since the cooperation of each level with those both above and below it is very im-portant. General Level The general vocation director is usually also a coun-sellor or assistant to the superior general with whom he lives at the generalate of the congregation. Thus he is in a good position to see the strong and weak spots in the recruiting programs in each province as well as in the mission fields or vice-provinces. Through correspondence, bulletins, and personal visits, he keeps informed concern.- ing methods and progress throughout the congregation. and in turn keeps the superior general informed. Some of the activities by which he assists the recruiters in the provinces and in the various schools are the following: First, he studies the trends, problems, and methods be-ing used by others, in order to pass along to the provinces any ideas which they may use in the light of their own program. There are three principal ways by which he can maintain an alertness to developing ideas: a) by reading widely in this field, gradually building up a useful file of written materials, reports, propaganda releases, and programs of various other congregations~ as well as a shelf of books on the theology and method: ology of vocation work; b) by consultation with other religious on the gener-alate level in order to compare notes and adapt the proven ideas of others. It can also be useful to study the methods of other organizations to see how they do their enlisting of members; and c) by attendance at vocation conferences, meetings, and exhibitions on the national and international level, since it is especially here that others with similar interests are found and where current problems and trends are re-ported on. Secondly, the general vocation director, through his correspondence and personal c6ntacts with the recruiting leaders in the various provinces of his own congregation, is in a position to pass. on ideas from one province to an-other and so to furnish information on programs which have met with success elsewhere within the community. Thirdly, he is able, either directly in correspondence with provincials or with the province vocation director to offer suggestions for strengthening the program of in-dividual schools. For he receives twice a year a vocation report from each house. These reports are made out in triplicate with a copy being retained in the community itself and two copies being sent to the provincial who, in turn, forwards to the generalate one copy of each report. The chief aim of this report is to ascertain that an active program is carried out in every school of the congregation. This report gives detailed information on the spiritual activities in each school that have as their end the win-ning of God's blessing on the recruiting program, as also on the promotional efforts being used, statistics on the number of students being interviewed, the likely pros-pects, and the number of vocations already obtained for various seminaries or novitiates. Fourthly, the general vocation director can also serve as a publicity director for the congregation as a whole, being aware that the better his community is known the more inquiries will be received from interested persons, and the more candidates will normally apply. This ac-tivity could include the distribution of literature in places where the congregation has no other contacts; spreading knowledge of the institute through the use of slides, pic-tures, or magazine articles; encouraging the preparation within the provinces of articles, pamphlets, pertinent leaflets, book marks, calendars, and the like. This kind of activity can be multiplied according to the policy of the superior general and the time available to the di-rector. However, in my opinion the principal contribution of a vocation director at the general level, is to encourage, Encourage, ENCOURAGEI The work of gathering young people for our novitiates in this day and age is frequently most discouraging, and this work must, in the last analysis, be done on the local and classroom levels. Many a religious teacher does the daily work of instruct-ing, interviewing, and otherwise promoting vocations only to find that at the end of the school year he has not obtained a single candidate from his class. Now if he feels all alone in this discouraging effort, he may easily let up ÷ ÷ ÷ Challenging Youth VOLUME 21~ 1962 199 4. 4, 4. Brother lohn ]oseph, C.F.X. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 200 on his efforts the following year. However, if he knows that he is not alone, but senses that' he is being encour-aged, prayed for, and supported by his brethren and su-periors, then he is less inclined to slacken his efforts. The general vocation director, conscious of the fact that any such slackening of effort tends to lead to the failure of the whole program, must be always optimistic and cheer-ful, ever encouraging the.teachers to keep trying, always suggesting new approaches. The office of general vocation director is still rather new in the developing program of modern vocation re-cruiting but unless there is an officer on the generalate staff to help organize and encourage a congregation-wide program of increasing membership, there is less likelihood that the community will keep pace with the ever-increas-ing demands for personnel that all of us find confronting us today. So important a part of the growth of an insti-tute deserves special consideration by the highest authori-ties of the Order. Provincial Level It is, however, on the level of the separate provinces that most programs of recruitment begin. It is here that methods will begin to vary according to the traditions and religious background of the region in which the houses are situated. Here it is, too, that the representative of the recruiting organization first comes into direct con-tact with the prospects themselves. Though policies and programs may differ, the general aim will always be the same; namely, to lead young men and women to know and to love Christ so that they may be alert to the call which He may deign to give them. So let us here outline a few general steps which have been found useful at this level. The provincial vocation director works according to the instructions of his particular provincial. He may be a member of the council, though in many congregations he is not. In any case it is important that he work .closely with his superior and with the other programs of the separate schools. And it is essential that he have adequate time to carry out a well-planned program. He has a full-. time job and should not be encumbered with other du-ties to the extent of causing the work of recruiting to suffer in the province. For the task of obtaining new postulants cannot be left to chance. Nor to a program of prayer alone. The Lord does, indeed, bid us to pray the Lord to send required laborers into His vineyard, but He uses men to further His purposes and seldom extends His invitation by a direct apparition or heavenly voice. In this matter we can learn from successful organiza-tions in the world. The army and navy, all business firms, every political group or social club has its clearly defined method of obtaining new members. A personnel depart-ment is set up, equipped to supply in[ormation, present the attractive features of membership, as well as to ex-amine and select potentially useful members. Frankly, this is what the office of the provincial vocati0ndirector is also designed to do. This religious must attract poten-tial candidates and then select members for the congre-gation from among those who apply. Though policies vary, and it is a healthy sign that they do, some of the usual activities o[ this office are the following: l) He assists the provincial and the local superiors in the selection o~ at least one vocation director for each of the schools in the province. It is chiefly through their cooperation that the director will carry out the program of the province. 2) He trains, advises, and guides these recruiters. An annual gathering of them all for at least a few days is a usual and useful practice. 3) He sees to the composition and actual preparation of a variety of pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and other ma-terials for distribution to the schools. 4) He publishes a regular (usual!y monthly) bulletin to keep all the religious interested in the programs, poli-cies, and results of the same. G) He visits every school at least two or three times dur-ing the school year, checks on the program of the local directors and the teachers, speaks in the classes or at school assemblies, interviews students who have been recommended to him by the local director, by a teacher, or who present themselves to him following an invitation to do so during his talks to the students; gives a confer-ence each year to every community so that the members will be constantly aware of the needs and aims of the program; develops a library of slides and sometimes of moving pictures to help him in clarifying the mode of life lived in the training schools anal religious communi-ties; and also addresses groups of parents, alumni, or other adult groups among whose members he wishes to arouse interest in vocations. 6) He plans and places advertisements through which Catholic magazines and newspapers may carry informa-tion about the congregation to potential candidates who could not otherwise be reached. 7) He sponsors such events in the schools as essay or poster contests on a province-wide competitive basis, as also vocation exhibitions, prayer campaigns, mission crusades, and other activities which serve to arouse inter-est in the work and needs of the Church. 8) He helps to develop both at the provincial house and in all the communities Small libraries of selected ÷ ,,I-÷ Challenging Youth VOLUME 21, 1962 201 + + ÷ Brother John Joseph, C.F.X. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 202 books and pamphlets concerning religious vocations, oc-casionally preparing an up-to-date bibliography of these publications. 9) He attends conferences and conventions dealing with the problems of vocation recruiting, and maintains contact with other provincial directors. 10) He organizes week-end retreats for students who are interested in vocations so they can prayerfully con-sider this matter in a quiet atmosphere. He may also ar-range for interested students to spend a few days at the training centers of the province. For the good recruiter believes firmly with Canon Jacques Leclercq that "It is the orders which insist most strongly on the supernatural aspect of vocations which receive the most recruits" (The Religious Vocation, p. 85). 11) He represents the provincial in interviewing all candidates, having them fill out all the required forms and then make formal application to the provincial upon whom it usually rests to accept or reject the prospect. 12) He may arrange for special tests of the potential postulants since these tests~ if given prudently, often sup-ply useful information. 13) He visits the homes of the applicants if informa-tion on the family background is needed or if parental opposition makes avisit necessary. 14) He may accompany the new class of aspirants or postulants to the juniorate or novitiate, in order to help them through the period of adjustment to the new en-vironment. He occasionally visits them, especially on the days of the reception of the habit or the taking of vows. 15) Finally, he keeps the general vocation director and, through him, the superior general informed about the progress of recruiting in the province. These numer-ous activities give us an idea of the tremendous impor-tance of the post of provincial vocation director for the successful carrying out of the program of recruitment in the congregation. Local Level We now come to the task of the local vocation director. Here we are getting closer in our systematic approach to reach, inform, and guide youth{For we are now consider-ing the school itself, where the boy and girl are actuallv found. Right here, and not at the provincialate or gen-eralate, are the vocations in person. Accordingly, here it is that the challenge to follow Christ the King must ring out the dearest. The chief responsibility for this lies with that religious who, working closely with the superior and other authorities of the school, encourages and directs the individual teadbers who are in the last analysis the real recruiters. All depends npon the latter just as in a battle the general, captains, and lieutenants depend on the non-commissioned soldier in the ranks. However, let us first consider the essential part of the one who must organize the program in the whole school. His chief du-ties include the following: 1) He must be well-informed on all matters" concern-ing the history of the congregation, its founder and pio-neers, its provinces, numbers, and missions. 2) He must have a pleasant office, well-equipped for interviewing prospects, containing supplies of literature, needed forms, suitable files, and so forth, 3) He must have the school program of recruiting or-ganized, supplying teachers with definite outlines of such program, and checking its success. 4) He should arrange to speak in each class, invite students to visit his office, supply information needed, and aim by a program of education and inspiration to develop the latent vocations in the school. 5) He can sponsor a vocation club for the more thor-ough cultivating of potential vocations, and can encour-age such groups as the Sodality of Our Lady, the various Third Orders, the Legion of Mary, and the Catholic Students' Mission Crusade, since these deepen the spirit-ual life of the students while offering them an outlet for their zeal. 6) He arranges for publicity' for the congregation in local and school publications, featuring activities such as profession, ordination, or jubilees. 7) He does the preliminary work of interviewing defi-nite prospects so that they will be ready to meet the pro-vincial director when he visits the school, In cases where the student is interested in the diocesan priesthood or in a congregation other than that of the counsellor, the con-tact can be made for him and every assistance given him to accomplish his aim. 8) He may find opportunities for seeking out vocations beyond the limits of the school, through talks in other schools or colleges, or to parochial groups of young people who do not attend the Catholic schools. 9). Finally, the local vocation director is the keym~n in the community for all matters pertaining to recruiting although he must avoid the pitfall of believing that it is .his exclusive right to foster vocations in the school. He assists the superior in filling out the required vocation re-ports, if such are a part of the system. He aids the teach-ers by supplying them with needed materials and fresh ideas. He takes a special interest in candidates who have been accepted so as to encourage them to live .closer to Christ through a definite program of prayer, reading, and frequentation of the sacraments. Thus does the local director, if he is efficient, zealous, and capable of winning + + + Challenging Youth VOLUME 21~ 1962 ÷ ÷ B~oth~ John ]o~eph, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 204 the backing of the teachers, do much toward ensuring a successful program. Classroom Level Now we come to speak about the teachers themselves. Nobody is in a better position to challenge youth than the teacher who, day by day, appears before them. If he is truly zealous for the welfare of the Church, he can do much toward planting the seed of vocation in these youthful hearts. His is the actual contact with the future priest, brother, and sister. The success of the program will fail or succeed as he does. Cognizant, then, that there before him sits the future religious of the Church, the teacher must unhesitatingly challenge the very best that is in the hearts and souls of his students. Some suggestions for teachers, then, are in order: 1) The teacher must prepare the soil for religious vo-cations by encouraging attention at prayer and regular attendance at the sacraments. 2) He should stress Christ's love for us and teach youth to reciprocate that love. 3) He should go into detail in explaining the problems of the Church, both at home and in the mission fields; suggesting the part his students can play in solving them. He should dwell upon the loftiness of working for God. 4) In his religion lessons he should not neglect to dis~ cuss the great truths of life that have led so many persons to dedicate their lives to God. Consideration should be given to the fleeting quality of earthly .possessions and pleasures, the dangers of the world, and man's responsi-bility to his Creator. Thus the teacher causes his students to think seriously about life. 5) He should talk to his class occasionally about the religious life, its various apostolates, missionary activities, and lofty purpose. He will find the students interested in the life of the founder and history of the order. He can explain the special privileges and obligations of the priesthood, the difference between a priest and the vari-ous kinds of brothers, the meaning of the vows, the dif-ference between the secular and religio.us clergy, and be-tween the active and contemplative life. These are all interesting topics. 6) The teacher, while keeping all things in perspective, should also point out the joys, benefits, and rewards of the priestly and religious states. 7) He should be pleasant at all times, drawing youth by his kindness. His cheerful, friendly manner shoul~ also be noted in his relations with his fellow religious. For nothing repels youth more than a sour, unfair teacher. 8) He must try to win their confidence that he may intuence their wills and help them to combat the ob-stacles which everywhere oppose vocations. 9) The teacher need not hesitate to suggest, in a pru-dent way, to a particular student that he prayedully con-sider whether he has a vocation. This personal, in.dividual approach is a potent one as success[ul recruiters' know. Personal interviews are more effective than group talks. 10) The teacher should cooperate with the lodal direc-tor in all programs, contests, outings, retreats, or other activities sponsored in the school. The real success of all these depends largely upon him. 11) Finally, the teacher should constantly pray that God may bless his efforts. Such a program, it well organized and put into prac-tice, adapted and modified to the needs and limitations of the area, will certainly carry to the youths o[ today the great challenge of this mid-twentieth century. It will also arouse many of them to give themselves to the service of Christ, our King. To effect such programs we religious must likewise hear and answer the challenge. We must be great-souled in the service o[ a Church that is proud to proclaim itself Catho-lic, seeking as it does to spread the message of Christ to all men in all parts of the world. To be worthy of this service we need a broad outlook, for in such a service the small-minded religious is a contradiction. It is the Church as a whole that is important. Believing this, let us all take a keen interest in filling the seminaries of our dio-ceses, while the same zeal will lead us also to encourage vocations to the religious congregations, which carry on so great a part of the burden of the Church. Our brothers and sisters must realize the privilege that is theirs to lead young men to the sacred priesthood, while the. clergy must recognize the importance of a tremendously en-larged army of well-trained religiou~ [or the advance-ment o[ the educational and charitable systems of the universal Church. Working together under Christ and His Vicar, we can indeed meet the challenge to bring the world to the Sacred Heartl ÷ ÷ ÷ Challenging Youth VOLIJMI: 21~ 205 RENI~ CARPENTIER, S.J. Priestly Vocation and Religious Vocation ÷ ÷ gen~ Carpentier, S.J., is a member of the faculty of Col-l~ ge Saint-Albert, 95, Chauss~e de Mont-Saint-Jean, Eegenhoven - Lou-vain, Belgium. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 206 What is the Will oI the Holy Spirit? The juxtaposition1 of these two terms demands that a comparison of the two be undertaken. As the words indi-cate, an abstract comparison of the content of these two vocations is not in question. Between the priesthood and the state of evangelical perfection the difference is evi-dent: The ministerial priesthood implies sacramental character, strictly divine powers, a sacred responsibility for. the service of the people of God, and the highest, kind of dignity. The state of perfection signifies nothing of the kind. The theoretical comparison, it seems, poses no prob-lem. But it is an altogether different matter when voca-tion to the priesthood and vocation to the religious life are placed face to face in the concrete. In both cases a way of life is chosen. In today's Church these two ways of life appear to young Christians as two ways of consecrating oneself entirely to the Kingdom of God. Necessarily, then, these two ways of life are being com-pared and the comparison brings up a complex problem. Each of these two vocations is fixed within a system of laws and institutions which form a unit; yet both can be chosen at the. same time. In practicE, the two ways of life meet and overlap. It remains true, nevertheless, that or-dinarily priestly vocation means the life of the diocesan priest; and religious vocation means the r~ligious insti-tute with or without the priesthood. The question is then asked--and it is this question which I wish to answer: How is one to explain objectively to young Christians, for example, the meaning Of the two vocations? "Objectively," that is, what does G6d and what does the. Church ask and expect of each? And how is this to be explained without arbitrarily doing an injustice to one or the other, without a This is the text of an address delivered tO the First International Congress on Vocations to the State of Perfection. The translation was made by John E. Becker, S.J. glorifying one at the expense of the other? In short, how is this to be expressed according to the desires of the Holy Spirit in order to cooperate with Him and not to obstruct His action? Exterior Aspect ol the Two Vocations It is necessary, I believe, to distinguish from this objec-tive or essential aspect of the comparison another aspect which I may term exterior; by this I mean what a young person of today, confronted with the great institutions of the Church, can see from the outside before he has en-tered them. This aspect must be of equal interest to us if we wish to know how to enlighten a young candidate and how to develop public action in the Church in favor of vocations, Certainly, the objective value is of greatest interest to us; it is the only one which is true in itself. Whether I am a priest or a religious, what am I really called to? Since this is the most important aspect, it is what should govern the exterior aspect. Nevertheless, the two vocations are mysterious. The young person, the adolescent, and even the adult who approaches the priesthood or the religious state without having lived either of them has not yet fully understood them. What they see are the most superficial differences. For example, a diocesan priest may live with his mother; the religious is fully enfolded in a powerful family. These features are true but nonessential. The priestly or religious ideal appears to the young man in this priest or that religious he has been close to or whose life he has read. I certainly do not wish to speak here of those strictly individual points of view which characterize voca-tions in the concrete; but there will always be an exterior picture of the two vocations which is more or less pro-found, more or less complete. Still, it must not falsify the objective meaning. We seek here the reality of a vocation, its deep and objective meaning, and also its true exterior meaning, the true supernatural psychology of the call which is addressed to Christian people. Recent Discussion The question of the two vocations was very vividly high-lighted thirty or forty years ago. The reason was a most holy and necessary one, an evident appeal of the Lord for the sanctification of diocesan priests. Some of these accord-ing to Cardinal Mercier object: "We are not religious." But are you not, comes the rejoinder, of a quite superior and more demanding "ordbr," "the order of St. Peter," or "the order of Christ," whose priests you are? Here, then, is posed the question of the religious vocation and the vocation to the diocesan priesthood. The matter is complicated by another factor, that of Priest and Religious ,4. Ren~ ¢a~pentier, $.1. REVIEW FOR REL;GIOUS 208 belonging to a diocese. The priest seeks to discover more intimate links with his bishop; but does not the religious priest, and especially the exempt religious, live at the fringe of the influence of the diocesan bishop, "at the fringe of the hierarchy," as it is sometimes expressed? Why does the religious live in this way, on the fringe? Is it not through concern for his own salvation? .If he withdraws from the world, is it not to concern himself with his own salvation? But in that case is not the diocesan priest who from morning to night is focused on the salvation of others actually living out to a greater degree the life of charity, the state of perfection? The vocation to the diocesan priesthood is then not only the vocation with the greatest obligation to perfection, but it is the call to an authentic "diocesan perfection," and even to true evangelical perfection, that is, fraternal charity. And this seems to give the lie to the name and the institution of the s0-called "state of perfection.". On the other hand, this conclusion seems to contradict the facts; for, practically .speaking and because of his state of life, the Church imposes a greater obligation to perfection on the religious. And do not the greater part of religious men and women vow their whole life to the heroic service of the neighbor? And finally, is not the religious fully joined to the Church by a vow of obedience which is frequently directed to the bishop of Rome? Holiness and Fisibility Carried on in this way, the discussions recalled that the question of the two vocations has had a long history. At root, it would seem to derive from the very nature of the Kingdom of God here on earth; that is, unless I am mi.~;- taken, from its twofold essential values, holiness and visi-bility: holiness under the free impulse of the Spirit which gives life to the Church; visibility which makes of the Kingdom of God an institution perfectly adapted to the Spirit. Holiness is the aim; it is the call of all who are baptized and especially of all priests. It is for this, her end, that the Church institutes the states of perfection. On the other hand, visibility, the visible and organiza-tional Church, is the way for all men. An admirable gift from on high, visibility implies the sacramental transmis-sion of holiness, the liturgy of adoration, the soverei~ society of the Church, the sacred jurisdiction that governs the people of God in Christ's name, and finally also, at the very heart of this visible Church, the official institu-tion of the community of perfection. Sanctity and visibility are strictly associated. Concretely they make up but one thing: the Body of Christ which is the Church. Nevertheless, religious life seems centered on sanctity, perfection to be acquired. The vocation to the priesthood is more concerned with the visible aspect, for it must assure the validity bf the Eucharistic cult, the efficaciousness of the sacraments, the solidity of doctrine, the prudent direction of the people of God. The two voca-tions, like the two functions they must fulfill~ are dif-ferent. Nevertheless, the religious life, a public state, is of the highest interest to the visibleGhurch and leads very frequently toward the priesthood; the priesthood, for its part, can have no other aim than the sanctification of the world; and it therefore aims first at the sanctification of the priest and often at his belonging to the state of per-fection. Duality-Unity Here we are at the heart of our problem. Between the two.vocations there is an evident, profound difference and at the same time an intimate connection. It is as if the two values of the. Church, inseparable but necessarily distinct, should appear here with maximum emphasis: spiritual power and institutional power. This distinction between two realities mutually inte-grated, this otherness-oneness of two sets of values which seek one another out and will always do so, this is the point of this paper. We will clarify it first by means of the sacred history of the Church; then we will venture into its theology; finally we would like to deduce some practical attitudes for.success in the sacred task common to all priests and all religious of cultivating the vocations by means of which the Church and humanity survive. First we must take a very brief look at the historical evolution of the two vocations and at their mutual unity-in- tension. In doing this we will distinguish three stages for each of which only a few characteristics will be pro-posed. The Primitive Community The first stage to be considered is that of the primitive community extending throughout the first two centuries up to the time when, in the third century, persecution became intermittent and the separation of the monks occurred as an ecclesiastical event. During this period there was as yet no problem with the two vocations. It is evident that they existed; but the people of God had not yet felt the need to divide itself into distinct com-munities; indeed, the persecutions would have prevented it. It is true that at the call of the apostles the Christians of the first centuries spontaneously answered by adopting a communal and fraternal way of life in which the spirit 0f what would later be called "the counsels" reigned. So it was that in their eyes earthly goods, their own prop- + 4. 4. Priest and Religious VOLUME 21. 1962 209 ÷ ÷ ÷ Ren~ Carpentie~, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 210 erty, are in a certain way destined by charity for the use of all. Catechetical instruction in the first centuries re-peats this principle without creating any problem. Within the community, each one applied it freely. Some kept their goods to support their family. Others, sometimes a large group, the ascetics, and those who practiced celi-bacy, followed Christ more literally. They gave their goods to the poor of the community and lived on the re-sources of all. There were also virgins who definitively renounced marriage and lived in their families. These men and women had a special place in the Church but were not separated out. They were charged with the dis. tribution of the alms of the community and with other works of charity. Perhaps also they may frequently have been deacons and deaconesses. In this fraternal community the priests were very close to the faithful. At the beginning they were virtuous men upon whom the founding Apostle had imposed hands and who could thenceforward consecrate the Eucharist. If the community grew in number, there arose among the priests and bishops one bishop who inherited the author-ity of the Apostle. Soon, it seems, it was from among the ascetics, the celibates, the voluntarily poor that these priests were chosen. Today, the parish of the simple faith-ful is separate from the communities of perfection, and a double catechesis has been formed; one is centered on the counsels while the other often no longer considers them, It is quite a'task to represent ourselves as a community in which the preaching of the counsels in words and deeds is always present, as a community in which there is only one catechesis and where the same spirit is shared by all: those who own as well as those who have given away what they own; those who profess virginity and those who live holy married lives in the Lord. This apostolic cate-chesis demands an extended treatment. The "'Apostolic Life" and the Monks The end of this first period, between 250 and 350, is marked by the separation of the monks. After the new study of the Vita Antonii published by Father Bouyer in 1950, historians have almost reached agreement on the meaning of this event in the history of the Church. The whole Church of that time saw in this new life a return to the ancient "apostolic life" which was no longer truly practiced in the numerous communities of the period. It is a noteworthy historical fact that these "fugitives" separated themselves from their communities. In modern times, we would say that "they exempted themselves from jurisdiction." Were they then criticized and condemned? On the contrary, everyone admired them. Although some bishops in Egypt and even in Rome had to be convinced by the enthusiasm of Athanasius, they fully recognized this more vigorous "apostolic life." Let it be noted, then, that the apostolic life became more specialized and in-stitutionalized in order that it might continue to exist. But it remained at bottom the same thing, and the whole Church bore witness to this. Everyone recognized it by the same name as the primitive apostolic life which had been taught to all during the first two centuries and which had never ceased to exist. This event, then, places the two vocations face to face, but once more without any practical problem arising. There were evidently priests among the "hermits" or "Chris(ians of the desert," whether these lived near their former community or whether they banded together to form a new community. The Problem o] the Two Vocations In the second period we group the whole of the Middle Ages up to the Council of Trent. The two vocations are distinct from here on, and the problem concerning them promptly arises. It is a long story with many detours over which I need not delay this audience. I would only like to propose a general conclusion. As soon as they are sepa-rated, we see the two vocations seek one another out. From the side of the priesthood, it seems, two convergent inspirations are followed. One is represented by St. Augustine. If the great bishop did not ordain any prie.sts except those who were deter-mined to live a common life with him in a "clerical mon-astery" without personal possessions and evidently celi-bate, this was, he declared, a simple return to the apostolic life as it was lived in primitive times. It was by this primi-tive teaching that he justified common life even in its institutionalized form. Imitated from the beginning by neighboring bishops, this ideal passed on to a line of clerics, the canons, who will defend it throughout the Middle Ages. The other inspiration began, according to the testi-mony of St. Ambrose, with St. Eusebius of Vercelli who was the first "to make monks of those who were clerics," although he was subsequently imitated by a large num-ber of the bishops of Italy. He required that his clergy adopt the monastic life. Although this antedated by a half century the common life of St. Augustine, this com-mon life fonnd its motivating force in an already evolved understanding of monasticism. Henceforth monasticism spread magnificently, helped especially by the highly in-fluential work of Athanasius, Vita Antonii, which ap-peared around 357. The nuance which subtly distinguishes the two inspira-tions should be noted. For Augustine the return to the + ÷ + Priest and Religious VOLUME 21, 1962 211 ÷ ÷ ÷ Ren~ Carpentie~, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 212 beginnings seems a "duty" upon which he vigorously in-sists. On the other hand, imitation of monks cannot ap-pear as anything other than a counsel, though Eusebius made a diocesan institution of it. It is because of the presence of this double orientation of mind that we are able to understand the directives of Gregory the Great to the monks sent to England (they were to establish a clergT of the "apostolic life"); and it would also seem to explain the totally monastic character which the English church kept for a long time. But it is especially to the influence of the evangelical ideal that we must attribute the law of virginity imposed on priests of the Latin Church from the time of Pope Siricius in 386. For if poverty introduces one to the evangelical life and if obedience is its culmination in its institutionalized form of monastic life, it is still vi~- ginity, espousal to Christ, which is its central value. The two vocations seek each other out. I confine my considera-tions here to the Latin Church; for the Greek Church, reference can be made to the words of Plus XI and Piu~ XII on the honor in which virginity is held in it. I need not further emphasize this theme. The efforts of local councils and of the popes to draw the clergy to a common life are well known. The immediate reason is evidently to safeguard chastity; the basis, neverthele~;, is found in the apostolic life. As for detachment from riches, the two vocations also coincide in this. With the great reformer of the clergy, St. Peter Damian, and Pope Nicholas II, the two just missed being identified forever, since the Pope almost decided to impose common life on all priests as seven centuries before the popes and the councils had prescribed celibacy for them. This projected obligatory common life is the historical climax of the Church's effort to unite the two vocations. But the rural parish was clearly more necessary. Priests living alone had been accepted for a long time without criticism by the time the Council of Trent wrote the in-stitution of the secular clergy into law and placed the accent on the creation of common seminaries for the formation of all priests. The Three Canonical States Then the third period began, the one in which we live; it prepared the way for the Code with its three "states of persons." On this canonical classification (which is often very confusedly understood) were based the various docu-ments of Plus XII which clarified and, it may be said, re-solved recent controversy. In presenting the teaching of Pius XII, I begin the second part of this address: the comparative theology of the priestly and religious vocations. Without attempting to give this theology in all its details, I will take as a framework the three following divisions: the teaching of Pius XII; the two vocations and their relationships; fi-nally, the main elements of a theological synthesis. Teaching of Pius XII on the Two Vocations Pius XII had frequent ofcasion to compare' the two vocations, particularly with respect to religious clerics. But he also stated the excellence and the contemporary value of the vocation of lay religious (for example, that of the teaching brother) existing along with the priestly vocation. (See his Letter of March 31, 1954, to Cardinal Valerio Valeri.) Since these congregations of teaching brothers could today, without the difficulties of former times, become clerical congregations, the Pope, .by de-claring them fully approved, implicitly affirmed the proper value of the religious vocation in itself. What then in brief was his teaching on the two vocations? 1) The priestly vocation and the vocation to the state of perfection are different. The state of life of a diocesan priest cannot be called a state of perfection. For the priest as such is not held to the effective practice of the three evangelical counsels as is the state of perfection ~(Dis-course, December 8, 1950). 2) The priestly vocation is distinguished from that of the simple baptized faithful by reason of the divine hier-archical constitution of the Church. The vocation of the religious is another matter. Its significance is not related to the distinction between priests and laity. It can be a call of priests as well as of laity. Its significance is that it "relates strictly to the proper end of the .Church, which is to conduct men to sanctity" (Discourse,~ December 8, 1950). It is the state of life which publicly professes to aim at evangelical perfection; that is, the common prac-tice of the counsels by the three vows of obedience, chas-tity, and poverty (Provida Mater of February 2, 1947). 3) There is another sign that the religious vocation is different from the vocation to the priesthood. The priest-hood and its exercise are of exactly the same value in the two clergies. The priesthood, then, is distinct from the state of perfection. There is certainly a sharing of apostolic labor between the two clergies, but the Church freely de-c: ides about this sharing according to time and place. In the same way, dependence upon a bishop is perfectly realized in the religious priest, even if he is "exempt" (Dis-course, December 8, 1950). Finally, we must conclude that properly speaking the two vocations are not comparable. The religious life has no other meaning than the effective practice of the three counsels in a recognized state of life in order to aim at evangelical perfection. The priestly vocation as such does not have this significance. 4. 4' 4" Priest and Religious VOLUME 21, 196~ 213 ÷ Ren~ Carpentier, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 214 Mutual Attraction o] the Two Vocations Nevertheless, this difference does not hinder the mutual attraction of the two vocations. As Plus XH added: "Nothing prevents the diocesan p.riest from adopting the three counsels, either privately or in a state of perfection" (Discourse, December 8, 1950). As is.evident, in the pre-ceding outline of th6 problem there was never any ques-tion of absolutely excluding the priest, from evangelical perfection as the Church teaches it in the states of per-fection. There was question only of keeping [or each vo-cation its own significance. On the other hand, when in Menti Nostrae the Pope described the "active charity" that is demanded of every priest by reason of his priest-hood, he presented it by means of the three characteris-tics of the states of perfection: humility and obedience, chastity, disinterestedness and poverty. For reasons of per-fection and of edification, he recalled to priests the counsel of the common life (c. 134), although in the Code this does not seem even to imply an invitation to live in the insti-tutional community of goods of the Middle Ages. And in his encyclical on the centenary of the Cur~ of Ars, His Holiness Pope John XXIII spoke in the same way. The teaching in Cardinal Suhard's pastoral letter (The Priest in the Modern World), though obviously of much less universal importance, was also the same. Especially in-teresting is the testimony of. Cardinal Mercier which is sometimes appealed to as a justification for a different spirituality for the diocesan priest. In the statutes of the society of priestly perfection which he founded, he pro-posed to his priests the three vows of religion; and he passed the last twelve years of his life trying to obtain from Plus XI recognition of these vows as public with-out, nevertheless, detaching priests from their diocese and. tl~eir bishop. Without this public status, he wrote, dio-cesan priests would be unable to fulfill their priestly vo-cation; and this is why he hoped for its extension to the universal Church. This last point, however, goes beyond the position o.~ the popes and need not be held. As Pius XII insisted, "the state of perfection" is not necessary. What we do hold is a conclusion fully conformed to the teaching of history: The two vocations are different and yet they cannot re-main strangers to one another. Monks as a group and the majority of male institutes today are clerical insti-tutes (and many even, since the time of the canons regular and the Dominicans, have become religious in order to become priests). Likewise, every diocesan priest, by reason of his priestly vocation, is oriented by his own pastors toward evangelical perfection, toward its spirit. To em-ploy the expressions of Pius XII, "nothing will be lacking to his practice of evangelical perfection if he wishes to adopt, even privately, the vows of the three counsels" (Discourse, December 9, 1957). Theology o] the "Duality-Unity" o[ the Two Voca-tions , In view of this teaching, I would now like to attempt a theological comparison of the two vocations. Naturally, it will be only a brief exposition, and I ask the indulgence of the theologians who hear me. As.I have already indi-cated, I think that the mystery of these two vocations re-flects in itself the unsuspected depths of the principal treasures of the Kingdom of God. This requires an ex-tensive treatment; but here we can give only a few indi-cations. The Priestly Vocation First of all, the priestly vocation appears from the be-ginning as fully independent of the vocation to the state of evangelical perfection; and so it has remained in spite of the efforts made from the beginning 0f the Middle Ages by bishops, popes, and saints to join it indissolubly to the institutionalized apostolic life of religious. In this distinction between the two vocations, which always for-bids calling the priestly life as such "a state of perfec-tion," is hidden, unless I am mistaken, a subtle teaching of the greatest importance. It is this: The powers of the priest are strictly divine. As Plus XII wrote in Mediator Dei, "The power which is entrusted to the priest is in no way human, since it is entirely from above and comes down from God." Since this is the case, it would be ex-tremely dangerous for the priest or the faithful to confuse the exercise of these powers with the exercise of personal holiness, the reception of these powers in the sacrament of orders with the reception of a personal sanctifying grace proportioned to these powers. The priest would risk considering himself as a sanctifying power, whereas in reality he is but a channel for such. And the faithful would risk stopping short at the minister as at a screen which masked Christ from them. A central principle of the Kingdom would be thereby compromised, the prin-ciple of the ministry as a transparent medium. From this would follow an easily made conclusion that has already torn the Church: Because of the weakness and the un-worthiness of the minister, the divinity of his powers would be rejected. Thig transparency of the minister (that is, the doc-trinal affirmation, on the one hand, of the validity of his powers independently of his sanctity and, on the other hand, his personal duty of complete humility, of abso-lute disinterestedness) was demanded by Christ, especially 4. 4. 4- Priest and Religious VOLUME 21~ 1962 ÷ Ren~ Carp~ati~r, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 216 at the moment of the first priestly ordination, as the proper mark of the evangelical priest: "I am," He said, "in the midst of you. as one who serves." "The kings of the' gentiles" lord it over them. But not so among you." You must have nothing in common with the egoism of the powerful of.this world. You must be the servants (Jn 13:14.16; Lk 22:25-27). It is with this same intent that theology teaches the instrumental causality of the minister of the sacraments. As Plus XII expressed it in Mediator Dei, priests are made into instruments of the divinity by which heavenly and supernatural life is communicated to the Mystical Body of Christ. My priestly vocation, then, is for others, not for re.y-self. This is a difficult requirement which ought to be well understood. Certainly it gives no dispensation from the duty of personal sanctification. Quite the contrary. If "Christ is a priest," wrote Pius XII again in Mediator Dei, "it is for us, not for Himself. In the same way is He a victim~ for us." In giving to His priests an active partici-pation in His priesthood, Christ does not have primarily in view their own enrichment by exceptional gifts. "The priestly ministry," writes Father de Lubac, "is not a kind of super-baptism which constitutes a class of super- Christians." The priest communicates to the members of Christ the marvelous deeds of Christ. He imitates Christ's unselfish act of love. Certainly if he desires it, he will receive in abundance the personal graces to love as a priest ought to love; but these graces are to intensify in him his own baptism, his privileges as an adopted child. Along with all his brothers, he remains a humble adopted child, even though he wields the true powers of the only Son. "There is, then, in the Church," writes Father Con-gar, "a double participation in the priesthood of Christ, one along the lines of the relationship of life-giving, of pure and simple communion, which Christ has with Hi:; Body; the other according to the relation of power which He exercises upon His Body as a means of communion." The first sanctifies all the faithful, and the priest is first of all one of the faithful. It unites them to the Father in Christ. It is from this participation in Christ's priesthood that the state of perfection takes its development. The second participation entrusts to those ordained for the ministry to others the powers and the sacramental means of sanctification. This explains the refusal of the priesthood by Francis of Assisi and the flight from the episcopal o~fice of so many eminent saints. Knowing that others of their time could be priests and bishops, they affirmed in this way the radical difference there is between spiritual, moral imi- tation of Christ and the priesthood which does not per-tain to the order of sanctification-to-be-acquired. Finally, let us give one more sign of this otherness. If the priestly character is indelible and will forever mark those who have received it, the exercise of the priesthood will have but one time: It will' disappear when' ~l~e ~E~ple of God are fully assembled in the life to come. On the contrary, it is then that communion with the Father and communion between brothers will be fully established, and these are the very exercise of the vocation to perfec-tion, especially to the state of perfection. The Religious Vocation We have just established the otherness of these two vocations from the point of view of the priestly vocation. No less specified is the proper mission of the vocation to the religious state. If the priestly life ought first of all to bring down the divine gifts upon the people of God through the sacraments, the religious vocation under-takes to give to these gifts of God the Church's public and fullest response. This response is the building up here below of the Kingdom of Heaven. The response is evi-dently personal, but it is even more social. The personal imitation of Christ by profession, the program given by our Mother the Church to her states of perfection can only be the Gospel adapted by love; that is, the counsels of Jesus and the following of Christ. But even more is it a social response. The Kingdom is the Mystical Body of Christ. To love Christ is to build up His Body to unite His members in a community of charity and in a definitive liturgy of adoration for the glory of the Father. Since the Church is herself a public reality, the state of perfection, when consecrated by public vows, brings into being a fully developed cell of Christ. It recreates here be-low a truly social order based on mutuaI love and on a return to the living God, a social order which constitutes a permanent appeal addressed to disunited men that they find their brotherhood again. "That he might gather into one the children who were scattered abroad, (Ps 11:52). This is a mission of the highest importance, since by it alone does the Church fully succeed in bringing about a visible evangelical community, the new order of God's children. It is clearly a mission, one that is altogether different from that of the priestly vocation and that can-not, properly speaking, be compared with it. But it is essential to the realization of the Church here below; without it the priest would not preach in full the social order of the gospel since he would have no example of it to point out. + .+ + Priest and Religious VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ Rend Carpentier, $.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Correlation oI the Two Vocations This public mission, which is both individual and so-cial, explains to us as a consequence how the two voca-tions are different. But it is this same public and social value which demonstrates their intimate and necessary connection. We will now consider the mutual relation that exists between the two. The priestly vocation, a service of love of the Mystical Body, is totally oriented toward the Christian people. It has no concern but to bring to being, to nourish, to teach the Mystical Body on earth, and to guide it to eternal life. But the state of perfection is nothing else (I speak of its professed program) than the most perfect public community within the Mystical Body. Moreover, it is the Church herself who, recognizing her own mystery, or-ganizes the religious community. The priest is the man of the Church, the servant of the Church. He is, then, above all the servant of religious life. It is his most excel-lent creation. Another consideration is the following. The priest is the man of the Mass. He lives but to offer Christ to the Father and to place at the disposition of the children of God the Eucharistic sacrifice where they can consecrate themselves in Christ. But the religious life consecrates it-self entirely by the three public vows which cover the whole of existence. It responds fully, then, to the appeal of the priest. It does not exist except as an echo of the voice of the priest which, in turn, is but the instrument of the voice of Christ. Everyday the priest is the immedi-ate witness of the Eucharistic consecration of Christ. But it is in religious life that this offering of consecration is accepted and fulfilled as a state and a program of life. There it is that Christ the Victim can make Himself vis-ible. It follows that the two vocations, arising from two dis-tinct missions, unceasingly tend to resemble one another. To all that we have seen of history and theological re-flection, we add what is suggested by the spiritual as-pirations of the two vocations. On the one hand, the religious vocation aspires to the complete realization of the Mass which the priest cele-brates within the heart of the community. At the moment when religious life culminates at perpetual profession, it fulfills the most complete act of the priesthood of the Church and of the faithful, the definitive offering of the whole life~ Its model, then, is the .sacrifice of Christ and the Mass which represents it. On the other hand, the priest centers his spirituality around the Mass. He will find no more perfect mirror of it than the one which exists at the heart of the Church, the public state of per- fection. There it is that he may contemplate the ideal of his own aspirations for sanctity. In order to understand this well, we must return to a capital truth. The priest is only an instrument of the ministry. He preaches perfection, but he does .oqtsr.eate it. He does not invent the evangelical program; he'is its servant. He does not produce grace, he is the humble channel of the grace of Christ. As does everyone of the faithful, as does every man, he. contemplates perfection not in himself but there where it shines; that is, in the Church, the great sign lifted up before the nations, and, above all, as Pius XII has said, in that chosen portion of the Church where, under the assiduous leadership of the priesthood, the way of life of Christ is fully adopted (Plus XII, Discourse to Superiors General, February 11, 1958, and previously in his Letter to Cardinal Micara of November II, 1950). "Imitate what you handle." What the priest handles is the Eucharistic Body, and it is the Mystical Body; for both are but one. It is only right to speak of the "fatherhood" of the priest. In actuality, however, he only holds the place of the Father, as he fills the role of Jesus. Passing through his humble hands, the splendor of the Father shines forth in the way of life of Christ, which the Church, having the Son as her Spouse, teaches to her states of perfection. Frequent Union of the Two Vocations Accordingly, the priestly vocation has always sought to unite itself with the religious vocation. This historical movement of the Church can only come from the Holy Spirit. That is the source of the vocation of the canons regular, of the Dominicans, of the very numerous insti-tutes of religious clerics. A different case, but one which demonstrates nevertheless the same mutual integration of the two vocations, is that of the monk-priest. Since he seeks the perfect public consecration of himself and of his community, it is natural that the monk should, if he can, unite in the same person the divine instrumental power of consecrating and the most complete of the Church's responses to the divine consecration; that is, the public state of perfection. It might be asked if the monk does not re-orient to himself the priesthood that he receives. But it would be wrong to consider the matter in this way. What the monk seeks is not an egocentric perfection which would no longer be Christian. More than anyone, he with his brothers brings to reality the Mystical Body; and it is in the Church, in the perfect community of charity and adoration, that he finds his sanctification. When he celebrates Mass, as does every priest, he offers the Church; he builds up the Kingdom of 4. 4. 4. Priest and Religious VOLUME 21~ 1962 219 + + ÷ Ren~ Ca~pentier, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 220 ,God and, first of all, that perfect kingdom which is con-stituted by the monastic community. The priesthood is not necessary to him; but if the Church gives it to him, it is to achieve a greater integration within herself of the person of the monk, his community, and the divine official praise which this community celebrates and carries on in the world. Clarifications When the resemblance between the two vocations, priestly and religious, is spoken of, what is considered is the essential matter of evangelical perfection, and not the difference in the observance of details which are so considerable from institute to institute. In his discourse to the Second General Congress of the States of Perfection (December 7, 1957), Pius XII pointed up this "essential" matter of perfection; it is the imitation of Christ defini-tively embraced in the great counsels that sums up all the other matters. If, to make an impossible supposition, the priest sought to create for himself an ideal of holiness of another kind than that of the baptised, he would put himself, so to speak, outside the Church, the Body of holiness; he would be ambitioning something else in his plan of holiness than to be as perfectly as possible the adopted child of the Father in Christ. He would be boldly directing his as-pirations towards a life conformed to his divine powers; that is, he would seem to be making his spiritual lift.' equal to that of the only-begotten Son Himself. No priest has ever thought of such a thing. By reason of the sacer-dotal character he is instrumentally a man of God, but his whole mission makes him a man among men. Cer-tainly, he reveres in himself with full humility the mys-terious efficacy of Christ, as do also the faithful; but not for an instant does he or the faithful confuse the lowly man with the transcendence of that God who works through him as through an intermediary. "It is, then, quite true," wrote Father de Lubac, "that the institution of the priesthood and the sacrament of orders did not create within the Church two degrees of attachment to Christ, as it were, two kinds of Christians. This is a fun-damental truth of our faith. All are united in the same essential dignity, the dignity of Christians, a marvelous renewal of the dignity of man, which has been so mag-nificently sung by the great Pope St. Leo." Against the similarity of the two vocations a difficulty might still be raised. Does not the religious withdraw from the world, and ought not the diocesan priest root himself in the world? In order to follow the vocation of a diocesan priest, is. it not fitting to place the accent on that which is peculiar to it as opposed to the religious state? By this means it would be ~reed of an imitation which would paralyze it; left to its own initiative in enter-ing into the mass of men, it would be free to communicate to all men those things which are necessary here below. There is a general problem here, that of action and contemplation, of renouncement ~ihd of use. It is a prob-lem which exceeds the limits of this article. Recent popes have spoken of this problem, especially to priests. In his heart, Pius XII declared, the priest should be an entire stranger to the world, one who wishes to live for the Lord only and to serve Him perfectly (Discourse to Superiors General, February 11, 1958; see also the third part of the Discourse of December 8, 1950). In this difficulty as formulated, we confine ourselves to noting a mistake which would be a grave danger for religious vocations if it were not corrected. In the truest sense of the word, the religious, even the most contemplative, does not abandon "the world." He-builds it up into its full reality if it is true that the evangelical order of brotherhood is the ex-ample given by Christ to disunited human society so that it might find peace and life. During the Middle Ages the monks literally created a new people, western civiliza-tion (see Pius XII's encyclical F.ulgens Radiatur on St. Benedict, March 21, 1947). Even today, does not the re-ligious life devote itself to all human sciences, to all the services of the health of souls and of bodies, to all the forms of education of children, adolescents, young adults, and adults. It remains true, nevertheless, and this is what it proclaims by its very existence, that "he who would save his life will lose it" (Mt 16:25) and "What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, but suffers the loss of his own soul?" (Mt 16:26). No ConIusion of the Two Vocations Finally, if the two vocations necessarily tend to resem-ble one another in their efforts at sanctification, they should by no means be confused in the Church of today. On the contrary, it may be believed that their differentia-tion, completed by canon law, enriches the Church. For the religious state, the correct independence of local juris-diction assured it by ecclesiastical law is a life or death condition. The very nature of the evangelical society, as the often sad history of the Church demonstrates, requires that it be able to live according to its own principles if it is to give the services which the Holy Spirit and the Church entrust to it. And on the other hand, the Church has too much respect for the liberty and the differences of her children, and too great a need for priests, not to leave to those of her elect who desire it the choice of their own means of sanctification and not to impose any more 4. 4. + Priest and Religious VOLUME 21, 1962 221 ,4" Ren~ Cavpentier, S.$. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS than what in her own view she has judged to be indis-pensable. Synthesis A summary of this theological evidence in a single synthesis is long overdue. To formulate it, I will draw upon a very recent little work of His Excellency, Msgr. DeSmedt, Bishop of Bruges, entitled The Priesthood oI the Faithlul. I have found it very illuminating. The bishop's intent is to explain the priestly vocation to his flock. He considers he can do no better than first of all to develop before their eyes the broad perspective of the priesthood of the faithful. The end of the Church is holi-ness. The Church is accordingly, a Body of holiness, hence a priesthood of the faithful. This is the major and basic principle which gi,~es proper value to all ecclesiasti-cal realities, above all to the two fundamental vocations which are at the center of the Church. In the priesthood of the faithful, all--the simply bap-tized, priests, bishops, the pope himself---are united to offer themselves and to join themselves to Christ so as to be efficaciously offered by His all powerful adoration and to be finally gathered together by Christ into a single people of brotherhood in communion with the Blessed Trinity. In this Body of holiness the mission of the states of perfection easily takes its proper place. It is the vocation of the states of perfection to respond fully, under the guidance of the Church, to the appeal of the baptismal dignity. It is for them to make concrete the people of God, fraternally united and consecrated to the Father by the vows of the three counsels. In this way they are at the service of their brothers, all Christians and all men, to win them and orient them to brotherly consecration in Christ. Among the states of perfection, the religious state is at the heart of the visible Church; it is com-missioned by her and closely linked with her to be the public w!tness of the social order of the gospel, the witness of the community of love and of worship in the midst of men. Secular institutes and all the baptized and con-firmed, priests included, who in actual fact or in spirit practice evangelical perfection in mutual charity and the faithful adoration of the Lord, also witness to this true life, at least in a personal way, each one according to his position and according to the innumerable adaptations which the apostolic approach to men require. It is with respect to the priesthood of the faithful that the diocesan priesthood is situated with full clarity. Es-sentially, it is its servant. Consecrated by Christ, it dis-tributes to the people the word and the bread in His name and in His place. It directs the people to eternal life. It has its powers and its commission. It is the object of the veneration of lay persons who absorb its presence, its help, its teaching, its edification. This is what Bishop DeSmedt shows in the second part of his work. But by this very fact the priest centers his life on his flock as its pastor, dn the *family of God asr its father. Above all, he is pastor and father for the states of perfec-tion. He must count on them above all to assure the spread of the apostolic life in the world. He is always, then, the central figure of the state of perfection even if he is not charged directly with its care. That is to say, he makes it known, he reveals it to the world, since it is he who must reveal the Church as a brotherhood conse-crated to God and since it is he who must reveal the full gospel. Objective Dil~erence of the Two Vocations Thus the objective difference which we were to find between

Issue 7.4 of the Review for Religious, 1948. ; "Review-for Rehg ous J:ULY 15, 1948 The Pres~ence of God . c.A. Herbsf ,An Ency~cllcal on the Lifurcjy . j. P~tz Plus XI! on Bees . ~Aucjustlne.Klaas Giftsto Relicjious-IV ." . Adam C. Ellis LaSallian Formula for Apos÷ola÷e--J.i Brother Charles Henry Book Reviews VOLUME VII Questions Answered NUMBER- ! REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS VOLU~IE VII JULy, 1948 NUMBER CONTENTS THE PRESENCE OF GOD-~C. A. Herbst, S.J .1.6.9 " AN ENCYCLICAL ON THE LITURG'~--J. Putz, S.2 .1.7.5. OUR CONTRIBUTORS . . ". . 190 PIUS XII ON BEES-~-Augustine Klaas, S.2 .191 GIFTS TO RELIGIOUS--IV. SOME PRACTICAL CASES--, Adam C. Ellis. S.J . 195 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- , 25. Place for Clergy at In~'estiture or Profession .208 " 26. Secret Vote in Council Meetings . 208 27. Extreme Unction for the Aged in "Danger of Death" . . . .208 28. Sister Renounces Right to Share in Father's Will . 209 29. Soliciting Votes Prohibited; Delegates Vote according t'o Own . Conscience . 210 30. Wills by Religious before and after the Code . 210 31. Absence from Public Recitation of Little Office .211 32.~Making the Sign of the Cross 4. . 211 33. Erlenmeyer Flasks as Cruets . . . 212 34. Genuflection after Receiving Holy Communion . . ." . . .212 ¯ THE LaSALLIAN FORMULA FOR A FRUITFUL APOSTOLATE--II.-- Brother Charles Henry, F.S.C . 213 'PENITENTIAL INSTRUMENTS" . . . . . - . 219 BOOK REVIEWS-- Come, Follow Mel; My God and My All .220 BOOK NOTICES . ' . 221 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1948. Volume VII, No. 4. Published bi-monthly; January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Pri'ss, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka. Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Mary's, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, aS the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C.'E1iis, S.J., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Ke11y, Ed!torial Secretary: Alfred F. Schneider, S.J~ .Copyright, 1948, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotations of reasonable length, provided due credi~ be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 2 d011ars a year. Printed in U. S. A. Before writing to us, please consult notice on Inside back, cover. "['he Presence of God C. A. Herbst, S.J. dr4-| N HIM~WE LIVE, and move, and are" ()~cts 17:28)? This is | ~the; classical e,x, pression in the New Testament of the presence of God. God s presence is brought incomparably closer'to us in the New Law through JeSus Christ, Our Lord. But this attribut~ is ~brought out strikingly in the Old Law, too. To the father of all believers and the head of the chosen people God said: "I am the Almighty God: walk.before me, and be perfect" (Gem 17:1). "I set the Lord always in my sight" sang the Psalmist (Ps. 15:8). and: "Whither "shall I .go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into ~heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art. present. If I take my wings early in the mornirig," and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: Even there also_shall thy hand Idad me: and thy right hand shall hold me. And I said: Per-haps darkness'shall cover me: and night shall be my light in my pleasures. But darkness shall "not be dark to thee, and night shall be light as the day: the darkness thereof, and the light~ thereof are alike to thee." (Ps. 138:7-12.) In ~he New Law, Our Lord expressed it perfectly, of course. "If any one love me. he will keep my word, and my Father will love him. and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (John !4:23_). "And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor know-eth him: but you shall know him: because he shall ab.ide with you, and shall be in you." (John 14:16-17:) St. Paul wrote to the Ephe-sians: o''One God and Father of a11, who is above all, and through all, .and in us all" (Eph. 4:6), and to the Corinthians: "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Cot. 3:16) : "Know" you not. that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is'in you?" (I Cor. 6!19). One can merely mention "here .the inexpressibly wonderful presence of God in the Holy Eucharist and in our hearts in Holy Communion. God is present in three ways, says St. Thomas (Summa I, q. villi, a. 3)'.He is present by His kn. owledge. "Neither is .there any creature invisible in his sight: but all things are naked and open to His eyes" 169 C: A. HERBST Review for Religiotts (Heb. 4:13). St. Augustin~ expands on this a little. "'He is to be " " 170 feared in public and in private. If you walk, He sees you. If yo.u go into the house, He sees you. If the light is burning, He sees you. If the light, is out, H~ sees you. Go into your room. He sees,,you. Withdraw into your own heart: H~ sees you. Fear Him: Him Whosd whole c.are it is that He keep His Eyes upon you. Fear Him and be pure. if you wish to sin, find a place whereHis Eyes are not upon yo,u and then do what you please." (Sermon 132.) This presence of God is most important and practical. That is why we find it emphasized for all Christians right in the beginning of the catechism. "God is,every-where. God sees us ~and watches over us. G6d knows all things, even our rhost secret thoughts, words and actions.': It is a simple truth, too. Cardinal Newman says: "It is my wish to take an ordinary .child, but still one who is s/fie frbm influences destructive of his re-hgious. instincts. Supposing he has offended his parents, he will all alone and without effort, as if it were the most natural of acts, place himself in the presence of God.~. We shall not be wrong in holding that this child has in his mind the image of an Invisible Being, who exercises-a partic.ular providence among us, who is present everywhere, who is heart-reading, heart-changing, ever-accessible; open- to impel~ra~ rion." (Grammar of Assent.) God is presen.t in all things by I/is power. All things are subject. ¯ to Him. He "works" in'all things, "reacheth from end to end mighti-ly, 'and ordereth" all 'things sweetly" (Wis. 8: 1), "upholding, all things by the Word of his power" (Heb. 1:3). St. Ignatius Loyola was deeply impressed by God at work in His'creatures. "Consider how God works and labors for me in all thingS'created on the face' of the earth--that is, behaves like one who labors -as in the hea~,ens, ele2 ments,'plants; fruits,~attle, etc., giving them beir~g, preserving tl~em, -giving them vegetation and sehsation, etc." (Contemplation for Gaining Love.) Without this presence of God we could not do any-. thing; He must concur with "us in every action. "He gives life to all our members by-His intimate presence, and so communicates life and strength to our faculties for their proper actions tfiat H~ walks with ° our feet, heaf~ with'our ears, sees with our eyes, and feels in our whol~'. body. Were He to withdraw, we could not act any, more; we should have no faculties or powers to act left." (Le Gaudier, De Perfectio.n~ Vitae Spi[itudlis, Pars V, Sectio viii, caput I.) How truly we say with I~aias: "Lord, thou hast wrought all our works for us" (Is. 26:1.2). ,lulg, 1948 THE 15RESENCE bF GOD By His essence also God is present in all things in thaLHe created them, gave them their ,very substance and,beihg. "I beseech thee, my son; look upon heaven and earth, andall thai isin them: and consider that God made them out of nothing, and'mankind also" (II Much. 7:28). '.'By him all thinigs consist'" (Col. 1:17). God is more present to usothan we are to ourselves. Lessius the theologian says: "God with all His goodness is in a way more .present to each thing than it is-present to. itself. For He is completely and intimately present to every single particle and indivisible point of the thing,~whereas the thing:itself~ is not completely present to" each single part,,of itself. Neither is one part intimately present to the other, nor is any part present tO the whole." (De Perfectionibus Moribusque Di~inis, Liber II, caput iii). God's presence shines forth from the works of His Handh. "I will behold thy heavens," the works of thy fingers: the moon arid the stars which thou,.hast fbunded. O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy, name in all the earth" (Ps. 8: 4, 10). "For the invisible things of him, from-the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and'divinity'' (Rom. 1:20). The seraphic St. Francis saw God in everything: the birds, the fishes, the Iambs,¯the trees,'the flowers, _fire, the wolf of Gubbio. "At eyery step he heard the thousand-fold Sursum Corda echoing from the works of creation, filling him with the knowledge, the praise, and the love of God" .(Felder, The ldealh o[ St. Francis o~ Assisi, 423). The preserice of God as presented by Sacred Scripture. the theo'- logians, and the saints is a great fact. It is a divine trhth. All solid devotion and genuine piet~r must be founded on'divine truth. But even a ~reat supernatural truth, a divine fact, will have no influence on spiritual living unless we put it to work in our lives. We must realize it, make it real for ourselves. The exercise of the presence ofo God is an aspect 6f recoll~ction.~" "By it we center our ,inner_ "actively.off God p~resent ~with us and in us throughout the day insofar as this ,is c?n_sonant,with the duties of our state in life. We must make our-selves consck~Us of G~d's presence if it is to help us grow in virtue. Wd must '°'wake up and live." We must recall the presence of God. "Sire must advert to it, think of it. We must cultivate this virtue by m~king acts so that it_may become a habit. At first the acts will be fear and sh6rt, as before mentafprayer, for instance. This is recommended in The Spiritual Exercises: "I will stand a step or two before the place where I am about to contemplate or meditate f_or~the Space of an 171 ~. A. HERBST Review for Religious~ Our Father, my mind raised or/high, considering how God'our'Lord sees me, and I will make an act of reverence, or humility" (Third Addition.). This sh6uld be done gently,,Without forcing the imagi-nation or straining the mirid. It is a restin9 in the presence of God. Gradually we can increase the number of times: before all prayer, when we change occupations, while moving down the stairs or through the hall,~and so on. A little ingenuity will find" or make many an occasion for rendering successful" this business of perfection ~s it does for making any business a success. The most common way, no doubt, and the simplest way to recall the presence of God is.by the use of ejaculat~ry prayers. Renewing one's good intentions is another fine means. Occasional short acts will gradually bedome more frequent and longer, and the habit will be formed. Then, since v~e,tr~asure God as oui greatest'good, our thoughts will lovingly turn to Him in those numerous free intervals throughout the day. "Where thy treasur~ is, there is thy heart also" (Matt. 6:21) St. Francis de Sales gives four ways of plating oneself in the presence of God. ~ The first consists in a lively and attentive apprehension'of the omnipresence 6f God. which means that God is in everyt~hing ai~d everywhere, and that there is not any place or thing in this world where he is not most assuredly present: so that, just as th: birds, wh:rever they. fly. always encounter the air. so. wherever we ~o, or wherever we are, we find God present. The second way of placing yourself in this holy present:e, is to think that not only is God in the place where you are. but that he is in, a very special manner in your heart and in the depth of your, spirit, which he quickens and animates with his divine presence, since he is there as the-heart of your heart, and the spirit 'of. yGur spirit. The third way is to consider our Saviour, who in his humanity looks from Heaven upon all'persons in the world, but particularly upon Christians who are his children, and more esRecially upon those who are in prayer, whose actions and be-l~ aviour he observe/, The fourth way consists in making use of the imagination alone, iepresenting te ourselves the Saviour in his sacred humanity, as though he were neat to us; just zs we are wont to represent our friends to ourselves. (Introduction to the Devout Life, II. 2.) The practice of the presence of God was a means to great sanc-tity for Brother Lawrence, a G I of seventeenth cen~tu~y France, who became a discalced Carmelite lay brother cook. The little book of his Conoersatt'ons and Letters is illuminating in this matter and has 'helped many. It may be well, therefore, to hear a few words from him. \ Thus I continued some years, app!ying my mind carefully the rest of the day, and even in the midst of my business, to the'Presence of~Gcrd, whom I considered 172 Jul~l, 1948 THE PRESENCE OF GOD always as wiih me, as in me. At length I came insensibly to do the same thing during my set time of praye~',' which caused in me great delight and consolation. This practice produced in me so high an esteem for God that faith alone was capable to satisfy me in that point. I havequitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my only business to persevere in His holy Presence. wherein I keep myself by a simple attention and an absorbing passionate regard to God. which I may call an actual Presence of God: or. to speak better, a silent and seciet conversation of the soul with God. (Sixth Letter.) He is always near you and with you: leave Him nor alone. You think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you: why, then. must God be neglected? Do not. then, forget Him. but think of Him often, adore Him continually, live and die with Him; this is the glorious empl~oyment of a Christian (Eleventh Letter.) When one deeply-loves another, one longs for him, l~ngs to be "with him. One is happy to be in that presence, just to rest there, though no words are spoken. The lover wants to be with the beloved. This brings great joy. With God, this brings full contentment and peace. Brother Lawrence said: "I know not what I shall become: it seems to me that peace of soul and repose of spirit descend on me. even in sleep. To be without the sense of this peace would be affliction indeed: but with this calm in my soul even for purgatory I would console myself." (Seventh Litter.) Great happiness must come from the ~ertain knowledge that that God is present who loves us beyond measure, who is infinitely ricla so that He can bestow every blessing, infinitely good and willing to give us what is belt for us. This will afford much consolation in time of trial. Men may not know our trials and sorrows, or, if they do, do not understand and do not care. But the ever-present God knows with an infinite knowledge my most secret sufferings. He understands perfectly, living as He does in my very heart. "And He cares. He will sustain and comfort me. But God present with us is infinitely great and holy, too. We must regard Him with profound respect. This, added to great love, gives reverence, a virtue which flows naturally from a realization of the presence of God, a virtue which the world today so woefully lacks. It is that gift of the Holy Ghost called fear of the Lord, that (ear Which is the beginning of supernatural wisdom. In the spiritual life ;c is a tempering virtue and will not permit ~ny undue familiarity in the creature's love for its Creator. This Creator-creature relation-ship, the most fundamental of all religious relationships, must be carefully preserved. Reverence is the etiquette.of the heavenly court. We must follow its norms if we are to act properly in God's presence. It will appear in our exterior not only when we pray but in the 173 C. A. HERBST modesty of the eyes, our poise, gentle, gravity, .custody of~ all the senses, and general external deportment. When I come to realize that the God Who cleated me to'praise, reverence, and serve Him and thus to save my ioul is present with me and in me, I c:innot but feel a deep sense of responsibility. And He has mad~e all else for me, too. I am the king of ~reation. "What is there that I ought to do more tomy vineyard, that I have not done to~ it?" (Is. 5:4). One cannot be too careful to live up to His expecta, tions, one just dare not be wanting in fidelity. Noblesse oblioe. "Un, to whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and 'to whom they have committed much, of "him they will demand the mbre" (Luke~f2:48'). We certainl3~ must see how absolutely futile and stupid it is 'to act out of human respect when the dyes of God are Upon us. But to sin in His very presence, to violate the divine law in the very presence of God thr~eatening eternal death this is the height o~ ir~solence. Even the pure angels tremble in His sight. ,"Know, you not that you are the temple of God, and ~that the Spirit of God' dwelleth in you?' But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God 'is holy, which you ar. ." (I Cot. 3:16, 17.) - We might well pray here as Lessius does at the end of his treatise on the immensity of God. "Turn, I beseech Thee, my heart inward to Thee in the depths of my soul, that I may live with Thee, the noise of creatures far away and the tumult of importuning thoughts silenced. May I ever see Thee present, love Thee, venerate Thee, hear Thy Vgice, present to Thee the miseries of my exile and find con-solation in Thee. May forgetfulness.of Thy presence never overtake me, my Light, the Sweetness of my soul! May I never forget Thee; but'always, whithersoeve~ I may turn, may the eyes of my soul be fixed on Thee" (olo. cir., II, iv). Or more briefly with St. Augustine, "Most sweet God, this shall be my agreement with Thee: I shall completely die to myself that Thou alone mayest live in me. I shall be absolutely silent, that Thou mayest speak in me. I shall be per-fectly quiet, that Thou alone mayest work in me." 174 An Encyclical on the Lit:urgy J. Putz, S.J. [EDITORS' NOTE: This article is reprinted with permission from The ~Montblg (Vol. XII, pp. 81-97), Since the official English version of the encyclical Mediator Dei was not available at the time of writing, the author worked on the Latin text and ~he Italian version. The Latin text has no subtitles: thbse given in the-article aie-practically identical wih those added in the Italian version., Part II of the encyclical treats of the Eucharistic Cult. As it is the longest and-most important part, we keep it over for a second article.] 44~mHE liturgical movement will one day be recognized as one~ of ¯ | the most ch.aracteristic phenomena o~ modern Catholicism."1 It, was initiated a century ago by Dora Gu~ranger and has developed as part of the Catholic revival which started as a reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism. At the beginning of the present century it received a new and powerful impulse from the " famous Motu proprio of Pius X. It has: ifievitabIy produced some faddists and extremists who have at times hindered its progress and provoked opposition; but in spite of this it has undoubtedly achieved very desirable and much-needed results. Its influence on the Catholic mind and life is evident: the liturgy is~better understood and appre- ¯ tinted; it is celebrated with greater care and devotion: the sacraments . are better frequented: the laity, to a large extent, has been brought to take a more active part in the Mass and th~ prayer of the Church. and to understand better its own organic function within the Mys-tical Bod~ of Christ. During these last ye,ars, the intense fermentation of Catholic - thought and life; which has been 6he remarkable'effect of the Second ¯ World War in several European countries, has been manifesting itself also in the liturgical field. The fervent activity of theologians and pastors ma~y be expected to lead up to an important renewal of liturgi-cal life. Bu~ impatien~t reformers are calling for ~quick changes and sdmetimes are taking the law into tl~eir own hands. Fads and efaggerations have also become bolder. Noris there complete agree-ment on the line to be followedo Some conceive the liturgical revival as a return to the past, while others, more desirous of a really popu-lar liturgy, stress the need for further evolution. ' Pope Plus XII thought the time had come to make an official ~These are the opening .words of Dora O. Rousseau's Histoi~e da Mouveraent Liturgique, Paris, 1945. 175 J. PUTZ Ret~ieto for Religious ,statement on the principles that must govern the "liturgical renewal,'~ in order.that the liturgy might be (as it should be) not an occasion of strife but°a bond of union. On November 20, 1947, he issued ~ln encyclical "On the Sacred Liturgy," which begins with the words Mediator Dei et hominum. The headlines of some Catholic news-papers have characterized it as a "warning against liturgical e~rrors.': But it is immensely more than that. It is primarily positive and doctrinal--an exposition of the meaning and greatness of the liturgy, and an exhortation to a genuine liturgical spirit. The very first v;rords put the liturgy in its true context: it is a continuation of Christ's priesthood. As a doctrinal document Mediatbr Dei supplements the great encyclical On the Mystical Body, the doctrine of which pervades. every page of it. After having in the previous encyclical made Cath-olics aware of the wonderful nature of the Church, the Holy Father now wants to lead them to a more intense and intelligent participa-tion in the life of the Church, of which the liturgy is the most impor-tant expression. While reproving those who, "too.keen on novel-ties, stray from the path of sound doctrine and prudefice," the Pope" also expresses his sorrow because in "some places the study of the liturgy is too much neglected. Therefore, while restraining the imprfident, whose exaggerations can only "compromise a holy" cause," he wants also to rouse those who are indolent or fearful of any progress. He encourages legitimate p~rogress: indeed, as one commentator puts it, "movement" in the liturgical movement" will date from Mediator Dei.2 After an introduction which ~xplains the reasons that have induced the Holy Father to speak on this matter, the encyclical devel-ops its theme in four parts: (1) the nature of the liturgy in general; (2) the Eucharistic cuIt; (3) the Divine Office and the liturgical year;. (4) pastoral directions. PART I. THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF THE LITURGY I. The Priesthood of Christ Continued Man's fundamental duty is to acknowledge and worship the divine Majesty--a duty, primarily of each indNidual man, but also a collective duty of the human community. The perfect cult of God, of which the Old Testament was but a shadow, began with Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the New Testa-ment. His whole life on earth was a priestly life, spe~t in prayer 2Gerald Ellard, S.J., in America, Jan. 10, 1948, p. 408. 176 Ja[~/, 1948 AN ENCYCLICAL ON THE LITURGY" and s'acrifice, consummated on the Cr(~ss; in all His actions He had but" one end in view, the glory of the Father and the,ever-gr.eater .~anctification of men, by which men-in turn give God the glory due to Him. His priest}~ood is to continue: "The divine Redeemer wished thatthe priestly life begun~ by Him in His mortal body should continue throughout the centuries~iri His Mystical Body which is the Church. For this~ end He instituted a visible priesthood to offer everywhere the 'pure oblatiofi,' in order that all men, from.East and West[ freed from sin, might spontane-ously and willihgly ~erve God." The Church, then, continues 'the priesthood of Christ, especially in, the sacred liturgy. She has the~sa'me purpose and function as the Word'Incarnate. By her teaching and her government, by her sacri-fice and sacraments, by her prayers and her blood, she tends to make Christ grow in the souls of men, to build up here on earth that "holy temple" (Eph. 2: 19-22) in which the divine Majesty may receive a' cult Well-pleasing to Him. The liturgy "is the public .worship of the Church, the worship of the Whole Christ, Head and m(mbers. "In every liturgical action, together with the Church is present her divine Founder. Christ isopresent in the august Sacrifice of the altar, both in the person of the~,minister and especially under the Eucharistic Species." He is present in the sacraments by His powkr, which He infuses into them to make them instruments effective of sanctity. He is present, finally, in the praises and .supplications addressed to God, acording to His promise, 'W~ere two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them.' " The litu~rgical action began with the foundation bf the Church. Wherever there was a group of Christians, there "we find an altar on which 'the sacrifice is offered and round which evolve the other rites that sanctify men and enable them to give glory to God." Among these rites are, first of all, the sacraments; then hymns and psalms for the praise of God; shcred readings; and, finally, the homily by the 6ne who presides at the hssembly: ' As time went on, the cult evolved according to circumstances and the needs of the faithful; it was enriehed' wi~h new rites and formulas. "Thus the priesthood of Jesus Christ is ever active, since the sacred liturgy is nothi'ng bu~ the exercise of that priesthood." 2. Interior and Exterior Cult This section treats the most fundamental problem~of the liturgy, the relation and "tension" that exists between exterior and interior worship, between objective and subjective elements 0f'spirituality~ between: socihl and individual oreligion. The cult due to God is both interior and ixterior. Exterior wor-ship requires rio justification as~ it is natural to ~.man, neclssary for social ~worship, and apt,' to stimulate and intensify/ interior religion. .But the esse~tial_ elsrrient of worship is interior self-dedication, without, hrhich ':religion becomes a vain and empty fdrmalism." (cf. Mark 7: 6: Is. 29: 13). The Chdrch never'separates the two; she wants exterior observances to be the expression 'of a sincere heart ~triving after perfection in the service of God. Theoliturgy " has a special power Of its own to sanctify the. soul. The Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments are-efficacious primarily ex opere operato; while the prayers and ceremonies with which the Church has adorned the sacrifice and the sacraments, or the sacra- "mentals, and other rites instituted by the hierarchy, draw their efficacy chiefly° ex oper~e operamis Ecclesiae, "in so far as the Church is holy and acts always in close union with her Head." But this objective power of the liturgy can be exaggerated or misunderstood. Its relation to private prayer and personal effort must be clearly grasped. There are some who, partially inspired by .a legitimate reaction against prevalent individualism; would have us practice an exclusive liturgical or "objective" spirituality, concen-trating on the mystery of the Mystical Body and seeking only to unite ourselves to the liturgy in union with the community. The liturgy with its merging, as it were, of one's personal life in the life of the community is held to be all-sufficient. To it is opposed what is called '~subjective" or individual piety. Under this. depreciatory lab~el are put all religious p.ra~c~tices not strict~l.y liturgical,, as pgiva~te prayer, meditation, asceticism. These ','new ,theories,',' ihe encyclical says, are "false, insidious, and m0st~pernicious.'' Pius XII has ~repeatedly. condemned such° tendencies. He now proceeds to show at length the necessary ufiity ¯ of the two aspects,, objective and subjective, of the spiritual fife.'~ The liturgy requires personal effort and in turn stimulates, it; li~turgical piety,and,,personal piety must vivify one another. Christ's action, v.g., in the Eucharist, produces-its effect onls, with the free co-operation of His members; for "they :ire living members endowe~l with reason and will; they°must., consume the life-giving food, transform it into themselves, remove whatever might 178 ,/ul~/, 1948 AN ENCYCLI~AI:. ON THE LITURGY " . hinder its efficacy." Hence private prayer, meditation, and other 9ractic~es not strictly liturgical, though t1"iey.cahnot replace the Mass ~nd,the sacraments, are most praiseworthy and altogether necessar'¢ insofar_ as ~they aim at enlightening.the intellect, aroi~sing and strengthefiing thd, will, withdrawing the soul fr6mosin, and-turning it ,towards whole'-hearted'service of God--all this through 2esus Christ whose life and power are active in all His members. This personal-activity and:ascetical effort disp6se the faithful to participate more intensely and with greater fruit in the liturgy,--~the sacrifice, the sacraments, and other sacred rites: and the liturgy in turn will further increase tl~ir zest for prayer and Christian abnegation, for :efiergetic c011ab'6ration congre-: gations positively f~rbade their subjects, to make: a will. Those con-s,. t.itu~ions which received papal approval after 1901 usually contain 210. - ' dulg, 1948 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS a prescription of the Normae (Art. 120): "It is proper, 'however, that, before taking first, tempora~ry vows, each and every"Sistiff free!3r dispgse,,bly will bf all she actually possesses-or may', sub~.eql~ehtly p6ssess.:, °o This article did not absolutely order: the Sister t(~" make. a Will, but it c~rthinly' recomr~ended her°doihg so; and m mosUconL gr~gatiotis this'recommendation was carried~out~. ' ~'-:" ~ ~ ~ " ~ . If a Sister in a.¢ongregati0n had not rhade a will befok¢ tlqeCode, she is ri6t 6bilged~" tb' mal~e one now,~ though she may- d~ ]~ if she wishes. 'HoWever, if Shegdies intestate (withoht ~ will), wh~it~ver property she owns will go to'her r'e, lafi(,es according to tee civil law presc'riptions ~f the State in which she dies. If the Sister did make a will be'foree t~e Codei°sh~ may° not revise it after the Cowdeit h'o u~t t'h~e "pe ~rmission of the Holy See~; or, in, case of urgency when time does riot admit of such recourse, without the pdrmiSsioh of h~r higher superior; or, if that cannot be had, of "her local superior (cf. canon 583, 2°). Article 122 of the Plormae -of 1~901 con~ained'sin~ilar prc~isions regarding the changing°of the will .bf a religious in a congregation. " " : Our rulb prescribes ¢he recffaHbn of ¢he LiHle Office of ' he "Bless-ed Virgin on Sundays and holidays. Teaching cafechefical classes pre-venfs a Sis÷er from saying fhe~small hours on Sunday.mornlncj. Is she obliged fo reclfe a chaplef'df fhe Rosary as a subsfifufe for ÷his parr'of ¢he Office? The answer to this question depends hpon the ~wording of yot~r rul~'~ If°the obligatiozi is put upon the community ~s a Whoi¢; ~th~r~ the Sisters Who are unable to be present at the common recitation of the Little Office are 'not obliged~fo say it privately nor to substitute otherpray~rs in~its:place:,uhless "the--constitutions or the rule explicitly oblige them to do so. On the other hand, if the .obligation of the r~le is;pu.t on~ .the individual "Sist~er, then all are obliged'to sa~, the Little Office,-, either in common, if.that is the custom, or privately if Lhey~ are prevented~by their work from assisting at the common reci-ta. tion.~ They may not substitute other prayers for the Little Office unless the constitu~tions allow them to do so. ~Vhaf is the-proper° manner ~of maldng ,the sign of the cross, and how should the words be dlsffibuted? QuEsTIoNS AND .~NSWERS The Roman Missal (Ritus seroandus. III, 5) has the following prescriptions for the ~ign of the cross to be made by the celebrant at Mass: "When making the sign of the cross he always" puts his left hand below the breast: , . . Blessing himself~ he turns towards him-self the palm of the right hand, and with ~I1 its fingers joined.and exte~nded, he forms the sign of the cross from °the forehead fo the breast, and fron~ the left shoulder to the right." As to the distributlon 6f the words while making the sign of the Cross, there seems to be:no official prescription. Comn~entators on the rub~ics.~are ag,reed in pronouncing~'the word "Father" while t~)uching the forehead, the word "Son" while touching the br4ast, the word "Holy[' at the left shoulder, and the word "Ghost" at the right shoulder. They disagree as to when the word "Amen" is to be Said: while toudhJng the right shoulder a!ong with the word "Ghost"; or by itself after the sign of the Cross has been completed either while joining the hands or while placing them in any other position demanded by a subsequent action." One may follow either opinion. Can you suggest any special kind of cruet which delivers a steady flow without guggllng or splashing, and which makes it easy ~o pour the one ormore drops desired at the Offertory? Try Erlenrneger flasks, ]00 cc. or 125 cc. (about 30 cc. to the ounce). These flasks' are standard equipment~ in all chemistry laboratories., . They are made to deliver a steady stream without guggling. If only one drop is desired, the ,flow is easily' controlled~ ~4 In leaving the altar rall after receiving Holy Communion is it proper f,o, ge,nt~flecf or not? There, is n~thing prescribed regarding the manner of leaving the altar rail after receiving :Holy Communion.' One should follow~the custom of the diocese in which one resides. If there is no custom; it would seerfi advisable not to ~genuflect for the practical reason that usually it Causes confusion among the other Communicants, especially if they are numerous. There-is no disrespect shown to th4 Blessed Sacrament, for the commt~nicant himself is a tabernacle of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, which he has just received. 212 - The LaSallian Formula t:or a Fruit:t:ul Apost:olat:e--II. Brother Charles Henry, F.S.C. III. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER EXERCISES THE APOSTOLATE WE MIGHT SUM UP the apostolate of the Christian teacher in the" following brief~tatement: to" give to the cl~ildren the spirit of Christianity, which is the spirit of Chris~. St. De La Salle says just that in so many~ words: "God sends the children to you that you may give them the spirit of Christianity." All ~he care of the Christian teacher should be devoted to this work. It is for this end that he is engaged in the apostolate of the Church. That the spirit of Christianity may reign in the lives of our pupils .we must bring them to l~now Our ,Lord Jesus Christ, the truths of His holy ,eligion, and the maxim~ He has left us in the Gospel. We shall accomplish this by our instruction, by our good example, and by our vigilance to keep from them all 'that might sully the purit~ of their souls. 1. The Apost.olate of Teachino =, ~ Since the spirit.of Christianity is the spirit of Christ, we cannot better impart it to our pupils than by presenting to them Him who is the embodiment of that spirit, and by teaching them the truths and the maxims of the Christian life taught by Jesus in the Gospel. Teaching Chr;st "First and foremost, our pupils should know Christ hi~fiself. Christ is the fbundation-stone of Christianity, the head of the body of Christendom. St. De La' Salle solemnly admonishes us "to instruct the children in the mysteries that ,lesus accomplished on earth; that is what St. Paul° calls "laying the foundation of the edifice of the Church.' " He likewise insists that God's choice of us for the apos~ tolate h:~s for end "to make 3esus Christ known and to announce Him. See that you make Him known to those whom you instruct." In one of the few lyrical passages in the writings of St. De La Salle, h~' says: "You are destined to beget 2esus Christ in the hearts of children, and to beget the children to 2esus Christ." ~This knowl- .~" edge must not be a merely historical survey but ""it s~hould lead' them 213 "BROTHER CHARLEs HENRY R~oieto for Religious to unite all their actions to ,those of Jesus Christ our Lord." So important is this-teachifig th=at tl~e Chri~kia~n teacher "must be tireless m announcing Jesus Christ and His maxims. ' " Maxims of the Gospel ' The saint ~rgds most earnestly that we teach these maxims and this fusion~of, the life and thought of Our'Lo[d with the life and thought of the child. No exhortatioh is more frequently reiterated than that of t'eachi_ng the maximi of the Gospel. In the~rule~of his institute, he makes it matter.of0obligation for the Brothers "to bring up the children in a tru~ly Christian spirit0accord_ing, to the rules and maxims .of the Gospel," making it, their "first and .principal care to teach t.heir~scholars the maxims and practices Our Lord has left us in .the~Holy Gospel." Time and again in his meditations he reminds us of this,,important obligation: "You are charged to teach the maxims of tl~e Holy Gospel; it is for that end that God sends the children to you: as a matter of state, you are obliged to teach-these maxims daily."~ .The Christian teacher should keep God in view, exhorting his pupils:~"as if God exhorted by l~im, since he is chosen by God to announce these'truths of the Gospel to young souls.'! "He .should look 6n himself as a visible guardian angel "to lead his pupils to the practice of the maxims of the Gospel, showing them the means pro-portionate to their age, so that being gradually accustomed to this ~ahner of acting in the]~ y6uth, they will be,able when older to practic~them~rom habit' and without difficulty:" The ~founder also points ou~ the,~naxim~ that'should especially be taughti hbrror' of th~ spirit Of 'the ~orld, happiness in persecutions, ~beafing of the-cross, spirit of poverty, not to seek justice after the manner of scribes and Pharisees, ~ , St. De La Salie recognized a dangerous tendency, that has had lamentab!~e results in religious education,-, viz., the;teaching of specu- !ati~r~e! re!igious .truth without making it concrete and practical for the life of the child. Therefore he warns the teacher: "It is not ~nbu, gh.to secure for the children the science of,Ch.ristianity and to. teach,them the mysterids and speculative truths; it is necessary in zd~i~ion ~to make them learn the maxims 9f, Christian riving, which zre fougd through.ou~ the. Holy Gospel. In, o~der.to lead, your pupils .to t~e,~ac.quisition of the spirit of Christianity you ,should teach the pract!ca~l t.r.uths o~ .~e. faith of ,Jesus~ Chris.t. and ~he, maxims ~of the Holy Go~speL.with ",at least as much care as you tea.ch the purely,, specu,o 21~4 LASALLIAN FORMULA FOR ~PO~TOLRTE lative truths. It is in the maxims of Our Lord that ~he Cld~ristian teacher will find the practicgl ~omplement'tb the speculative truths of the catechism, ind the life lessons that should be the outcome of religious truth well .explained and comprehended." Not tha~ the saint advocated the neglect bf the truths of 'faith. He frequentiy remi~ids us of~the importance of teaching the catechism and the sacred truths of the Creed. "If you wish your ministry to be as Useful tb the Church as it can be, you should teach your pupils the fufidamental truths of religion, following ther~ein the example of the apostles, which is that of Jesus Christ Himself.". ~ 'The Ho;nousness 'of Sin ~.An aspect of this practical teaching of the truths of faith is the saint's insistence on the duty of :the Christian teacher to inspire a horror of sin in his'pupils. It is a point of rule for his Brothers "to give the children a'greathorror for sin and for all that can make them losel purity/' "Consider. that ~the ~end of'the icomin~ of the Son of God into this world having been .the destruction of sin, that oul~ht also .to be the end of the institution of the Christian schools and con-sequentl~ r the first object .of your zeal." To be practical, he urges us especially to in'spire our pupils wit5 a horror'of evil i:ompany .that so, quickly and e~sily ~corrupts the best morals. He likewise urgds us to "inspire the pupils with~a horror for~th~ wisdom~of, the world~ which is,only a cloak for sin,. from which we cannot do too,much to preserve them." We must riot neglect to correct childrdn of their faults, for thisisa mbans of teaching them the.evil of sin. , .T~his0 then, is~,the first means,;of ~exerciiing .the apostleship that God~.and the Church confides~t0 us: to teach our pupils thd life les-sons taught by Christ's words and examples, to give thein a knowl', edge of both the sp, eculative and practical truths of Christ's. revela-tion, and to inspire them with a. horror for sin, which is diametri. cally opposed to Christ and the spirit of Christianity. But .in addi-tion to the teachifig of the spoken~word, there is also the teaching o,f e~xample and zealous but discreet vigilance. 2. The Apostolate of Good Example° If the example of the Christian teacher were to cry aloud that he is not himselt; a model of that which he teaches, no good can come of his'efforts. On the other hand, "what power and efficacy there is in example to convert souls and make them advance in perfection." Being called to labor for the salvation of souls the Christian teacher 215 BROTHER CHARLES HENRY " Revieto [or Religious .~sn ~ct begin by giving good example in order to gain them to God." In fact, he should be convinced that he is called to be a saint of uncommon sanctity since it is his mission, "not only by the words of salv.ation that he should daily address to his pupils but likewise by his good example, to'communicate sanctity." The whole~ burden of this thought the saint has summed up in one pointed, unequivocal. °~tatement: "You. can do nothing better in instructing your pupils than to edify them." 3. The Apostolate of Vigilance St. De La Salle addresses to the Christian teacher that solemn and terrifying warning of St. Paul: "You watch as having to render an account of their souls," The teacher labors as a.co-operator with Christ, -. tbe Good Shepherd, and like Christ he should-watch that none of the~sheep perish. He should examifie himself, asking,him-self. frequently: "Have I had such vigilance over tbeir conduct as to. prevent their doing the least wrong in my presence, andhave I fur-ni~ hed them with motives to avoid evil when they are far from my care?" The vigilance of St. Leo, a chief pastor of the Church, should inspire: the.Christian teacher, whose apostolate associates him with the pastors of the Church, to be watchful to prevent any evil from hindering the pupil's development in piety. It is because children are weak and lacking in understanding that God has appointed the "Christian teacher to be their protector, to watch over them lest any-thing tarnish their virtue, and to conduct them safely through the midst of all the dangers of the world. "Ask of God today the grace to be so vigilant as to take every means to prevent their falling into serious sin. Ask to be such guides that you will remove far from them all that can be an obstacle to the good of their" souls." IV. Tr~E SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN TEACHER RENDERS HIS APOSTOLATE FRUITFUL The f6und(r of the Christian Schools would have the Christian ¯ teacher .to be keenly aware that only God can give ,the increase of grace and salvation. The teacher plants the good seed of word and example; God makes it fructify. But God demands that the seed be watered by the spiritual life of the teacher. St~ De La Salle insists, in season and out of season, on the vital importance of the spiritual life of the teacher that his apostolate may bear frui~ in souls. He espe: cially, emphasizes the . importance of prayer, mortification, detach-ment, and ~alth. 216 duly, 194 g LASAL~.IAN FORMULA FOR APOSTOLATE I. Pr,,a~er, especia[[~':Mental Pra~ter ' The saint devotes the meditations of the Rogation Days entirely to the importance of prayer, devoting that of Rogation Monday to -prayer for our pupils. The teacher should pray for the spiritual needs of his pupils that his instructions may bear fruit in them, :and, that they may be successful in the important affair of saving tl~ei~ imfi~ortal soul~: In the second point he urge.s us to have recourse to God to supply all those things which our human efforts cannot ach;.eve. But it is not only our direct prayers, for the students that are needed to make our apostolate bear fruit. It is our personal-prayer, our personal, daily converse with God. If the Christian teacher is to know how to lead his pupils to God he must first know God well himself. Th~s knowledge, of God is -gained b~y intimate contact with Him ir~ player. The obligations of his state "should engage him to be most assiduous in prayer that he may obtain from God the graces he needs." He will be faithful to sacred duties only in the measure that he is faithful to prayer. Since the daily work of the teacher becomes a continuous immolation and martyrdom, he must clothe himself with Christ for strength; and this is accomplished in mental prayer. In'prayer the teacher becomes a branch attached to Christ, the Vine, and draws from Him th~ means of producing fruit in his ministry among the pupils. Where else can the teacher obtain that uncommon holiness that he needs in order to sanctify his pupils, except in interior applicatio.n to prayer and fervor in his daily spiritual exercises? Ability in the art of speaking to God is'the secret of that eloquence that will gain souls for God. When the Christian teacher mounts daily to God by :men~al prayer, "he descends, equipped with what he should teach his pupils. It is in this holy exercise that he becomes skillful" in his~ apostolic work." '2. Mdrtification The link between prayer and mortification is indicated by St. De La Salle in the brief statement, "Frequently, prayer Withou't mortification is an illusion." He urges self-denial as a source of strength in prayer and as a means of attracting the divine benediction on the apostolic labors of the teacher. In St. John the Baptist, the Christian teacher will find.both a model and an incentive. "It was the example of his austere, retired life which gave him the power to -gain hearts and lead them to do penance for sin. You have the grace of 217 BROTHER CHARLES HENRY " Review for Religiou:s .being a successor in his ministry." The same is true of all the saints who have worked so successfully for the salvation of souls: "It is by theirs,. ~ mortified lives that the~; have produ~ce~ great fruito, in their min-istry." The great good that St. Basil was ~able to accomplish in the Church.Was due t6 his practice of solitude and fasting. ~'Nothing will aid you more, if you wish to do gre~t good to souls in the exer-cise of your ministry." "God gives us three means to prepare our-selves to teach our charges effectively. First we must study to have the knowledge requisite for the instructor of youth; .then we. must frequently give ourselves to prayer; thirdly, we'must practice mor-tification." 3. Detachment "If-you wish to be worthy to be employed in the salvation of Souls, be detached from all, and~the grace of God will be showered on you for yoursdf and for others. One has no idea how capable of doing good in the Church is he who is detached from all The two means most appropriate for doing good to souls are regularity of life' and detachment. Since the teacher is called to elevate children in piety, he ~hould live in complete detachment. This places him in a state to work usefully in his employ." The detachment inherent in poverty is e~pecially efficacious in making the Christian teacher suc-cessful in his aposto

Issue 39.3 of the Review for Religious, May 1980. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published bi-monthly (every two months), is edited in collaboration wilh faculty members of the Dbpartment of Theology of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, MissQuri, © 1980. By REVIEW FOR REL~O~Ot~S. 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 RF.L~CaOt~S: 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 A nswers Editor Assistant Editor May, 1980 Volume 39 Number 3 Correspondence with the editor and the associate editors, manuscripts and books for review should be sent to REVlF.W FOrt RELIGIOUS; 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. A Check on Our Availability: The Examen George A. Aschenbrenner, S.J. Father Aschenbrenner is engaged in campus ministry, and at the same time, working nationally with priests and religious. He resides at Scranton University, Scranton, PA 18510. [n an earlier issue (January, 1972, "Consciousness Examen") I had written about a renewed understanding of the traditional lgnatian exercise of the daily examen. In that article I preferred to talk of an "examen of con-sciousness," because most of us had come to understand "conscience" in a narrowly moralistic sense. This had turned the examen into a fairly negative practice, soon discarded when we got into the typically busy apostolic life. To set aside specific time each day to see what we did wrong was not very much help. Nor did the practice enrich our apostolate much, because it gradually turned God into Someone always catching us .doing something wrong--and thus we wrought havoc on our self-esteem. A good sense of self-value, an ef-fective apostolate, and our image of God are always intimately connected. A Positive~ Understanding of the Examen .~: The formal examen should rather be a time of prayer about how much God has loved me in the yery existential details of my day, and how he could have loved me more in certain situations if my inner spiritual decisiveness and external presence had been a bit different. This is not just a different articula-tion of the meaning of the examen. Rather, it leads to an enormous difference attitudinally and effectively. A healthy self-esteem has to be ultimately and ir-revocably rooted in our Father's love, climaxed in his victory in Jesus. This neither excessively highlights, nor denies, my daily sinful weakness. Rather it leads to a consoling humiliation, found in a Father's forgiveness that is con- 321 :322 / Review for Religious, V~olume 39, 1980/3 stantly available in Jesus as my personal savior. In this way, the daily effect of my sinful condition is not to tear down self-worth, but to build up true apostolic humility, which itself is the source of genuine self-esteem. This positive understanding of the examen helps avoid another fallacy. Many times the full, rich prayer of the consciousness examen shrinks into a quick, superficial reflection over the day, and the five traditional elements of the examen thus collapse into the third element by itself--a general survey of the day's activities. The formal examen, however, was never intended to be just a quick thinking-over of the day. It is supposed to be prayer--and that within a fairly specific form, one related to the daily contemplation but not identical with it. And if the examen is to be chiefly about God's love for me, then gratitude should play a major affective role. Of course, it is the gratitude of a sinner who is at peace with the nothing he can do on his own, because he is still wonderfully learning how our Father's love turns everything to good--even his own sinfulness. The Examen Is Essential to Availability In the conclusion of his letter to the Society. of Jesus on "apostolic availabi_lity," Father General Pedro Arrupe made thi~ statement: To become partly immobile through lack of availability on the part of individuals and the consequent fear of superiors to give them the missions called for by our apostolate today, would constitute a most serious threat to the very existence of our vocation . lgnatian availability is the guarantee and the conditio sine qua non of our practice, which leads to salvation, and alone is of interest to the Society and the Church. A strong claim! My central point here is that the daily examen is the primary means to maintain this disposition of Ignatian and, indeed, of all apostolic availability. Even so, why should a brief period of prayer assume such great impor-tance? This leads us to another insight often neglected in the past. The formal examen-prayer, with its five elements, (usually) lasting about a quarter-hour, is always a means to the informal examen, which is a special faith-sensitivity that is with one all through the day. Often in our early years, we have turned the formal examen-prayer into an end-in-itself, giving to it a rigid fidelity that corrupted its significance. Of course it would be illusory to imagine that we can grow into living the informal examen=sensitivity without the early development of habitual practice of the formal examen and a con-tinuing adaptation of our involvement with this type of daily prayer. Through the informal examen, a person acquires a special ability for discerning (or examining) "presence" in everything. For Ignatius, this quality-presence was more important and extensive than the formal examen-prayer, inasmuch as this presence helps the person to recognize ,the grace of apostolic availability and flexibility that is being'offered in every situation. Apostolic availability is a profound faith-experience that roots one's iden-tity and security in God's love. When a person's security is too rooted in a job The Check on Our A vailability: The Examen / 323 or a place, or even a certain reputation, there results a stubborn rigidity that undermines his availability, just as availability canequally be undermined by a disordered need for change and variety--as when a person is so superficially committed that he really doesn't care whether he's changed or where he's assigned. In that same letter, Father Arrupe pointed up some of the challenges for what we have termed apostolic availability that are especially present in the new directions, institutional involvements and types of service that are re-quired in the modern world. What is fundamental; though, is that availability ¯ is primarilya readiness and sensitivity of heart, not simply a changing of job and/or place. In the heart of a person serving for many years.in the same mis-sion there can be an availability that is very apostolic and invigorating~--and often more difficult than the "availability" that leads to a new assignment. Apostolic availability and genuine perseverance in the same task orplace can never be opposed. In the formal examen, we hold up our day to be seen against the light of God's love. Sometimes this will be more instructive for us than was the experience itself., We may appreciate what we didn't even see in the actual experien.ce. At other times, we can savor the depths implicit in our sensitivity in the actual experience of the day. The continuing informal examen makes us sen-sitive in every situation to a Father's love that is always available, makes us ready to respond in filial 10ve to the Father's desire, as Jesus was--especially on Calvary. At such a point of insight, we see how often our cowardice or disordered desires reveal us to be persons of the "Second Class" (Spiritual Exercises, 154), who seek to make God come to what we desire. This is precisely backwards: consolation and greater apostolic service are to be found in our coming to what God desires. The sensitivity of apostolic availability distinguishes the heart ofa person of the "Third Class" from one of the "Second Class." The difference can become very subtle in one's interior af-fective life, but what~is always at issue is nothing less than better service for the justice of God's kingdom. Availability and Discernment In our sinful human condition, apostolic availability does not at all come naturally to us, but often is born of our decisive dealing with desolation in ac-cordance with the principles of Ignatian discernment. The seven capit.al sins, as inner affective experiences (.before we intentionally act on them), are each a type of desolate violence endemic to our sinful condition. They infringe on, and restrict the freedom of our availability. In decisively going against this desolate violence (see Exercises319), we become interiorly available to God's loving and consoling attractiveness, which a!ways frees us for whatever his Heart desires of us now. In this way, Jesus' own decisive availability to his 324 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 Father, in service to our world, is gradually born in our affectivity through our careful living, with all the subtlety of discernment, in the face of our inner, desolate violence. The daily examen is the most practical and regularmeans to practice, this discernment for availability. Our particular examen could then focus on the flaw or weakness that now is most keeping us from this fuller apostolic availability. What is that flaw or weakness? It is not so much something that we decide on, but rather what God will reveal: to us in his loving concern that all of us should belong to him ~ver more totally. By responding to his call through the particular examen, and directing our attention and effort primarily against that flaw or weakness, we are allowing ourselves to be drawn more into the apostolic availability of Jesus where he and we best find the Father. The Examen: An Action-Reflection Model Apostolic renewal is not simply being able to get more done. Apostolic ac-tivity is not measured simply in quantity, but must respond to the dictates of a wise sensitivity in the zealous lover of God. A certain degree of.reflectivity is essential to the growth of this sensitivity. Although in the beginning this reflectivity may seem labored and artificial, as one matures in the Spirit it becomes more integrated, less obvious, and part of the "presence" one has everywhere. There is much talk about various action-reflection models to help renew our apostolic presence, and, indeed, some such model can be an essential instrument and method for apostoli~ religious formation from the novitiate onward. I suggest that the examen is precisely such an action-reflection instru-ment, one that is built right into our daily life, and capable of fostering apostolic availability as a whole way of life open to service to the needs of our world for God's greater glory. In these models, we reflect on our experience, hoping that the reflection will lead us to better quality in our apostolic efforts. Hence the reflection is never for itself, nor directed to a self-centered sanctification, Often in the past, the examen did not have an hpostolic orientation, ~but tended to a suf-focating introspection. As we mature in outpractice Of the examen, the separate steps of action-reflection-action integrate into a sensitivity of presence in the activity that makes us available in everything for the call of our Father's love, in whatever way he desires for his greater glory in our world. Just as the routine and regularity of the daily order help to keep the con-templative monk attuned to God, so the examen can keep the apostolic religious, who is both active and contemplative, a~ttuned to God's love, and allow us, mortified by apostolic availability, to find in everything of this world a son's filial, loving service of his Father. Missionary Prayer and the Problem of Inculturation Carl F. Stark/off,' S.J.~ Father Starkloff's last article in our pages, "Oppression, Death and Liberation: Thoughts in a Context," appeared in the issue of November, 1978. He continues as superior and director of St. Stephens Indian Mission; P.O. Box 294; St. Stephens, WY 82524. The', title of the recently published National CatecheticalDirectory--Sharing The Light of Faiths'is more provocative than one might think upon first sight, if one reads it as a missionary statement. It can be interpreted in the light of a eatechesis that is meant tO instruct Catholics in the faith handed on through baptism. But if we examine those places in the DireCtory that dis'cuss the relationship between faith and culture,' we may be sufficiently disturbed to make us probe more deeply the rfieaning of what it is to share our faith. To speak of the missionary apostolate brings to mind the turbulent history of the exegesis of the so-called "Great Commission" in Matthew 28:18-20, which is placed on the lips of the risen Christ as he sends forth his joyous (though not yet spiritually rejuvenated) disciples to teach all nations about the source of their joy. This gospel mandate began a missionary enterprise that sent preachers of the Good News throughout the known world and outward to the barbarians of northern Europe, the East and to the far-off British Isles. J. Verkuyl points out that the early reformers, probably because of their sense of urgency to establish their movement among European Christians, wanted (mistakenly) to restrict Jesus' mandate to the time of the Apostolic Age.2 The ~ Sharing the Light of Faith: National Catechetical Directory for Catholics of the I~lnited States (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1979). See especially pp. 7-16; 85-98; 116-119. 2 j. Verkuyl, Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction, tr. Dale Cooper (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1978), pp. 18-19. 325 326 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 nineteenth century, however, witnessed phenomenal growth in mission activi-ty among all Christian denominations, and the confident expansionist attitudes of the period endured up to the mid-point of, our own century. Today, however, there is a widespread "malaise" among missionaries, as Walbert Buhlmann puts it, though he is careful to note that such a condition is one environment that can nurture hope.~ In any case, there is a c'risis of confidence in the Church's self-image as a "sent" community, and the crisis extends back from the mission frontiers into families and communities, and into individual souls, as Christians question their right and duty to "spread the Gospel." This is a cultural and theological crisis that offers promise of much growth in understanding of the relationship between faith-proclamation and cultural sharing, or, to view it from the dark side, between preaching the Good News and cultural imperialism. A great quantity of material is flowing, from the pens of missiologists about this prob-lem, and there are various theories dealing with the faith-culture question. I have shared in this effort elsewhere. This article, however, is an attempt at a "spirituality" that might further an experiential approach to faith and culture as it is rooted in the life of prayer. Fundamentally, prayer is at the root of this crisis that touches catechesis in the "established" Church, and ,even touches relationships between parents and children. Chesterton wrote somewhere that to deny the right of parents to teach religion to their children is to deny them the right to teach them anything. If our prayer lacks conviction, we are easy prey to dp~bts about this right and duty. In this article, I do not intend to discuss whether there should be missions; I happen to believe there should be. Nor do I intend to take up the much-debated question of a "moratorium on missions"; 1 happen to believe that missions are part and parcel of Christianity. That "mission" should be done differently, with consideration of mutual'resources and values between the missionary and the local culture is beyond iluestion.And that mission should cease to be mission and become church is a prominent New Testament value articulated by St. Paul in his dealing~ with theJocal churches. But amid all the discussion of liberation and oppression, of imperialism and colonialism, of faith and culture, there shines the Light at the center, who is Jesus Christ--the only ultimate justification for all missions. The love of God as manifested in him must be preached-- no doubt in a~.growing way much more by Africans and Asiatics and Other third world people t.o p~eople of the first and second worlds. But they, too, must heed their calling to be transparent mes~sengers. The transparency of which I speak is primarily a question of the missionary's "spiritual life, and that is the subject of this article. A recent b~ok on mission spirituality stresses the importance of the mis-" sionary's life-style for his or her witness to the Gospel. Michael Reilly writes: ~ Walbert Buhlmann, O.F.M., Cap., The Coming of the Third Church, trans. Ralph Woodhall, S.J. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1977), p. 405. Missionary Prayer and the Problem of Inculturation / 327 How can the life-styles of these countless men and women who did so much to spread Christianity in the early centuries be described? There is no lack of testimony and evidence on this point. It can be summarized under five categories: the transformation and moral uprightness of their personal lives, their fellowship and social concern for others, their joy, their endurance under hardship and persecution, and the power which they exercised by virtue of their faith.' This iri general speaks of the awesome demands laid upon the missioi~er. Certainly no mission labors c~in be sustained without these qualities, to which we will more explicitly add perseverance in profound daily prayer, even and especially amid the many "dark nights" that cultural conflicts can create or intensify. The growih in a person's ~n spiritual life should be a continuing conv'er-sion in the intellectual, moral and religious orders, of which Bernard Lonergan writes in the transcendental phenomenology of his theological method.~ Missionaries above all, because they confront so many new and challenging experiences, must undergo such conversion, which is fed by, and, in return, nourishes a gospel-centered awareness. The,apostle must have also that unqualified, unreserved "being in love with God" that Lonergan calls religious faith,6 and this faith should be anchored in the historical reality that is:Christianity. Lonergan writes: ""There is a personal entrance of God himself into history, a communication of God to his people, the advent of God's word into the world of religious expression.'" The missionary will have to apply this dynamic of constant growth to cultural realities and religious values, as well as to his or.her own sources of spiritual power, experiencing these with both.pas-sionate involvement and prayerful detachment. The title "missionary" is not only audacious and shocking; it is unforgivably arrogant unless one assumes in it the motive that stems from the experienCed knowledge of Jesus Christ as the embodied presence of God's love in the world. This love incarnate becomes most explicit in the various' gospel texts that order the proclamation of salvation to all peoples. To preach eternal salvation is fundamental to all missionary zeal. But because salvation is incarnate for the Christian, his preaching cannot merely" project salvation into eternity, disembodied and unattached. The Good News calls people to ex-perience God's love and kindness within temporal existence, Otherwise, why take creation with any seriousness, at all? Our reading of the various reports of the life. and work of Jesus of Nazareth has been conditioned by our catechetical upbringing. We have learned to see Jesus as laying down his life when.he wills to do so, meanwhile battling with the scribes and pharisees in their apparent hypocrisy and their intransigent insistence on external conduct. But it is to the credit of the Michael Collins Reilly, S.J., Spirituality For Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978), p. 53. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Tti'eology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 3-25. Ibid., p. 105, ' Ibid., p. 119. 32~1 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 "liberation theologians" that they have forced us to become aware of the pervasive and persistent struggle of Jesus to win for the poor of Yahweh a humane existence, snatching their lives from the hands of powers that oppress them with needless burdens and joyless, unwarranted submissiveness to human domination. Thus missionary zeal is summoned to examine itself about its concern for a basic humaneness of life; it should feel great pain whenever the Good News is kept from persons because they are humiliated and demeaned, when they suffer oppression or oppress one another. Indeed, our spiritual resources must be strong enough to make us believe that faith can thrive under oppression, but our contemplation of the Gospel also shows us that Jesus fought conditions that enslaved people, Jesus' mission, and that of the Church, is to work for the conditions that permit a joyous and free wor-ship of God. This is a profound social dimension of the Gospel that more and more who read it are coming to perceive. For the prayerful and devout Christian, one of the most urgent motives-- perhaps the motive--for mission.activity, at least in the year~; of Catholic and Protestant missions since the sixteenth century, has been the brooding con-templation of countless hordes of souls going to hell because they did not con-fess Jesus Christ. With the reflective work of modern theology and Vatican Council 1I (rooted incidentally in some very good and very old "natural theology"!), we may still have concern for our neighbor's salvation, but there is also the opportunity for a more enlightened appreciation of the values to be found in the religious traditions of all peoples, and for a more modest assess-ment of the spiritual condition of the non-Christian. This appreciation of the spiritual values of other religion, along with the sense of a Gospel permeated with social values, leaves mission theorists with the task of formulating new attitudes towards the mission apostolate. In fact, this qualifying of the sense of missionary urgency has led to a growing spiritual crisis for many church people, most especially those in an active mission apostolate. Toward a Missionary Spirituality The approach to prayer that I hav~ chosen to discuss here is one that might help the follower of Christ to find "seeds of the word" and a means of salva-tion in the religions of non-Christians or in elements of tribal spirituality not explicitly Christian. At the same time, however, it seems to me a nullification of the Christian vocation to deny or to bypass the person of Jesus Christ, taken both historically and in the Pauline cosmic dimension, as the fullness of divine grace intended to be the Father's greatest gift to humanity. 1 do not say this as a scriptural or dogmatic fundamentalist: the praying Christian should also be an inquirer into the more sophisticated areas of comparative religion and scripture scholarship. Still, whatever level of hermeneutics we may under-take, the New Testament constantly reminds us that courteous dialogue with non-Christians is only part of our calling. The prayerful realization of what Christ means in my life can do no less than move me to tell my dialogue Missionary Player and the Problem of Inculturation / 329 partner how utterly central Christ is for me. What the other does with his ex-perience of my witness is a matter of his personal decision, always to be respected. But that person should know that my life of prayer has shone out through my personal testimony and conduct. Juan Luis Segundo has proposed a helpful approach to the centrality of Christ and tile witness of the Church. He reminds us that the principle "no salvation outside the Church" should not be taken as a matter of church boundaries but rather that it deals with the mediatory role of the Church.8 Segundo calls the Churcha reality at once particular (pertaining to cultural realities), since it is a historical movement serving as a sacrament, and univer-sal, since it serves as a medium of salvation: "It is the expression of the mystery of Christ himself.''9 In Christ the missionary preaches God's love to people, and if he feels unable to broadcast the triumphalistic boast that no one outside the Church will be saved, he is still conscious of the unique gift of Christ. Segundo calls the Christian "one who knows"-- knows Christ as the beginning of the Father's plan that moves into the future and permeates all of time. The Christian is not the only one to enter into this plan, but he is the one who knows it through Revelation.'° This is anything but a revival of primitive gnosticism; it is rather a consciousness (grounded in prayer) of the gift of sav-ing knowledge and the acceptance of a calling found through hearing the Word of God. Such a "knowledge" given.to the Christian is the content as well as the experience of conversion, a living faith that Lonergan calls an "other-worldly falling in love."" What the Christian knows then becomes the driving force for the labor of proclamation. It is, for one thing, a deeply biblical spirituality, for our encounter with the Word of God in Scripture and preaching is our summons to mission. However, I have chosen here to offer a more particular approach or method based on resources within my own Jesuit order, hoping that these resources will serve others in developing a mission-centered prayer life. Recent documents of the Society of Jesus remind us that the Jesuit's self-knowledge is found in the sense of being a sinner who is nonetheless called to be a companion of Jesus.'2 We redeemed sinners are by vocation a "com-munity of dispersion," ready to be sent on mission." The basic dynamic of this vocation, paralleling similar resources in other communities, is the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius o( Loyola, which, made, serve to mediate the gospel-conversion-mission experience. Examining the experience of conversion and mission, we immediately con- 8 Juan Luis Segundo, S.J., Tr. John Drury, A Theology For Artisans of a New Humanity (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1973), Vol. I, p. 76. 9 Ibid., p. 78. ,o Ibid., p. 13. " Lbnergan, Op. Cit., p. 240, ,2 See Documents of The 31st and 32rid General Con.gregations of the Society o f Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), p. 401. ,3 Ibid., p. 405. 330 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 front the problem/mystery of Christ and culture, of the universal sway and dominion of the Risen Christ .and the particular authenticity of cultural values. Indeed, the Exercises are themselves a partictilar cultural phenomenon within which the Christian faith is rekindled and nourished, and which have proved themselves to contain certain universal values. One who truly receives the liberating love of God in the Exercises comes in touch with the sovereign God in a discovery so powerfully expressed by Karl Barth: The love of God stands where there is disclosed, beyond and above and in the twofold negation, the preeminent affirmation--Jesus Christ, the .Resurrection and the Life~ Blessed discovery! God stands in light inaccessible. Blessed discovery! All flesh is as grass and all the glory of men is as the flower of the field. When, in spirit and truth, one of these discoveries is made, the other is involved in it, for both are in fact operations of the One God, whose universal majesty is the "Yes" in the"No.'"' The gift of a knowledge0of the love of God is so moving and powerful (perhaps in a very quiet way), that it is no wonder that enemies of the lgnatian Exercises have called them a brainwashing. The radical freedom of Christian conversion, as Barth so stirringly tells it above, calls us into a permanent state of tension. This tension is made up of what, to borrow from a number of spiritual writers, we might call "moments" of the Exercises--the two moments of conversion and of mission, I call them moments in the sense that they are kairoi, transcendent of any chronological order; they are experienced in an interweaving rather than in succession, and not merely in time of retreat but in the insertion into comrhunity and ministry. In the Exercises, the first truth one comes to grips with is God's sovereign-ty over one's life and destiny. One has to wrestle with and deeply assent to the fact that we are created to praise, reverence:and serve God, and thus come to salvation. I use the word "wrestle" here because the ascesis of,the Exercises contains much wrestling (though in the end we seethe folly of all this muscle!); no human being readily surrenders his or her own sovereignty andautonomy to anyone, even to God. Nor should they readily surrender. We are persons gifted with dignity, and until we realize that this dignity can be brought to final perfection in God alone, through obedience rather than abject slavery (an important reflection in ministry to the oppressed), we should not sur-render our autonomy. Yet we finally do have to surrender to God as Chris-tians, having,wrestled with him and been so wounded that we manifest in our very steps, as Jacob did, the divine-human struggle that eventuates in our ob-taining his blessing. Then the believer, too, becomes an Israel who realizes that all this effort was part of a foolish bout with God's love. I wish to return to this matter of conversion later, for it is the genuine source of crisis (under-stand "decision") in the missionary's grasp'of problems of culture and social justice. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, tr. Edwyn Hoskyas (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 321. Missionary Prayer and the Problem of lnculturation / 331 Once the Christian has yielded to divine sovereignty (or arrived at a stage of acceptance, for the faith-choice that expresses this yielding occurs many times in "becoming a Christian"), he has again accepted the reality of his own sinfulness--the disobedience, the recalcitrance, the anger at God's insistence on submission. There goes with this an even more difficult acceptance of divine love, for within our sinfulness we find an inability to let ourselves be loved, and even glory in perversely thinking about God's "No" to us and fear His "Yes." With the opening to grace we rejoice in that essential Christian ex-perience of acceptance of self as loved by God. The loving power of Christ is the "tree of life" that nourishes our circle of existence at its very center--a powerful Amerindian image that indicates a wholeness of life based on devo-tion to its source. But the moment of conversion is hardly complete with repentance, or with the return of the prodigal. The once-lost younger son will discover now the meaning of mature membership in his father's household, that it is shared life and companionship, but also involvement in the labor and the suffering. Such a call to deeper filial piety may well bethe sequel to the Prodigal Son parable, in which the erring but more attractive younger son is equalized with the dour older brother who we all quietly tend to scorn. The sin in all of us resists true belonging. Thi~ is why the SpiritualExercises lead the Christian to understand what it is for Christ to be a "King" in our lives, for him to have a loving sovereignty 'rather than by an imperious and aloof barking of orders that avoids deeper ih~,olvement. David Fleming describes the Meditation on the Kingdom of Christ as the placing of oneself into a "mythical situation, or the kind of story-truth of which fairy tales are made."'~ One seeks to know Christ in whatever fashion one may need in ~order to bring home the fact of his lord-ship. The meditation on Christ's kingdom is thus thematic forall contemplation of the life, death and. resurrection of Christ. All the while meditating on the ministry of Jesus, a retreatant prays for the grace to know him more intimately, to love him with grea~er intensity and to follow him more closely. One can begin to attempt this radical Christian prayer, having first meditated on the mystery of the Incarnation, which we shall later take as the basic model for the missionary apostolate. St. Ignatius presents the Incarnation con~ templation as a mental trylStich, representing the Godhead in heaven, humani-ty struggling on earth, and the young woman of Nazareth who assents to the mysterious calling to' archtypically stand for every Christian's response to God. This meditation enters into the second moment, or moment of mission, but first of all it reminds the Christian that the essential grace to be gained from meditating on the life of Christ is "an interior knowledge of the '~ David L. Fleming, SoJo The Spiritual Exercises: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978), p. 65. 332 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 Lord, who for me has become man, that I may more love and follow him.'''6 This "for me" (so dear to St. Ignatius-- as well as to Martin Luther!) is the ex-pression of faith in a God who never remains for himself alone but perpetually gives of himself. It is the expression of the love of a missionary God. As the Christian enters more deeply into the mystery of the Incarnation, he realizes how much of the sinner hangs on, and how the moment of conversion is ever-present. As the Meditation on the Two Standards or Two Leaders-- Christ and Satan- shows us, the threat of fear and pride and exaltation of the false self is never far away. Within the gospel accounts one also contemplates types of persons who experience different degrees of submission to God, and so asks himself in what way this reflection applies personally to one's life. As the dread reality of St. Luke's journey to Jerusalem looms up, the Christian is made to realize, along with St. Matthew's newly appointed head of the Church, the still unconverted :Simon Peter, that each one of us shares in that journey. Somewhere within this period of meditation, St. Ignatius' Three Modes of Humility challenge the follower of Christ with the call not merely to avoid all sin, but to enter into his poverty and humiliation and suffering-~-to share fully in his mission. The Third Week of the Exercises is an entering into the fullest meaning of the passion of Christ, not merely with tears of empathy but with readiness for full association. The apostolic moment of the Exercises is mysteriously present here: one comes to sense the many possible challenges that could in the future demand a personal appropriation of the kenosis of the Son of God. Once again, the Christian may fear Christ and remain_ sitting outside the Garden of Olives, only to fall asleep, to avoid the grim strain of apprehension. Or, the disciple might insist with Peter that he will never betray Jesus, and almost in the same moment deny even being with him. We thus discover that it was a relatively simple matter to love God in a childish way as our understand-ing Father, in contrast to our acceptance of his Son as an intimate friend. Friendship can demand so much, and we fear the maturity that it requires, especially when we find that the Son of God, in his hour of greatest need, calls his disciples "friends." This is the opportunity to pass even more dramatically through the ever-deepening dying of "becoming a Christian," which, as Kierkegaard wrote, is all that we ever do in relation to Christ; we never fully "arrive" in this life. But if the Christian perseveres in prayer, there may come, finally, the gift of identification ~,ith Christ in which the cloak of sinfulness falls away and true companionship is accepted. If the Christian embraces the mystery of the cross (according to his or her own personal vocation), there comes that peace which pervades one's prayer at the. entrance to the sepu!chre. A true Christian is a child of the Resurrection, an heir to the joys of the Ibid., p. 70. Missionary Prayer and the Problem of Inculturation / 333 triumphant Christ, and a bearer of that joy. The Christian contemplates and absorbs the spirit of the risen life as the spirit of his own life, and, according to Ignatius, reaches holiness through sharing the joy of the Friend who has defeated death. It should be no surprise that this experience, too, is a conver-sion in the intellectual, moral and religious dimensions of life. We do not easily accept joy in our lives, or the fact that we are created for joy, as C. S. Lewis was astonished to discover. In the face of the grief in the world (and, if we are idealistic missionaries or social activists, our own tenden-cy to take too seriously our personal warfare with all this grief), we find it hard to transform our, solemn frowns into laughter of rejoicing. Perhaps we cannot but think of God as the Ruler of Olympus who becomes jealous of our hubris at thinking we might ever simply be happy. And there is that temptation to sadness in the anticipation of apostolic struggles. So conversion to Christian joy, and the mission to share that joy, are again telescoped into two moments of one experience. St. Ignatius did not leave us simply to contemplate the Resurrection with the first disciples. He has bequeathed to us the Contemplation for Obtaining Divine Love, which is summed up in God's desire to share himself with his friends. There is given here a recapitulation of all good gifts that descend from the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow, (Jm 1:16-17). We consider all gifts received, and more, we affirm ourselv~es as gifts of God's favor. A joy-filled Christian can thus say: Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect, and all my will--all that 1 have and possess. You gave it to me;to you, Lord, 1 return it. All is yours, dispose of it according to your will. Give me only your love and grace, for this is enough for me." This contemplation also expresses an aspect of the apostolic moment, both in the call to offer one's gifts in the divine Service, and in the vision of God dwelling in and giving life to all creatures. The consideration of the labor of God within all things helps to feel his presence as the very life of the ministry. There is here, too, a profound theodicy that enlightens the missionary about the working of the Holy Spirit in all created reality, where the Word is somehow present before his preaching even begins. It is a great blessing for an aspiring young missionary (or an older one seeking renewal) to be able to sum up his spiritual experience with the vision of all good gifts descending from above--the gifts of justice, goodness, pity and mercy--"as from the sun des-cend the rays, from the fountains the waters." This is ongoing conversion in the highest sense. The Translation of Prayer Into Mission Let us get "practical" about all of this. Where does one go missiologically Ibid., p. 140. 334 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 with the experience of conversion-mission? If I am a redeemed sinner, saved by God from my own self-oppression as well as from the,oppression of false spirits, l am under a mandate t~ p.roclaim that experience to all people. Fur-ther, as Barth has written, we have surrendered our old way of thinkingto the divine "No" and thus ~have been .renewed in a life of grace through His "Yes." To believe that one is saved is the ultimate experience of freedom, and if one has been gifted with a share in God's holiness, he may even sense a call to relinquish homeland and culture in order to announce that freedom to others. Such a state of soul is a great gift and a great mystery; it is also a great problem, and without ongoing intellectual conversion, can leave one open to many deceptions. There is hidden in this experience the danger that the con-verted Christian will interpret some of the chltural trappings of his conversion as essential to conversion itself. In fact, I woul,d venture the guess that much of the zeal to save "savages" has arisen from an uneducated state of mind in x, relation to what one sees as their "unhappy and primitive state." Metanoia in its most profound etymological sense must be part of any missionary prepara-tion and part of an ongoing learning process. Perhaps the most helpful spiritual approach to a missionary openness to foreign experiences is faith in the Incarnation as a continuing contemplation. So St. Ignatius' Meditation on the Incarnation might well serve as the fun-damental reflection of the apostolic moment of the Exercises.lncarnational theology has, of course, been thematic in the thought of theologians and in Church documents since Vatican Council II. Its frame of reference is the historical context of gospel proclamation, which stresses the service of Christ and his Church to .the temporal order, and the hope this service offers to humanity for a more truly di~,ine-human life. A healthy incarnationalism is also eschatoiogical, and in its optimism does not forget the reality of sin. It realizes that God's becoming human does not empty him of his transcendence but rather gifts humanity with a share in that transcendence. In simple w~ords, the Incarnation has its total fulfillment outside history and awaits the kingdom of God in faith even as it expresses its presence already. In. the con-rex: of missiology, incarnational theology proclaims the en-flesh-ment of God within cultures, and challenges all cultures to reach beyond themselves. Ignatius Loyola was a man of great sensitivity to the ways in which the Gospel is to be received humanly, as his instruction for the use of the senses in prayer attests. The Contemplation on the Incarnation is an experience of the divine entering history, of the Good News transforming human cultures and confronting the evils that threaten what is truly of God's creation in them. ln-culturation does pose a tension, if not even a dilemma, for the Christian, as I have already indicated. The zealous missionary who is filled with a desire to show Christ's love to the world iS a person who has acquired the gift of detach-ment from a familiar environment, though perhaps not to the degree he may think he has acquired it. Even the most dedicated Christian carries his or her native culture along as mental and affective baggage, and tends to extend that Missionary Prayer and the Problem of Inculturation / 335 culture, along with the Gospel, to other peoples. To offer the good things of one's own culture to others is a natural and authentic aspiration, if one is aware that these things are not coextensive with the Good News of Christ. This awareness can come only from a deep study'of the culture and from a "participation" in it to whatever degree is compatible with Christianity. Another factor of great importance is the relationship the Christian, has towards the people to whom he is missioned,. There is a danger that one will project one's own degree of commitment into these people, and thus expect of them too soon that same kind of response. Likewise, to compare one's own "surrender" or submission to God, acquired with the help of many cultural blessings and advantages, to the enslavement of oppressed peoples and its concomitant apathy or resistance, is of course a tragic confusion of entirely different experiences. Worse yet, one might even miss the signs of a people's dedication simply out of a failure to comprehend their ways of expressing it. However, meditation on the Incarnation, if we supplement it with proper cultural training, inserts us into the saving love°of the Godhead as well as into the infinite patience and empathy of Jesus Christ, who met people "where they were," living with them in their struggles and calling them to converison. Christ never destroyed or shattered a person's life, however great a shock he may have dealt, but rather uplifted and sanctified the life of every person. In the Contemplat!on on the Incarnation, St. Ignatius in. structs the retreat-ant to "see" the various persons in the eye of the imagination: "those on the surface of the earth, in such variety in dress and in actions; some white and others black; some in peace and others in war; some weeping and others laughing; some well, others ill; some being born,, and others dying . ,,,8 One is to continue by imagining how so many live in blindness, how they swear and blaspheme, how th6y kfli and go down to hell. And in the same mental exer-cise, we are shown how Father, Son and Holy Spirit conspire to work out the salvation of the suffering human race, and how the messenger Gabriel goes to speak to the Virgin of Nazareth. Whatever Ignatius had in mind as he described the misery of our race (in his own cultural terms!), and however we may have evolved in our attitudes about,how many benighted pagans are going into damnation, a sensitive response to his vision of a suffering humanity draws one deeply into a sharing of the human condition. The point here is that human beings have always injured and oppressed one another in various ways; but the much stronger aspect of this truth(See St. Paul'spollo mallon in Romans 5.) is that all types and cultures, all races and .nationalities, enter into the divine compassionate vision and its willto save and transform. Those who are to be saved will be saved as black or white or red or yellow, whether they wear three-piece-suits or loincloths or nothing at a!l, whether their music is rendered by pipe organs or jazz bands or ancient drums. We do not really know what God has in mind to Ibid., p. 72. 336 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 do with diversity in the kingdom of heaven; we do know that he has a total disregard for differences as far as the equal dispensation of his kindness is concerned. Thus a meditation on the Incarnation, if carried through with full involve-ment, takes a missionary into the midst of the culture he serves. It prods him to study anthropology and sociology and comparative religion, both in books and in lived exp~erience, as well as to do all that is necessary tomake him atten-tive, intelligeni, reasonable and responsible. It serves as the affective nourish-ment of all the intellectual and procedural efforts one may bring to work in a foreign culture. It would seem, therefore, that a missioner's own prayer life would change, to some degree, along cultural lines: An openness and sensi-tivity to the people will lead to a sharing of indigenous forms of prayer and worship. No matter how hard 1 may try, I will never become a Native American or South African black or campesino, especially if the culture I serve has a history of deep Wounds inflicted by the very society and church I represent. This should in fact be an initial experience of inculturation--to realize that onb is a foreigner or guest, or better, a pilgrim, and that one naturally resists becoming part of a new culture, especially in its startling and strange aspects. But still, we ~can take on many qualities of our environment, and should do so if they insert us better into the life of the people and help us to grow personally. Generally, the first experience of mission life for the outsider is one of conflict. This is emphatically true of all who enter into work among societies suffering from powerful structures and histories of persecution or cultural invasion. To become part of a wounded culture is to absorb inevitably the feel-ings of frustration, anger and despair; to experience the "diminishment" that occurs within as one responds again and again to expressions of these negative feelings. There may also be a deep dissatisfaction with oneself over the failure to remain tranquil and "understanding" in the face of such assaults. The mis-sionary must then turn, in a way perhaps never before experienced, but anticipated in earlier prayer, to the reality of a suffering and dying Savior, who himself knew pain and rejection and the feeling of being an outsider. When'the Word pitched his tent among us, he certainly had to live as an alien in our midst, with disciples who failed to understand, with authorities who re-jected him, with hangers-on who melted away in the face of conflict. The mis-sionary can be helped spiritually, through intellectual resources and the study of the history of injustice or persecution in the area of hi~ activity. For exam-ple," in studying the near genocide of a number of ti'ibal cultures at the hands of invaders who made these people aliens in their own lands, the missionary can learn to approprihte the sense of weakness often felt by Christ himself in the face of the burdens of history. However, even in a badly wounded culture, one can experience gifts in greater number. Among many of the more traditional, or "primal," societies Missionary Prayer and the Problem of Inculturation / 337 of Africa or Asia or the Americas, can be found spiritual attitudes remarkably resonant with the Christian experience: creative suffering, prayer, contempla-t! on, worship forms, acceptance of death, ascetical practices. One can learn to appreciate the reverence of the people, the sense of appreciation for nature, the deep respect for spiritual realities. It is possible to learn to enjoy the music, the dance, the language, the good times, as they occur in a natural cycle of tribal events. Perhaps the missioner will even find in the new culture (not because he hates his own but because he loves it too) a new"sacred space" in which to be at home. As this occurs, one finds oneself both proclaiming and experiencing conversion. Missionary prayer is then truly coming to birth according to the mystery of the Incarnation. To sum up, then, Christian conversion is not a narrowing experience. While it focuses our gaze upon Christ as the Father's unique expression of love, it also constantly opens our horizons and leads us to greater social and cultural understanding. But the conversion process must be a composite of in-tellectual, moral and religious growth. Prayer alone will not achieve this, but without prayer the missionary is merely another cultural invader. A strongly incarnational prayer reminds one constantly that in Christ the Father has reconciled the divine and the human, and that we can indeed preach a transcendent faith that finds roots in local cultures. "When Did We See You?" Donald Macdonald, ,S. M.M. Fr. Ma~cdonald, master 6f novices for the Montfort Fathers, is stationed at the house of Maria Bhavan; D.R. College P.O.; Bangalore 560029; India. ~ watched a group of sisters, out walking, slowly pass a row of hovels. Out-side one of them, a little girl was squatting, cutting wood. Seeing the sisters approach, she put down her knife, joined her hands in the Indian way of greeting, and gave them a lovely smile. The sisters (presumably) never saw her. Three other sisters were walking some five or six yards further back, and I thought that perhaps one of them would have seen what happened, and so stop for a moment to make a fuss over the child. They, too, walked past. I still see the quizzical look on the child's face. Clearly, mistakes are easily made. It is also unfair and invalid to draw a general conclusion from a particular instance. But from years spent in pastoral ministry, not least with religious, I suggest that there may be more in that incident than many of us would care to see. Such insensitivity may be the rule rather than the exception. Those sisters may be like that even with each other. They just do not see. This same lack of insight may be a consistent feature of their everyday world: They may never really live in the present moment, and so miss so much of what is happening about them. If the mature person is "one whose center of gravity is where he actually is," it may explain the immaturity of some religious lives." What is needed is the ability to be both part of, and apart from, the present moment, to give oneself wholly in the present as an expression of a mature Christian faith. So much of religious life, especially as one gets older, can be so unsatisfactory for so many, because they are never really "alive." Any one, for example, who has ever been in the company of the present Holy Father, might judge that he is in fact a great parish priest of the time when such men 338 "'When Did We See You?" really knew their people. He is always aware of what is happening. Though he may be unable to speak to everyone individually, yet he neglects no one, regardless of how many are about him. What steps, therefore, can the religious take to try to become fully alive to the present as an expression of a mature Christian faith? Listen Like a Disciple Once upon a time, most religious began the day with a "morning offering." I suggest that this once-common custom should be revived to help give a precise focus to our day. A line adapted from Is 50:4 makes an ideal morning prayer: O Lord, give me a disciple's tongue. So that 1 may know how to reply to the weary, provide me with speech. Each morning, wake me to hea~, to listen like a disciple. We should pray that we may speak only what we have learned of God--a disciple's tongue. We beg that we may never ignore the weary, and so have something to say ~to the child, the~neglect of whom began these reflections. Ideally, we want to be able to answer the questions people dare not ask. We want to offer not just sympathy but empathy,, the ability to feel for and with these persons of our world. We must have time for those that n'o one else has time for. So important is this approach to the present moment, that we should ask God to wake us each morning to hear. But, more than that, we should ~vant to listen like a disciple. In whatever circumstances we are placed, we want to be aware of all that is happening, to assimilate our experience. The whole world is sacrament. Thus we are eager to listen like a disciple, to try and catch every, nuance and inflection of the world in which we live. Most of us share a com-mon degree of hearing and vision. What separates us one from another is insight, or the ability to respond to the unspoken word or gesture. Our prayer, therefore, should be that God would give us the sensitivity to be fully alive in our global village. Our center of gravity is ~vhere we actually are. A day begun with ~suCh a reflective prayer to God can ~urely help give definition to our approach to the present. If our minds progressively assimilate the assumptions underlying the prayer, experience, in whatever form it comes, will be integrated into our lives in God. Through Love in His Presence The religious may further deepen that basic insight, by attempting to share the grasp of reality found in the superb opening prayer of the letter to the Ephesians. There Paul's present situation is prison. The future prospects, in his estimate, probably included death by execut~ion.The past, an apostolic life of mixed fortunes, was evidently drawing to a close. In such circumstances :340 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 notice the approach of a mature Christian faith, and the astonishing balance given by such a center of gravity: "Blessed be God the Fathe~ of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ" (Ep 1:3). There, the first move is to God. And what a God--"the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ," who has given us everything. This, from a man in prison, towards the end of his life; no self-pity, nor justified disappointment, nor even the pretence of whistling in the cemetery to pretend he is not scared. His perspective is anchored in "God the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ." Whata marvelously expansive opening to a prayer from a man shut in, and about to lose his career and his life. Then his faith, grasping reality,, takes him almost beyond the limits of imagination to the point of saying: "before the world was made he chose us, chose us in Christ" (Ep 1:4). The sense of awe and wonder is evident as it dawns on him, "the very least of all the saints" (Ep 3:8), that these moments of life have been given him by God. The immediate present is received as a gift from God in Christ offered before even the world was made. How does one quantify love on a scale like that? From this perspective, the present moment is an expression of the depth of the love of God for us that is quite literally beyond computation. One just receives and adores. To the extent that I can share this outlook, I allow God to love me in the present moment. Receiving life as so charged with the love of God, 1, too, deepen my capacity to love. I do not know when I first knew God, but from "before the world was made" God knew and loved me. The present moment is the focus of such love, where I "live through love in his presence" (Ep 1:4). This, l suggest, can be the center of gravity of a mature Christian faith. His Spirit Living in You Following Saint Paul, the religious can go still deeper into the present moment. "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (l Co 3:16). Individually or collectively, God is present among us in the only way that is real to us--through knowledge and love. Anything else is superficial. The point is given added emphasis when we remember that the word translaied "temple" i~s no(our word for Church, b~t rather, "tabernacle." "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Rm 5:5). Religious, aware of God so present to them and in them, could only respond in wonder and awe. Their very personality would reflect adoration. "Your body, you .know, is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you since you received him from God" (l Co 6:19). If the religious truly listened like a disciple to words like that, the love of God, found in the present moment, would take them to !he heights, and give them "the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until knowing the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, ~you are filled with the utter fullness of God" (Ep 3:19). "When Did We See You?" / 341 For the Praise of His Glory Despite possible appearances to the contrary, the above approach to reality, stemming from an understanding of baptism, is simplicity itself. It has to be if it is to center on the present moment. Here the religious is never in the position of the harassed motorist driving at night, and trying to cope with all the signals he is receiving at a busy road junction. Nor is it an artificial con-struct pieced together from a possibly outdated literary-form. Quite simply the religious is aware that he is loved by God. He has always been present to God. Life is God's gift to him, moment by moment. In responding to life so given, all that is deepest in him echoes awe, adoration and love. Thus does he begin to sound the depths of "the unfathomablk riches of Christ" (Ep 3:8). Aware of the presence of God within him, he believes that with that gift he has received everything (see Rm 8:32). As the reality of this dawns on him, the love of Christ overwhelms him, as he begins to see that "for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Co 5:14,17). His center of gravity is moving gradually from self to Christ. Inescapably, and often at a level beyond words, his faith expresses itself in love, adoration, gratitude. In time, as he continues to allow God to 10ve him,his "life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 2:3), so that, however imperfectly, he realizes, as a baptized Christian, "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Ga 2:20). Thus he tries to allow God full play in his life. As many religious know, such an approach to the present moment comes to be as natural as breathing. It is the normal, prosaic everyday basis of his life. It is the common coin he uses moment by moment. Living therefore in Christ in a sacramenthl world, one lives in the presence of God, not at some degree removed from him, as though he were a spectator. The smile and greeting of the child which provoked these reflections, can be seen as an expression of the love of God. Her puzzlement as she was ignored was surely an echo of the rejection of the love of God. The insensitivity of the religious presented a glimpse of Christ handicapped, unable to express his love for the child in that instance (see Ph 3:18). Attempting to listen like a disciple to what God might be saying in an incident that was over in seconds, one realizes all too well that, in addition to the above, there may be other inferences. Lord, in the child and the religious do I see you and me? Do I see your love always expressing itself in the most unlikely situations--and my response? Again, is that how I am to the people who come into my life? This reflection does not depersonalize the child, nor take from her her integrity as a human being. She is not a cipher. But viewed from the stand-point of Christian baptism, which is the basis and point of religious life, it is surely not illegitimate for us to deepen the realiz~ation that we are loved by God, that, as a result, we must "owe no one anything, except to love one another" (Rm 13:8). We are in debt, therefore, to everyone we meet, as we can never adequately repay love. There is perhaps no more exacting test of the authenticity of one's faith. The Threat and,the Thrill of Dominion Labour# Beneviile, S.C.C. Sister Labour~ teaches at Delone Catholic High School; S. Oxford Ave.; McSherrystown, PA 17344 Let us m~ike man in our image, after our likeness. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground (Gn 1:26). In the light of the Genesis account, we know ourselves to be the hallmark of the creative power of God who transformed the darkness over the a~yss; the God who shaped the formless waste which was the earth; the God who made light to dispel the darkness; the God whose touch brought forth vegetation and seeds of every kind. Custodians of creation, we are challenged to find joy and fulf!llment in this awesome burden of nurturing the universe. To do so, however, we must discern the subtleties of our behaviorand try to strip away any repressive thought patterns which distort our presence to reality. By un-consciously excluding that which is painful, fearful, or even sublime, repres-sion is the ego's means of scaling down life-- that is, of reducing ffc~th terror and ecstasy to something within our control. From infancy on, we have been schooled to block out that which either threatens or diminishes our own stature; thus anxiety is minimized and we are able to move through life with a kind of equilibrium. 'Capstones of God's creative power, we are marked by an ambivalence which suffers from the pain of finitude as well as from the glorious burden of mirroring Infinitude. We live simultaneously on the brink of obliyion and the brink of infinity. Because the possibility of both destruction and transcendence are threatening, we too readily settle for the protection which illusion offers. But truth and ultimate fulfillment demand that we live face to face with the realization that the universe is teeming with wonder and danger 342 The Threat and Thrill of Dominion / 343 of colossal proportion; and we cannot let our consciousness of this inure us to the utter magnificence of that which has been entrusted to us. Instead of deflecting the wondrous mysteries of the world, we must so sensitize ourselves to our task and privilege that the fullness of God's glorious creation opens up before us, and thus we can revel in the inestimable joy to which we are heirs. ". mountainsand hills shall break out in song before you, and all the trees of the countryside shall clap their hands" (Is 55:12). The innate fear by which we resist the greatness to which we are called-- a Jonah complex according to psychologists--prompts us to entrench ourselves in mediocrity, security and conformity rather than bear the risk of the superlative. In the depth of our souls we glimpse our godlike possibilities, but quiver at the thought of having our potentials actualized. Intensity hurts. Pain--albeit a "nice" pain--is the counterpart of intense living. "We are only the earthenware jars which'hold this treasure to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God" (2 Co 4:7). Our spiritual and.emo-tional yearning often seems to exceed our human capacity to withstand. Repression of the sublime is the defense which enables us to maintain our balance in a universe which would sweep.us off our feet if we were totally sen-sitive to it. Ecstatic moments, for instance, are too charged to be endured for long. Because we lack the strength to bear the miraculousness and force of life at its fullest, we cut back to an idle; we moderate the degree to which we will let ourselves experience the grandeur of it all. Closing ourselves off to the possibility of unlimited greatnessthus enables us to remain intact, untouched in the face of an overwhelmingness which might otherwise be devastating. In Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Emily perceives the truth of life only after she returns from the grave: "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize while they live it--every, every minute?" The stage manager answers: "The saints and poets, maybe--they do some." Just as the fear of greatness keeps us walled up, so does the fear of little-ness. In contrast to the rest of creation, we are at best miniscule, and that's ter-rifying. Man, the self-aware capstone of creation, is, in fact, insignificant. Our fragile position in a mighty world began with our helpless condition at birth. Despite unconscious efforts of denial, none of us can ever quite forget the fact that we were once dirty-faced, cry-baby kids who needed another even to change our diapers. As a species we may have been given dominion, but as individuals our personal histories are at best embarrassing. Unlike animals, we are endowed with a self-awareness which makes the truth of our fragility even more terrifying. "It means to know that one is food for worms., to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feel-ings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression-- and with all this yet to die.''t Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, 1973), p. 87. :344 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 Paradoxically, it's this very terror of our own nothingness which has generated such self-assumed authority, such egoism. The instinct for self-worth and self-preservation has sparked the fantasies and repression which delude us about our true condition. Unable to cope with the reality of our littleness, we have let our egos construct vast networks of illusions by which we assert and argue our own value. Without these lies to feed off, life would be nightmarish. The rose-colored vision which repression insures protects us from the omnipresent bogeyman whose terrors would disarm us: if we ever dropped the mask of importance. According to Kierkegaard, the lies perpetrated by the ego are: the most natural ,defense against the anxieties of life. Dread would be overwhelming without the escape hatch which repression offers. Fantasizing about one's role or place in the cosmos is a comforting ex-ercise by which the emerging person obscures the truth which lies at the root of the human condition. The egoism which dominates us doesn't ring of pride as much asit does of escapism. It's weak man's instinctual defense against his smallness; against . total negation in an apparently capricious and topsy-turvy universe. Let's face it, over and above the natural disasters which threaten us, the evils We heap on one another are staggering: the haunting memory of six million Jews exter-minated; the wake of Three Mile Island and the threat of nuclear extinction; four hundred thousand boat people drowned; incessant wars and rebellions which decimate the hopes of nations. Rather than live vis-a-vis our fragile position, we prefer, in fact, to pull the wool over our own eyes. The crux of our failure to resonate with the challenge of dominion, then, is two-edged: a fear of greatness and a fear of littleness. Repression serves to protect us from a double apprehension about the latent power which might be unleashed in us, as well as from a sense of feebleness in the face of a vast universe. By blocking out any mystery or terror which dwarfs our stature, we live comfortably with the illusion of control. Repression makes the dark so cozy that we forget our need for the light. The price of this illusion, though, seems to be a lobotomy of the soul. We have anesthetized our spirits as a means of maintaining our balance. Undoubtedly, to have been made in the image of the Creator and subsequently entrusted with undisputed authority is a fearful heritage. If we are to attain our true stature, however, we must be persons who accept their creaturehood and are brave enough to live without the facade of power or righteousness or control. We will enjoy the thrill of dominion and minimize its threats only to the degree we can live with our own vulnerability--that is, to the degree we can shed the protective armor which has shielded us from so much of life. Thus psychology and religion merge as we relinquish the security blanket of egoism, which has so falsified our percep-tions, and posit our faith in the God who created us. The formula for such faith is basically simple: "One is a creature who can do nothing, but one exists over against a living God for whom 'everything is The Threat and Thrill of Dominion / :345 possible.' -2 The Scriptures clearly delineate the nature of this call to faith: faith in a God who has told us every hair on our head is numbered; faith in a God who knows when every sparrow falls to the ground; faith in a God who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the grass of the field with splendor; faith in a God who has said,. "No one who comes to me shall ever hunger and no one who believes in me shall ever thirst" (Jn 6:35); faith in a God who himself conquered death through resurrection. Such faith is the death knell to all the claims which the ego has so jealously guarded. Instead of making our own arrogant assertions the touchstone, our fundamental identity with Ultimate Power gives us our significance. Creaturehood is no longer a liability--rather, it's a hotline to the Creator. The very One who has called us into existence and given us authority stands behind us and before us. The secret fears which once eroded our joy and op-timism are dissipated the moment we see creatureliness as our claim to the Creator. Similarly, the inner yearning to proclaim ourselves and to experience the something more of life takes on new meaning as we accept our role as capstones of God's creative power. Our identity lies in imaging the Father and in nurturing that which his loving touch has brought forth. No longer is our personal worth determined by social and cultural norms; on the contrary, our individual worth is affirmed by our link with the transcendent God who created us and gave us dominion. Love has shared Itself. We have been made in his image. "Before you were born, 1 called you by name," The mystery at the heart of each of us makes sense and finds fulfillment only in relation to the Mystery at the heart of creation. ~ Becker, p. 90. Towards Mutuality in Ministry Sally Kenel, D. W. Sister Sally serves in the pastoral ministry of St. Mary, Gate of Heaven Parish. She resides at 85-28 Forest Parkway; Woodhaven, NY 11421. Which do you identify with more? A typewriter or a piece of paper? Santa's bag or a Christmas stocking? ~ These either/or questions attempt to indicate a basic tension that exists in identifying oneself as either a "giver" or a "receiver." We religious engaged in ministry probably tend toward the giver option. It is true that mfnistry requires service, but a forced choice between giver and receiver can set up a dualistic I-as-opposed-to-you dynamic. This dynamic, in turn, can be d block to the growth of the minister. Much of our training in religious life has reinforced the notion that "it is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Evidence of our working out of this framework can be found in such everyday responses to people as, "What can 1 do for you?" Immediately, the giver/receiver dualism is established. It is my contention that it is blessed to give and to receive; that the clear cut distinction between giver and receiver does not exist in reality; that there can be, indeed must be, mutuality in ministerial relationships. Since this belief was brought home to me in my ministry with the elderly, reflection on this concrete experience is what will give shape to much of this article. However, mutuality in ministerial relationships can exist between people of different ages, backgrounds, sexes, and so forth. In fact, all our relationships offer the possibility of blurring the lines that separate us, plunging us into that unity of all things in Christ. At first cons'ideration, the elderly may seem an. unlikely group to demonstrate that mutuality in ministry is possible. Often, our culture tends to focus only on the losses and depreciation of old age. Economically, in terms of the relationship Of expenditure to production, the aged person is viewed as Acts 20:35 346 Towards Mutuality in Ministry / 347 a liability. From the viewpoint of the dominant values of medicine, the process of human aging is considered to be totally negative. Moreover, the experiences of many people attest to the losses of aging: loss of income, loss of role, loss of status, loss of affection, loss of competency, loss of power-- to name a few.2 .Certainly, the elderly seem to be a group with serious needs, and meeting these needs can become an all encompassing task. However, to look only at the negative aspects of aging and to focus solely on the needs of the aged, starts us ministers on the road to that dualistic l-as-opposed- tozyou mentality. If mutuality is to be a possibility, we must get beyond the needs to the person. As we meet the person, it is my experience that we will find that revelation continues to take place, that we can receive. "What we like best about your visits, Sally, is that they help us to remember." This comment of one of our parishioners personalized what Becker describes as the special function of the pastoral minister, that is . to "bring up to date," so to speak, the treasury of accepting relationships in the life of the older person. The personal relationships which the pastor activates in the contem-porary history of the elderly will help them to "remember" (anamnesis) the past mercies of God, the past loving, unconditional acceptance of family, friends and members of the household of faith (hopefully)? ~ Becker goes on to indicate that this remembering is biblical in nature. It takes on the import that it has in the Scriptures especially in the Old Testament where "remembering was understood not merely in the sense of recall, but in the sense of reliving, reactualizing by recollection.'" Thus, in listening to the story of a~person's life, often we hear an individualized, unique version of salvation history; a testimony tothe action of God i'n the life of that person. ~ Nouwen says that the "great vocation of the minister is to continuously make connections between the human story and the divine story.''~ Several of the elderly people with whom I have had contact have made,these connections themselves during the course of their lives. From them 1 have learned much about their individual lives, much about the mystery of life, and much about the God who informs all our lives. From them, too, I have learned much about m~own humanity and my identity as a religious. That I would learn about the htiman condition 'from the elderly did not surprise me; in fact, 1 expected to learn from those who had experienced so much more of life~ However, 1 was unprepared for the fact that the lives of the elderly would have so much to say about religious,life, Yet, aging thrusts a person into new relationships with poverty, 10helines~ and oppression, the very conditions to which the vows speak. Thus,. 1 found that the elderly stand with us religious in witnessing to 2 Evelyn E. Whitehead, "Religious Images of Aging", in Aging and the Elderly, Spicker et al., eds., p. 37. ~ ~ Arthur H. Becker, "Judgment~and Grace in the Aging Process", Pastoral Psychology, XXVII (Spring 1979), p. 188. ' Ibid., p. 188. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Living Reminder (New York: Seabury Press, 1977), p. 24. 3411 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 common values. Let us explore this a little more deeply. According to Johannes Metz: Poverty as an evangelical virtue is a protest against the tyranny of having, of possessing and of pure self-assertion. It impels those practicing it into practical solidarity with those poor whose poverty is not a matter of virtue, bui is their condition of life and the situa-tion exacted of them by society.6 Actually, many middle-class people are impelled into practical solidarity with the poor by old age. Living on a fixed income in our inflation-ridden society does not allow some elderly people even modest comforts. For these, poverty is a new experience which can either be creative or devastating. It is creative for those who, during the course of their lives, have realized that the quality of a person's life is not determined by possessions or achievements. On the other hand, if a person's life has been completely caught up in amassing more money and possessions, the poverty that old age brings will be devastating. Those who deal with their new poverty in a creative way have much to say to those of us who accept poverty willingly. These people demonstrate how poverty can open the heart to surprise, wonder and delight in the simple things of life. Consider, eighty-nine-year-old Bernie whose eyes sparkled as she showed me a jar of grape jelly, the gift of her granddaughter. The jar of jelly represented much more than a welcome addition to her diet; it told her that she was loved and remembered. To Bernie, it was a confirmation of the goodness of people, and ultimately, the goodness of God. Faced with this sincere gratitude for such a little thing, I find myself becoming more'and more aware of the many gifts I have been given. Material possessions fade in mean-ing next to such gifts as good health, friends, and joy in living. It is with people such as Bernie that we religious can grow "to recognize, even celebrate, a deeper truth-- that no one ever earns his way, that life's meaning is more a gift than a reward.'" However, while appre~:iating the qualities such as gratitude which the elderly manifest, we must not lose sight of the poverty in which' they are rooted. This poverty is real. It is the kind of poverty that makes three meals a day a luxury and has the elderly counting out their last bit of change in the supermarket. It is the kind of poverty that keeps the house cold all winter long because utility costs are skyrocketing. It is the kind of poverty that isolates because traveling is impossible and a telephone is beyond their means. In short, it is the kind of poverty that invades one's very being; If we allow ourselves to see poor people like these, to meet them and to be touched by them, 1 believe that we religious will be challenged. What the outcome will be in terms of living out poverty will be up to each of us. But the elderly will have ministered to us, repeating the words of Christ: "There is one thing more you must do. Go and sell what you have and give to the poor; yow will have 6 Johannes B. Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 49. ' Whitehead, op. cir., p. 45. ~ Towards Mutuality in Ministry treasure in heaven. After that, come and follow me.''8 Metz goes on to define celibacy:. . celibacy as an evangelical virtue is the expression of an insatiable longing for the day of the Lord. it impels toward solidarity with those unmarried people whosecelibacy (that is to say loneliness; that is to say not having anyone) is not a virtue but their social destiny, and towards those who are shut up in lack of expectation and in resignation.9 ~' Along with poverty, old age often brings a new form of loneliness. Distance from family and friends becomes a foe too formidable for the decreasing energy of the elderly to overcome. Opportunities for making new friends are often more severely limited than before. Ultimately, death itself provides the final separation. With the realization that much more of one's life lies in the past than in the future, loneliness can assume new proportions. Only when they are older do some ~people seem to realize how lonely their lives have been. John, a single adult of seventy-six, admits that now he is fascinated by children. He loves to be with them, to talk with them, to play with them, to watch them. He claims that in his younger days I~e never reflected on what it would mean to "live on" through children. Now, he sees this as a definite lack in his life, a choice that he drifted into rather than con-sciously made. Loneliness has made him a~are of his lack of responsibility for his life and he regrets what might have been. However, his new awareness of the fact that life is meant to be lived with and for others has led him into caring for his older sister who is handicapped. Thus, loneliness for John, has led not to resignation but to service. Our loneliness which results from our celibate way of life can lead to ser-vice also. However, this is different from using ministry to neutralize one's loneliness. Just as John has moved from the experience of loneliness to that of being with and for another, so too, must we religious come in touch with our loneliness in order that we may capture its implications for service. For some people, the lonelines~ of old age is a new experience, one which can make them more vulnerable. Consider eighty-nine year old Bill who, in the nice weather, spends most of his time enjoying the warmth of the sun in front of his house. One day he was approached by a well-dressed man who claimed to be a friend of his son. After some pleasant conversation, Bill in- ViCed him into his home where the man proceeded to rob him. Bill's hurt and outr,age stemmed not so much from the loss of mbney but from the fact that "he came as a friend, but in reality was a crook." Yet, Bill was willing to risk again. He opened his door to me, another stranger, and invited me to share a part of his life. For him, loneliness helped to keep alive the hope that relation-ships are possible. This willingness to risk is an important quality for us religious to cultivate. What is the point oi" celibacy if we surround ourselves with people who protect us from meeting strangers? Our celibacy demands that we also be open to Mark 10:21. Metz, op. cir., p, 60. ~150 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 others in ways that manifest the hope that relationships are possible. Such openness calls for risks, and the elderly who often have been separated from their life-long companions can show us how to take such risks. The loneliness of the elderly, which is accentuated by a new awareness of death, can lead them to greater depths of faith and hope. If the, lives of the elderly tell us that relationships with people are possible, so too do they announce the reality 6f ~ relationship with God. Moreover, this relation.ship with God is not merely limited to the present, but has eternal dimensions as well. The elderly 1 have come in contact with have revealed a variety of ways of relating to the Lord in prayer. For some, recitation of formal prayers like the rosary is very comforting. Others have discovered fgrms of contemplative prayer. One woman, unable to leave her home, said tl~at at first she missed attending church, but then came to the conviction that the whole worldis a cathedral and that God is truly present everywhere. She looks forward to experiencing this presence in a new way after death. For me, her faith~an~d hope serve as a reminder of Jesus' words: "I am the resurrection. If, anyone believes in me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.'''° It is in union with people such as these that our "longing for the day of the Lord" takes on corporate dimensions. It is in union with people such as these that we religious can break out of our own "lack of expectation and resigna'- tion." It is in union with people such as these that we religious can penetrate into the true meaning and value of our celibacy. Finally, Metz defines the ex~angelical virtue of obedience as: the radical and uncalculated surrender of one's life to God the Father who raises up and liberates. It impels one to stand close to those for whom obedience is not a matter of virtue, but the sign of oppression and of being placed in tutelage, and to do this in a prac-tical way.'t Growing older changes relationships, and often the elderly find themselves the victimsof oppression. A well-meaning son or daughter becomes convinced that the aged parent cannot live alone, and forces a move either to a relative's home or to a nursing home. An irate landlord, angered by the low rent an elderly person pays, refuses to make needed repairs. Doctors who refuse to make house calls make more frequent hospital stays necessary. The violent who prey uppn frail older persons can turn a routine trip to the bank in.:io a traumatic experience, and cause a person to live locked at home in fear. It is much the way Jesus put it to Peter: "When you were young you put on your own beet and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.'''2 Recently, I received a phone call from a woman whose children and grand- John I 1:25-26. Metz, op. cit., p. 67. John 21:18. Towards Mutuality in Ministry / 351 children were trying to move her to another state to be with them. "Please, please save me from their clutches." Her cry touched me deeply. Several days later I visited her. The pain of moving, the pain of leaving what had been home for forty-five years, the pain of separating from friends and neighbors, the pain of uncertainty about the future, were all still .there. However, something else was there, too. "They want me to move because they love me, and so I am going," she told me. Love was able to penetrate through her pain and make surrender a positive action. It is from this woman that 1 have learned much about "letting go," a characteristic so necessary for obedience. This attitude does not act as a sedativ~ for the pain that can result from having our desires and plans thwarted. It is not a withdrawal from life, a giving up because we cannot have what we want. Rather, it involves an active acceptance of what is, embracing the pain along with the joy. "Letting go" calls for seeing things in true perspective without the warping that our own fears and prejudices can bring to a situation. When we cannot let go of something it is usually because we wish that it were other than it is. We hold on to a relationship after its vitality is gone, wishing that it could return to its former intimacy. We insist on our way of ministering to others, wishing that their needs matched our own gifts a little more closely. We hold on to our anger and hurts, savoring them, but wishing that we were not so fragile and vulnerable. And yet, the wishing changes nothing. Our former friend moves out of our life. The ways in which we are asked to serve are often not what we would choose. We remain vulnerable people. It is in the difficulties that We experience in "letting go" that we religious are most closely united to those subject to oppression. Neither situation is easily remedied; both requi~e struggle. Yet the struggle itself is not sufficient to achieve liberation. This remains the gift of God. "If the Son makes you free you will be free indeed.'''~ And so, while we continue to struggle, we learn from others that the love which makes surrender possible is available to us. The elderly can teach us that liberation is a real possibility. In conclusion, as I have~ been ministering to the elderly, they in turn have ministered to me in a variety of ways. They have helped to bring about a new awareness and sensitivity in my ministry. I have become more conscious of the mutuality, in relationships, more apprec~ia~ive of the role of others in my life. "Giver" and "receiver" no longer seem like isolated, opposed ways of being. In fact, I understand to a greater degree how "it is in giving that we receive." This understanding helps me to approach others with more'humility and respect. No matter in what ways I minister to others, I am aware that they also are ministering to me. Mutuality in ministerial relationships offers oppor-tunities for growth that few of us, if any, can afford to pass by. John 8:36. Come and See: The "Cottage Program" M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. Father Pennington's last article, "The Vocation of the 'Vocation Father,' "appeared in the May, 1979 issue. He continues to be "Vocation Father" at St. Joseph's Abbey; Spencer, MA 01562. The "Cottage Program" is an instrument of our cooperation in the mystery of the genesis of a vocation that I wanted to share with you through these pages. In our times, as it had been in the eleventh or in the fourth century, or in the time of Christ himself, serious-minded young men and women seek a teacher, a guide, a master-- someone who could give a fuller meaning to their lives. Andrew and John had traveled south, taking time off from their work. They had heard tell of a teacher, a prophetic man of God, on the banks of the Jordan, and joined the stream of seekers heading in that direction. They listened, they learned, they understood--perhaps more deeply than most, because, when the teacher pointed to another, they followed him. And he asked them: "What do you seek?" Ultimately,. that is the question the Lord addresses to each one of us. And the answer we give is the most significant decision of our lives, the decision that, consciously or unconsciously, decides all else that we do. If we listen to the deepest ye~arning of our hearts, we, too, will respond, "Master, where do you dwell?" Master!. Yes. Be our master, our teacher, our guide, and let us abide with you, wherever that may be for us. And he replies, "Come and see!" It is when we experience this presence of God, speaking to our deepest hearts, that we know we have found our Master, our Way, our Life. Some years ago I was in Rome taking part in a vocation conference sponsored by the Sacred Congregation for Religious. There were brothers and 352 Come and See: The "'Cottage Program" / 353 sisters, priests and lay religious from many nations taking part in the conference. One of the modern features of this conference was that each par-ticipant was :free to speak in his or her own language. One evening in the course of the program we had a question box. Archbishop Paul Philippe, the Secretary of the Congregation, was presiding, reading out the questions found in the box, and inviting answers from the floor. "Now, here is an interesting question," he said. "How do you get across to a young person the idea of the contemplative life?" A little priest from Brazil, a Salesian with an Irish name like McHale, jumped up. In rapid-fire Portuguese he explained that the only way one can convey to a person the nature and meaning of the contemplative life is to bring him or her into con-tact with it, and let him or her discover its meaning, l think Father was right. And I believe that is equally true of any way of religious life or anylife of a transcendent nature. "Come and see." That is the thinking behind theCottage Progr.am. There is on the property of St. Joseph's Abbey (near Spencer, Massachusetts) a small stone house with six rooms in all. It was built in the 1920's, hut the lodge-like living room boasts beams over two-hundred years old, taken from a barn that stood in the days of Ethan ~llen, the onetime owner of the property. The kitchen and dining-room have been converted into bedrooms. The garage is now a chapel, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the 'first vocation director. In an icon over the altar he points to Christ in the tabernacle. Standing in the shadow of the recently built abbey, the cottage offers young men interested in monastic life the opportunity to "come and see." It is usually full, and at times more than full ("full" means five men, but the rooms can accommodate two, and there is also the attic. There is always room for one more!). Those staying at the cottage follow very much the same schedule as the monks. They' form a little community of their own, so they won't feel strange or lost in the large monastic community, but they do join the monks for the Office, the Eucharist and work. The men are welcome to come for a day, a weekend, a week, or sometimes even 'longer-- whatever seems good for them. They are encouraged to think of the cottage as their home--a sort of spiritual home base. They may come whenever they wish. To date, no one has abused this open hospitality. The first visit is usually preceded by some reading about life .in the monastery. Each evening the candidates (or "cottagers," as they are sometimes called) gather around the great stone hearth for a colloquium or a conference with the Vocation Father, where they can learn of the wisdom and ways of the monks and have their questions answered. In the course of his visit, each young man is given practical instructions on how to do spiritual or faith reading and how to meditate. If he already has a method of meditation which has proved fruitful for him, he is encouraged to continue in it. If it is one learned from an Eastern master, he is helped to see how to place it in a Christian framework so as to open it to the Spirit, to faith, 354 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 and to love, so that it can truly be prayer. Before he leaves, the candidate is asked to formulate his own rule of life and to go over it with the Vocation Father. Our method for this is simple: After reflecting prayerfully on l Corin-thians 2, the candidate takes four sheets of paper. On the first; he tries to ex-press as succintly as he can the present goals of his life as he sees them. On the second, he lists as fully as possible the things he has to do to attain these goals. On the third, he lists the things he sees have been preventing him from moving toward his objectives. And, finally, on the fourth, he formulates a daily pro-gram for himself, and also a weekly and monthly schedt~ie of particulai: events.* This gives the candidate a concrete, practical support for bringing into his everyday life something of what he has learned and experienced as he shared the monks' life accordin.g to their Rule. Such an experience helps the young man to recognize and foster' the grace of vocation he is receiving. In some chses, it may be a long time before an individual can enter the monastic community. The qottage, though, already gives him a sense that in some way he already belongs, that he has his place in the monastery and a'spiritual father who cares for him. In some cases, the cottage experience puts the young man in touch with the contemplative dimen-sion of his life and shows him how to develop it, even as he moves on to some other vocation. It is not as easy for active religious communities to provide a Cottage Program as it is for monastic communities whose life is centered in a stable fashion in one place. But it is not impossible, and I think it can be, in some way or form, very useful. Let me suggest what I think could be an ideal form for an active religious institute. Obviously, the ideal always has to be adapted as it finds its ieal incarnations. It has been my experience over the years that there are a significant number of active religious who feel the call to a more contemplative form of life, either on a temporary or a permanent basis. It seems sad that they must, in most cases, think of going outside their own communities to realize this. :Far better would it be I think, if, ea~:h province or congregation had its own contem-plative house or house of prayer. Here a core group of members, committed for varying periods of time, could live the spiritual dimension of the particular charism of the community in a fuller way, and devote time.to a deeper study of the institute's proper ~:harism. It would be a place where the other members of the community could come, for days of recollection or longer retreats, to get more deeply in touch with their shared charism, their own deepest spirit. Such a house of prayer or contemplative center would, of cours~e, form a very precious and enriching adjunct for the novitiate and house of formation. It could also greatly encourage and inspire the retirement community as the seni6r members live out their life commitment in a more c0nte.mplative way. Here, though, I am thinking of such a house as a context within which the o *For a fuller treatment of this method, see°the Epilogue of my book, Daily We Touch Hhn. Come and See: The "'Cottage Program'" / 355 vocation father or mother could offer the ministry of hospitality. The aspirants would be able to perceive in the core group,a good expression of the spiritual and communal aspects of the life of that community. It is precisely an attraction to these aspects that often leads ~ oung men and women to explore the possibility of living out their commitment to Christ and his Body in a religious community. There would always be a group of professed religiou~ there with whom the candidates could pray and work. These would normally be members more reflectively conscious of the charism of their community, of their own participation in the grace of the founder. And so they would be able to help the aspirants to identify the grace stirring in their own hearts. Such an arrangement-- a vocation program within the context of a house of prayer or contemplative center--will not always be possible, or even desirable in some cases. Another alternative for a Cottage Program would be the house of formation or novitiate, if the vocation father or mother could find a bit of space there; a few rooms, for the candidates and themselves, and a common room are enough. The formation team could be the "stable com-munity" providing the lived experience for the aspirants. And these young men or women could readily identify with the young people in the formation or novitiate program. Whatever the arrangements, the ingredients that seem to contribute to the makimal success of such a program are:" 1. The presence of a professed community which obviously lives the spiritual aspects of the vocation., though thi~ does not exclude involvement in active .apostolates. 2. Access to the younger members of the community who have recently embarked on this life and with whom the candidates can easily identify. 3. A vocation father/mother willing and able to function as a spiritual father/mother, to instruct in the spiritual arts, to pray with the candidates, and to pray for them. 4. Practical instruction in spiritual reading, meditation (we usually use Centering Prayer), and the art of receiving spiritual guidance. Merton's little book, Spiritual Direction and MeditatiOn, published by Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, is good for this. 5. A rule of life. 6. An open and welcoming hospitality. We have found that frequently candidates tell others of their experience at the cottage and are eager to have them share ira this program. This has added to the almost geometric increase of caffdidates we have experienced since we have inauguratedthe Cottage Program. There are many other programs underway~in different religious orders and congregations, which include~ one or othi~r of the aspects of the Cottage Program. I do not propose this program as the only way or the best way, but simply share it as one way, a way that has worked very well for us. I believe it 356 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 has been not only successful in fostering vocations for our own community (we have seventeen in the novitiate at the moment), butin making a contribu-tion to other religious communities, and to the Church at large. This year more than three hundred fifty have stayed at the cottage. All have found it a beneficial experience. Each learned at least a little more~ about prayer; about community, about Christ our Lord and his great love for each one of us. Such fruit makes a Cottage Program more than worthwhile. Now Available As A Reprint Celibate Genitality by William F. Kra[t Price: $.50 per copy, plus postage. " Address: Review for Religious Am 428 3601 Llndell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 Vocations: Identity and Commitment M. Marceiline Falk, C.PP.S. Sister Marcelline teaches at Bishop DuBourg High School; 5850 Eichelberger; St. Louis, MO 63109. Clearly we are living in times of crises. There are financial and political crises that make the front pages of our daily papers and evening newscasts. But there is another crisis, one that is becoming, or should be, of great interest and concern to those who love the Church of.Christ: that is the crisis of voca-tions to women's religious communities. " For centuries women religious, by their consecrated lives and devoted labors have fulfilled an important mission in the Church. Will they be able to continue that mission? Only if they are able to maintain their membership in sufficient numbers to continue in existence and so perform the apostolic ser-vices that the Church has entrusted to them. The severe drop in the number of vocations to women's religious com-munities is well-known. It is interesting to observe that both the sudden drop in religious vocations and the massive exodus of religious women engaged in active apostolates occurred at the same time that many communities were discarding religious habits, leaving earlier apostolates for other forms of ser-vice, and adopting life-styles more nearly !ike those of their secular counter-parts. Is there a causal relationship or at least a significant correlation between these concurrent phenomena? Are commitment to a specific apostolate and a readily perceived identity important factors in the viability of religious com-munities, as they are in other groups and organizations? Does a distin-guishable garb help to build an identity, promote a visibility which encourages vocations, make known that a religious woman is somehow different? Does a specific apostolic commitment attract the generosity of young women? Are 357 358 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 external life-style practices related to the number of vocations that a religious community can expect? If the answer to these questions is "Yes" then perhaps this will be instructive in our efforts to reverse the trend of too few vocations. In an attempt to find answers to the above questions, to ascertain the percentage of youthful members' in communities, and to establish a possible correlation between youthful membership and some readily observable life-style characteristics, 1 conducted a survey during the spring and summer of 1978. The results of this survey indicate that, indeed, the answer to these ques-tions is in the affirmative~ The results clearly show that religious communities which have kept a readily identifiable religious habit, however modified, and which engage in well-defined community apostolates do have more vocations. Many have adopted modified habits, but they are still readily identifiable as religious women~ Further, the term, "a definite community apostolate," need not preclude other works of charity being undertaken by the community in response to real need, when the work is not contrary to the spirit of the com-munity, and does not detract from the primary apostolate. The following questionnaire was sent only to major superiors of 300 active religious communities.2 The names were selected in a random manner from approximately 800 listed in the 1975 Catholic Directory. Responses were received from 223 or 74°70 of the sample. Of these, two were incomplete. The questionnaire used follows: Survey on Religious Life-style Practices A. 1. Nameofcongregation (or province) 2. Number of final professed sisters " 3. N~mber of sisters in temporary commitment 4. Number of novices of postulants 5. Number of other types of formation (pleasespecify) B. Policy of Congregation in regard to the following: 1. Is there a (superior, coordinator, Yes.____, No___. 2. 3. 4. .) in charge in each local house? Is this person elected , appointed ., other Other types of local government Are personnel appointments made a) __ by direct appointment.'?, ~. b) __ by choice of individual? c) __ by assignmer~t after consultation with the sister d) __ other (specify) Does your congregation have a definite commitment to a specific apostolate in the Church? Yes , No ? What is/are the principal apostolate(s) your sisters serve? Does your congregation have an official, d~stmctive habit? Yes " , No~__. ' Youthful membership includes sisters in temporary profession or promises and novices. Total membership includes final professed, temporary professed and novices. 2 Very small communities and contemplative communities were not included. Vocations: Identity and Commitment / 359 8. Does your congregation permit the use of secular dress? Yes~, No__. a) At the sister's own discretion? b) With thepermission of the major superior? c) Other (please specify) 9: Do the sisters have the use of a personal bridget? Yes~, No~. a) Is there a fixed amount? b) For what purpose may this budget be used? The questions in Part A we~:e used to provide information about the number of religious, and to determine the percentage of youthful membership in the congregations surveyed. The percentage of youthful membership can be used as an indicator of viability or numerical stability. Data from questions in l~art A were analyzed, and results are given in the following table. Com-munities were divided into nine groups, according to the percent of youthful members: Table I Group 07o Youthful Members No. of Communities % of Total Sample I Over 10% 18 8.1 o10 11 9.9-6.00/o 19 8.6°1o 111 5.9-4.507o ' 23 10.4070 IV 4.4-3.5070. " 28 12.6070 V 3.4,2.0070 29 13.1 070 VI 2.4-2.0% 29 13.107o VII 1.9-1.5°/0 23 10.40/o VIII 1.4-1.00/o 27 12.2% IX Less than 1 070 25 I 1.3% Let us assume that an average of about 10%0 of young members will allow a religious institute to maintain its membership,3 and that about five years elapse between entrance into the novitiate and final profession. This would mean that an average yearly entrance rate of about 2% would be required to maintain a numerically stable community.' If we accept this percentage of new members as necessary for the maintenance of numerical stability in the community, it takes into account an expected loss of 2% due to death or departures. Communities, then, which can categorize 10% of their population as "young," and which also have an influx of new members at the rate of 2% per year, would have a numerically stable, or even increasing membership. If a community can only describe 5% of its membership as young, this would indicate that it has been receiving new members at a rate of about 1%. A youthful population of 2% would suggest admissions at the rate of 0.4% annually. In each of these instances, given the typical 2% proportion of change due to death and departure, losses to the total membership would be statistically predictable: 1% and 1.6% respectively. The same predictability ' "Religious in the World (Statistics up to Dec. 31, 1974)," Consecrated Life I, No. 1 (1977). ' For example, a community of 500 would need an average of ten new members per year to main-tain a stable membership. 360 / Review for Religious, l/olume 39, 1980/3 would pertain to each of the nine categories of communities in our sampling. On the basis of these calculations, Group I would be expe.cted to maintain or increase its total membership. Communities in Groups II find IlI could be expected to have progressively slightly reduced membership. If the present trend continues for groups IV, V, and VI, their membership would probably be halved in three to five decades, while those in Groups VII, VII1 and IX might well cease to exist in about three decades. Obviously these calculations are premised on present trends. Factors, however, coulffchange in the future, and this could retard the fulfillment of these predictions-- or accelerate them. Part B of the questionnaire is concerned with som~ external, behavioral characteristics. The characteristics chosen are different from those usually associated with ~ecular life-styles, and traditionally have been common characteristics among active communities of religious women. Numbers one and two have to do with community governance. Numbers three through six are concerned with apostolate and personnel assignment. Numbers seven and eight deal with the matter of religious habit, and nine, with the question of personal budget. In each of thes~ areas, change became evident after the Second Vatican Council. One of the purposes of the survey was to explore the possibility that these changes had an influence on the incidence of vocations to the respective communities. To this end, the number and percentages of communities which evidenced a particular characteristic were tabulated, and compared against the percent-age of young members each community enjoyed. My fullest hopes in pursuing this investigation were not realized. Nothing could be concluded about postulants, or persons in other types of formation. Responses to questions 2 and 3B, concerning local governance, proved ambiguous, and indications concerning amounts and usages in the matter of personal budgets were too varied to admit of interpretation. Therefore, for purposes of our study, only Part A and questions 1, 4, 7, 8 and 9 of Part B proved useful for our analysis. In the tables which follow, the responses to the various items are grouped on the basis of .the proportion of youthful me.rnbers, i.e., on the basis of how those communities have succeeded in draw-ing new members to join them. Table 2 Percent of Communities With a Person in Charge at the Local Level Number in Group % of Group 10070 15 out of 18 83.3%0 9.9-6.007° 16 out of 19 84:2°/0 5.9-4.5070 18 out of 23 78.3070 4.4-3.5070 20 out of 28 71.4%0 3.4-2.5% 17 out of 29 58.4% 2.4-2.0% 18 out of 29 62.1% 1.9-1.5o/0 17 out of 23 73.9°70 1.4-1.0% 15 out of 27 55.6% Less than I% 21 out of 25 84.0% :Vocation~: Identity and Commitment / 361 Table 3 Percent of Communities with Personnel Placement After Consultation Number in Group °/o of Group 10% 16 out of 18 88.9% 9.9-&0%o 16 out of 19 84.2070 5.9-4.5°7o 17 out of 23 73.9°/o 4.4-3.5¢/0 24 out of 28 85.7%0 3:4-2.5%0 18 out of 29 62.1°/0 2.4-2.0%o 24 out of 29 82.8% 1.9-1.5%0 14 out of 23 60.9% 1.4-1.0% 20 outof 27 70.1% Less than 1% 20 out of 25 80.0% Table 4 Percent of Communities With Specific Community Apostolic Service Number in Group a/o of Group 10% 15 out of 18 83.3% 9.9-6.0% 16 out of 19 84.2% 5.9-4.5% 19 out of 23 82.6% 4.4-3.5% 23 out of 28 82. 1% 3.4-2.5% i4 out of 29 48.3% 2.4-2.0% 15 out of 29 51.7% 1.9-1.5% 14 out of 23 60.9% 1.4-1.0% 12 out of 27 44.4% Less than 1% 12 out of 25 48.0% Table 5 Percent of Communities with a Distinctive Habit Number in Group °/o of Group 10% 16 out of 18 88.9% 9.9-6.0% 15 out of 19 80~0% 5.9-4.5% 13 OUt of 23 56.5% 4.4-3.5% 23 out of 28 82.1% 3.4-2.5% 14 out of 29 48.3% 2.4-2.0% 14 out of 29 48.3% 1.9-1.5% 11 out of 23 47.8% 1.4-1.0% 8 out of 27 29.6% 1.0% 13 out of 25 52.0% Table 6 Percent of Communities Permitting Secular Dress at Sister's own Discretion Number in Group ~o of Group 10% 2 out of 18 I1.1% 9.9-6.0% 4 out of 19 21.0% 5.9-4.5%0 6 out of 23 26.1% 4.4-3.5% 9 out of 28 32.1% 3.4-2.5% 15 out of 29 51.7% 2.4-2.0% 17 out of 29 58.6% 1.9-1.5% 15 out of 23 65.2% 1.4-1.0% 19 out of 27 70.4% 1.0% 17 out of 25 68.0% 362 / Review for Religious, 'Volume 39, 1980/3 Table 7 Percent of Communities Using a Personal Budget Number in Group % of Group 10% 5 out of 18 27.8%0 9.9-6.0% 10 out of 19 52.6%o 5.9-4.5% 16 out of 23 69.6%0 4.4-3.5%o 22 out of 28 78.6%0 3.4-2.5% 27 outof 29 93.1% 2.4-2.0% 28 out of 29 96.6% 1.9-1.5% 20out of 23 ¯ 87.0% 1.4-1.0% 26 out of 27 96.3% 1.0% 25 out of 25 100.0% These tables indicate that the characteristics of a specific community apostolate and a distinctive habit do have a strong influence on the number of youthful members, and therefore, on the number of vocations to a com-munity. To test the degree of relationship between the given characteristic and the percent of youthful membership, a statistical analysis of the data given in the previous tables was made. The usual instruments of the Spearmann cor-relation coefficients and significance tests were used to demonstrate statistical correlation between the percentage of youthful members and .the various characteristics with the following results,~ The correlation between youthful membership and the characteristic of having "a person in charge at the local level" did not show any 'appreciable significance. The correlation was 38.33.07o with a corresponding significance of ¯ 154. This is evident from the data, which do not show much variation. Most communities reported a person in charge. Answers to the questionnaire on this point were frequently qualified by such statements as: "Yes, but not in smaller houses," or: "No, except in the larger houses." The correlation between youthful membership and the use of a personal budget is even less, at -31.67070, having a significance of .203. The negative correlation indicates that there is some slight decrease in the use of the budget as the percentage of youthful members increases. Again, although most com-munities indicated the use of a personal budget, the amount and kinds of restrictions on its use varied from very small amounts for the purchase of small, personal items to large amounts with practically unrestricted use. It was interesting to note that the use of th.e personal budget was least evident among communities which did not permit secular dress. Personnel placement after consultation with sisters shows a somewhat higher correlation, of 60.0°70, and a significance of .044. Possibly there is a ~ Spearmann correlation percentages, based on O- 100%, measure the tendency of two variable~ to vary ~together, that is to show a relationship to each other. Significance tests decide whether dif-ferences between values obtained from the samples and theoretical expeclations could be due to chance. A low significance factor indicates that the relationship studied could not be due to chance. Vocations: Identity and Commitment / 363 relationship between community apostolate and the placement of personnel in areas of community commitment. Of significance is the very high correlation between the number of young members and the existence of a specific community apostolate (90.0°7o and a significance of .001). This strongly suggests that a community commitment to a specific service in the Church has a strong influence on vocations. Such apostolic services were not necessarily limited to only one area of the apostolate. Many communities, in fact, indicated a wide range of apostolic services. But they were community apostolates, and not left to individual choice. A distinctive religious habit is also a significant factor in the number of youthful religious in a community. In this case, the correlation percent is 77.8070, with a significance factor of .007. The most highly significant correlation was the inverse ratio between the number of youthful members and the use of secular clothes at the sister's own discretion. Here a-98.33070 correlation coefficient, and a significance of .001 clearly indicate the negative influence of this characteristic on vocations.6 Ap-parently commun~ities having an open option for secular clothes fail to attract many young women. The characteristics analyzed in this study cannot be the only ones which in-fluence the number of vocations, and so affect the numerical stability of a religious community. Neither are they necessarily a measure of the internal fervor, or of the importance of a particular community's contribution to the Church and the People of God. Other aspects, such as the quality ofcom-munity prayer life, the kind of apostolate, the geographic location,ethnic origin, time of founding--as well as many other intangibles, such as com-munity spirit, understanding of the vows, and other internal characteris-tics- will certainly also have an effect on the overall picture. However, the statistical analysis of the data obtained in the questionnaire does clearly indicate that, generally, communities with a specific and well-defined apostolate, and those which retain the visible sign of the habit do have a significantly greater number of young members. Apparently these two fac- . tors do, in large measure, provide the initial visibility, the instant recognition of "Who We Are," and "What We Do" that are capable of drawing new members to the communities that possess them. 6 The negative percent means that the use of secular dress has a strong adverse effect on religious vocations. 364 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 Since these characteristics, a reasonably specific apostolic service and a distinctive habit (or nonuse of secular clothes) does seem to show such a high significance, it might be interesting to apply the conclusions to a real community. I made an analysis of membership trends for one particular community. This community changed its apostolic thrust from education to an open-ended .apostolate, according to which its present policy is to permit new members to choose their own apostolic field of service. The use of secular dress was also left to the discretion of each sister. A comparison of the membership of this community between the years 1961 and 1978 shows the following:' Table 8 1961 1978 Nurfiber of Final Professed 513 458 Number in Temporary Vows 47 1 I Novices 48 3 Total Membership 608 472 In 1961, the youthful membership (novices and "juniors") was 95, or 15.6% of the total. In 1978, these numbered only 14, or 3% of the total membership. This represents a net los's of 136 sisters during this seventeen year period, a 22% loss. During this same period, 94 sisters died, and there were 80 new admissions. There were also over 100 departures. The major loss due to departures and a decline in admissions began in 1968, when the policies of individual choice of apostolic service and the use of secular dress became effective. At this time, a new formation program was introduced, placing a strong emphasis on self-fulfillment and promoting individual choice of apostolic service and of the mode of dressing. The median age in 1961 was about forty-eight years. In 1978, it had risen to about 63 years. In 1961, about half the community was professed less than twenty-five years. By 1978, half the community was professed for forty or more years. During the last ten years, since the new policies of self-choice in apostolic service and the use of secular dress went into effect, only fourteen sisters made first profession. Surely this would indicate that the rise in median age is rather due to a lack of new vocations, and of departures, than to a ¯ general rise in the median age of the population at large. Further, it is clear that the median age of this particular community is much too high for com-placency about the future. The following table shows the shift which took place in the median age of this community: ' The year 1961 was chosen as starting date because it was the last year before Vatican ll; 1978 is the latest date for which statistics were available. Vocations." Identity and Commitment / 365 Table 9 1961 1978 Number of Years Number of % Number of % of Professed Sisters Total Sisters Total More than 53 18 3.0 61 13.0 48-52 22 3.6 44 9.3 43-47 30 4.9 65 13.8 38-42 40 6.6 79 16.7 33-37 55 9.0 42 8.9 28-32 65 10.7 32 6.7 23-27 78 12.8 37 7.8 18-22 65 10.7 32 6.7 13-17 39 6.4 40 8.5 8-12 48 7.9 15 3.1 4- 7 54 8.9 8 1.7 3 or less (Including Novices) 95 15.0 14 3.0'- Prognostications from this table make it clear that if the trends continue, and are not somehow reversed, it will become increasingly difficult for this particular community to continue its service to the Church, that, indeed, it faces a struggle for survival in the not too distant future. The. decrease in religious vocations is a grave concern for the whole Church, as the following statement of Paul VI in an address to religious women indicates: ~ In truth, here again we have to" make a double observation that is not a happy one. Religious vocations, for women, too, are falling off; yet both the Church and secular society have a gro.wing need for these vocations. This is one of th~ problems of our time, for whose solution we must work and pray? The importance of identity and apostolic commitment in fostering voca-tions is stressed by Cardinal Pironio, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for' Religious and Secular Institutes: In a serious study of consecrated life--particularly in evaluating certain attitudes and concrete activities--there is no doubt that many things would change if we responded with loyalty to this question: "What do Christ, the ecclesial community, and the world in which we live expect of us?" At any rate, there are three aspects in consecrated life which it would be well to emphasize: The Church expects religious to be faithful to their identi-ty, to their essential values, and to their evangelical relevance . Religious are, before all else, Christians, but they are religious in a way that is unmistakably distinct . Religious identity d0es not segregate religious from the rest of the members of the People of God, nor does it remove them from the world; on the contrary, it identifies them and involves them in the world with their own, unmistakable specificity . The loss of identity is one ~ Pope Paul VI, "New Horizons for Women Religious," address given to women religious on the feast of the Nativity of our Lady, 1964, Documents on Renewal for Religious, Daughters of St. Paul, 1974, p. 57. 366 / Review for Religious, Volume 39, 1980/3 of the causes today of the drop in vocations to consecrated life. When an institute's iden-tity disappears, or is jeopardized, it is only logical for young people to lose their en-thusiasm and become disoriented. Being faithful to one's self is therefore to take on a strong commitment with God and with men. it is the essence of our vocation, and of our consecration, and of our mission.~ I The words of our Holy Father, John Paul II, spoken to mothers general on November 16, 1978, just one month after his election, are particularly significant: And if your consecration to God is really such a deep reality, it is not unimportant to bear permanently its exterior sign which a simple and suitable habit constitutes; it is the means to remind yourse!ves constantly of your commitment which contrasts strongly with the spirit of the world; it is a silent, but eloquent testimony that our secularized world needs to find on its way, as many Christians, moreover, desire. 1 ask you to turh this over carefully in your minds. '° This study of external behavioral characteristics as related to vocations is an attempt to contribute to a serious study of possible causes for the evident decline in the number of religious vocations to active communities of women in the United States. While it is true that this is only part of the total picture, it is hoped that a spirit of openness would encourage communities to consider seriously the impact of these external behavior patterns on the perception of what religious life is all about. The interior spirit of a community is of the ut-most importance, but the external manifestation of that spirit of dedication, the willingness to be recognized by a religious habit and the having of a specific apostolic commitment to the service of Christ in the Church and the world is also important. These externals advertise for all to see: "We are religious! We do believe that our.being and our service are essential to our specifically religious witness." 9 Eduardo Cardinal Pironio, "Th~ Joy of Fidelity," Consecrated Life Ill No. ~, 1979. ,o Pope John Paul 11, "Be True Daughters~ of the Church, Not Orily in Words But in Deeds," Strain Forward, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 1979. How About a Semi-Sermon Sometime? M. Eucharista Ward, O.S.F. Sister Eucharista teaches at St. Ladislaus Higl~ School; 2697 Caniff Ave.; Hamtramck, M 148212. It was hard to imagine how God could add to a spiritual nurturing that for ten years had seemed almost the equivalent of hothouse conditi

Issue 12.2 of the Review for Religious, 1953. ; The .Summa, t:or $is :ers Sister Mary Jude, O.P. EVERY good religious longs to perfect herself1 in the technique of that most divine of occupations--the salvation of souls. To that end vacations are sacrificed for "higher studies," precious holidays are spent attending workshops and teachers' meetings, and "free" time is consumed directing co-curricular activities. In this never-ending process the simple religious, as~well as superiors, super-visors, and superintendents may wonder whether they are not losing their perspective, whether the tail is 'not' wagging the dog. Those in authority repeatedly warn the Sister about the "danger" of studies, until she is given the impression that learning is some kind of neces-sary evil, and a uniyersity, an unavoidable occasion of sin. .Although no good religious has entered the convent with the idea of becoming merely a high-powered schoolteacher (or nurse of social worker), by the end of her first year of teaching she finds her-self involved in a complex system of aims and methods, classroom' management and educational devices. If she has time to think, she wonderswhere it all fits in with her longing to, be absorbed in Jesus Christ. The "points" at meditation, the spiritual reading books in the community bookcase, and conferences and retreats are lavish with warnings of all kinds. Sister ~an never say she has not been told the r'ight thing to do, but has anyone ever taught her how? , She marvels afresh at the insight of Pope Pius XII in his Holy Year message to religious: "To harmonize your~exterior work with your spiritual life and to establish a proper balance between the two." The Holy Father knows exactly how she feels. How is this to be accomplished? Sister must teach English and history this year (next year it may be typing and music) the while she longs to make her pupils understand, "If thou didst know the gift of God. the height and deptl'J of Christ's love, the riches of the glory of His in-heritance in the saints." Instead Sister must drill on the rules for capitalization and ex-pound the Monroe Doctrine. In some high schools priests have taken over the teaching of religion. Realizing the importance of training leaders in the secular branches of learning a.ccording t6 Catholic prin- 1The article is. directly concerned with teaching Sisters. But what is said applies equally to teaching Brothers. as well as to religious engaged in social work, nursing, ~7 SISTER MARY JUDE Re~ieu~ [or Religlous ciples, Sister attempts to assimilafe and o~ientate the subject and the child Godward., She suspects that Father bas been given the easier task--that of teaching'religion as religion. Community officials, becoming apprehensive at stories of .Sisters who have lost their vocations or become worldly-minded in pursuit ~f degrees, frequently react by reducirig to a minimum the number of " Sisters engaged in graduate studies, if this reT, ults in a loss of educa-tional standards to their community, many mistresses of studies con-elude that this is the price that must be paid for maintaining the ligious spirit. Unhappily they can neither foresee nor measure in their lifetime the intellectual stagnation effected by this policy. If the senior memb,,er~ .of the congregation remember their own more leisurely days, when summertime meant rest and relaxation: when daily preparation did not include the breadth of background iequired today; when children came to school with respect for au-thority already inculcated at home; when even the lengthier noon period with no police duty allowed sufficient time for slackening emotional tensions and regaining spiritual tranquility; if these thirsts are remembered, they are never brought up in accounts of "the good old days." With higher studies made the privilege of a chosen f~w instead of the constitutional obligation of all, superiors become fearful lest the ~ubjects singled out grow proud. They reason that it is the fault of " the studies if Sisters so favored become complacent. Meanwhile, Sis-ters, being human, continue to substitute emotionalism for true piety and to confuse devotion with devotions. Honor to the Mother of God is frequently a medley of classroom'May-altars and Sodality "activities" fondly imagined to be Catholic Action. On th~ Blessed Virgin's fulness of grace or her other prerogatives they do not expa-tiate much, because they do not know too much about Mariology. Sisters wonder why their students do not turn-out better, why so little that is taught in religion class carries over to daily life. When promising'pupils marry outside the Church or disgrace their faith by misdeeds in public life or in the underworld, their former teachers are bewildered. Have they not done all they can? Have they? Does even Sister's prize pupil know how precious grace really is? Does Sister herself have a proper appreclatlon of what it means to be a member of the Mystical Body of Christ? Has she ever put across to her pupils the beauties of a baptized soul strengthened by. confirma-tion, purified by penance, perfected by the Holy Eucharist, and Mar~h, 1953 .'i SUMMA FOR SISTERS adorned by the gifts of the Holy Spirit? If sl~ has, then Johnny will seek h married partner who will aid in his slSiritual development and will not establish his marriage merely oh emotional grounds. How can Sister teach these things, if she has never been taught them'herself? She has tried to teach children to develop will power, but how well has she emphasized the role of grace in r~sisting temp-tation? How many of her charges know that the grace, of God is theirs for the asking? Or instead have they been. thoroughly indoc-trinated with the idea that the'Jr Guardian Angel is on their right side and the devil on their left? What do they know of the life of grace within themselves? How many children and adults confuse sensible consolation and devotion? lk~ost,Catbolics think that priests and Sisters live in a semi-ecstatic state in which prayer is a series of thrills. They are. consequently, the more horrified when they discoverthat Father and Sister are human. Sister,is such a good teacher that she can mak~ even world history the most gripping subject in the curriculum. She can fiave her pupi_Is laughing merrily at the nineteenth century theory of spontaneous generation.of life. Do any of them know that it is a greater thing for God to raise a soul from mortal sin than to breathe life into a corpse? How different would be her pupils' attitude on leaving the confessional if they believed that they could no more restore grace to their own souls than bring themselves back to life.?_. They are taught to make an act of thanksgiving after confession. Have they ever been "given reasons for awe and wonder at God's mercy in the sacrament of penance? All the dislocations and chaos of the past years have had tre-mendous impact in the classroom. To analyze their cause is not our purpose here. The Korean War and television .are but ancillary to the mental dissipatio.n which teachers must combat. The young peo-ple of today are the offspring of the "Fla'ming Youth" generation .of the 1920's. Greater and " heavier tasks are being placed upon the school. Even so delicate and personal a matter as sex instruction is shirked by parents. Respect for authority is not only not inculc'ated at home; but it is denied to the teache.r,by mother and father.' , Like St. Thomas Aquinas the Sister must accept people as they are. A religious cannot right every wrong in the world, much as she would like to. She must start with that portion of the Lord's vine-yard which the will of God has assigned to her. She does no.t con, clude that the soil is bad becatise she finds weeds thriving in it. Be- SISTER MARY JUDE Re~iew for Religious cause there is so much to be overcome Sister must be equipped with a knowledge of sacred science before she can start to put things in di-vine order. Because the problem is of such complexity, Sister must first see things as God sees them. This wisdom can come from a study of the Summa Theologica. Time was when those entrusted with forming educational poli-cies of communities would have ridiculed the idea of theology for Sisters. Today, however, with the movement of theology for the laity sweeping the country as it has in the last fifteen, years, with* the butcher, the baker, and the candlestickmaker enthusiastically ~d[scus-sing their ultimate end and distinguishing between the moral and in-tellectual virtues at study ,clubs, no excuse is needed for a study of divine trtith by those whose life is dedicated to God by public pro-fession. No longer do people consider the study of theology a pre-requisite only for those who hear confessions. I~ she is going to God-center the'life of her students, a Sister must know. the science of God. "This is eternal life : That they may know thee. the only true God, and Jes~s Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John, 17:3). In order to convince her pupils of the very purpose of their existence she must first develop within herself a reasoned conviction and understanding of the great mysteries of faith. She must learn to distinguish emotionalism from true love of God, and yet evaluate the place of the emotions in the spiritual life. To meet ,the intellectual needs of th~ mid-twentieth centt~ry a scientific knowledge of God is needed. Unless Sister herself believes that "the least knowledge of divine things is greater than hny amount of knowledge about material, things," she will lose ground. Anyone who puts a degree in chemistry, or language, credits in litera-ture or education before a deeper knowledge, of God cannot be suc-cessful in connecting the life of the day and the life of God within the human soul. She is laboring "for the roost thaf perishes," and not for "that which endureth unto everlhsting life." Teaching, according to Saint Augustine, is the highest form of charity. For the religious teacher, then, the study and quest of wis-dom for the development of her vocation is absolutely necessary. Study undertaken for love of God increases her sanctity. The holier she, becomes, the greater is herdesire for a kngwledge of truth. Be-cause in the convent cemetery there lie the remains of Sisters who achieved sanctity without the study of theology, it does not follow that Sister Anno Domini does not need theology. To those who had 60 March, 1953 SUMMA FOR SISTERS not the opportunity for the study of theolo~gy God undoubtedly supplied. He fits each one with the grace needed for the task He wishes her to do. Theology was not ava~labie for those Sisters, nor had they the same problems to face that the Sister of 1953 has: St~ch an excuse will not hold today. The separation of study from. prayer is not a new problem. But the brilliant patron of Catholic schools has left a method by which study can be employed to direct the interior life to God. St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica has synthesized the whole rela-tionship 'between God and man in the most perfect harmony. Courses in the Summa Theologica have been opened for Sisters at various centers. Seven of these summer schools'stem from the one at Provi-dence College, Providence, Rhode Island, where the" Summa is stud-ied article by article in courses specially adapted to religious women. Other schools use Father Walter Farrell's Companion to the Summa as a text and the great classic itself as a reference. In accord with the spirit of Saint Thomas and in fulfillment of the spirit of the Do-minican Order the spiritual formation of the religious teachers at-tending Providence College transcends the intellectual. Otherwise the real purpose of the stud~ of theology would be subverted. There is not a mother gener~l anywhere who would grope for an answer if asked whether she would rather gend but in September good religious or good teachers. However~ the study of theology on a graduate level, although enthusiastically endorsed by all the Sisters who have t~iken the courses, is not yet as widespread as it should be. Many consider other educational requirements more pressing. That these members of rel.igious communities may eat their cake and have it too--with icing--Providence College also offers a course in the Summa and additional intensive study of special questions with a master's degree in religious education upon its completion. Theology is the antidote for those who fear that higher studies will~make the Sisters proud, just as it is the preventative for worldli-ness in secular subjects. No one who has learned the Catholic teaching on grace: thai it is "God Who moves in you both to will and to accomplish;" that you cannot even want to be good unless God gik, es you the grace bf that holy desire; no one who has learned the glories of the gifts and fruits in- the soul can find it in her heart to be proud. A man must walk to God by steps of the will, but the mind must tell him tb Whom beis walking and what road he should take. 61 SISTER MARY JUDE Review [or Religious The mind was created for truth, the' will for good. To know the truth and to choose the good a man must have grace. "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God" (II Cor. 3:5). Humility, St. Thomas teaches, is truth. A distinctive phenomenon of the "active" orders today is the !number of religious seeking to change to a p'urely~contemplative life. Although their final profession is far enough behind them that they should have arrived at some proficiency in the delicate balance between praye.r and work, they now seek to transfer to a cloister. While God. for His own reasons may thus call a Sister, such a voca-tion is unusual. Eor every Sister who makes such a change there are many who for a variety,of reasons never effect the transit. They ar-dehtly desire this transit because they, presume it will bring closer union with God. The Sister who would exchange classroom or hos-pital corridor for cloister, has not yet been brought to a realization of the fulness of her vocation. She is willing to settle for less than th~ overflow of contemplation which needs to find an outlet in lifting her neighbor to God. The author of the.Summa, a high-octane teacher if ever there was one, could, without diminishing any of the power of his spiritual life, give himself to the service of his neighbor, for his compass was ever pointed toward truth. Thomas of Aquin had a list of accom-plishments no superior would dare .assign one person today. He t~ught school, preached, wrote something like 36 volumes, carried on an enormous corresponder~ce, traveled back and forth a~ross Eu- ¯ rope on foot several times and was at every'one's beck'and call. The: religious who resents teachers' meetings which take 'up her valuable time can recall the Angelic Doctor laying down fiiS pen in the middle of an article ("Just when I 'got a good start!") when summoned by the Pope to a General Council. To 'the man who was to become the Patron of C;itholic Schools, action and contemplation were inter- 'woven, interdependent. "Goodness diffuses itself," St. Thomas wrote, and the religious woman who has enough spirituality~will externalize her love of God no matter what she is teaching, which--if her congregation runs true to form--will be something outside her "teaching field." If a Sis-ter's community'has been progressive enough to send her to on.e of 'the summer schools of sacred theology for religious women, she has a lever which can move the dead weight of secula.rism considered l~y 62 , March, 1953 SUMMA FOR SISTERS the Bishops of the United States as l~he number one problem. Be she art or music instructor, baby teacher or cbllege professor, she needs the lever of theology. With ,Thomistic thoroughness and spiritual benefit both to herself and her pu.pils the religious who has met and mastered the order and harmony of the Summa Theologica can fit the most important thing~ in life intb her curriculum. Observant of the world's needs but not preoccupied by them, a Sister who has studied theology can immerse herself in algebra and chemistry without fear of losing the sense of the presence of God. In Him she will live and move and have h~r convent and school life. She will share with her pupils the fruit~ of her contemplation, be it in her presentation, of invertebrates or by .means of geometry theorems worked out in units and lesson plans. After a study of the Summa Sister reaches her peak performance. She can teach about God through, every medium because she has first learned to know God herself. Thrilled as by high altitudes, Sister has become acquainted with the science of God, has learned what~aan is, has studied the~ principles of human acts in relation to God. She has an appreciation" of the role of grace in the soul and has studied the life of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Now that she has analyzed the means utkl-ized by the perfect Teacher, the Divine~Physician, the Greatest of all social workers--the means He has ordered for her and her pupils to share His life--now that she. ha~ this equipment, she can gear every moment of her day to the perfect love of God. A survey of Sisters with graduate training in secular subjects will reveal that few have used more than a small p6rtion of the knowl-edge acqutred in Home Economics or Art or Latin at a university. The training in research, the materials, bibliography, the mental con-centration, the technique of organizing knowledge all are invalu-able. These, however, could be acquired and better orientated after a mastery of the queen of the sciences. If Sister has studied only the first twenty-s, ix questions 6f Prima Pars which treat of the nature and attributes of God, hers is a breadth of vision so vast as to leave her untroubled by all the petty things which disturb conventual peac~ of soul. Placed beside the majesty, t~e b~auty, the simplicity of God; what are the annoying manner-isms of Sister Alpha, the inconsiderateness of Sister Beta, the impru-dence of Sister Ghmma ? As~o.the.Holy Eucharist is the great, divinely-ordered means ~f 63 SISTER MARY JUDE transforming.the human soul into the likeness of Christ, so theology lifts convent life above the narrowest of confines, the most ov'~r- ~rowded horarium, the most pQorly systema'tized routine. From the study of the first part of the Summa Sister learns how great God and from the third part of the same work how much He loves her. No spiritual reading book can grip her soul with the irrefutable logii: of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Once these truths have become part of her life, what difference does it make if Sister Delta leaves most of the work for her, or if Sister Epsilon is congenitally unable to mind her own business? No unctuous sermon whose .resultant glow will be chilled by the first reprimand of a superior can fill her with the peace and joy which a knowledge ~f sacred doctrine brings. Theoiogy is thus definitel); needed by all members of our educa-tional system. There is not a Sister in the Catholic Church who feels :satisfied with the results of her teaching. "Ask Father in confession," ¯ will no longer sufficb. Problems brought to Sister by pupils and ex- ¯ pupils by parents and friends should ordinarily be solved by her. .All too frequently.' those turned away will lose their nerve long be-fore they reach the confessional. Many, many people have never :asked a question in confession in all their lives. They would not know at what part of the confession to interject their request for in- .formation. Besides, they feel th.at, knowing SiSter's sympathy and good sense, they would get an answer which would take into tic-count all the circumstances peculiar to their own situation all of which would call for an autobiography in the confessional. As for asking Father outside--oh, no, he's too busy--even though Father, like Sister, is eager to help them. Moreover, there is small danger that Sister is presuming to answer questions and pass judgment in matters requiring.a trained physician Of souls. One of the biggest and surest and most lasting lessons Sis-ter carries away from her study of the Summa is how mu~h she doesn't know! And as she packs a trunk bulging with all the "teaching materials" Sisters tend to accumulate, she doesn't wonder anymore if the v~orld is sneaking up on her, for if she could, she would fill her arms with the world that she might 'give it all back to Christ. IEDITORS' NOTE: Although we would not entirely agree with some points in tml arti_cle, we believe that it calls for careful consideration and perhap~ for some a~o~- sion. Communications on any of the points, pro or con. woUld be welcome.; 64 The blidden Life Michael Lapierre, S.J. T lif~ HE of Our Lord falls into two distinct parts--the hidden life and the active life. The one is predominantly a life o~ .~ prayer, the other predominantly a life of activi.ty. The one comprises a period of thirty years, the other a period of only three. Tile life 'of Mary His Mother'and of His Foster-Father St. Joseph. was, moreover, scarcely ever in the public eye. As .a root supports and steadies the stalk and flower, so they supported and prepared, their Son for His future ministry. So in the hidden life of prayer, penance, and silence led by many in the world today whether in or out of religious orders and congregations, whether with or without vows, we find the root fixed in the good ground by the bank of living waters. This root supports and helps to energize the vast apostolic enterprise of the Church of Christ in the vast chaos called ~ the modern world. It may seem strange, in an age when there seems so much need of active work in the Church and outside of it, that the Church leaves. thedoors of.her monasteries sealed up, does not send a trumpet call to her monks and nuns to rise from their benches of prayer, to doff the robe of elected silence, to step forth from'the monastery wall and cry forth, like the Baptist, the words of light, of life, and of salva-tion. It may seem strange that the Church chose a contemplative as a patron for that most active 0f her activities. For over her intense as well as.extensive mission activity the ChurCh has placed the Car-melite contemplative, St. Thir~se, the Little Flower. And it makes us re~flect a little too when we read of Plus XI singling out a monastery of Trappist monks in the vast mission field.of China for special praise ¯ and commendation. "What can these do in the mission field?" we are tempted to ask. Missioners must instruct, preach, baptize, con-firm, perform marriages,.absolve, be at the ready call of the sick and ¯ the infirm. And how can a monk do this! Yet it is not too strange after all, if we reflect for a few moments upon a few salient truths. Only let us not forget that we are speaking , now as men possessed of the precious treasure of the faith wherein so many things are made clear to us at which unaided reason might~ fumble and endlessly stumble. Yet it is not out of place to mention MIdHAEL LAPIERRE Ret~iew for Religious that¯ pagans in their higher moments did not fail to set abundant stress, upon thefimportance of contemplation. 3apart had her bonzes; China had her monks. , And whatever the motives and intentions of these religious d(votees were, nevertheless there was somewhere.in the depths of their minds, a realiz, ation, dim and distant perhaps, that the better part in the life of man was, after all, contemplation. We are all familiar with the episode .in the Old Testament where-in Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice his Isaac, his only bqgotten and beloved son. It ~vas a hard test of faith and God meant it to 'be so. Abr~ih'am bent his mind to the trial and prepared to carry out God's injunctiofi. But as he raised the sacrificial knife which was to spill:his son's blood upon the altar of holocaust, an angel stayed his hand, saying: "Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou any thing to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake'." "At once ~e see that God was pleased with Abraham's intention. And God blest Abraham because in the strength of. his faith'he had bent his mind to the ful-fillment of God's will, though it seemed to Contradict one 6f the promises a~lready made to him. We are not so familiar per.haps.with that passage in Psalm 49, ¯ where God so emphatically insists through the mouth of His P~alm- "ist that internal holiness must accompany external worship. Here i~ the passage--"Listen my people and I will speak, Israel; and.I Will bear witness.against thee: I afi~ God, thy God. Not for thy sacrifices do I chide thee, for thy burnt offerings are always before me. I will not take a, bullock f~om th3~ house, nor he-goats .from thy flocks: For all the wild aniinals of the forest.are mine, the thousands of beasts on my mountains. I know all the birds of the air, and what moves in the field is~known to me. If I were hungry I'would not tell you: for mine is the world and what'fills it. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls? or drink the blood of he-goats? Offer to God the sacri/ice of praise, and pay thy vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." From this we gather then, that all our external activity, all our efforts ha~'e little or no ,value bdfore God, if our ~minds and hearts ire ,no't in harmony with Him, if we are not seeking him in all "our doings. - We recall too how Gabriel responded to Daniel the Prophet who with prolonged piayer-lnterceded for his people: "From. the ~begin- " ning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am come to shew it to. thee,, because thou art a man of desires: therefore do thou mark 66 March, 1953 ., THE HIDDEN LIFE the word and understand the vision"~ (Dan. 9:22). Because he was a man of desires, a man of prayer, therefore a man with his mind turned towards God, Daniel's prayer is heard and God reveals him-self to him in pra~yer. Many, many tim~s we have heard repeated or have used ourselves the words of Our Lord to Martha concerning Mary Magdalene: -"Mary has chosen the better part which shall not be taken away from her." And to this saying of Our Lord we. may add another less familiar, spoken to His disciples who asked Him why they could not drive the devil out of the boy: "This kind goeth not out but. by prayer and fasting." All these instances show that God fin~Is as much'delight if not more in the 'supreme effort of man to keep his thoughts subject to God as He does in the supreme effort of man to plant the divine truth in other souls. When we bow before the Will of God. when we strive to extend our mind into God's breadth of view, when we b~nd the whole energy of our being into praising, reverencing, and serving God then we are practicing the Apostolate of intention. All*men must practice this to some degree. For all rrien are by -nature reflective animals. They like to turn in upon.the truth ~hich they have discovered---if they are action-inclined, with a vie~- gen-erally to further action: if they are contemplation-inclined, for sheer love and'joy. The missioner and the contemplative each c~rries on a warfare for souls his own soul and the souls of others. While the missioner works in the macrocosm, we magi say that the contem-plative works in the microcosn~. The contemplative finds God in the' depths of his own thoughts, the missioner finds God in the souls for whom he is spending himself. The contemplative is constantly employed in tapping the source of supplies whence flows the grace of God; the missioner ,is directing this supply" to souls. In the redemptive plan of' God each has his activity, each his definite purpose. Nor are.these 6perations opposed to one" another, but rather they are complementary. In the words of St. Paul, "There ar~e diversities of graces, but the same Spi.rit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord: and there are diversities of opera-tions, but the same God, who worketh all in all" (I Cor. 12:4-.7). Nevertheless because we are human clay equipped with senses easily and quickly captivated by creatures, perhaps 'because we are a fallen race filled .with the pride of life, caught by the glory of re-nown. haunted by the eclat of reputation, thrilled to be. in the public 67 MICHAEL LAPIERRE Ret~ieto for Religiot~s eye and to have our name trumpeted on the lips of men, we rush for-ward, or set high in our estimation the active phase of apostolic en-deavor: For when all is said and done, has not St. Paul received abundant glory through the ages for his ceaseless journeyings in the cause of Christianity? Think of St. FranCis of Assisi, the troubador "of God singing his way into the hearts of the sinners a'nd of the poor of the Middle Ages; think of St. Catherine being the counselor of kings and popes; St. Francis of Sales winning the stern Calvinists by his disarming evenness of temper and charming good humor; St. Philip Neri entrancing the stolid Romans by his laughter and even saintly jocularity; St. Teresaof Avila, a real Napoleon in her struggles for the reform of the Carmelites. There is a strong appeal in this active apostolate; an appeal enhanced by the passage of time and by the softening of the cross's painful outline in the blaze of .after-glory. "They are the heroes," we say. "How I would like a career like that," or "@hat's the'life for me." "If only we could set the world on fire as they did. If we could cast our lives in such a mould." The supreme success of it dazzles us indeed! Two Apostlesj bad the-same thought that we have had when they sat near Our Lord one day and brazenly asked Him, "Lord may we sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left in Thy Kingdom? , And Our Lord replied, "Can you drink of the Chalice of which I shall drink?" As they, so we overlook or forget to see th~ pain and the penance~ paid for such renown. The.glory came only after the crown was. won. If we wish to be realistic we must concentrate on the prelude to alFthis glory. We should see St. Paul, ','preaching not ourselves, but Jesus Christ' Our Lord; . . . in all things suffering tribulation,-but not distressed; straitened but not destitute; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not pe~rishing: always.bearing about in our bod~, the mortification of Jesus, that the life Of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies" (II Cot, 4:5, 8- 10). Hear him cry, "Let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, in tribulation, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes~ in prisons, in seditions, in labors, in Watchings, in fa~tings, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in sweetness, in the Hol~ "Ghost, in charity unfeigned, in the wo~d of truth., as dying, :and behold we live; as chastised, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always ¯ rejoicing; as n~edyl yet enriching many; as having nothing: yet pgs-sessing all things" (II Cot. 6:4-10). We should hear him say, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ 68 March. 1953 THE HIDDEN LIFE by Whom theworld is dead to me and I to the world." We should picture to ourselves St. Francis of Assisi contem-plating and praying to God on the lonely and solitary slopes of Mount Alvernia: St. Catherine drawn' from h~r loving contempla-tion of her °Saviour into the world of turmoil and dissension: St. Francis of Sales pouring out'his soul in prayer to God: St. Philip Neri as the "Hermit of the Streets" whose "little room l~ad a bed in it but that was not always used. Many nights Philip stayed,,up praying or wandering in the Campagna. When he did sleep it was as like as not on the floor. He hung what few clothes he had on a cord stretched from wall to wall." (T~ Maynard. M~cstics in Mot-le~ . page 25.) These are a few indications of the lives of prayer and penance led by men and women whom we know to have been extremely active in the work of spreading God's Kingdom on earth~ Their days and hours of contemplation are concealed beneath the radiance of their active lif~. But just as the sun's rays blind us to the sun, so the glory of these saints' public l~fe shields from us the depth and the richness of their hidden life. And yet, as' ~ith the sun, so with them the brilliance of their renown takes its splendors from the ~ullness Of their prayerful nights and silent days wherein the energy of their souls and bodies spent itself upon God and upon His truth. With their whole souls they sought God: and loving Him with all the fire of their whole being enriched by grace, they loved other men and all things in this one all-consuming love. They set in order and tried to keep aright, the creatures in the little world of self before and even wh~le venturing among the creatures of the larger world of God's creation. In all they strove for God--in everything they sought to live the morning offering made to the Sacred Heart. ' This was-the, hidden life behind, shall we say, the feverish activity: this was the wellspring that on no account they allowed to run dry. If in the earthly life of Jesus we find such a startling proportion between the 'years spent amid the hills of Nazareth and years spent on the stage of public life; if ia the lives of the saints we find the sami~ preponderating inclination to slip into prayer, penance, and seclusion, surely we have a truth to learn and a lesson to practice in imitating Him and His chosen souls. The Church, the Body. of Christ, has caught this lesson; there-fore she cherishes with a jealous love and guards with zealous ca~e those of her members°taking Nazareth for their ideal and the prayer-z 69 MICHAEL LAPIERRE ful life of Mary and Joseph. f6r their model. Fbr she is quite aware that they carry on a very vital, though, unseen activity, just as Mary and Joseph performed a very important task in ~uarding, feeding; cI~thing, and teaching the Son of God. For they, walking in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary, guard, feed. c'l~)the, and'enrich today the Mystical Body of Christ. As consecrated workers of Jesus Christ. we need their intercession and support. Furthermore we need to strengthen the life of grace and of union with God ~n our own souls. If we have, a realization of the value of the Hidden Life we shall go ab6ut this with a wil!. To the degree to which we have formed in ourselves a knowledge and a love of J~sus Christ. to that degree even in the midst of the heaviest .and the most annoying work we shall find our minds and our hearts stealing back to taste and to relish the sweetness of the Lord. To Him our desires will fly as to a'harbor and a refuge; for Him our. whole soul will yearn: 'Who will give me wings like a dove and will fly and be at rest." "I have sought him whom my soul loveth . I have found him and I. will not let him go." "I have loved O lord the beauty ofThy house and the place Where Thy glory dwelleth." "How lovely are Thy tabernacles O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth and fain,teth for the courts of the Lord." It is the v,r-" rues of the Hidden Life that we must sow'and make to take root and flourish in. our souls. The better we succeed in this planting the more contemplative our lives will become. And the ,more contem-plative our lives become the.deeber and richer will be our knowledge of God and of His. love. The deeper and richer our knowledge and love of God becomes, the fuller and livelier becomes our Apostolate of Intention. For then we shall move about our daily tasks, then we. shall face our duties, then we shall ac'cept the disaplSointments of each day, then we shall welcome the joys of our pilgrimage, With one thought, with all the ene.rgies of body and soul, senses~and mind concentrated on one object, ,the seeking and the serving of God in each and everything that we think and say and do. For, "Many Waters cahnot quench charity, neither can the fl.oods.drown ,it. If a man sh6uld give all" the substance of his house for love he shall despise it as nothing." ' ' PROCEEDINGS: SISTERS' SECTIONOF CO'NGRESS Religious Comrnunitg Life in the United States. The Proceedings of the Sis-ters' Section of the First National Cgngress. Of Rel!gioUs' of .the United States, which was.held at Notr, e Dame, Indiana, last August, can now; be obtained from the Pau!- ist Press, 411 W. 59tbSt., Ne~, Ysrk 19, New York. $2.50. 70 I:::at:her bler!:ling on I nt:usefl Cont:empla!:ion Jerome Breunig. S'.J. 44~UT do not think you are mystics just because you have read ~ Garrigou-Lagrange's Three Ages of the Spiritual Life," said the rector of a major seminary who had been urging all to buy and read the book. The laudable prOmotion of books on the :mystical life often produces two very different reactions. Some are inclined to make too little of the possibility or desirability of mysti-cal graces, while others tend to be enthusiastically over-optimistic and. after some quickl.y digested reading, imagine they are in the "fifth mansion" as soon as they experience a few moments of serene prayer. In his manual, Theologica Ascetica. Louis Hertling, S.3., presents the basic, element.ary facts of mysticism b¥iefly and concisely, and in a way that 'inculcates respect in those iiaclined to be cynical or slighting and prudent reserve in those who would seem to expect to attain to infused contemplation in ten easy lessons. Father Hertling taught a course in ascetical theology at the Uni-versity, of Innsbruck and later at the Gregorian and Athenaeum Pon-tifical Universities in Rome. He first published his lectures in 1930 under the title, Lehrbuch clef Ascetischen Theologie. His lectures in Rome were published in 1947 by the Gregorian University Press as Theologia Ascetica. The present a'rticle is drawn from the section in the latter which treats of the way of the perfect, numbers 327-367. It does not attempt to reproduce the entire content but rather some of the more practical directives found in the treatise. Father Hertling's ideas about the theoretical problems of mysticism, the essential nature of it, and so on, are not accepted by many other theologians, but still ~they are well worthy of consideration and respect. His practical directions seem. very sensible and excellent. A mystic is defined as one who has infused contemplation, and infused contemplation as a perception of God orof the mysteries of faith wbii:h is beyond human powers. This perdeption is not miracu-lous as the vision the shepherds in Bethlehem-received, as bearing a voice from heaven, or as a prophet's infused knowledge.of, future events:~:. It is not necessarily altogetbe~ new knowledge, bur"it is a new way of knowing as the beatific vision is a new way of knowing. 71 JEROME BREUNIG Revieu.~ for Religious In fact, infused contemplation is in. the same order as beatific knowl-edge, but it lacks the clarity, extension, and permanence of the oter-hal vision. In the natural order, some of our knowledge is proper, some analogotis. We have proper knowledge of what we perceive through our senses. Of spiritual, suprasensible, and supernatural reality, such as, of God and of the, mysteries of faith, we can have only analogous knowledge naturally. But' supernaturally, through the mystical grace of infused contemplation, the favored soul receives more than that: it receives a proper, that is, a sort of immediate, experimental knowledge of the things of God. The definition 'of infused con-templation can therefore be stated: an experimental or at least quasi-experimental perception of God and of the divine mystdries. In simpler language, the mystic might be said to "sense," "touch," "experience" God. In the beatific vision we shall see God face to face, we shall know God as we are known by Him. This description by St. Paul (I Cot. 13) is magnificent and clear, but he does not explain how the finite mind attains the infinite. Theologians have proposed theories, .but all agree that the beatific vision is a~mystery in the strict sense of the word. Infused contemplation presents a somewhat parallel case. A mystic is said to "experience" God, and theologians propose theories to explain this divine experience. Such investigation is challenging and serves to increase the awe of the searcher before the grandeur of the divine, but it does little to unveil the mystery of the divine opera-tion. Father Hertling merely mentions a few of the theories and then quotes from his former colleagi~e at the Gregorian University, the late 3oseph de Guibert, S.3. "Many place the essence of infused contemplation in the soul's becoming directly and immediately con-scious of the supernatural gifts which it has received from God, and in these gifts attaining God Himself and through them His presence and action in themselves. There is no immediate intuition of God but an intuition in ~ mirror, in some objective medium . Nor must it be thought that the object of contemplation is not God Him-self but only his gifts. For these gifts are not only a mirror or medium in which the soul attains God, not by a dialectic process or reasoning, but intuitively, as when I see an object in a mirror, my attention does not stop with the mirror but is wholly taken, with the object that is seen in the mirror." (Theologia Spiritualis Ascetica et Mgstica, 399,401.) 72 March, 1953 I N FUS ED CONTEMPLATII21~I Some Questions Is the grace of infused contemplation ordinary or extraordinary, relatively rare or frequent? Do all have a vocation to it or only a few? Is infused contemplation the normal goal and crown of the spiritual life or not? There is a difference of opinion among theo-logians on these questions. In general, Father Hertling's position is. that ~he grace of infused contemplation is extraordinary and rela-tively rare, that not all are called, and that it is not the crown and 'goal of the spiritual life. He is careful, however, to make proper distinctions on each qiiestion. ~ Is the grace of contemplation extraordinary? It is if understood simply as not customary. But it is not in the sense that it' would be rash to wish it for oneself, to pray to,receive such a grace, to prepare dispositions as occasion offers, as it ,would be imprudent to seek visions or the gifts of miracles. Is it relatively rare? Those who deny that contemplation is rela-tively rare say that all who are in the state of grace possess it because it is the specific effect of the gifts ,of t,he Holy Ghost, which are in-fused with sanctifying grace. Sin~e it seems contrary to experience that all in grace have infused contemplation, those who hold this opinion say that the contemplation in the imperfect is still below consciousness, and, as perfection increa.ses, or as the soul is more and more freed from inordinate affections, the infused contemplation enters more and mo~e into consciousness. After agreeing that infused contemplation is an effect Of the gifts, or rather that it is a special gift of th~ Holy Spirit, the author gives this ~refutation. Infused contemplation is an act of the intellect or~ at least, it is to be considered in the category of actions and not of qualities, or habits. Now, an unconscious act of the intellect, or an illumination of the mind that is not perceived, seems to be a contra-diction. For this reason, it seems more correct to say tl~at the.gifts infused at the time of justification place in the soul a remote disposi-tion to receive contemplation, but contemplation itself is had only when it enters into consciousness. It would not be necessary for the favored soul to know this rdflectively,, for he could have infused con-templation without knowinlg it was such, or knowing that it wa~s something that others did nbt have. The point is, if it is perceived I in no way~ it is not present.] Are all called to contemplation or only some? This. call can be compared to the call to perfection. There is a remote call for all, if 73 JEROME BREUNIG': ~ Review }'or Religious the reception of sanctifying grace with the ~ifts of the Holy Spirit is considered, sufficient for such a Vocatioh. The author denies a,proxi-mate vocation for all. God does not promise .this grace to. all ',who to-operate as well'as they can with the grace they receive, for God does. not lead all by" the same way, nor does He want to.' God can ~ompensate for the absence of infused contemplation by giving :othei: graces to. help ~i'man attain perfection. Of course, 7the man with in-~ 'fused contemplation will advance more easily and can more re~idily advance .higher on the w.ay of perfection. The not-unrelated question of whether infused contemplation the goal and crown of the spiritual life is answered in the same way. Perfection, or. the goal of the spiritual life, is judged l~y the heroic ~,irtue of a man rather t-ban by his method of prayer. As said above, o ] a, man can attain.perfection without co, nterflplation. Contempl.ation, then. is rather a very efficacious means to reach the goal than the goal .itself. On" the Value of Contemplation The author steers a: middle course between the two extremes found among spi~i.tual directors. On the conservative side arethe spiritual directors who fear infused contemplation in souls hndet ~heir direction, are always afraid of illusions, and try severely the sbuls who may show signs of" contemplative graces. On 'the ovef-enthusiastic side are those who woul~l urge a.nd persuade all novices and young religious that they al~eady have ~or may soon expect in-fused contemplation. These 'men are often deceived by the theories spoken of above, such as the universal call to contemlSlation. Even the theologians do not understand these theories as some dir~ectors would wish to apply them, In this way they~le.ad souls, a~'S~. The-resa says; to'intrude themselves into mystical paths where ihey carry on as fools. On the other hand, infused Fontemplation is not as rare as many b~lieve. The highbst levels are very rare but not the qesser grades which are still 'true mystical states. It would not be tOO much to expect tofind one Or 6ther true contemplative in a large~ religi.ous community, and this not only ~m0ng':'jubilarians. Norneed such religious'be parii~ularly conspicuousbr riecessari.ly revered a~ tibly by '~'11. When a spiritual director meets,such a soul, he need not be filled witl~ dismay. I~ is not too urlusual or da,ngerou~: 'Generally speaking, graces are not dangerous. Illusions appear when there is question~ of something other than contempI'ation itself, such as visions, revelations, supernatural commands.' Of such phenomena March, 1953 INFUSED CON:FEMPLATION Father.i-iertling says: "'I would not believe one in a hundred or even one in a thousand." It can happen that one believes he has infused contemplation when he only has affective prayer. But even this is not harmful if it has the effect of f6stering.,the practice of virtue. When the diredtor investigates too much in these matters, intro~- duces.special trials, and especially when he talks too much about them, he may not only disturb but even cause ,the person he is directing to form too high an opinion of himself. The effects of ihfused'contemplation are ve, ry powerful and most desirable, especially when they occur ~ frequently. Success in living a life of virtue depends on,holy thoroughly the Interior life is pene-trated with the truths of faith. A man will constantly practice heroic virtue 0nly when he is completely penetrated with the truths so they.hold sway in his heart and mind over all else. This interior state can be acquired with labor by ordinary means such as medita-' tion. but it can be attained more quickly and efficaciously with the help of thatspecial light sent from above. In" an ordinary-state, the truths of faith, known only analogously and not directly, have less psychological efficacy, and this must be renewed continually by un-ceasing laboi. In infused contemplation, a man acquires a qug~i-experimental knowledge of divine trutbs so that supernaturalrrib: tives have the same or even greater cogency than natural ones. There is real danger when a man leaves the ordinary way iore: maturely and on his own. thinking he already has contemplation when he does not have it. This happens especially when be assumes privileges. True mystics do not have ' privileges." Such a ofiehears that contemplatives find discursive rheditation difficult a-nd. in time. impossible, and mistakenly thinks be is a m)istic when. because"~'of sloth or lack of training, he finds no delight in mental 15~?ayer anal does not m~ike any progress. Infused contemplation is not attainiid by'leaving off meditation: thi? would rather cut short an~ hope whatever of acquiring it. Since even authentic mystics are not always illumined by contemplation,~ they must in the in~erveni'ng time return tirelessly to ordinary ways of prayer. Again, an immature ~eligious he~ars that contemplatives ~re under the direktion of the Holy Spirit, as though contemplation would act )is a spiritual director, and therefore thinks that he'can now act freely and without'the counsels of older me'n. These illu-sions and dangers do not rise from contemplation itself, but from the error of those who do not have it. It can be seen that out-of.'seasdri 75 ,JEROME BREUN[G admonitions that all are called and must tend to contemplation could do more harm than good. Conditions and Dispositions Since contemplation is a. gratuitous gift of. God, it is not easy to determine the conditions or dispositions that would be more favor-able to the reception of this grace. The best natural dispositions for infused contemplation would seem to be a clear mind, seriousness of purpose, and a simplicity or harmony of character. Contrary. dispo-sitions would be genius and a highly imaginative or emotional na-ture. Too much versatility and talkativeness would also seem to be hindrances. In general, mystics are not reformers, innovators who blaze new trails, or critics. A youthful exuberance would also seem unfavorable. A maturer age (after 40 or 50) and a more tranquil outlook are required. Ordinarily, mystics are men with few ideas, but these are sublime ones. Sometimes their writings tend to be monotonous, continually presenting the same round of thought in the same style. Universal spirits such as St. Bernard and St.Theresa of Avila are the exceptions rather than the type of the true mystics. The ~study of mystical theology, association with mystics, and reading their books does not help directly. It can help indirectly by stirring up. interest in the study of the things of the spirit. Infused contemplation is not "contagious." There is no such thing as a mystical movement in the Catholic Church. Collective mysticism is almost certainly a sign of false mysticism. The best deoeloped dispositions for infused contemplation are magnanimity, the spirit of sadrifice, separation from the wbrld, self-denial, and an intense application to prayer. Without the greatest' diligence in cultivating mental prayer, persevered in over the years, there is hardly any hope of attaining to contemplation. The need for chastity and mortification is clear from the examples of the saints. As it is the best way to sanctity, so the religious life provides the most suitable form of life for the cultivation of a life of prayer. Con-templativeorders are particularly.adapted to help their members at-tain this higher state of prayer. It is not going too far to see in a vo-cation to a contemplative order a proximate vocation to infused con-templation. Still, the membe~ of a contemplative order who does not have this conten~plation is not on that account a poor religious, for the purpose of the religious life is always Christian perfection, which can be had without contemplation. But even those who live an active life dedicated to works of charity for others can attain contempla-tion as is attested frequently in the lives of, missionaries. , Xavier t:he Missionary J. J. De~ney, S.J. ALTHOUGH more than ten years elapsed from the time Xavier landed in India on May 6, 1542, until his death on Decem-ber 3, 1552. less than four years and ten months.were spent in the Indian phase of his apostolate, and even this time was very much broken up by movements from one place to another. The field in which he v~orked longest was the Tamil-speaking sections along the Fishery Coast and the southern coast of Travancore, and even there his stays totalled less than two years and were spread over a coastline considerably more than a hundred miles long. Making liberal allowances we can admit that Xavier ma~ have spent seven-teen months in Goa, but these months were diyided over the whole ten years of his stay in the East, and much of the time here was spent in working with the Portuguese and in administrative work. The time Xavier spent in mgving from one part of India to another. usually by sea, certainly totalled up to many weeks and probably months. The remaining time~ includes stays in Cochin (at least seven different times). Quilon, Bassein, Negapatam, and Mylapore. We must remember too that Xavier's work in Goa and the coastal towns of the Por,tuguese was much different from that among~ the Tamils of the south. Yet in spite of such a sho'rt-lived and diversified apostolate Xavier was to become the "Apostle of the Indies," and to be known and revered as such throughout the world. Few saihts are better known and loved than Saint Francis Xavier. and no country is more closely associated with the name of Xavier than India. How did Xavier merit such a close association with India in these few years of work in our country? Since Xavier's most typical missionary work was in the South. we will first consider his work done there. ~ In late October'of the year 1542 Xavier arrived on the Fishery Coast as the ~only priest among twenty thousand recently baptized Paravas in desperate need of religious instruction and speaking a language which he did not know. He set to" work energetically: studying the language, in-structing the people, and baptizing their children. " In a country where the birth-rate is high and life-expectancy is J. J. DEENE¥ Review for Relioious low. we can easily imagine that the unbaptized children who had ~been born since.the priest was last present among .the Paravas num-bered at least four or five thousand, for it is not likely that the unin-stru. ci~d Paravas baptized their children. Besides this. Xavier bap-tized many,dying babies of pagan parents: in one letter he tells us that bebaptized over one thousand babies who died soon afterwards. Thes~ facts alone would explain Xavier's great preoccupation with baptisms, which is reflected in his letters. However. be also baptized great numbers o'f pagan adults, first of all on-the Fishery Coast whe're he tells us his arm often becfime tired from baptizing new converts to the faith: and finally in Travancore where he himself testifies that be baptized ten thousand in one mon(b among a people who 'bad never before been introduced to Christianity. ° ,It is true that Xavier did not requird a prolonged catechumenate prior to baptizing, and that his "'quick" .baptisms of~ pagan adults wot~ld surprise us of a more exacting age, but we must realize tile cir-cumstances in which Xavier worked. When be came to ~heFishery Coast be was confronted with the immense task of instructing twenty thousand new Christians. baptizing their ~hildren. and gaining new converts. Necessarily the instructions had to be on a limited scale. The people were uneducated and Xavier had to rely for the far greater part on formulas memoi?ized in probably defective Tamil. To bring new converts to the same low'level of instruction witb"tbe rest~would not take much time. Xavier just bad to keep working, trusting in God, begging for more helpers so that be could raise the level of all. old and new Christians. and at least he had the cgnsolation of knowing that those Who died had been baptized." could be fairly sure of the stability of his new converts. The oppor. tunism which had led the greater number of these people to the faith would be a-strong inducement for all of them to remain Christians. for this would be their surest guarantee of protection against the Muslims. Meanwhile Xavier would work hard to supernaturalize their motivation and deepen their religious knowledge and their life of grace. ~ The whole movement among the fishermen of Travancore is but an application, on a grand scale of the same attitudes. Xavier had a sudden'opening, an invitation from a grateful local king to enter his territory and work among the fishermen who lived a!ong the coast. Xavier seized the opportunity and went swiftly from village to village briefly instructing and baptizing the people before 78 XAVIER THE MISSIONARY, the moment would pas.s: alrea'dy he-had .some help,.on tl~e Fishery. Coast when this new opportunity presented itself, and'he was confi-dent that new recruits for the mission would soon arrive from. Europe. These would have to consolidate the work. A modern missionary would perhaps be more cautious, and even some of his fellow missionaries;held a stricter view. Surely-one element which we cannot, excliade'in Xavjer's case is the prompting of divine grace, and We ha.ve, nogreater proof of this than the, strong Catholic .faith which still exists among .these peoples. Xavier's work in Goa and the Portuguese ,centres" wa~ cast in a different.mould, but was no less taxing on his energies. The Goa of Xavier's day was far frbm being a model of strong, religious life. Many of the Portuguese were soldiers of fortune away from the. type of family life that might promote even a modicum of decency. For their own sake of course these souls were important to Xavier: more; over, he saw that unless the life of the Portuguese presented a favourable picture of Christianity,.~tbe Indians would havi~ no inter-est in it. So ~a large amount of Xavier'.s attention was given to the Portuguese, preaching to them, hearing, their confessions, visiting the sick and those in prison, using every means of personal contact by ¯ .which be thought he could bring individuals around to'a better way of living. But the Indians were in no way neglected, and Xavier frequently put-aside special time for them and considered it his° greatest glory when he could find time. to.be with their children. - In all these .activities Xavier followed a very exacting time schedule. We know from the eloquent testimonies of Xavier's contemporaries that his presence infused a renewed spirit into the city- of Goa. In all fields of his activity Xavier's form of apostolate was ~tarkly dire~t. He could not afford to spend his time .producinig plays or organizing boys' ball clubs; there was too much to be done. Rather he approached the people ~ immediately off a highl.y spiritual level. He, tried to imbue everyone he contacted with a sense ofthe importance of .the part they must play in the work of. the apostolate. He considered the children ideal co-apostles, and frequently mentions, working through tl~eir instrumentality. His-letters to the King of Portugal find to the'local officials are ferven,t pleas-that they may do all they can~ to eradicate the abuses which are such.a hindrance to the work, a~nd:that~they may render every positive help they can. In his" numerQus.letters to his fellow ,Jesuits working.in India he constantly guides, and ~ncourages them. and we. know, from the testimony of 79 d. d. DEENEY Review [or Religious these Jesuits that his personal contact was a source o~ great inspira-tion to all of them. Even the letters which Xavier sent back to his companions in Europe produced great good for the work of the mis-sion in India, for each new letter was dagerly sought and widely cir-culated in the Jesuit colleges, and they captured young imaginations and set generous hearts on fire. Thus besides what Xavier did him-self in ministering to the good of souls, he gave a tremendous impetus to the work in India by imparting to others some of the warmth of the flame that burned within him. ~ But isn't there a negative side of Xavier's work in India which we should .not overlook if our picture is to be complete? It is very likely that the modern missiologist would not always find~ in Xavier's life the best exemplar of present:day mission theory." We find in Xavier's life no serious attempt at a sympathetic approach to the cultural life of the India of his day, nor do we see signs of his taking those means of adapting his ways to the ways of the people such as would later prove so effective in De Nobili's apoitolate. Xavier occasionally met Brahmins, but from the start he brands them as being "as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found," and when he had one long talk about Indian religion with a learned Brahmin, he considered the fruits of the ~discussion not worth recording. Xavier knew that Indian literature is largely con-tained in a "sacred language," but there is no indication that Xavier ever considered learning this language. The fact that he started to use the vernaculars immediately is surely a strong point in his favour, but we have indications in Xavier's letters that his knowledge of the vernaculars was quite limited. After a year and a half of the two years spent in the South where Tamil was spoken, Xavier wrote, "I am among these people without an interpreter. Antonio is sick at Man'apar, and Rodrigo and Antonio (a different one)'are my interpreters. Thus you can imagine the life I lead, and the sermons I give, since they do not understand me, nor do I understand them. And you can imagine my efforts to talk with these people!" (29 Aug. 1544). / Also as we read Xavier's letters we feel that he did not seem to realize the importance, or at least the feasibility, of influencing 'the lower classes of India through the~intelligentsia. His own apostolate was carried on almost entirely among people of lower class, which can be explained perhaps, but it is harder 'to explain the fact that in his letters to Europe he regularly minimized learning as a requisite 80 March. 19~ XAVIER THE MISSIONARY for. the new missionary to India. Moreover, not only did Xavier fail to take positive means to identify himself with the chhUral life 6f India, but on the contrary Xavier, as we see him in his letters, is thoroughly identi~fied with the Portuguese; he was in continuous torrespondence with King John III of Portugal, and with the local officials, and had constant recourse to the Portuguese for. financial, legislative, and even military aid, nor was he slow to let this be known. He also required that all the new missionaries who did not know Portuguese should learn it immedi-ately upon coming to India. These might be considered limitations in Xavier's approach, but we must remember the sphere of action in which Divine Providence set Xavier's efforts in India. Si'nce Xavier's apostolate was either among the usually extremely poor fishermen or else in cities within the sphere of Portuguese influence, it' is natural that his attitudes s~hould he largely fashioned' by these environments. In the South he was absorbed in work for a people who were in constant danger of attacks, and for the sake of his people he had to be in close harmony with the Portuguese. In-the coastal cities ~ontroIled by the Portu-guese he had no other choice. Portuguese power would intrude itself whether Xavier wanted it or not. Actually much of Xavier's inter-~ vention with the Portuguese authorities was exerted in order t6 keep the Portuguese from hindering his work. Also we must realize that Xavier lived at a time, when Church and State were still very closely linked together, for good and for evil, and that he was working in a sphere where the State was actually willing to do much to aid the spread of religion, so it is natural that he availed himself of this aid as much as he could. This can explain Xavier's failure to adapt his ways to a more typically Indian society. It explains his failure to. consider learning as a necessary requisite for the new missionary. The apostolate of the Fishery Coast and along the southern coasts of Travancore re-quired practical men of robust health and solid virtue; for'the sea-towns controlled by the Portuguese he required good preachers also, apparently mostly for the benefit of the Portuguese, who were, for tl~e greater part, not so'much"in need of priests who could explain the fine points of dogma, as of priests who could shock them out of their attachment to sin. This brief description of Xavier's works helps us understand something of the accomplishments of.Xavier, and also something of 81 SUMMER: SESSIONS Review [or Religious the limitationk in his techniques, but it does not show us positi3~ely the tremendous force which,was Xavier. This can be gotten only by a direct personal study of Xavier. the man. the saint. Happily it is a study to which we have often applied our minds and hearts. Xavier is above all a marl entirely dedicated to God and absorbed in the work of winning s'0uls to God's love and life. Every line of his letters breathes this whole-soul absorption: nothing else matters: there is never a thought of his co~fort nor of rest: always the work to be done: .He is a man of intense activity, but the action never gets in the way of his deep union with God. His trust in God is unbounded i he fears only not to trust. 'Grace and nature gave him a heart with a great capacity for loving l~is fellowmen, and gave him great powers in influencing his. fellowmen. Indeed, although Xavier may not have made much contact with the higher cultural elements in India. he certainly, showed forth qualities which appealed strongly to all that was finest and typically ¯ Indian in those among whom he worked. For Xavier radiated forth a~ spirit, of profound union with God and of utterpoverty and detachment such as none of the Indian holy men could equal, and Xavier's deep sympathy for his people and willingndss to expend himself in their behalf was something unknown to their holy men, but appealing no less s~trongly on that account to the hearts of his people. Summer Sessions At Marquette University, Father Gerald Kelly, S.3. will con, duct a 5-day institute on Medico-Moral Problems, ~dune 15-!9. This instittite, which, covers all the provisions of the Catholic Hospital code, is for cfiaplains, Sisters, and other hospital personnel. Also, this summer M~rquette will inaugurate a program of studi.es leading to a degree of Master of Arts in the_ology. The program extends through,five summers, and provi~les two plans for the Master's de- .gree: one including a thesis,, the other without a thesis. The. intro~ ductory courses will be given in 1953, ,lune.22LJuly 31, by Fathers Augusti~ne Ellard, S.3., and Cyril Vollert, i.3. Among those who will conduct courses in subsequent years are: Fathers Cyril P. Dono-hue, S.,J., Gerald Ellard, S.3., Gerald Kelly, S.d., and Gerald F. Van 82 Mar¢~, ! 9~ 3 F~R YOUR INFORMATION Ackeren, S.J. For further information ,wi~te to: Rev. Eugene H. Kessler, S.J., Marquette University, Milwaukee 3, Wisconsin. The Institute for Religious at College Misericordia, Dallas, Pennsylvania (a three-year summer course of twelve days in canon law arid :iscetical theology for Sisters), will be held this year August 19-30. This is the first year in the triennial coursd. The course in canon law is given by the Reverend Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., that in ascetical theology by the Reverend Daniel J. M. Callahan, S.J., both of Woodstock College, Woodstock~ Maryland. The registration, is restricted to higher superiors, their councilors, mistresses of novices, and thosein similar positions. Applications are to be :;ddressed to Rev. Joseph F. Gallen, S;J., Woodstock College, Wood~tock, M& For Your Inrrorma ion " Scholarships for Librarians Mary.wood College, an ALA accredited library school, will offer three 'scholarships in librarianship for 1953-54 to graduates of ap-proved colleges. .Two of these scholarships are full tuition, $450, and the third; $350. The course of study for which' these scholar-shops are available le~ids to the, Master of Arts in LilSraria.nship. "They are competitive and are based on scholarship and background. Dead-line for application is May" 1. Address~ Marywood College, De-partn~ ent of Librarianship, Scranton 2, Pa. Futuramic Convention A Futuramic Convention will be held at Central Catholic High S~hool, Canton, Ohio, on March 31 and April I, 1953. Religious ~orders, colleges, business, industry, and branches of the service are in-vited to participate. Those interested can write for more information to Futuramic Cowcention Headquarters, Central Catholic High School, 4824 Tuscarawas Street, West, Canton 8, Ohio. Transparencies for .Vocational Project : A priest, wqrking on a project to foster interest in vocations to the Sisterhood, is: anxious to contact any priest or Sister who has a selection of 35 mm color transparencies depicting the everyday life of the Sister in th~ novitiate, the convent, the school and hospital, and in the missions at home and abroad. Write to. Fr. B. Megannet~, O.M.I., St. Patrick's College, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 83 Divided Attention P. De Letter, S.J. ONE of the most common forms of inattention during prayer is divided attention. Who does not know from experience what this means? We go to pray and sincerely try to apply our-selves to prayer. We pray the beads or the Divine Office, make our. meditation, say or hear Mass. But while the deliberate application of our mind goes to and stays on the prayer, another half of our mind, subconsciously or half-deliberately, is taken up with thoughts completely foreign to our prayer, Our interest, worry, preoccupa-tion, Our plans for the day or the week, are at the back of our minds, struggling to come to the fore and divert our attention. Even when we do not. wilfully give in, but strive as best we can, the play of the unwanted thoughts and images carries on ,in the background of our mind like another actor on a second stage. The "intruder" succeeds at times in drawing our attention away from prayer and lessening our application by fifty per cent or more. The resulting prayer looks superficial and shalIow. Our mind and heart seem to have little grip on the subject of\our medi.tation. Prayer is not exactly mere lip service. We still give a half-hearted advektence to the matter of our meditation. But neither vocal nor mental pra)'er is thorough, satisfactory. They do. not occupy us fully. No wonder we feel ,small and draw little profit from them. Could it be other-wise when our prayer is half-hearted? ,Can nothing be done? Is there little hope that sorhe day, with the help of His grace, things maY improve ? Human minds are naturally fickle and prone to divide attention among many objects. This is particu~larly true when they are at-tracted to things other than uninteresting duty. But what makes matters worse is that we train ourselves to divide our attention. The inevitable amount of' ~outine occupation, both Spiritual and tempo-ral, found in regular life a~tually fosters this division. Besides, the advice of spi'ritual authors often tends to emphasize this training for a "double life." Some routine work develops a mechanical Way of acting which demands and generally takes little attention. Without allowing itself to slip into inattention ~hat harms the work, the mind can pursue a different train of thought on its own. How many ideas originate in this twilight zone! While we are performing routine 84 DIVIDED A'VFENTION tasks, oar real intere, st follows up its own spe.culations. In regular community life, moreover, we are positively encour-aged to divide our attention. When we do manual work, we are " to keep our mind occupied with spiritual thoughts that can keep us united with God. When at meals, we are not to be too much en-grossed with the material occupation but "to let the soul have her food" in the reading at table or in pious reflections. We are definitely asked to train ourselves to divided attention. Nor is this practice to be cofifined to exterior occupations. 'When reciting our rosary or saying the Office, there is no need. to try to pay attention to every word. While saying the 'Hail Marys, we are to reflect either on the mystery, on the person to whom we pray, or on our special intention. While reciting a psalm, we need not follow the meaning of every word (who could do that?), but we may keep ¯ our attention on its main idea or on some striking phrase or thought. In that manner we expressly foster, in our very prayer, a psychology of divided attention. Is it surprising that something similar happens when we do not look for it and wish to give ourselves fully to prayer. After developing the habit of dividing our attention, both outside of and during prayer, we must not be surprised to find the habit coming into play even when we are not planning on it. Obviously, divided attention is not all wrong. We cannot help dividing our attention. A spiritual life that is not confined to chapel or prie-dieu but penetrates into our day's work is not possible with-out it. The spiritual advice we are given about attenti6n in spiritual and temporal duties is certainly right. We do ~ell in following it. There is nothing wrong with that divided attention which we foster deliberately. It is a means of saturating our action in contemplation, of making our vocal prayer approach ever closer to mehtal prayer. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the habit of deliberately dividing our attention is not without harmful consequences. We suffer from these when we turn our minds to set period~ of prayer. The habit is prone to act in an indeliberate manner. Such is the mechanism of every habit or second nature. This may evidently hinder our pur-poseful action. Trained to divide their application, our minds often do 'so spontaneously just when we wish to concentrate on one sub-ject. A special effort is required, to counteract this natural and de-veloped propensity. To know ,the factor~ that favor the indeliberate activity of the divided-attention habit is the first step we can take to oppose them 85 'P. DE L~TTER Review ~,or Religious effectively and neutralize their influence., The~se may be divided into three groups: affections that occupy one's emotional powers, such as, desire and hope, fear and anxiety: thoughts and memories steeped in emotional content: new sense-perceptions which we are permitting or seeking here and now. These are factors to be reckoned with. ¯ The shallowness of prayer that is,caused by the habit of divided attention cannot be remedied completely. 'There is no need ~o at- ¯ tempt the impossible. To prevent every surprise of divided attention would require a vigilance so sustained that it could not be demanded in. our every day duties. The power of the habit can be lessened and controlled, but the habit itself can hardly be rooted out'altogether. We can go far in learning to control its spontaneous activity by fol-lowing the wise rules given by the masters of Catholic spirituality. Our emotions, desires, hopes, anxieties, fears are among the chief causes of the thoughts and images that disturb our prayer. A two-fold effort can check the noxious action of these worries and preoc-cupations. First is the long-range strat.egy. By personal effort and with the help of gr.ace we can train ourselves, to control our emotions. We can prevent them from upsetting our peace of soul. The measure of success in this effort varies for different temperaments, characters, ai~d graces. Some are easily excited, preoccupied, worried. Others can take things more evenly. Not all have th~ same will power~ Not ail receive the same graces. But those called to a state of perfection or to the priesthood should possess this self-control to a marked de-gree: this is part of the vocational fitness and they are in a position to inirease'it steadily. .This self-mastery and habituai'peace of mind is-nothing else than the remote preparation for pra3ier which spiritual authors, without exception, recommend. Secondly, spiritual authorities also insist on immediate prepara-tion. -This consists in arranging for a psychological transition-stage from exterior occupations to prayer. This transition must be gradual, It must allow a peaceful and organic switch-over from the .one to the other. It may not be mechanical. Our psychological make-up is such that sudden transitions c6mmanded by sheer will power or whim rarely succeed. What occupied the mind before prayer stays on and continues to hold us" half-consciously. We must allow the hold to decline gradually. Before prayer we must give our mind and heart a chance to shift from @hat occupied them before, and to turn peacefully but definitely to prayer. To make this mgve :effective, motivation is important. We may find. motives by asking 86 March, 1953 DIVIDED.ATTENTION the traditional preparatory questions': "What ain I ,about todo?" "To Whom am I going to speak?" The better we manage this trari-sition, the greater the chance for success in forestalling divided atten-tion. The same twofold effort for remote and. immediate preparation l~elps to ,redu.ce the harmful influence of the thoughts and memories steeped in emotional cbntent that stay on in the mind during prayer. They are reduced as a cause of distraction by habitual union with God, habitual self-control, and a determined immediate l~reparation for prayer. The third source of divided attention is easier to"dr~/up." ¯ It is ~w~at we'see and hear around us during prayer. To allowthe eyes and ears to prey for .new sensations is evidently looking for trouble. Why invite images to enter, when they have to be dismissed at once? A suitable place for prayer should eliminate most divided attention from this source. It may happen that remote and proximate preparation for pra~,er meet with 0nly partial success, for instance, on occasions of marked emotional disturbance, whether of great joy or of great anxiety" When we have been half-hearted in our effort and are paying the price in half-distracted prayer, can we still do something? Can we go agains~ distractions and salvage a little of our prayer? A: condition for success is to nouce the distraction and to desire to overcome it. We are able to notice it, for our mind.is not fully~ taken .up by the distracting thoughts. We can also desire to remedy the situation. Our very dissatisfaction is a first step towards im- -provement. With the help of grace we can rouse ourselves to effecliive volition. '.The following considerations might prove of help in con-trolling and counteracting divided attention. A.first means is to arouse a desire for,.real prayer, for real union with God. We can desire, or at~ least desire to d~sire, this deeper contact with God. We can express this desire by asking for grace. Unless we really wish to pray, we are not likely to make ~he needed effort. In prayer, our effort and God's grace go hand in hand. The desire must be rooted in the awareness of our need for contact w~th God who.is our strength and happiness. A life dedicated to God has no meaning without real union with Him. The awareness of what we are and do should excite a genuine desire of actual union with God. Aided by grace, this desire should grow strong enough to tin-saddle distracting affections. This will .not always succeed. Our worries may be too pervading 87 P. DE LETTER and penetrating~ When it fails, it might be useful to pray about°our distractions. One way of unifying divided attention is to bring the troublesome care to the fore and to center our attention on it under God'~ eyes. We can prayerfully reflect before God on what worries us, on our plans and ideas, hopes and apprehensions, and entrust these to His Providence. What can be better than this? When we beg Him to enable us to do what He demands, our very worries' may unite us closer to Him in genuine prhyer. This use of our distrac-tions is not without danger. Unless we.be fully sincere about ex-ploiting them, we may be !ed into far-away considerations and for- .get about prayer. , But if we are sincere, and if our first effort in tackling distracting worries has failed, there is a good chance that this second means may prove more helpful. At any rate, this prayer will likely be better than a half-distracted and desireless resignation. Lastly, we can insist on the self-surrender we make in prayer. Even under surface inattention this can be genuine. In spite of some unwanted and repelled wandering of the mind, prayer can really be raising of the heart to God. Prayer indeedis more a matter of inten-tion than of attention. Attention, of course, is always required, but the intention of surrendering to God is the heart of prayer When this is thorough, distracting thoughts easily lose" their interest and their grip. Le[ se.lf-surrender 15e sincere: shall we not be'straightfor-ward in setting aside what does not tally with it? Passing and un- '~ccepted wandering of the mind does not seriously break our contact with God. And the more pervading our surrender, the rarer also and less lasting our distractions. This last consideration suggests the radical remedy for divided attention in prayer. But it is not a quick device or a palliative for passing ill. It is a whole attitude of life. Our minds will easily concentrate on God in prayer when our lives are centered in Him, when He is our all?embracing~love and "worry." Then othdr wor- ties and preoccupations shrink into unimportance. They lose their hold on our minds and hearts. The more we grow in that one iove, the higher~ we rise above temp~ral occupations. That growth is the work of a lifetime. In its unfinished stages we are likely to exper,- ence. the trouble of divided attention in prayer now and again. No grave harm will come from it if we sincerely keep up the, struggle T1fiere are no magic or mechanical devices to rid us of this evil. It the simplicity and unity of one Love which ~must rule our' lives that will also bring unity and stability to our naturally wandering minds. 88 The I:ucharis :ic APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION OF HIS HOLINESS POPE PIUS XI[ ON LEGISLATION TO BE OBSERVED REGARDING THE EUCHARISTIC FAST. PIUS, BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD FOR AN EVERLASTING REMEMBRANCE ~i~HR, IST Our Lord, on the in which He was betrayed" Cot. 11 :23), when for the last time He celebrated the Pasch of the Old Law, took bread and, giving thanks, broke and gave it to His disciples after the supper was finished (cf. Ldke 22:20), saying: "This ,is My body which shall be delivered for you" (I Cot. 11:24). Ir~ the same way He handed the chalice to them, with the words: "This is My blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many" (Matt. 26:28); and He added: "This do for the commemoration of Me" (cf. I Cot. 11:24 f.). These passages of Sacred Scripture clearly show' that our Divine Redeemer wished to substitute, in place of that last celebration of the Passover in which a lamb was eaten according to the Hebrew rite, a new Pasch that would endure until the end of time. This is the Pasch in which we eat the Immaculate Lamb that was immolated for the life of the.world." Thus the new Pasch of the New Law brought the ancient Passover to an end, and,truth dispelled shadow (cf. the hymn Lauda Sion in the Roman Missal). The relation between the two suppers, was designed to indicate the transition from the ancient Pasch to the new. Accordingly, we can easily see why the Church, in renewing the Eucharistic Sacrifice to commemorate our Divine Redeemer as He had commanded, could relinquish the conventions prevailing at the older Love Feast and introduce the practice of the Eucharistic fast. From the earliest times the custom developed of distributing the Eucharist to the faithful who were fasting (cf. Benedict XIV, De Synodo diocesana, VI, cap. 8~ no. 10). Toward the end of the fourth century fasting was prescribed in a number of Councils for those who were to celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Thus ir~ the year 393 the Council. of Hippo decreed: "The Sacrament of the Altar shall not be celebrated except by persons, who are fasting" 89 POPE PlUS XII Revieu., for Religious (Conc. Hipp., can. 28: Mansi, III, 923). Not long after, in the year 397, the same prescription, phrased in the vgry same words, was issued by the "Third Council of Carth.age (Conc. Carthag. IlI, cap. 29:'MansL III, 885). By the beginning of the fifth century this practice was quite universal and could be said to be immemorial. Hence St. Augustine asserts that the Holy Eucharist is always received by persons who are fastihg and that this usage is observed through-out the whole world (cf. St. Augustine, Epist. 54, Ad Ianuarium, cap. 6: Migne, PL, XXXIII, 203). Undoubtedly this practice was based on very' weighty reasons. Among them may be mentioned, first of all, the situa.tion deplored b'y the Apostle of the Gentiles in connection with the fraternal Love Feast of.theCbristians (cf. I Cot. !1:21 ft.). Abstinence from food and drink is in accord with the deep reverence we owe to the supreme m~jesty of 3esus Christ when we come to receive Him hid-den' ufider the Eucharistic veil. Moreover. when x~e consume His precious body and blood before we partake of any other food. we give clear evidence of our conviction that this is the, first and most excel!enf nourishment of all, a refreshmen.t that sustains our very souls and increases their holiness. With good reason, then, St. Au-gustine reminds us: ".It has pleased the Holy Spirit that. in honor of so great a sacrament, the Lord's body should enter the mouth of a Christian before food of any other kind" (St. Augustine, loc. c~t.). The Eucharistic fast not only pays a tribute of honor due to our Divine Redeemer, but also fosters our devotion.' Therefore it can help to increase the salutary fruits of holiness which Christ, the source and author of all good, desires us who have been enriched with His grace, to bring forth. ' Besides; everyone who has had experience of the laws of human nature knows that when the body is not sluggish with'food, the mind is aroused to greater activity and is'inflamed ro meditate more ferventl}; on that bidden and sublime mystei'y which unfolds within the temple of the soul, to the growth of divine love. The importance ,which the Church attaches to the observance of the Eucharistic fast can also be gathered from the gravity of the pen-alties imposed for its violation. The Seventh Council of Toledo, in the year 641, threatened with excommunicstion anyone who qcould offe,r the HolyI Sacrifice after having broken his fast (Conc. Tole-tanum VII, cap. 2: Mansi, X, 768). In the year 572 the Third Council of Braga (Conc. Bracarense III, can. 10: Mansi, IX. 841.), 9O March: 1953 THE EUCHARISTIC FAST 'and in 585 'the Second Council of Macon (Conc. Matisconense II, can. 6: Mansi, IX, 952) bad previously decreed that ahyone~ who incurred this guilt should be deposed from office and deprived of his dignities. As the centuries rolled on, however, careful attention was paid to the consideration that expediency sometimes required, because of special circumstances, the introduction of some measure of mitigation into the law of fasting as it affected the faithful Thus in the year 1415 the Council of Constance, after reaffirming the venerable law, added a modification: "The authority of the sacred~canons and the praiseworthy customs approved by the Church havre prescribed and do now prescribe that the Hol~; Sacrifice should not be offered after the celebrant has taken food, and that Holy Communion should not be received by the faithful who are not fasting, except in the case of illness or of some other grave reason provided for by law or granted by ecclesiastical superiors" (Cone. Constantiae, sess. XIII: Mansi, XXVII, 727). We have desired to recall these enactments ~o mind that all may understand that We, although granting not a few faculties and per-missions regarding this matter in view of the new conditions arising from the changing times, still intend by the present Apostolic Letter to retain in full force the law and usage respecting the Eucharistic fast. We also wish to' remind those who are able to observe the law that they must continue to do so carefully. Consequently only they who need these concessions may avail themselves of the same accord-ing to the measure of tbelr need. We are filled with joy--and We are glad to express Our satis-faction here, if only briefly--when We perceive that devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is increasing day by day in the souls of Christ's' faithful as well as in .the splendor surrouhding divine worship. This fact emerges whenever the people gather for public congresses. The paternal directives of Sovereign Pontiffs have undoubtedly contrib-" uted much to the present happy state of affairs. This is particularly true of Blessed Plus X, who called on all to revive the ancient usage of the, Church and urged them to 'receive the Bread of Angels very frequently, even daily if possible (S. Congr. Concilii, Decree Sacra Tridentina S~tnodus, Dec. 20, 1905: Acta S. Sedis, 'XXXVIII~ 400.ft.). At the same time be invited children to this heavenly Fbod, and wisely declared that the precept of sacramental confession and of Holy Communion extends to all without exception who have 91 POPE PIUS XII Review [or Religious attained the use of reason (S. Congr. de Sacramentis, Decree Quam sir~gula~:i, Aug. 8, 1910: ttcta Apostolicae Sedis, II, 577 ft.). This prescription was later confirmed by.Canon Law (C. I. C., canon 8d3; cf. canon 85zL § 5).-In generous and willing response to the desires of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the faithful have been receiving Holy Communion in ever greater numbers. May this hunger for the heavenly Bread and the thirst for the divine Blood burn atidently in the hearts of all m~n, whatever their age or social condition may be! Yet allowance must be made for the fact that the extraordinary circumstances of the times we live in have introduced many modifica-tions into the habits of society and the activities of our workaday life. Consequently serious difficulties may arise to prevent people from participating in the divine mysteries, if the law of Eucharistic fast should have to be kept by.all with the strictness that has ipre-vailed up to the present time. In the first place, priests in our day, owing to insufficient num-bers, ate clearly unequal to the task of dealing with the constantly growing needs of Christians. On Sundays and holydays, particu-larly, they are often overburdened with work. They have to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice at a late hour, and not rarely twice or even three tim~s the same day. They are frequently obliged to travel a considerable distance that large portions of their flocks may not be deprived of Holy Mass. Apostolic toil of this exhausting kind un-questionably undermines the health of our clergy. The difficulty mounts when we reflect that, besides celebrating Mass and explaining the Gospel, they have to hear confessions, teach catechism, and take care of the manifold tither duties of their ministry which" is more exacting and laborious than ever before. In addition to all this, they must prepare and adopt measures to repel the relentless attacks that in our day are craftily and savagely launched on many fronts against God and His Church. But Our thoughts and Our heart go out most of all to those who are laboring in distant lands far from their native soil, because they have nobly answered the invitation and command of the divine Master: "Going, therefore, teach ye all nations" (Matt, 28:19). We have in mind the heralds of the Gospel. They endure the most crushing burdens and overcome every imaginable obstacle in their travels, with no other ambition than to wear themselves out that the light of the Christian religion may dawn for all men, and that their flocks, many of them but recently received-into the Catholic faith, 92 Ma~h. 1953 THE EUCHARISTIC FAST may be fed with the Bread of Angels which nourishes virtue and re-. kindles love. A similar situation arises amofig those Catholics who live in many of the districts committed to the charge of missionaries or in other places that lack the services of a resident priest. They have to wait hour after bou~ until a priest arrives that they may assist at the Eucharistic Sacrifice and receive Holy Communion. Furthermore, with the development of machinery in various in-dustries, countless workers employed in factories, transportation, sbipping,'or other public utilities, are occupied~ day and night in al-ternate shifts. The exhausting hature of their work may compel them to take periodic- nourishment to restore their energies, with the result that they are unable to observe the Eucharistic fast and hence are kept away from Holy Communion. Mothers of families, likewise, are often unable to go to Holy Communion until they have finished their household duties. Such tasks usually require many hours of hard work. Again, the case of school children presents a problem. Many boys and gibls are eager to take advantage of the divine invitation: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me" (Mark 10:14). They put all their trust in Him "who feedeth among the lilies" (Cant. 2:16: 6:2), knowing that He will guard the purity of their souls against the temptations which assail youth and will protect the in-nocence of their lives from the snares which the world sets to trap them. But at times it is extremely difficult to arrange to go to church and receive HoI~ Communion, and after that to re~urn home for the breakfast they need before setting out for school. Another matter of frequent occurrence today is that large num-bers ~f people c~oss from place to place during the afternoon hours to be present at religious functions or to attend meetings on social questions. If pe.rmis~ion were given on such occasions to offer the Holy Sacrifice, which is the living fountain of divine grace and in-spires wills to desire growth in virtue, there is no doubt that all could draw upon this source of strength to think and act in a thor-ougbly Christian manner and to obey just laws. These specific considerations may well be augmented, by others of a more general kind. Although the science of medicine and the study of hygiene have made enormous progress and have contributed greatly to the reduction of mortality, especially among the young, conditions of life at the present time and the hardships brought on 93 POPE-PlUS XII Review for Religious by the frightful wars of 6ur century have seriously impaired bodily constitutions and public health. For these reasons, and especially for the purpose of promoting reawakened devotion toward the Eucharist, numerous bishops of v~irious, nationalities have requested, in official letters, that the law of fast might be somewhat mitigated. The Apostolic See had previ-, ously shown itself favorably disposed in this regard .by granting special faculties and dispensations both 'to priests and to the faithful. As an e.xample of such concessions, the Decree entitled P. gst'Editum may be mentioned; it was issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Council, December 7-, 1906, for the benefit of the sick (Acta S. Sedis, XXXIX, 603 ffl). Another is the Letter df May 22, 1923, sent by the SacrM Congregation of the Holy Office to local Ordinaries in favor of priests (S.S. Congregationis S. Officii Litterae locorum Or-dinariis datae super ieiunio euc,haristico ante Missam: Acta Ap. Sedis, XV, 151 ft,). ~ In these latter times, the petitions of the bishops hav.e become more frequent and urgent. Likewise the faculties granted have been more liberal, partcularly those that were conferred because of war c6nditions. All this clearly discloses the existence of new, serious. coniinuing, and widely prevailing reasons which, in the diversified circumstances brought to light, render the cdebration ~f the Holy Sacrifice by priests .and the reception of Communion by the faithful ex_ceedingly difficult, if the la~, of fasting has to be observed. ¯ .Accordingly, to alleviate these grave hardships and incOnveni-ences, and to eliminate the possibility of inconsistent practice to which the variety of: indults previously granted may lead, We deem it n.ecessary to mitigate the legislation governing the Eucharistic fast ~to such an extent that all may be able more easily to fulfill the law as perfectly as possible, in view of particular circumstances of time, place, and person. By issuing this decree, We trust that We may contribute substantially to the growth of Eucharistic devotion,, and thus more effectively persuade and induce all to sharc in the An-gelic! Banquet. This will surely redound to the glory,of. God and will enhance the holiness of the Mystical Body of Christ. By our Apostolic authbrit~r, therefore, we enact and decree ihe folio.wing; I. The law of Eucharistic fast, to be observed from midnight,. cgntijaues in force for all those who do not come under the. special Mar~l~. 1953 THE EUCHARISTIC FA ST conditions which We shall set forth in this Apostolic Constitution. In the futuie, however, this general principle, valid for aIl ,, alike, whether priests or faithful, shall prevail: plain water does not break the Eucharistic fast: II. Those who are ill, even though not confined to bed, may, on the advice of a prudent, c.onfessor, take something in the form of drink or of true medicine: but alcoholic beverages are excluded. The same faculty is granted to priests who are ill yet desire to celebrate MASS. ~. III. Priests who are° to offer the Holy Sacrifice at a late. hour or after onerous work of the sacred ministry or after a long journey, may take something in the form of drink, exclgsive of alcoholic.bev-erages. However, they must abstain from such refreshment for the period Of at least ~one hour before' they celebrate Mass. I~r. 'Priests who celebrate Mass twice or three times the ~ame day. may. consume the ablutions at each Mass. In such cases, how' ever, the ablutions must be restricted to water.alone, and mu~t not include, wine. ~ V. Likewise the faithful, even though they are not ill, who are unable to observe a. complete fast until the tiine of Communion, be-cause of some grave inconvenience--that is, because of fatiguing work, or the lateness of the hour at which alone they can receive the Holy Eucharist, or the long distances they have to travel--may, on the, advice of a prudent confessor, and as ,long as such state of necessity lasts, take something in the form of drink, to the exclusion of alco-holic beverages. However, they must abstain from refreshment of this kind for the period of at least one hour before they receive Holy Communion. VI. If circumstances indicate a necessity, We grant to local Or-dinaries authorization to permit the celebration of Mass at. an eve-ning hour, as We have said, but with the restriction that Mass shall notbegin before four o'clock in the afternoon. This evening Mass may be celebrated on the following days: on Sundays and h61ydays of dbligation which are obseived at the present time or were formerly obserged, on the first Friday of each month, and on days delebrated With solemn functions which the people attend in great numbers; finally, in addition to these days, on one day a week~ The pries,t who offers Mass.on these occasions must observe a fast of .three hours from solid f6od and~alcoholic beverages, and of one hour from non- March. 1953 ~ THE EUCHARISTIC FAST alcoholic beverages. At such Masses the faithful may receive Holy Communion, ob, serving the same rule r~garding the Eucharistic fa.~st, but the prescription contained in canon 857' remains in force. In mission territories, after due consideration of the extraordi-nary con(~itions there prevailing; which for the most part prevent priests from v.isiting their distant stations except rarely, local .Ordi-naries may grant to missionaries faculties to celebrate evening Mass also on other days of the week. ' Local Ordinaries are to exercise care that any interpretation en-larging on ~he faculties here granted is precluded, and that all danger of abuse and irreverencein this matter is removed3 In granting these faculties, which circufiastances of person,place, and time make impera-tive in our day, We decidedly intend to reaffirm ~he importance, binding force, and good effects of the Eucharistic fast for those° who are to receive our Divine Redeemer dwelling concealed underneath the Eucharistic veils. Besides, whenever bodily discomforts are re-duced, the soul ought to do~ what, it can to restore equilibrium, either by interior'penance or in other ways. This is in harmony with the traditional practice of the Church, which is accustomed to enjoin other pious works when it mitigates the obligation to fast. Accordingly, they who are in a position to take advantage of the faculties here granted, should offer up more fervent prayers to adore God, to thank Him, and above all to expiate their sins and implore newgraces from on high. Since all must recognize that the Eucharist has been ins[ituted by Christ "as an everlasting memorial of His Passion" (St. ~Fhbmas, Opusc. LVII, Office for the Feast of Corpus ChristL lesson IV, Opera Omr~ia, Rome, 1570, Vol. XVII), they should stir up in their hearts those sentiments of Christian hu-mility and contrition which meditation on the sufferings and death of our Divine Redeemer "ought to arouse, Moreover, let all offer to our Divine Rddeemer, who keeps fresh the greatest proof of His love by uiaceasingly immolating Himself on our altars, ever more abun-dant fruits of their charity toward their fellow men. In this way, surely, all Will do their part, better and better every day, toward alizing the words of the Apostle to the Gentiles: "We, being many, are one bread, one body~ all that partake of one ,bread" (I Cor 10:17). We desire that all the decrees set forth in this Constitution shall be. firmly established, ratified, and valid, an~ything to the contrary 96 March. 1953 THE EUCHAILISTIC FiST notwithstanding, even what "may seem to be deserving of special men-tion. All other privileges and faculties granted in any form by the Holy See are abolished, that this legislation may be duly and uni-formly observed throughout the ;¢ orld by all men. All the decrees herein enacted shall become operative from the date of their publication in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Given at St. Peter's in Rome, in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-three, the sixth day of January, on the Feast of. the Epiphany, in the fourteenth year of Our Pontificate. POPE PIUS XlI Instruction ot: Holy OJ:t:ico SACRED CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY OFFICE INSTRU'~TION ON THE LEGISLATION TO BE OBSERVED CONCERNING THE EUCHARISTIC FAST The Apostolic Constitution Christus Dominus, issued this day by the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius )~II, gloriously reigning, grants a number of faculties and dispensations concerning the observance of the law of Eucharistic ~fast. At the same time. it substantially con-firms most of the norms which the Code of Canon Law (canons 808 and 858, § 1) imposes on priests and the faithful who are able to observe the law. Yet these persons are likewise included in the favor conferred by the first prescription of the Constitution, according to which plain water (that is, ordinary water without the admixture of any other substance whatever), no longer breaks the Eucharistic fast (Constitution, n. I). With regard to all the other concessions, however, only those priests and faithful may take advantage of them who find themselve~ in the particular conditions specified in the Con-stitution, or who celebrate evening Masses or receive Holy Commun-ion at evening Masses which are authorized by Ordinaries within the limits of the new faculties granted to them. Accordingly, to secure throughout the world a uniform observ-ance of the norms pertinent to these concessions and t0 forestall every interpretation that would enlarge on the faculties granted, as well as to obviate any abuse in this matter, this Supreme Sacred Congrega-" .97 INSTRUCTION OF HOLY OFFICE Reoietu for'Religious tion of the Holy Office, by order and command of the Sovereign Pontiff, lays down the following directives: Concerning the sick, whether the faithful or priests (Constitution, n~ II) 1. The faithf~ul who are ill, ~ven though not confined to bed. may take something in the form of drink, with the exception of al-coholic beverages, if because of their illness the); are unable, without grave inconvenience, to observe a complete fast until the r.eception of Holy Communion. They may also take something' in the form of medicine, either liquid (but not alcoholic drinks) or solid, provided it is real medicine, prescribed by a physician or generally recognized as such. However. as must be noted, solid foods taken a's mere nour, ishment cannot be regarded as medicine. 2. ,The conditions that must be verified before anyone may use a dispensation from the law of fasting, .for which no time".limit pre-ceding Holy Communion is set down, are to be pru, dently weighed by a confessor, and no one may avail himself of the dispensatior~ without his approval. The confessor may give his approvai either in ¯ sacramental confession or outside of confession, and once and for all so that it holds good as long as the same conditions of illness endure. 3. Priests who are ill, even though not confined to bed, may likewise take advantage of the dislbensation, whether,they, intend to celebrate Mass or wish only to receive Holy Communion. Concerning priests in special circumstances (Consti'tution, nn. III and IV) 4'. Priests who are not ill and who are :to celebrate Mass (a) at a late hou'r (that is,-after nine o'clock in the morning), or (b) after onerous work of the sacred ministry .(beginning, for example, early in the morning or lasting for a lbng time), or (c) after a long jour-ney (that~is, at least a mile and a quarter or so :on fogt, or a propor-tionately greater distance in accordance with the "means of. travel em-ployed, allowance being made, too, for difficulties of the journey and personal~considerations), may take something in the. form of drink, exclusive of alcoholic beverages. 5. The three cases enumerated' above are,formulated .in-such a way'as to embrace all the circu'mstances for which the legislator in-tends to grant the aforesaid faculty. Therefore any interpretation that would.extend the faculties granted must :be avoided~ 98 March. 1953 , THE EUCHARISTICF.AST 6. l~riests who find themselves in these circumstances may take. something in the form of drink once or several times,, but must serve a fast of one hour prior to the celebration of Mass.:. 7. Furthermore, all priests who are to celebrate" tWO . or; three Masses the same day may, at the first Mass or Masses, .take the two ablutions pr~escribed by the rubrics of the Miss.al, .hut using only water. This is merely an application of the new principle that-water does not break the fast. However,. priests who celebrate three Masses without interval on Chrismas or on All Souls' Day are obliged to observe the. rubrics regulating ablutions. 8. Yet if the priest who is to celebrate two or three Masses should inadvertently take wine in'the ablutions', he is not forbidden to celebrate the second and third Mass. Concerning the faithful in special "circumstances (Constitution, n. "V) 9. Similarly the faithful who are unable to observe the Eucha,. risti¢ fast, not because of illness but because of some other grave in-convenience," are allowed to take something in the form of drink, with the exception of alcoholic beverages. But they must keep the fast for one hour prior to the reception of Holy Communion. 10. ,The causes of grave inconvenience, as it is here understood. are three in number, and they may not be extended. a) Fatiguing wbrk undertaken before~ going to Holy ,com-munion. Such is the labor performed by workers employed in suc-cessiv. e shifts, day and night, in. factories, transport and- maritime services, or other public utilitieS; likewise b~ those who, in .virt~ue of their .position or out of charity, pass the hight'awake (for example, hospital personnel, policemen on night duty, and the like). The same.is: true of pregnant women and mothers of families who must spend a long t.ime in household tasks befo~.e, they can go to church :etc. : b) The lateness of the hour at whicb:"Holtj Communior~ ceived. Many of the faithful cannot have Mass until late in the day, because no priest is able to visit them earlier. Many children,find it excessively burdensome, before .sett.ing out for school,'to go to church, receive Communion, and then to return home again for breakfast; etc. c)" A. long distance to travel on the way" to chu.rch. As was explaiped above (n. 4), a distance of at least a~ mile and a quarter or INSTRUCTION OF H~)LY OFFICE Reuieua for Religious so, to be covered on foot, is tb be regarded as a long journey in this connection. The distance would have to be proportion.ately longer if conveyances of various kinds were us~ed, and allowance has to be made for difficulties of travel or the condition of the person .who makes the trip. 11, The reasons of grave inconvenience that may be alleged must be'carefully evaluated by a confessor either in sacramental cofifession or outside of confession; and without his approval the faithful may not receive Holy Communion while not fasting. The confessor, however, may give this approval once and t:or all so that it holds good as long as the same cause of grave inconvenience exists. Concerning evening Masses (Constitution. n. VI) By authorization of the Constitution, local Ordinaries (cf. canon 198) enjoy the power of permitting the celebration of evening Mass in their own territory, if circumstances indicate its necessity, not-withstanding'the prescription of canon 821, § 1. The common good sometimes requires the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice in the after-noon: for example, for those in certain industries who work in shifts even on Sundays and holydays: for those classes of workers Who must be at their jobs on the mornings of Sundays and holy-days. such as those who are employed at ports of entry;' likewise for people who have come in great numbers from distant places to cele-brate some event of a religious or social character; etc. 12. Such Mhsses. however, are not to be celebrated before four o'clock in the afternoon, and are limited exclusively to the following specified days: a) Sundays and 'holydays of obligation which are now in force, according t,o the norm of canon 1247, § 1 : b) Holydays of obligation that have been suppressed, as listed in the Index published by the Sacred Congregation of the Council, December 28, 1919 (cf. A./l.$,, Vol. XII [1920], pp. 42- 43): ) First Fridays of the month: d) Other days that are ~elebrated with solemn functions and are attended by the. people in great numbers: e) In addition to the days mentioned above, one other day during the w.eek0 if the good of particular classes of persons requires it. 100 Ma~h. 1953 THE EUCHARISTIC FAST 13. Priests "who celebrate Mass in the evening, and likewise the faithful who receive Holy Communion at such a M~ass. may, during a meal which is permitted up to three hours before the beginning of Mass or Communion, drink al~c;holic beverages that ate customary at table ifor instance, wine, beer. and the like), but they must observe becoming moderation, and haid liquors are entirely ruled out. How-, ever, with regard to the liquids whi(h they are allowed to take before or after such a meal up to one, hour before Mass or Communion, alcoholic beverages of any kind whatever are excluded. 14. Priests may not offe? the Holy S,acrifice in the morning and afternoon of the same day, unless they have e~xpress permission, to celebrate Mass twice or three times, according to the norm of canon 806. The faithful, similarly, may not receive Holy Communion in the morning and afternoon of the same day, in conformity with the prescription of canon 857. 15. The faithful, even though they/are not included in the number of those for whose benefit evening Mass has been instituted, are. free to receive Holy Communion during such a Mass or directl~ before or immediately after it (cf. canon 846, § 1). If they do so, they must observe the noims prescribed a~ove, relative to the Eucha-ristic fast, 16. In places that are not subject to the general law [ius com-mune] but are governed by the-special law for the missions [ius.mis-sionum], Ordinaries may authorize evening Mass on all days of the week, under the same conditions. Cautions regarding the execution of these norms 17. Ordinaries are to exercise great care that all abuse and irrev-erence toward the Most Blessed S~icrament are completely avoided. 18. They must also see to it that the riew legislation is uniform-ly observed by all their subjedts, and must notify them that all fac-ulties and dispensations, whether territorial or personal, heretofore granted by the Holy See, are abrogated. 19. The interpretation of the Constitution and of the present Instruction must adhere faithfully to the text, and must not in any way extend the faculties that are already so generous. With regard to customs that may be at oddswith the new legislation, the abroga-ting clause is'to be borne in mind: "Anything to the contrary not-withstanding, even what may seem td be worthy of special men-tion." 101 BOOK NOTICES Review ~or ReligioUs 20. Ordinaries and priests who are to avail themselves of the faculties granted by the Holy ,See should zealously exhort the faith-ful to assist at the Sacrifice of the Mass and ~recei~ve Holy Commun-ion frequently. " By initiating appropriate measures and especially by their preaching, they should promote that spiritual good for the sake of which the Sovereign Pontiff, Plus XII, has been pleased to issue t.he Constitution. In approving this Instruction, the iHoly,Father has ordered that it should be promulgated by publication in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis along with the Apostolic Constitution Christus Dominus. From the,Palace of the Holy Offic.e, danuary 6, 1953'. ~ JOSt~PH CARDINAL PIZZARDO, Secretaql A. OTTAVIANI Assessor. [EDITORS' NOTE: The foregoing translations "*'ere made by Father "Cyril Vollert. S.J. professor of sacramental theology at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. The - translations wer~ prepared 'from the texts as published in L'Osservatore Romano, January I 1, 1953, and were carefully checked with the official texts published in ,Acta Aoostolicae Sedis, 45 (Jan. 16. 1953), 15-24. 47-51. For our purposes a somewhat free translation, rendering the sense of the documents as accurately as pos-sible, seemed preferable to a strictly literal translation.] ¯ BOOK NOTICES Those who want a life of Our Lord that is scholarly, without the more distracting trappings of scholarship, and very readable, will find what they desire in the popular edition of Giuseppe Ricciotti's LIFE OF CHRIST. By means of careful editing the former large edi-tion has been reduced to a little more than half its size. The popular edition has a 70-page critical introductibn and a :good index. A very good book.f0r either spilitual reading or meditation, i(Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1952. Pp. xiii + 40.2. $3.50.) Every Sister will smile, laugh, and cry as she catches some glimpse, s of herself in EVERYNUN, a, novel and. play by Daniel A. Lord, S.3. Written originally for th~ One Hundredth Anniversary of the-Sisters of St. 3oseph xn Canada, the play is ideal for a similar celebrfftion, for Vocation Week Programs, and for private reading. Many passages seem to glow like grace itself. This "morality play" is a tribute and a consolation to Sisters, and should open the vistas of the religious life to Sisters-to-be as well as to others who have to live outsid~ convent walls] No royalty is charged for the productions of 102' March. 195'3 BOOK NOTI.CES Eoer~mun. If admission is charged by those producing theplay, Father Lord asks a gift ~f ten per cent of the return for his work for the Knights and Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament. (St. Louis, Missouri: KHBS, 3115 S. Grand Blvd., 1952. Pp. 162. $3.00.) ST. VINCENT DE PAUL, by Mgr. Jean Calvet (translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard), is a l-volume, well-documented biography, as fascinating as good historical fiction. The many aspects of the saint's life--his interior life, his apostolate of charity, his power of organization, his spiritual direction of nobility and especially of his companion saint. Louise de Marillac, and so forth all blend into the picture of an unt~orgettable character. One flaw in the book is ISerbaps a too-evident nationalism on the part of. the biographer. _Bibliography and index are both useful. (New York: David McKay Company, 1952. Pp. 302. $5.00.) RETURN TO THE FOUNTAINHEAD contains the addresses given at the Tercente,nary Celebration of the Sisters, of St. Joseph, Le Puy, France. in July, 1950. by His Eminence, Cardinal Gerlier, and .other French Churchmen. The book is edited and translated into the- American idiom by the Sisters of St. Joseph at Fontbonne College, St. Louis, Missouri. All Sisters of St. Joseph (others, too) will . draw inspiration and strength for today from this return to and consideration of the evidently blessed origins of their congregation. The address, "The Spirit of the Congregation," is particularly de-serving of prayerful attention. (St. Louis 5, Mo.: SistErs of St. Jo-seph of Car, ondelet, Wydown and Big Bend Blvd., 1952. Pp. xi, + 143. $3.00.) Great things might be expected from the girl who was late for school because she had stopped to pick up broken pieces of glass to protect the' feet of the children of the poor from the young lady who preferred the care of blin~t children to the attractive social life her position guaranteed. WHOM LOVE IMPELS, by Katherine Bur-ton, tells her story in another excellent biography., the life of Pauline yon Mallinckrodt, the foundress of the Congregation of Charity. While her brother Hermann .yon Mallinckrodt helped lead 'the growing Center Party t+ ultimate victory over Bismarck in the Reich-stag, Mother Pauline guided a still-growing crusade of charity that began in Paderborn, Germany, in 1849 and now motivates over "2,000 religigus laboring in schools, orphanages, and hospitals in Eu-rope~ throughout the United Sthtes, and in South America. (New York: Kenedy 24 Sons, 1952. Pp. x + 234. $3.00.) ¯ 103 Search t:he Script:ures Henry Willmering, S.J. | N THE ENCYCLICAL Diuino Agtante' Spiritu. published Sep- | .tembet 30, 1943. Pope plus XII remarked "that the condition of biblical studies and their subsidiary Sciences has greatly changed .within the last fifty years." and "after enumerating the various helps which are at the disposal of modern exegetes the Holy Father con-tinues: "All these advantages which, not without a special design of Divine Providence. our age has acquired, are, as it were, an invitation and inducement to interpreters of the Sacred Literature to make dili-gent use of this light, so abundantly given, to penetrate more deeply explain more clearly and expound more lucidly the Divine Oracles." This invitation of His Holiness was promptly accepted by the m~mbers of the British Catholic Biblical Association. After appoint-ing an editorial committee, they drew upa plan to produ.ce a one-volume commentaryI on the whble Bible. In addition to a thorough exposition of the text of all the books of the Old and New Testa-ments, it would include a complete manual of biblical introduction Their ambitious plan has been successfully realized, and the firm of Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, has produced their labors in a quarto volume of 1312 pages, double column to a page. clearly printed on excellent paper, and,strongIy bound in buckram. The price is eighty-four shillings (about twelve dollars). The volume includes a condensed, yet adequate and up-to-date commentary on the forty-five books of the Old, and" the twenty-seven bqoks of the New Testament. There' are introductory articles for every book, and also on groups of literature, namely, on the Pentateuch, the historical books, the poetical and Wisdom literature, the prophetical literature, and the Epistles of the New Testament. The place of the Bible in the Church, the formhtion and history, of the canon, the languages, texts and versions, the geography of the'Holy ~.Land,.the history of Israel, chronology of Old and New Testaments, archaeology and the Bible, and many other informative and fascinating articles enable the IA CATHOLIC COMMENTARY ON HOLY 'SCRIPTU'RE." Editorial Committee: Dom Bernard Orchard, Rev. Edmund Sutcliffe, S.J., Rev. Reginald'Fuller, Dora Ralph Russell. Thomas Neldon ~ Sons. Pp. 1312. 4 guineas. The reviewer, Father Willmering, a p~cofessor of Scripture at St. Mary's College. St. Marys. Kansas. has written the commentary on the Catholic Epistles for this volume. 104 March, 1953 SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES reader to obtain a solid background for the proper understanding ot the sacred text. In all there are seventy-two commentaries andthirty-eight separate articles. The commentary is designed to be read with the Douay version of the Bible, which is the version still in widest circulation among Catholics yet every commentator had before him the original text of the book he interpreted, and he faithfully noted any important vari-htion of the English v~rsion from the original. Throughout the book ¯ each paragraph is distinctly marked in the margin for .purpose of reference, and very many paragra~phs have appropriate headings indi-cating their contents. The commentaries on individual books are a positive expos, ition of Catholic interpretation, not directly apolo-getic, but so worded as to provide answers to current unorthodox views. The explanation meets the needs of all who desire to have in limited compass a clear exposition of the sacred text. which is schol-arly, accurate, and thoroughly ~Catholic. Frequently we desired to have at hand a ready answer book to the many perplexing questions which ,the Old Testament poses. Let us take a few examples from Genesis. The opening chapters of this book narrate the story of creation and the origin of the human race. The world was formed by Divine Omnipotence on six successive days. Darkness yielded to light, the firmament unfolded, the waters under it assembled in one place, and dry land appeared. Then God placed the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, filled the waters with fishes and the air withbirds; gave the land as the habitat for beasts and reptiles, and finally, created man in His own image and made him ruler of the visible world. How must we understand this unscientific account of the development of the earth and its inhabi-tants? What is the meaning of the six days of creation? Recent discoveries have found human bones .and artifacts in sl~rata that .greatly antedate the four thousand years B.C. which was formerly assigned as the age of the human race. To what extent, therefore, are the early narratives of Genesis historical? For what purpose did the sacred writer introduce them? What are we to think of the great ages of the patriarchs? What part of the earth was covered by the flood? We used to look for the answer to these questions~ in the Catholic Enc~Iclopedia or the Catholic's Ready Answer Book: yet these books of reference are nearly a half century old, and exegetical opinion has passed through radical changes since that time. The new Commentary offers satisfactory solutions to these and several hun- 105 HENRY WILLMERING dred other difficulties that have often puzzled us in the past. As the preface ~tates: "it' is a critical survey of modern biblical knowledge-from the standpoint of all those, Catholic and non;Catholic alike, who accept the full doctrine of biblical inspiration" (p. vii). At the end of the volume is a topical index, which lists nearly ten thou'- sand titles and refers directly to the paragraph in which the answer to our difficulties is given. ' But the Commentary,, is not primarily a "question settler." St. Paul reminds .Timothy: "All Scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in .justice: that the man of God may be. perfect,, furnished to every good work" (2 Tim, 3: 16f.). Hence, "in the commentaries on individual books a special endeavour is made to give adequate treatment to the doc-trinal and spiritual con.tent." ~pecial articles, which emphasize the spiritual nature of the Bible and are therefore of particular interest to religious, are the following: :'The Place of the Bible in the Church," by W. Leonard and' Dom B. Orchard, which stresses the Church's love for the Bible, and what she has done to preseive and propagate it;' "The Interpretation of Holy Scripture," by, R. C. Fuller, an ac-count full of valuable information: "Our Lady in the Scriptures, by E. C. Messenger, explaining the prophecies relative to the Mother of God, and her tJrerogatives; "The meaning of the Old Testament," by E. F. Sutcliffe, S.J., what it meant for the. israelites, and what is its meaning and value today; "The Religion of Israel," by the same author; "The Person and Teaching of Christ," by Dom Aelred Gra-ham; "Christianity in Apostolic Times," a long and interesting article by M. Bevenot, S.J. and Dom Ralph Russell; and finally "The Life of St. Paul," by D. J. O'Herlighy. Besides the articles mentioned above, there are thirty others, all-well written and abounding with valuable and interesting information. Anyone who digests all these wil

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 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 48.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1989. ; R~z,.'n~w vor R~.t~3~oos (ISSN 0034-639X) is publishcd bi-monthly at St. Louis University by thc Mis- ¯ souri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus; Editorial Office: 3601 Lindcll Blvd. Rm. 428: SI. l.x~uis. MO 63108-3393. Sccond-class postagc paid at St. Lxmis MO. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: $12.00 pcr year: $22.00 for two years. Other countries: for surface mail. add U.S. $5.00 per year; for airmail, add U.S. $20.00 per year. For subscription orders or changc of address, write: R~,.'u~w voa R~t.~Gous: P.O. Box 6070: Duluth. MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Rv:vtv:w v(m REI.I(;IOtJS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. David L. Fleming, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors Ma\'/June 1989 Volume 48 Number 3 Manuscripts, books fnr review and correspnndence with the editor should be sent to REvtEw wm Rr:t,t(;mt~s; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. la~uis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 l~eRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Back issues and reprints shnuld be nrdered from R~:\'t~:w vo~ R~:~,nntms; 3601Lindell Blvd.; St. la~uis, MO 63108-3393. "Out nf print" issues are available frnm University Micrnfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major pnrtion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Snciety fnr the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS . Color plays an important role in our human lives. Before modem psy-chological studies were done about color and its effect upon our human psyche, the Church emphasized color to highlight liturgical seasons and to enhance individual feast-day celebrations. Both the colors for deco-rating altar, tabernacle, and sanctuary and the colors for priestly vest-ments and stoles conveyed a mood or feeling of the season or feast. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS over the past ten years has distinguished its is-sues within any one volume by color. Willy-nilly, whether by foresight or only upon reflection, color for us, too, tends to have a certain sym-bolic relationship to the seasonal and liturgical placement of an issue. An obvious point can be made with the blue cover of this issue--a blue which is associated with Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, and with her special identification with the month of May. In more recent times, the popular place of Mary in the devotional lives of Catholics has dimmed. The Vatican II renewal of our liturgy and sacramental celebrations necessarily focused our attention and re-education upon the central mysteries of our faith-life. Devotions in their myriad forms of litanies, novenas, vigils or holy hours, and various other pious practices--whether in honor of Mary or of any of the saints-- naturally received less attention during this period. Our time and ,our en-ergies were being re-directed so that we could recapture the Eucharistic celebration and the other celebrations of sacraments with all the fervor and participation that marked our popular devotions. It sometimes appeared that, with popular devotions less emphasized, Mary and the saints were also losing their place in Catholic life. Instead, this has been a time of nurturing fresh growth, with new insights and em-phases to invigorate and renew our faith-lives. The recent Marian year stands as a proclamation of the renewed understanding of Mary's place in the life of the Christian faithful. In this issue, we look through four different prisms at Mary. The first article is "Mary in Contemporary Culture" by Father Stan Parmisano, O.P. Just as Mary has played a distinctive role in the various ages of the Church, for example, in the "lady" ideal of the Middle Ages culture, so we need to ask how our relation to Mary facilitates our Christian re-sponse to.the issues and values prevalent in culture today. The author 321 399 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 stimulates our own thinking about the hidden ways in which Mary might be said to be prevalent in our culture. The second article in this issue is "Through Mary" by Ms. Hilda Montalvo. As wife, mother, and teacher, Ms. Montalvo calls us all into a personal reflection upon what the dogmas about Mary mean to us. She points the way to seeing how Marian dogmas are necessarily Christian dogmas, helping us to clarify our own relationship with God and to en-rich the meaning of our human lives. Sister Mary Eileen Foley, R.G.S., writes the third article on Mary, raising the question in her title, "Reflections on Mary, Bridge to Ecu-menism?" In view of an existing Reformation tradition in which the honor given to Mary continues to divide Roman and Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christian from the majority of other Christian churches, Sis-ter Mary Eileen suggests ways of seeing how a new understanding of Mary may well be in our day a true ecumenical bridge. The fourth article allows us all to pursue further at our leisure the most recent writings on Mary. Father Thomas Bourque, T.O.R., pro-vides us with a selected bibliography of writings about Mary which have been published between the time of Paul VI's exhortation, Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and John Paul II's encyclical, Mother of the Redeemer. Hopefully this compact bibliography can serve as a helpful resource for a fresh and renewed understanding of Mary's role in the lives of Christian peoples. Finally, I will note that in a newly added section to our Book and Cassette Reviews area, called "For the Bookshelf," we have briefly noted the contents of a few books about Mary just recently published. I hope that you will find the occasional addition of this section to Re-views a help in highlighting those recently published books, which we want to note and can often group around certain themes or issues. David L. Fleming, S.J. Mary In Contemporary Culture Stan Parmisano, O.P. Father Stan Parmisano, O.P., is Regent of Studies for the Western Dominican Prov-ince. He teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California in the area of Religion and the Arts. His address is 5877 Birch Court; Oakland, California 94618. ~ have been asked to specify the difference Mary, the Mother of Jesus, makes or can make in our contemporary culture. Let me first propose some principles, or basic thinking, that may help toward a fruitful dis-cussion of the complex of issues and subjects involved in the question. Afterwards, we may consider some of these particulars in terms of Mary and her possible role within them. We think of the presence or absence of Mary, as of Jesus, in terms of visibility or of imaginable or intelligible content. Thus if there is a dearth of "thinking" about Mary or of images of her, we would say that she is absent in our time; on the contrary, we would say that she was pre-sent in former times, especially in the medieval and early renaissance worlds, when she was quite "visible" in the content of theology, art, architecture, poetry, music. But there is another kind of presence: invis-ible, unconscious, the presence of form rather than content, the kind of presence we are asked to look for, say, in non-representational art or in music, or in poetry where the music or rhythm precedes idea and image and helps create them. t This is a presence of thrust, of dynamic, of spirit ¯ . . like that of the Spirit of God (ruach Elohim) hovering over the yet unformed waters of chaos and warming them toward visibility and life. I want to suggest that perhaps Mary is present here and there in our time in this last manner, and that we should strive to promote her more universal presence in this direction as well as in that of visible content. In fact, this is the direction in which we should seek to define culture 323 324 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 itself. Culture is not a matter of any one specific content or subject or activity nor of all taken en masse. Rather, it is the inherited dynamism or spirit or form that produces each of them in all their various nuances, though it itself is affected and reshaped by them.z The same is true with regard to God and Jesus: it is not so much the content of our thought about them, not the images we have of them that is telling, but what un-derlies these, beyond thought and image, inspiring and shaping the con-tent of our belief. I would regard Mary in a similar way. In the earliest Church there was not, perhaps, much content or visibility of Mary, at least when com-pared to Jesus and his male disciples, to Paul and his entourage. But, to borrow an image from one of her later lovers, I would suggest that she was there from beginning to end as "atmosphere," as "world-mothering air, air wild," as form or spirit shaping the emerging thought and action of the Church.3 Certainly it was in her modest context, her "atmosphere," that Christ was preserved from mere myth and acknowl-edged as substantially and earthily human (so Paul's almost casual aside: "born of a woman"). By the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance that spirit had blossomed into a fullness of content. Then that content be-gan to harden till in some instances and locales it quenched the moving spirit and became identified with Mary. And could it be that Vatican II tried to recover her spirit, the "form" of Mary? If so, we must not mis-take what it had to say about Mary for the fullness of Mary but, with its beginnings, refocus on the thrust of Mary in our time and beyond. In speaking of Mary's presence in this way I would hope to suggest another presence, that of the Holy Spirit. Saint Maximilian Kolbe spoke boldly of Mary as the quasi-incarnation of the Holy Spirit, emphasizing the latter part of this hyphenation. Since then, less venturesome theolo-gians have accentuated the quasi.4 In any case few Catholic theologians will deny Mary's special and intimate relationship with the Spirit. They go hand in loving hand, indissolubly Wedded--not only because they were cooperatively together at the conception of Christ and later at the birth of the Church, but because they have a kind of natural affinity. Both are hidden, in the background as it were, but dynamically so, strik-ingly reemerging at critical moments in Jesus's adult years--as when the Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to prepare him for his ministry, and when Mary, waiting for Jesus "apart from the crowd," inspires in him the revolutionary declaration as to his true and lasting kindred (Mk 3:31 - 35). There are other shared characteristics. These are discoverable in cer-tain movements or thrusts of our time, and I suggest that we look here Mary in Contemporary Culture / 395 for the presence of Mary/Spirit in our time as well as in any explicit Marian theology or devotion. Some of these revelatory movements are as follows. The interiorization of religion. Certainly emphasis today is on the sub-jective aspect of belief and morality. Even those who rightly uphold the objectivity of belief and morals are concerned more than ever with lib-erty of conscience, personal and cultural limitations of understanding, the virtue of prudence and its largely intuitive functioning, the unique-ness of a given "situation," the restoration in one form or another of casuistry(the individual case). But interiorization, subjectivity, intuition are of the unpredictable Spirit "who blows where he wills" and of the traditionally feminine rather than of the predictably and predicting ra-tional and the traditionally masculine. Purged of all excess and distor-tion, they are, in other words, of the Holy Spirit and Mary. Contemplative prayer. In the last twenty to thirty years there has been in the western world a mounting interest in and practice of medita-tive prayer, sparked by eastern imports such as TM, Zen, Yoga, and now developed along lines of traditional Christian contemplation. This prayer is seen now to be not just for the select few, mainly among nuns and monks, but for all in whatever walk of life. Here is obviously another aspect of interiorization and the letting go of content in favor of a poised and expectant darkness. It is not a looking to what is outside (image, word, symbol, creed) but to what is within, to the private, personal "reve-lation," to what God is "saying" to me here and now--like a pregnant woman turned inward, quietly aware of the mystery growing within her. Here again is the Holy Spirit praying within us when, as St. Paul tells us (Rm 8:26-27), we do not know what to pray for (that is, when all con-tent is surrendered) and here is Mary, the silent, surrendering contem-plative par excellence. Unseen, unfelt, they are at the heart of so many today who are trying to pray such prayer, and so many others desper-ately in need of it if only to avoid being torn apart and scattered by the noise and confusion of a world off-center. Ecumenism. Another mark, and need, of the contemporary Church is ecumenism, conceived now as the unification not just of the various Christian churches but of the worldreligions as well. Again we may see here the stirring of.the Spirit who is the bond of love, the vinculum cari-tatis, uniting Father and Son, the one hovering over the deep bringing, at the Father's Word, order out of chaos, the one forming and securing the one Church in the beginning. And as Mar~,, with and in the Spirit, brought to birth the one undivided Christ, so is her labor today with re- 326 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 gard to the Church. It is the opinion of many Catholic theologians that Mary should be downplayed today so as not to offend our Protestant broth-ers and sisters and thereby impede ecumenism. I should think it would be just the opposite, providing the depth of Mary is presented, which is her spirit, her form more than her traditional content; yet the latter, in the purity of Church teaching and practice, is of marked importance, too, for itself and for what it reveals of her spirit and the new directions that spirit may take, for all the churches, in the future.5 Social Justice. Whereas in former times we would speak of charity and the works of charity, now the cry is for justice and the doing of jus-tice: we do for the poor not so much out of our love and their need as out of our sense of justice and their rights. Again, in the past justice has been in the main the province of the male, the one actively engaged in the world, in politics, business, civil defense, and so forth. But women are more and more coming to the fore in it, seeking justice for themselves and for the marginal and oppressed in general. Here we may note a fresh dynamic of Mary--the seed of which, however, was there from the be-ginning. Thus those writing of Mary today, particularly women, view her in the context of the women of justice in the ancient Hebrew world-- Esther, Deborah, Judith--and see a whole theology of social justice in Mary's Magnificat.6 And if the movement toward social justice is of the Holy Spirit, who as creative Love seeks balance, harmony, substantial peace and concord, then, yes we can find, if we look, the Spirit's spouse at work with the Spirit toward the same goal. Mary, while drawing us within in contemplative stillness, also directs us outward to the Christ who lived and lives in our objective, tangible world and identified him-self with the quite visible poor and needy. She points to this Christ dwell-ing outside us as well as within, just as does the Holy Spirit who, as the gospel tells us, is there to remind us continually of all Christ has visibly done and audibly spoken. Perhaps part of the new "content" of Mary today is this visibility of the woman in works of justice and peace, not as having lost the interiorization, the contemplative spirit, the gentle, mothering love of her past, but as gaining something in addition: the hid-den life while, paradoxically still remaining hidden, come forth openly to help heal the world. Mary remains what she was in the past and there-fore under the press of current need becomes someone new for the pre-sent. When considering Mary in her relationship to women, past and pre-sent, we must be cautious. Christ is male; his maleness is part of his his-tory, and history is important in the religion known as Christianity. But Mary in Contemporary Culture / 327 his maleness is meant mainly as a means of access to his humanity and person which are neither male nor female. Christ is equally for both men and women, though, of course, in different ways according to different psychologies and cultures. However, the h~stoncai fact of Christ s male-ness has often dominated our thinking about him, with regretful results; as when, in spite of changes in psychologies and culture it is used to jus-tify an ongoing exclusive male ecclesiastical leadership. Similarly with Mary. Her femininity is a providential part of her history, but it is as a human being and person that she is of greater moment. Accordingly she is for the man as well as the woman; she serves both equally and both are equally to learn from her, though, again, in different ways. Yet her femininity has had its influence, for good and bad. For bad." it has tended to limit our ideal of the Christian woman to what it was in Mary's own day and to which, accordingly, she herself was in good measure bound. For good: it has softened our conception of God and so made our ap-proach to God easier, more inviting, loving rather than fearful. In and through the gospels, past art and poetry and drama, seeing God in the arms and in the care and "power" of this then insignificant Jewish woman--quiet, gentle, lowly, we find some of that same womanhood rubbing off, as it were, on Father God. A fair part of the accessibility of Jesus himself, his merciful compassion, is the fact that he has Mary as his flesh and blood mother. Without her, would we be altogether con-vinced of the mercy of God and the understanding compassion of Jesus? Here is one way in which the "content" or dogma of Mary has affected us in the past, with its mark still upon us, thankfully. In the present thrust of woman toward justice, with Mary behind (and before) her, it would be tragic if this content were surrendered in favor of one that is hard, merely active, superficially and imitatively masculine. Eventually God himself might regress into the terror and cruelty of past and present dark religions. Mary, the Spirit, and Christ Above I recalled the bold but, to my mind, accurate Mariology of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit in a unique way, such that we can speak of her as the very incarnation of the Spirit, with some reservation (quasi). As indicated above, some Catholic theo-logians are embarrassed by this as by much else in the Church's past the-ology and practice concerning Mary. They think it an exaggeration of the biblical teaching and find it an impediment to union with our Protes-tant sister churches. As to the first objection we must insist that Scripture was not meant Review for Religious, May-June 1989 to stand alone: it sprung up out of the Church (community of believers) and its seeds are meant to grow within the Church under the care of the same Spirit who once inspired it. There was an initial content, to be re-spected as the Spirit's word through all time; but there were also drives, dynamisms within the original word, forms yet to find their specific con-tent or matter. Thus the gospels' powerful presentations, lovingly and carefully lingered over, of the relationship between Mary, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit cry out for meditation and penetration and so the revelation of truths beneath the surface. Thus we have the doctrines of the Immacu-late Conception, Assumption, the Queenship of Mary, and so forth; and her quasi-incarnation of the Spirit. This last is not to make a god of Mary. The gospels are clear on this score: Mary is the handmaid of the Lord, his lowly servant. Rather it is to point up something in God--the femininity, womanhood,, motherhood of God. Mary can be looked upon in two ways: as an historical person, flesh and blood, the daughter of Anna and Joachim (or of whomever), the physi-cal, natural mother of Jesus. Here she is all and only human. But she must also be seen as symbol, but the special kin~ of symbol that makes what is symbolized present in very reality. Thus as the Eucharist does not simply remind us of Christ but makes him really present upon our altars, so Mary does not simply recall the Holy Spirit to our minds and point us in the Spirit's direction; she makes the Spirit. really present among and within us. Seeing her we see the Spirit, as seeing the Eucha-rist we see Christ himself. This is a good and legitimate reason for ad-dressing the Spirit as feminine--not as a sop for the marginal woman but simply because as there are reasons for addressing God as Father or Son there is this equally cogent reason for addressing God as Mother.7 As in time, in the mystery of the Incarnation there is eternal Father, mother Mary, and Son Jesus, so in eternity there is Father and Son with mother-ing Spirit as their bond of Love. As for the difficulties such teaching may hold for ecumenism, they may be only initial difficulties. As suggested above, if we view Mary and present her in terms of form, thrust, spirit, and not just as already shaped content, and if we continually move deeper within this content in context of present needs and lawful desire, perhaps Protestants will eventually come to see what Catholic belief and theology have long since held as truth and will thank us for having led the way back home, as we have reason to thank them for having helped bring us back to much that had been lost. One final remark before considering some of the specifics of our sub- Mary in Contemporary Culture / 329 ject: it has to do with Mary's relationship with Christ. Again, in sensi-tivity to Protestant criticism and in reaction to exaggerated statements about Mary and misguided devotion to her, Vatican II and ecclesiastical documents and theology since have been most careful to insist upon the subjection of Mary to Christ. Salvation is through Christ alone; he is the one mediator between God and humankind. There is little if any talk about what formerly there was lots of talk about, namely of Mary as co-redeemer and mediatrix of all graces. Such theologizing, it is believed, and the devotion arising from (or producing) it detracts from the power and mission of Christ. But I wonder if we are not here misconceiving power and the whole matter of Christ's redemptive work. We seem to be equating Christ's (God's) power with power as we ordinarily think of it: dominating rule, often exclusive. But Christ's power is not univo-cal with ours, and he himself quite literally took the greatest pains to turn the tables in the matter: "You know how those who exercise authority among the gentiles lord it over them . It cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest . Such is the case with the Son of Man who has come, not to be served by others, but to serve" (Mt 20:25-28). And what about the power of love, which is Christ's power, or that of helplessness: the power of the sick to draw upon the strengths of oth-ers to heal and console, the power of the ignorant to create scholars and teachers, and so forth? I have often observed that the one with most power in a family is not the father or mother but the newly born baby, the whole life of the family revolving around the child precisely because of its powerful helplessness. If this seems farfetched relative to God, we have only to think of the Christ child in the crib at Bethlehem and the adult Christ upon the cross on Calvary. And what of the power of one who knows how to share his or her power, which requires greater strength, ability, "power" than to keep it all to oneself? I should think the great power of Christ, of God himself, is most manifest in the power to empower, to raise others to his very life and level. Jesus at the Last Supper remarked: "I solemnly assure you, the one who has faith in me will do the works I do, and greater far than these" (Jn 14:12). Not ex-clusive but inclusive--such is the power of Christ. Though our Holy Father in Redemptoris Mater follows Lumen Gen-tium in insisting upon Mary's subordination to Christ, h~, together with the Vatican II document, reiterates an old principle we ought to consider with equal care: "The maternal role of Mary towards people in no way obscures or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows 330 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 its power" (emphasis mine). Why not assert this aspect of Christ's power and see Mary as true queen "at the side of her Son," as the encyclical expresses it? Indeed, for centuries and still today, at least in our Christ-mas liturgies and devotions, we see the King rather in the power of his mother and in her arms, enfolded by her who gives him to the nations: "and so entering the house, (they) found the child with Mary his mother. Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me . He went down with them then, and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them . Figlia del tuo figlio, queen of heaven" (Mt 2:1 I ; Lk 1:43; Lk 2:51; T. S. Eliot, Dry Salvages, after Dante's Paradiso, xxxiii). In one mariological conference that I attended the speakers were in-sistent that we not view Mary apart from Christ. I kept thinking yes, but might not the reverse also be true: we must not view Christ apart from Mary. In Redemptoris Mater, John Paul several times reminds us of the indissolubility of the bond between Mary and Jesus and explicitly de-clares that "from the very first moment the Church 'looked at' Mary through Jesus, just as she 'looked at' Jesus through Mary." Christ does not want to be viewed in splendid isolation with everyone insisting that everything and everyone else is subordinated to him. His own image of himself is of one who serves, just as Mary's self-image is of the Lord's handmaid, neither thought less of their dignity for that: "Behold, all gen-erations shall call me blessed" (Lk 1:48). Mary is the first-fruits of the redemption, the Church in promised fulfillment, the Mother of the Re-deemer, of God himself, the spouse of the Holy Spirit and the effective symbol of the Spirit's presence and action in the world--this woman who embodies the very motherhood of God holds the new creation in her arms and nurtures it, just as she did her divine Son centuries ago. She has a greater, more powerful (loving) role in the work of redemption than much of our present theology is prepared to concede or any of us begin to imagine.8 At the conclusion of Redemptoris Mater we read: ". the Church is called not only to remember everything in her past that testifies to the special maternal cooperation of the Mother of God in the work of salva-tion in Christ the Lord, but also, on her own part, to prepare for the fu-ture the paths of this cooperation. For the end of the second Christian millennium opens up as a new prospect." Our Holy Father also calls for "a new and more careful reading of what the Council said about the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and the Church . " Renewed thinking about Mary and action relative to her Mary in Contemporary Culture / 33"1 are called for.9 But we are to do our thinking and acting in the context of both Scripture and the wider tradition, and of current need. We are to listen to the living Spirit as "she" shows within this treasure, Mary, both the old and the new. Mary and Some Specifics of Culture: Psychology In light of the above generalized reflections on Mary and contempo-rary culture I would like to comment briefly upon several segments of our culture in terms of Mary's possible role within them. In the area of psychology, so overwhelmingly influential in the shaping of our contem-porary culture and such an intimate part of it, it depends on what psy-chology we are talking about. If it is Jungian depth psychology, we need not look long or far to find Mary's place within it. Much of the work has already been done by the master and his disciple. Jung maintained that ideas and archetypes such as the anima, the intuitive, the dark, the yin--in general, the feminine--are underdeveloped in our western cul-ture, with disastrous results. His psychology must go even further today and add they are also on the wane in much of the eastern world in com-petition now with the west in its masculine drives toward action and domi-nance, rational knowledge and acquisition. This psychology's percep-tion, then, of the need for Mary or some equivalent dynamic is evident. Jung himself expressly spoke of the need in terms of Mary. He rejoiced over the definition of the doctrine of Mary's assumption, declaring it to be "the most important religious event since the Reformation." At last the feminine was given the exaltation it requires and deserves.~° However, as suggested above, and as Jungian psychology insists, we must not think of the feminine exclusively in terms of the woman. In the past maybe so, and in our present world still many women may be said to possess more of the "feminine" than do men. But feminine charac-teristics are meant to be part of the male psychology as masculine ones of the female, and cases abound where dominance in one or the other is reversed. I think of the two great sixteenth-century Carmelites. Both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross had the organizational skills and drives and other "masculine" traits appropriate to founders and reform-ers of religious orders, and in these Teresa, as evidenced in her numer-ous religious foundations and governance thereof, may be said to have surpassed John. Again, both were richly passive, intuitive, contempla-tive, steeped in dark and mystery and in cleaving, passionate love, all notable feminine characteristics. Yet it is John, at least as revealed in his poetry, who appears the more feminine: he is the anima, the woman pas-sive under the strong and passionately active love of a quite virile God. 332 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 To what extent, therefore, the feminine characteristics are de facto ¯ found in women more than in men may be moot. But they are definitely the major component of the psyche of the woman Mary as she appears in the gospels. Mary's strong, paradoxically active passivity (she brings .forth the Word as she receives it), her alert and watchful hiddenness, her concern and compassion for those in need (Cana) and for the suffering (Calvary), her motherhood (of Christ and the Church), her deep, loving fidelity (from thefiat of Nazareth and before to that of Calvary and be-yond) are purposely emphasized that both men and women might real-ize their indispensability in each life that would be Christ's. They are also underscored to draw our attention to the feminine in Christ, whom oth-erwise we might tend to view simply as masculine: visibly out front, ac-tive in his preaching, teaching, healing, immersed in religious contro-versy-- a male among a world of males. In the context of his mother (and the other women who surround him), Jesus is still masculine but we are forced to attend to the deep roots of his masculinity, which is his femi-nine Spirit: his passivity (his prayer and passion), his hidden life even as he actively encountered the world, his cleaving love and compassion unto death, his motherhood (Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34). In Mary's presence, her "atmosphere," such qualities of Christ are not simply seen, but they are seen to be the best of him. Jesus was so powerfully and creatively masculine--such a leader for his time as for all time--because his mas-culinity was rooted in and suffused by the feminine, the Spirit. It is Mary who as his mother nurtured him in this, and who helps draw our atten-tion to it. It is she, then, who as our mother nurtures us in the same Spirit and in a similar way. As for other psychologies suffice it here to say that Mary should be looked for behind and within any therapy working toward healing and wholeness. Again, it is Christ who is the healer, but it is Mary who in-itiates the process by bringing Christ to birth, in the world at large and in each individual. Mary, one with the Spirit, struggles and groans in each of us to bring us to the wholeness, the sanity of Christ. Like her, and with her, we concentrated on the activefiat that allows it all to hap-pen. Politics, Economics, Sociology In the political, economic, and sociological concerns of our time Mary points up the need for the hidden, the contemplative, and for uni-versal justice (as in her Magnificat), and, though unnoticed, she is be-hind and within all creative efforts toward these ends. The absence of the contemplative, of the feminine in general, in contemporary politics Mary in Contemporary Culture / 333 is evident, and results have been tragic. Because they lack roots, our poli-tics, both domestic and foreign, change even as they are being formed; and this condition is aggravated by lack of goals other than immediate and pragmatic. But it is the contemplative spirit that gives depth and con-stancy and lights up the future and beyond. Also, our current concentration is upon superficial differences and divisions (my need, my race, my country, my self) rather than on our deeper oneness, which only contemplation, in the one God-centered form or another, can reveal and promote. Further, the disturbance we experi-ence within and among nations may well have as its root cause the fail-ure of the contemplative, the fruit of which is "the peace that surpasses understanding." And so we find divisions among us, the growth of fear, the expan-sion of military might to safeguard our "own" war or the cold threat of war. We look, then, to Mary, universal Mother and Queen of peace, for political healing. She is already there, in this felt social need, but also in those religious orders of men and women whose main concern is con-templation. One of the concrete ways in which the state might help work its own remedy, and so implicitly acknowledge Mary in its functioning, is itself to encourage and promote contemplative communities within its boundaries. These would help make up for the failure of prayer else-where and would be invitation and incentive for the rest of us to unite ourselves with them, at least from time to time, and so help bring our nation and the world to greater depth, unity, and peace. If the need for Mary and what she represents is obvious in politics, it is more so in the field of economics. Here the masculine dominates to the complete exclusion of the feminine, and material concerns have been so isolated from the spiritual that never the twain do meet. This is especially disturbing when we realize that it is economics that determines even our politics. Science too, as technology, is subordinated to it and dominated by it. Indeed, economics has become the dominant factor of our culture or a-culture; it is our pseudo-religion, often becoming, in fact if not in theory, the determining force in more legitimate and traditional religion. If, then, Jesus needs to be born into our world today, it is cer-tainly here in our economic systems and practice. And if born here, he may begin to penetrate the rest of our world. So once again we look to Mary to mother Jesus where he is most needed and we do what we can to help her in the birthing. To see sociology in terms of Mary is to reconsider love. Whatever the other theories as to the origin of society, from the Christian perspec- 334 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 tive it is love that first brings us together and, accordingly, it is love that is society's fundamental problem. So from its beginnings Christianity has taught that the basic unit of society is not the individual but the family which (ideally) is the product of love; and social workers, I believe, would readily agree that it is the lack of love, with the resulting fear and loneliness, that is their chief concern. But today love which is meant to unite is itself fragmented. Sex, in-tended to be integral with love, has been divided from it and made to function alone with all the consequent evils, both mental and physical, that plague our society. The inward-outward directions of love have also been severed, so that now it is either love of self (inward) to the exclu-sion of others or the love of others (outward) to the neglect and loss of self. One of the results of this is the breakup (further division) of the fam-ily which, accordingly, is now challenged by sociologists as the de facto basic unit of society. Mary can and, in secret ways, does have a curative place in all of this. Her love was integral. It reached out to others in and through Christ's large love; indeed, she brought that very love to birth. But she also reached deep within herself to the Spirit of love wherein she found her personal growth and happiness: "All generations will call me blessed." True, she "knew not man." But this does not mean her love was sexless. It is the myopia of our time that sees sex as having but one kind of expression. Mary can alert us to look for the depth in sex and sexual love and so open to us new possibilities of love. And love restored to wholeness should work toward the restoration of the centrality of fam-ily with consequent diminution of fear and loneliness. The Arts and Sciences Mary can have, and has, her place in those areas of our culture known as the arts and sciences. In any presentation or exercise of the hu-man, as in the arts and sciences, we are to see Christ, of course, but also Mary who, in her Immaculate Conception and her conception and birth-ing of Christ, was the first to bring the human to perfection. But as in Christ the human is perfected in and through the divine (Christ's person and divine nature) so also we find Mary bringing the human to perfec-tion in, through, and toward the divine. Again, it is a matter of whole-ness, which our contemporary world tends always to divide. Apart from the divine the human can only degenerate into the inhuman; but with the divine all of its gifted potential is realized. It is in this sense that the only true humanism is Christian humanism. Thus in the arts and sciences Mary is present as they express and promote the human, and she is dy- Mar), in Contemporary Culture / 335 namically present, moving them forward and deeper into the divine to become divinely human. Christ alone might be said to suffice for this: he is the one who in his very person brings the human to perfection. But Mary gives assurance of and added emphasis to Christ's humanity (he is of herflesh) and his divinity (she is Mother of God) and is responsible for the becoming of these in our world (she conceives and nurtures the perfect human being). She is behind the process of the arts and sciences. Here, then, as elsewhere in our contemporary world, Mary, together with her Son, may be found, not just as a possibility, but as actively engaged in shaping a reemerging culture. Our concern ought to be to look for them together and, having found them, enter into their work. NOTES ~ "I know that a poem, or a passage of a poem, may tend to realize itself first as a particular rhythm before it reaches expression in words, and that this rhythm may bring to birth the idea and the image; and I do not believe that this is an experience peculiar to myself." T. S. Eliot. "The Music of Poetry" in On Poetry and Poets (New York: 1957), p. 32. z Eliot again: "Culture cannot altogether be brought to consciousness; and the cul-ture of which we are wholly conscious is never the whole of culture: the effective culture is that which is directing the activities of those who are manipulating that which they call culture." Christianity and Culture (New York: 1949), p. 184. For Eliot's summary definition of culture see p. 198. 3 Gerard Manley Hopkins in "The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air We Breathe." 4 Ren~ Laurentin, indeed, disapproves of the expression altogether, reserving the term "incarnation" for that bf Christ alone~ However, he proceeds to speak of Mary as "pure transparency for the Spirit . . . she is wholly relative to the Spirit; this indeed is at the very core of her deep relationship to Christ and the Father." "Mary and the Holy Spirit," in Mary in Faith and Life in the New Age of the Church (Ndola- Zambia: 1983),"pp. 287-288. 5 See note 9 below for C. Jung's defense of Mary, precisely as in Catholic dogma, as a remedy for a defective Protestantism. In a letter to The Tablet, Sept. 5, 1987, p. 944, Dora Bede Griffiths, writing from his ashram-in Tamil Nadu, South India, suggests a rapprochement, between eastern religions and Christianity through the femi-nine. He notes that in Hebrew the "word for the Spirit (ruach) is feminine and in the Syrian Church, which spoke a form of Aramaic, which is close to the Hebrew, reference was made to 'our Mother, the Holy Spirit.' " The same for the Hebrew word for Wisdom (hokmah): it too is feminine and "this Wisdom is described as 'coming forth from the mouth of the Most High' as a feminine form of the Word of God." He suggests the possible enrichment of our Christian tradition by contact with Hinduism which "has no difficulty in calling on God as 'My Father, my Mother' and with Mahayana Buddhism which conceives of the highest form of Wis-dom as a feminine figure. Dora Bede does not mention Mary here, but it is my sug-gestion that she it is who concretizes the divine feminine, gives it flesh. Thus she 336 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 is the one who, rather than impede universal ecumenism, is meant to help in its re-alization. 6 There are the fine women theologians writing on Mary, such as E. S. Fiorenza and E. Moltmann-Wendel. But I am also thinking of the poets who perhaps do even more to deepen and broaden our knowledge and appreciation of Mary: a Caryll Houselan-der of the past generation and an Ann Johnson of the present. For the Magnificat especially, see the latter's Miryam of Nazareth: Woman of Strength and Wisdom (In-diana: Ave Maria Press, 1984). 7 In his essay "Sur la maternit~ en Dieu et la feminit6 du Saint-Esprit," Escritos del Vedat !I (1981), Yves Congar argues from Scripture and Tradition to the femi-ninity of the Holy Spirit, but is here silent as to Mary's role in the "sacramentiz-ing" of it. The essay may also be found in Theology Digest 30:2 (Summer, 1982) pp, 129-132. 8 Solus Christus, as solafides and sola scriptura, requires severe qualification. For centuries Catholic theologians have argued vigorously against ~he two latter formu-lae. They have been rightly suspicious of such exclusivity in view of the fullness of Christian revelation. For the same reason, perhaps, they should also challenge the solus Christus, this time in view of the fullness of Christ who is our revelation. 9 In an interview carried in America (June 6, 1987), pp. 457-458, Cardinal Suenens stressed the incompleteness of Vatican II's declaration on Mary. "I felt we needed to say more . She is not merely an historical figure; from the beginning she has been given an ongoing mission to bring Christ to the world." ~0 C. G. Jung, "Answer to Job," in Psychology and Religion: West and East, trans. by R. F. C. Hull, Bollinger Series XX (Pantheon Books, 1958), p. 464. Jung goes on to criticize Protestantism for its criticisms of the dogma. "Protestantism has ob-viously not given sufficient attention to the signs of the times which point to the equal-ity of women. But this equality requires to be metaphysically anchored in the figure of a 'divine' woman, the bride of Christ." Jung realizes that the dogma does not give Mary "the status of a goddess," still "her position (now) satisfies the need of the archetype." 1 don't know how this last can be, however, unless it is in and through Mary that we recognize that within the godhead itself the feminine is real-ized in the Person of the Spirit. Through Mary. Hilda S. Montalvo Hilda Montalvo is currently teaching at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida. She is a wife and mother, currently a candidate for a Doc-torate in Ministry. She has completed the graduate program in Christian Spiritual Guid-ance from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Washington, D.C. Her ad-dress is 7151 Pioneer Road; West Palm Beach, Florida 33413. The other day at a Lay Ministry workshop there was a spontaneous burst of applause when I shared my way of praying Mary's life. From the be-ginning of my spiritual journey over twenty years ago I have had an in-tuitive knowledge that the objective "facts" and titles about Mary were important not only because they honored and revered the mother of God but also because they spoke of my reality as a human being and a Chris-tian. These Marian dogmas have helped me to clarify and understand my basic assumptions of myself, my relationship with God, and the mean-ing of my life. I have always had a problem with original sin. To inherit Adam's sin is simply not fair, and so at seven I became an agnostic. The idea of a God that punishes and condemns innocent people--and I experi-enced myself as innocent--was repulsive and frightening. Christianity was not good news. If I was good, if ! kept the commandments, then God would love me. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception simply meant that God had wai.ved that evil from one person. To be born with original sin was bad enough but at least it was a shared human experi-ence and it explained (somewhat!) evil and death. But if Mary was born without it, not only was she not totally human but her "fiat" was pre-destined and she had no actual freedom. Christianity became good news when I realized that the fall/ redemption concept of original sin was simply one way of understand- 337 331~ / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 ing the Genesis story. The traditional interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve posits a paradise lost because of disobedience and the conse-quent punishment of suffering and death. But modern biblical interpret-ers such as Brueggemann are recognizing that the fundamental revela-tion of Genesis is that God's creation is good and that God is constantly gracing and blessing it. God made man and woman in "our" image and it was very good. That has to be the most important assumption of our spiritual life. Each person must come to a personal conviction of this truth that is not only an intellectual response but a lived, grounded ex-perience. The story of Adam and Eve is now being understood as that moment in history when human beings first become self-consciously aware, the first truly human act. Before that there was simply undifferentiated ex-istence; total unconscious dependence on environment and relationship, such as each baby.lives through his or her first year. The process of be-coming self-conscious, of becoming autonomous, in a child can be de-scribed a bit facetiously as the "terrible two's," in humankind, as the Fall. Original sin is not a 'thing' that we are born with: it simply de-scribes in mythological language our natural tendency for independence. Catholicism has always affirmed that grace builds on nature. Crea-tion spirituality, which has its origins in the earliest writer of the Bible, the Yahwist, emphasizes the constant presence and blessings of God in spite of the seeming sinfulness of his creatures. The main thrust of the whole Yahwist Saga which culminates in that beautiful and simple story of Balaam and the talking ass (Nb 22:25) is to celebrate God's refusal to curse his people and his insistence of unconditional love and bless-ing. We, like Balaam, are blinded by our needs and expectations. Per-haps .the Immaculate Conception is yet another reminder of our innate gracefulness? Could not this be the fundamental celebration of baptism? Jesus experienced the unconditional love of his Father at his baptism; we celebrate this same unconditional love and our acceptance into a lov-ing community at our baptism. Mary's Immaculate Conception could be the reminder of God's unconditional covenant with each one of us and the celebration of his covenant through one individual. It is not a nega-tive gift--but a positive statement: God is with us and for us. Original sin (and now I can begin to forgive God and Adam!) is the mythical explanation of our desire for independence from God and his creation--autonomy--with the inevitable consequence of alienation and death. Baptism is the celebration of the fact that God not only loves us unconditionally but is present within us and among us; it effects what it Through Mary / 339 signifies. The truth and hope beyond individualization is unity with God and interdependence with others--co-creators of the parousia, paradise, but now conscious and mature and in freedom. Mary is the archetype of this truth which has been named as Immaculate Conception. At the experiential level I resonate with Mary's "fiat." I also have experienced, am experiencing, the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and have been afraid and anxious. I also wrestle with the "how" and "why" and the "why me." I also (carefully and tentatively) have said "fiat" and Christ has become incarnate, is now conceived, and contin-ues to be conceived in my life moment by moment. I also have felt com-pelled to go forth and share this good news with others. I give birth daily to Christ in my family, in my ministry. I also sing daily "My soul mag-nifies the Lord, my spirit exalts in God my savior." Mary's story is my story and every Christian's story. She is the ar-chetype of the Disciple as well as the archetype of Woman and Mother for both men and women. An archetype, in Jungian terms, is an image in thepsyche that when recognized and owned can serve to integrate be-liefs, feelings, and behavior. Unless one allows the Word to be con-ceived within one's very being, Christianity remains barren and lifeless, a moral code. It is onlywhen I become willing to accept the transform-ing gracefulness of God's love and presence in my life that I become ca-pable of writing my own Magnificat. As I journal the events of my life I become aware that God "has done great things for me," not least of which is to radically change my values and priorities. Mary is both virgin and mother. If this is understood only in the physi-cal sense, it is simply a faith statement that speaks exclusively of Mary. Mary "undefiled" stands above and beyond created reality, sexuality, and life itself. By implication, then, all persons who express their love sexually, even in stable and committed relationships, are impure, cor-rupted, polluted, tainted, or unclean. The list of synonyms in Roget's Thesaurus is much longer. But dogmas and doctrines speak of the truth of our nature and our relationship with God and with one another. Thus it behooves Catholic Christians to question what God is revealing through this dogma. Might it not mean that "perpetual virginity" means a life of integrity and innocence in any walk of life? Every disciple must conceive and birth Jesus; must be reborn; must be both virgin and mother regardless of his or her sex or sexuality. This way of perceiving Mary's virginity and motherhood can be especially fruitful for men who, in Jung's terms, project their ideal image of woman instead of accepting and owning their own femininity or anima. Mary Review for Religious, May-June 1989 within, for all disciples, symbolizes openness, receptivity, gentleness, gracefulness--many of those feminine virtues that have been lacking in our contemporary society. As a wife and mother I recognize and celebrate both the gift of moth-erhood and the wholeness and purity of my own life that is bespoken of through virginity. In and through motherhood I continue to be uncon-taminated, unprofaned, spotless, unblemished, andchaste. As I pray this dogma I become more comfortable with the paradoxical reality of my own inner being; I begin to name and own my authentic self; I become more open and vulnerable to the healing presence of Christ within. To meditate on the dogmas of Mary in this fashion helps us come in touch with the paradoxical nature of creation. It helps us to see be-yond the either/or stance that divides, judges, and creates conflict and war. It helps us to accept that much broader vision of both/and that is so freeing and encompassing. It helps us to see and understand the dif-ference between facts and Truth, between knowledge and wisdom. It is an invitation to live and enjoy mystery, to be surprised by newness and resurrection and Presence. Meditating on the dogma of the Assumption can be especially help-ful for us in recognizing our projections of the categories of time and space unto life after death. We were taught that heaven and hell were places for all time---eternity. Purgatory was a transient place of purifi-cation. The time and place one went to depended on one's choices. All very neat and logical--and totally contradictory to Revelation. The mag-nificence and mystery of the Spirit's presence in the Church is especially obvious in this dogma of the Assumption. Again we must take it seri-ously and symbolically--in the deepest sense of symbol which is to point beyond the literal sense to the mystery of which it speaks. Mary, the Dis-ciple, is assumed, taken up into heaven, body and soul, after her death. In mythological language she passes into timelessness and spacelessness. She simply is. Westerners tend to equate rational thought with knowledge, thus de-nying intuitive, imageless wisdom. The Assumption--as the Resurrec-tion- is revealed knowledge that goes beyond rational logical thought into mystery and Truth. But as finite human beings we factualize and ex-teriorize the nameless, misunderstand symbol, and live mystery as if it were actuality. The invitation of the dogma of the Assumption is to .let go of our need to understand, to know, to control, and simply trust the goodness and kindness of God. The invitation is to live this life to the fullest and trust that God will take care of our future--name it resurrec- Through Mary / 341 tion or assumption. The invitation is to experience beyond imagining and to live with the paradox of knowing but not understanding. My skepticism/agnosticism has served my faith in the sense that by doubting, questioning, and mistrusting religious experience I have not succumbed to superstition or fanaticism. On the other hand--as was pointed out to me by a wise fellow-traveler--skepticism was also an "ego defense, behind which lies a fear of change and loss of control that giving in to the religious experience may bring." Gifted with this insight I have consciously approached the dogma of the Assumption with as much of an attitude of "letting-go" and an open mind as possible. This has allowed me to see beyond the constricting barriers of space, time, matter and form. It has encouraged me to become open to mystery and surprise and to think in other terms than those of classical theology which comes to logical and rational conclusions about the mystery of God: "It is fitting and right." The Assumption means that when I die I become present. The.As-sumption means no more time, space, dualism, paradox. The Assump-tion means no more becoming. All the barriers to fullness of life that I have struggled with either because of environment or because of genes will disappear and I will become--I am, one with Christ. Catholics have traditionally prayed "through Mary to Jesus." This archetypal way of praying Mary, in fact, allows Jesus to become incar-nate in our very being. As I "ponder" the Immaculate Conception I be-come aware of the goodness of creation and my innate gracefulness; I conceive Jesus' within me by the power of the Holy Spirit; I give birth to him daily and discover him in others; I slowly let go of my need to control through power and knowledge. Through Mary belief statements become faith experiences; factual knowledge becomes lived Truth. I can then say with Paul: "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me." Some Reflections On Mary, Bridge To Ecumenism? Mary Eileen Foley, R.G.S. Sister Mary Eileen Foley, R.G.S., has been teaching courses in Scripture in a par-ish and to her own Sisters, in addition to her free lance writing. She has been princi-pal and teacher of special needs of teenage girls. Her address is Convent of the Good Shepherd; Cushing Hill Drive; Marlboro, Massachusetts 01752. The hopeful days of ecumenism following Vatican Council II in the 1960s highlighted a maj6r difference between Catholics and Protestants, namely, devotion to Mary. For a long time after the Reformation in the sixteenth century, there was an absence of any productive or even respect-ful communication between us, and consequently there was little under-standing of each other's point of view, especially regarding the mother of Jesus. Historical Background Devotion to Mary, an outstanding characteristic of most Catholics, became the dividing line, with symbolic rather than logical origins. Mary represented Catholicism, against which the Reformers were protesting on the Continent. About the same time in England, the suppression of Catholicism un-der Henry VIII was more specifically directed against the papacy. The destruction of monasteries, however, depri red the people of religious in-struction and centers where Mary was honored; as a consequence, devo-tion to her almost died out. Elizabeth I, motivated politically rather than religiously, continued her father's efforts to dominate Ireland, capitalizing on the anti- Catholic movement by implementing the policy of "Anglicization 342 Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 343 through Protestantization." In Ireland, the mere possession of a rosary was sufficient evidence of treason against the Crown, and was punish-able by death. Under Cromwell's dictatorship in England, Anglicanism, as well as Catholicism, was repressed, and even the celebration of Christmas was forbidden. "Where was the Blessed Mother in thought and practice if her son's birthday was repudiated by the law of the land?"~ Divinity vs. Discipleship Influenced by the history and the politics of the times, misunderstand-ings grew in regard to the Church's attitude toward Mary. Protestants were disturbed about the apparent centrality of devotion to Mary; it seemed to be taking something away from Christ. Non-Roman Catho-lics balk at giving Mary the title of "Co-Redemptrix," fearing that Christ will be displaced as unique mediator of salvation.2 In time, Catholics were able to hear Protestants voice their concern about our apparent "divinization" of Mary, yet countless explanations to the contrary did not seem to convince them, either to put their fears at rest or to allow them the comfort and friendship of the Mother of God. The Council actually approached the subject of Mary with the concerns of non-Catholics in mind, even over the objections of some of the bish-ops, who felt that ecumenism should not be the focus of a document on Mary. Some wished her to be declared Mediatrix of All Graces, but this did not happen at the Council. Actually no separate document on Mary materialized. In the final analysis, Mary appears in the context of the document on the Church. In a discussion of Christ (the Redeemer) and the Church (the Redeemed), she is very clearly identified with the Church, the people of God, rather than with Christ, the Son of God. The document portrays her, not as Christo-typical but as Ecclesio-typical. The implications of this decision were far-reaching indeed. First, this is a very different focus from that to which we have been accustomed. We have tended to see Jesus and Mary together, and while Mary was by no means deified, we did tend to .pray to them together. We looked up to them. Her stance now, however, is with us, the re-deemed, the beneficiaries of the passion and death of Christ. Discipleship Part of the reason for the change seems to be the emphasis on Mary's role in Scripture as disciple. As a hearer of God's word, she is an out-standing disciple of Christ, and she is logically first among his disciples :344 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 and members of the Church. The concept of disciple, clearly presented in .the Scripture, seems to be more acceptable to our Protestant brethren and carries with it no overtones of divinity. All four Evangelists as a matter of fact paint her portrait as the faith-ful disciple, and in so doing, they reflect this role as seeming to surpass her title of Mother of God. "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you," cried a woman in the crowd, to whom Jesus responded, "Yea, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it" (Lk 12:27-28). "Your mother and brethren are outside, awaiting you," he was told, and he deftly responded with a question: "Who is my mother? Who are my brethren? He who does the will of my Father, is mother, brother, and sister to me" (Mk 3:31-35). Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and the disciple whom Je-sus loved. "Woman, behold thy son," he said; then to John, "Behold thy mother" (Jn 19:25-27). Jesus is speaking to his ideal followers, who henceforth will model discipleship for all who desire to follow the Mas-ter. It struck me while comparing these Gospel passages that the Evan-gelists are at great pains to demonstrate that Mary's dignity comes from the fact that she was a woman of faith, which is the outstanding charac, teristic of a disciple. She was open to the word of God and completely obedient in carrying out whatever it called her to do. Whether it was ac-ceptance of the angelic message ("be it done unto me according to thy word," Lk i:38) or responding to the call to go to Bethlehem, then Egypt, and finally Calvary, she modeled clearly for us what the disciple of Christ should be. Grace and Discipleship No one, it seems, could be faulted for honoring one who followed Christ so perfectly. Yet, here again, differing beliefs on grace playa part. Protestants believe that salvation is effected by God alone, that hu-man nature plays no role. Protestants tend to view human nature as totally corrupted by sin, and grace as the merciful disposition of God to forgive and to treat the sin-ner as justified . To speak of human cooperation is to underestimate either the radical nature of human sin or the absolute gratuity of grace. In this perspective (from the Protestant point of view) the use of Mary's fiat becomes a primary example of Catholic presumption of God's sov-ereignty, making God dependent on humanity or making a creature mu-tually effective with God in the work of redemption.3 Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 345 Resistance to the title "Co-Redemptrix" is related to this belief also. The Catholic point of view has been adequately stated, and to quote Tambasco again: "Mary's life simply reflects the fullest effects of grace which enable a faith-filled freedom that responds to and engages in the sovereign work of God in Christ .F.reedom does not substitute for grace, or grace, freedom."4 Because she is preeminent in carrying out his word, Mary's signifi-cance lies, according to the synoptics, in this characteristic of disci-pleship, more than the fact that she is Jesus's natural mother. At the foot of the cross, howe~,er, the beloved disciple, John, and the faithful disci-ple, Mary, seem to be called to discipleship in terms of a family rela-tionship, specifically that of mother and son. The role of disciple now seems to be expressed best in terms of mothering! Discipleship And Motherhood Actually, Mary conceived Jesus by means of an act of faith, the mark of the disciple: When the invitation to be Christ's mother is proposed to her, she says, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word" (Lk 1:38). And then the Word becomes flesh . Faith comes first, and then motherhood. John, too, is to carry out his discipleship in similar terms. In his First Letter, John's words are as tender as any mother's: "Remain in him now, little ones . See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called the children of God! Yet that is what we are' (1 Jn 2:28; 3:1). Mothering is what disciples do. Whatever our ministry is, we hope to bring to it compassion and caring. As a teacher l felt honored to be involved in nurturing the intellectual and spiritual growth of students. The Scriptures are full of mother images that apply not only to a disci-ple but were, in fact, chosen by the Lord for himself. The scriptural im-age of Christ weeping over Jerusalem is very explicit: "How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a mother bird collects her young under her wings, and you refused me!" (Lk 13:34). The disciple of Christ shares in his life-giving approach to those to whom he has been sent. Life-giving calls up images of motherhood, and lately it has been very popular to speak of God as Mother. Julian of Nor-wich often prayed to "Mother Jesus." Mary images motherhood for us, not only her own, but the motherhood of Christ as well. Even the Apos-tle Paul says: "You are my children, and you put me back in labor pains until Christ is formed in you" (Ga 4:!9). Finally the God of the Old Testament speaks through Isaiah: "Can 346 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 a mother forget her infant, or a woman be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Yet even if she should forget, I will never forget you" (Is 49:15). It looks to me that, although Protestants accept the fact that Mary is the mother of.Jesus, they do not seem to see her as their mother, too. While we sometimes see ourselves in the role of mothering, at other times we, too, need to be nurtured or affirmed. The mother of Jesus seems to be a natural one to turn to, especially since we understand that she has been given to us in the words spoken to John, "Behold thy mother" (Jn 19:27). The motherly qualities so ~befitting a disciple are surely present in a special way in Mary, the paramount disciple of all. Doctrine, Scripture, And Tradition Another possible ecumenical barrier regarding Mary is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (Mary conceived without sin) and the dogma of the Assumption (Mary taken into heaven, body and soul.) A dogma is a doctrine that has been presented for belief, and the idea of the evo-lution of dogma is an enlightening one for many, Catholics included. A doctrine emerges from tradition, which has been explained as follows: Tradition is the living faith experience of the Church which preserves the truths enunciated in the Scriptures but also explicates these truths, draws out what is hidden, and develops more fully insights consistent with but not wholly expressed in the biblical text.5 As has been better expressed above, sometimes a dogma affirms what was not known in complete form from the beginning, but devel-oped from reflections on, for example, the mystery of the Incarnation, and has been the constant teaching of the Church for centuries. Dogma may appear to have been imposed exteriorly, in a context that is a-historical. The vagueness of its scriptural basis is difficult for Protestants, who are biblically, and therefore, historically, oriented. Rootedness in history and Scripture, sources that are being mined assiduously by Catho-lics today, may well provide the undergirding necessary to place devo-tion to Mary in properperspective for all. The aforementioned dogmas on Mary were defined during what we now call the Marian Age (1850 to 1950), although they have been part of the tradition of the Church since the sixth century. Belief (in the Assumption) originated not from biblical evidence nor even patristic testimony but as the conclusion of a so-called argument from convenience or fittingness. It was fitting that Jesus should have res-cued his mother from the corruption of the flesh and so he must have Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 347 taken her bodily into heaven.6 At the end of the sixth century, they began to celebrate the Immacu-late Conception in the East, but it remained unknown in the West until the eleventh century . To eastern ears, which had a different under-standing of original sin, it meant only freedom from mortality and genu-ine human weakness.7 Such doctrines are based on what has been described as "theology from above," or an understanding of the Incarnation as originating in the Trinity. When the Father sent his Son to earth to be born of the Vir-gin Mary, it was incompatible with his nature that the Son would inherit original sin, taught to be transmitted through birth into the human race. Therefore, it was appropriate that Mary be conceived immaculate. The honor is for the sake of Jesus, not Mary. The Communion Of Saints An understanding of the communion of saints, a belief shared by both Catholics and Protestants, may be helpful in seeing Mary's role more clearly. The idea seems to have originated with the martyrs who gave their lives for Christ, and, as a result, were believed to be enjoying his presence and the rewards of their sacrifice. Obviously, they would be in a unique position to be allowed by God to hear the prayers of those still struggling on and would be willing and able to offer these petitions for help to Christ himself, in whose presence they now live. The idea of intercessory prayer is accepted by most people, who pray not only to the saints who have distinguished themselves in the service of God, but to their own friends and relatives who led good lives on earth and as-suredly are still mindful of the needs of those they have left behind. Peo-ple who are still living are also asked to pray for the intentions of oth-ers! That people should present their petitions to Mary in order that she might intercede with her Son for them follows logically in this tradition. It would seem that he would be especially attentive to one who was his model disciple on earth, to one who spent, her life hearing his word and accomplishing it, especially if she were interceding for one who was ask-ing her help to be an effective disciple also. - In ordinary life we often speak to someone with influence in order to present our case. Such is the nature of intercessory prayer, not to be confused with praying directly to Mary,'as if she were able to grant these petitions herself. Protestants dislike seeing Mary in the role of Media-tor, since Jesus Christ is the one Mediator. A movement at the Council to declare Mary Mediatrix of all Graces was scrapped, although this be- Review for Religious, May-June 1989 lief has been part of the tradition of the Church since the eighth century. The ecumenical dimension of the Council reflected the Church's percep-tion of herself now as a world church, with respect for the truth possessed by all churches. Theology -From-Below The contributions of Karl Rahner to contemporary religious thought seem to have great value for the ecumenical movement. Rahner, consid-ered to be one of the greatest theologians of our time, is especially im-pressed with the sacramentality of creation--the fact that God himself is revealed in his works. When creation first came from the hand of God as recorded in Genesis, it was seen to be good--to be holy. God was in his creation from the beginning. Although it was good, it was not com-plete, and in the p.rogress of time, all creation moves to fulfillment, which is finally achieved in Jesus Christ. Rahner's idea is that Christ emerged naturally from God's creation, rather than emphasizing his "being sent down from heaven." He says things often like "the more one is like Christ, the more he is truly him- ~elf." To be like Christ is to approach being a perfect human being. Rahner's ideas allow for experiential learning on the part of Jesus, like any human person going through the normal stages of growth and de-velopment. This Christology is very attractive to a Catholic today, and perhaps it has been better known to Protestants all along. This Christology does not deny his divinity, of course, but the em-phasis is very different from the implications of the theology:from-above design, which seems to emphasize his divinity more, although it does not deny his humanity. One argument advanced was that since one is the mother of a person, rather than a nature, it seemed logical to em-phasize Mary as Mother of God. "In 451," writes Charles W. Dickson, a Lutheran pastor who has served as Chairman of the Commission on Ecumenical Relations of the North Carolina Council of Churches: the Council of Chalcedon dealt with the subject of dual natures by af-firming the inseparability of the two natures, each nature being pre-served and concurring in one person (prosopon) and one subsistence (hy-postasis). 8 Reverend Dickson continues: If this Chalcedonian formulation is given serious attention in contem-porary Protestant thought, some feel the human nature of Christ will not continue to suffer the devaluation of the past, nor will, therefore, its pre- Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 349 cursor in the Incarnation--the Virgin Mary.9 The title, Mother of God, does seem to imply that Mary is divine, and although Protestants accept Mary as the mother of Jesus, tradition-ally they seem to resist the title of "Mother of God." In pagan mythol-ogy, the mother of the god or gods was considered to be a goddess. There seemed to be anxiety in New Testament times from the beginning not to equate Mary with the pagan goddesses, and although this distinc-tion has always been understood by Catholics, it may have looked to Prot-estants that we were divinizing Mary. Popular Religion - An Aid To Ecumenism? In view of the ecumenical dimension, the relationship between sym-bol, basic human need, and religion is very important. Clifford Geertz says that religious symbols provide not only the ability to comprehend the world but to endure it. Man depends upon symbols and symbol systems with a dependence so great as to be decisive for his creatural viability and, as a result, his sen-sitivity to even the remotest indication that they may prove unable to cope with one or another aspect of experience, raises within him the grav-est source of anxiety. ~0 In worship, people tend to clothe God with attributes that will meet their innermost needs. Sometimes in the past the abstract definitions of the theologians left people cold. God was oftentimes seen to be a dis-tant, transcendent God, and a judging God, who dispensed rewards and punishments in strict accordance with one's deeds. People were longing to see him as loving and compassionate, like a mother. If ordinary Catholics had been accustomed to reading the Scripture for themselves, as they are beginning to do now since Vatican II, they might have experienced firsthand the motherly concern of Jesus for the poor, the sick, and the scorned. Probing the Bible now, one is touched, for example, by his attitude toward women, especially disgraced women, regardless of the disapproval of males present. I do understand, however, that Bible reading for Catholics was sharply curtailed at the time of the Reformation due to so many people leaving the Church because of pri-vate interpretation of the Scripture. We understand now that in God there is a perfect balance of so-called masculine and feminine qualities; thanks to insightsfrom psychol-ogy, we are more theologically sophisticated than our predecessors. How-ever, in the early centuries of Christianity, people turned to the feminine Mary, in whom they felt that they had a ready-made mother who cared 350/Review for Religious, May-June 1989 about them. Based, no doubt, on the idea of the communion of saints and the practice of asking for the intercession of the martyrs, who were surely with God, there was a normal development of devotion to Mary, who, as the mother of Jesus, w,a_.,s seen to be more than willing to help those for whom her Son died such a cruel death. Popular Religion And The Apparitions When Catholics finally turn to the Scripture for news of Mary, they are amazed at how little is there! The immense body of material that is available on Mary derives from tradition and also from popular religion, which is based on Mary's relationship to Jesus ~nd the needs of people. Our knowledge of her has been shaped also by .accounts of her various appearances throughout the world. However, as Tambasco comments: ". (the) return to biblical and ecumenical considerations has rightly reduced these devotions to a minor role (p. 71)." Their value is in the Gospel teaching that each affirms. The Church moves very slowly in granting approval for belief in ap-paritions, and even when approval is received, there is no obligation to believe. The one important guideline in regard to any appearance is the fact that nothing is presented or ordered that is contrary to the constant teaching of the Church. An example would be when Mary reportedly appeared to Catherine Labour6 in France in 1830 and to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, also in France, in 1858, she said, "I am the Immaculate Conception," a tra-dition in the Church since the sixth century. At LaSalette she insisted on the observance of the Lord's Day, which the people were ignoring, treating Sunday as any other day. She also re-proved them for blasphemy and taking the Lord's name in vain, thus un-derscoring the second and third commandments. At Fatima she asked them to do penance and to pray for peace. In 1879 at Knock, in County Mayo in Ireland, she said nothing at all! She appeared with St. Joseph and St. John, beside an altar sur-mounted by a lamb and a cross, over which angels hovered. The Irish saw in her appearance a message of comfort for the persecution they had suffered for their faith, dating back to the sixteenth century. They iden-tified the symbols with those of the heavenly liturgy in the Book of Reve-lation, seeing in them an affirmation of their fidelity to worship. Priests had risked their lives to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, symbolized by the Lamb. St. John the Evangelist is holding the Gospel book in one hand, with the other hand raised, as if he is making a point in a sermon. Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 35"1 The theme or instruction accompanying each visit was not a new teaching in any way, but an old teaching which needed a new emphasis, depending on the times. When I was at Knock in 1987, I remember think-ing to myself: it really doesn't matter whether Mary actually appeared here or not! All around me at the shrine there was evidence of faith, as people prayed, participated in the liturgy, reflected on the passion of Christ at the stations, or were merely kind and friendly to each other. I felt a renewal of my own spirituality in such a faith-filled atmosphere. The element of pilgrimage is, of course, very strong at Knock, and pil-grimage from the earliest days has been a vibrant expression of popular religion among people. Pilgrimage Pilgrimages stemming from the apparition at Lourdes are legendary. According to Victor and Edith Turner (Image & Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1978), who did an anthropological study on popular religion, people do not necessarily go on pilgrimage for the cure, but for the atmosphere in which their spiritu-ality is nourished. People see a pilgrimage, or a journey, as a symbol of the journey of life, and they value their association with fellow trav-elers oriented toward God in the service of neighbor. There is a leveling of classes on a pilgrimage; kings travel with ordinary folk, as will be the case in heaven. They volunteer as stretcher-bearers or wherever there is a need, and are energized in the role of service to their fellow human be-ings. In writing about pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady at Guadalupe, Segundo Galilea says that here the rich can discover the world of the poor and become sensitive to their need for justice and reconciliation. The movement towards Mary obliges the rich to go out of themselves and to meet the poor. It gives the poor a sense of security and allows them to meet the rich without apology, on an equal footing. Mary is, then, one of the rare symbols of integration in Latin America . ~ The apparition at Guadalupe in i 53 I, perhaps one of the first appa-ritions on record, is said to to be a large factor in popular religion in Latin America, and as a result, has given impetus to the liberation theology movement there. It has touched the hearts of the oppressed, making them feel that they are loved by God, and consequently raised in their own self-esteem, to the point where they are seriously struggling for self-determination in their living situation there. 352 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 Mary and Liberation Theology A new reading of Luke's gospel, which emphasizes salvation his-tory, yields much that is pertinent today in regard to saving, or liberat-ing, the oppressed. Accustomed as we are to seeing Mary as queen, it is a new thing for us Catholics to see Mary as a peasant woman as she was at Guadalupe, and, indeed, at Nazareth. It is a challenge for us to take another look at the Magnificat, which we sing every day in the Liturgy of the Hours. There are places in South America where the recitation of the Magnifi-cat is forbidden, as being subversive. Mary's song begins with the praise of God. "My soul proclaims the glory of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." The use of the word Savior emphasizes her stance with us, in need of salvation. She re-fers to herself as his lowly handmaid, on whom he has looked with fa-vor. All generations will call her blessed because he, the mighty one, has done great things for her. In countries where there is no middle class, but only the poor and the rich, who possess all the wealth of the land, the poor hear Mary's Magnificat message in the Virgin of Guadalupe: He has shown might in his arm; he has scattered the proud in their con-ceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty (Lk 1:51-53). They look to God for the mercy he promised to "our fathers,"-- and here all peoples sharing the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Christ, unite in looking back even to the patriarchs, to whom God prom-ised mercy and liberation, which was accomplished first through Moses and eventually through Jesus Christ. And now there is hope for these poor also. The Exodus and Exile theme of liberation fit the situaiion to-day. A new look at Scripture will allow us to see Mary as homeless and as an exile, driveh out of her homeland to Egypt for the safety of her child. Popular religion often forges ahead of the theologians, and the hier-archy has only recently given its approval to the liberation theology move-ment in Latin America. A Latin American theologian says that the Mariology of Vatican II was more preoccupied by dialogue and relations with Protestants than with the simple people and popular Mariology. What is important now is to prolong the'deep and rich Mariological affirmations of Vatican II by a popular Mariology, a renewed Mariology . ~2 Mary, Bridge to Ecumenism? / 353 The basic idea of this renewed Mariology is that Mary is the sign and sacrament of the motherly mercy of God towards the poor, of the ten-derness of God who loves and defends the poor (Puebla, no. 291). ~3 (ital-ics mine) How will these considerations serve as an ecumenical bridge for us? By recognizing the need among peoples for freedom of conscience, free-dom from oppression, freedom of religion, justice for all. It is said that the problem with the doctrines presented for belief in former days was not with the dogmas themselves, but with authority. (Belief in the Im-maculate Conception predated the Reformation.) The wording was that he who did not believe, let him be anathema! Even Martin Luther did not deny the doctrines themselves, but pronounced them pious opinions. John XXIII insisted that there be no condemnations! He condemned no one. Evangelization itself must be an invitation, even a lure, to Christi-anity. No one is to be coerced in this matter in any way. John Paul II in Mother of the Redeemer.says that the Church's jour-ney now, near the end of the second Christian millennium, involves a renewed commitment to her mission. In the words of the Magnificat, the Church renews in herself the awareness that the truth about God who saves cannot be separated from his love of preference for the poor and humble, expressed in the word and works of Jesus. These points are di-rectly related to the Christian meaning of freedom and liberation' (p. 51 ). One must be free from oppression in order to respond to the call of Christ to do one's part toward the building up of the kingdom of God. In discussing Mary's role at the wedding feast at Cana, when she ad-vised Jesus that "they had no wine," the Pope sees this as expressing a new kind of motherhood according to the spirit and not just according to the flesh, that is to say, Mary's solicitude for human beings, her com-ing to th'em in the wide variety of their wants and needs (P. 30-1). I feel that the orientation toward ecumenism observed at Vatican Council II, especially in regard to Mary, has borne fruit and hopefully will continue to do so in the future. I am intrigued by the interpretation offered by Edward Yarnold in regard to reconciling Protestants and Catholics in regard to the Immacu-late Conception and the Assumption. It is possible that Christians disagree over the symbolic form of doctrine, while not disagreeing over the theological meaning. Thus, Roman Catho-lics could take literally that Mary was immaculately conceived and then assumed into heaven, but that is just the symbolic meaning. Protestants might not agree with that, but could accept the ultimate theological mean- 354/Review for Religious, May-June 1989 ing that says God's grace requires response, providers conditions for re-sponse, and results in sanctification even after death. There would thus be theological unity with a plurality regarding symbolic meaning. ~'~ When the late Rev. Arthur Carl Piepkorn, was professor at Concor-dia Seminary, St. Louis, he explained that "other Christians" (he did not refer to them as non-Catholics) have taken hope from references to Mary at Vatican II as follows: It may yet happen in our time that there will come about a happy bal-ance between excess ardor in the veneration of the Mother of God and in excessive coldness to the role that God himself has given her in the drama of human salvation. If it does, as I pray it will, we shall see in our time what the "Mag-nificat" placed on the lips of the mother of God--'All generations will count me blessed.' Other Christians feel that the more we esteem Mary, the more we honor her Son; when men (sic) refuse to honor Mary, they really do not believe in the Incarnation.~5 NOTES ~ William L. Lahey, "The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Theology and Devotion of the Seventeenth-Century Anglican Divines," Marian.Studies,,XXXVlll (1987), p. 143. 2 Anthony J. Tambasco, "Mary in Ecumenical Perspective," What Are They Say-ing About Mary? (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 54. 3 lbid, p. 57. '~ lbid, p. 58. 5 lbid, p. 60. 6 Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston Press Inc., 1980), p. 873. 7 Ibid. 8 Charles W. Dickson, Ph.'D., "Is a Protestant Mariology Possible?" Queen of All Hearts (Vol. XXXIX, No. 4) Nov./Dec. 1988, p. 26. Quoted from Willison Walker-- A History.of the Christian Church, p. 139. 9 lbid, p. 26. ~0 Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Cultural System," Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Travistock Publications, Ltd., 1968), p. 13. ~ Segundo Galilea, "Mary in Latin American Liberation Theologies," ed. Bertrand de Margerie, S.J., Marian Studies, XXXVIII (1987), p. 57. ~2 Victor Codina, "Mary in Latin American Liberation Theologies," ed. Bertrand de Margerie, S.J., Marian Studies, XXXVIII (1987), p. 49. ~3 Ibid. 14 Quoted in Tambasco, What Are They Saying About Mary? p. 64. ~5 "Lutheran Hails Mary in Vatican ll's Words," The Boston Pilot (June 29, 1973), p. 2. Prayer and Devotion to Mary: A Bibliography Thomas G. Bourque, T.O.R. Father Thomas Bourque, T.O.R., is Chairperson of the Philosophical and Religious Studies Department of St. Francis College in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He has been involved in youth ministry, parish ministry, and the ministry of Catholic education and adul( education. His address is St. Francis College; Loretto, PA 15940. The Marian Year is meant to promote a new and more careful reading of what the Council said about the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and of the Church . We speak not only of the doctrine of faith but also of the life of faith, and thus of authentic "Marian spirituality," seen in the light of tradition, and especially the spirituality to which the Council exhorts us. Marian spirituality, like its corresponding devotion, finds a very rich source in the historical expe-rience of individuals and of the various Christian communities present among the different peoples and nations of the world. John Paul II Mother of the Redeemer, #48 ~,lohn Paul II invites all of us to reflect upon our.journey of faith with our Lord in light of our relationship with his Mother Mary. As many Catho-lics and Christians continue to question the role of Mary in the Church today, the Pope's encyclical is very timely. Solid devotion to Mary can only spring from an authentic knowledge of her role in salvation history. The Mariology of John Paul lI's encyc-lical, Mother of the Redeemer, as well as the Mariology of Paul Vl's ex-hortation, Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, can truly be summed in the words of Paul VI: "In Mary, everything is relative to Christ and de-pendent upon him." Both pontiffs remind us that Mary is never to be 355 356 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 considered in isolation. She must be seen in relationship to Christ, the head, and to his Body, the Church. Both Paul VI and John Paul II con-tinually link Mary to Christ, and not only is Mary Mother of Jesus, but also to the Church. The basic principle of Mariology is that Mary is Mother and Associ-ate of the Redeemer. She is a woman of faith, simplicity, loving avail-ability, and a disciple of faith. As a follow-up to the Marian year, the following selected bibliogra-phy is offered as an aid for reflection and prayer. This selected bibliog-raphy can serve as a guide to study and reflection on the contemporary devotion to Mary. The concentration of this work is a modern approach to Mariology from the time of the apostolic exhortation, Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the time of promulgation of the encyclical let-ter, Mother of the Redeemer. The selected bibliography is divided into four sections. The first sec-tion consists of books which deal with Marian prayer, devotion and spiri-tuality. The second section lists articles from periodicals from the years 1974 to 1987. Encyclicals and pastoral letters are cited in the third sec-tion, while typescripts and tape cassettes of value are cited in the fourth section. Books and Pamphlets: Ashe, Geoffrey. The Virgin. London: Routledge and Paul, 1976. ¯ Bojorge, Horacio. The Image of Mary: According to the Evangelists. New York: Alba House, 1978. Branick, Vincent P., ed. Mary, the Saint and the Church. Ramsey, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980. Brown, Raymond E., ed. Mary in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978. Buby, Bertrand. Mary: The Faithful Disciple~. New York: Paulist Press, 1985. Callahan, Sidney. The Magnificat: The Prayer of Mary. New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Carberry, John Cardinal. Mary Queen and Mother: Marian Pastoral Reflections. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1979. Carretto, Carlo. Blessed Are You Who Believed. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1982. Carroll, Eamon R. Understanding the Mother of Jesus. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1979. Cunningham, Lawrence and Sapieha, Nicolas. Mother of God. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1982. A Mary Bibliography / 357 Deiss, Lucien. Mary, Daughter of Zion. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1972. Flanagan, Donal. In Praise of Mary. Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1975. --. The Theology of Mary. Hales Corner, Wisconsin: Clergy Book Service, 1976. Flannery, Austin P. The Documents of Vatican II. New York: Pillar Books, 1975. Graef, Hilda C. Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion. New York: Sheed and Ward, Two Volumes, (Volume I, 1963 and Volume II, 1965). --. The Devotion to Our Lady. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1963. Greeley, Andrew M. The Mary Myth: On the Femininity of God. New York: Seabury Press, 1977. Griolet, Pierre. You Call Us Together." Prayers For the Christian As-sembly. Paramus, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1974. Guste, Bob. Mary At My Side. Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1986. Habig, Marion. The Franciscan Crown. Chicago: Franciscan Her-ald Press, 1976. Harrington, W. J. The Rosary: A Gospel Prayer. Canfield, Ohio: Alba House, 1975. Haughton, Rosemary. Feminine Spirituality: Reflections on the Mys-tery of the Rosary. Paramus, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1976. Hertz, G. Following Mary Today. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1979. Houselander, Caryil. Lift Up Your Hearts to Mary, Peace, Prayer, Love. New York: Arena Letters, 1978. Hurley, Dermot. Marian Devotion For Today. Dublin: C. G. Neale, 1971. Jegen, Carol Frances. Mary According To Women. Kansas City: Leaven Press, 1985. Jelly, Frederick. Madonna: Mary in the Catholic Tradition. Hunt-ington, Indiana: Our Sunday .Visitor Press, 1986. Johnson, Ann. Miryam of Judah: Witness in Truth and Tradition. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1987. --. Miryam of Nazareth. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1986. Jungman, Joseph A. Christian Prayer Through The Centuries. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. 351t/Review for Religious~ May-June 1989 Kern, Walter. New Liturgy and Old Devotions. Staten Island, New York: Alba House, 1979, 119-184. Kung, Hans and Moltmann, Jurgen. ed. Mary in the Churches. New York: Seabury Press, 1983, Concilium, volume 168. La Croix, Francois de. The Little Garden of Our Blessed Lady. Ilkley, England: Scholar Press, 1977. Long, Valentine. The Mother of God. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1976. Maestri, William. Mary: Model of Justice. New York: Alba House, 1987. Malinski, Mieczslaw. Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious Reflections on Life and Rosary. Chicago: Claretian Publications, 1979. Maloney, George A. Mary: The Womb of God. Denville, New Jer-sey: Dimension Books, 1976. Moloney, John. Pilgrims With Mary. Dublin, Ireland: Irish Messen-ger, 1976. Obbard, Elizabeth Ruth. Magnificat: The Journey and the Song. New York: Paulist Press, 1986. Pelikan, Jaroslav. Flusser, David. Lang, Justin. Mary: Images of the Mother of Jesus in Jewish and Christian Perspective. Philadelphia: For-tress Press, 1986. Pennington, Basil. Daily We Touch Him. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1977, 135-148. Rahner, Karl. Mary, Mother of the Lord. New York: Herder and Herder, 1963. Randall, John. Mary, Pathway To Fruitfulness. Locust Valley, New York: Living Flame Press, 1978. Ratzinger, Joseph. Daughter Zion: Meditations On The Church's Marian Belief. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983. Rosage, David. Praying With Mary. Locust Valley, New York: Liv-ing Flame Press, 1980. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Mary, the Feminine Face of the Church. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977. Schillebeeckx, Edward. Mary, Mother of the Redemption. London: Sheed and Ward, 1964, 164ff. Sheed, Frank. The Instructed Heart--Soundings At Four Depths. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1979. Stevens, Clifford. The Blessed Virgin: Her L~]'e & Her Role In Our Lives. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1986. Tambasco, Anthony. What Are They Saying About Mary? New A Mary Bibliography / 359 York: Paulist Press, 1984. Unger, Dominic J. The Angelus. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1956. Viano, Joseph. Two Months With Mary. New York: Alba House, 1984. Wright, John Cardinal. Mary Our Hope. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984. Articles: Abberton, J. "On the Parish: Marian Devotion." Clergy Review. 63 (April 1978), 147-150. Albrecht, Barbara. "Mary: Type and Model of the Church." REvtEw ~oR REt~tG~Ot~S. 36 (1977), 517-524. Alfaro, Juan. "The Marioiogy of the Fourth Gospel: Mary and the Struggles for Liberation." Biblical Theology Bulletin. 10 (January 1980), 3-16. Barrionveuo, C. "For A Better Rosary." Christ to the Christian World. 18 (I 979), 304-307. Billy, Dennis J. "The Marian Kernel." REview ~oR R~t.~ous. 43 (May/June 1983), 415-420. Blackburn, Robert E. "The Reed of God Continues To Flourish." U.S. Catholic. 47 (May 1982), 2. Browne, Dorothy. "Mary, the Contemplative." Spiritual Life. 23 (Spring 1977), 49-60. Buby, B. "The Biblical Prayer of Mary: Luke 2:19-51 ." R~v~w RE~.tG~Ot~S. 39 (July 1980), 577-581. Buono, Anthony M. "The Oldest Prayers to Mary." Catholic Di-gest. 48 (August 1984), 111-113. Burns, Robert E. "Don't Let Sleeping Devotions Lie." U.S. Catho-lic. 52 (January 1987), 2. Carberry, John Cardinal. "Marialis Cultis: A Priestly Treasure." Homiletic and Pastoral Review. 78 (May ! 978), 7-13. Carroll, Eamon. "A Survey of Recent Marioiogy." Marian Stud-ies. 36 (1985), 101-127. b. "A Survey of Recent Mariology." Marian Studies. 35 (1984), 157-187. --. "A Survey of Recent Marioiogy." Marian Studies. 31 (1980), 11-154 (Similar surveys may be found within volumes 24 to 31 of Marian Studies). b. "A Woman For All Seasons." U.S. Catholic. 39 (October 1974), 6-11. 360 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 --. "In the Company of Mary." Modern Liturgy. 9 (May 1982), 4-10. -- "Mary After Vatican II." St. Anthony Messenger. 91 (May 1984), 36-40. --. "Mary and the Church: Trends in Marian Theology Since Vati-can II." New Catholic World. 229 (November-December 1986), 248- 250. --. "Mary, Blessed Virgin: Devotion." New Catholic Encyclope-dia. 9 (1967), 364-369. -- "Mary: The Woman Come Of Age." Marian Studies. 36 (1985), 136-160. --. "Prayer and Spirituality: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Catholic Prayer-Life." Today Catholic Teacher. 12 (March 1979), 40-41. Chantraine, George. "Prayer Within the Church." Communio. 12 (Fall 1985), 258-275. Ciappi, L. "The Blessed Virgin Mary Today and the Contemporary Appeal of the Rosary." Origins. 44 (October 30, 1975), 4. Clark, Allan. "Marialis Cultus." Tablet. 228 (April 6, 1974), 354- 356. Colavechio, X. "The Relevance of Mary." Priest. 36 (June 1980), 14-16. Coleman, William V. "A Peasant Woman Called to Guide the Church." Today's Parish. 13 (May-June 1981), 7. Coiledge, E. "The Church At Prayer: To The Mother of God." Way. 19 (July 1979), 230-239 and 19 (October 1979), 314-321. Conner, Paul. "The Rosary Old Or New?" Sisters Today. 59 (Oc-tober 1986), 108- I 10. Curran, Patricia. "Women Reclaim the Magnificat." Sisters Today. 55 (August-September 1983), 24-30. Daly, Anne Carson. "A Woman For All Ages." Homiletic and Pas-toral Review. 86 (May 1986), 19-22. Davies, Brian A. "Mary In Christian Practice." Doctrine and Life. 26 (June 1976), 403-407. Deak, Mary Ann. "Mary's Faith: A Model For Our Own." Catho-lic Update. UPD 108 (I 978). Dehne, Carl. "Roman Catholic Popular Devotions." Worship. 49 (October 1975), 446-460. Demarco, A. "Hail Mary." New Catholic Encyclopedia. 6 (1967), 898. Donnelly, Dorothy H. "Mary, Model of Personal Spirituality." A Mary Bibliography / 361 New Catholic World. 219 (March-April 1976), 64-68. Emery, Andree. "On Devotion To Mary." New Covenant. 11 (May 1982), 12-14. Finley, Mitchel. "Rediscovering The Rosary." America. 148 (May 7, 1983), 351. Fischer, Patricia. "The Scriptural Rosary: An Ancient Prayer Re-vived." Catechist. 20 (October 1986), 21. Flanagan, Donald. "The Veneration of Mary: A New Papal Docu-ment." Furrow. 25 (1974), 272-277. Frehen, H. "The Principles of Marian Devotion." The Marian Era. 10 (1971), 34-36 and 272-277. Foley, Leonard. "Mary: Woman Among Us." St. Anthony Messen-ger. 94 (May 1987), 12-16. Gabriele, Edward. "In Search of the Woman: Reformulating the Mary Symbol in Contemporary Spirituality." Priest. 42 (February 1986), 28-29. Gaffney, John P. "APortrait of Mary." Cross and Crown. 24 ~Spring 1975), 129-138. h. "Marialis Cultis: Guidelines to Effective Preaching." Priest. 38 (December 1982), 14-18. Galligan, John Sheila. "Mary: A Mosaic Joy." REw~wFoR R~L~G~Ot~S. 43 (January-February 1984), 82-92. Galot, Jean. "Why the Act of Consecration to Our Lady?" Origins. 3 (January 18, 1982), Galvin, John P. "A Portrait of Mary In the Theology of Karl Rahner." New Catholic World. 229 (November-December 1986), 280- 285. Gordon, Mary. "Coming To Terms With Mary." Commonweal. 109 (January 15, 1982), 1. Green, Austin~ "The Rosary: A Gospel Prayer." Cross and Crown. 28 (June 1976), 173-178. Grisdela, Catherine. "How May Processions Began." Religion Teacher's Journal. 18 (April-May 1984), 28. Gustafson, J. "A Woman For All Seasons." Modern Liturgy. 9 (May 1982), 4-10. Hamer, Jean Jerome Cardinal. "Mary, Our Foremost Model." Con-templative Life. 10 (1985), 173- i 74. Hanson, R. "The Cult of Mary as Development of Doctrine." Way ,Supplement. 51 (Fall 1984), 8-96. Hebblethwaite, P. "The Mariology of Three Popes." Way Supple- 369/Review for Religious, May-June 1989 merit. 51 (Fall 1984), 8-96. Herrera, Marina. "Mary of Nazareth in Cross-cultural Perspective." Professional Approaches For Christian Educators. 16 ( i 986), 236-240. Hinneburgh, W.A. "Rosary." New Catholic Encyclopedia. 12 (I 967), 667-670. Hofinger, Johannes. "Postconciliar Marian Devotions." Priest. 37 (January 1981), 43-45 and 37 (February 1981), 15-17. Hogan, Joseph. "Hail Mary." Sisters Today. 57 (January 1986), 258-261. Jegen, C. "Mary, Mother of a Renewing Church." Bible Today. 24 (May 1986), 143-166. Jelly, Frederick M. "Marian Dogmas Within Vatican II's Hierar-chy of Truths." Marian Studies. 27 (1976). --. "Marian Renewal Among Christians." Homiletic and Pastoral Review. 79 (May 1979), 8-16. --. "Reply to 'Homage To a Great Pope and His Marian Devotion: Paul VI.' " Marian Studies. 31 (1980), 96-98. -- "The Mystery of Mary's Meditation." Homiletic and Pastoral Review. 80 (May 1980), 11-20. Johnson, Elizabeth A. "The Marian Tradition and the Reality of Women." Horizons. 12 (Spring 1985), 116-135. Karris, Robert J. "Mary's Magnificat and Recent Study." REVIEW ~OR REt~G~OUS. 42 (November-December 1983), 903-908. Keolsch, Charity Mary. "Mary and Contemplation In the Market-place." Sisters Today. 54 (June-July 1983), 594-597. Kerrigan, Michael P. "The Beginnings Of A New And Prosperous Way of Life." New Catholic World. 229 (November-December 1986), 251. Kleinz, John P. "How We Got The Hail Mary." Catholic Digest. 50 (May 1986), 55-57. Koehler, A. "Blessed From Generation to Generation: Mary In Pa-tristics and the History of the Church." Seminarium. 27 (1975), 578- 606. --. "Homage To A Great Pope And His Marian Devotion." Marian Studies. 31 (1980), 66-95. Krahan, Maria. "The Rosary." Mount Carmel. (Autumn 1977), 124-131. Kress, Robert. "Mariology and the Christian's Self-Concept." REVIEW ~OR RELiGiOUS. 31 (1972), 414-419. Lawrence, Claude. "The Rosary From the Beginning To Our Day." A Mary Bibliography / 363 Christian World. 28 (July-August 1983), 194-201. Leckey, Dolores. "The Rosary Time of My Life." Catholic Digest. 47 (October 1983), 57-58. Leskey, Roberta Ann. "Ways To Celebrate Mary." Religion Teacher's Journal. 17 (April-May 1983), 28-29. Lewela, M. Pauline. "Mary's Faith-Model Of Our Own: A Reflec-tion." Africa Theological Journal. 27 (April 1985), 92-98. Low, Charlotte. "The Madonna's Decline and Revival." Insight. (March 9, 1987), 61-63. MacDonald, Donald. "Mary: Our Encouragement In Christ." REviEw FOR REt.tG~Ot~S. 44 (May-June 1985), 350-359. -- "Our Lady of Wisdom." REvtzw FOR REt.~G~Ot~S. 46 (May-June 1986), 321-331. Main, John. "The Other-Centeredness of Mary." R~w~w FOR RELIG~Ot~S. 38 (March 1979), 267-278. Maloney, George A. "A New But Ancient Mariology." Diakonia. 8 (I 973). 303-305. -- "Do Not Be Afraid To Take Mary Home." Catholic Charis-matic. 1 (October-November 1976), 30-33. --. "Mary and the Church As Seen By the Early Fathers." Diakonia. 9 (1974). Marino, Eugene A. "Mary: The Link Between Liturgy and Doc-trine." Origins. 14 (December 27, 1984), 467-471. Marshner, William H. "Criteria For Doctrinal Development in Marian Dogmas." Marian Studies. 28 (1977), 47-97. "Mary and the Saints." National Bulletin on Liturgy. 12 (Septem-ber- October ! 979), 178-183. Mary Francis. "Blessed Mary: Model of Contemplative Life." Homi-letic and Pastoral Review. 8 i (Mary 1981), 6-12. Mary of the Sacred Heart. "Remember the Rosary." Religion Teacher's Journal. 20 (October 1986),39-40. McAteer, Joan. "What the Rosary Means to Me." Ligourian. 72 (October 1984), 16-20. McCarry, Vincent P. "Mary, Teach Us To Pray." Catholic Digest. 50 (May 1986), 40-43. McDermott, John Michael. "Time For Mary." Homiletic and Pas-toral Review. 83 (May ! 983), I i- 15. McHugh, John. "On True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary." The Way Supplement. 25 (Summer 1975), 69-79. McNamara, Kevin. "Devotion to The Immaculate Heart of Mary." 364 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 Furrow. 36 (October 1985), 599-604. -- "Mary Today." Furrow. 31 (July 1980), 428-450. Miller, Ernest F. "Why We Honor Mary?" Liguorian. 63 (August 1975), 13-15. Montague, George. "Behold Your Mother." New Covenant. 10 (May 198 I), 4-7. Moore, M. and Welbers, T. "The Rosary Revisited." Modern Lit-urgy. 9 (May 1982), 4-10. Motzel, Jaqueline. "Growing Through the Rosary." Liguorian. 73 (October 1985), 28-3 I. NC News Service. "Mary: An Image of Obedience and Freedom." Our Sunday Visitor. 75 (April 12, 1987), 17. Nienaltowski, Mary Ellen and Metz, Kathleen. "How Do We Pray The Rosary?" Religion Teacher's Journal. 21 (March 1987), 17-18. Noone, P. "Why Catholics Hail Mary?" U.S. Catholic. 44 (May 1979), 47-49. Nouwen, Henri J. "The Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir: An Invita-tion to Belong to God." America. 152 (May 1 I, 1985), 387-390. O'Carroll, M. "Recent Literature On Our Lady." Irish Theologi-cal Quarterly. 45 (I 978), 281-286. Offerman, Mary Columba. "Mary, Cause of Our Joy: A Bibliogra-phy On Mariology." REvl~.w ~oR RE~.~lous. 35 (1976), 730-734. Palazzini, P. "The Exhortation Marialis Cultus and the Rosary." Origins. 27 (July 4, 1974), 9-10. Pellegrino, M. "Comments on the Apostolic Exhortation: Marialis Cultus." L'Osservatore Romano. 35 (August 29, 1974), 3-1 I. Pennington, M. Basil. "The Rosary: An Ancient Prayer For All Of Us.'" Our Sunday Visitor. 72 (October 23, 1983), 3-ff. Peter, Val J. "Marian Theology and Spirituality." Communio. 7 (Summer 1980), 100-178. Puzon, B. "All Generations Shall Call Me Blessed." Sisters Today. 45 (May 1974), 533-537. Quinn, Jerome D. "Mary the Virgin, Mother of God." Bible To-day. 25 (May 1987), 177-180. Rasmussen, Eileen. "Accept Devotion To Mary." National Catho-lic Reporter. 11 (January 3 I, 1975), I I- 14. Rausch, Thomas P. "The Image of Mary: A Catholic Response." America. 146 (March 27, 1982), 231-234. Roberts, William P. "Mary and Today's Classroom." Catechist. 18 (April-May 1985), 28-29. A Mary Bibliography / 365 Schreck, Alan. "Devotion To Mary." New Covenant. 13 (July- August 1983), 14-18. Senior, Donald. "New Testament Images of Mary." Bible Today. 24 (May 1986), 143-166. Shea, John J. "Mary's Melody of Amazing Grace." U.S. Catho-lic. 47 (May 1982), 6-10. Smith, Herbert. "Mary: Mother and Disciple." Liguorian. 73 (Oc-tober 1985), 52-53. Smith, Joanmarie. "Re-Seeing the Rosary." Professional Ap-proaches for Christian Educators. 16 (1986), 12-15. Smith, Patricia. "Images and Insights: Mary In A Modern Mode." New Catholic World. 229 (November-December 1986), 269-273. Smolenski, Stanley. "Rosary or Chaplet?" Homiletic and Pastoral Review. 86 (October 1985),9-15. Snyder, Bernadette. "Who's Praying the Rosary Today?" Liguorian. 74 (October 1986), 2-6. Speyr, A. "Prayer In The Life Of The Blessed Virgin." Commu-nio. 7 (Summer 1980), 113-126. Stahel, Thomas H. "Redemptoris Mater." America. 156 (May 2, 1987), 353-354. Tambasco, A. "Mary: A Biblical Portrait For Imitation." New Catholic World. 229 (November-December 1986), 244-271. Tannehill, R.C. "The Magnificat As Poem." Journal of Biblical Lit-erature. 93 (1974), 263-275. Tutas, Stephen R. 'Who Is Mary For Me?" REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. 43 (September-October 1984), 778-780. Unger, Dominic J. "Does the New Testament Give Much Histori-cal Information About the Blessed Virgin or Mostly Symbolic Mean-ing?" Marianum. (1977), 323-347. Van Bemmel, John. "How To Pray The Rosary." Religion Teacher's Journal. 17 (April-May 1983), 29-30. Ward, Jack. "The Rosary-A Valuable Praying and Teaching Tool." Catechist. 19 (October 1985), 24-25. Ware, Kallistos, Timothy. "The Jesus Prayer and the Mother of God." Eastern Churches Review. (Autumn 1972), 149-150. Zyromski, Page. "Rosary Meditations Especially For Catechists." Catechist. 20 (October 1986), 20-22. Church Documents, Pastoral Letters and Addresses: John Paul II. "Address to a General Audience About the Rosary As An Opportunity of Pray With Mary." Origins. 44 (November 2, 1981 ), 366 / Review for Religious, May-June 1989 --. "Address to the Faithful About Mary and Her Spiritual Testa-ment." Origins. 30 (July 25, 1983), 2. --. "Address to the Faithful Saying That With the Rosary We Are Armed With the Cross and the Word." Origins. 41 (October 10, 1983), I. --. "Address to the Faithful Saying That Mary Is Present In Every Liturgical Action." Origins. 8 (February 20,, 1984), 10. --. Address to the Faithful Stressing Devotion to Mary Our Mother." Origins. 880 (April 9, 1985), 12. ~. "Address to the Faithful Urging Honor to the Infinite Majesty of God Through Mary." Origins. 891 (June 24, 1985), I. --. "Homily Announcing A Fourteen Month Marian Year To Be-gin Pentecost Sunday." Origins. 16 (January 15, 1987), 563-565. --. Mother of the Redeemer. Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1987. --. "Renewal of the Act of Consecration of the World to the Mother of God." Origins. 14 (April 2, 1984), 9-10. --. Redemptoris Mater. Tablet. 241 (March 28, 1987), 355-359. National Catholic Conference of Bishops. Behold Your Mother: Woman of Faith. (Pastoral Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary). Wash-ington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, November 21, 1973. Paul VI. "Apostolic Exhortation: Marialis Cultus." L'Osservatore Romano. April 4, 1974. ~. "Mary, Model of the Church." REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. 34 (March 1976), 161 - 164. ~. "Renewal of Devotion to Mary." The Pope Speaks. 20 (1975), 199-203. --. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1974. Poletti, U. Cardinal. "Significance, Value and Practice of Devotion to the Rosary." Origins. 42 (October 16, 1975), 9. Transcripts, Lectures and Tapes: Clark, Alan. "The Holy Spirit and Mary." Mary's Place In Chris-tian Dialogue. (Occasional Papers and Lectures of the Ecumenical), 1982, 79-88. DeSatage, John and McHugh, John. "Bible and Tradition in Regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary: Lumen Gentium." Mary's Place In Chris-tian Dialogue. (Occasional Papers and Lectures of the Ecumenical), 1982, 51-60. Dimock, Giles. "Practical Devotion to Mary." Marian Conference A Mary Bibliography / 367 at the University of Steubenville, 1986, (Cassette). Hutchinson, Gloria. Mary, Companion For Our Journey. Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1986, (Cassettes). Peffley, Bill. Prayerful Pauses With Jesus and Mary. Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1987, (Audiocassettes). Pittman, Robert S. "The Marian Homilies of Hesychius of Jerusa-lem." Ph.D. Thesis. Catholic University of America, 1974. Powers, Isaias. Quiet Places With Mary: A Guided Imagery Retreat. Mystic: Twenty-Third Publications, 1986, (Audiocassettes). Scanlan, Michael. "Prominence of Mary: The Time of Visitation." Marian Conference at the University of Steubenville, 1986, (Cassette). Ware, Kallistos. "The Mother of God in Orthodox Theology and Devotion." Mary's Place in Christian Dialogue. (Occasional Papers and Lectures of the Ecumenical), 1982, 169- ! 81. An Ignatian Contemplation on the Baptism of Our Lord Michael W. Cooper, S.J. Father Michael Cooper, S.J., teaches in the Theology Department and the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University of Chicago. His address is 6525 N. Sheri-dan Road; Chicago, Illinois 60626. Baptism has once again become an integral part of the Christian experi-ence. Instead of simply an individual event between God and the bap-tized, the sacrament once more celebrates a person's entrance into the community of believers. Moreover, with the renewal and expansion of the understanding of ministry, it is baptism that now offers the founda-tion for the call to mission and service for every member of the People of God. Even with all these rich theological and liturgical developments, I have still found it difficult to make any vital connection between them and my own baptism. In part, I simply have no sentiments or recollec-tions to explore or deepen. Like many other pre-Conciliar born, I was rushed to the local parish on the Sunday following my birth to save me from a sudden case of limbo. Nor does my mother have any spiritual re-membrances of my baptism to share with me, since on that day she was still in the hospital recuperating from my worldly entrance. Thus until very recently the experiential and spiritual sense of my own baptism re-mained in a limbo of its own. The meaning and power of my own baptism finally came alive, how-ever, as I shared Jesus' experience of his own baptism during several pe-riods of prayer on my recent thirty-day retreat. The thrust of contempo-rary spirituality reminds us to pay close attention to our human experi-ence- whether in prayer, in ministry, or in the rest of life--and to ask 368 Contemplation on Baptism / 369 what the Lord might be saying or how he might be inviting. Often these moments become actual revelations of God's living Word for us-~either individually or collectively. Through these experiences we realize the Gos-pel no longer as. a onetime event in the past but as always happening-- and now most immediately to us. From this perspective of the ongoing Gospel I share the fruits of a very transforming experience of the baptism of our Lord. Though admit-tedly the very personal encounter of one individual, maybe my experi-ence will contribute to our collective efforts to reclaim the experiential and spiritual roots of our baptismal call to community and ministry with God's people. I entitled this article "An Ignatian Contemplation . . ." to highlight a very definite approach to praying the Scriptures. Instead of methodi-cally plodding through the Gospel, I contemplated, that is, I watched at-tentively and receptively the scene of our Lord's baptism, letting it touch my mind and heart. I began by reading through the scripture text (Mt 3:13-17) several times, then I put down my Bible, closed my eyes, and let the event come alive before the inner eye of my imagination. Following Ignatius' instructions in the Spiritual Exercises (no. 114), I then took my place in the scene, so that I would be experiencing the baptism as an engaged participant and not as a disinterested spectator. Paying attention to the persons, their words, and their actions, I contem-plated the event as if it were happening now for the first time. On the banks of the Jordan, Jesus steps out from the crowd and pre-sents himself to his cousin John for baptism. His voice filled with emo-tion, John protests saying, "I should be baptized by you, yet you come to me!" But Jesus responds very straightforwardly. "Let it be for now." Then in a very powerful moment of the contemplation, I hear Jesus go on to explain himself, "I'm no different from the rest of the people gath-ered here. We're all struggling to gain our human freedom and whole-ness. With all the fear and unfreedoms we carry around from growing up plus all the pressures and demands on us today, it's a wonder we're not more wounded than we are." For Jesus, this very heartfelt experience becomes his baptism into a deep identification and solidarity with the rest of the human family united together in the struggle to become more human and free. Jesus' words to John then cannot be taken as some sort of pious self-effacement. Rather, our brother Jesus is experiencing his baptism as a deep, deep bond-edness with the human family gathered at the healing waters of rebirth and wholeness. 370/Review for Religious, May-June 1989 As I continue to contemplate the baptism unfolding before me, I am drawn to even closer physical proximity with Jesus by the magnetism of his human compassion and tenderness. At the same time I begin to feel close again to several friends from whom I have parted company because of certain decisions on their part that hurt me very deeply. Along with this new feeling of closeness comes the realization that despite the pain and darkness that have separated us, there exists a deeper bond of soli-darity in the human struggle that binds us together. We are no different from each other or from the rest of the people on the face of the earth. In one way or another we are each carrying around within us parts of our wounded child and of our stressed adult. The shadow of our fuller human potential and psychic wholeness always seems to lie just beyond our reach. With this realization a lot of the bite to my pain and anger subsides and I hear myself saying very serenely, "In our choices and endeavors, we really do try to give as much as we can at the moment. Sometimes our responses aren't adequate or all that the situation might call for or that we or others might hope for. Because we will always be carrying around our wounded and unfinished selves, we at times end up creating pain and darkness--for others as well as for ourselves--despite our best and freest possible intentions at that moment. I am no different from the rest of mortals. We are all in our own way longing and strug-gling for our human freedom and wholeness as daughters and sons of the living God." These intense feelings of solidarity with my friends that ac-company these reflections free me to let go of a lot more of the pain and misunderstanding in our relationship. And almost immediately these peo-ple actually appear on the banks of the Jordan and, ecstatic and teary-eyed, we embrace one another. By this time Jesus and John are sitting off to the side talking intently to one another. I am savoring the wonderful feelings of reconciliation and the pure joy of this moment when all of a sudden my attention switches. Several close friends for whom I had initially been either .teacher, spiritual director, or mentor become present to me. These new feelings of solidarity in the human struggle now bring a different sort of bondedness with them. Any leftover images of being in some way "the expert" or "the helper" or simply the one who is a couple of steps ahead of the others seem to disappear forever. I am just acutely aware of'how similar our journeys and struggles have been at such a profound level. A marvelous celebration of deep friendship and belonging to each other takes place as they, too, appear on the banks of the Jordan and I jump up to embrace them. Contemplation on Baptism / 371 This first moment of the baptism climaxes as I join hands with my friends who have come to the Jordan. Together with Jesus and John we dance in circles and zigzag chains across the sands. Then we run into the water to splash and frolic like little children and truly we are, because so many of the hurts and wounds of growing up and of adult life are be-ing healed. This wonderful moment comes to a close when with ecstatic reverence we take turns baptizing one another in these life-giving wa-ters of human compassion and solidarity. The second major moment of the baptism begins as Jesus steps out of the water. This time the heavens open and a voice proclaims, "This is My Son, the Beloved, on whom My favor rests." Along with his sense of profound solidarity with the human family, Jesus now experiences most intensely his deep, deep solidarity with God. Because the baptism has become not only Jesus' but mine as well, I feel myself being drawn into that same solidarity with God. I now hear a voice from the heavens addressed to me, "You, too, are My son, the beloved, on whom My favor rests." Initially, I simply rest in this deep sense of belonging to God. Though still feeling very much the earthen vessel, chipped and bro-ken in so many ways, I receive nonetheless a strong assurance in the prayer that I will have whatever I need by way of resources for my per-sonal journey and for my ministry. With God's favor there will be enough of hope, courage, and justice, of human and psychic energy, and of whatever else needed for today with more to come tomorrow. The Lord has spoken . Rather than end a prayer that is really only be-ginning to unfold, I simply thank the Lord from the depths of my spirit for sh.aring the baptism with me both in contemplation and in life. This Ignatian contemplation of the baptism of our Lord invites sev-eral brief comments. First of all, we realize that the foundations for a renewed understanding of Christian baptism do not come so much from our own sacramental initiation as from sharing the experience of baptism with Jesus. Like the Lord, we are baptized into covenantal solidarity with both our brothers and sisters and with our gracious God. From this perspective, baptism loses much of its static notion as sim-ply a once-in-a-lifetime event. Especially for adults being baptized or re-claiming their baptismal call, as we did in this contemplation, the cele-bration of baptism becomes a dynamic initiation into a lifelong process that continues to open up new levels of human and divine solidarity as our Christian existence unfolds day by day. This sacred bondedness with the human family confronts the blatant Review for Religious, May-June 1989 barriers and subtle alienation that separate us from each other. Baptism invites us to embrace the human family--both near and far--as "my peo-ple" and not just God's people. Our experience is meant to mirror that of Jesus: "I am no different from anybody else." The heart of the mat-ter remains this recognition that we are all struggling with varying de-grees of success for our human freedom and wholeness--two of the gate-ways to encountering the divine in ourselves. Here, too, our experience follows the pattern of Jesus in discovering his own divinity. In facing the forces that would shrink, wound, or destroy these most precious gifts of God to us, we plumb the depths of our human resources and discover the wellsprings of the divine energy in us as well. Second, this baptism into human solidarity against the enemies of our humanity celebrates our entrance as adults into the Christian com-munity. We now recognize and claim for our own this community both broken and healed yet always struggling for greater wholeness. Third, this very sacred experience of human solidarity becomes the foundational stance for each Christian's involvement in ministry as part of our baptismal commitment. It is only from a vital sense of bonded-ness to each other that we can enter into the.joys and struggles of one another without pretense or feigned empathy. By the Lord's design we are in this human struggle together. Baptism then celebrates our call to be companions to one another and to all our brothers and sisters in the unfolding of the kingdom of God in our time. Fourth, the divine bondedness solidifies as we hear the voice from heaven address us withthe same love and promise offered to Jesus: "You are My beloved on whom My favor rests." This proclamation then nurtures our heartfelt sense of belonging utterly to God. Moreover, this divine connectedness touches all the dimensions of who we are, so that we begin to look and feel more and more with the eyes and heart of our gracious God on our~e, lves, others, and our world. In the face of our human wounds and inadequacies, this sense of di-vine favor sustains Christian perseverance and empowerment for life and ministry. We can be stretched to the limits of our understanding and of our physical and psychic energies, yet we now know deep down that no matter what comes God's favor will sustain us this day and there will be more of what we need tomorrow. From the Lord we need only ask with Ignatius in the Suscipe of the Spiritual Exercises: "Give me only Your love and Your grace; that is enough for me" (no. 234). For those hungry to deepen their commitment to Christian commu-nity and ministry, an Ignatian contemplation of the baptism may be the Contemplation on Baptism I 373 occasion to nourish those desires as they share this moment with Jesus as though it were happening for the first time. We never know whom or what we might meet on the banks of the Jordan! the woman with the hemorrhage i was tired of their pity and their prayers now for how many years each face became compulsive to be good with kindness--their helpful helplessness i've seen their looks that worried into silence "i'm so sorry" drove me to distraction until they learned my shame would last God only knowswperhaps forever then they disappeared like frightened children and the very thing

Issue 25.1 of the Review for Religious, 1966. ; Religious Women and Pastoral Nork by J. M. R. Tillard. O.P. 1 Metanoia or Conversion by J6seph Fichtner, O.S.C. 18 The Church's Holine~g and Reh~ous Life by Gustave Ma'~t~lei, S.J. 32 Religious Significance of the T.rinity by Bernard Fraigneau-Julien, ~.S.S. 53 Contemplatives and Change ~by Mother M. Angelica! P.C. 68 The Crisis of Creatur~liness by Alfred de Souza, S.J; 73 Sdence and Renewal by Thomas Dubay,] S.M. 80 Freudian Gloom and Christiah Joy by William J. Ello~, S.J. 95 Freedom to IObey by Mother M. Viola, O.S.F~ 104 The Great Waste by Sister Mary Carl Ward, I~.S.M. 114 A Fresh Look at God by Patrick J. 0 Halloran,, S.J. 125 Poems 130 Survey of RomanDocumi ents 132 Views, News, Prdviews 135 Questions and Ariswers 138 Book Rdviews 142 VOLUME 25 NUMBER I January 1966 Volume 25 1966 EDITORIAL OFFICE St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas 66536 BUSINESS OFFICE 428 East Preston Street Baltimbre, Maryland 21202 EDITOR R. F. Smith, ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ella~d, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS Ralph F. Taylor, S.J. William J. Weiler, S.J. DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answers Joseph F. Gallen, S.J2 Woodstock College Woodstock, Maryland 22163 Book Reviews. Norman Weyand, S.J. Bellarmine School of Theology of Loyola University 230 South Lincoln Way North Aurora, Illinois 60542 Published in January, March, May, July, September, Novem-ber on the fifteenth of the month. REVIEW FOR RELI-GIOUS is indexed in the CATHOLIC PERIODICAL IN-DEX. and in BOOK REVIEW INDEX J. Mo R. TILLARD, O.P. Religious Women and Pastoral Work It is interesting to study fxom a theological viewpoint the history of the appearance in the Church of religious communities of women devoted to the active life. One basic trait clearly distinguishes them: in spite of the immense diversity of their immediate ends, all these con-gregations find their finality in the exercise of evan-gelical charity in the form of what is ordinarily referred, to as "the works of mercy." Whether it is a question of caring for the sick, of helping the poor, of educating youth, of assisting the~ aged, or of accepting and rehabili-tating certain categories of men: and women, rejected bye our society, the central activity of these communities always issues in a direct love of human beings., If one compares, for example, a missionary congregation of men such as the Holy Ghost Fathers and a missionary con-gregation of women such as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, it will be seen how, in the same human context and with the same apostolic aim, ~the activity of such religious women brings to e~clesial activity a specific note of realistic charity. The priest preaches the gospel and administers the sacraments; the 'lay brother is occupied with the material needs o[ the mission; but the mission-ary sister attempts to incarnate concretely in the here and now the message of fraternal charity which is at the heart of the good news: she nurses, she feeds, she edu-cates. It is.this area that is her ministry, and in it.she finds the certainty of serving her Lord in all fullness. While in non-clerical religious communities of men (such as teaching or hospital brothers) there often ap-pears a kind of tension arising from the fact that these religious experience a sense of frustration at not being able. to exercise a priestly ministerial function, com-munities of women ordinarily find peace in the humble, day-by-day gift of their charity. This point seems to us to be ecclesiologically and pastorally important; and we would like to study it here ÷ J. M. R. Tillard, O.P., is professor of dogmatic theology at the Dominican House, of Studies; 96 Empress Ave-nue; Ottawa 4, Can-ada. VOLUME 251 1966 ! ÷ ÷ ÷ ]. M. R. Tillard, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS from three distinct points of view: first, we shall attempt to point out the theological characteristics of the specific activity of the religious women at the heart of all ecclesial activity; then we shall try to situate that activity of religious women in its direct relationship with the ac-tivity of the hierarchy; and finally we shall discuss the concrete possibilities of enlarging their activities in ac-cord with the needs of the Church today. The Work o[ Charity o[ Religious Women Is at the Heart of the Apostolic Charity of the Church In what does the charity of God's Church for men consist? To this question an answer can be given in the simple statement: the Church seeks to be a genuine in-strumentof grace by which the love of God Himself for men can be effective in the here and now of the human situation. In other words, in her charity the Church does not seek to love merely in her own name; rather she is desirous" that through her and through the mediation of her transparency and of her profound mystery of com-munion with God there may pass the power of the agape of the Father. This is the reason why her love for men is always humble and poor and never triumphant: she of-fers her heart, her hands, her toils, and her goods to the charity of God. It is in this way--and perhaps above all in this way--that she is sacrament in the precise sense that through her and the ministry of her action the One who is defined as Love reveals Himself and acts. He is that Love which does not remain enclosed within itself but which on the contrary radiates out to touch and affect all beings and all the reality of every being. To say that the Church is servant--and this perhaps is her most fitting characteristic in the present time of the history of salvation--is to say that she has no meaning except inso-far as she serves as an intermediary between the mysteri-ous love of the Father and men as they actually exist. More profoundly, it is to say that she is a mystery o[ charity; that is, through the total availability created in her by her love [or God passes the love o[ God Himself. It does not seem to us to be an exaggeration to say that today God wishes to love the world through the heart o[ the Church. In this Iove of God for men transmediated by the Church there is without doubt an internal and essential order. The dominant wish of the Father--and the entire gospel message affirms this--is to lead men to His king-dom, to introduce them already in this life to the inti-macy of His friendship in order that eventually they may share for all eternity in the glory of His Son. Christianity is not to be confused with humanism, however great the latter may be; its aim is always that self-surpassing which we call the "life of grace," and the Church can be faithful to her mission only insofar as she leads men into the fullness of the Pasch of Jesus. This is why at the heart of her action her fundamental preoccupation is always with the Pasch and its two moments of death to sin and of resurrection to newness of life. She exists [or the Pasch; she exists to proclaim the staggering reality of this Day that inaugurates the new times, to make present and active its power in the Eucharist and the other sacra-ments, to keep men in contact with this source of the love of the Father. A Church that would cease to center its life on the Pasch would no longer be the Church of God (Ekklesia tou Theou), the sacrament and the place of agape. Nevertheless, this paschal love is a total love of man in the concrete, and it has nothing of the abstract about it. It does not merely aim at.some small, secret zone of the human person (what is equivocally called "his interior life"). Without effecting an artificial cleavage between the natural and the supernatural, the temporal and the eternal, it encounters the person as he really is in the unity of his person. On the one hand, it penetrates to the very depths of the human being whom it renews and re-creates by grace; on the other hand, its pervasive in-fluence reaches the entire extent of the human mystery. Between the mystery of the redemption and the mys-tery of creation there exists a profound unity, the link-ing bond of which is precisely the paschal event. The Father of Jesus is God the Creator; and the Son who is incarnated in Jesus is just as truly the One "through whom God created the world" (Heb 1:2). Moreover, if God sends His Son, He does so--it is the living tradition of the Church as expressed by Irenaeus--in order to save and to regain the fix'st creation that has been wounded by sin. The Resurrection is not simply a starting point, the ¯ dawning of eschatological times; it is above all the glorification of creation by the entry of a man (its King) into full participation in the Spirit of God. It is the ele-vation and exaltation of nature by the power of agape. For the Father does not give the resurrected Christ a new Body; He restores that Body of His that was born of Mary but now is flooded with divine gifts. He thereby lets us know--a point that we often forget--that His plan is a single one, that in Him there is not one plan as Creator and another plan as Redeemer with a clearcut distinction between them; there is only one plan of love that envelops all of human destiny. This, moreover, is the reason why baptism which opens the door to the world of grace is also the leavening pledge of the resur-rection of nature (Rom 6:5; 8:11; Eph 2:6). Paschal love--of which the Church is the instrument + + ÷' ÷ ÷ ~÷ J. M. R. Till~rd~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS --is, then, a love that is directed to the entire reality of the human condition and that refuses every form of selec- . tivity with regard to the makeup of the human existen-tial. In its ultimate finality it is eschatological in the sense that its overall concern is with leading man to the glory of the Parousia. Nevertheless, it is concerned with the human situation as this is realized here and now. For here and now God loves man; here and now His Father's heart wishes to give His creature the benefits of His in-finite love; here and now He wishes men to know that in spite of their misery they are loved by Him; and here and now He desires :that the world be infused with the re-creation and healing of nature provided by the Pasch of J~sus. More than this, God the Father desires that this love, immediately directed to the nature of man and seeking to heal sicknesses, to console the troubled, and to succor the poor, should be the atmosphere in which there shines forth the revelation of that other dimension of agape which opens on the joy of eternity. In other words, the eschatological aim of paschal love--the prom-ise and the hope of eternal liIe where .there will be "'no more wailing, no more crying,, no more pain" (Ap 21:4) --can be proclaimed and revealed only by the action of ecclesial charity on the miseries and .sufferings of this earthly life. Charitable action in the today and the tem-poral of the history of men is nothing less than the sacra-ment and the seal o[ paschal love. The Church can pro-claim and prepare the happiness of eternity only if she devotes herself to the .relief of the suffering of mankind. It is thereby--and theologians do not seem to have real-ized this in 'a realistic way--that'she sows in this world the first fruits of the world to come. But it should not be thought that what has just been stated is only the reasoning of a theologian. To be con-vinced of this, it is sufficient to reflect with attention on the way in which Jesus realized His messianic vocation. If He fulfilled the figure of the Suffering Servant (glimpsed in the Servant of Yahweh Songs inserted in the Book of Isaiah), he did so not only by His death of ignominy but also by His pedagogy of mercy and.of tenderness (Is 42:!-7). He preached the gospel of salva-tion by "going about doing good" as Peter said to .Cor-nelius and his friends (Acts 10:38). And this good that He did consisted of simple acts of temporal mercy: healing the sick, consoling widows, giving food to the hungry, treating the poor with kindness, welcoming strangers without any attitude of segregation. The proclamation of the gospel was done in this way, and the death on the cross receives its significance only when situated in this climate which reveals th'at its finality is one o[ love and not of.power. And there are other manifestations of this. As a sign permitting John to judge of His messianic mission, Jesus in Matthew 11:2-6 offers His acts of love for the lowly and the poor, following in this the line traced by the prophecies of Isaiah: it is these acts that are the seal authenticating His vocation. In the merciful act of themultiplication of loaves performed out of pity for the needs of the persons who followed Him, Jesus according to John (6:1-66) reveals the profound mean-ing of the sacrament bf His .lbve, the Eucharist. In that case, once again, the act of temporal mercy, far from being merely an occasion allowing Jesus to speak about His doctrine, provides the climate and the atmosphere in which the proclamation of the Bread of life can burst forth. The gift of material bread and the Eucharist are not two acts artificially bracketed together; they are rather two expressions of the same thrust of agape as Paul well understood when he reproached the Corin-thians (1 Cor 11:17-33). Similarly, the washing of the feet (Jn 13:1-20) is not just a simple illustration of the commandment of charity and of the mutual service de-manded of the disciples; it is its seed. One last indica-tion can be given, one which it seems to us has not been sufficiently recognized: the holy women were the first proclaimers of the Resurrection simply because they were concerned to go early in the morning to give the Body of Jesus the care and the veneration that Jewish custom demanded--an act of humble mercy, but by doing it they became the first witnesses of the act par excellence of the mercy of the Father. We hope, then, that the importance of the above reflec-tions is understood. We do not intend to show here what John has so strongly emphasized; namely, that the frater-nal love of Christians among themselves is the sign of their belonging to Christ and thereby a witness to the power of agape. Our intention is to enable one t.o grasp that mercy shown towards all men, whether Christians or not, is the atmosphere which envelops and normally authenticates the gospel proclamation. In other words, we wish to throw light on the fact that we can bring men the good news only if at the same time and in the name of this good news we concretely show men that we love them "not in words, but in deeds--genuinely." For in the humility of their object these acts are the sacrament in which should gradually appear their infinite originat-ing source with its promise of eternal happiness. But this is an eternal happiness that does not permit flight from the suffering of the present but that, on the contrary, involves itself with that suffering in order to sow there already the seeds of eschatological joy. Once again, it is through the experience of the visible and the tangible that God slowly leads mankind to faith in the invisible; ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Women VOLUME 25, 1966 ÷ 4. ÷ ]. M. R. Tillard, O.P. REVIEW'FOR RELIGIOUS 6 by the visible dimension of His chitrity H~ leads them to faith in the folly of His, agape." it is when seen in this light that the apostolic actii, ity of religious women of the active life receives its evangeli-cal meaning. Properly speaking, theirs is not the task of preaching the gospel wffh authority: this. fl6ws from the hierarchical function to which they do not have access. Neither are they like militant lay people wiih a inandate to take charge of a milieu and graduMly conduct it to Christ; although these religiohs women are essentially members of the laity, they pertain to a special form 'of lay life officially recognized by the Church and deter-mined by t.h'e directi;c~s of their constitutions which fix the quality of their mandate. Here we should note the confusion that so.me pastors and even some theologians cause by more or le~s fissimilating the life of religious women to that of secular institutes, basing themselves in this. only on canonical texts. Briefly, religious women of the active life do not ordinarily form a part of.what is called the direct apostolate. Nevertheless, they play an essential role in the work of evangelization. For by their day-to-day charitable activity officially done in the name of the Church it is they who assure the gospel of the atmosphere of mercy,, the importance of which we have shown. For. this activity to bear all its fruit, it is evidently necessary that it be disinte~:ested, that motives of the financial interest and of the material prosperity of the community should not take precedence over the apostolic anguish arising from love for men. Let us admit that in this matter there is often room for considerable con-version, especially in countries where religious commu-nities conduct their institutions without any outside con-trol. But under the p.retext of real abuses, one should not make a wholesale condemnation without any distinc-tions. By her religious women the Church creates the visible dimensidn of charity ~which according to the law of the divine pedagogy is an integral part of the work of evangelization. And let us add that their vows add to the activity of sisters an element which married or non-reli-gious militants do not have. For sisters are those who have freely given up human values as fundamental as those of nuptial and motherly love, of the possession of a certain level of comfort; and they have done this in order to give themselves more completely to the universal love of men. Thanks to them if they are faithful to their vocation, poor themselves and hence totally transparent garriers of the love of the Father--the Church is able to reply .to those who question her mission: "Look around and see: the blind see, the lame Walk, lepers are healed, the deaf hear., and the good news is proclaimed to the poor" (Mt 11:4-6). Far from being an obstacle to the evangeli-zation of the world, are not these religious, on the con-trary, its advance troops? Day after day they plough the fields in which the hierarchy sows the word and where other lay people lend support to the testimony of the love of the Father. In a word, these religious ~ire the sign of the love of the Father for poor mankind slashed by suffering. The Action o[ Religious Women and Its Relation to the Action o[ the Hierarchy O~icially--and it is told him from the day of his con-secration-- the bishop is charged in a special way with the love of the poor, the suffering, and the lowly of his churches. He is not simply the functionary which man), imagined him to be before Vatican Council II; he has the vocation of a father. And this implies that his heart is anguished by the suffering of his people. But to discharge this duty (and he will have to r(nder account of it on the day of judgment), he cannot rely only on his own powers and his own initiative. Here, as everywhere in his pastoral action, he must act in com-munion with lay people. This does not mean that he seeks to utilize the energies of the latter for the profit o~ his own projects and plans (this would be clericalism). On the contrary, he labors to arouse and nourish in them a conscientious and realistic grasp of the heavy responsibility that, not as pastors but as baptized brothers of Christ, they also have with regard to the concrete exercise of the charity of God in the midst of the needs of their fellow men, especially of those who suffer. For it is the Church as such, in the living union of its leaders and its faithful, which must radiate the paschal love of the Father. No one. can dispense himself from this law of his baptismal grace. Nevertheless, all are not called to live it out in the same fashion: there are special places in the Body of Christ, and even within the laity chari-table action can diversify itsell: in a number of ways. One of these ways will retain our attention here. It will be recalled that at the beginning of this article, it was said that all active communities of women find their definitive finality in the exercise of the works of mercy. But why is this? The answer to this question will intro-duce us into the very heart of ecclesiology. Let us recall that the mystery of the Pasch takes place not over and beyond creation but in it. The former is not the destroyer of the latter; on the contrary, it saves and elevates it. This is why all created values should hormally become paschal values. Accordingly, the gifts of nature considered in the light of the Resurrection appear as graces, primary and structural graces which 4- + + Religious Wdmen VOLUME 25~ 1966 7 ÷ ÷ ]. M. R. Tillard, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8 find their true meaning only in the Church. Everything human, then, is grace; and hence everything human as such should allow itself to be swept along by the power of paschal love. But in the human as it is concretely and existentially realized the differentiation of the sexes, plays a central role, and to ignore it would be a grave matter. Sexuality is not simply an exterior ~nd accidental wrapping cover-ing a common reality: it penetrates to the deepest mys-tery of man and woman and gives a positive determina-tion to that mystery. Each sex has a positive value that it alone is able to accomplish because sex modalizes the human along a given line. Sex, it is true, carries with it the entire essence of the human being so that nothing which defines and situates the latter will be absent from the one sex when it is in the other. Nevertheless, each human sex is under its own proper, unique, and ir-replaceable mode. In the man the human being is mas-culinity, in the woman it is femininity. And it cannot be in the man without being masculinity nor in the w~man without being femininity. Hence, the act of knowIedge, the act of joy, the act 0f love, the act of giving self are all in the man and in the woman but under a mode proper to each. The same is true of the act of pertaining to the Church of God and the act of serving the gospel. Hence the gift of self for the radiating of paschal love passes through masculinity and femininity. These represent the two positive and complementary values of the human through which the love of the Father sacramentalizes it-self. Man (the male) is above all power. He is power in the gift of physical life, he is also power in the domination of the world. In him cold reason dominates intuition. He structures, he legislates, he constructs, and he judges everything with a certain rigor. He likes to dominate, and his physical strength allows him to do.so. Accord-ingly, his proper collaboration with the agape of the Father is better exercised in an institutional ministry as leader of the community, as pastor, as legislator. But the woman is above all offering, appeal to communion, open transparency to the other. She is characterized by meraory and constantly sharpened intuition more than by logical rigor and deductive reason. She is made to receive love (as a bride) and to permit it to be fecund (by motherhood). She is heart rather than dry intelligence, tenderness and compassion rather than justice and sever-ity. She completely tends to the gift of herself in a con-stant care of little things, in the exercise of a delicacy and a kindness that sow joy. She puts flowers in the house and she sings songs. For her this is no waste, and she should not feel frustrated at not possessing what the opposite sex possesses. On the contrary, all this is her wealth; and this wealth is worth as much as that of the male. Accordingly, her proper contribution to the dif-fusion of paschal love should also quite simply assume this morphological, physical, and psychological constitu-tion which makes her what she is. She consecrates her-self especially to the dimension of temporal and spiritual mercy, of tenderness for the poor and the little--to the dimension which we mentioned above as the sign of the gospel Let us add that she alone can do this with per-fection: it is her charism. To say this is not to imply a right to the hierarchical priesthood which would thus be violated. Ther6 is no question here of such a right but of the assumption of the true quality of her being for the service of the gospel. Diversity of functions in no way signifies diversity in dignity. The charity finality of active religious women, then, appears to us to respond to the realism of the incarna-tion of grace in human nature. In our opinion it is one of the signs of the fact that the supernatural respects and saves the natural. Femininity as such with its own proper chdracteristics and its own special tendencies is thus assumed for the sake of the gospel. The motherhood of the Churcl~ cannot be better expressed. But it is necessary to go even further in our reflection. For by a special title the bishop links to himself this special charitable activity of religious women. They re-ceive from him a quasi-mandate, similar to that of the members of catholic action although it is specifically different. This gives to their commitment an official note: they face the. world as the ones officially responsible for the fidelity of the local church to the paschal com-mand of love for the lowly and the poor. It is, of course, to be clearly understood that they are not the only ones with the duty to radiate this agape just as the members of catholic action are not the only ones to give testimony to Christ in their milieu of life. Nevertheless, for reli-gious women this mission is more pressing for they re-ceive it "quasi ex officio": their entire life should be consumed so that, thanks to them, the Church may exist in an act of love and of mercy in the face of the sufferings of the world. The judgment that the world will pass on the quality of the local church on this point depends preeminently upon them. The bishop links himself to them in a notably special way in order that there might be assured the love of the poor which he is charged to maintain in a living and genuine way in his diocese. This is their ministry. And thereby it is seen how they are inserted into the pastoral work of the Church: they represent a chosen group to whom the one responsible for the ecclesial life of the diocese entrusts the ministry of + + + Religious Women VOLUME 25, 1966 9 ÷ 1. M. R. T~ltard, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 10 charity. Hence they are not situated at the fringe of apostolic action; on the contrary, though not pertaining to the hierarchy, they fulfill one of the essential func-tions of the life of the People of God, for, as we have previously pointed out, charitable action forms the at-mosphere of the proclamation of the gospel. This perspective seems to us to be able to restore the breath of the gospel to the life of many communities that are too shriveled up within themselves and that do not perceive with enough clarity the implications of their mission. Overly orientated toward the perspective of the individual perfection of their members--and this individual perfection is clearly not contradicted by what we have said---, they forget that they are supposed to create in the world an evangelical sign within which the gospel can be proclaimed in all truth. It seems to us to be a serious matter when religi6us women vowed to charity feel that "they are outside of apostolic action," that "they are restricted to an activity of secondary im-portance when the world has such a great need of apos-tles," that "they are condemned to works of filling in for others." In such cases the question must be asked whether such religious institutions do not have need of a great movement of "conversion." The Charitable Action of Religious Women and the Needs of the Church Today There is one fact that has heavy consequences for the problem to be considered in this section: most of the religious congregations vowed to works of charity were founded at a period when the State accomplished nothing or almost nothing for the relief of human misery. In this matter the Church played an evangelical role of arousal and took the lead of the movement of mercy in the name of Christ. But today (at least, in the Western world and in the large socialist countries) the State--with the im-mense means that it often has--is occupied with tasks such as the care of the sick and of the old, the education of the young, the use of leisure, the rehabilitation of certain categories of men and women; for all of this per-tains to its area of competency. In this new situation, do religious still have a place? One thing is clear. Wherever religious parallel public institutions and retain their own ~schools, hospitals, or-phanages, it is necessary that these latter, if they are to remain a sign of the gospel, be distinguished less by the size of their activity than by their quality. Between a religious establishment and other institutions there should normally be perceived a difference with regard to respect for persons and to the attention given to them and also with regard to availability, tact, and commitment. A Catholic hospital, for example, should not be distin-guished from a non-religious hospital only by the fact that it affords a certain climate of prayer, easy access to the sacraments, and the assistance of a chaplain. It is further necessary ~that the very way of treating the physical sufferings be marked with the seal of the Spirit which, as St. Paul says, is "love, joy, peace, good temper, kindliness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness, selbcontrol" (Gal 5:22). This should be so much the case that a non- Christian who is being cared for there should feel him-self enwrapped with the love of God. When an officially Christian institution is no longer capablewthe reasons may be diverse---of giving this evangelical witness, then today it no longer has any reason for existing; and its continuance in existence is a counter-witness. It is clearly evident in our day that even in the institu-tions that belong to them religious women cannot carry out all the functions required of them for the welfare of those who come to them; they have need of auxiliaries and of employees. Moreover, it is frequently the State that confides to a given community the charge of an establish-ment of which the State remains the owner and for which at times it chooses the personnel who are to assist the sisters. This is a situation that at times creates suf-ficiently bizarre conditions. But in any case it increases the apostolic responsibility of the community: the com-munity in such a case has the duty of radiating the power of agape also into the active body of workers of the establishment. This stems from the fact of having taken charge of a milieu in order to flood it with the values of the gospel. This is a genuine apostolic activity bearing fruit on three levels: the personnel to whom the true demands of charity are gradually disclosed; the repercus-sion of this conscience attitude on the action of'these men and women; and those who are its beneficiaries. There is infinite need for tact and for suppleness, for complete openness, and for the absence of all proselytism. It is equally necessary that the community should never forget its primary purpose: the manifestation of the mercy of God for the poor, for the little, for those who suffer. In the case of a group of sisters working in com-mon in an institution (this is the only case we are consid-ering here), this situation restores to the community the meaning of its apostolic vocation, imposes on it a perpetual revision of life, strengthens the bonds of fra-ternal love, and compels it to achieve a state of radical transparency with regard to the gospel. For it feels itself being constantly judged in actual situations in the. close and common work of daily labor. And in the community it is the Church that is being judged. And I would say that the Church is being judged more in such a case ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Women VOLUME 25, 1966 11 I. M. R. Tillard, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS than it would be in cases where militants of catholic ac-tion work in the same circumstances and in the same milieu. The vows--especially that of poverty the apos: tolic value of which must some day be restudied in depth. .--indicate that the community has chosen to act exclu-sively for the kingdom of God and not at all for any earthly ~;ellbeing however limited it may be. In. the com-munity, then, men expect to find a delineation of the Church. Hence let us emphasize that far from decreasing the charitable finality of religious institutes, the situation in which religious must work with non-religious actually extends it: the community must not only work itself for the service of love but it must also lead others to act in the same way and under the same explicit motivation. Nevertheless, "today's circumstances are constantly obliging us to think more and more of another way of exercising this mihistry of mercy. In this case the com-munity as such does not take charge of a given institu-tion. Each sister in accord with her professional com-petence is employed wherever she finds-a position corresponding to the specific end of her congregation. Dur-ing the day, then, the community is dispersed, each of the .religious going to her own place of work. There, in com-munion with the militants whom she may find there, each sister in her work tries to be both an instrument of the charity,of God and an active leaven within the laity arousing them to the call of the gospel. Unlike the preced-ing case, she does not pertain to a group performing as such a given function in the establishment. She is sim-ply an employee on the same footing as the rest, and her personal competence is the only reason for her holding the position that she occupies. In accomplishing her work she is not immediately attached to a group of religious working at her side. She is alone. Often she is in an indifferent "milieu, even in one agitated by forces hostile to the Church. It is there that the. Lord asks her to live her vocation as a religious vowed to the exercise of mercy and to do so through the quality of her work and in the network of social bonds that she creates with the men and women who are around her. _ This is a difficult and complex situation. The religious must not lose sight of the primary end of her institute which is charitable work itself. Hence, her central pre-occupation must not deviate from this central point of a direct and immediate relationship with a'man or a woman or a child to be cared for, educated, or aided in some fashion. She is not primarily sent to lead a militant life after the fashion in which Christians of catholic action act. Her mandate is another one, although---and we will return to this--like all the baptized she also has the duty of becoming leaven in her milieu. Let us not forget what we have developed above at length: in the name of Christ and of the Church the bishop has en-trusted to her in a special way the responsibility of radiating charity under the form of mercy, compassion, gentleness, and tenderness in the face of the sufferings and needs of human beings. She must above all seek this: that through her actions (materially resembling those performed by her non-believing neighbor) there may pass the entirely slaecial quality that the love of Christ Himself infuses into human activity. This is not easy, we admit. But if she does not do this, then she no longer responds to what the Church specifically expects from her for the sake of the gospel. And in this case through her defect something essential is lacking to the life of the local church; an entire dimension of the mystery of Christ is veiled; men and women will not experience the sweet-ness of the God and Father of Jesus. At first sight this function may appear to be less efficacious and less direct than the fact of militant action in a milieu for the sake of sowing the gospel message; than the fact of sharing in the struggles and the anguishes of the other employees and of thereby working for their liberation. Nevertheless, her function is just as necessary from an evangelical point of view. She responds to a ministry that is essential to the Church and that completes and consummates that of the other militants. For it is a question of a different form of action of the same love, of a mandate obliging her in communion with that of the militants to make the visage of Christ appear in the small part of mankind entrusted to the bishop for salvation. Hence, in the con-crete circumstances of her action the religious must always subordinate the other forms of her apostolic activity to her charitable function. It is easy to see in this kind of situation the new im-portance taken by what is called the common life. When she returns to her community, the sister should find the spiritual and loving atmosphere that permits her to reground her forces, to nourish herself with the gospel, and to judge her activity in open dialogue with her superiors and her fellow sisters. The hours that she passes each day in the milieu charged with providing her the means to grow in her union with the Lord must not become for her a heavy load encumbered with a multi-tude of oral prayers and with confusedly arranged exer-cises. Neither must it appear in her eyes merely as a slack period offering a little leisure. What it should exactly be is difficult to say. But it is clear that the essential should be an atmosphere of true prayer, of simple and loving joy. The witness of charity is so often dissipated by fatigue and by nervous tension that there should be a strong reaction against everything (even those things ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Women VOLUME 25, 1966 ÷ ÷ ÷ J. M. R. Tiilard, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]4 clone under the pretext of devotions or of ancient cus-tom) which irritates the sisters. And it would be good if superiors, would re'member that to work to create in their houses an unpressured spiritual atmosphere is the first service that they themselves can give to charity. Up to this point we 'have reflected only on the exercise by religious women of their ministry of charity in the usual situation of the Church today. NOW it is necessary to ask two questions which more and more appear to us to be urgent: Should not religious women be more in-timately and immediately associated with the matter of pastoral reflection, their charisms between taken into equal count in this area? And can not their participation in the ordinary pastoral ministry be enlarged? Before answering the first question, we must frankly remark that up to now the Church has been contented to ~ttilize the charitable action of religious women and has manifested a certain suspicion with what they might be able to contribute to pastoral reflection itself. Our present day pastoral has been elaborated by r.elying almost exclusively on the qualities proper to the mascu-line sex. This can be attributed to various causes: to the fact that according to tradition access to hierarchical orders is reserved to men; to the fact that in the West the Church's ministers are celibates and thereby inclined to mistrust women; and above all to the fact that our civilization has not yet considered with sufficient serious-ness what is represented at the heart of the human mys-tery by the genius proper to ~oman. We are just begin-ning to awaken on this point; and the awakening is often accompanied by certain feel.ings of revindication and of aggression so that it can become dangerous and entirely lose its meaning. Up to now pastoral thought has had the tendency to see everything frdm the masculine View-point as 'if the masculine sex alon~ represented the human or as i~and this is still more serious--it were the human ideal to which the feminine should conform it-self in order to attain any real value. Hence, the con-stant temptation of pastors has been (and often still remains) to consider religious women on.ly as so many servants to be smiled at from the vantage point of the superiority complex of the strong sex and to,be employed at.will in any kind of work; and they have not sufficient.ly considered them as women capable of perceiving with the penetration proper to their sex precise objectives that escape masculine psychology and as capable of grasping with an original insight of their own the con-sequences of certain decisions. This points seems to us to be a very serious one. It seems necessary to us that the Church be converted in this matter. This does not mean that the Church. should admit religious women to a priestly ordination as some persons are beginning to maintain basing themselves exclusively on arguments of rights to be redressed and of sexual egalitarianism. But it means that the Church should become conscious of the irreplaceable contribn-ti0n of feminine thought and that she should associate sisters more closely with the effort of investigation, judgment, and criticism that is needed for the ordering of the pastoral activity of a diocese, How is this to be done? It would take too long to treat this in a detailed and precise manner, Nevertheless, let us remark that it cannot be a question only of a consul-tation taking the natnre, as it were, of feeling the pulse of the situation but without passing beyond the stage of the preliminary. The charism of the hierarch~ demands thatiit al~vays act in communion with the laity, men and Women. The ultimate decision is without a doubt that of the leaders, a typical act of their own proper p.astoral judgment. Nevertheless, it should be born of a delibera-tion in which the laity are involved as much as the clergy in a frank confrontation of viewpoints and in a common sharing of apostolic perceptions and of dif-ferent psychologies. There is no qnestion here either of demagogy or of feminism; it is simply a utilization of different vocations and of different charisms in an at-mosphere of authentic communion. And this seems to us to be the meaning of authority in the Church of God,. It is rare that a pastoral decision is a purely hierarchical creatior~. It is most often nothing else than an assump-tion by the hierarchy--thereby bestowing the weight of its authority and the guarantee of its charism--of a perception arising among the laity who are plunged, into the experience of the real and then thought about, reflected upon, and discussed by their pastors. Moreover, from the viewpoint of kingly power the grace of orders ~is more a grace of prudential judgment than that of intuition. Invention comes above all from the periphery, from the precise point where the Church is in contact with the realism of the human situation. In this way, then, the grace of the laity penetrates even to.the inner nature of the pastoral function. Among the laity we place in a special rank not only the militants of catholic action but also the religious women who are 9fficially devoted to the ministry of charity. At one and the same time they are women--hence they can voice the neces-sary feminine viewpoint--and they are involved in the sufferings of human beings, knowing not only the latter's complexities and temptations but also their riches. If it is true--as we have shown above--that the ministry of charity is bound up essentially with the gospel and repre-sents a fi'ont line force of ecclesial action, then it seems in-÷ + ÷ Religious Women VOLUME 25, 1966 15 -b ÷ J. M. R. Tillard, O;P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16 conceivable to us that religious women should not be fully associated with the work of apostolic reflection that is p]'erequired for all authentic pastoral action. Moreover, why (and this is our second question) could they not receive in certain circumstances (always in dependence on the bishop, rightly understood) the entire responsibility for the organization of the entire chari-table apostolate of a diocese? In the collection of various areas which we group indistinctly under the name "pas-toral activity," is this not one of the numerous domains where women are more naturally competent than men? Why must a member of the clergy always be the head of every diocesan activity? At a time when we com-plain about the lack of priests and exhaust ourselves in imagining the outcome of this situation, it would seem logical to begin by reflecting on our theology of pastoral action and by asking whether as victims of the sin of clericalism, we have not permitted the atrophying of apostolic energies, among them those of religious women. A number of initiatives, undertaken especially in mission countries, show that urgent necessities are obliging the Church to a profound evolution on this point. The right is conceded to religious women to perform certain acts which up to now custom has linked with the person of the priest: they can distribute Communion, take charge of the liturgical assembly on Sunday, and catechize. The somewhat "sensational" cases should not rivet attention on themselves and thus prevent the Church from per-ceiving the numerous, more ordinary forms of activity which she can officially leave to the genius and the con-science of religious women. We have mentioned here the pastoral work of charity, but the same reasons would be valid for the organization of catechetical activity (on the condition that the sisters in charge be truly com-petent and not content themselves, as too often happens, with a hastily acquired and thin layer of catechetics) and for certain aspects of pastoral activity with regard to the family. A few minutes ago we mentioned the example of the women who set out at dawn to embalm the Body of the Lord and become the first witnesses of His Resurrection. Entirely like Mary, the woman who was the first witness of His Incarnation, they are the witnesses of the silent and hidden activities of God which are, nevertheless, His most fundamental ones. Is not woman even on the physi-cal level the first witness and the first receiver of human life as it comes into existence in secret? There is in this a mysterious harmony, sign of a providential vocation. This vocation is accomplished in the Christian bride whose femininity becomes grace and salvation for her husband and their children. It is accomplished in the contempla- tive nun hidden in silence and burning out her life for the Church. It is also accomplished in the religious woman of the active life who bends over human misery to bring it the most perceptible sign of the tenderness of God. The Christian woman has the marvelous and irre-placeable task of becoming the living sign of the Church as Bride and Mother. It is necessary that our pastoral awaken to this vocation of theirs and respect it for the glory of the gospel and the salvation of the world. + VOLUME 25, 1966 17 JOSEPH FICHTNER, O.S.C. Metanoia or Conversion Joseph Fichthe.r, O.S.C., teaches at Crosier House of Studies; 2620 East Wallen Road; Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18 Since we religious are living .in an age of Chuich re-newal and reform, we can ask ourselves the question: What are we contributing to this movement? Is the movement likely to succeed if we merely let ourselves passively be swept up into it? Religious orders have a precedent of active participation in the many past Church reforms. They can take their cue from a fairly long list of orders who, somehow or other, were in-strumental in either initiating renewal and reform or carrying them through. Perhaps the most famous instance of a religious order undertaking reform of its monastic life and thereby lead-ing the way to full-scale Church reform is that of the Cistercians. As Father George H. Tavard, A.A., already pointed out in a lecture to major superiors at Den-ver, July 1, 1964, the Lorraine and Cluniac monastic re-forms spearheaded the whole Gregorian reform within the Church 0050-1200). St. Bernard wrote De consider-atione, a pattern of reform for Pope Eugenius III to use upon the administration of the Roman See. In the thir-teenth century, the mendicant movement of Franciscan and Dominican Friars coincided with the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council and of Pope Innocent III. It is a fact of Counter-Reformation history that the Jesuits with their military structure and educational purpose and the Capuchins with their simplicity and austerity of life implemented the Trentine reform. This historical precedent comes closer to home when we recall that the canons regular followed in the wake of the Gregorian reform, when, for the first time in history, the idea of reform spread to the whole Church. Charles Dereine, S. J., noted how the canons regular helped to revive eremitical life in the thirteenth century,x The eremitical life did not last long among them because it was encroached upon by lay people, especially the conversi, who looked to the eremitical 1 Les chanoines reguliers au DiocOse de LiOge avant saint Norbert (Louvain~ University of Louvain, !952). groups for spiritual guidance and help (cura ani-marum). At their beginnings, after the example of their leaders was sufficient rule, the groups fell under the influence of the Rule of St. Augustine. But the choice of the Augustinian Kule, whenever it was made, engendered a delicate problem of conscience. Should the charter members adopt the canonical customs then in use or return to the primitive ideal of austerity and poverty? This was the step of capital importance in canonical reform. Carolingian law had granted the canons the right of abandoning private property in order to lead an apostolic life. A few groups opted for the new order (ordo horus in contrast to the ordo antiquus), a way of life which was more austere especially in the matter of poverty. Their option was vitally important, if not difficult, in an age of canonical reform. They had the alternative of affiliating themselves with Cistercian communities. I mention this bit of past history because obviously it stands parallel to our own day. Religious are now in a position to maintain the status quo (which eventually will die and decay); to merge with other religious groups who have similar constitutions, customs, and spirit, or at least associate with them in apostolic works (and this is a conciliar recommendation); or to forge ahead with the Church. It is essential for religious today to recognize and evaluate their role within the context of the Christian life. To fail to do so is to become purposeless and nondescript. They can only begin to reform if they knew beforehand why and how and what and whom they are to renew and reform. One of the aims listed for the present reform, in fact the first on the list, is "to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful." s Religious must count themselves among the faithful because of their consecration to God through baptism. Over and above baptism, the profession of the evangelical vows is a super-addition to that consecration . It is indeed a special consecration which per-fects the former one, inasmuch as by it, the follower of Christ totally commits and dedicates himself to God, thereby making his entire life a service to God alone.¯ The role of the religious, then, particularly iri a time of spiritual renewal and reform, is to bear witness for the Church socially and publicly by a way of life which "radiantly shines forth" and shows that "the kingdom ¯ Constitution on the Liturgy, n. 1. ¯ Pope Paul VI, dllocution on Religious Life, May 25, 1964. 4- 4- Cor~erslon VOLUME 25~ 1966 ÷ ÷ Joseph Fi~htner, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS of Christ is not of this world." 4 They bear witness by means of the vows, the three signs "which can and ought to attract all the members of the Church to ~an effective and prompt fulfillment of the duties of their Christian vocation.''~ The Decree on Ecumenism dispels any doubt that vows constitute a mere external show; Church renewal demands a change of heart, a renewal of the inner life of our minds, self-denial and an unstinted love.e If religious are to have a leading role in renewing the Church, they must be in the vanguard of :that ',spiritual ecumenism" which amounts to a change of heart, holiness of life, and prayer. One of the characteristics of the present reform move-ment within the Church is the return to original sources, especially biblical and patristic. At the same time that the Church wants to update herself, she is taking a hard look backward at her beginnings. The very idea of reform conjures up the biblical theme of metanoia, repentance or conversion. Throughout salva-tion history, both under the Old and. New Testaments, God repeatedly issues a call to repentance. What re-newal and reform we are experiencing today fits into the biblical background ofmetanoia. The prophets of old--Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel --were reformers. They called upon the people of Israel. wandering away from Yahweh to "turn back" to him, to "repent." Here we have the original Hebrew notion of reform translated by the Septuagint but especially by the New Testament into the Greek metanoia. A few examples will have to suffice. The prophet Amos enumerates the natural calamities which befall Israel for its sins; and then he quickly adds almost like a refrain: "Yet you returned not to me, says the Lord" (4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11). "In their*affliction [Hosea is speaking for Yahweh], they shall look for me: 'Come, let us return to the Lord, for it is he who has rent, but he will heal' us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds' " (6:1). "Perhaps," writes Jeremiah, "when the house of Judah hears all the evil I have in mind to do to them, they will turn back each from his evil way, so that I may forgive their wickedness and their sin" (36:3). Ezekiel adds the note that the Israelites must make for themselves "a new heart and a new spirit" (18:31). The general prophetical teaching was that Israel, having personally sinned against the Lord, should per-sonally repent. Return to Yahweh meant that Israel should be orientated toward Yahweh and His will be-cause He is its God. Basic to repentance .was the de- ¯ Paul VI, ~lllocution on Religious LiIe. ~ Constitution on the Church, n. 44. e Decree on Ecumenism, n. 7. mand that Israel direct its whole existence to God and unconditionally accept Him in all events. To repent was to obey His will, to trust Him absolutely and be cautious about human help (alliances with other na-tions). Repentance had both a positive and negative aspect to it. By returning to Yahweh Israel would take up a new direction but likewise turn away from evil. Real repentance must be an inner renewal, a renewal of life, which is not possible without divine assistance. When we turn to the" New Testament, we find that it retains the past teaching on metanoia but lends empha-sis here and there. There seems to be more insistence upon the positive and interior aspect, that of changing one's mentality, attitude, feeling. Metanoia supposes error in conduct, repentance for past fault, and a con-version of one's whole person to a way willed by God in order to. ready oneself for entrance into His kingdom. Baptism, faith, repentance, love, poverty of spirit, all enter into the nature of metanoia. Metanoia requires personal responsibility coupled with the gift of God. John the Baptist was the first to take up the prophetic cry: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mt 3:2; Mk 1:4). The cry, however, is more categorical because given in view of an eschatological revelation. Conversion is for everybody; it must be authentic, a change of nature from within. Jesus too preaches con-version: "Repent and believe in the gospel"; "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Mk 1:15; Mt 4:17). But he goes beyond the Baptist in realizing the eschatological kingdom in His own Person. The purpose of His mission is to bring repentance: "I have not come to call the just, but sinners, to repentance" (Lk 5:32). The. metanoia which Jesus proclaims is really the will of God, a salvific way of life. One enters into such a way of life by converting or changing into a different man (see Mt 18:3). The close tie between monastic reform and the re-form of the entire Church was never better envisioned than by the early Church fathers. In fact, it is possible to trace historically a progression of the idea of reform from what concerns the individual Christian to monastic life and to the universal Church. The idea of reform became effective as a supra-individual force at a rather early date, particularly in monasticism. Within monasti-cism itself there has been a whole series o1: reforms. Today we tend to apply reform first of all to social entities and institutions rather than to individuals. How effective such a sweeping measure can be, remains to be seen. For a broad, ecclesiastical pattern of reform, follow-ing upon the principles already laid down in the Scrip-÷ ÷ ÷ owoersion VOLUME 25, 1966 21 + ÷ ÷ Joseph Fichtner, O.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS tures, we have to resort to patri~tic writings. It is impossible, o[ course, to go into anything like a complete survey of their writings, but one can at least gain a few insights from Gerhart B. Ladner's~ monumental work,' The Idea o[ Reform.~ I am indebted to him fo~ the following all-too:brief summary. Ladner draws this definition of reform from Scriptural and patristic sources: "the idea of [ree, intentional and ever perfectible, multiple, prolonged and evdr repeated efforts by man to reassert and augment values pre-existent in the spiritual-material compound of the world." The Greek fathers generally regarded reform as a return to paradise. Baptism begins this reform because it is a return to innocence. Because innocence is often lost and because baptism is unrep~atable, reform is mostly postbaptismal, a long process of many starts. If man is to reform himself, he has to make a conscious pursuit of ends. He starts with an intention rather than with spontaneity or urge or response. The key feature then of Greek patristic reform ideology was the return to a state of innocence through a. continual spiritual regeneration. Man has to be reconditioned into a state equivalent to his original state. Gregory of Nyssa in particular, with his mystical bent, accounted for this development of the Pauline.theme of the "new creature" and "new creation." Now the question, how is man to be renewed, brings us to a consideration of the' second salient feature of reform ideology, a feature found mostly among the writings of the Latin fathers. They proposed that man who originally was made in the image of God should be reformed according to and in the image of God (Christ). Although the early fathers felt that reform meant a withdrawal from the world rather than a penetration of it, or at least a juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, and hence relied upon monasticism to bring about reform, the idea gradually dawned that the whole Church should undergo reform. St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and St. Hilary of Poitiers were of the earlier mentality. Then under Gregory VII, the idea of reform began to envelop the Church as a whole, and finally Innocent III and Thomas Aquinas extended it to entire Christendom, to the political, socio-economic, and ~ultural milieu which the Church helped to form or in-fluence. Implicit in this idea was the re-imaging of man not only individually but socially. Reforming man to the image-likeness of God was the inspirational idea behind ~Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea o[ Re[orm (Cambridge: Harvard, 1959). all the reform movements in early and medieval Christianity. A third renewal theme, for which St. Augustine was mainly responsible, was that of the kingdom of God. St. Augustine, ,however, had such a high opinion of the Church as the kingdom of God upon earth which was on its way to becoming the heavenly kingdom that he refused to see any need of its reform. That is why he formulated the idea of the City of God which permits into its environs both sinners .and saints until the sin-ners are weeded out at the-parousia. He and Tertullian (before his defection from the Church) struck a more positive and futuristic note by teaching a' renewal for the better. For Augqstine in particular, fourth century Pelagianism was an occasion to take stock of the ideology of reform. Pelagianism represented a reform movement based upon the belief that man can reform himself and the world on his own. Contrariwise, Augustine fought against the temptation of relaxing personal effort and simply trusting in God. His intention was to strike a balance between God's grace and man's will. Reliance upon God and personal responsibility must go together in order to attain the kingdom of God. In the Christian East and West while the Church was building up, the need was ever felt for individual and social reform. But who was to initiate it? ,Only special members and organisms within the Church's body, namely, monasticism. The East and West differed not merely in reform ideology; they differed too in their attitude toward monastic life. The Greeks leaned strongly toward contemplation, the Latins toward the active life of charity for God and man. The western-minded Augustine mapped out a program of reform for monastic and quasi-monastic life for clerics and lay-people. Such was the principal and practical way in which he wished reform to be carried into effect. The monk-priests and laymen were to join together in the City of God to bring about a renewal for the better. ¯ It is evident from thi~ patristic perspective that re-newal and reform must take into account the past and present and future. If we look back over the condition of religious life since World War II, the thought strikes us. that religious institutes have been passing through a phase of de-velopment. Consciously or unconsciously, they have been engaged in a reform movement for almost twenty years. The movement seerhs to have begun officially with the first ~eneral congress 6f religious held in Rome near the close .of the Holy Year, 1950. At this meeting, on December 8th, Pope Pius XII delivered an allocution in + + + VOLUME 25, 1966 23 ÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph Fichtner, O$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS which he outlined three reasons why religious should update themselves: For the changed c~nditions of the world which the Church must~ encounter, certain points of doctrine touching upon the status and condition of moral perfection, not to mention the pressing needs of the apostolic work which you have so widely and so generously undertaken, all these have called you to devote your-selves to this systematic study and discussion. The same reasons prompted the Sacred Congregation of Religious to summon the First National Congress of Religious of the United States at the University of Notre Dame, August 9-12, 1952. Part and parcel of the whole reform movement within the religious orders were the researches into their past histories. The studies in some instances may not have been altogether conclusive, but at least they pointed out lines of development. They put religious into a position where they have to either retain or reject the essentials of their past, paralleling the present-day Church reform which will not abandon the basic struc-ture of the Church, Religious have to decide what sort of growth they want', homogeneous or heterogeneous. To be or remain a homogeneous body, the religious insti-tute, as the schema De religiosis recommends, must faithfully retain its nature, purpose, special spirit, and sound tradition--everything which constitutes the patrimony of the institute. The historian John Tracy Ellis called attention to this necessity in his address to the Paulists on the occasion of the diamond jubilee celebration of St. Paul's College, Washington, D.C., January 25, 1965. In this era of change he advised "the parallel need of holding fast to a sense of history if we are to escape the consequences, of mere change for change's sake, of what I would call--if the term be allowed---the curse of 'presentism.' " The historical researches accomplished at least one thing: they gave the orders more or less a sense of identity. Erik H. Erikson, the psychologist, defined per-sonal identity as follows: The term identity expresses such a mutual relation in that it connotes both a persistent sameness within oneself (self-same-ness) and a persistent sharing of some kind of essential charac-ter with others. Although his definition fits personal identity, it is analogically applicable to the "moral persons" which re-ligious orders are. A sense of identity is most important for normal psychological and spiritual renewal. The man who cannot identify himself is either an amnesia victim or is ignorant or leads a schizophrenic existence. If young candidates entering a religious order cannot identify themselves with it because there is nothing to identify with, the more is the pity. As Pope Paul VI stated in his address to religious referred to above, the work of general chapters is to accommodate constitutions to "the changed conditions of the times"; but it must be done in such a wa~ that "the proper nature and discipline of the institute is kept intact." No renovation of discipline is to be intro-duced excepting what accords with "its specific pur-pose." Therefore, until this accommodation of discipline is duly processed and brought into .juridic effect, let the religious mem-bers not introduce anything new 0n their own initiative, nor relax the restraints of discipline nor give way to censorious crit-icism. Let them act in such a way that they might rather help and more promptly effect this work of renewal by their fidelity and' obedience. If the desired renovation takes place in this way, then the letter will have changed, but the spirit will have remained the same, in all its integrity,s The Pope certainly did not have in mind the ,idea of implementing constitutions to the point where they are voluminous, minutely detailed, and unlivable; for such constitutions can easily cramp the style of religious liv-ing. "Multiplicity of laws is not always accompanied by progress in religious life," remarked Pope Paul "It often happens that the more rules there are, the less people pay attention to them." 0 It is particularly irksome to men, and I suppose to women too, to be ruled by many minute prescriptions. But in the meanwhile; while the constitutions are under study or revision, it will not do to adopt or maintain "the practices which are dangerous to religious life, unnecessary dispensations, and privileges not properly approved" 10 which sap the strength of religious discipline. Is there a behavioral pattern, psychological and socio-logical, which religious can follow in order to promote metanoia for the present and into the future? Govern-ment and business have had psychological and socio-logical studies made to 'guide societies and institutions toward self-renewal. They have begun to understand the processes, reasons, and conditions for the growth and decline in societies.11 Of course we cannot accept the complete structure and dynamics of reform which they use; but they have been able to outline a good, comprehensive pattern of reform. The following, then, will be some explanation of the principles of self-renewal pertinent to religious orders. Religious orders s Paul VI, Allocution on Religious Life. 9 Paul VI, Allocution on Religious Life. 10 Paul VI, Allocution on Religious Life. 11 See John W. Gardner, Self-Renewal, the Individual and Inno. vative Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). VOLUME 251 1966 ÷ 4- 4. ]oseph Fichtner, O.~.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS cannot grow as supernatural cells within the body of the Church unless they accept whole-heartedly the natural (that is, psychological and sociological) dy-namics of growth. 1. A society that wishes to renew and reform itself must first of all know itself. It has a sense of identity. As religious we have, more or less, a self-image. Con-fusedly at least all of us have a picture in our minds of the ideal religious, namely, one who lives a Christlike life as distinct and unique. Now self-knowledge is not a still-life picture but a moving picture of self-develop-ment, a continual search for identity. Ordinarily we find knowing ourselves difficult and inconvenient. Yet the more we have a sense of identity, which we can learn in part from our tradition, the more it helps us to plan our future--what or who we want to become. Young members may at times rebel against a tradi-tional heritage, even if it is only the starting point of their rebellion. 2. This brings us to a second principle very closely allied to the first. Self-i.dentity is largely a matter of knowing our past and having continuity with it. Our present beliefs, attitudes, feelings, values arose out of earlier personality formation, earlier learning and ex-perience, all of which is most difficult to shake off. We are more inclined to trust tradition because we experi-enced it. Historians did us the favor of recalling the past and showing how evolution already took place in it. Historians help religious groups to achieve self-knowl-edge, and in this way they serve the cause of renewal. If religious were able to sustain renewal in the past, per-haps they can feel at home with it in the future. With-out ignoring their past, they are oriented to the future and will have a hand in shaping it. The tendency of a society with a past is twofold: to persist or to change. The two tendencies are not diametrically, opposed. In fact, it is wrong to oppose change to continuity; both must be given due emphasis, Our aim should be to endlessly interweave continuity with change. "The only stability possible is stability in motion." ~ Religious do nonetheless face the danger to-day of living in an age when the rate of change has sped up almost to leaving them in the dust. They can expand or grow or change so rapidly and wildly that it will be cancerous and kill the values they want to keep. 3. True religious see and share a vision of something worth saving. This vision is made up of all the motiva-tion, conviction, commitment, and values that give meaning to their life. Only if they believe in something Gardner, SelpRenewal, p. 7. can they change something for the better. Otherwise they will experience a failure of heart and spirit. The self-renewing religious will have something about which they are thoroughly convinced and about which they care so deeply that they will do something about it. Yet each one must beware of being egocentric about it. One little thing that he really cares about deeply, one little thing that he can do with zealous con-viction, gives him extra drive and enthusiasm. That is why long-term purposes or values or goals are so important for us. They have to be relatively lasting in order to determine the direction of change. Should they be fly-by-night visions and goals, they will not enable us to absorb them or do justice to them or will endanger a distinctive character and style of living. The mature religious has a religious commitment larger than himself. He has been given a religious goal not as an accomplished fact; his has to be a seeking and striving for the goal in an ever-renewing way. He will be happy in the s.triving, not necessarily in the attaining of that goal. Small victories will instill in him some satisfaction but never the idea that he has arrived, that his life is fulfilled, or that he can sit back and no longer feel the tension of self-renewal. All of us have built into our nature the hunger for meaningful, goals. They are as vital to our being as breathing. But in a sense we must breathe together. We can live together in a .religious community o.nly if we have some measure of consensus in regard to our goals, beliefs, values. We can come to some rough agreement among the many who share the same ideals. Haggling over details there will always be. No matter how pluralistic our community may be, variety and di-versity and spontaneity should not be allowed to inter-fere with at least a middle ground of ideals, goals, and visions. We do ourselves an injustice if we allow all sorts of individual values to conflict in a careless atmos-phere of freedom and then expect something good to come from them. Such a procedure is equivalent in economics to the false theory of laissez-faire. On the other hand, change for the better is brought about when socially or communally acquired and ap-proved ideals, convictions, goals change. In this way change takes place according to psychological and socio-logical laws. It is possible to change laws, the external marks of a society, without affecting the beliefs, prac-tices, and values of the members of that society. Men commonly live as they think; hence to change their life demands a conversion of their minds and hearts. Their life is bound to change if the set of ideas, feelings, and ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 25, 1966 27 ÷ ÷ O.~.C, R~:VIEW FOR RELiGiOUS attitudes which the individual shhres with the members of the society changes. 4. Any renewal or reform, therefore, ought to be aimed at the individual or person. He must find himself in a ~ort of do-it-yourself movement. He must be free and independent enough, flexible and versatile enough, to be open to change. If he isolates himself from others within his group, if he fails to cross-fertilize with them, he will not change or grow. Anthropologists point out that .much cultural change comes about through bor-rowing from others. Karl Rahner makes the pointed remark in his book, Theology for Renewal: If anyone wants to have the Church changed, he must make himself the starring-point of renewal. For the crldc himself is part .of what the Church is suffering from. For usually his own life is not much of a recommendation for Christianity.~ The same remark may be applied to the religious critic. We are more prone to criticize others than to be self-critical. Each religious has personality traits which favor either change or persistence (conservatism), and no doubt many have a mixture of the two. A characteristic of the self-renewing religious is that he 'has a mutually fruitful rapport with others. He is capable of accepting and giving love and friendship. Without such love and friendship, the person enters into rigid isolation. The loving and friendly person depends upon others and can be depended upon. He discovers common tastes, interests, is accessible, and is willing to lend assistance. He makes others feel important. In so doing he is one of the many within a vibrant society who inculcate mutual trust, affection, and identification (as opposed to carping criticism, character asshssination, and envy). They are the cross currents through which his change for better is possible~ 5. Is there enough freedom in the religious way of life to allow for change? This question has to be asked because psychologists and, sociologists maintain that only a free society is open to inquiry, experimentation, and action. A society where reasonable room is left for personal taste, self-expression, and self-criticism, will grow. Its framework or structure is not such that it throttles thought and discussion of new ideas. Authori-tarian or bureaucratic or legalist.ic societies may not throttle thought and discussion but they tend to chan-nel and control them. Freedom, however, has to be balanced with some ~Karl Rahner, Theology ]or Renewal (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), p. 87. determinism within a society. No individual religious should expect to be left to run rampant, to do as and what he pleases. Freedom may result in license. Or it may alienate him from the community. A religious who is left reasonably free may achieve responsibility; but if he seeks too much autonomy he may end up with self-pride, an inflated ego, and not really fulfill himself at all. Every person has limitations and has to come to terms with his membership in the community at large. The social side of his nature should make him realize values which are grea~er than his individual needs. 6. Change and improvement usually spring up in a community that has felt-needs for them. Felt-needs are the beginning of any renewal and reform. So religious must examine their felt-needs. There can be no metanoia unless the community feels needs, and the needs have to be felt widely enough for the majority to do some-thing about them. The first task of renewal and reform is the always difficult task of facing up to ourselves. What gap do we find between the ideals we profess and the realities we practice? How far apart do our constitutions lie from their fulfillment? We have to give due credit to the prophetic and visionary eyes and minds among us who see and speak out against the unreality or even hy-pocrisy of religious life, to whatever degree they may exist. Young members, especially, who still have the ideals and goals fresh before them, can help the rest to an honest self-examination. We do them a good turn too by telling them that their task is to re-create values in their own conduct and not simply look at them idealisti-cally. We should assure each generation of religious that they have to refight the battle and inject new life into lasting ideals and goals. 7. No amount of organization, law-making, socializing will help a religious society to renew and reform unless men in it have the determination to 'foster renewal and reform. It is men who make up a society, not laws or regulations or structures. It is the personal environ-ment that makes for growth, for between the individual and his environment there takes place something like osmosis. If we do not set a pace by our ideals and ex-ample for incoming members, then they will believe little is expected of them. Of whom much is expected, the chances are that he will expect much of himself. If he is educated and motivated in an atmosphere that en-courages effort, sacrifice, selflessness, it is very likely that he will be affected greatly and respond mightily. We take it for granted that the young religious is a free and responsible individual. He will become in-creasingly responsible if we set up for him a meaning- VOLUME 25, 1966 29 Joseph Fichtner, O~.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ful relationship with larger and higher goals. We help him to free himself fr6m the "prison of utter selb preoccupation" by instructing and leading him to place himself in the free and willing service of these goals and the people aiming at them. In !religious life as well as in any other, family li~e' included, deeds speak louder than words~ Authentic religious conduct preaches a better lesson than 'any homily, sermon, conference, or instruction. None o~ us learns much from principles, but we do emulate people who are high-principled and exemplary. Ordinarily we do not analyze or list the virtues we wish to develop, unless it be during meditation; but we identify our-selves with the people who have virtue. That is why all of us~ young and old, need models in our imaginative life and in our immediate environment, models of what we at our best can be. At the risk of too much repeti-tion, it should be said that what we do communicates moral and spiritual values much more than what we say~ Words are cheap. Action calls for assuming burden-some and sacrificing responsibility. It is a summons to spiritual greatness. . ¯ 8. The danger in religious life is tO think we can progress morally and spiritually without changing psychologically, socially, culturally. Change for the better---evolution and not revolution or historic acci-dent- usually is a slow, complex, unpredictable, some-what risky and painful process. It does not happen by leaps and bounds; it takes time and hard effort. When practices change, they will not be acceptable evenly .throughout a whole community. Some will wel-come them, others resist them. So many factors and their interplay go into change for the better that they make change complex. And the complexity of a changing situation .brings with it a risk. It takes prudent analysis and prognosis to decide whether the risk is reasonably calculable. Members of a society who are "on their toes" and not living "in a rutV will forestall wild and revolutionary change. Historians have shown that long-range changes came about through successive small innovations, most of them unobtrusive and anonymous. People who lived through the innovation would probably admit that they did not know it was happening; But innovators who herald a change with a flourish of trumpets should ex-pect to meet up with attack and opposition. That pain accompanies growth is inevitable; everybody wants to grow and progress but nobody wants the pain that goes with it. 9. The locus of metanoia is the minds and hearts of ~he individual members of the community, in those minds and hearts where there is the hidden potential of zeal, dedic~ition, a sense of. mission, leadership, and a willingness to sacrifice. Members who have closed minds and hearts have lost the capacity for metanoia. For the self-renewing man there is no end to the development o[ his abilities. He is not a gold mine left unti~pped or an oil well only partially drilled. Psychologists advise us of the fact that many go through life without nearly salvaging all their ta, lents.~ Nothing can be so decisive for refiewal as the use of G6~l-given talents. Conversion VOLUME 25, 1966 31 GUSTAVE MARTELET, S.J. The Church's Holiness ¯ and Religious Life + ÷ + Gustave Martelet, s.J., is professor of fundamental theol-ogy at 4, Mont~e de Fourvi~re; Lyon (V), France. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS V. RELIGIOUS L~FE AND PREFERENTIAL LOVE OF JEsus CHRIST The* eschatological character of virginity contributes spiritual depth to our understanding of religious life; we must now analyze the latter in still greater detail. Having begun by considering the holiness of the Church (I), which appeared inseparable from her mystery as Spouse (II), we saw that marriage represents sacramentally a mys-tery whose content is spiritually appropriated by virginity (III). This insight illuminated the eschatological meaning of virginity and exposed its motivating drive, a preferen-tial love of Christ (IV). This love throws the greatest light on religious life, and it is in function of that love that our first comprehensive glance at the state must be cast--the concern of the present section. We shall examine the na-ture of religious life'in iiself, its dependence on the mys-tery of the Church, and the significance which consecrated virginity retains today with regard to religious life. 1. Nature o[ Religious Life We do not pretend to supply an exhaustive treatment of this vast subject, for that would simultaneously entail a consideration of the history of the Church, of canon l~aw, * This is the second part of Raymond L. Sullivant's translation of Saintetd de l'Eglise et vie religieuse (Toulouse: Editions Pri~re et Vie, 1964). The first part of the translation appeared in the November, 1965, issue of the REvzE\v; and the rest of the translation will be printed in the March, 1966, issue. When completed, the entire trans-lation will be issued by the REvmw in a clothbound edition. Notifica-tion of the date o~ publication of the clothbound edition will be made to all those who send a request for this notification to R~vmw ro~ R~mmos; St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas 66536. The request for this notification does not constitute an order for the book and in-volves no financial obligation. of liturgy, and of dogma; but we shall present its meaning from the viewpoint which we have set for ourselves.04 When considering the importance of virginity in the thought of the fathers, we must resist the temptation to construct a strict parallel between that state and the re-ligious life and to reduce the one state to the other. The adoption o.f this excessive view is done from a de-sire to augment the grandeur proper to virginity. While we have seen why there is little danger of overestimating its value, still a careful analysis establishes that virginity founds the order of virgins and not the religious life as such. To be sure, the history of consecrated virginity as that of widowhood with whicti it has much in common05 eventually meshed with the history of religious life itself. But regardless of the progressive absorption of the order of virgins into that of nuns, a fundamental difference pre-vents the loss of their separate identities: religious life re-quires and consecrates not so much virginity as chastity. We a,re grateful to Father Mogenet for an unpublished ex-planation of the point: Since St. Paul's day, the Church has had a too sensitive awareness of the virginal dignity of Jesus and our Lady not to recognize its exemplarity. She has exalted the charism of Virginity and has honored Christ's virgins who have been mem-bers of the Christian community since the first century. Never-theless, when religious life developed as the more or less con-scious response to the three evangelical counsels, no one thought of restricting it to virgins. The deserts, as later the monasteries and the convents, received converted sinners, married men, widowers, and the chaste single as well. And al-though virginity is a privileged state in following Christ, it is not an indispensable condition. It would seem that St. Peter had been married. We can almost say that Christ's call takes no account of the past. It draws the hearer from family life, from the project of founding a home, to the sacrifice of human love. The summons commits the aspirant to a continent exist-ence which requires perfect chastity as its normal state. This condition permits religious life to become, for those outside its ranks and most notably for the married, the support and model which it should always be.~0 Conse-quently, it is clear that religious life cannot be reduced to virginity alone. For even as the value of the latter arises ~ On this point a generally recognized role is played at the present time by Father Ren~ Carpentier's book, Li]e in the City oI God (New York: Benziger, 1959); the volume has the merit of never separating evangelical perfection and the mystery of the Church. m Andr~ Rosambert, La veuve dans le droit canonique jusqu'au xiv~ si~cle (Paris: Dalloz, 1923); on the status of consecrated virgins during the fourth and fifth centuries, see, for example, Jean Gaude-met, L'Eglise dans l'Empire romain (iv"-v~ siOcles) (Paris: Sirey, 1958), pp. 206-11. ~ Bishop Huyghe, whose writings on religious life are well known, put a great emphasis on this point in his speech to the Council on re-ligious life; see D.C., v. 60 (1963), col. 1590-1. ÷ ÷ ÷ Religious Li]¢ VOLUME 2S, 1966. ÷ Oustave Marteleg, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS from the preferential love of Christ which consecrates it, love can vow true chastity to Christ even when virginity has been humanly destroyed. Recognition of the prefer-ential love of Christ is equally important for a proper un-derstanding of poverty and obedience. Christ's call can be directly traced to His command to sell all one's goods (Mt 19:21); and the example of St. Francis as well as that of Father de Foucauld emphasizes the close relationship that unites poverty to love of the Poor One par excellence, Christ Himself. The same can be said of obedience. Whether obedience is linked with the demands of common life lived in conformity with the vita apostolica,6z or whether it is explained (as was done in the Rule of the Master adopted by St, Benedict) with reference to the role of the abbot as Christ's "vicar" in ac-cord with St. Luke 10:16: "Who hears you, hears me," or whether obedience is primarily envisioned as an "imita-tion" of Christ in His dependence on His Father as ex-pressed in St. John 6:38: "I have come down from heaven not to carry out my own will but the will of him who sent me," 68 makes no difference: in every one of these view-points, obedience is an integral part of religious life even though the present canonical form of the vow of obb-dience dates only from Carolingian times.69 Nevertheless, in its case also condition and essence must not be con-fused. Obedience, as poverty and chastity, is a sine qua non condition of the religious life. But can we say that it is its very content? The answer is yes, to the degree that by its suppression religious life would be emptied of one of its specific obligations. But the answer is no, if by mak-ing obedience the content of religious life one comes to forget that religious obedience attains its goal only by as-suring the reign of the will of Christ over our own will. Hence the organized exercise o£ the three counsels truly manifests the nature of religious life but only to the exact extent that this exercise reposes directly upon the love of the Lord, aims at imitating Him, and~emanates from His mystery through the power of the Spirit. The explana-tion, previously established when defining the eschatolo-gical meaning of virginity, should help us understand the ¯ z M.-H. Vicaire, L'imitation des Apdtres. Moines, chanoines, raen. diants (iv~-xiii~ si~cles) (Paris: Cerf, 1963). ~s De Vogii6, La communautd et l'abbd, pp. 128-9. n~ Catherine Capelle, Le voeu d'obdlssance des origines jusqu'au xii~ si~cle. Etude juridique (Paris: Librairie g~n6rale de droit et jurispru-dence, 1959), pp. 153-79, dates the juridical birth o£ the vow o[ obe-dience from a Chapter of 789; but as she remarks on pp. 208-13 it is necessary to wait for Yves of Chartres in the eleventh cer~tury for a theory of the vow over and beyond the practice of obedience. On the . relationship of the three vows to religious life see the discourse of Paul VI given on May 23, 1964 in the English translation, REVIEW KELtg~OUS, V. 23 (1964), pp: 700--1. point, since the spiritual basis of virginity is the desire to belong to Christ in an absolutely exclusive fashion. A point raised by the rule of St. Benedict in its fourth chap-ter, "The Instrument of Good Works," is of utmost per-tinence in this matter: "Nihil amori Christi praeponere," says the great legislator: "Put nothing before Christ's love." The axiom comes directly from the Vita Antonii. St. Anthanasius there depicts St. Anthony "repeating to all that they should desire none of the world's goods in preference to the love of Christ." 70 One wouId search in vain to find this central idea expressed with more lapidary compactness. And who would be better authorized than St. Benedict to condense western monasticism's raison d'etre into a concise formula? The same thought appears in the seventy-second chapter of the rule to explain the ardent zeal which monks should have: "They will prefer absolutely nothing to Christ who deigns to conduct us all to eternal life." 71 And it is the eschatological note that gives such complete fullness to the formula. It is because Christ "is the beginning, the first-born from the dead (that in everything he might be preeminent)" (Col 1:18) that nothing must be put before Christ and that one should die to everything rather than die to Him who is Life itself. Hence His priority as the Lord over all things and over ourselves--"Everything is yours but you are Christ's and Christ is God's" (1 Cor 3:2)--must be trans-lated on the level of love by an exclusive preference for His Person and by an unconditional desire to follow and imitate Him alone. Accordingly, all monastic life, as all religious institutes afterwards, crystallizes around the practice, of the three evangelical counsels with a view to assuring the rigorous ascendancy of Christ's ways over those of the world. Since Christ is completely despoiled of material goods (He "has not a stone on which to rest his head" [Mt 8:20]), since His own relationship with others does not take carnal generation into account ("Who is my mother and who are my brothers?. Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, my sister, and my mother" [Mt 12:48]), and since He does not exercise His liberty except by delivering it up to the will of His Father (Jn 6:38), religious life will accordingly be defined as a ca-nonically determined break (even if it is not always spir-itually accomplished), with the possessions of the world by poverty, with carnal generation and conjugal love by ~o P.G., v. 26, col. 865 A, a citation derived from the previously men-tioned unpublished work of Father Mogenet. On the Athanasian au-thenticity of the Vita Antonii, see Louis Bouyer, La vie du saint ~lntoine (Saint Wandrille: Editions de Fontenelle, 1950), pp. 15'-22. ~ Citations of the Rule of St. Benedict are made according to the text of Dom Philibert Schmitt. + Religious Lile VOLUME 25, 1966 Ousta~e Mar~eleg, Sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS chastity, with personal hegemony over self by obedience. This triple rupture defines, by way of three complemen-tary means, a unique and single preference which should e~]ectively animate the religious' entire being, And if man is, in effect, a relation to nature through possession, a re-lation to the other thr~ough love, and a relation to sell through liberty, then poverty, chastity, and obedience are the triple condition of one and the same preference: the preference for Christ over all the goods of the world', sac-rificed to Him who appears as the One Necessity, the pref-erence for Christ over carnal generation, and even more so over conjugal love, sacrificed to Him who appears as Love itself, the preference for Christ over our own indi-vidual liberty, sacrificed to Him who appears as the only Lord. Understood in this manner, religious !ire is the applica-tion of the call: "Come follow me," in which tradition has always seen the principle of life according to the coun-sels. Directed to the rich young man in Galilee (Mt 19:21), Jesus' personal summons is ceaselessly repeated by the Spirit in the ever present reign of the resurrected Christ: On the basis of a love for the Lord of glory alone, the Spirit founds the movement of grace that is religious life. As a way of life in keeping with the evangelical counsels and canonically defined within the Church, religious life is first of all the choice of an end and only secondly a sys-tem of means. It is a response which presupposes a call, a canonical institution commanded by a spiritual love.It becomes an institution only because it was first an inspira-tion; it becomes the letter of a rule only because it was first the spirit of the Gospel. And if it is true that the counsels themselves are still a letter when isolated from the Spirit from which they live,r2 it is also true that the letter of religious life takes form from the letter of the Gospel only by the charismatic mediation of the Holy Spirit Himself. Religious life assumes a bodily form only when the Spirit breathes into souls the soul of the Gospel. This soul is none other than the spiritual preference of Christ over all things in keeping with the words of St. Benedict cited above: "Put nothing before the love of Jesus,Christ." r~ By constructing this formula for his sons and for all of those who would hear the faithful echo of the Gospel through i(, St. Benedict initiated his followers into the well,founded hope of "eternal life," that is to say, of "the life lived forever with the Lord," the anticipation" 7a Dom Lafont gives strong insistence to this point in the work cited in footnote 7, pp. 170-83. ra On the centrality of Christ in the gospel message see de Grand-maison, Jesus Christ, v. 2 and v. 3, pp. 3-346; and R. Guardini, Das Wesen des Christentums (Sth ed.; W0rzburg: ~Werksbund-Verlag, 1958). of which is the proper mission of religious life in the Church. By this preferential love of Jesus Christ, religious life, far from living in isolation from the Church, enters, as does virginity, into her most profound being and shows itseff subject to her. 2. Religious Life's Dependence on the Church We are speaking here of the whole Church for the serv-ice of which religious life exists, as we shall see in the last section. But for the present we wish to consider in a gen-eral way the essential dependence of religious life on the hierarchy and on the Christian community itself. By first drawing attention to marriage and its dependence on the Church, we shall better understand the position of reli-gious life. A. The Church and the Christian Couple Many of the faithful are indignant (and some of them ventilate their dissatisfaction in the daily press) over the fact that the Church through her magisterium wishes to impose a conjugal ethic on them. Although there are sometimes unjustified clerical probings into the private lives of couples, this indiscretion is not the object of the litigation. The latter arises from the Church's right to is-sue obligatory laws in the conjugal order. Contraception is not the only sensitive area; problems of a similar na-ture cluster around the subject. We do not propose here to solve any of these problems but only to indicate the spirit with which the intervention of the Church in such matters is to be accepted. In so doing, we shall contribute to the understanding of the relations that exist between the Church and religious life. Christian marriage is the sign of the 'union of Christ and the Church. The spousal charity of Christ and the Church must consequently be reflected in marriage if it is to obtain the transparency of a sign. To avoid saying that Christ has not assumed flesh in its entirety, we must recognize that all flesh must bear the mark of Christ and exercise that paradoxical docility which the Spirit de-mands of it. Christian conjugal ethic is dominated by this end. It has no other reason for being than to assure to the human love of the partners that spiritual clarity befitting the sacramentality of their love. Christianity assumes re-sponsibility for the most authentic prescriptions of human ethics; but in making them both more urgent and more imprescriptible, it demonstrates the need for transparency which the sign should have and the latter's ability in Christ to follow Him. That is why no home can be more human or purer, more united or freer, more self-sac-rificing or happier, humbler and more transfigured, than the home in which the light of Christ shines and where 4- 4- 4- "Religious Life VOLUME 25, 1966 . Gustave Martelet, ~,. $~1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS His flame burns. It is thu"s apparent ~hat the Church can never sacrifice the conjugal ethic since the human love of the baptized must reflect, even in the flesh, the sanctity which she represents. The objection of those Christians who maintain that the Church cannot pronounce on :subjects which Chris~t did not discuss is indeed fragile. Christ's sile,nce, while ap-parently impressive, is quite relativ6 when one reflects on the manner in which He spoke'of tl~e indissblubility of the conjugal bond (Mt 19:9) a~nd of foregoing the works of the flesh "in view of the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 19:22).' Even if Christ had~ not.spoken, one could not declare the Bride in.competent tq d~e~fine :t,he standards "of the Gyoom to those who represent the mystery itself. Christ. would have shown little respect for His Bride, in fact, He wohld have shown outright distrust for her and lack of faith in the:intuitions of which His Spirit is the .guarantee, if He had not endowed His Church with the. right and the duty "to.speak" in an area where the bridal mysyery which she lives directly orientates the spi.ritua! underst.a.ndin~ of the couple's love. Yet the Church's authority does not sup-plant Christ in His mystery. The 'former relies on the lat-ter; she thus rejoins the profound life of her children--a life which is sometimes resisted but never denied: The latter know that they will never truly communicate with Christ through their love if ~they reject the manner in which the Church forms and guides their consciences. B: The Church and P~eligious Life If she takes so much care with regard to the sacrament of marriage, the sign of her bridal mystery, the hierarchi- Cal Church watches nb less jealously over religious life: If in the free holiness of the married she wishes to see 'the bldssoming of an image of what they become in and by th~ sacrament, she cannot be disinterested in ~hose Who pretend not only to represent but to spiritually actualize the v.ery love. of the Bride as it is directed in its entirety toward the Groom. The Church's ~igilance over the sac-ramental ~ign of her nupti_als in marriage can only be re-doubledin the case of the spiritual~ fulfillment 9f thesd huptials in religious life. The lat~er trul)i exist~ in the .Chu.rch~.only when i.t is discerned; judged, a~proved, con-trolled, 'su~pb.r~ed, afid'criticized.'lS)i hier~irchical action, 1.oc.al" orsupr~me;, of which it ~an neither atiempt nor de-s~ re to be free. ¯ This essential function as judge" and. guardian is never brought t~o fulfillment not only because human weakness is forever prone to compromise :what gener'osity 'in th~ SpirivoHginal]y envisage~l and ~romised but a'l~o b~cause ~ov~'g" ingpi~a~ion Wtiic-l~ giv'e~"-'birfl~ ~0 ~eligioh~ life" ig never dulled and because from the flight to the desert to the ransom of captives, from the highest conte.mplation to the most obscure nursing service, from ancient Carm.el to. modern Nazareth, from the monastic 9rders to the secu-lar institutes, the Bride must al.ways discern the various ways" in which the Groom inspires her through her chil-dren. Let it suffice to state that religious life, charismati-cally given to the Church by Chrigt Himself, exists in the Church only as canonically submissive to her law. More-over, if this strict submission does not des.troy religious life but~ rather makes it flourish, the reason is that throUgh this submission religious life finds its own truth. Publicly "recognized" by the Church as a privileged "way of holi-ness, religious life understands itself as the flowering within the Church of the Bride's mystery of loving re-sponse to the Groom's love. Religious life's dependence on the mystery of the Church is not only hierarchical but is also connected with the entire Christian community. The evangelical coun-sels which mold religious life do not make the pi:eferen-tial love of Christ become a monopoly of the monastery. Every Christian--and, strictly speaking, every man--is called to this love; and the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are directed to every member of die Church "as the norm for the moral conduct of the baptized." 74 While' it is true that as far as the manner of loving Chri~ alcove all things and of thereby entering into the love of God is concerned religious life represents a privileged state, still it is of absolute necessity for no one. Although pos-sessing a universal value of exemplarity, it is imposed only on some, and then by a determined vocation. Holiness is never automatically assured those who commit themselves to this way of the vows; and there is no doubt that many Christians remain more faithful to Christ in the world than certain religious do in ,their monasteries or convents. Hence, religious have no grounds for' Complacendy or for a disparaging attitude toward those who are not mem-bers of religious life. The person who becOmes a religious enters a state of life which he may be unworthy hence humility is necessary for him--but which of itself initiates him into a perfect love of Christ--hence depre-ciation by Christians of such a life is impossible. Religious life, then, does not exist in order to divide the Church b~ absUrd rivalries over the better and the less good but on!y in order .that, the sovereign love of "Christ may increase and'that the life of the vows may assume at the depths of it-self the evangelical traits of the Lord. Never regarding it-self as opposed or superior to anyone, religious life must always be at the service of all men by means of those who ~* Lafont, "$aintet~ du peuple de Dieu," p. 1~5. + + + Religious Life~ VOLUME 25, 1966 39 ÷ ÷ ÷ Gustave Martelet, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS attempt to live it out and who take care not to betray .its ideals. Such is the dependence of religious life on the Church for the service of which it is born and must perdure. It is judged by the. hierarchy with a view to benefiting the common spiritual good of the entire Church. Like con-jugal life (and because it refers to One and the same mys-tery but in a different way), religious life cannot destroy its dependence on the Church as a whole, whether it be a question of the hierarchy who judges it and supports it in its fundamental inspiration or whether it be a mat-ter of the faithful whom it should stimulate to the love of tile Lord and by whom it is itself stimulated: "God or-ganizes his holy ones for the work of the ministry in view of the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain (o the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:12-~). Hence, despite (or, more accurately, because of) its integration into the life of the Body, religious life retains an irreducible original-ity which we shall have occasion to discuss later. This originality, which integrates religious life into the Body while simultaneously differentiating it, does not suggest separation or exclusiveness. This is why its full canonical development does not prevent the possible renewal of forms which historically preceded it. C. Religious Life and Virginity or Consecrated Widowhood It is easy to understand why the order of virgins and widows was practically absorbed into that of nuns during the course of history. When reading the recommendations to virgins and consecrated widows made by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, or St. Augustine,75 to limit our consideration to the western fathers, one receives the impression, con-firmed by history, that these women be.longed to a state of life in which equilibrium was maintained with diffi-culty. A certain kind of exterior protection was lacking to many of them, and thht "sweet odor of Christ" which initially stimnlated their resolutions sometimes evapo-rated in lamentable circumstances. By endowing Christian generosity and the desire to consecrate oneself to Christ with a defined monastic framework, religious life quite ¯ naturally almost completely absorbed the order of virgins and that of consecrated widows which were formerly overexposed to many dangers. Spiritual situations, which 75 For example, Cyprian, Liber de habitu virginum (P.L., v. 4, col. 439-62; Ambrose, De virginibus (P.L., v. 16, col. 187-232), De virgini-tare (ibid., col. 265-302); Augustine, De sancta virginitate, (P.L. v. 40, col. 412-28). On widowhood, see Ambrose, De viduis (P.L., v. 16, col. 233-62); Augustine, De bono viduitatis (P.L., v. 40, col. 4~II-50). were still unstable, thereby received a precise form. This was a good thing from one aspect, but frdm one aspect only. For a valuable diversity thus tended to disappear even though there do exist within the Church Christian individuals or groups who without becoming conventual religious consecrate their virginity or widowhood to the Lord. This non-conventual exercise of religious consecra-tion of self has regained favor in our day to an unusual degree. Many Christian women,TM desirous of living their bap-tismal regeneration in the form of absolute consecration to Christ, receive no call to abandon the world where family, children, profession, business, .and situation ex-pect and demand of them a daily, total devotedness. In the minds of these Christians the consecration of their vir-ginity or widowhood to Christ does not necessarily iden-tify itself with the practice of leading a religious life apart from the world's structures. Without criticizing those who follow a more classical road to perfection, they demand little more than the three vows of religious life to express their gift of self to the Lord. Their borrowings may also include certain organizational aspects of life and the tone of a definite spirituality, but they do not usually exceed these features. They desire to take religious life from its conventual conditions in order to implant it in the world --which that state had justifiably abandoned in the be-ginning. The reasons justifying this abandonment of the world and assuring to convent and cloister their incon-testable values (though these have not always been uncon-tested) thus permit the conception of new forms of reli-gious life. The spiritual break with the world which should always characterize religious life can operate in an entirely interior fashion without imposing a rupture that may be described as a sociological or, better still, a conventual one. On the contrary, the structures which are most typical of the world can become the condition of a highly intense though less apparent form of religious life. In all this the ideal of the secular institutes is recog-nized. The latter represent one of the most original ex-pressions of religious life in the Church today.77 Duly 76 Cardinal L~ger reminded the Council of this fact. He also in-sisted on the fact that there should not be too rapid an identification of consecrated virginity with religious life: there are persons who de-sire the first but who perhaps are incapable of the second (D.C., v. 60 [1963], col. 1593). This was doubtless the meaning also of the re-marks of Bishop Huyghe (D.C., v. 60 [1963], col. 1594). r~ For an overall view of the matter see Jean Beyer, Les instituts s~culiers (Bruges: Descl~e de Brouwer, 1954). Consult also the same author's "La vocation s~culi~re," Nouvelle revue th~ologique, v. 86 (1964), pp. 135-57, where complementary data are given On the situ-ation of secular institutes at the present time. On Father Beyer's book see the remarks of Father Carpentier, "Les instituts s~culiers," Nou- 4. 4" Religious Li]e VOLUME 25, 1966 41 encouraged by Roman authority,rs this new state is em-barking, it is our belief, upon other realizations which it virtually contains and which go back to ancient formulas whose significance is by no means exhausted. The term "secular institutes" designates greatly differ-ent kinds of groups.79 Besides such institutes as Opus Dei which has the attractiveness of large-scale dimensions, there are other groupings whose aims and methods are more modest. The members ofthese latter groups think less in terms of vast, extensive actions than in those of an unreserved gift of self to the Lord; their way of life calls to mind more the reed than the oak. Since the end pur-sued in these groupings is less the secularization of reli-gious life than the consecration of profane existence, many specifications of religious life which are and no doubt should be characteristic of secular institutes appear less necessary to these groups. Thus, in the absence of common life, the observance of obedience and poverty is difficult of realization. Furthermore, obedience and pov-erty, even when maintained for good reasons, would imply in these groups a dependence and control which are not indispensable for the spiritual ends envisaged by the members of these groupings. Accordingly, the different positio.n taken up with regard to certain modalities of the religious life formally considered does not arise from a weaker desire for Christian perfection nor from an initial lukewarmness; it is rather the result of a different inspi-ration. It is not a question of criticizing the values of re-ligious life or of protesting the help to be found in reli-gious life, whether conventual or secularized; it is rather a matter of consecrating virginity or widowhood to the Lord while allowing freedom from many determinations which this consecration has assumed within the frame-work of religious life properly so-called ~and which con-tinue to characterize--legitimately so--secular institutes. The desire to return to formulas less rigid even than those of these institutes is the desire (and it is not necessarily chimerical) to return to the ancient formulas of conse-crated virginity and widowhood. Gustave Martelet, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS velle revue thdologique, v. 77 (1955), pp. 408-12. And see the more re-cent remarks of Karl Rahner who clearly shows that members of secular institutes are, in the Church, genuinely religious even though in and for the world they are lay persons (Theology Ior Renewal [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964], pp. 147-83). ~s The two fundamental documents are those of Pius XII: Provida Mater of February 2, 1947, and Primo [eliciter of March 12, 1948; English translations in T. Lincoln Bouscaren, S.J., and James I. O'Connor, s.J., The Canon Law Digest Ior Religious, v. 1 (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1964), pp. 143-55 and 157-61. ~ At the end of Father Beyer's book on secular institutes will be found a list of fifty-eight existing groups with a brief description of each. We have already mentioned the weaknesses shown in the past by this way of life, weaknesses.that necessitate a real sense of prudence in this matter. But the present sit-uation is not entirely the same as that of past ages. Reli-gious life has benefited from centuries of experience; it exercises a decisive influence on the effort of every Chris-tian to reach perfection. Accordingly, what in past ages religious life would have reduced to itself, it can now re-frain from absorbing, allow to grow, and even protect in its own way. In this way virginity and consecrated widow-hood could regain their own particular status outside of conventual or secularized religious life and beyond that life Of the baptized that retains all legitimate Christian rights with regard to marriage. Being canonicaIly more supple than any known form of religious life and at the same time having the spiritual seriousness of a complete giving of self to the Lord in the Spirit of the gospel, con-secrated virginity and widowhood would then represent in our world a way of pertaining to the Lord to which Christians, not well adapted for religious life, could feel themselves called in order to live an intense life centered on Christ and the gospel and based on a total consecra-tion of self which spiritually transforms one's life without modifying it socially. A similar procedure which could revive in the twen-tieth century one of the most venerable but also most threatened institutions of Christian spirituality would suppose a profound renewal of schools of spirituality gathered around the great orders, both monastic and apos-tolic. By remaining or becoming centers of a profound religious spirit aiad by renouncing any control which would in any way limit the freedom of action of the men and women who seek a support that is purely spiritual, religious orders could provide an enormous service to Christian women, to speak only of them, by offering them a permanent and profound consecration of self to Christ in the world without entering the religious life in the proper sense of the word. For the sake of concretizing the matter, is it necessary to say that the matter discussed here is that of a profound renewal of third orders and of "third congregations"? Yes, if one wishes to put it that way; but the renewalmust be a radical one permitting the spiritual training that is given to take complete account of modern conditions of life; furthermore, the spiritual heritage drawn upon must provide souls with a truly profound in-troduction both to the Lord to whom they consecrate themselves and to the world for the benfit of which Christ frees them. Although these possibilties are offered only as sugges-tions, still the preceding considerations concerning simi-larities and differences between consecrated virginity and Religious Liye VOLUME 25, 1966 43 ~ustcwe Martele~ S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS religious life supply a foundation for them. Forms of con-secration to Christ are of an infinite diversity within the Church. Some of them are completely new; others reclaim ancient practices and endow them with :a new spirit. It is to the latter type ~hat adaptation of secular institute formulas for the purpose of consecrated virginity and widowhood is related. In this the approbation of the Church will be necessary; but so also will be the inspira-tion of the Holy Spirit whose preeminent role at the very base of religious life must now be explicitly considered. VI. LOVE OF CHRIST AND THE MYSTERY OF THE SPIRIT The role of the Spirit is irreplaceable in acquiring the love and knowledge of Christ: "No one can say: 'Jesus is Lord' except by the action of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cot 12:3). In order to understand the true sources of religious life in the Church, it is therefore necessary to speak first of the Spirit as the revealer of Christ. The point is an es-sential one in Scripture. After Pentecost, when St. Peter announced the identity .of Jesus for the first time in Jeru-salem, he cried: "Let all the house of Israel, therefore, know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36). But before reaching this conclusion, St. Peter had already ex-plained: "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise o[ the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear" (Acts 2:32-3). It is thus the effusion of'the Spirit by Christ which reveals His own glorification and which even constitutes it in a certain way. Jesus is riot the Lord with-out being, in keeping with this title, the One who gives us the Spirit. The Son's glorification by the Father in the Resurrection and His dispatch of the Spirit from the Father are two aspects of the mystery that are rigorously correlative as the Gospel explicitly proclaims: "Neverthe-less, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7). And similarly: "But when the Counselor comes whom I shall send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who pro-ceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me" (Jn 15:26). o The dissensions raised by these texts--and others to ¯ which we shall refer later--is well known. The Orthodox interpret them as a guarantee of the complete dependence of the Son and the Spirit in regard to the Father, while we see in them the acknowledgement of the equality which the Son receives from the Father with regard to the eternal procession of the Spirit. It is the Filioque quarrel on which we shall not delay,s° We have mentioned the matter, however, since it is not without pertinence, usu-ally unperceived, to our subject. For while insisting more than our Orthodox brothers on the eternal role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit, we mugt not fail to remember the complementary role of the Spirit in refer-ence to the Son. The point is as vital to the theology of the processions as it is to the economy of the missions,sl And in fact, if it is true that the spiration of the Spirit cannot be understood without relating it to the Son in eternity since the ~piration is nothing else then the act by which the Spirit owes to the Father and to the Son His eternal existence as a divine Person, it is also true that we risk overlooking the light which the existence of the Spirit sheds in its turn on that of the two other Persons. For the Father would not be the Father of such a Son, who is con-substantial, that is, equal in nature to His Father, and the Son would not be the Son of such a Father, capable of communicating His own undivided divinity to His Son, if the One and the Other were not associated "spirators" of the Spirit. It is because the trinitarian life reaches completion in the procession of the Spirit that it can also begin in and by the generation of the Son. The entire mystery of the Father and the Son is found in that of the Spirit who results from their love and who is their very love, the eternal sign of what can be called His transcend-ent possibility. The trinitarian mystery is really conceiv-able only because it is the mystery of a God "who is Spirit" (Jn 4:24). For a better understanding of the trini-tarian mystery, it is not sufficient to say that the Son re-ceives from the Father the power to spir~ite the Spirit un-less one immediately adds that the Spirit, spirated by the Father and by the Son acting in common, is also the meas-ure and the sign of the unfathomable mystery which en-velops both and to which initiation would be impossible unless the Spirit Himseff were given us. It was to arrive at this truth that we took the preceding detour through trinitarian theology, for we could not truly know the Son and through Him the Father, in the revealing economy of the Incarnation and of the Church, unless the Spirit played His irreplaceable role of revealer and witness of Christ for us. It is this central point of view which we shall now attempt to illuminate. 1. The Mystery o[ the Spirit in His Relation to Christ + ÷ A. Necessity of the Spirit in Understanding Christ The temptation to believe that Christ could be reduced to purely human dimensions is not a chimerical one. "Is See Appendix A. See Appendix B. Religious Lile VOLUME 25, 1966 ÷ Gustave Martelet, . $.1o REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS he not Jesus, son of Joseph, whose father find mother we know?" the Jews asked (Jn 6:42). And it is true that Hi~ human accessibility enters into Hisl role of Mediator. "That which we have heard,, which we have seen wi~h "our eyes, which we have looked upon and to~tched with our hands, concerning the word of life, we announce to you" (1 Jn 1:1-2). It is in this way that Jesus reveals to man "what noeye has seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived--what God hhs prepared for those who,,love him" (1 Cot 2:9 citing Is 64:3). This human accessibility o'f Christ, and through Him of the Father, is the very con-dition of revelation and is in a way identified with it. Not only did Jesus say: "No one comes to the Father except by me" (Jn 14:6); but He made the even more radical statement: ".Philip, who has seen me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:9). Hence,.it is evident that God's revelation in Christ .supposes the humanity of the Son who through that humanity takes on our own. But His humanity is precisely the humanity of the Son; accordingly, one does not enter the trinitarian mystery through it without hav-ing been introduced into it by the Father. "No one comes to me," said Jesus to the Jews, "unless the Father draws him" (Jn 6:44). And to Peter who had just recggnized and confessed Him as "the Christ, the son of the living God," Jesus declared: "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 16:17). It is "not of flesh and blood" but of the Father in the gift which He makes us of the Spirit. Jesus' words concerning the Paraclete in St. John have the same meaning. It is good that Jesus departs in order that the Spirit may come making it truly possible to know Jesus: "These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (Jn 14:25-6). And Jesus also said: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things' that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declhre it to you" (Jn 16: i2-4). Without the Spirit Christ will always remain for us in the order of "the flesh" which Jesus said "avails nothing" (Jn 6:63). In his turn, St. Paul affirms: "Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, at present we no longer know him in this way" (2 Cor 5:16) but only ac-cording to the "new creation" (2 Cor 5:17) which is the work of the Spirit. And the Apostle tells ns in the Letter to Titus: "And when the goodness and loving kin~dness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by' us in icighteousness but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and by the re-newal in the Holy Spirit which he poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior so that we might be jus-tified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal li~e" (3:4-7). Similarly, in the Letter to the Galatian's: "BUt when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son~. so that we might receive, adoption as sons. And because' you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying 'Abbal Father!' So through God y0u"are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir" (Gal 4:4-6). It is, then, through the Spirit that the Father attracts us, beyond the ways of flesh and blood, to the very knowledge of the Son, just as one must be re-born by the power of the Spirit (Jn 3:5) if Christ is to in-troduce us into His otherwise impenetrable kingdom. Since such is the case, the truth of Christ, though at-tested by history, is not naturally accessible as a simple fact of our experience. It depends on testimony from above which does not destroy our intelligence but trans-forms it by giving it n

Issue 4.6 of the Review for Religious, 1945. ; ¯ for " " ' NOVEMBER 15, 1945 ";Joseph's Jubilee, ¯ , . Francis Latin Psaffer . Michael J. ~ ;nce of Rel;9;ous . ~,dam Consider ,~n~ic~ris~? . A.gusfi, C. I:~:No÷ of TMs Fold . Job. S. Co~( s from fhe C~ounci] of Trent . A., ~)~0ne but Jesus" . Charles F. Theology for Everybody . '. Gerald Co~municafions Ouesfions Answered.' ¯ Decisions of the HolySee 'Books Reviewed Index t"o Volume Four " EVlE FOR RELIGI VOLUME IV NOVEMBER 15, 1945 NUMBER, CONTENTS ST. JOSEPH'S JUBILEE Francis L. Filas. S.J . TI~tE NEW LATIN PSALTE'RNMichael J. Gruenthaner, S.J . 365_'~ BOOKLET NOTICES . ". ~ . 372 CORRESPONDENCE O'F RELIGIOUS--Adam C. Ellis, S.J . 373~. WHY'NOT CONSIDER ANTICHRIST?Augustin C. Wand. S.J. STILL NOT OF THIS FOLD~-John E. oogan. s.J . CONCERNING COMMUNICATIONS . 398 S.PiRITUAL READINGS FROM .THE COUNCIL OF TRENT IIN Augustine Klaas; S.J. " . 39,~ "NO ONE BUT JESUS"-~Charles F. Donovan. S.J . 4~5~' BCOKS RECEIVED .~. .'; . 409 LITURGICAL PROCEEDINGS .~. . : . MORAL THEOLOGY FOR EVERYBODY.---Gerald Kelly, S.3. DECISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE . 421" NEW CONTRIBUTORS . 422. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 47. Sick Sister Requests Comm.union_ . . 48: Number of Siiters in United States .° . .423 49. Superior's Duty to Demand Salaries . 423 50. Apostates from Religion Exi:ommunicated .424 51. Right to Introduce New Devotions . BdOK REVIEWS-- Christian Denominations: Further Discourses on the. Ho!y Ghost: Moral Theology; The Ho.ly Sacrifice: Augustine's Quest for Wisdom .425~ INDEX TO VOLUME IV . ~ . ~ . 429 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. November. 1945. V61. IV. No. 6. Published bi-monthly : ,January. March. May, July, September. and .November at the College Pres.s, if 606 Harrison Street; Topeka. Kansas, by St. Mary's College; St. Marys, Kansas.l with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15. at the Post Office, Topeka. Kansas. under the act of March 3, 187,9. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis. S.3. G. Augustine Ellard. S.3., Gerald Kelly, Editorial Secretary: Alfred-F. Schneider. S.J. " Copyright. 1945. by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotation: of 'reasonable length, provided 'due credit be given this rewew and ,the authoi, Subscription price: 2 dollars a year. // Printed in U. S. Before writin~ to u~, ple~se"consult notice on Inside back cover. .:(. ~, St. Joseph's Jubilee Francis L: Filas, S.J. ~N DECEMBER 8, seventy-fivE years ago, Pope Pius IX, acceding to the wishes of hundreds of bishops and thousands-of priests and faithful, declared St. Joseph Patron. of the Universal Chtirch. This action on the part of the Holy Father marked, the end of the era of ~t. Joseph's obscurit~y and ushered in'a period ~when the humble, lovable foster-father of-Jesus was honored to an extent far.beyond th~ most optimistic hope~ of the early proponents.ofhis devotion. The prese.nt sketch purposes tO relate how and why St. Joseph obtained his outstanding ,position in the devotional life of/he Church. .~ ¯ Pope Leo XHI in his encyclical, Quamquam Pluries, su~cinc-t[y set forth the basis for Joseph's p.atronage: ' The Holy Family which Josepl~ governed, as with paternal authority, so he.wrote, contained the beginnings.of the new. "Church. Here was Mary, the Mother of God, who was to become the m6ther of all Christians when she bore them 6n .Ca!vary amid the sufferings of her Redeemer Son. At. that same time ,Jesus-became the firstborn of Christians, ~is brothers by adoption~ and redemption. Consequently Joseph, tl4e "watchful defender of Christ" and "chaste guardian of the Virgin,'.' .cherishes with singular affection the multitudes who make up the Church of his foster Son: Over this multitude "he rules with a sort of paternal authority, because he is the husband of Mary and the father of Jesus Christ. Thus, it is conformable to reason and in every .way becoming to blessed Joseph that as once it was his sacred trustto .guard with watchful care the family of Nazareth, no matter what befell, so now, by .virtue of his 361 FRANCIS L.FILAS Reoie~v for Religious heavenly patronage, he is in turn to protect and defend the Church of. Christ." This concept of~ Joseph's patronage lay.hidde~ and unnoticed for centuries. Probably the first to propose it was John Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris, who described it in a sermon to the members of the Council of Constance on September.8, 1416. Gerson'~ sermon had ¯ for its purpose the adoption of a feast of the espousals of Joseph and Mary. With deep anxiety ~he chancellor noted the disastrous results of the great Western Schism bf 13 78, a woufid which-was still unhealed. He asked for approv.ai - of the feast of the. espousals "in Order that through the merits of Mary and through the intercession of so great, so powerful.ahd in a certain way so omnipotent an intercessor ~ith his b~ide., the Church might be led to her only true and safe lord, the supren~e pastor, her spouse in place~ of Christ." The suggestion made by Gerson Was not acted upon,. but once it had been put forth, the idea continued to recur to friends of St. Joseph. What really began to receive marked emphasis .was Joseph's part as guardian of the H01y Family. The full understandink of this role contained the: idea of ~Joseph's further guardianship of the Church. It Was next elaborated in the Summa of the Gifts of St. doseph, a pioneeringbook written by the Dominican. Isidor de Isolani in 1-522. His work gathered the various materihls that.had already been published about St.Joseph and told of the Saint's life, wrtues, blessings, and. glory in Heaven. Isolani also d~ew a glowing picture of Joseph's future glory_on earth. While depicting the exceptional hbn-ors he felt sure would be granted his Saint, he had this to say: "For the honor of His name God has chosen St.-Joseph as head and special patron of the kingdom of the Church, Militant." _ 362 November, 194.5 ST. JOSEPH'S JUBILEE, The theme of St. Joseph's guidanceof the Holy Fam'ily and the Church ~ontinued to run.through the,d~votion as it flourished up to the middle of the 18th cenl:ury. Here, in common with t-he fortunes of the; Church, it suffered a relapse; but with the reign of Plus IX, a hundred year~ later, i~t again surged forward. During t.he 1860's various 'petitions from~ bishops,, priests, and the faithful were~sent to the HolySee, askin~ for St. Josephls full. glorification in the liturgy, and for the declaration of his patronage of the Universal Church. Three special.petitions were presented to the Vatican Council in 1869-70. It seems, that these three were the petitions that moved Pius IX to n~ake his declaration on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1870. Qer~on's purpose was. ~chieved; St. ~Jos~ph was offi- ~ cially proclaimed Patron Of tl~e Universal ,Church--and how sorely the,Church needed that help! Plus had already ' been stripped of his temporal holdings. In a score of countries rampan,t anticlericalism was riding apparently unchecke~t against a Church which the infallible savant~ of that "progressive" era declared dying if not already dead. ~The stre.ngth of the papac~y h~d been c6mpletely broken. so they said; the prestige of the prisoner of the Vatican was shorn from him and his successors for .all time. But as usual with enemie~ of ~he Church, they forgot Christ's promise to be v~ith His Church forever. They forgot the power of its.~mother, of her who was conceived without sin-~in fact they merely laughed at and disregarded the "out-dated" dogma about ~hero which the Pope had expounded. Probably they did not even kn6w of the .Holy Father's action reg,arding St. Joseph on that momentous Feast of theImmaculate Conception in 1870. Now, seventy-five, years later, what is. the prestige of the Churc~ St. doseph protects? Or what is the power.of 363 FRANCIS L. FILAS the Pope, so intangible, yet so compelling, ~hat kept the. Nazi invaders from settin~g foot on the territory of Vatican City? The world press invariably seeks the reaction of the Holy Father on every moral issue that-arises. The ChurCh "is daily recognized as a stable force, if not the or~ly stable force, in a world going somewhere towards" progress "or destr_uction'with, awesomerapidity. It is hard to dismiss i~his resurgence of the Church since. 1870 as mere chance. St. ,Joseph's patronage has shown its effects. Nor hasthe Church been ungrateful t6 its protector. In the last seventy-fi~ve years the popes have lavishly show-ered liturgical honors on St. ,Joseph. He alone of all saints except our Blessed Lady has~been given two feasts of excep-tional r~ink, a spe.cial preface in the Mass, a l!tany, in his ~ honor, separate invocation in the prayers for the dying, and particular mention in the Divine Praises. Now, as the Church is facing a continued crisis in its own and in-the world's history, ,Joseph isoagain the standard-bearer, spear-heading the campaign against atheistic communism, the threat of our times. His name is ever linked with those of ,Jesus and Mary. In all these tributes the mind of the Church can be discerned implicitly: St. ,Joseph is worthy of sp~cial.venerati0n~ second only .to Mary and above the veneration granted any other angel or saint. As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of his patronage of the Universal Church, we should humbly thank Almighty God for ~having given St. ,Joseph to us. and thank, too, our protector for his services to the Church just as Mary and ,Jesus thanked him ~or all he did at Betfi-lehem, in Egypt, and-at Nazareth. 364 The New Lat:in Psalt:er Micfiael J. Gru~nthaner,'S.J. THAT tl~e Psalms are. endowed with unu~uaI .poetic beauty and spiritual powe~ is concedeffby all; Cath~ olics and non-Catholics alike. They reveal to us the glorious attributes of the divinity; they speak ~o us of the sufferifigs and the triumph of the Messias; they recount to us the events and lessons of Israel's h!story; they instruct, us. in the ~ays of true wisdom. Their chief attraction, how-ever, lies in the fact that so manyof them depict .to us the anguish of thehuman heart struggling with almost every imaginable phase of .adversity and rising to heights of hero-oiSmby unshaken confidence in God and persevering prayer. ~Each Psalm, therefore,~ is a gem of religious thought. Its power to enlighten the mind and warm the. heart springs , not only from the wisdom and artistry of its human author but pr.incipally from the Holy Spirit, who inspired its pro-. duction. Need weowonder, then,.that the Psalms formed the favorite private prayer of the devout Jew in the Old .JTestament and that not a few of them,were sun. g in the Temple to enrich and spiritualize¯-the sacrificia, l.Lritual? Under the c!r~cums.tances,_~it seems but natural that the Psalms should.be ,repeatedly quoted by: Christ and° the Apostles and~that the Church should, prize them as a pre-cious heritage from the Old Dispensation: So highly did she esteem them that she allotted them a commanding poSi-tion in her liturgy. Full enjoYment of .the spiritual treasures contained within the Psalms has, however, been barred to many. The reason is that the early Church received the Psalter in an unskillful translation from the Greek, which inits turn 365 MICHAEL J. GRUENTHANER Revieu~ for R~ligious .was an imperfect tendering of the original Hebrew. St. Jerome,.to whom the Church owes so much. for his labors in behalf of the Scriptures, ameliorated ~he situation slightly by revising the Old Latin version extant in his day in accordance with better Greek manuscripts. His first emendation of the Psalter appeared in Rome about 383 and was adopted by the churches of the Eternal City; for this reason it is known as the Roman Psalter. In 386, while residing in Palestine, he published a second and more extensive revision of. the Psalter based, like the former, exclusively on the Greek or Septuagint verson. Because it first gained great popularity in Gaul, it is called the Gallican Psalter. Ultimately, it became the version current in the Latin Church and was incorporated in the Vulgate as the OfFicial translation of that Church. To facilitate religious discussion between Jews and Christians, St. Jerome also translated the Psalms directly from the Hebrew, but this so-called Hebrew Psalter never c~iptivated the ordinary ¯ clergy and the laity; it remained restricted in use to scholars. Histor~t o[ the Neu~ Version The Gallican Psalter, therefore, found in the Vulgate and the Roman Breviary, retains some of the defects of the Old Latin together with all the weaknesses of the Septua- - gjnt, its archetype. These deficiencies became ever more apparent with the progress of biblical studies in modern times. It was noted., that .the meaning of the Psalms had been obscured not infrequently and that much of their artistic merit bad evaporated in the course of the double trans, lation to which they had been subjected. To bring outthe full significance and poetic.beauty of the. Psalms, Catholic.scholars in xiarious countries began to publish translations of the Hebrew text in th~ vernacular. These proved to be so conducive to a fuller understanding and 366 November~ 1945 THE NEW LATIN PSALTER~ keener appreciation of these inspired poems that a move-ment arose among priests and religious to have a Latin ver-sion of the Psalter more consonant with the original than the official Vulgate or Gallican Psalter. ¯ This desire became so widespread that our reigning Pontiff, Pius XII, corn- " missioned the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome to pre-pare a new version of the Psalter in harmony with~ all the most~ approved methods of textual criticis~m. The task of preparing this translation was confided to six professors, each of whom was a specialist in one or more of the branches of bibllcal science bearin.g~ on the subject. Begun in ~lanuary, 1941, the prdject was completed after thre~ and a half.years of intense labor. The Holy Father found, the manuscript of the new version~ so satisfactory that he ~ommanded it to be printed. In accordance with this command tvco books were published by the Vatican Press in 1945" a Liber Psalmorum, and a liturgical edition in which the Psalms oof the new version are arranged according to the system followed in the breviary. The Liber Psalmorum contains a new version not only of the Psalms but also of the canticles ot~ the Old and New Testaments usually° recited in the breviary. Each of them is headed by a suitable title; the text is preceded by a short analysis exhibiting the nature and interrelation of its tho.ught. Brief footnotes have been added, explaining difficult expressionsand ideas, as well as setting forth the reasons for the translation adbpted. These notes supply the absolute minimum required for the comprehension of the text; they are not intended to supplant the more exten- o sive commentaries which supply a complete exposition of all tbd problems presented by a particular Psalm. The 'book is also provided with a brief introduction de. aling with the nature, origin, and history of the Psalms; essentials 9nly are considered and controversial issues are avoided. 367 MICHAEL J. GRUENTHANER Review [or Religious A notable feature of the book is the Morn Proprio of Pius XII, In cotidianis precibns, which is concerned with the new version. It recounts its history, character, alad purpose, and grants permission to all those who so desire to substitute the New Psalter ~for the older one in the pub-lic or private recitation of the Divine Office; this permission is to be valid as soon as the liturgical edition shall have been published. The New Psalter, therefore, has the same official standing as the Vulgate version. This is, unques-tionably, a momentous step; for the latter has been used exclusively i.n the breviary for so many centuries" it is intimately-interwoven with the writings.bf the Fathers, as ~-~the Sovereign Pontiff notes in the Motu Proprio; it has been declareff authenti~ by the Council oi: Trent. The motives ~prompting the Pope to introduce so startlin~ an innovation are well set forth in his Motu Proprio: That all may hereafter derive greater light, grace, and consolation from the recitation of the Divine .Office, so that, enlightened and impelled by these, they may in these most, difficul~ times of the Church be fittedmore and more to imitate the models of sanctity shining forth so egregiously in the Psalms and that they, may be moved to nourish and foster anew the sentiments of divine love, strenuous courage, and piou.s 'repent~ance which the Holy Spir'~t excites within us when reading the Psalm~. Basic Text ot: the New Version An attentive scrutiny of the New Psalter'shows .that: it fulfills, the ~ishes of the Holy Father. First of all, it is based upon a corrected Hebrew text; in this respect it sur-passes any of the ancient ~'ersions. The text found in our present Hebrew Bibles cannot be. accepted without reserve. It is not derived immediately from~the autograph manu-scripts of the sacred writers but from copies which in their ttirn depend on a long line of ancestors. But a text which has come down to us through so many centuries of succes-~ 368 November, 1945 THE NEW LATIN PSALTER sive copying~nec~ssarily contains a :great variety of scribal err6rs. Furthermore, the .primal text of the Psalms ~was written in consonants .only," some oL which bore a close resmblanc~ to one another; in addition, .individual words were not separated from one another as clearly, as ,in. our printed books. Consequently, copyists made not a.few mis-takes by confusing similar letters, by combining: or dividing consonants illegitimately, and by :adding ,vowels that were not approprjaSe~. ° - The New Psalter hassucceeded in eliminating not afexO of these lapses by comparing the Hebrew text with the ver-sions and. by an intelligent application of other laws of textual criticism. How the text.has been improved inthis way may be seen from a few illustrative.examples. Psalm 28:8 in the Vulgate reads: "The voice of ~thd Lord pre-pareth the stags, and he will discover the thick woods.". This puzzling sentence is now replaced by the following: "The voice of the Lord con_torts oaks and strips forests." The much debated verse ini,Psalm 109:3, "From the womb, before the daystar, I begat thee" becomes more. intelligibly, ':Before the daystar, like th~ dew, I begat thee." More examples cannot be given here; it will suffice to say 'that all the resources of modern, scientific textual criticism have been e,mployed~to approximate.as closely as. possible the wording of the Psalms as it left the hands of their inspired authors. Greater Accuracg at~d Claritg Since the principal author of the Psalms is the Holy Spiri.tl the translators strove to reproduce their thoughts .and sentiments with the greatest precision. As a result, some ~bf the statements in the Vulgaye which were difficult to understand either in themselves or in thei~ .c0~ntext, have become lucidly clear. The ,enigmatic utterance of Psalm 63:7,. "Men shall come, to a deep heart, and God sl~all be. 369 MICHAEL J. GRUENTHANER Revleu~ for Religious exalted" takes quite another 'form in. the New Psalter, "They thihk up "evil schemes, they 'conceal the plans which they.have formed, for the mind and the heart of ~ach are deep:" .The passage refers to the evil intrigues of the god~ less againstthe good; ithas no reference to the heart of God, aS the Vulgate suggests. Similarly,- psalm 44:14' in the Vulgate. implies that the glory of t.he royal bride consists in .internal virtue, b~it the new Version renders correctly, glorious, the king's daughter hnters the palace." Th~ verse merely descbibes theoutw:ird appearance of the king's bride as she enters the palace in the.wedding procession. A marked advance in clarity has been achieved by the correct translationof the Hebrew tenses. Th6ugh there are but two of them, a Perfect and an Imperfect; they can-not be translated mechanicallyby the Past and the~Future. respectively, as the Greek attempts to do, without impairing the sense. The New Psalter, on the cofitra,ry, gives each tense its proper shade of meaning. ~ Thus in Psalm 42:3 the Psalmist d~clares in the Vulgate, ~'Sehd forth thy light and thy truth: they have conducted me and brought"me unto thy holy hill and into thy tabernacles." If isevident from the context, however, that the Psalmist is far from Sion; that he is, in fact, a prisoner in the vicinity of Mount Hermbn. The LiberPsalrnorum removes the incongruity by rendering the tenses more correctly, "May they lead me, may they guide~me" to thy ho!y hill and to thy tabernacles." Other sources of confusion in the Vulgate are the slavish rendering of _certain Hebrew idiomatic expressions,. the servile adherence to the letter of the Greek protgtype, and the translationof some geographical names. Needless to sa~y, these infelicities, of tran?lation have been emended in the Liber Psalmorum. Poetic Chara~cteristics Another laudable featureof the New ~salter is the care 370 November, i945 THE NEW LATIN PSAETER , with which itendeavors to conserve the poeti~ chracteris~i~S of ~he original. Forceful metaphors "and othel poeti~ devices indicative of a vivi~l imagination ~ind :strong emo- 'tion are not denatured b3i colorless or. insipid rendering's. Thus'in Psalm 17:3 God is addressed as a rock, a fortress,. a shield, and a tower; the ,forcefulness of these epithe.ts is much attenuated in the Vulgate. Again, in Ps'alm 23:7 the New Psalter correctly bids the gates to raise: their heads in order that tl-ie king of glory may enter; the Vulgate, however/avoids this vivid personification.by addressing the command" to the princes. Even the word-painting which is occasionMly found in the P~alms has been skillfully imitated in the new Ladr~ "version. Conspicuous examples_may be ieen in Psalm 28, in which a thunderstorm passing through P~lestine is desribed and inPsalm 92: 3, 4, which pictures the tumult of the waves breaking upon the seashore. The Liber Psalmorum also attends to the outward form - of Hebrew poetry, The verses are printed in stichs and trheefriar icnosm, abninda tthioen a lipnhtoa b,settriocpahl:e.s sitsr uincdtuicrea toefd .c eRretapient iPtisoanlms,s are also made clear to the reader. .Improved Latinit~ Aquality of the New Psalter which will appeal tO many is its improved Latinity. Expressions and, construc~i0ns which" entered the Vulgate from later Latin and from ,the conversfional .language of the people have been ex~ludedl Instead, the vocabulaiy, style, and grammar of the classical period have been adopted, without, however, disrega;ding the venerable tradition of the. Church; for the discarded words and pl~rases have to a large extent been replaced by others v~hich are classical and which are at'the same time found in other books of the Vulgate and the liturgy. Certain 371 MICHAEL J. GRUENTH~NER words, however, which have acquired adistinct.ively Chris-tian meaning, such .a~ $aluator, gr.atia; dilectio, .have been retained, even though the significance attached-to them has no support in classical usage. Though classical, the style is no~ involved: it is simple, smooth, ~lear, suitable for th~ r.ecitation of the Psalms in public. The LiberP~almorum is noW available in an American edition (Benziger Brothers), and the. liturgical edition will soon be reprinted in the United States. There can° be 'no ,doubt that the study and use of the New Psalter will con-tribute much towards a proper appraisal of the .unique literary qualities of the inspired lyric poems which it trhns-lares so felicitously; it w_ill,prove, above all, ~to be a power-ful means towards the attainment of that ideal of spiritual perfection w.hich 'is ever before the eyes of the devout priest hnd religious, whose life in God draws so much of its sus-tenance from the recitation of the Divine Office. BOOKLETS Maryknoll Mission Letters, Volume i, 1945, contains letters' from China, Latin America, and Central America. Besides the usual wholesome mission news. the volume outalns'mahy inter.estlng items: for example, the story of a snake charmer, an encounter with a tiger, and how it feels to be stung by a scorpion. Price $.50. Order from: Field Afar.Press; 121 East 39th St., N.Y. Let's Look at 8ancti{~!ing Grace, by Francis P. Le Buffe, S:J., contains the sub.- stance of lectures given at the Summer School of Catholic Action. It is a dear-cut, s]istematical, .and simple presentation of a, difficult and involved subject. Readers will l~ke the homely examples and the naive diagrams. The first part of the bobklet deals with grace; the secofid part with the sacyaments, ,channels of-grace". A small bibliography is. suggested. Price $.10. Order from: ~The Queen's~Work, 3742 ¯ West Pine Bl~'d., St. Louis 8, Mo. Fa_ther.Albert A. Murray, C:P~S., informs us that many religious wrote for the booklet, Holy Hour for Conversions, after we announce.d it in our January number (p. 47). He wants our re_aders to know that the booklets are still available, free of charge. Write to: The Paulist Fathers, 911 South Wabash Ave., Chicago 5, Ill. 372 C6rrespondence ot: ReligiQus Adam C. Ellis,. S.J. [~DITORS' ~NOTI~': As a number of quesuons regarding the correspondence of reli-gious have been riceived by the Questions and Ans~vers Department of,.the REVIEW, it. was thought desirable to publish an article on this important subject. The answers to the qu9~tions received will be found in the follow.'ing article.] ~'VERY man has a natural right~ to keep_.his secrets jt~st ~ as he has a right to hold and possess'p'roperty. Since man by nature isa s~cial being,, it frequently becomes necessary to communicate secrets in, writing, and his natural right~ to secrecy then ~xtends to all s.uch writings. This point is most practical :in regard to correspondence or letter writing, and moral theologians tell us that one who reads the letters of another contrary to his wishes violates "a nat-ural secret and may sin .gravely ~gainst justice. .,- When a man unites with his fellow men in any kind Of society, he usually does so in order to share in the benefits to be derived from such a.union benefits which hecannot conven!entiy obtain by himself but which are.the fruits of mutual efforts and of the pooling of individual resources whether these beomaterial objects or the higher and better things of, mind and heart. Experience teaches that in pro-portion to the benefits derived from such common enter~ prises, the individual members must give up certain rights which are not compatible with the common ~good aimed ~t by the society: In a word, if the members of a society wish to share in the benefits which are inherent in the organiza-. tion, they must comply with the conditions laid down for member~ship; and these conditions ~almost always curtail individual rights to a greater or less degree. Such is the reason for and the source of limitations put upon religious in regard to letter writing. Practically every re!igious institute in the Churc~h lays down certain condl- - 3.73 ADAM C. ELLIS Reoielo For Religious tions for such correspondence, and the candidate who applies for admission implicitly accepts all the limitations and restrictions contained in the rule and constitutions in order that he may share .in. the benefits to be derived from membership in the religious society. It will be helpful, therefore, both for superior~ and for subjects, to study, in detail the rights and obligations of both in regard to this matter of correspondence. The Law and Its Purpose Before the Co'de was promulgated,' there was ,no general ilnacwom oinf~g. tahned Couhtugrocihn gr emqauiilr tion gth ael lc ernesliogrisohuips otof tshuebirm suitp teh-.eir riors. Nevertheless, in practically all orders, and congrega-tions, .this was required by the constitutions or .by custom. The Norroae of 1901; which established the standards of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops" and Regulars for the approval of constitutions of new institutes with simple-vows and Which were based upon the practice of the same Congregation during the preceding fifty years, contained two articles on the'subject. Art.~ 179 required that "all-letters to be sent by the religious, as well as all letters sent to them, shall be given to the local superior who may read them at his discretion. Superiors, however, shall use this facultY with that moderation which prudence and charity dictate, and they are bound to secrecy regarding informa-tion thus-obtained." Art." 180 Stated that all letters" addressed to higher superiors (general and provincial), or to the local ordinary, or to the Sacred Congregation, and all letters received from these same persons, were free from such inspection and censorship. These provisions of the Normae were incorporated in all :constitutions approved by the S~cred Congregation during the past forty ye, ars and" more. 374 . b[ooembero 1945 CORRESPONDENCE OF RELIGIOUS The Code of Car~on Latu,.promulgated in~ 1917, has only one canon (No. 611 ) regarding the correspondenci~ of religious. This ca~on, ,which we shall consider presently, does not give sup~biors the right to read the letters of their ~ subjects. Rather it .supposes that this right is contained in the constitutions br, customs of individual institutes, to which it leaves the positive statement of all regulations con-~ "cerning letter writing. ° ~ The purposd of all rdstraint put upon the corresPond-ence of religious is the same as that of the law ofenclosure "--to shield the religious from the temptations, the cares, hnd the distractions of the world which religious have for-saken by their religious profession. There may be no qess danger in communication,with externs by means of letters ~h~in in conversation with them either in the parlor of the religious house or in the homes of secular persons. The religious who has heeded Christ's call, "Come, follow me," has fr.eely renounced the pleasures he might have enjoyed lawfully in the world, in order to follow Christ more closely by striving after perfection through the observance 6f the vows and the constitutions within the security of the cloister. Mere physical s~paration from the world will not attain this end if religious are allowed unrestrained contact with pe/sons in the world by means of correspondence. Hence it is evident that some kind of restraint or super-vision over such correspondence is necessary fob the protec-tion both of the individual and of the community. Rights and Obligations o~: Superiors " The constitutions and customs of each institute deter-mine what rights a superior has in regard to the cokre-spondence of his subjects. More often, especially in con. gregations of Sisters and Brothers, the constitutions pre, scribe what was stated in the Normae mentioned above. Let 375 ADAM C. ELLIS' Review for Religiou,~ us ~take these prescriptions as.a, starting point. All letters. written by-religious and. all letters addressed to religious must pass through the hands of the local supe riot; who has the right to r~ead, them. Thi~, means ~first of all that the 16cal superior isentrus~ed with the task of expediting:.,the mail of the community. He should~see to it, therefore,,,th;it all outgoing lett.drs are mailed promptly after they, ' have" been censored and that incoming letters are delivered-to the persons tO whom they .are addressed within a reasonable time. The right to read the letters of his subjects does not impose an obligation on the superior to do .'so, unless the constitutions impose it specifically. Hefice superiors are to -use their discretion. They-shou!d be fnore careful to read th,e letters of younger religious since these are in a period of sp!ritua! formation, and 'should be trained to use.modera-tion and prudence in regard to their correspondence both as to subject matter and~as, tochoice of persons. However, Superiors may well be more~ready to trust older religious whom;they know'by experience to be prudent in this mat-ter. , Such a0policy is.in,conformity with the moderation recommended by. the Normae. This moderation is to be based on a prudence and charity which will.prompt supe-riors to.instruct,those subjects who are imprudent.in-their " correspondence, pointing out tO them their defects and. .imprudences.so that they,~ may learn-.the norms of religious" moderation. This,-of coarse, should be done in such marl,. ner. as to a,void giving offense and:t0 "convirice. the subject that the only motive the super!or has in checking his cor-respondence'is hi~bwn'. flood afid'th:it of the"~ommunity. The Oblig[~tior~ or: Secrec~/. All commentatorson th~- subject 'of the ~orrespondence of religious.emphasize the. fact that the superior is bound by'the natural la,w to-k~ep Secret whatever information he 376 Nouember2,1945 CORRESPONDENCE OF .RELIGIO~S acquires by reading the letters of his subjects:- This obli-ga. ti~n binds in conscience and~ is of its: natureserious when the subject mat~ter is serious. Superiors, therefore, have,no right to communicate to others information obtained, by reading the correspondence of their subjects, nor may they themselves make use of such information except to prevent harm to the religious himself or to the community. ¯ It is tbe;duty of every superior to safeguard the welfare of individual subjects and of ~the community as a whole. Hence occasion~ may arise when it becomes, necessary, to make known to.higher superiors information received from reading letters. Whendver ~his is-.necessary, the superior may use such knowledge since in taking his vow of obedi-. ence according to the constitutions .the religious freely, giyces the superior the authority to do so. -Prudence and discre-tion Will be the twin guardians of the secret-and will indb care to the superior.the cases in which he should make use of his know!edge and the precautions .which should protect all ievelations of-this kind for instance, not-to make known too're than is necessary. Keeping in mind:the purpose'of all restrictionsregarding correspondence, namely, the protection of religious from the temptations, the cares, and the distractions of the world, superiors will more readily abstain from reading lettdrs" written by corresponddnts who have a spiritual, outlook and spiritual ~hilos0PhY. of life. This will be ~he case especially in regard to the correspondence of pious parents, brothers, and sisters of the religious. We believe that, as a general rule, superiors'should not rea'd letters received by older religious from the members of their immediate family; and. they may also show. their confidence- in'younger-reli-gious by not reading such letters unless some special circum-stance demands it, as in the case of parents who areopposed "to the vocation of their child and who may endeavor to 377 ADAM C. ELLIS Review for Religious ~nduce him to return to the family circle. While it is trde that parents and relatives of religious are usually aware that their correspondence is subject to inspec-tion by the religious superior, an'd that they have confidence in their discretion, nevertheless occasions will arise when they wish to communicate family secrets to their children and tothem alone. If they mark such a letter '-'personal," the superior should neither open it nor read it. If in some rare case h~ has good reason for. suspecting an abuse, he may refuse to give such. a letter to the religious to whom it is ~iddressed. In regard to correspondents of religious who are una-ware of the restrictions imposed upon 'communications by the constitutions and whose letters contain matter which the superior considers undesirable for the religious, the natural .right of the sender would seem to demand that the superior should not simply destroy such a letter, but rather return it to the ~ender _with an explanation of the regula-tions regarding the correspondence of religious and with a warning to desist from-se_nding such letters in the future. Usually it will be more prudent and less offensive to the unsuspecting correspondent to have the religious write hir~ and explain the situation to him. Rights and Duties of Subjects To begin, witl~, religious should .not look upon the restrictions placed upon letter writing by the constitutions as an unjustifiable restriction of their natural rights, but rather as a wise protection from the sp!rit of-the world which they have freely abandoned in order to serve God more perfectly in the religious life. As they grow older and become more experienced, tbey'will obtain a greater realization of the need to pro.tect, their reputatio~l as well as the good name of the communi'ty in which they live:, 578 November, 1945 CORRESPONDENCE OF RELIGIOUS Regularly permission must be obtained to write letters, either for each individual letter, as is usually the cas.e with novices; or a general permission is given which is.renewed from time to time. After the letter is written it is put unsealed into the superior's mail box. Similarly all letters addressed to the members of a religious community are first given to the superior before' they are distributed. The superior may open them and read them befor~ passing them on to the religious to whom they are addressed. Except for privileged letters---of which more will be said presently-- all correspondence of religious is thus subject to the authority of the superior according to the regulations con: tained in the constitutions and customs of each-individual institute. Some are. more strict than others, depending upon the spirit and particular end of each institute. While it. is true that these regulations of the constitutions regarding correspondence have the same binding force as ¯ other prescriptions and normally do not bind under pain of sin, it is likewise true that secret correspondence carried on contrary to the provisions of the rule is dangerous and can readily become sinful. Religious'should learn to be circumspect when they write letters, especially to people living in the world. Con-sciously or unconsciously such,people have a high regard for the religious state, and sometimes their expectations of reli-gious are even. higher than are those of religious superiors. They have never heard of.the distifiction that religious have not as yet ac~luired perfection, but are in the state of acquirifig it. Hence they are not a little surprised, to say the least, to find a religious writing about matters which are ~worldly, or uncharitable, or gossipy. Furthermore a reli-gious,- especially when he writes to members of other com-munities, must remember that individual communities as such also have a right to their secrets and that a religious 379. or o ADAM C, ELI~IS ¯ who Without rhyme or re~ison retails-.local difficulties and happenings which are not edifying offends againsvcharity, if not against justice. _ -, .: . Ex~eptions contained in Canon. 611 " -°° "All religious,-whetJ~er men or-women,, can fr@dy" send 161~e~s, exeml~t from all control (nulll obnoxlas.lnspectionl), to the Holy See and. its Le~gate in the cou~ntry,~to their Cardinal Protector, to their own h;cjher supe~r;ors, fo ~he super;o~ of their house.when absent, to the local ordinary to ~hom they are subject, and, in the case of nuns subject tO the jurisdiction ~f regularS, to the.higher.superlors 6f-th~ order; and from all these p~rsons the religi~us;'~ne~ or ~vomen, can also receive leffers which' r;obody has a right to open.:-(CanOn 611.) These exceptions may be.divided into two classesi let-ters Written to certain ecclesiatical superiors, that is, to the Holy See, the Apostolic Delegate, the local ordinary; ~nd tO the Cardinal Protector. While the l~st mentioned is not, strictly speaking, an ecclesiastical superior,, still he has specialrelation to the congr~g~ition orinstitute and fre-quehtly,, takes care of its correspondehce witl~ the Holy See: The second class of-persons mentioned in the exc_eption are certain religious superiors, that is, all higher superiors .(superiors .general and provincial superiors) and one'.s own local superior ~hen.that superior hap'pens to be absent, from the community. Every religious h,as a strict.~rigl~t to send letters to any~of these persons and to receive letters from them and such letters are not subject, to inspection. It may be well to compare the persons mentioned in the canon with those mentione'd in the Norrnae. There are three notable, differences: (1) the Normae.did not include the Cardinal Protector, the Code ~loes; (2) the Norrnae included councillorsand assistants, the. Code omits therri; (3) the Norrnae meritioned only the S. Congregation o'f -Bishops and Regulars, the Code includes a_ll the Roman Congregations in the term "Holy See." Neither the Norrnae nor the Code grants the right of free correspondence with. ~380 November, "I 9,15 CORRESPONDENCE 6F RELIGIOUS the confess0r~. The ~constitutions~ ~ay~ of course, extend the liberty .g~anted by the Code to' other persons ,not men-tioned in the canon, for instance, to the general ouncillors~ but unless .they are ~xplicitly mentioned in th~ constitu~ tions, these persons are not entitled to the privilege under the Code., ' " . What is meant by the term "free from all inspection"? ¯The authorized English translation of the canons of :the Code which pe~rtain to religious, publishe.d .,by the Vatican Press, translates it by "exempt from all control." The least that one.can conclude from the text.of the Code .is that every religious has the right to send such letters sealed with, out aski.ng .any permission ,from superiors. Although 'the literal interpretation of the Latin text of the Code would seem to require that all "such correspondence must-.pass through, the hands-of superiors, even though they.may not ope~ or read them, still the phrase employed in the author~ ized translationo, e"x e m "pt from all control," would seem to permit the sending and recdving of such letters withou.t their passing through file hands of the local superior. :This opinion was defended even before the Code by canonists who knew the .viewpoint of the S. Congregation of Reli- " gious and is held today by a number of authoritative com-mentators. Their reason for~ this opinion is that otherwise tht liberty granted .~ by the'Code would be restricted, and religious would not bd free in such correspondence. Does this mean that.a religious may send such letters throtigh any intermediary whatever, and that he may pro-cure stamps from anybody in Order to mail such privileged letters freely? - 0pinionsdiffer in this matter,, and a reason-abl. e reconciliation of divergent views seems to be as follows. °Whenever their rights are sufficiently protected hy having such sealed letters pais through the ordinary channels, reli- .g~ous should ~foll0.w this method: Usually there.will be, no ADA~ C. ELLIS " Review for Religious inconvenience in sending ~ealed letters to high'e~ superiors through .the hands ofthe local superior. Bht if the ~religious has a good reason for not wanting his supe.rior to know that he is writing to higher superiors, especially to ecclesi, asti~al superiors, he may mail the letter personally or have someone else mail.it, being careful to select a prudent person who will not be astonished at his request. It i.s customary in some communities for the assistant superior or some older religious to provide stamps for' this purpose, and this is a laudable custom: A religious, therefore, who for good reasons obtain~ a stamp "from ~a prudent person and sends an exempted letter without havingit pass through the hands of his superior violates neither the rule nor his vow of poverty. The permission" of the Holy See is implicit in the ~authorization to send such a lette~ freely~. Such cases will occur rarely, and if the restrictions above laid down are observed, there, will be little danger of abuses. These can occur, of ~ourse, but the fear of. an abuse does not take away the right granted by the law. R~!igious seldom send le~t-ters to the local ordinary, much less to the Holy See, with-° out a serious reason; and if it be necessary, these high authorities will curb any excess on the part of indiscreet correspondents. ¯Letters of Cdt~science As we have seen a.bove, neither the No~rnae nor the Code allow free correspondence with th~ confessor or spiritual director~ and canonists who are intimately acquainted with the mind of the S. Congret~ation.of Religious tell us that the S. Congregation judges that such correspondence can easily lead to abuse, especially in communities of religious women; hence it will never allow the constitutions approved by it to include the confessor among the persons excepted. On.theother'~hand it recommends that superiors use their discretion in individtial cases, and grant permi& 382. November° 1945 CORRESPONDENCE OF RELIGIOUS sion for such letters when it ~s reaso.n~ably requested. ;While it is true that superiors are not bound" in strict justice to do so, nevertheless, in'certain cas.es they will .be b6und by charity to bring ~elief to the spiritual need of their subjects. If the superior has granted permission for letters of conscience, he may not read them,-nor the answers received to them. This p~rmissiQn, however, does not give .the sender~the right to mail such lette/s without the knowledge bf the superior~ In these cases it is customary to use two envelopes. The letter is placed in the inner envelope, .sealed, and marked "conscience matter." This isthen, placed in an outer envelopi~ containing the address and. is pu,t unsealed .into the superior's mail box. If the superior has not granted permission to the reli-gious to send a letter of conscience, and the" subject writ,es such a letter, that letter is subje~t to the ini;pection of th~ superior. If an incoming, letter is marked "conscience mat-ter," the superior may not read it; but, as prudence dictates, he may or may not give it to the religious subject to whom it is addressed: ,If he deems, it necessary to refuse to give the letter to the religious,-he.should return it to the sender unopened, warn him that such correspondence is not per-mitted and that any such letters .sent in the future w_ill be opened or destroye.d. Religious on. their part should be reasonable in their requests to send such "conscience" letters, and they should ¯ realize that it is preferable to receive spiritual direction by word of mouth rather than by letter. The. director is able to ask questions, and obtain information necessary to give sound direction, and the religious has the oppoitunity t6 ask for further information or advice. Thus he can be'cer-tain that he clearly understands the direction given. In a letter; however, a religious may find it difficult to express himself clearly and fully so as to .give a complete pic.t.ure to 383 ADAM C. ELLIS R. euieu~ for Religious the direct'or and to avoid giving a false impression Which may lead to wrong advice. It is also possible for a religious to misunderstand or misinterpret the advice given by the director in a letter. Then there is tlde possibledanger, that' a letter may be lost, or opened by others, oreven that it be Published. Conclusion " In conclusion it may be well to sum up briefly what has been said on this subject~. (1) The Code of Canon Law does not give religious superiors the right to read the correspondence b.f their sub-jects. This right comes from the constitutions 0f the indi-vidual institute or.from custom, and is stiictly limited by them. (2) The superior who has the right and the duty of _inspecting the correspondence of his subjects-is strictly bound by. the natural law Of secrecy in regard to the con-tents of such correspondence. He may refuse .to send out certain letters Written by religious, and he may refuse to deliver undesirable letters addressed to religious, but if be has read them he is bound to secrecy in regard to, their contents. (3) Canon 611 gives the religi_ous the right to corre-spond freely with certain ecclesiastical and religious supe-riors. Such letters are free from all inspectio.n on the part of superiors, fis are all replies received to them. Superiors may neither open nor read such letters. (.4) Normally religio.us should mail such exempt let-ters'. after their have sealed them; through their superiors. For a good reason, however, religious may get stamps from a prudent person and mail siach letters directly without the knowledge of their superio.r: (5) As tO letters Of conscience, they are not en.cour-aged, and may not be sdnt or received without.the permis- 384 CORRESPONDENCE OF RI~LIGIOUS 385 s~on of th.e superior. However, once permission is granted for such letters, the superior¯ may-neither .open" hotread .them or the replies received to them. (6).In regard to ordinary letters received by religious, superiors should be moderate in the use of the powers granted to them by the constitutions. This is especially the case in the correspondence of religious with their parents and nea~ relatives. Superiors should not iead such letters when it is evident that. they contain family secrets. (7) When a letter is received from an undesirable.cor-respondent, it will be mor~ prudent for the superior to return it to the sender, or, preferably, to. permit the reli-gious to Whom it was addressed to write to the correspond-ent explaining the regulations of the institute in th~ n4atter and warning him to desist from sending such letters in the future. (8) Re_ligious should not look upon the restrictio~ns placed upon letter writing by the constitutions as an intol-erable burden or as an oldfashioned restriction .of~ rights, but rather they should consider them as a protection for themselves and their reputation, as well as for the good name of the communi[y in which they live. (9) Religious should learn to be prudent and mod-erate in writing letters, especially to people in the world-. The latter normally have a very high esteem for the reli-gious life andfor religious in general, and they are apt to be stfrprised at finding a religious expressing himself in his let-ters regarding matters which are wor~ldly, or uncharitable, o or just gossipy. (10) Religious communities as such also have a right to their secrets, and religious should show their loyalty by carefully abstaining from revealing in their letters any untoward, happenings which might ngt, be edifying to members of other communities, much less to externs. /'hy Not: Consider An!:ichrist ?" Augustin C. Wand, S.J: THE theme of the Antichrist has for many Catholics an air of the mysterious, the legendary, and the bizarre. If it is mentioned at all it is apt to be shrugged off as unreal and distantly removed. Not even its broad outlines and salient features enter into the thought-and life either" of, the ordinary Christian or bf the seeker for the higher things of the Spirit. It is,. as it were, taboo among serious Christians, whilst the rationalist critics treat it as a bit of Yet it w~is not always thus. The Fathers of the Church abound in direct statements and in allusions to the person and~the career of this opponent of Christ. The earliest of these found a well developed tradition on the subject~' among the Jews, as a careful study of the so-called Old Testament Apocrypha has show.n. ~ This tradition was somewhat clarified and fixed by St. Paul and St. John. From these writers we c'an see that in its primary and proper sense Antichrist is a definite person in whom hatred for Christ and opposition to His Worl~ i's, as it were, per-sonified. The term "Antichrist" is not a proper ~name but a descriptive expression for which also several other words are used. St. Paul tells the Thessal0nians jn his second let-ter that before Christ's return an6tiqer person will appear who-leads a great rebellion against God and tries to be treated as God himself. A great deceiver himself, he is likewise equipped by the devil with great powers for wbrking "signs and lying wonders," so that many who are incautious and ove.rconfident in themse.lves will be seriously misled. After having had his way in working evil for a 386 WHY NOT CONSIDt:R ANTICHRISTI tirrie this great seducer will be overcome by Christ (II Thess. 2:3-12). St: otohn gi~;es us the name Antichrist and fells about the helpers and the spirit of this terrifying indi-vidual.~ ([ 3ohn 2: 1.8-22: 4:3 : II John, 7). These are the main traits which the "New Testament writers have left us regarding the cartier of'the man whom St. Paul names the "man of sift': and the "son of perdition:" Aided and directed by these and other revelations the early Christian writers dwelt often and at length on the subject in learned;works, in sermons to the people, in Com-mentaries on the Scriptures, and in poetical, compositions. Already in the Doctrine of the Ttoeloe Apostle~ and in the so-called Epistle ot:Barnabas, in St. 3ustin, in Irenaeus, and in Tertullian numerou~ allusions to Antichrist a~e found and lessons are drawn from the theme.In the third cen-tury St. Hippolytus wrote a special treatise on the subject. He also spo_ke at length on it in his Commentarg on Daniel, as did St. Jerome and Th~odoretus. Victorinus of Pettau enlarged on it when interpreting the Apocalypse, St. Greg-ory the Great when explaining the Book of ,Job, Rhabanus Maurus.when handling the Bo.ok of dudges and the el:?istles of St. Paul. The poet Commodian and the rhetorician Lactantius spin long passages, filling in from the sibyls and other apocryphal sources, The. theme was, therefore, a familiar one during the whole of the patristic times. The subject thus bequeathed to the Middle Ages fur~ nished a stimulating, topic for tbi vivid imagination of ~hose"sti'rring times. About the middle of the tenth,cen-tury the abbot Adso wrote a tract for the queen Gerberga. In the main this repeated the traditional teaching but 'it added'also a few sibylline verses. Two centuries later we find a Ludus de Antichristo, showing that drama had seized upon the subject. About the same time another movement started which was to have. fateful consequences: 387 AUGUSTIN C. ¯WAND " Reoieu~ for Religious The abbo~ Joachim of Flora-thought ~to find the 'various epochs°of the history of the Church depicted in the suc-cessive visions a~nd figures of the Apocalypse. The spark thus lighted soon caused a conflagration~ .During the r~li-gious controversies of the late Middle. Ages feelings ran high. Some followers of Joachim thought t6 find Anti-christ in this or that pope of the time. Wycliffe and.Huss carried this tendency to new extremes. Along these paths the sixteenth-century reformers went to greater lengths: From Luther onwards the cry resounded that "the Pope is Antichrist." Thus it continued with greater Or lessuinsist- -ehce until well into the nineteenth century. John Henry Newman, while still an Anglican, wrote a lengthy essay in which he surveyed the history of this party cry and acutely pointed out the baleful conclusions that might be drawn from such a slogan) The din of this noisy campaign has, perhaps, led Cath-olics to fight shy of the subject of Antichrist.~ I~ is true that such leading-theologians as Suarez, Bellarmine, and Lessius wrote learned treatises On the subject; but these did hot reach the people and the later Scholastics soon. forgot about -them~ So we ring that preachers and spiritual writers, compilers of meditation books, and even at times the authors of theological textbooks have had little or nothing to say concer~ning Antichrist and the lessons that .can be drawn from the subject. - .0 - At the same time ~rationalists have seized upon the theme and have enervated it by their speculations. For them it is a bit of curious folk-lore. Its roots they trace to the ancient mythologies and its development is explained through various fortuitous h~ippenings. Nothing Super-natural has entered into this strhnge and curious story. So 1J.~H. Newman, Essays CriticalTat~d Historical II, 112-185. 388 WHY NOT CONSIDER .ANTICHRIST? "much have these critics:had the field ~t~themselves that Bousset, a leader in t.his ~investigation, has not found.it worth w, hile; either in' his book or in: several larger treatises in encyclopedias, to mention that there is another concep,. tion of 'this phenomenon. ' r YetCatholics should bear in mind that, if God found it worth while to make a revelation concerning events that are to precede the second coming of .Christ,_He :did this~for . a definite, and seri6us purpose~ Cardinal.~ Newman remarks. on this subjecti o- . - If dreadful scenes still~await the ChurCh, if~t_hey have been fore, told, and foretoldth~it christians may be prepared for ,them, no,calam-ity can be~greater than a belief that they have already ,been fulfilled, and that there is nothing to look.out for or fo fear: no devic~ of Satan can be more crafty than to make us think that they are not to come.2 The tone with which our Lord, St. Paul, and, St. ,John spoke was that of serious concern. Difficult.ies there are in understanding their language and obscurities ~emain but; as Father Martindale remarks, "The upshot . is not to make, us careless. We have to obey the reiterated command~" to Watch . We have. [not to] lap Ourselve~ in false security precisely because [ the' horrible revelation ] has not come." The fullest ~and clearest statement of the d~octrine on Antichrist, though the term is not mentioned, is contained in the second epistle of St. Paul: to the Thessalonians (2:3- 12), which has already been summarized. However we are warned in the very text that the teaching is not mean~ to ~0e clear on all points. St. John uses the term Antichrist and gives some additional points in.his epistles (I, 2:1 22; 4.'3; II:7). Yet he speaks more about the followers of Antichrist than about the leader hinise~lf, The Apo~a- 2--1. c. p. 113 f. *C. C: Martindale, Antichrist, p. 24. 389 lypse;of :St.3ohn certalnly,has some matters that belong to the subject. Of Antichrist but the use of this book is b~set with difficulties and calls for the guidance of an experienced hand. The Fathers of the Church often spoke at length.on the subject. However in reading them a few cautions will be needed. Most of them stood too r~ear to the Roman Em, pire to .disengage themselves from the thought that the fate of,the world and of the Church was bound up with the destiny of that grand old institution. As is often the case with prophecy, the course of events has helped to clarify the. meaning to a certain extent: we now know that Rome has passed and still thegreat conflict has not cbme to an end. Our vision has been directed to a more distant futur~ but that does not impair the absolute truth of the predic[ion. ~ndependently of any reference to a particular political power, St. Augustine has indicated the prospect i1~ a few terse sentences: The first persecution of the Church was violent . the-second persecution is deceptive, sucl~ as is now being carried on by heretics and false brethren of .every description: the third through the agency of Antichrist is still to come, than Which there is nothing more dangerous, as it will be both violent and deceptive. Its force will rest onpolitical power, its deceit on miracles.4 Cardinal Newman has summed up the teachings of the Fathers in a series of lectur~ that will prove very handy2 The best introduction to the subject in English pr6bably is the pamphlet of Father C. C. Martindale, S.J., called Antichrist and published by the Catholic Truth Society of London. ~ 4Enarr.in Psalm. IX, n. 27: MPL. 36, 128. 5j. H. Newman, Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects, 44-~108. "~90 S ill 0t: This Fold John E. Coogan, ~.J. THEODORE Maynard remarks in his,,Storb, of Ameri- .can Catholicism that there still is a mysterious leth-argy" in our Negro apostolate. Despite the heroic work done by individuals and groups, both clericai and lay, the'work of winning our thirteen million N~groes to the Church does not seem to get under way. The battle for the soul of the race still remains to be joined: so far all tha~ can be found is local skirmishes. Most of Negro A~merica even today remains absolutely unchurched. The two-hundred and fifty, varieties of Protestantism claim something less than one-half of Negro America, frequently to merely -nominal. affiliation. Negro Catholics represent only some two per (ent of the racial group. We Catholics publish slightly more favorable statistics from time t'o time; buc little jus.tificati9n is shown for the reputed rise except that where things are so bad, inevi'table change, must be an improvement. After all, some are being converted; and it is easy for us to fail to count those~ who are falling away. The Church in America has shown in other fidds than the race apostolate that, when we really make up our minds, things happen. For example, our Catholic school system taken as a whole, from kindergarten to university, is an achievement without precedent elsewhere. True, it teaches only half our Catholic students; another half still throng the halls, of Horace Mann. But the educational achievement of double-taxed Catholics is tremendous. Proportionate success in .the race apostolate would recall the, mass conversiqns of the primitive Church. .This statement is the more clearly true because there is 391 JOHN E. COOGAN Repieu~ ?or Reliyiofis no large group in America. that responds so r.eadily to sin-cere, he:irtfelt Catholic'. effdrt; seldom has fruit hung so ripe bn the tree, seldom were fields so ready for the harvest. "The mere announcement bf the opening, bf a Catholic school in o the corner of an old warehouse in. a Negro neighborhood has brought children by the hundreds, eager t6 be taught the things, of Holy God. Last year four thousand children applied for admission to 'a midweste~rn colored Catholic s~hool that could accept only one in ten. Another school was forced to ~u~rn away six hundred disappointed children for sheer lack of room. During thepast summer a nearby vacation school was so en~thusiastically attended that the opening-day teaching staff: had hastily to be doubled, and yet one-hundred and fifty children had to be sent~home. Evidence of whole-souled Catholic interest in the colored - brings an explosive response. ¯ ' The apparent explanation of our slight progress in the Negro apostolate is ,that the collective heart of Catholic America has not been touched. The Holy Father could say, six years ago, We confess that We feel a special paternal affection, which is cer-tainly inspired of Heaven, for the Negro people dwel!ing among you; for in the field of religion .and education We know that they need special care and comfort and are very deserving of" it. We therefore invoke an abundance of heavenly blessing and We pray fruitful suc-cess for those whose generous zeal is devoted t6 their welfare. (Sectura Laetitiae, America Press edition, n. ~14) And in 1942 the American hierarchy, speaking, through the Administra~ivej Board of the National Catholic"Welfare Conference, could say of "our .colored fellow-citizens," "We.fully appreci,ate their many native gifts and aptitudes which, ennobled and enriched by ~ true Christian life, will make them a powerful influence in the establishment of a Christian social order." But the Catholic masses are largely heedless, and little is done. 392 Nooernber, 1945 STILL NOT OF THIS FOLD The eminent non-Catholic Negro historian, Dr. Ca~- ter Woodson, has described racial prejudice as Teutonic and Protestant. Dr.'Louis Snyder, of the department of his-tory of the College .of the City of New York, makes it con- ~equent upon "the division between Church and Statb during the Reformation and the developing territorial con-solidation and rise of national states." In confirmation of: these explanations, last year in Chicago the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church tldus confessed Protestant responsibility 'for racial prejudice: It is a sorry and alarming fact that Anglo-Saxon white Protestants seem to be imbudd with more feeling of racial superiority and are guilty of more arrogant snobbery toward those of another color than any other people. The church has apparently not succeeded in incul-cating humility in English-speaking whites. Equal candor would,, however, compel CatholiCs to acknowledge that here in North Americ&,-almos~ alone in all the Catholic world, many of us have become infected with this same intoldrant spirit; .we too seem to feel that we so-called ~whites are made of finer stuff, and that the Negr~ is definitely second-rate. And although we would be willing to go to some expense for the conversion of such a second-rate' people living in some remote region of the earth --say in the Congo or Uganda--we do °not want many such converts here if they are going to move in on us and use the same religious facilities. We might hear with a sort of mild. cosmopolitan satisfaction the story of the conversion of the King of Bungo; but we would not want to have to look past his kinky head to see our parish altar. Africa~is the dark continent, the land of the primitives; and America is a white man's country! . All right, all right! We'll ~tolerate a Negro or two on a side aisle of the.church, or back near the door. Certainly we understand: Catholic means. world-wide, for all. But do you suppose we want Negroes 393 JOHN E. COOGAN Review for Religio~zs coming, in here just like us? Perhaps in another hundred years; more likely, a thousand. B°ut not nbw! It's all right ¯ to love your neighbor, but we've got to be practical. This impression of Negro ~inferiority extends princi-pally to his intellectual and moral powers: "'He is a recent primitive, unfortunately dragged from his benighted jungle life into the world of white men with mind. s sharpened and deepened by two thousand years of civilization. The Negro is mentally in the childhood of the race." This manner of reasoning°implies'a process of mental evolution, a "trans-mission of acquired' characteristics" that is al.toge.ther unknown to s~ience. Presuppos.ing a similar environment, there is nothing that can. be taught to a white child that cannot be taught to a colored. In interesting confirmation of this, a Catholic. army chaplain, recently returned from Nigeria, reports the native children positively superior in educational performance to his prize parish school pupils in the States. Even the Congo pigmies have been found altogether normal mentally. Professor Ellsworth Faris, of the University of Chic~ig9, declares fron; personal experience amon.g them that he was impressed by their "keenness 6f intellect, native shrewdness and essentially high mentality." Obviously a pigmy father less_than four feet tall and weighing about seyenty-five poundsm 'to supply elephant steaks to his.hungry family must use his wits. - " Argum,ents to African dullness c~rawn from thei~ crude native cultur~ ignore the ruins of.ancient cities scattered about their continent, memorials of their achievements in days when our northern European forefathers were lurking in' cayes, clad in the skins of wild beasts. It is thought-provoking to find Cicero then advising Atticus:."Do not obtain your slaves from Britain b~cause they are so stupid and so utterly incapable of be!ng taught that they are not 394 November', 1945 STILL NOT OF THIS FOLD fit to, form a part of ,theh~usehold of Athens." ' The fact is that all' isolated areas are likely to be culturally stagnant. Inhabitants of our southern hill country are of the stock that gave greatness to early American life; but, ocut off from the busy world, they actually deteriorated culturally. The isolation of. the African continent was far more~ enduring and even more complete. For a variety of topographical reasons, the dark continent is almost impenetrable. When to this is added its long list of fierce animals, poisonous insects, and ~deadly tropical diseases, it is easy to realize the difficulty~ of either boir0~ing foreign cultures or building up one's own. But in America, we may be reminded," education is'free; why has not the Negro risen intellectua:lly to the white man's level, if his innate powers are not inferior? Who does not know that it is only a.long lifetime that the edu-cation of the Negro has been thus even nominally free? And even now,.thro.ugh the" regions of densest Negro concen-tration, four years of slip-shod schooling are still a for-tunate experience. But the fact that Ohio Negroes men-tally out-scored the whitest.of four other states in draft tests for World War. I suggests how dependent mental achievement is upon intellectual opportunity. The whole question of the relative innate mental pow-er~ of ~he several races had better, be left to experts. May it siaffice, then, to say that the United States Government Advisory Committee on Education reported in i939, It is the .consensus among America's most eminent psychologists, educationalist.s, sociologists, and anthropologists, based upon their critical appraisal of investigations of racial differences, that there is no adequate evidence to ;support an assumption of inferior native learning ability on the part of Negro children. Even more impre.ssive is the dictum of" the American A~thropological Association, the unanimous judgment of 395 JOHN E. COOGAN Review for Religious the two-hundred and eighty members,present (led by Father John Cooper, Ph.D., of the Catholic University) at-its 1938 convention in New York "Anthropology pro-vides no scientific basis for discrimination against any people on the grounds of racial inferiority . " The second major point of supposed Negro inferiority that we proposed to discuss here is that of his moral pow-ers: "He doesn't seem to possess the white man's powers of sublimation and self-control!" That dbes sound rather pharisaical, doesn't it? Despite the greater ease with which the economically more privileged conceal their.vices, peri-odic bevelations of life in ~ertain strata of whiteosociety give one a flashlight picture of an "explosion in a sewer." Con- _fess~dly, there is among our colored much" vice arising from sheer ignorance;.it must be remembered that for ~everal centuries our slave lav~ did not recognize their unions as legal marriage. Frequent shifting of partners was not merely tolerated or encouraged, but-often even required. As the competent historian, John Spencer Bassett, reminds us, the Negro slave was a chattel: "He could, according to the popular theory, be "bought, bred, worked,-neglected, marked, or treated in any other respect as a horse or a cow~" It is precisely the Negro's awareness of the moral damage suffered by his people that makes him hunger and "thirst for Catholic truth when once he sees it. Usually the ,only sort of religion he has ever really known was the emo-tional kind that enabled him to forget for a time the stern realities of life in a white man's world. It satisfied the yearning to "participate in s.or~ething bigger than himself,"~ but it offered him little aid or inspiration" to more godly; living. The Catholic Church alone could offer in its full-ness "the way, the truth, and the life," and she" usuall3r remained for him either unknown or apparently a "white° ¯ man's church.''~ And for him she commonly retains that 396- November, 1945 STILL NOT OF THIS FOLD -a.ppearance even today. Hopes for a racially better day lie largely with re.ligious, especially teachers. We religious can teach young Catholic America--our future °priests and laymen alike--what Christ meant when He proclaimed, "I am the Vine, and you are the branches" ;. and what St. Paul meant when he spoke of a Mystical Body of which we are the members and Christ the Head. And we can show how inevitable th'en it is that "As you do unto the least of these My brethren you do unto Me." The Catholic Church. is for the Negro---as indeed for the whole world--the only port in. the storm. Her emblazoned cross must arrest his wanderings and guide him home. If a naked continent can become for the world's deprived a "Land of Opportun~ity,'' then what can not Mother Church mean to an orphan pe6ple ~and'a lace oppressed? Upon .the base of the Statue of Liberty, in New York harbor, ~the s~ulp~or has carved these lines: Give me your tired, you; poo?, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore; Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Such is the invitation of America. The invitation of the ~tholic Church goes still deeper and promises more: Come all you who are weary and heavy laden, And you shall find rest for your souls. The Negro will come if only our Catholic masses are taught by us to echo the welcome of ~h.e Holy Father and of our hierarchy, and to treat him as a brother; he will come with a feeling of proper pride in his human dignity and in the battles be has fought to make it respected. It will be an inspiration for us then to hear him sing 'in his Nationa! ,Negro Anthem, "Lift Every Voice And Sing": 397 God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, . _~ Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou wfTo hast by Thg" might~ Led us into the light; Keep us forever in the pdth, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we ~orget Thee, °~ Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land. ¯ °,. CONCERNING COMMUNICATIONS "Diocesan Priest," who wrote the letter against formalism in the Ju!y number (IV, p. 277) 'has sen~ another excellent communication. Unfortunately we have not space enough.for the letter, but we Wish to digest its essentials. Agaifist "Hos-pital Sister" (of. p. 355) he defends the action of the Sister who sent the first communication on formalism (of. p. 132) : "She was citing a case where formalism was carried to an extrehae, and then put the point up for discussion. Isn't that one of the purposes of the 'Communications' section of the REVIEW?" Also in reply to "Hospital Sitter" he points out that the discussion did not concern religious women only; for "Religious Priest" clearly included religious~men in his part of the discussion. Having taken care of these minor points, "Diocesan Priest"goes on tb say that both pries(s and religious do hav~ visitors who call for perfectly valid and important reasons and cannot always choose their own.time for calling. ~$uch visitors hardly be said to be "importuning" anyone. It is possible to treat these people-- and others to--harshly by adhering to the word of the rule rather than to its spirit. "Christ could have left the miracle at the marriage feast of Cana go unper-formed because His 'time had not yet come,' but kindness and charity for His fel: lowman were more important . Don't misunderstand me. I do not advocate the destruction of all formalism. I imagine that I am only one of thousands of parish priests who really envy; religious the order in their lives. I merely agree with the Sister in saying there can be too much formalism."' We regret that we can print only this brief survey of "Diocesan Priest's" let-ter. It seems to us that his two letters brought out excellent p~ints and manifested a Christlike attitude. It is possible for us religious to be¢ome~so much attached to regularity that we resent any interference with it, even for a good cause, just as it is (Continued on p. 428) .398 Spiritual Readings t:rorn t:he Council of Treni: -Ii* ' Augustine Klaa.s, S.J. Hotg, Sacrifice of the Mass SINCE under the former Testament, accOrding to the testlmony ~ of the Apostle Paul, there was no perfection because .of the. weakness of the Levitical priesthood, there was need, God the Father of mercies so ordaining, ihat .another priest should ~ise according to tb~ order of Melcbisedech (8 3), ou.r Lord Jesus Christ, who might perfect arid lead to perfection as many as Were to be sanc-tified. He, therefore, our God and Lord, though He was by His death about to offer Himself once upon the altar of the cross to God the' Father that He might there accomplish an eternal redemption, nevdrtheless, "that Hi~ priesthood might not come to an end with His death (84), at the last.supper, on the night He was betrayed, that He might leave to His beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requfire'_s, whereby that bloo~ly sacrifice once to be accomplished on the cross might be represented, the memory .thereof remain even .to the end of the ~orld, and its salutary effects applied to the remission of those sins which we d.aily commit, declaring Him-self constituted a priest forever according to the order of Melchise-dech (85), offered up .to God the Father His own body and .blood under the form of bread and wine, and under the forms of those same things gave to. the Apostles, whom He then made priests of the Ne~v Testament, that they might partake, commanding them and their successors in the priesthood by these words to do likewise: Do this 'in commemoration of me (86), as the Catholic Church has always understood and "taught. For having celebrated the ancient Passover which the multitude of the children of Israel sacrificed in memory of their departure from Egypt° (87), He instituted a n~w Passover, namely, Himself, to be immolated under visible signs by the Church through the priests in memory of His own passage from this world to the Father, when by the shedding of His blood He redeemed and delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into his 83) Hebrews 7:11 85) Psalms 109:4 rinthians 11:24 f 84) Hebrews 7:24 86) Luke22:19; ICo- 87) Exodus 13 *Selected from H. 3. Schroeder, O.P., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, (~t. Louis: Herder, 1941). 399 AUGUSTIN~ KLAAg Reoieu~ [or Religious kingdom. (88) And tliis is indeed that clean oblation ,which cannot be defiled by any unworthiness or malic~ on the part. of those'who offer it: which the Lord foretold by Malachias was to be great amon~ the Gentiles (89), and which the Apostle Paul has dearly indicated when he says, that they who .are defiled by partaking of the table of devil~ cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord (90), under-standing by table in each case the altar. It is, finally, that [sacrifice] which was prefigured by various types of sacrifices during the period of nature and of the law (91), which, namely, comprises all the good things signified by them, as being the consummation and perfection of them all. Mass Propitiatory for the Living and Dead And inasmuch as in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner the same Christ who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross, the holy council teaches that this is truly propitiatory and has this effect, that if we~ contrite and. penitent, with sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence, draw nigh to God, ~e obtain merc~./ and find grace in seasonable aid. (92) For, appeased by this sacrifice, the Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests who then offered Himse, lf on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits of.that bloody sacrifice, it is well understood, are received most abundantly through this,unbloody one, so far is the latter from derogating in any way from the former. Wherefore, acco.rding to the tradition of the Apostles, it is rightly ~ offered not only for the sins, punishments, and other necessities of the faithful who are llving.,.but also for those departed in Christ but not let fully purified. The Real Presence " First of all, the holy council teaches and openly and plainly.pro2 fesses that after the consecration of bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially con-tained in the august sacrament of the Holy Eucharist under ~the 88) Colossians 1:13 90) See I Corinthians 89) /~lalaehias 1:11 10:21 400 ' 91) Genesis 4:4:12:8 92) Hebrews 4:16 November, 19: 5 READINGS FROM TRENt appearance of those ~ensible things. For there is no repugnance in this that our Savior sits always 'at the right hand of .the.i Father in heaven according to the natural mode of existing, and yet is in°many other places sacram~ntally present to us in Hi.s own substance by a manner of existence which, .though we can scarcely express in words, yet with our understanding illumined by faith, we can conceive a~a'd 6ught most firmly to belie,~e is possible to God. (93) For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ and who treated of this most .holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this wonderful .sacrament at the last ~supper, when, after blessing the bread and wine, He testified in clear "and definite words ,that He gives them His own body and His own blood. Since these words, iecorded by the holy Evangelists (94) and afterwards repeated by St. Paul (95), embody~that proper and clearest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, it is a most contemptible action on the part of some contentious and wicked men to twist them into fictitious and imaginary tropes by which the truth of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth (96), recognizing with a mind ever grateful and unfor-getting this mostexcellent favor of Christ, has detested as satanical these unt~utl~s devised by impious men. Institution of the Holg Eucharist Therefore, our Sav.ior, when about to depart from this woHd to the Father, instituted this sacrameiat, in wh~ich He poured forth, as it were, the riches of His divine love towards men, making a remem-brance of his wonderful works (97), and commanded us in the par-ticipation of it to reverence His memory and to show forth his death until he comes (98) to judge the world. -But He wished that this sacrament should be received as th~ spiritual food of souls (99), whereby they may be nourished and strengthened~ living by the life of Him who said: He ~tbat eatetb me, the same also shall live bg me (100), and as an antidote whereby we may be freed from dail~r faults and be preserved from mortal sins. He wished it furthermore fo,be a'pledge of our future glory and' everlasting happiness, and thus be a 93) Matthew 19:26i Luke 18:27 94) Matthew 26:26- 28: Mark 14:22- 24; Luke 22:19 f 95) See I Corinthians 98) Luke22:19: ICo- I 1:24 f rinthians 11:24- 96) See I Timothy 26 3:15 99) Matthew 26:26 f "97) Psalms 110:4 100) John 6:58 401 AUGUSTINE KLAAS symbol of that one body of which He is thehead (I01) and to which He wished us to be unite~d as members by the closest bond ,of. faith, h, ope and charity, that we might all speak the same rhino an, d there. might be no schisms ambng us. (1,02) ¯ Excellence of the Holg Eucharist The most Holy Eucharist has indeed this in common with the other sacraments, that it'is a symbol of a sacred thing and a visible form of an invisible grace; but there is found in it this excellent and peculiar characteristic, that the other sacraments then first have tbe power of sanctifying when one uses them, while in the Eucharist there is the Author Himself. of sanctity before it is used. For the Apostles had not yet received the Eucharist from the hands of the Lo~d, when He Himself told them that ~vhat He was giving them is His own body. (103) This has always been the belief of:the. Church of God, that immediately after the consecration the true body. and the ~rue blood of.our Lord, together with His soul and divinity exist under the form of bread and wine,, the body under the form of bread and the blood under the form bf wine ex vi verborum; but the same body also under the form of wine and the same blood under the form of bread and the soul under both, in virtue of that natural connection and concomitance whereby the parts .of Christ the Lord, who hath now risen from the dead, to die no more (104), are mutually united. also the divinity on account of its admirable hypostatic union with His body and soul. Wherefore, it is .very true that as much is contained under either form as under'both. For Christ is whole and entire under the form of bread and under any part of that form; likewise the whole Christ is present under the form of wine and under all its parts. Transubstantiation But since Christ our Redeemer declared that to be truly His own body which He offered under the form of bread (105), it has,. there-fore, always been a firm belief in the. Church of God, and this holy council now declares it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the 101) See I Corinthians 102) See I Corinthians 104) Romans 6:9 11:3; Ephesians 1:10 105) Luke 22:19: John . 5:23 103) Matthew 26:26; 6:48 if; I Corin- Mark 14:22 thians 11:24 402 ¯ Nooember, 1945 READINGS FROM TRENT whole substance 'of the wine into the substance of His blood. This ch.ange the holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation. Worship and Veneratio.n There is, therefore, no room for doubt that all the faithful of Christ may, in accordance with a custom always received in the C~ath-olic Church, give to ttiis most holy sacrament in veneration the wor-ship of latria, which is due to the true God. Neither is it to be less adored ~or the reason that it was instituted by Christ the Lord in order to be received. (106) For we believe that in it the same Go.d is present of whom the eternal Father, when introducing Him into, the world, says: And let all the angels o~: God adore him (107) ;. whom the: Magi, failing down, adored (108); who, ,finally,' as the Scrip-tures testify, was adored by the Apostles in Galilee. (109) The holy council declares, moreover, that the custom that this sublime and venerable sacrament be celebrated with special veneration and solemnity every year on a fixed festival'day, and that it be boine reverently and with honor in processions through the streets and pub-lic" places, was very piously and r~ligiously introduced into the Church of God. Eor it is most reasonable that some days be set aside as holy on which all Christians may with special and unusual demon-stration testify that their minds are grateful to and mindful of their common Lord and Redeemer for so ineffable and truly divine a favor whereby the victory and triumph of His death are shown forth. And thus it/deed did it ~behoove the victorious truth to celebrate a triumph over falsehood and heresy, that in the sight of so much splendor and in the midst of so great joy of the universal Church, her enemies may either vanish weakened and broken, or, overcome with shame and confouhded, may at length repent. Worthy Reception If it is unbecoming for anyone to approach any of the sacred functions except in a spi.rit of piety, assuredly, the more the holiness 'and divinity of this heavenly sacrament are understood by- a Christian, the more diligen.tly ought he to give heed lest he receive it without great reverence and holiness,~especially when we read those terrifying words of the Apostle: He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth 106) Matthew 26:26 107) Hebreffs 1:6 -108) Matthew 2:11 109)'Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:52 403 AUGUSTINE KLAAS , ~ .and drinketh judgment to himself, not ,discernin9 the bod~l of the Lord. °( 11 O) Wherefore, he who" would communicate, must recall to-mind his precept: Let a t~an prove himself¶ (111 ) ~ Three. Wa~ls of Receiving the Hol~l Eucharist As to the us~ of this holy sacrament, our Fathers have rightly and wisely distinguished three ways of receiving it. They have taught that some receive it sacramentally only, as sinners; other's spiritually only, namely, those who eati.ng in desire the heavenly bread set before them, are by a lively faith which worketh by charit~l (I 12) made sensible of its fruit and usefulness; while the third class receives it both sa~crameritally and spiritually, and-these a~ethey who so prove and prepare' themselves beforehand that they approach this divine tabl~ clothed with the wedding garment. (I 13) As regards the reception ofthe sacrament,, it has always been the custom, in the Church of God that laics receive communion from priests, but that priests when cele-brating communicate tl~emselves, which custom ought with justice and reason to be retained as coming down from Apostolic tradition. (1.14) Finally, the holy council with paternal affection admonishes, exhorts, prays and beseeches through the b6Wels of the mercy of our GSd, that fiach and all who bear the Christian name will,nov/at last agree and be of orie mind in this sign of unity, in this bond of charity, in this symbol of concord, and that, mindful of so great a majesty and such boundless love of our Lor.d Jesus Chri~st,. who gave His own bel~)ved soul as the price of our salvation and His owri flesh to e~it (1 15), they may believe and ~renerate these sacred mysteries of His body and blood with such cofistancy and firmness of faith, with'such devotion of mind, with such piety and w~rship, that' they may be able to receive frequently that su~ersubstantial bread and that it may. truly be to them the life of the soul and the perpetual health of their mind; that being invigorated by its strength, they may be able after the journey of this miserable pilgrimage toarrive in their heavenly coun-try, there to ~eat, without any veil, the same bread of angels (1 16) which they now eat under sacred veils. 11.0) See I Corinthians 112) Galatians 5:6 115) John 6:56 ff 11:29 113) Matthew 22:11 116) Psalms 77:25 111) See I Corinthians 114) Hebrews 5:3:" 11:28 7:27 404 -"No One Dut: Jesus" Charles F, Donovan, S.J. IN ST. MATTHEW'S account of the Transfigerati0.n ~ occurs ~ seritence which "could serve as an epi.tome of-the religious life, a slogan for those in the path of. spiritual perfection: ~"Neminem viderunt nisi solum desum'" (They saw no one but Jesus). Peter and James. and John beheld' the glory of Christ, "His face shining like the sun and His garments becoming whiteas snow," and they saw Him talking to Moses and Elias. Then the voice of God spoke from the cloud': '~'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; to Hhn.o then, listen." When the apostles heard this, they fell to the ground in fright; but Jesus touched them and told tl~em hot to Bear. When they lobked up, they saw no one but Jesus, ¯ In its context, this little clause, "They saw no 6ne but Jesus," merely means that whereas a moment before the apostles had seen others conversing with Christ, now'.Hg stood before them alone. But taken from its context and considered by itself the sentence can have a variety of spir-itual applications. For instance, it can be taken to sum up the single-minded loyalty, the controlling purpose~ the unfaltering interest, the clear courageous vision of Jesus,. that should dominate oui lives as religious from the time of our entrance to the time of our death. ~ Either of the alternative titles of ~ Kempis' classic gives the gist and the essende of the way of perfection. The busi-ness of ~erfection is on our part a following of Christl an imitation of Christ. And as is obvious, if we are to fol-low the Leader, we must keep our eyes on Him; if weate to ¯ 405 Review for Religious -~,copy thee Model, w.e must never lose sight of Him. All . sorts of-substitute leader'--fakes every one of them, no matter how. attractive--~ry to,win our attention and lo~r- ¯ alty fro~ Christ. For a time we may follow popularity or ease or success or human respect. When we do, we are on dead-end roads¯ because we are not following the one Way t9.perfection: ~f in the big and the trivial crises of life we ¯ imitate Christ, at least to the .extent. 0f asking ourselves .~utomatic~lly, as by second nature, "How would Our Lord act or react in this .situation?" we are doing much. By c.ohStantly appealing to and applying that standard, we are ¯ walking in the fgdtsteps of the saints, those who most suc- ¯ ~.e.?sfully and u;adeviatingly saw noone but Jesus. - "They saw no one but Jesus." This motto is not pro-pbied, of .course, as a justification for a sort of.spiritual dsc~ipism, a flight ~from people and prosak reality to the gonsgling company of Christ. It is not a prop for the asocial, or a defense for those who wish -to reject com-munity life; because it. imports not an exclusive vision of J~sus, but a vision that includesall else in Christ, an ecu-menlcal, all-embracing vision of Christ. If,we live up to this ideal, it means that in all our plans and fun and strivings and world, Christ has the leading role; it means that~for us there is no interest, no pleasure, no effort, no jo.y that is not dominated by Him. When we sa~r that we should see Christ in all men and all men in Christ, that is not just a trick of speech; nor does the phrase recommend a trick of conduct on our part. We are not supposed to play m'ake-bdlie~re and substitute the attractiveness of Christ for the irritating or dull personality of our neighbor.' We don't have to pretend Christ is in our neighbor, especially when that neighbor is a religious, joined to Christ by grace, by mutual choice, and by vow. Christ has told us again and a'gain ,that He is one with, 4O6 " N?~emS~r, 1945 ":'No. ON~ BUT-~JE~US!' identified with, the just soul. Our lover therefore;~fdr~ou} companions, a love of them in Christ and of Christ- in them., involws no pretense, no mental juggling.° It must, like Christ's love fbr all of us, be genuine and sincere. It isa 'lovd with a particular character upon it, a particularbias; a special core and inspir~ition. For in all otirdealings with others, in Our devotion, our service, and our companion-ship, there is one starting point, one term, one focal object~-- Christ, our and their Lord and Lover. "They saw no one but Jesus." This watchword is of ~lpplication and help in various small but not unimportant by-ways of the religious life. For instance, take.~hat saboteur of the spiritual lffe[ distradtions in prayer; We spend .the time of praye.r planning the day's work (work that i~n't half as big to Christ as would be our .loving con- ~rersation during meditation), or grieving for the ~isitors who didn't co.me (visitors whom we left at home, r'emem-. ber, because of our love for Christ), or dreaming of the hap, piness we would have in ~a different community (although Christ is in, this community as well as that, and wants~. me here with Him). Such wasteful dissipating mind-wanderings Would not bother us and spoil the most valu, able partof our day if Our Lord really ruled our heart. We wouldn't be noticing~s0-and-so's absence, ~his one's pos- ¯ ture, or that 6ne's habit at Mass or other common exercises if our eyes, mind, and heart were riveied on the One. All our life we are going to hlive trials. We know that. Certainly we didn't enter religion to get away from them, to get a soft life. And it is in trials that our faith, ofir prac-tical faith in Christ is tested. It's easy to follow Him when things are going smoothly. It's pleasant to walk with Him on cool green.Galilean hills. BU.t the particular following that He enjoined involves a cross. "Take up your cross and follow Me " Whatever it is that gets us down, what- 407 CHAI~'B$' P. DONOVAN ' Revieu~ foroRdi~llous eve~ ,happens to be our cross, whether it is sickness ~or mis-understanding or failure or temptation of our own disposi, tibn or an unaccountable desolation or .spirituals sluggish-ness, whatever form our crosses take, we can bear them courageously,, even lightly, if in them and through them all .we See only 3~sus. ~ Remember those Sisters whom Father De Smet, him-self one of God's heroes, was bringing from'l~urope to America.The boat trip was unusually hard~ and long (they.had to go around South America to reach the west cdast in those days) and the poor Sisters began to compl~in. Father De Smet made this beautiful reproach: "I offered you an opportu.nity and you are making it a sacrifice." For the moment the Sisters viewed the arduous crossing with natural eyes only. Although they were going to America' to work for Christ, they could not see Christ on the way, upon the tossing waters o~ the Atlantic or of the Pacific. :NO doubt, after their holy ~ompanion's reminder, they saw ,Jesus again and cried in their hearts like St. ,John upon .other waters, "It is the Lord." ~ Why do we lose the clear perspective, the selfless~purity of intention that was .ours on entering religion? St. Thomas More says°somewhere that a man who gives up authority and fortune to follow Christ in the way of religious life may soon be striving anxiously for any powe.r he can gain, even if it is nothing more than the high office of tolling the bell. The SiSter who three years ago ~vas ready .to follow Christ's call to the ends of the earth, whatever the cost in suffering or 'humiliation~ to~la~ is disconsolate and bitter because she is given the third instead of the .fourth grade. Ambition, rivalry,]ealousy, c~liques--these ready and time-proven tools of Satan, chillers of fervor, spoilers of happi-ness for individuals and communities ~--get a foothold for only one reason: Christ getsp~ashed to one side, is ~ometimes 408 " ° 1945- "No ONE BUT JESUS" even pushed out of sight. And as the old saw has it, out of sight, but of mind. . . " Life becomes complicated and tense and emotionally snarled only when we lose thfit ciear vision. -Wh~ wea~ri-ness; the 'fever, and the fre~ of which the poet speaks are °inevitable where little idols of selfishness, false gods of ambition or self-indulgence are ¯set up in the place, of Jesus on the altar of out thoughts and desires. Noviceship sirn-plicity, youthful joy,., deathbed clarity are ours as long as we remain true to that .ca.pitul~tion to Cl'irist which we made at.the start of our religio.us, life. There is b~Jt on~ anchb£ one goal, one beacom one spouse for usHe of ¯ .whom the Father says, to us as to the apostie~, :'This, is.my beloved Son in whom i am well ple~ised; to Him,. theft, listen." BOoks.Received " (From¯ August 20 to'October 20) " FREDERIC PUSTET CO~, New York and Cincinnati. ¯ . . , dourney 'in the Night. By Rev. Father Brice, C.P. $2.50. Stars, By Rev. Gile~ Staab. O.F.M.Cap. $2.00., LONGMANS, GREEN ~ Co., New York and Toronto. The Heart.of Man. By Gerald Vann, O.P. $2.00. . THE BRUCE PUI~LISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. " The Wool Merchant of Segooia. By Mabel Farnum. $2.00. The Life of Our Lord, By Sister 3aneMarie, O.P., and Sister Anne Catherine, C.S.J, $1.00 (Paper). Speech Models. "Selected and Edited by William R. Duffey a~d Aloysius Croft. $2.5.0. Tl~e Religion Teacfier and ll~e World. By .Sister Mary Rosalia, Rev. 3ohn J. Considine, M.M., and Sister Mary Julian Bedier. $1.00 (Paper.). " Heads abooe the LITURGICAL PROCEEDINGS ,~ - National Liturgical Week: 1944 is a record of the Fifth Annual Liturgical Week held.in N~w York last' December. It con'~ain'-s all prepared papers, ~ead at the meeting and brief summaries'of the discussions. Also includ~'d ire five papers read at the Liturgical Conference meeting held at St. Meinrad's the previous October. There i& a notable foreword by His Excellency, Archbishop Spellman. A reading list and an index complete the volume, which is published by The Liturgi~ cal C6nferehce,¯605 No. Michigan Blvd., Chlcago~ . ~. Moral TheOlogy t:or,l:verybody Ge')a~ld Kelly,,S.J~. THE occasion formy present remark~ is the publication ¯ !n i~nglish .of Father Heribert Jone's Moral" "The, ology,1 which it'is my not unpleasant task to review. In writing my review I am taking a cue from the" jacket of the book, which commimds it to pastors "as a. quick and convenient means for rendering, decisions in cases of con-s_ cience," to young priests and seminarians "to facilitate the repetition of Moral Theology,'-' and to the educated laity to. help them "in solving many of ~the .minor problems of' conscience that occur in their daily lives." For pa_storsl for other priests (young and old), and for seminarians who-have begun their Course of theology, my review can be very brief. Father Jone is ~/first-class moralist an~t canoeist. In.his c(~mmentary off The Code (Geset.z-buCh) 2 and in his one-volume .moral theology he has mani-fested toe a remarkab!e degree the power of' selecting impor.tant things and Of presenting his.material in a clear, ,br'ief fashion. Ndt the least of his accompiish~ents is a wholesome "modernizing" of certain sections of moral the- ' ology. For instance, he sketches the pathological obstacles to human activity a,nd he bas_es his necessarily brief remarks on scrupulosity on recent psychological, data. Father Urban Adelman's translation preserves the goodqualities,of the original German, and his adaptation of certain sections (for example, justice and marriage) to the needh bf the American priest is. especially commendable. The boSk is ne.atly pririted and the size is very handy. ~See the. "Book Review" section, p. 426 foi d~tails concerning publisher, l~ric~, etc. '~his has not been translated into English. 410 MORAL THEOLOGY FOR EVERYBODY All this does not mean that the~book is 100 percent flawless. It has its defects; but my impression is that they are few and df re.latively minor importance. For example, a p~iragraph is out of place in'the section on legal adoption; a few opinions seem to be represented as.having more value than they really have; and, though the date of the book .1945, some recent and very important decisions of the Holy See are not referred to. When the book is reprinted it would be well to include an extra page or two indicating the sub~- stance of these decisions. . ~ The jacket also recommends the book to the "educated laity." I trust that I am not misinterpreting the word "laity" in assuming that in the context it refers to all who. are nqt clerics and that it would, therefore, include non-. clerical religioui,- both men ~nd women. At any rate, I am mainly interested in the question of moral theology for religious, and I think that this is an "appropriate 0dcasion for discussing that topic in something more than a super-ficial manner. My remarks on the subject will touch upon these" four questions: should non-clerical religious an~/ moral theology? how much should they, know? and how are they to.get this knowledge? and finally, will the mere reading of Father Jone's book satisfy their needs? Meaning o~: Moral, Theologg Before answering these questions it seems advisable to indicate briefly what moral theology is. An adequate defini-tion may be briefly phrased thus: moral ,theology is the sci-. ence of obligatorg Christian perfection. Moral- theology deals specifically wi'th what we may roughly designate-as the,first two degrees of Christian perfection,3 whereas ascetical theology, according to the more common opinion 8For a description of the three degrees of perfection, confer Father Klaas's, article. "Perfection is UniOn with God," in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, IV, i~P. 259-261. 411 Reuiew for ~eli#ious hdd today; is specifically con~cefned with~the third degree. Moral theology is the science of Christian obligation;~ ascet-ical theology is the science of Christian superero'gation. :. "Obligati6n,~' xherefore; is.-, the moral theologian's/ sphere. He discusses-, the comm~nds of God, of the Church, and of civil~s~ociety that give rise to obligations. He" e~lains the meaning of these precepts, the degree ~ind thee k{nd.of obligation they impose, the way they are to be ful-filled,- the pehalties' for violation, and so forth. He examines the subjective side of obligation: the human conscience and all the factors that concern responsibility before God. Under ~he .same aspect-~obligation--he treats of the divine and ecClesiasticallaws governing :the use of the sacraments, the sacramentals, and indul~gences. Value for Teachers From this thumbnail outline of the scope of moral tbe-ol. ogy it is obvious that at least those religious who have to .teach ,Christian doctrine could profit greatly-by some knowledge-of moral theology. For Christian doctrine inc,!udes the Commandments of God, the precepts of the Church, and certain obligations relative to the sacraments. These are moral subjects. Even in presenting them to small children the teacher who knows something of the science underlying them has a great advantage over_the teacher whose own knowledge is more or less elementary. If we consider merely the formal teaching of Christian doctrine, we may safely say that religious, particularly Sis-ters, are among the most influential "moralists" in the Church in America. They play a most important role in the formation of'c~nsciences. - "Sister says that's wrong. ¯ Sister says we must do this," how. many times have not " such statements become principles of action in the lives of ch!ldren and rehaained so even through adtilt life? That is November, 1945 MORAL ~THEOLOGY FOR EVERYBODY what I mean by '~'influence'"; and it-~cannot be'denied that religious who teach children, exercise such- influenc.e, on oa large scale: And~ I might add here that~ I have no great sympathy for the pe~ssimistic, destructive attitude.that con-centrates on the blunders .:made' by teaching° Sisters and attributes practically all. the harm of malformed consciences to them. The good they have accomplished is tremendous and far~ outweighs the harm done by occasional blunders; ¯ but this good could'be increased and the blunders could ~b~ diminished if the. religious teacher were given some training in the science of Christian morality. ~The moral teaching done by religious is not confined to the religion class. Questions are asked outside of class and advice is sought; and through the answers and the counsel given, consciences are ,,influenced perhaps even more than in the classroom. This is~as if should be. Religious are not mere instructors; their schools are not merely classrooms. The human relationship between the pupil.°and .the reli-gious teacher is,very intimate. If it were not,so, our apos-tolate of teaching would be a very dull one indeed. But with-this extende~ sphere of teaching there is also a~n extended field of opportunity, and. this implies a greater degree of responsibility to be prepared to answer the ques, tions, and to give advice. Since I have touched upon the subject of informal stu-dent counseling I may be pardoned for expanding slightly on that topic. Warm, personal relhtionships between students and teachers are the logical outcome of our system of education: This is. true in all spheres: the elementary. school, the high school, the college, and in so far as reli-gious and priests come in contact with the students--even in the universities. It is perfectly natural, foi i,n~tance, that a high schbol or college girl should place special confidence in a certain Sister; that a boy should have confidence in a 413 GERALD K~LI~Y "'" " ~ Review for Religious Br0t[~er; And because of this confidence they wilt-refer their personal 'problems to the Sister or Brother. ~. The p~rsona~l problems of youth are, of course, quite vari~d;~but certainly many of them pertain to morali[y. The question" of .likes and dislikes, of hot tempers, of char-acter weaknesses, of falling in love, of dean conversation, g!ean reading, clean thinking, conduct at dances and par-ties-~- the~e are but indications of their moral problems. They get puzzled or worried over their moral obligations, and they' will speak about these things to the reli~gious in whom they have confidence. And it seems to me that, Whenever possible, the "religious should be prepared, to answer them. The old cry, '~You'd better see your confes-sor about that," can be overdone. Boys and girls are not able tO talk to everyqne--nor are the rest of us, for that matter--and it may happen t.hat the only confessor avail-able is someone they cannot "open up to." Hence, at least in' those problems that~ do not strictly require the specialized judgment of the priest and the sac~ed priva.cy of the con-fessional, religious teachers ought to think twice before closing their lips with one hand and pointing to the con-fessional with the other. In the problems that I.have indi-cated- the ordinary problems of young people religious who have good judgment and the proper training can give .~veryhelpful counsel. But they must have some training,. some knowledge of the moral principles to be applied. - It will be noticed that in indicating the personal prob-lems of youth I said nothing about the purely physical aspects of sex. I purposely omitted mention of this because I am convinced that it is a special problem. The pa'rents are supposed to give physical sex instruction; but in defect of the ~arents religious are sometimes called upon to sup-ply the needed knowledge. A religious should not do this without an understanding with the parents, if they are 414 November, 1945 ]~'IORAL THEOLOGY FOR EVERY~ODY alive, and without the knowledge and approval of his own superior. Grave misunderstandings can result from a failure to observe these safeguards. Moreover, not every/- one is qualified to give such instruction. Those who do give it should have, not only a.knowledge of the subject, but also a wholesome professional attitude. Otherwise ~they Will manifest a morbid interest, or will be crude in their expression, or will blush and stammer--and all these are fatal mistakes in giving physical sex enlightenment. Before leaving this point of the desirablity of some moral theology for teaching religious, I should like to put the matter in a slightly different wa~. The.imparting of moral instruction, whether formally in the classroom or informally in conversation, calls for an attitude l!hat may b~ characterized as positive, moderate, and objecl!ive. The positive attitude contributes inspiration; it makes moral precepts appear in their true light, as conducive to beauty, harmony, and peace, and nor as balls-and-chain on the feet of joy. The moderate attitude steers the middle course between rigorism and laxism; it overemphasizes neither the divine nor the human elements in the life of Christian per.- fection. The objective attitude removes, as the name implies, the blight of subjectivism in moral teaching and counseling. Not what we as individuals think is right wrgng, but what the Church, through her official do~cu-ments or'approved theologians, teaches is right or wrong-- that is what we are to teach; and that is the one thing with which the truly objective attitude is concerned. The attitude that I have just described may be to soine extent the result of temperament; but only to a relatively slight extent.¢ It is attained chiefly through correct knowl-edge and appreciation of Catholic morality; hence the desirability and even need of some training in moral the-ology for teachers and counselors. 415 ,G~RA~-~D KELLY " : . Review [or Religious ,: . Personal Advantages :. ¯ :The preceding paragraphs,give at l~ast an indication t'hat some knowledge of moral theology is, decidedly bene-ficial for religious ~ngaged in the teaching apostolate. The. sa.me reasonswould apply tO any other apostolate in which the:religious might reasonably be expected to answer ques- .tions about moral matters or to give counsel: for example, n.ursing, and social service. I cannot dwell here on the needs of these other apostolates; but°I should like to say a wo'rd about the value of moral theology in the personal " lives.of the religious. In doing so, it seems advisable to deal'~rst with certain objections that are often voiced when the: question;of moral theology for religious is proposed. . We sometimes hear it said: "Religious lead an ascetical life. They are not s'upposed to live according to the norms of moral, theology." This objection is not asstrong as it is sometimes made to appear. The religious life is certainly an ascetical life, a life dedicated to the perfection of the counsels; and as~ such, the science of it belongs to ascetical the01og~r. From this I am justified in concluding that reli- 'gious ought to know some ascetical theology; but'I am noe justified in concluding that they should not know any moral theology. The f~llowing of Christ in the observance of the counsels does not free religioqs from the obligation of observing the commandments Of "God and precepts of the Church. Religious have the same obligations as. other Catholics, plus a host of other duties. The explanation of these obligations is the function of moral theology. Hence, t.hough it would not be correct to say that-the aim of the religious life is entirely contained in moral theology, it correct to say that it is partially treated there.- And in so far as it is t/eated in .moral thet)logy, this science can ben beneficial to religious. Another obj.ection which is not at all u.ncommon runs 416 ¯ November, 1945 MORAL THEOLOGY FOR E~iERYBOI~Y as follows: "If~you t~acb religious moral theo~logy you, will " be teaching them how far they can go, without cohamitting mortal sin., And they will take advantage Of that knowl-edge and commit many venial sirfS they would otherwise not fiiave committed."., I might m~ntion in passing that the phrasing °of this objection" shows a thoroughly negativ~ and- ~rror~ous concept of m'~ral theology. However, I ~vill not delay on that h~re bUt'~will merely poin~t out a m~ch more fundamental error in this 6bjectibn: namely, it s,fiows a complete lack of confidence in religious idealism. If this obje~fi0ii were really true,'Z'then I believe I could logically conclude that the religious life is°failing in its purpose. _For surely the purpose of the religious" lift is. to-keep alive in us the desire of imitating Christ even beY0n.d the sphere Of, obligation; and.if ev~fi this "desire is lacking in the majo,rity of us, ou~ institut~ have fa~iied~miserably. ~- As a matter of fact, the .objection-may have some weight in the case of a.few; it certhin, ly'does not apply to. religious as a group. If We-consider all religious, we might epitomize tile effects of moral theology on their personal lives somewhat as follow~. For a certain numbei:, th~ effect is entirely n_eutr~il; ~heir lives are neither, better'nor worse for the kiaowledge. In the, case of a comparative few the effect may be evil; they apparently 'abuse the knowledge. -E;cen in these cas~s; however, I doubt if the k~nowledge of moral theology lowers th~ir, ideahsm. Rather, their ideal-ism is already lowered, and the newl,y acquired knowledge helps them to salve their consciences. I ¯believe that.if ~these few had been taught, some moral theology while they were still fervent, it would have had no evil effect on them. Finally, in the case of the majority of religious, the effect of some knowledge is decidedly beneficial. ¯They Understand their own spiritual objectives better and they are able to dis-cuss them ~ith directors and ~onfess6rs more intelligently. 417 "~ERALD KELLY Review 'fop Religious They are fre.ed from needless worries: and many of the averiues that lead to scrupulosity are blocked off. How Much? Granted that most religious would profit by some knowledge Of moral theology, it is quite logical to ask: how much ought they to know? I can hardly give a. perfectly exact general answer to this question, but I can indicat'e certain general norms that might be of service. The first is a negative norm: they do not need a confessor's knowl-edge. _h fair percentge of the matter treated in the ordinary seminary course would be useless for non-clerical religious. On the other hand, speaking positively, it would be Very helpful to know: the fundmental principles, with the more practical applications; the main points considered under each of the Ten Commandments; the ecclesiastical precepts of fast, abstinence;' and the observance of holidays; the' obligations of the vows;, the obligations.pertainlng to the reception 'of the sacraments, particularly of the Eucharist and penance. That is a general 0utlin~. Those engaged in special work might need a bit more. Fbr instance, those teaching in college and the upper grades of high school. might well know something about the Church laws~ con-cerning marriage; nurses would need special training in medico-moral problems; social workers ought to have an acquaintance with the social aspects of Catholic morality. How to Get It? .A mother superior or brother superior might stop me at this point with the pertinent query: '"Fatherl I begin to see that some knowledge of moral th.eology would be "use-ful to many of my subjects, especially the teachers. 'But ple~ise tell me fi6w. they. are going to get this knowledge." That, in the radio parlance of the day, is the $64-question; and, since I led up to it, I ought t.o try to answer it. 418 November, 1945 MORAL THEOLOGY FOR EVERYBODy Religious can learn .some moral theology by reading, especially if the topics are well-developed and more or less self-explanatory. The main disad~vantage of this method is that it is too passive; it affords no practice in the actual solving of problems. Furthermore, if the reading is not directed by someone who knows the needs and the capacities of the religious, much time may be lost; and if the reading matter is very technical, erroneous notions may result. A secbnd method is the lecture system: a professor lec-tures, and the religious listen. A great deal of information can be assimilated in this way and, if.questions are allowed, . many practical problems can be answered. But like leading /it is too. passive. One does not have a real grip on moral principles until one has learned through actual personal effort how to use these principles in solv~ing cases. When I speak of the disadvantages of reading and .the lecture system~ I do not mean to say that they have no value. Properly used, they do impart some knowledge and they furnish a.general idea of the way moral principles are established and applied to concrete problems. But the ideal method is an active class--a class in which the professor explains the main points thoroughly, and the students have time for working problems personally, discussing questions among themselves, and consulting with the professor. Of course, this ideal method takes time. In te.aching Sisters during the summer I have found that it takes two or three 6-week sessions, with a double period each day, to cover the general program I outlined above. And I realize that, consider.ing other needs and the pressure for credits and degrees, very few religious can spare all this time for one subject. Consequently I am not expecting to see reli- ¯ gious swarming~to summer sessions of moral theology with plenty of time for discussions and problems. But surely a few can be spared now~, and there is no harm in hoping and 419 GERALD KELLY planning for future.programs. As a matter of factl in the last decade or two we have made~ great progress~in providing various advanced religion courses for teaching. ~eligious. Personally, I °hope to see the da~i. when a sort of,stream'- lined seminary co~rse-~compris!ng Sacred Scripture, the various branches of theology, and the essentials "of canon law' wili be readily available for many religious. Ea~her Jone's Book What I have said prepares the way for a brief estimate of the ~ralue of.Father Jone's book fo} non-clerical reli-gio~ s. The mere reading_of the book will undoubtedly ft~rnish much valuable information; it is a complete volume moral theology. It is a good book for ready refer-ence when one wants, answers to various problems that are treated explicitly by-the moral theologians: and for this reason it'is a handy book for the community library. But we sh6uld be careful that we do not look for too much from the mere reading of a book like this. Though. it does cover all of moral theology, it is only a compendium. Its full value can be realized only by one who has had a regular course in moral theology. ¯ For one who is just learning it is too brief; so brief, in fact, that, while solving some "minor problems of Consciende" it might .easily create others. In moral theology, as in other subjects, a little knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing.' A fitful word about the value of the book for the laity in general. I believe that the claim ofthe publisher--that it will help them to solve their minor problems of con-science is true, with the ~eserxiatio'n mentioned above: ._namely, that the brevity of treatment may create o.ther problems. Therefore, they ought to.be in a position to supplement :the~ reading with consultation and discussion. 420 :.Decisions. o,C 'he I-Io1 .See Forb/years ago, on December 20, 1905, Pope Pius X issued the Sacra Tridentina S~jnodus, the hist0ry-making decree on frequent Communion. To recall the anniversary, we are r~printing here the hi.he articles that form the positive and practical part of the decree. The Q,ernadrnod-m (referred to in articl~ 7) forbade superiors .to interfere with the reception of Holy Communion on the-part of sub-jects. The obligation of reading this decree ahnually (see article 8) no longer exists, as its contents have been incorporated into the Code. 1. Frequent and daily Communion, as a thing most earnestly desired by Christ Our Lord and by the Catholic Cliurch, should be ope~n to all the f~ithful, of whateverrank and condition of lifd: so that no one who is in the state of grace, and who approaches the holy "table with the right intention, can lawfully be hindered therefrom. 2. A right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the holy table should do so, not out of routine, or vaing]ory, or human re~pect, but for the purpose of pleasing God, of being more closely ¯ united with Him. by charity, and of seeking this divide remedy for his weakness and defects. 3. Although it is more .expe.dient that thos~ who communicate frequen,tly~.or daily should be free from venial sin, especi;qly from . such as are fully deliberate, and from any affection thereto, never-theless it is ~ufficient that they be free from mortal °sin, with the purpose of never sinning .mortally in the future; and. if they. have this sincere purpose, it is impossible but that daily communi~nt~ should" gradually emancipate themselves from even venial sin~, and from all affection thereto. 4. But whereas the Sacraments of the New Law, though they-t~ ke dffect ex opere operato, nevertheless produce a greater effect in proportion as the dispositions of the recipient are better; therefore care is to be taken that Holy Communion bd preceded by very serious preparation, and followed by a suitable thanksgiving according to each one'~ strength, circumstances, and duties. 5. "lbhat the practice of frequent and daily Communion.may be carried out with greater prudence and more abundant merit, the con-fes~ or's advice should be asked. Confessors, however, are to be care-f~ l hot to dissuade any one from frequent and daily Communion., DECISIONg OF THE HOLY SEE provid.ed that be is in a state of grace and' approaches with a right intention. : . ~--. ~ ~- o - o 6. But since it is plain that, by the frequent Or daily reception "of thee Holy Eucharist, union with Christ is fostered, the"spiritual life more abundantly sustained, the souimore richl# endowed with~vir-tues, and an even surer.pledge of everlasting happiness bestowed on th~ recipient; therefore parish priests, confessors and preachers in accordance with the approved teachings of theRoman Catechism (Part ii, cap, 4, n. 60) are frequently, and with great zeal to exhort the faithful to this devout and salutary practical. ~7. F.requ~nt and daily Communion is to-be promoted e.speciallv in religious orders and .congregations of all kinds: with regard .to which, however, the decree Quernadrnodum,'issued on the 17th De-cember, 1890,.by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars is .to' remain in force. It is also to be promoted especially in ecclesias~ical~ seminaries, where students are preparing for the service of the altar: as also in all Christian establishments, of whate~er kind, for training of yotith. , 8. In the case of religious institutes, whether of solemn or simpl~ ;cows, in whose rules, constitutions, or calendars, Communion is a~ssi~ned to certain fixed days, such regulatio.ns are to be regarded°as directive and not preceptive. In such cases the appointed nfimber of Communions Should be regarded a.s a minimum, and not as setting. a limit tothe devotion 6f the religious. Therefore, freedom of access to the Eucharistic table, whetiaer more frequently or daily, must always be allowed them, according to the principles above laid d~wn in this decree. And in .order that all religious, of. both sexes may c!early, understand the provisions of this decree, the Superior of each house is to see that it is read in community, in the verna~ular, every year ~¢ithin the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi. " 9. Finally, after the publication of this decree, all ecclesiastical; writers are to cease from contentious controversies concerning the dispositions r