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

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

Issue 55.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1996. ; lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and.apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLUVCA.SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, ,\IN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1996 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 ~:ommercial 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. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1996 * VOLUME55 Q NUMBER6 contents directions 566 583 The Dialogue of Conversion: Toward Jubilee 2000 Jeffrey Gros FSC proposes ways in which religious communities can participate in the ecumenical dimension of preparing for and celebrating the bimillenary jubilee of the incarnation. A Way of Being Church: Journey, Serve, and Evangelize Erik Karl Riechers SAC explains the Union of Catholic Apostolate as a Pallottine family model for sharing a spirituality and ministry. models 593 Frances Cabrini: A Woman for Today Rita E. Goldman paints a w~rm and human portrait of Frances Cabrini as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her canonization. 601 The Cistercian Martyrs of Algeria, 1996 M. Basil Pennington OCSO relates the story of the seven Cistercians who were abducted and killed in Algeria. Review for Religious life and death 613 619 Death Questions and Life Questions Cathy Arata SSND builds upon her apostolic experience in E1 Salvador in facing the hard questions of life. Prophetic Sorrow a Sign of the Times Beverly Anne LoGrasso OSU presents the Ursuline community's grief response to the rape and murder of two of their sisters. consecrated life 625 640 Full of Grace: Another Look at the 19th-Century Nun Dolores Liptak RSM relates the congregational stories of the 19th-century American sisters who transformed negative images and made of their own lives powerfully attractive invitations for service. "Objective Superiority" in Vita Consecrata Dennis J. Billy CSSR critiques the phrase "objective superiority" and presents an interpretation in the context of both Vatican II documents and Vita consecrata. 564 646 651 departments Prisms L.,'¢~,-s Canonical Counsel: Canon. 127 Technical Requirements for Advice or Consent Book Reviews 666 Indexes to Volume 55 November-December 1996 prisms Life and death issues are always with us. At times they touch more poignantly into our experience. Traditionally the November liturgical calen-dar is~ associated with death since we begin by remem-bering all the faithful departed and through the Sunday Eucharists we face somber scripture readings about the end times. December's liturgical calendar, on the other hand, looks more to life, celebrating Mary's conception as the "immaculate one" within a hope,filled Advent sea-son which culminates with the star-bright birth of Jesus our Savior. Prisms provided by life and death issues-have us face the God- and faith-questions in our lives. They are prisms necessary if we are to value realistically who we are, who we are becoming, and what we do, what happens to us. God provides us with many other prisms which help us see and appreciate the everyday richness of our lives and ministries as Christian men and women. Some people seem to little appreciate that we all use prisms to view life, accept values, and relate to God. Perhaps many of us fail to make use of the variety of prisms available through which to develop a more ade-quate and vibrant understanding of God, self, church, and world. Rather, some seem to choose to look at life through a single monochromatic lens or through a spattered one that allows only darkness and light and voids the rich sub-tlety of dawn and sunset beauty. Christmas presents us with an ever startling prism through which we see God's presence to ourselves and our world. We celebrate God's dialogue with us through the Word by whom all things came into being and in whom we find life. In listening to John's majestic pro- Review for Religious logue about the Word becoming flesh, I find the imagery of prisms and of dialogue all of a piece. John Paul II says, "By dialogue we let God be present in our midst; for as we open ourselves in dia- 'logue to one another, we also open ourselves to God." Dialogue-- entering into the presence of the Word--is similar to the various prisms of creation which allow us to truly seek and find a labor-ing God active in our world. Paul VI, too, had boldly proclaimed that "dialogue is a new way of being church." Drawing upon the imagery of the Word made flesh, he was reclaiming evangelization as an essential ele-ment of living ~the Christian life. Just as some people close them-selves from appreciating God's pervasive love that is visible in creation only through a variety of prisms, we can be people closed to the call to be church through dialogue. We can talk only to those people who think exactly as we do. We can read nothing that would challenge 6r broaden our mind-set. We can ,enter into conversation not to listen or to learn, but only to accept agreement or refute and "win the day." Not only evangelization, but life itself is being closed down--with other~ and so with God. It can happen to any of us--bishop, priest, religious, or layperson--who may claim the possession of truth in such a way that dialogue is neither possible nor desired. Every Christmas morn faces' us with this question: How do we find the Word in a manger--today? Like shepherds on the watch or like teachable magi, are we avail-able to an alien messenger's voice for direction or to a light from afar to help guide our way? As we approach the third,.millennium, John Paul has indi-cated that dialogue encouraged by the church is fourfold: the dia-logue of life found in people's sharing as neighbors, the dialogue of actioti collaborating for a world more humfin and more divine, the dialogue of sharing the riches of offr spiritual experience and helping one another find the Absolute, the dialogue of special-ists exchanging theologiFal insights to deepen understanding and appreciation of religious heritages and spiritual values. No one of us can remain aloof today from at least some aspects of this fourfold dialogue. Dialoguemprivileged prisms in our Christian responsibility to be neighbors, ecumenists, and evangelists! All of us who dialogue with you our readers in each issue of this journal pray that you be blessed with many grace-illumined prisms .coloring your Christmas season. David L. Fleming SJ November-December 1996 directions JEFFREY GROS The Dialogue of Conversion: Toward Jubilee 2000 Zeal for the unity of the church is central to Roman Catholic spirituality. As Christians move, toward the cel-ebration of the opening of the third millennium, we have been called to gospel, renewal in all dimensions of church life, especially church unity: "Among the most fervent petitions which the church makes., is that unity among all Christians of the various confessions will increase until they reach full communion.''1 For religious this is a particularly opportune moment for service in the church. Prayer, conversion, and spiri-tual renewal--to which religious have long known them-selves to be consciously called--are essential for understanding and engaging in the church's ecumenical commitment: "Concern for restoring unity pertains to the whole church, faithful and clergy alike. It extendS to every-one, according to the ability of each, whether it be exer-cised in daily Christian living or in. theological and historical studies.''2 This is a special time .for renewal of commitments already made and for deepening the knowledge, dialogue, and prayer that will serve the unity for which Christ prayed. This .essay will suggest how religious communities, especially communities of contemplative and retired per- Jeffrey Gros FSC writes from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; 3211 4th Street, N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017. Review for Religious sons, can participate in the ecumenical dimension of preparing for and celebrating the bimillenary jubilee of the incarnation (see Pope John Paul's apostolic exhortation dated 25 March 1996, Vita consecrata §44). After the brief introduction, we will discuss~ (1) the jubilee theme and its preparation, (2) a schedule of prayer, (3) a program of spiritual reading, and (4) the ministry of hospitality for dialogue. Of course, the social-justice and evange-lization elements suggested for jubilee preparation also entail ecumenical dimen-sions and possibilities. The reception of the results of ecumenical dialogues is a key element in the new evangelization of which Pope John Paul so frequently speaks. With the publication of Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, religious communities have been challenged to set up commissiofis within their institutes and appoint coor-dinators for ecumenical leadership.3 Obviously the tasks of such a commission and coordinator can begin with seeing to the ecumenical component of initial and continuing formation and with applying the directory's suggestions to hospitals, schools, retreat centers, social-service and advocacy, programs, and the many other are~is where religious provide leadership and witness. Vim consecrata further spells out ways that religious can contribute to church unity (§§2, 100, and 101). However, the publication of the apostolic letter Tertio millen-nio adveniente, with its detailed program leading up to the year 2000, gives such commissions an opportunity to design a prayer cycle and educational program that can enable all, especially retired religious, to participatei a.ccording to their station in life. Obviously, diocesan ecumenical officers and local ecumenical agencies can be of great help in such planning and' implementa-tion in the communities. The specificity of the Holy Father's pro-gram lends itself to rich adaptation in local communities. The publication of the encyclical Ut unum sint, with its enthu-siasm and rich spiritual emphasis, provides a significant resource for religious community reflection. As Pope John Paul notes in the The publication of the encyclical Ut unum sint, with its enthusiasm and rich spiritual emphasis, provides a significant resource for religious community reflection. November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion . encycl!¢.al: "A new task lies before us: that of receiving the results already achieved," which "must involve the whole people of God" (§80). The five years in preparation provide the church an oppor-tunity to pray and reflect over the results offered to the church for reception: "With regard to other Christians, the principal docu-ments of the Commission on Faith and Order [of the World Council of Churches] and the statements of numerous bilateral dialogues have already provided Christian communities with use-ful tools for discerning what is necessary to the ecumenical move-ment and to the conversion it must inspire" (UUS §17). These statements can find their way into the spiritual reading, prayer, and discussion of religious communities during the course, of the years of preparation for the jubilee celebration. The Jubilee Theme In the pope's letter on the jubilee, he emphasizes the social-justice implications of reordering society implicit in the theme selected, Leviticus 25, which recounts the biblical jubilee in which captives and slaves are liberated, land redistributed, and relations among God's people reordered. In addition to unity among Christians, conversion to a' new way of viewing society and widespread study of the church's social teaching are essential ele-ments. The World Council of Churches has already selected this same text, °under the theme "Return to God, Rejoice in Hope," for its fiftieth jubilee, to be celebrated at its 1998 assembly in Africa, In the first section of the pope's letter, he addresses the ques-tion of God's will .for the church, remarking that ~'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today," and in the second section he lays out his own philosophy of Christian history, which is based on the theology of the incarnation. Within this theological and his-torical context, he elaborates in the third section his vision of the jubilee preparation and, in the fourth, its specific stages. We will enumerate some of the ecumenical challenges and resources that come into play on the road toward the realization of this hope. We present the stages of preparation. There are five specific stages proposed for the years between the letter's publication and the jubilee. The first phase is remote preparation, 1994-1996. It includes reflection on sinfulness and the need of repentance, iden-tification of the difficulties on both sides of the sinful divisions in the church, preparation of a program of prayer for the Holy Review for Religious Spirit's gift of unity, "the promoting of fitting ecumenical initia-tives," and repentance for acts of violence and intolerance. This will entail careful historical study and reconciliation of memories (UUS §2). For this, members of religious orders and institutes may wish to look into their own histories to discern what role their predecessors may have played in the negative his-tory of relations among churches and religious groups. They can be led by the examples of religious orders (Oblates and Jesuits) during the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas. Also there will be attempts to deal with the religious indifference, the widespread loss of percep-tions of transcendence, and the crisis of obedience that are the experience of our time. Finally, there will be an attempt to create an ecumenical martyrology of common heroes in the faith who have suffered and whose commitment to the cross of Christ can bring us into deeper unity with one another (UUS §84). Again, religious orders and institutes may figure prominently on these lists, particularly members who gave their lives in the past fifty years in the common struggle against communism and totalitar-ianism. This remote preparation will be followed by three years devoted to specific themes: (1) 1997 will be devoted to Christ, recalling the common baptism in which all Christians share and which is the root of .the real, if yet imperfect, communion .that supports our common pilgrimage toward full unity. (2) 1998 will focus on the Holy Spirit .fostering the many charisms of the peo-ple of God, linking Christians of the northern and southern hemi-spheres, and giving strong impetus toward church unity. This will also be the year of the World Council Assembly. Catholic engage-ment in this jubilee celebration and its preparation can be integral to the program of the churches moving together toward the year 2000, (3) 1999 will be devoted to God the Father, with a focus on penance, the preferential option for the poor, the dialogue of cul-tures, and women's rights. In this year the Holy Father suggests an interreligious focus, especially with our fellow monotheists, Jews and Muslims. Here the leadership of Pope John Paul is well ahead of the church as a whole,.with his pastoral visits, his gath-erings of religious leaders in Rome and Assisi, and his Vatican documents and addresses on dialogue.4 Finally, the jubilee itself is to be planned "and carefully pre-pared in an attitude of fraternal cooperation with Christians of November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion other denominations and traditions, as well as of grateful openness to those religions whose representatives might wish to acknowl-edge the joy shared by all the disciples of Christ" (TMA §55). Certainly such an ambitious project ~will take skill in dialogue and outreach at ever} level of Catholic life, building on the thirty years of developing bonds of trust and affection among the churches. Religious have a significant contribution to make on this spiritual journey. ~, Prayer Cycle in therJubilee Preparation ¯ Some will participate actively in the planning and designing of the jubilee events and the engagement of the Catholic and ecu-menical communities in the dialogues, prayer opportunities, and 'study that will contribute to reconciliation. However, all religious can participate in prayer, which is at the very center of ecumeni-cal activity. In this section we will suggest particular themes according to the years leading up to the jubilee and, in the next, themes for spiritual reading which can enhance the prayer. A province or community can ask some of its members to work with some ecumenical partners to develop a set of petitions for prayer ,during the course of each year, and possibly to draw on the prayer resources of the partners.'If it is feasible, a religious com-munity can invite a leader from another church, or even a number of members of the congregation, for common prayer and reflection. Such prayer arrangemen.ts can be more or less detailed, depending on the prayer styles and flexibility of different communities,s During the time focused on early preparation and repentance, the encyclical Ut unum sint and the apostolic letter Tertio millen-nio adveniente can be reviewed to develop prayer intentions, read-ings, and themes. The themes of charity and conversion,the common martyrology, and the healing of memories all provide material for prayer of .thanksgiving, repentance, and petition to dispose the community .for the journey toward the jubilee cele-bration andthe fostering of closer Christian relationships, Specific prayers and readings on the communion (koinonia) among the churches and the goal of full communion can be drawn from World Council resources.6 General agreements on such themes as Scripture and Tradition, Eucharist and Ministry, Authority and Teaching, and Mary can provide a prayerful preparation for more specific intentions as the jubilee draws closer. Review for Religious The year 1996, because it calls specifically for the Roman Catholic Church to recall its own failures and to repent its own complicity in the divisions among Christians, might well focus on the African American churches and the peace churches (the Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites, and Quakers). Slavery and the continuing racism and violence in American society make it par-ticularly appropriate to pray.with and for these two groups of churches in repentance, confession, reconcilia-tion, and thanksgiving.7 The historic peace churches have been persecuted by members of almost all the churches, including Roman Catholics, because of their refusal to compromise with state-sponsored and church-legitimated violence. We should not only pray for and with these Christians, but also let our prayers and actions for peace benefit from their spirituality and the discipline of their nonviolent lifestyle. Because these churches are small, it may not be easy to find members in each community, but their spiritual literature is rich and widely available. Christ, our common baptism, and the grace we share with other Christians will be emphasized in 1997. During this year, the 450th anniversary of the Council of Trent's, Decrees on Justification, it is hoped that Roman Catholics and Lutherans can proclaim, in a binding joint declaration, a common understand-ing of Christ's justifying grace received in faith by Christians. If such an agreement on grace, sin, merit, and faith were to be suc-cessful, it would be a great contribution to our common spiritual life and a basis for effective movement beyond the 16th centur)i's condemnations. Prayer for and with the Lutheran churches, for the success of such an agreement and for the influence it could have on the life of church members, and quiet meditation on the meaning of God's love in Jesus Christ, as proclaimed especially in Paul's Letter to the Romans, can make this a year that sees our commitment to Christ renewed and our full .communion with the Lutheran churches realized. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will also be considering proposals for full communion with Episcopalians and with three Reformed or Calvinist churches: Presbyterian, United Christ, our common baptism, and the grace we share with other Christians will be emphasized in 1997. November-December 1996 Gros * The Dialogue of Conversion Church of Christ, and Reformed Church in America. These hopes and proposals for reconciliation will suggest opportunities for prayer and reflection too. Wherever Christ's will for the unity of the church is being realized, spiritually sensitive Catholics will be prayerfully attentive. During this year we can als0 include in our prayers the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East. These three traditions all share with us the sacraments and bishops in the apostolic succession; a common Trinitarian and Christological faith, some elements of which have been clarified only recently in ecumenical dialogue; and a common understanding of the catholic demands of full communion in a visible, sacramental church. Existing tensions, however, especially in Eastern Europe .but also occasionally in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, call for sensitivity, repentance, and reconciliation. Prayer for particular Orthodox and Catholic churches around the world, for their peace and reconciliation, is an important contribution to Christ's will for unity. The rich liturgical traditions of the Christian East can provide resources for community prayer and celebration for and with these churches. During 1997 we can also focus prayer on our relationship with Episcopalians and Anglicans worldwide. We share many spir-itual gifts. The dialogue has moved forward with unexpected pos-itive results, so much so that in 1994 the Holy See could say that "no further work" was necessary at this time on the theology of Eucharist and ministry, indicating that the agreements produced to date and the subsequent clarifications show a common faith as regards these two areas of our life. Obviously, the question of women's ordination and under-standings of authority and papal primacy are still under discussion. The Archbishop of Canterbury indicated, on behalf of the Anglican communion, a willingness to accept Pope John Paul's 1995 invitation to talk about how the papacy can be renewed to better serve the unity of the church. Regarding all the progress made to date, there is much for which to be grateful; for the broad common heritage of spirituality, there is much to celebrate; and, in anticipation of future steps toward full communion, there is much for which we must pray. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer provides many resources for prayer in our religious com-munities as we yearn for the day when full Eucharistic communion can be celebrated together. Review for Religious The year 1998 will be characterized by the celebration of the Assembly of the World Council of Churches. This is an oppor-tunity to make use of the Bible-study and prayer materials that will be produced for the occasion.8 This will also be a year dedicated to the Holy Spirit, to the role of the laity, and to enhanced rela-tions between peoples in the northern and southern hemispheres. It will be a year to raise up special prayers for the Roman Synod for the Americas and its contributions to Christian reconciliation and a year for leadership by laypersons in ecu-menism. There are local ecumenical confer-ences and agencies that can provide partners in getting prayer materials ready to help com-munities focus on the churches' common wit-ness in their immediate areas. In particular, with the year dedicated to the Holy Spirit, religious communities may wish to pray with and for various Protestant churches with which the Catholic Church is committed to full communion. United Methodists, Presbyterians, the United Church of 'Christ, Disciples of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America all participate in dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church with the hope of full communion. Most of these churches have participated with the Catholic Church in the liturgical move-ment and have common prayers and liturgical texts that can form the basis for prayer services. Their local representatives and mem-bers of religious communifies could profitably share with one another their common or different experiences and perceptions of their church life. Our relationships with some other churches look, at this time, more toward mutual understanding than toward full sacramental communion. The year 1998 should provide opportunities for prayer for and with Baptists, Pentecostals, and other independent Evangelical churches. More often than with them, we may find ourselves prayingJbr them and for their conversion to an open communication and dialogue with the Roman Catholic and other Christian churches. However, some of these Christians may be willing to pray with us even if there are few other areas of col-laboration to which they would be open. Pope John Paul suggests that 1999 be dedicated to the Father The year 1998 will be characterized by the celebration of the Assembly of the World Council of Churches. November-December 1996 Gros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion and to interreligious dialogue. We can pray particularly for Jews and Muslims and engage in common prayer when this is possible. While there are some fine resources available for Christian and Jewish prayer, little has been produced for local use in interfaith worship.? Care should be taken to produce any materials jointly with those with whom prayer is planned. The diocesan ecumeni-cal officer can assist. As with Christian groups, this can be a time of reflecting on the sad heritage of past relationships (here, for example, the cru-sades, the inquisition, the holocaust) as we move through repen-tance to reconciliation and solidarity. This is a time when one can raise i~rayers to God for other families of faith and draw on some of their traditions, like Hindu yoga and Buddhist meditation, to enrich our own Christian prayer life. Also during this year, prayerful reflection on the poor, on the roles of women, and on the maternal aspects of God can nourish the spirituality and prayer life of communities and individual religious. Finally, the year 2000 is devoted to the anniversary of the incarnation, with the Holy Father hoping for a major ecumenical gathering in Jerusalem, an interfaith gathering (possibly at Mr. Sinai), and planning a Roman Catholic Eucharistic gathering in Rome. During this year, thought and prayer can look towards the harvest time, when the years of ecumenical dialogue and prayer yield their fruit: a thoroughgoing ecumenical council of Orthodox, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians celebrat-ing full communion. The fruit of much prayer and study can show itself in local prayer meetings and events of celebration. On the first Sunday of Advent there will be a celebration of reconciliation in the United States for several Protestant. churches that will come together, after forty years of dialogue, to become the Church of Christ Uniting (COCU). Prayers for and with these churches for the Holy Spirit's blessing on this venture will be impor~tant for all Christians. During this period before the event, the Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches and the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the International Council of Community Churches will be deciding whether they are ready for this step toward full communion. Catholics can join with these Christians in prayer as they walk the path towarO unity. Catholics can be with them in longing for Review for Relig4ous the day when more Christian churches join in similar celebra-tions of full communion. Spiritual Reading in Preparat~ion for the Jubilee As a time of prayer before the great celebration of the incar-nation, these five years can include reflection informed by read-ing that serves the same goal of deepened conversion to Christ's will for the unity of the' church. The practical suggestions here will touch three levels of reading: church documents, ecumenical doc- ¯ uments, and more general spiritual-reading resources. Partners from other churches and communities, if they are familiar with their own spiritual traditions, can provide appropriate sugges-tions to meet particular spiritual needs. While there are many church documents that can provide understanding and stimulus for our prayer life, only four recent texts will be suggested here. The most useful may be the encycli-cal Ut unum sint because of its spiritual core and the enthusiasm with which it is written. Like all of the encyclicals of Pope John Paul, it includes much that is.familiar to those following the ecu-menical movement over the'last thirty years. However, if a para-graph or two are taken for meditative reading each day, with reflection on how the pope's comments relate to one's own expe-rience~ and how one is challenged by the values he lays out, this text can be of significant help. The Holy Father's emphasis on renewal of the individual and the church, on the centrality of prayer and dialogue to nourish prayer, on the dialogues of con-version and charity, on the centrality of love and truth, on the reception and celebration of gifts from others, and on openness to repentance and change, all provide profound opportunities for conversation with God about his will for us and for the church. The apostolic letter Tertio millennio adveniente is of a different character. Its first two sections, on theology and history, are rather dense. Careful reading, however, and even exploring of events and ideas laid out here and in the rest of the letter will be a help-ful orientation as one begins these five carefully programmed years of reflection and prayer. Some of the anniversaries recalled in the second section of the letter will lead us to want to read about certain segments of the Christian community, about certain saints and Christian leaders, and about the development of the church in different cultures. OUr prayer life can be nourished by November-December 1996 Gros * The Dialogue o~ Conversion biography and Christian history as we carry our heritage toward the future. Some may find the other two documents less spiritually nour-ishing since they have a more specific purpose. For those, however, who would choose to reflect on them prayerfully, they have a sig-nificant contribution to make. The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism is a more formal document, with theological and juridical content. For those who are involved in leadership or who wish to reflect on the position of the Catholic Church, this text is foundational. The sections on Ecumenical Formation and on Communion in Life and Spiritual Activity pro-~ vide important bases for reflecting on one's community's and one's own spiritual formation and on ministry in the light of what God is doing in the church. The apostolic letter on the churches of the East, Orientale lumen, will help, during the year 1997, in ini-tiating reflection on Christological understandings that have emerged in dialogues and on the spiritual riches of this half of the tradition catholic?° Much of what one finds in this text is also outlined in Ut unum sint. From our dialogues with other churches, we are fortunate to have very rich results to nourish our spiritual reading and our spiritual lives. Though some of these are technical texts, all of them are oriented toward bringing us closer to Christ and his mysteries and to one another in the church God has willed for us. The reconciliation which they are meant to serve is as deeply spiritual as it is theological and institutional. Therefore, it is use-ful for every religious house and spiritual renewal center to have a library where these ecumenical results are available for reading and reflection.11 These documents should facilitate for us a pro-cess of spiritual .reconciliation by giving us a deeper appreciation of the gifts of the other Christian churches and help us make the unity to which they witness a part of our own spiritual life. For each year coming up, there are significant resources for our reading and reflection. In 1996, getting to know the African American and peace churches can enrich our own faith and com-mitment to justice and peace in our spiritual lives.12 In 1997, deci-sions will be before the Catholic and Lutheran churches concerning the doctrine of grace, a focus on Christ's saving love that can renew all Christians.~3 This theme of justification by faith has produced some important spiritual-reading volumes in English.14 The Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue has already Review for Religious produced some marvelous results that enrich our sacramental understanding.~5 We are fortunate to have the texts of the Orthodox, both Eastern and Oriental, available.~6 For special attention in 1998, various documents already recommended and the specific preparatory materials for that year's World Council Assembly provide ample resources. In this year many could well reflect on the history and future of the churches together in the World Council.17 An extensive set of materials on Christian-Jewish and interreligious dialogue has been developed for reading and reflection; it can be especially useful during 199928 For more general spiritual reading, there is a variety of resources available. For 1996, books on conversion, ecumenical journeys, rec-onciliation, and ecumenical spirituality are widely available29 The African American and peace church traditions provide rich prayer and meditation resources for 1997.20 Spiritual biographies are a way of understanding the spiritual journeys of early and later Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Christians. Lives of Luther and resources from Orthodox and Anglican spiritual writ-ers can enrich one's sensitivity and appreciation for these tradi-tions. 2 ~ In 1998 (and earlier too) a wide variety of Bible-study resources will be available from the. World Council of Churches. That would be a year to reflect on the spiritualities of John Calvin, John Wesley, and Roger Williams and on the Christian commu-nities of which they were leaders.22 As a result of Thomas Merton's influence and the East/West monastic dialogue, religious are per-haps more acquainted with some interreligious resources than they are with such ecumenical onesfl3 In any case, 1999 provides an opportunity to deepen and broaden our reading in various living spiritual traditions of world religions.24 Approaches to other believers can, moreover, enrich our understanding of and rela-tionship to fellow Christians of other churches.~5 Finally, the jubilee year itself can be a time of reflection on the hopes of the whole Christian community for an ecumenical coun-cil that will truly unite Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant churches.26 Our prayer life can be nourished by biography and Christian history as we carry our heritage toward the future. Noventber-Decentber 1996 Gros * The Dialogue of Conversion The Ministry of Hospitality Institutional and theological efforts have their contribution to make toward visible unity. More importan( are the spiritual resources that foster zeal for God's will for the church. But the relational dimension of ecumenical spirituality can be realized only by people's concrete experience of the "dialogue of conver-sion" of which Pope John Paul speaks so eloquently in Ut unum sint. These five years provide an opportunity for any.community, no matter how mobile or sedate, to invite fellow Christians of other churches in for prayer, a meal, and possibly a discussion, depending, on people's time and interest (see VC §101). If more care can be given to such an invitation, communities can share some common reading before, the visit and can invite a Christian leader, her or his spouse, and even some members of their church. The ecumenical officers of the diocese can be of particular assis-tance in making these contacts and advising on appropriate ser-vices and programs. Pope John Paul outlines the basis for this dimension of the ecumenical spirituality: , If prayer is the "soul" of ecumenical renewal and of the yearning for unity, it is the basis and support for everything the council defines as dialogue. This definition is certainly not unrelated to today's personalist way of thinking. The capacity for dialogue is rooted in the nature of the person and his dignity. As seen by philosophy, this approach is linked to the Christian truth concerning man as expressed by the council: Man is in fact "th~ only creature on earth which God willed for itself"; thus he cannot "fully find him-self except through a sincere gift of himself." Dialogue is an indispensable step along the path toward human self-real-ization, the self-realization both of each individual and of every human community. Although the concept of dialogue might appear to give priority to the cognitive dimension, all dialogue implies a global, existential dimension. It involves the human subject in his or her entirety; a dialogue between communities involves in a particular way the subjectivity of each. (UUS §28) Religious, with their experience of community and renewal, of dialogue and governance since Vatican II, are in a particularly advantageous position to model and expand this dimension of ecumenical spirituality in preparation for the jubilee. As we Christians move toward the third millennium with hopes of full communion growing ever stronger, we support our Review for Religious prayer with the disciplines of spiritual reading, meditation, com-mon worship, and dialogue. In Vita consecrata the Holy Father calls upon religious to notice their excellent opportunity to con-tribute to the experience of koinonia, which lies at the basis of hopes for full communion among the churches: "A great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the church as communion . Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion as 'w.itnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design.' The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking, and act-ing which enables the church to grow in depth and extension" (VC §46). The first thirty ~,ears of Roman Catholic ecumenical involve-ment have been characterized by getting to know our ecumenical partners and understanding their churches, theology, and spiri-tualities. The theological dialogues have been most productive. In 1997 we are beginning.a third phase of the dialogue,27 This spir-itual journey from dialogue to decision is a spiritual resource that needs to be available to all Catholics. As our relationship with the Lord deepens in preparation for the celebration of his incar-nation, so "in the deep personal dialogue which each of us must carry on with the Lord in' prayer, concern for unity cannot be absent. Only in this way, in fact, will the concern fully become part of the reality of our life and of the commitments we have taken on in the church" (UUS §27). Notes ' John Paul II, Tertio millennio adveniente ("As the Third Millennium Draws Near"), Origins 24, no:' 24 (24 November 1994): §16 (hereafter Ta4A). 2 John Paul II, Ut unum sint ("That All May Be One"), Origins 25, no. 4(8 June 1995): §19 (hereafter UUS). 3 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, Origins 23, no. 9 (29 July 1993): §§50-51. 4 Red}mptoris missio, Origins 20, no. 34 (31 January 1991): §29. s One might suggest a prayer for each year. For example, the Magnificat for 1996 (repentance), the Te Deum for 1997 (Christ), the Veni Sancte Spiritus for 1998 (Holy Spirit), and the Nicene Creed for 1999 (God the Father). November-December 1996 Gro~ ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion 6 Thomas Best and Gtinther Gassmann, eds., On the Way to Fuller Koinonia (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993). Gtinther Gassmann, ed., Documentary History of Faith and Order: 1963-1993 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1993). 7 The Office of African-American Catholics provides a kit, Love One Another, including prayer materials that can be used for such services (U.S. Catholic Conference Publishing Services; 3211 4th Street, N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017). Other prayer materials, designed by the African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches. Liberation and Unity, for ecumeni-cal Lenten use, is available from Consultation on Church Union; Research Park; 151 Wall Street; Princeton, New Jersey 08540. ~ Available from: World Council of Churches U.S. Office; 475 Riverside Drive;New York, New York 10115; tel. 202-870-2470. 9 H. Schlesinger and H. Porto, Prayers of Blessing and Praise for All Occasions (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third publications, 1987). Leon Klenicki and Bruce Robbins, Jewish and Christians: A Dialogue Service about Prayer (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1995). ~o Orientale lumen, Origins 25, no. 1 (18 May 1995). 11 Lukas Vischer and Harding Meyer, eds., Growth in Agreement Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level (New York: Paulist Press, 1984). Jeffrey Gros and Joseph Burgess, eds., Building Unity (New York: Paulist Press, 1989) and Growing Consensus (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). Also the volumes noted in n. 5 above. 12 William Watley, Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1992). Marlin Miller and Barbara Nelson Gingrich, eds., The Church's Peace Witness (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994). 13 H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess, eds., Justification by Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985). Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990). 14 Jared Wicks SJ, Yearning for Grace: Luther's Early Spiritual Teaching (Philadelphia: Coronet Books, 1969) and Luther and His Spiritual Legacy (Wilmingtom Michael Glazier, 1983). George H. Tavard, Justification: An Ecumenical Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). is William Purdy, The Search for Unity (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995). Christopher Hill and Edward Yarnold, eds., Anglicans and Roman Catholics: The Search for Unity: The ARCIC Documents and their Reception, (London: SPCK/CTS, 1994). 16 John Borelli and John Erickson, Orthodox and Catholic in Dialogue (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press/Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1995). Ronald G. Roberson, ed., Oriental Orthodox-Roman Catholic Pastoral Relationships and Interchurch Marriages (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1995). Paul Fries and Tiran Nersoyan, Christ in East and VVest (Macon: M. ercer University Press, I ~87). Review for Religious ~7 W.A, Visser't Hooft, The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982). 18 "Dialogue and Proclamation," Origins 21, no. 8 (4 July 1991), "Interreligious Dialogue," Living Light 32, no. 2 (Winter 1995), Eugene Fisher and Leon Klenicki, eds., In Our Time: The Flowering of Jewish- Catholic Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1989). 19 For the Conversion of the Churches, by Groupe des Dombes (Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches, 1993). Dianne Kessler, Lorelei Fuchs, and Gillian Evans, Encounters.for Unity (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1994). Michael Hurley, ed., Reconciliation in Religion and Society (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994), and Timothy J. Wengert and Charles W. Brockwell Jr., eds., Telling the Churches' Stories: Ecumenical Perspectives on Writing Christian History (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995). Louis Dupr~ and Don Saliers, eds., Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation andModern (New York: Crossroad, 1989), and E. Glenn Hinson, ed., Spirituality in Ecumenical Perspective (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993). 20 James Washington, Conversation with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans (New York: HarperCollins, 1994). Daniel Liechty, ed., Early Anabaptist Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). 21 Bengt Hoffman, ed., The Theologica Germanica of Martin Luther (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), and Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991). William Wolf, Anglican Spirituality (Wilton, Connecticut: Morehouse Publications, 1982). Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (London: Mowbrays, 1979) and The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London: Faber and Faber, 1966); Georges Barrois, ed., The Fathers Speak (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1986). 22 J.L. Richard, The Spirituality of John Calvin (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1974). Alexander Ganoczy, The Young Calvin (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1987). Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995). Frank Whaling, ed., John and Charles Wesley (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). Edwin Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991). 23 Thomas Ryan, Prayer of Hear.t and Body (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). 24 Aloysius Pieris SJ, Love Meets Wisdom (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988). William Johnston sJ, The Still Point (New York: Fordham University Press, 1980). Patrick G. Henry and Donald K. Swearer, For the Sake of the World: The Spirit of Buddhist and Christian Monasticism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989). Anthony de Mello SJ, Sadhana: A Way to God (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1979). M. Thomas Thangaraj, The Crucified Guru (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994). Achiel Peelman, Christ Is a Native American (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995). Leon Klenicki and Gabe Huck, eds., Spirituality and Prayer: Jewish and Christian Understandings(New York: Paulist Press, 1983). Bernard Lee, The Galilean November-December 1996 Crros ¯ The Dialogue of Conversion Jewishness ofyesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The Paulist Press's Classics of Western Spirituality series includes many Muslim and Jewish titles. zs Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural. Research, Confessing Christian Faith in a Pluralistic Society, (Collegeville, 1995). 26J.M.R. Tillard, A Church of Churches (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991). Aram Keshishian, Conciliar Fellowship(Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1992). John Zizioulas, Being as Communion; Studies in Personhood and the Church, (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985). Lewis Mudge and Paul Crow, eds., "Toward the Year 2000: An Ecumenical Celebration," Midstream 24~ no. 4 (October 1987). 27 John Hotchkin, "The Ecumenical Movement's Third Stage," Origins 25, no. 21 (9 November 1995): 353-361. I Am the Bread I am the Bread baked of the Father's fine flour, molded in Mary by Spirit's pure power. I am the Bread Bethlehem born, kneaded and nailed, scorching with scorn, rising from death and the dead. I am the Bread. Come, eat me, hold me, share me, held by death, never. Living forevert. We are the bread. Jean Miriam Donachie SC Review for Religious ERIK KARL RIECHERS A Way of Being Church: Journey, Serve, and Evangelize Together I~rhere is any one way of describing the quandary of modern atholic life, I would suggest this: that we are groping for a way of being church. Small Christian communities, lay-associate programs, lay-formation programs, justice movements, secular institutes, and a host of other ecclesial forms all seek practical, concrete ways of living the reality of church. It is to ecclesiology that people generally go for a deep under-standing of the nature and purpose of the church. Yet a second, com-plementary avenue is open to us, namely, seeking in our.own praxis of church life specific principles that other ecclesial groups could apply to themselves. It is a good thing to celebrate our own local church history and Spirit-filled growth, but it is regrettable that oth-ers derive litde profit from it when we neglect to share it with them. Here I intend to share the exl~erience of the Union of Catholic Apostolate (UAC). While its experience is not automatically adapt-able to the church at large or even to every institute of consecrated life, the UAC has learned some essentials that could easily serve the entire people of God, helping it on its way of being church. One Way of Being Church: The Union of Catholic Apostolate When people first hear about the UAC, they almost Erik Karl Riechers SAC last wrote for us in March-April 1995. His address is Pallottine Faith Enrichment Centre; 6 McMillan Avenue; Red Deer, Alberta; T4N 5X8 Canada. November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church always assume that they are being introduced to yet another form of third-order spirituality, that of the Pallottine Fathers and Brothers. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The UAC is a radical and very challenging break from the model of spiri-tuality that led to the third orders. In the 1980s the conservative theory of "trickle-down" eco-nomics became popular. The concept was simple. If great wealth and prosperity could be produced at the top levels of society and the state, then benefits and positive effects would trickle down to lower levels. The idea of third orders might well be described as "trickle-down" spirituality. The concept was that an order would have a rich and vibrant spirituality and that, after a time, this spiritual wealth would be shared by other religious with a similar interest or direction. These would be the second orders. Finally, lay people would want to share in the founding spirituality, and some of it would trickle down to them, allowing them to par-ticipate in some derivative fashion, but never fully and certainly not in the same sense as the first order. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this model, and it is not my intention to belittle or ridicule it. However, for the Pallottine family it leaves a great deal to be desired, for it fails to recognize the element that is always at the heart of our UAC spir-ituality: that all Christian men, women, and children are called by name to an apostolic life. This vocation, this life, does not trickle down from the Pallottine Fathers and Brothers, nor is it but a shadow of someone else's spirituality. The calling of Christians is directly from God, not delei~ated to them by the hierarchy. Their spirituality, therefore, must be as unique as their vocation, and not just an offshoot of the spirituality of another person or group. The UAC is a concrete expression of Vatican Council II's teaching on the universal call to holiness that insists that "all the faithful are invited and obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life" (Lumen gentium §42). Imagine a great shimmering pool. For this pool's water a num-ber of tribes have various needs. Yet each of them goes to the common pool in order to satisfy those needs. The tribes procure the water and carry it home in distinctive containers, yet each has taken life-giving water from the same source. Some will use the water to cook, others to drink, others to wash the grime from their bodies, while yet others intend to douse the plant~ that will grow to still their hunger. Review for Religious The image reveals to us the way in which the UAC approaches Pallottine spirituality. The pool is Pallottine spirituality, and its contents are the ideals, intuitions, and insights of Vincent Pallotti. Every group of the UAC is distinctive and has a unique need for what is within the common pool of Pallottine spirituality. The Pallottine Fathers and Brothers go to that pool and realize its spiritu-ality in their own unique way. The Pallottine Sisters draw from the pool and use what they have drawn from its depths in their own par-titular fashion. Every group, lay or religious, goes to the same life-giv-ing source, goes to Pallotti, and comes away with its own manner of letting that life flow through them. We know ourselves to be one, for our thirst has led u~ to the same pool, and we acknowledge that we are all nourished from a common source. Yet we know ourselves to be unique, for that invigorating fountain of spirituality is cre-atively used to nourish many forms and variations of life in the Spirit. When we look across the world at all the expressions of the UAC, we see a web of communities, a grand alliance of spiritual-ity, and a confederation of Christians. Despite our wide diversity and exceedingly different experiences of life, we support one another as communities and individuals and share those experi-ences. This has been our ultimate strength, the power that is born of a genuine solidarity. For when we gaze upon the countenance of our Pallottine brothers and sisters, we recognize first and fore-most the people who stand beside us at the pool of Pallottine spirituality, who share our thirst, and who share our way of slak-ing it. In that gaze lies the certain knowledge that we are not alone in life. In our family no one receives a scrap from the mas-ter's table, because we all have an equal seat at that table. Despite our wide diversity and exceedingly different experiences of life, we support one another as communities and individuals and share those experiences. A Way of Forming Church I am often asked: What does the UAC offer people? I believe November-December 1996 Riechers * A Way of Being Church " that there are a number of interwoven answers to that question, each of them a principle applicable--though in varied ways--to the experience of being church. The need for spiritual growtb.~Many people today have a grow-ing awareness that their spiritual lives need more than a bare min-imum, that these lives of theirs have failed to grow beyond the confines of the catechism classes of their formative years. They come to the realization that children's catechesis does not suffice in a world of adult problems, and they begin to experience the need for development toward a responsible adult faith. Yet often they then face a second problem, namely, that they can get many bits and pieces in workshops, seminars, and adult-education classes, but that there are few places where they can get a comprehensive formation in Catholic, spiritual living. The UAC is a place where we begin to solve this problem through four movements. In the UAC we assist one another in coming to an adult faith in an adult church. Our manual of formation, titled Called by Name, offers a systematic approach to spiritual growth. Here we move the believer from the sporadic to the systematic. Called by Name takes a thorough look at eight great facets of spirituality: (1) God's infinite love and mercy and its effect in our lives, (2) the presence and work of God in human time and history, where we might experience this God, (3) the sheer power of the word of God, (4) communion as the antidote to loneliness and polarization, (5) the unrelenting call to embark on the mission with Christ, (6) the covenant according to which God creates, a homeland for Christians, (7) community that gathers under God's grace, and (8) hope and unity that,sustains and drives the Christian life. Each of these themes is tackled from three different angles. First, from the point of view of Catholic spirituality, we link our-selves with the Great Tradition and the wealth that Scripture, Vatican Council II, and Christian experience have to offer us. Here we move the believer's faith from adolescence to adulthood. Second, from the point of view of Pallottine spirituality, the members of the UAC experience the wonderful depth and richness of Vincent Pallotti's approach to God and the faith. Here we move the believer's spirituality from the common to the concrete. In this part of our formation, we make a transition from the common spirituality of all the people of God to a specifis form of realizing this spirituality in our concrete lives, the specific form of Pallottine spirituality. Review for Religious Finally, we learn together how we can integrate what we have learned into a life of prayer as members of the UAC. Employing the rich resources of the Tradition and the Pallottine heritage, we explore many forms of prayer in order that individuals may find a prayer method suited to their temperament and need and that all together we may discover the splendid variety of oppor-tunities to raise our minds and hearts to the living God. In this final part of a chapter's formation, we move the believer from prin-ciple to prayer. Hand in hand with this desire to grow in faith beyond the bare-bones basics is the need to sustain Christian life and aposto-late. In order to be church we must keep the flame of faith alive in our hearts, to "confirm our call and election" (2 P 1:10). This, however, has become an increasingly daunting task in today's society. Many people who are committed to liv-ing out their Christian commitment in the world suddenly find themselves facing unre-lenting pressures from their colleagues, friends, and acquaintances to conform to social norms that con-tradict their faith commitment. When they choose to go to Mass rather than the picnic, to be people of generosity rather than gos-sips, and to offer compassion in the place, of criticism, they often discover that the reward is outright ridicule for living in such a way as to be a "sign of contradiction." Unfortunately, no one wants to be contradicted. When Christian life is lived with pas-sion and zeal, it says to the people who live what is an otherwise unchallenged lifestyle that we would beg to differ. Yet, while this is a hard reality to live through, it is not the crux of our problem. It is hard enough to keep the flame of faith alive in our hearts without the added burden of trying to do this as a solo per.formance. People are looking for support in their lives, in their struggles. It is easy enough to fall away from the Way of Christ, but hard to resist the many temptations and avoid the pitfalls constantly presented to us on that way. Therefore, many people are experiencing the need to find a place where the spiritual life they have formed can be sustained and strengthened. The UAC is a place where people can find a spiritual homeland for Hand in hand with this desire to grow in faith beyond the bare-bones basics is the need to sustain Christian life and apostolate. November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church themselves. It offers the chance to speak of our faith, the daily struggles that affect it, and the many experiences and encoun-ters at work, rest, or play that challenge it. The UAC is the place where committed Christians share the many ways in which their faith can be lived as parents, professionals, business people, and citizens of the nation. It is the place where we heed the admo-nition of the Letter to the Hebrews: "Keep encouraging one another so that none of you is hardened by the lure of sin" (Heb 3:13). In the UAC we offer one another courage by teaching one another the joys of fidelity, giving one another a hand when we stumble along, speaking of our hope in moments of despair, and walking the way together, even when the path leads through dark-ness. Then, and only then, do we consider our Christian call to be fulfilled. Encouragement is the UAC's way of keeping the hearts of our brothers and sisters from being hardened.~It is all too easy to point out the lure of sin, to make people aware of the dangers lurking on every side that threaten to devour them whole if they are unwary. In the UAC we choose the harder Way of encourag-ing one another, resisting easier ways. This way is much harder because it demands that we get involved. The members of the UAC are committed not just to spreading faith, but also to keep-ing it alive in one another, and that means being committed to one another. It is the way of our Pallottine spirituality not just to point .to solutions, but to be part of the solution, part of the heal-ing. When we are lost, it is a pleasant thing to find someone who can give us directions. It is, however, without doubt a better thing when that person offers to guide us directly. Together to Evangelize A guiding motto of the UAC has been "Together to Evangelize." Over the course of the last years, three components have helped our reflection on our role within the New Evangelization: the scripture passage of the road to Emmaus, the person and charism of Vincent Pallotti, and the call to mission. So that we may be guided yet again to the place ~of renewal for .all the Pallottine family, I take a word from Reinhold Niebuhr as a lantern to light our path. With piercing insight this great Protestant theologian wrote: Review for Religious Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our life-time; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, no matter how virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. Let us bring this word to Emmaus experience, to Pallottine perceptivity, and to people who are together for evangelization. "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; there-fore, we must be saved by hope. "Two despairing disciples walk away from a life once brimming over with aspirations, hopes, and dreams. To follow Christ--ah, here was the achievement of a life-time, an endeavor worthy of discipleship, an undertaking for which you could put your life on the line and leave your "fishing nets lying on the shore." In .Christ they thought they had found the One worth investing their entire lives in. Their words speak of their hearts' discontent: "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Lk 24:21). And why not? After all, this man's words gave wings to the hopeless spirit, set sinners' hearts a-soaring, and suffused beaten men and women with vibrant new life. Here was a prophet "mighty in word and deeds," whose power calmed waves and curbed fears, sent healing grace rippling through the bleeding woman and peace to the demoniac's shattered soul, The dream of liberation from the heavy foot of Rome, glory for God and royal dignity for themselves, was vividly real; it was a dream wor-thy of a lifetime of sacrifice. It was a dream not to be! "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime." Pallotti clearly concurs. "On my own I can do nothing; with God I can do everything." What Pallotti sees with a clarity begot-ten of grace is that no effort of ours, regardless how noble, how ideal or how cloaked in dignity, will find fulfillment in our lifetime. Our effort, strength, stamina~ and speed will first thrill us and then tantalize us with their obvious inability to coerce complete-ness out of our life's work. God alone can deliver more than we may manufacture. God alone can write an ending beyond our endings. "Not the intellect., not the will., not worldly goods ¯. not riches., not honor., not dignity., not promotions, but God." With Pallottine conviction we profess that God alone is our hope: "therefore, we must be saved by hope." Born of this Pallottine conviction is the UAC's task for the November-December 1996 Riecbers ¯ A Way of Being Church Z---ygOJ New Evangelization. We must turn to the busy world with its many worthwhile pursuits and offer it the hope that comes from God alone~ Otherwise the worthy work of our people will become their downfall, as they rdalize that no fulfillment is forthcoming in their lifetimes. You can go out and combat poverty with leonine ferocity, but, for every Ethiopian fed yesterday, a Somali starves today. You can dedicate yourself to nobly terminating racism, and do it with a Schwarzeneggerian swagger, but today's apartheid-free South Africa yields its ~place in the news to a genocidal Rwanda. Gorbachev tears down walls for freedom; elsewhere someone loots the bill for terrorists. Desmond Tutu seeks to set his people free with the South African Truth Commission's airing of stories buried too long and too deep; others, far away in various direc-tions, distort ,the truth in hate-mongering rhetoric. Into this world we have been sent. To these men and women we must speak of the God of infinite love who can give every worthwhile human endeavor the blessing of a consummation that human history will relentlessly, ruthlessly deny it. We are together to evangelize so that people may be saved by hope. "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith." The Emmaus-bound disciples have tasted beauty, truth, and goodness in their time with Christ. "Before God and all the people', (Lk 24:19), Jesus revealed the beautiful heart, that wel-comes children; the true heart of the teacher lecturing tirelessly, openly, and authoritatively in temple and boat, on mountain and plain; and the good heart weeping for Lazarus in the tomb, heal-ing the centurion's servant, and shielding Mary from the harangu-ing of her harried elder sister. Now they stand in a puzzlement born of betrayal. For this beauty, truth, and goodness called Christ has been condemned to death and crucified. Moreover, even the empty tomb, the vision of angels, and the women's confident assertion that Jesus yet lives is now nonsensical to the disciples. The resurrection with the gaping truth of the tomb, the celestial beauty of an angelic news flash, and ~the gripping goodness of tidings that Jesus is 'risen from the dead~all remain meaningless because the only context these two know is death .and destruction with their definitive finality., "Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate, context of history." Review for Religion's Pallotti continually points to faith as the only context big enough to allow us to make heads or tails out of life's maddening complexity. If the span of our days is all we have, if the psalmist's seventy years (or eighty for the strong) are all we have for com-prehending life's events, then no avenue save futility and absurdity is open to us. Vincent Pallotti prescribes faith in the God of infi-nite love as the antidote: God's infinity offers a context in which we can live beyond the immediate experience. While Pallotti himself does not understand every why and wherefore of God's will, he has faith that God is not to be outdone in generosity. Puzzled and likely hurt by the rumor-mongering jealousy that made his pastorate in Spirito Santo a nightmare lived in waking hours, and eventually caused an unjust and unjus-tifiable suppression of the UAC, Pallotti has faith in the inex-haustible mercy and mystery of God, which will open up the present hour of harrowing agony to a meaning beyond the momentary. Here we find the UAC's second task in the New Evangelization. We must teach faith as a means of finding mean-ing beyond the momentary. The immediate context of history has to be broadened to the eternal horizon of faith, which is God himself. The now is simply not enough. Try as we may, the death of children by abuse does not make sense in our immediate context alone. What does truth mean in our day when wealthy people may purchase enough legal persuasion to win verdicts of "not guilty," while ordinary people of low or moderate incomes may find themselves convicted after minimal arguments for the defense? Can the immediate context alone help us cope with the drunken driver who walks away, unsteadily but alive, from the crash that claims the life and aspi-rations of the teetotaling pedestrian? Unlike Disney movies, lost dogs do not always find their way home, mermaids do not always find princes, beasts do not always marry beauties, angels are not always in the outfield, and some Cinderellas die in grinding poverty without ever making it to the ball. We must spread faith in God, for his rising from the dead is the only possibility of writing a conclusion beyond the otherwise absolute, limiting finality of human life. We are together to evan-gelize so that people may be saved by faith. "Nothing we do, no matter bow virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love." A final glance at the road to Emmaus revealsto us the truth of this Niebuhrian statement. November-December 1996 Riechers ¯ A Way of Being Church The disciples are doing a virtuofis thing. They are talking about all the things that happened in, Jerusalem, seeking a shred of meaning, a fleeting glimpse of God, in the morass their lives have become. Yet they do not accomplish anything until Jesus interprets everything for them. Pallotti once wrote, "My Jesus, anyone who does not love you cannot live." Why not? Because, if people do not love, they do not reach beyond .themselves, for love is self-transcendende. If we never reach past our narrow needs and greeds, we remain alone; like the gospel grain of wheat. But those who remain alone do not live. Out of this divinely, revealed and inspired love, Pallotti would have us move from self to neighbor. It is this infinite love that drove him to found the UAC. This love is the constitutive ele-ment of the UAC. This love is what Pallotti would have us rekin-dle. This love, however, we cannot accomplish on our own. We must receive it from the God of infinite love. As the UAC we find in this experience our last task for the New Evangelization. A clear-eyed view of the world shows us a devastating truth: We cannot go it alone; we must be saved by love. The rugged individualism of the 1980s has decayed into the ragged loneliness of the 1990s. The myth of ever-expanding opportunities and limitless futures has collided headlong with the era that downsizes everything, including compassion. The peren-nial quest for self-discovery has not relieved our people of their confusion. They must be saved by love. And we must be together to evangelize so that it may be so! There you have it. Our journey has been hard, but happy, touched by love and laughter, sprinkled with songs and tears. It is the price to be paid if we would find a way of being church. In the end of all our journeys, we can only hope that this rendering of a passage of Virgil's Aeneid (1.198-203) may be true of us: "And the time will come when it will gladden our hearts to recall these first trying days and the difficult things that we did, not each of us striving alone, but all of us working together." Review for Religious RITA E. GOLDMAN Frances Cabrini: A Woman for Today What if Mother Cabrini had been born in 1950 instead of 1850? What aspects of her life would be different? Personally, I think none. She was a true daughter of the church, and I am sure she would have welcomed the era of Vatican Council II. Even in her day she was considered forward. When she wanted Missionaries in the title of her religious congregation, she was told only men were mis-sionaries. At that time there was in Italian no feminine form of the masculine word missionari. A certain Father Marinoni, the director of the Foreign Mission Seminary, said, "It is not even in the dictionary." But she persisted. In Italy her sisters came to be called Missionarie del Sacro Cuore di Gesi~. We often think of saints as human beings far above ourselves, not realizing that in their lives they experienced their humanity in ways that we could recognize from our own lives. Perhaps it is the way the saints have been writ-ten about that leads us to think they were not truly human beings like ourselves. Many years ago lives of saints were written in very flowei'y, complimentary terms. The books Rita E. Goldman retired from United States foreign service in 1989 after assignments in Liberia, Nepal, Burma, Cameroon, and Romania. Since then, besides some volunteer work with Holy Cross sisters in Israel and with Mother Cabrini's sisters in Chicago, she has been involved in the RCIA program of her parish, St. Frances Cabrini. Her address is 3041 North Country Club Road, Apt. 220; Tucso.n, Arizona 85716. models November-December 1996 Goldman * Frances Cabrini 5.94 tended to portray only their "saintly" attributes, making the per-' sons seem not human to us when we read about them. In this article I hope to present Mother Cabrini as a real person, one very much like us. In fact, several prelates and business associ-ates who had known her were surprised when she was canonized. They said that in many business transactions she did not behave like a saint--she often pounded the table to make a point and would raise her voice in a heated exchange! Mother Cabrini was a modern woman. Her interests were extensive, and she certainly did not adapt 'readily to the role expected of late-19th- and early-20th-century women religious. She was a business woman and world traveler, keenly aware of the currents of thought in the world of her time. In fact, after her meditation, prayers, and Mass each morning, one of the first things she did was read the morning newspapers. This was before radio and television came upon the scene. I have no doubt that, if Mother Cabrini were living today, she would be turning on the radio or the TV to get her daily news of what was going on in the world. She would have loved the instant communication that exists today--in her day "instant" communication was onl~ the tele-graph and, later, the telephone. On 30 October 1952 Mother Cabrini was posthumously named "The Italian Immigrant of the Century" at a gathering of the American Committee on Italian Migration. Mother Cabrini was singled out because of her "unselfish devotion to humanity" and because "her accomplishments stand as monuments for all to behold and put to shame those people whose bigotry helps raise the cry of intolerance toward the immigrant." If Mother Cabrini.were living today, she would be in her element in regard to the immigrant. In our day there continue to be refugees, political, refugees, immi, grants, and displaced persons; they often make headlines. This has been a century of immigration. In the early 1900s it was the mas-sive immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Today it is immigration 7from Central and South America, Vietnam, China, and the war-torn areas of central Europe. Mother Cabrini's Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are in the forefront in helping today's immigrants just as Mother Cabrini was. Maria Francesca Cabrini was bor.n on 15 July 1850 in a small village in Lombardy, Italy. Her parents were pious and devout, and little Franceswas certain she wanted to be a missionary. She was the tenth of eleven children, of whom seven met early deaths. Review for Religqous Only Magdalena (who was retarded), Rosa, Giuseppe, and herself lived to adulthood. As a child Frances used to launch paper boats filled with vio-lets into a stream nearby, pretending the violets were missionar-ies going to foreign lands, especially China. As a teenager Frances applied to two religious communities for admission, but each refused her because of her frail health, a problem she bore throughout life. In 1870 she lost both of her parents; she was twenty. Her sister Rosa had become a public school teacher, and Frances followed her in this. When she was twenty-four years old, her pas-tor and bishop, valuing her desire to serve, asked her to lend a hand for a few weeks at a poorly run orphanage. These "few weeks" that lasted six years were a time of great suffering and prepared Frances for the work she would eventual.ly do. The local bishop offered her his backing: "You always wanted to be a missionary. I know of no such order of women. Why not found one your- ~ self?" So in 1880 she and seven young women con-secrated themselves to God and took religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.~They called themselves Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, They took over an abandoned Franciscan monastery in the town of Codogno, not far from where Frances was born. Maria Francesca Cabrini now became Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, ready to conquer the world for Christ. During the next few years, Mother Cabrini expanded her order in Italy, opening many houses and accepting new vocations. But she was still intent on doing missionary work. In 1887 she met Pope Leo XIII, who, even though he was aware of her desire to do missionary work in China,-persuaded her to go to America to assist the many Italian immigrants there who were in dire need. He said to her: "Not to the Orient, Cabrini, but to the West. Your China is the United States." At the time of her death in Chicago in 1917 at the age of sixty-seven, Mother Cabrini had founded sixty-seven hospitals, orphanages, and schools in .the United States, South and Central America,. and Europe. After her death other foundations were made in Africa, Asia, and Australia. .From an early age, after a frightening experience of near If Mother Cabrini were living today, she would be in her element in regard to the immigrant. November-Deconber 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini drowning, Frances had a real fear of water. Yet, even with this fear, she in her missionary travels crossed the Atlantic Ocean some twenty-three tiines, going to the United States and South and Central America. The only times she really had for "rest" were during these ocean voyages. Most of her correspondence was done at these times, including long letters about her travels written to her sisters back in Italy. Mother Cabrini's favorite sub-ject when she taught school was geography, and this is very much reflected in the travel letters she wrote. She certainly researched and read beforehand about the places where she was going to start a mission. It was in reading the book of her Travels that I came across the real Mother Cabrini, and I would like to quote some passages from these letters to show how human and like us she really was. Did Mother Cabrini know and speak English? The answer to that is yes. During her second voyage to New York in 1890, she wrote: "The sisters tell him [a friendly man on the boat] in English what he has not understood from me. He is very intelligent, and from the expression on my face he understands what I intend to say. He asks me to speak English as well as I can, and he helps me with some French words, saying he can understand. Sister Bernardina is going to make a novena for me to obtain the grace to speak English, and assures me she will obtain it. What do you think of it? 1 fear the day of judgment will arrive before 1 learn English." During the voyage from Genoa to New York in 1894, Mother Cabrini related the following: "Yesterday a waiter told me how sorry he was that he could not speak Italian so that he might ren-der the sisters better service. He wants me to act as interpreter, but my knowledge of English is limited, barely enough to prevent me from losing my way or dying of hunger." Sister Mary Louise Sullivan, however, in her Mother Cabrini: Italian Immigrant of the Century (1992), says: "Mother Cabrini read American newspapers daily when she was present in her houses in the United States. The Chicago Tribune was on her desk each day. She knew what you were talking about when you spoke to her in English and would sometimes reply gently in English when you tried to address her in halting Italian. She could become quite angry and would raise her voice when upbraiding a sister in her native Italian." Some of the humorous incidents she related were, in con-junction with the roughness of the ocean during some of her voy- Review for Religious ages. On her second voyage to New York in 1890, she wrote: "Poor sisters! At every movement of the boat they think we are in a great storm. Sister Eletta would like to have the boat stopped, at least during meals. I told the steward this just to make him laugh. He is so kind." On another occasion she said, "During this tempest not one of the sisters was frightened; all remained quietly in bed, ready to perish quietly, but under the bedclothes." On the voyage from New York to Le Havre in 1899, she wrote: "What a terrible night we have passed! The steamer seemed to jump and fly out of the water. At other times we thought it would capsize . At about 9 a.m. the rocking began again. I was still in bed and could not get up, and the stew-ardess asked if we wanted some break-fast. I told her to bring us some coffee. It was the first time I had ever had anything brought to my bed, and the poor coffee reached me at a very bad moment. No sooner had it been poured out than cup and coffee pot, by a sudden jerk of the steamer, were spilled over my bed. I was forced to get up whether I liked it or not." On her trip to New York in 1890, Mother Cabrini had a com-mon experience for one who is fair-skinned. (Mother Cabrini was very fair and had blond hair--remember she came from northern Italy.) She wrote: "Meantime the heat is like summer. For three days I looked like Bacchus. My forehead is very red, even pur-ple, and this redness is spreading all over my face. At first I thought it was erysipelas. I did not like the prospect, for I should have had to retire from the open, and fresh air is life to me. Happily, however, the doctor said the redness was the effect of the air and of the water which was spraying on my face . Today the skin has begun to peel off my forehead and nose. I am chang-ing like a serpent." Mother Cabrini mentioned language difficulties more than once. In 1898, going from Liverpool to New York, she wrote up this anecdote about Sister Frances, who knew English but not much Italian: "The other day, for instance, she wanted to say cauliflower in Italian, which is cavolf!ore, but her rendering made "I always close the porthole before I go to bed, as I would rather put up with the heat than receive a surprise visit from a fish." November-December 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini it 'fiore-cavalli,' which is 'horses-flowers.' By expressing herself in this roundabout way, she was doubly charitable, for 'she gave me the opportunity of a good hearty laugh." That same year Mother Cabrini recounted her experience with the London underground: "We entered a small station. Having gotten our tickets, we stood with many others in what appeared to us a room, waiting to proceed, when suddenly we felt ourselves descending into the earth. Then there was a stop, and we found ourselves in a large subway, lighted by electricity. People began to run as if they were running for their lives, and without saying a word. So we too followed and took our places in the train, or rather trains, for there was a line of carriages which could not be counted in the light, for it was like night so deep down. We had hardly gotten into our compartment'when the train moved off, and, as quick as lightning, we found ourselves in the center of the city, having gone all the way underground. At the station we entered a lift, though owing to its large size it did not seem to be a lift. Then we rose and came out into the daylight." Mother Cabrini related the following on her 1900 voyage from Genoa to Buenos Aires: "At dawn this morning we arrived at M~laga . I thought I would like to make a little visit to the town, and, as everyone was buying the raisins of Mfilaga to take to Buenos Aires, I also secured a box as a memento of the place. But I had better luck than the others, who went into smart-look-ing shops to get theirs, where they had to pay more for the box than for the raisins. I, however, fixed my eye on a donkey coming down a small mountain, loaded with boxes of the celebrated grapes of that mountain. In the evening everybody returned with their beautiful and elegant boxes, and I with my rustic box . At table someone offered us a bottle of M~ilaga wine, find I, wishing to reciprocate, sent to the cabin to get one of the botdes that Mother Augustine had placed there. They asked if it was Mfilaga, 'Yes,' I replied, 'this is Mfilaga.' They enjoyed the joke, drank the.wine, and were surprised at its exquisite taste. They could scarcely believe that such good wine came from Piedmont." On this same 1900 voyage, Mother Cabrini wrote about her cabin: "It is very nicely situated in that part of the steamer where the rocking is little felt, and there is a porthole to the west which I can open at will. I have to keepit closed from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., as the sailors clean the ship during these hours and throw water about heedlessly. The water often enters through the portholes Review for Religious and causes much inconvenience to those who are not expecting it. I always close the porthole before I go to bed, as I would rather put up with the heat than receive a surprise visit from a fish." All that has been said above will give you some idea of the modernness, and the humor, of Mother Cabrini. Perhaps we can visualize her today walking the corridors of the various institutions she founded, giving comfort and solace to those she meets. Or we can see her walking the streets of New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and all the other cities in both the United States and Central and South America where she founded missions, visiting the homes of Italian immigrants and asking about their lives and their children, assisting them in all the ways that were at her disposal. She did all these things in her life, but we might ask ourselves what made Mother Cabrini tick. I would say the love of God and serving him in his people was the driving force behind all Mother .Cabrini did. She literally left everything in order to find God more perfectly and to serve human beings.God gave her the graces and she generously corresponded. From her earliest days she had this "vision" of mis-sion, and she sacrificed all in order to carry it out. This involved constant interior self-denial, not the bodily mortifications of some of the saints, but a continual going against self in order to conform more perfectly to the will of God as she saw it in her regard and for the institute she founded. It was her contemplation, her communing with God, that gave her the energy to do all she did for others. But most of all she was a woman of faith. She had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and firmly believed that he did everything--she was just an instrument. The following passage in the Constitutions of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus expresses very well what made Mother Cabrini tick: "Mother Cabrini lived her experience of church with missionary fervor which captured her from the first Frances Cabrini was moved to action by the spirit of the Gospels, the word of the church expressed by the Holy Father, the cry of the suffering, the misery of the poor, ~ the tragedy of the abandoned. November-Decevnber 1996 Goldman ¯ Frances Cabrini moment she knowingly gave herself to God. It became the moti-vating force of her life. Strengthened by the Lord, nothing hin-dered her--not even the boldest undertakings--as long as it was justified by the greater glory of God and by her commitment to bring Christ to the world. Frances Cabrini was moved to action by the spirit of the Gospels, the word of the church expressed by the Holy Father, the cry of the suffering, the misery of the poor, the tragedy of the abandoned. Her courage and zeal, rising as they did from her loving communion with the Heart of Christ, impelled her to make her own St. Paul's motto: 'I can do all things in him who strengthens me.'" In proclaiming someone a saint at the conclusion of the care-ful process of canonization, the church tells the faithful that this person is worthy of imitation. The saints are our heroes, certainly more worthy of imitation than film or rock stars. In this brief essay I hope in some way I have shown you the humanness and modernness of Mother Cabrini. I hope, too, thatI have dispelled the notion that saints inhabit such a rarefied realm that they have no relevance for us. Mother Cabrini is very human and very approachable. She lived a life very similar to ours, in our century. She coped with many of the frustrations that we do, but with bet-ter motives, a better =attitude. We too can become saints, but it will take a lot of faith and a lot of love, not only of ourselves but of our neighbor. Knowing Mother Cabrini, we can ask her to help us attain this goal. By praying for her to assist us, we are asking a woman of our own times, a woman who understands what it is like to live in today's world. Icons i hear icons weep in our city their kingly gift of myrrh trickles down making holy faces glisten-glisten into sorrowing sorrowing the sorrow we refuse to bear Lou Ella Hickman IWBS Review for Religious M. BASIL PENNINGTON The Cistercian Martyrs of Algeria, 1996 )n 26 May 1996, from one end of France to the other, all across the land the bells tolled. It was a rather somber note for the glorious feast of Pentecost, Thousands stood in silence around the Eiffel Tower. It was a moment of remembrance, of pain, of joy, of awe. And yet in some ways it was strange that this should be tak-ing place. Since the early days of 1992, after an unpopular gov-ernment canceled an election it was slated to lose, blood had flowed freely in Mgeria. It was estimated that as many as fifty thousand had died in the guerrilla warfare, including at least a hundred citizens of other nations, some forty of them from France alone. Eleven priests and religious had been among those slain. But now, with the kidnapping and subsequent horrifying slaugh-ter of seven Trappist monks of Our Lady of Atlas, suddenly France and the world stopped to take note. Why? Because this was not just another moment in ongoing bloody events. It was a moment of exquisite love: "Greater 10ve than this no one has, than that one lay down one's life for one's friends."' These seven were, as the Trappist abbot general expressed it, "martyrs of love." Consciously, deliberately, these men remained among a chosen people to give an unfaltering witness of love, knowing full well what would be the probable outcome of their witness. M. Basil Pennington OCSO, a contributor to our pages since 1972, writes from St. Joseph's Abbey; 167 Spencer Road; Spencer, Massachusetts 01562. November-December 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs Who Were These Seven? The seven monks of Our Lady of Arias who gave their lives in a witness of love were, in fact, quite typical of today's Cistercians. They came from varied backgrounds, mostly the middle class, from different parts of France. Most of them began their monas-tic journey a bit later in life, after having served God's people in other ways. They entered three different French monasteries, but each in some way heard the call to go live a witness of love among the Muslims. In response to that call, they came together at Our Lady of Atlas Monastery, Tibhirine, and formed a "school of char-ity" under the tutelage of Father Christian de Chergd, the prior. All who knew the small community noted how closely these men were bonded in a true friendship. We are not surprised, then, when we learn that, as a student at the Carmelite seminary of Paris, Father Christian wrote his thesis on Christian friendship, a friendship that stands out by reason of its delicacy and its spir-itnal depth. Father Christian, .like others of the seven, first came to know Algeria and, its people during his military service. For twenty-seven months he was stationed there with significant administra-five responsibilities in service of the local population. He returned later as a monk to be another kind of presence, to give another kind of witness. After his ordination as priest, Father Christian had served for a time as chaplain at the great Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre, but his own heart sought something more. This he pursued at the ancient Cistercian Abbey of Aiguebelle in the foothills of the Alps in southeastern France and then, after some preparation with the White Fathers at Rome, with his Trappist brothers at Tibhirine. Christian was fifty-nine when he found the fullness of love he had always sought and laid down his life for his friends. Brother Luc Dochier, at eighty-two, was the senior of the " community. He was a medical doctor and brought this valuable skill not only to the community but also to people all around. The monastery's dispensary, which was tied in with the health department of the region, was the best for a hundred kilometers around. For all his learning--and he remained ever an avid reader ready to share with the brothers what he read--he was at heart a very simple man. The love of God was central, and love of neigh-bor consumed his working hours as he ministered to all who came. Father Cdlestin Ringeard, twenty years Luc's junior, was Review for Religious Brother's right-hand man. He was a man of energy and color. As a priest of the diocese of Nantes, his ministry had been in the streets; his flock, the alcoholics, the prostitutes, the gays. Like Father Christian, he had seen service in Algeria. In the medical corps he cared for the "enemy" as well as his own. With Brother Luc he cared for them again. Father C~lestin had entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Bellefontaine, in Maine-et-Loire, not far south of Paris. Bellefontaine is the motherhouse of Spencer. It was from there that in March 1984 he set out for Algeria with two others, Brother Michel Fleury and Father Bruno Lemarchand. Brother Michel was from a peas-ant family in Loire-Atlantique. He first heard the call to serve Christ in the poorest of the poor. He joined the Fr~res du Prado, who saw their life as living a "modern Trappist life in the midst of the poor." But soon enough Brother felt drawn to the fullness of the traditional Trappist life. When he joined the brothers at Our Lady of Atlas, he was given the task of com-munity cook. Michel was a simple man, a gentle man, yet very discrete. Curiously, when the abductors took the monks off, Brother managed to carry with him his monastic cowl and leave it along the route, giving the pursuers the sole indication of the direction in which the monks had been taken. Father Bruno, in a sense, no longer belonged to the commu-nity of Our Lady of Atlas. In 1990 he had been sent with three others to start a new little community of witness in Morocco near Fez. He had returned to Atlas a few days before the incursion of the guerrillas in order to take part in the election of a prior. He had brought with him to monastic life a rich background:. He had been a professor and then the head of the College of St. Charles of Thouars. His first experience of Algeria had come early in life when his father was assigned there as an army officer. Two of the martyrs came from the ancient Cistercian monastery hidden high in the French Alps, Notre Dame de Tamie. Born in the region, Brother Paul Favre-Miville was the son of a The monastery's dispensary, which was tied in with the health department of the region, was the best for a hundred kilometers around. November-December 1996 Pennin~ton ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs Savoyard blacksmith. It took him a long time to find his way to the monastery, but he came with skills that enabled him, when he got to Our Lady of Atlas, to set up a good irrigation system that served monk and neighbor alike in the cooperative gardens. His confrere from Tamie, Father Christophe Lebreton, at forty-five, was the youngest of the community. Coming from a family of twelve children--he was the seventh--he seemed to come naturally to monastic life. He was of a poetic nature, very much the lover, who expressed himself well in words, both in his journal and in poems. A mixed group, indeed, like that found in any Cistercian monastery, drawn together by a vision, a transcendent vision cen-tered on a particular, in this case, being a presence of Christ among a people that doe~ not yet understand who this incarnate God of love is. The Background Story The story actually begins over sixty years ago when the monks of Aiguebelle conceived the idea of implanting among the Muslims of Algeria a small community of monks who could be the praying heart of the Christian community in that country and also witness to Christ's love by their own lives of love. They found a site about forty-five miles south of the nation's capital, Algiers, near the city of M~d~a (Lemdiyya) at a place called Tibhirine. Although the community was fully committed to the traditional Cistercian con-templative life, along with many other third-world communities it extended monastic hospitality to providing some medical care for those who came to the monastery door. And, continuing the earliest Cistercian tradition, the brothers who worked the farm and gardens shared their expertise with their less fortunate neigh-bors, enhancing the human condition of these very poor people. As there was no possibility of local vocations, recruits had to be constantly sought in the form of volunteers from the Trappist monasteries of France. Thus the community enjoyed the enrich-ing presence of monks from a number of abbeys. In general, life was quite peaceful in the little monastery, though disturbed at times by the recurring wars. The latest period of disturbance began in December 1991, when the government suddenly canceled elections in which it seemed the fundamentalist Islamic party, the Islamic Salvation Review for Religious Front (FIS), would win control. The FIS formed a guerrilla force and was promptly outlawed. An even more radical group then formed in the mountains, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). It was this group that warned all foreigners to leave the country, and it began to indulge in periodic acts of terrorism. As the community of Atlas gathered to discuss what they should do in the face of this new warning and threat, they realized they were not the first Cistercian community to face such a chal-lenge. This was the case with the com-munities of Huambo and Bela Vista in Angola, Butende in Uganda, and Marija Zvijezda in Bosnia. For the monks of Atlas, the question became more acute when an armed band of the GIA, the "brothers from the mountain" as Father Christian called them, visited the monastery on Christmas eve in 1993. The guerrillas wanted to oblige the monks to collaborate with them through medical aid, economic support, and logistical help. In response the prefect of M4d~a offered the monks armed pro-tection and the possibility of moving from the monastery to a protected area. Through community discussions and votes during the following days, the monks decided to remain at Atlas, to decline armed protection so as to remain a sign of peace, and to reject any form of collaboration with the armed group except medical aid given only in the monastery dispensary. Father Christian sought to express the monks' position in a letter to the chief of the GIA, Sayah Attiya: Brother, allow me to address you like this, as man to man, believer to believer. In the pre~ent conflict in which our country is living, it seems to us impossible to take sides. The fact that we are foreigners forbids it. Our state as monks (ruhbfn) binds us to God's choice for us, which is prayer and the simple life, manual work, hospitality, and sharing with everyone, especially with the poor . These reasons for our life are a free choice for each one of us. They bind us until death. I do not think that it is God's will that this death should come to us through you . If one day the Algerians judge that we are unwelcome, we will respect their desire to see us leave. With very great regret I know that we will continue to love them all, as a whole, and that includes you. The community enjoyed the enriching presence of monks from a number of abbeys. Novonber-Deconber 1996 Penning'ton ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs When and how will this message reach you? It does not matter! I needed to write it to you today. Forgive me for having written in my mother tongue. You understand me. And may the only One of all life lead us! Amin. As the danger increased, in June 1994 the apostolic nuncio invited the monks to come and live at the nunciature. The broth-ers did not judge the time had come yet to abandon their monastery. When, on 23 October 1994, two Spanish Augustinian nuns were murdered at the entrance of the parish church, Father Christian wrote to the abbot general: The'communities of men seem to be standing by their option to remain. This is clear so far for the Jesuits, the Little Brothers of Jesus, all the White Fathers. It is also clear for us. At Tibhirine as elsewhere this option has its risks. That is obvious. Each one has told me that he wants to take them, in a journey of faith into the future and in sharing the present with neighbors who have always been very close friends of ours._The grace of this gift iis given to us from day to day, very simply. At the end of September we had another nocturnal "visit." This time the "brothers of the mountain" wanted to use our telephone. We pretended to listen in, then emphasized the contradiction between our way of life and any kind of complicity with what could harm the life of another. They gave us assurances, but the threat was there, supported by arms. (13 November 1994) On 16 December, after more cflreful and prayerful discussion, the brothers again took a vote to confirm their decisions. At this time the archbishop of Algiers, Henri Teissier, thanked them for taking the risk of prolonging their presence and their witness, telling them how significant was their presence of prayer and daily work in Tibhirine for the whole Christian community of Algeria. He thanked them for their fidelity and courage. The Testament of Father Christian It was during the previous Advent of 1993 that Father Christian had composed his "Testament," to be opened only after his death. This was done on 23 May 1996 when his and his bro,thers' passing was announced. There is no doubt but that this testament will be cherished as one of the great spiritual classics of the 20th century-- though surely that is not what this humble and transparent monk would ever have intended. Let us share it,with you in full: Review for Religious When an A-DIEU is envisaged. If it should happen one day--and it could be today--that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family, ¯ to remember that my life was given to God and to this country; ¯ to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure; ¯ to pray for me--for how should I be found worthy of such an offering? ¯ to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones that have been allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any .case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accom-plice in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that evil which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have enough lucidity to beg forgiveness of God and of my brothers and sisters in the human family, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down. , I could not desire such a death~ It seems to me impor-tant to state this. I don't see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what will be called, perhaps, the "grace of martyrdom" to owe this to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the contempt in wtiich the Algerians as a whoie can be held. I know, too, the caricatures of Islam which ,encourage a certain Islamism. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience in iden-tifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. " For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: they are body and soul. I have proclaimed it enough, I think, seeing and know-ing what I have received from them, finding here so often that direct line bringing the gospel that I learned at my mother's knee, my very first church; finding it precisely in Algeria, and already in the reverence of believing Muslims. My death, obviously, will appear to justify those who Novevnber-Deconber 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs hastily judged me naive or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of them!" But these .must know that at last my most insistent curiosity will be satisfied. For this is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, fruit of his Passion, filled with the gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness in playing with the differences. For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in and in spite of everything. In this thank-you where, once and for all, all is said about my life, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, 0 my friends of this place, at the side of my mother and my father, of my sisters and my brothers and their families--the hundredfold given as he had promised! And you, too, my last-minute friend, who would not have known what you were doing; yes, for you too I say this thank-you and this a-dieu--to commend you to the God in whose face I see yours. And may he grant to us to find each other, happy thieves, in Paradise, if it please.God, the Father of us both. Amen.t Inshallah.t Algiers, 1 December 1993 Tobhirine, 1.January 1994 Christian Has ever an executioner been addressed so lovingly: "my last-minute friend . , . I see your face in the face of God. may we find each other in Paradise"? The "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" of the Master is echoed with a fullness rarely heard in the long annals of discipleship. Greater love than this no one has. The Time Approaches Two more nuns were shot in Algeria on 3 September 1995. Ten missionaries had now been slain. After the funeral Father Christian wrote a letter to the abbot general in Rome: The celebration had a beautiful atmosphere of serenity and offering. It brought together a very small church, whose Review for Religious remaining members are perfectly conscious that the logic of their presen(+ must include henceforth the possibility of a violent death. It is for many a new and radical plunge, as it were, into the very charism of their congregation., and also a return to the source of the first call. For all that, all of us clearly desire that none of these Algerians, to whom our consecration binds us in the name of the love which God has for them, ever wound this love by killing any of us, any of our brethren. Lord, disarm me and disarm them. A few months later Father Christopher wrote these prophetic lines at the end of a poem: Finally, my friends, let's get it straight: I belong to him and follow his steps to the fullest truth of my Easter. On the night of 26-27 March 1996, Mohammed, the layman who helped the monks, was roused from his sleep--he lived with his family in a cottage at the gate of the monastery--by the "brothers of the mountain." They said they came for Brother Luc, the doctor, to take him to care for some of their men who were wounded. They crashed through into the monastery. When they demanded that Brother Luc come with them, Father Christian refused to allow it in view of Brother's age and serious asthmatic condition. With this the armed band rounded up all the monks they could find. Fortunately two were sleeping in another building and escaped capture, as did the priests and sis-ters in the guesthouse. The seven monks were carried off into the night and nothing further was heard of them until a London Arabic newspaper, A1 Hayat, published extracts from a communication of the GIA dated 18 April. It said that the emir did not recognize the aman, the protection that his predecessor accorded the monks; that it was illicit because the monks "have not ceased to invite Muslims to be evangelized, to display their slogans and symbols, and to com-memorate their feasts with solemnity." He went on, "Monks who live among the working classes can be legitimately killed . They live with people and draw them away from the divine path, urging them to be evangelized. It is also licit to apply to them what applies to lifelong unbelievers when they are prisoners of war: murder, slavery, or exchange for Muslim prisoners." Only later did the French government acknowledge that on 20 November-December 1996 Pennington ¯ The Cistercian Martyrs April the GIA had made a tape on which they required the seven monks to speak as proof that they were still alive. This tape was delivered to the government a week later. There were rumors of secret negotiations. But the monks would not have wanted to win their freedom at the cost of the lives of others, which would cer-tainly have been the case if the captured GIA terrorists were released to wreak more violence. The Martyrdom Although there had been some ambiguous statements from the French government in this regard, President Chirac stated formally on 20 May that there would be no negotiations with the terrorists regarding an "exchange of prisoners." This seems to have settled the mfitter. On 23 May, Radio Medi 1 in Tangiers read extracts from a GIA communiqud announcing that the seven monks had been beheaded on 21 May. Some doubt as to the verac-ity of this report lingered. But the French government, now admitting it had received the earlier secret communication from the GIA, confirmed the authenticity of the radio report. On Thursday evening, 23 May, in a powerfully symbolic act watched by millions on television, Cardinal Lustiger of Paris extinguished the seven candles which, in the presence of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders, he had lit seven weeks earlier as a prayer and a hope for the release of the seven monks. Muslim-Christian Relations The se'~en monks of Our Lady of Atlas had dedicated their monastic lives to furthering the growth of healthy and life-giving relations between Muslims and Christians, who shared faith in and worship of the God of our common father, Abraham. At first impulse one might say this sacrilegious butchery had decimated their life's mission. But in fact, according to the paradoxical logic of an all-loving God, it gave it a whole new impetus. Rabah Kebir, the leader of the Islamic Salvation Front, who had earlier demanded of the GIA the release of the seven monks, now spoke out most forcefully: "I strongly condemn this criminal act, which runs absolutely contrary to the principles of Islam." Kahdidja Khalil of the High Council of French Muslims went further: "We strongly condemn this savage and barbaric act. It is Review for Religious forbidden in the holy Koran to touch 'all servants of God,' and that means priests and rabbis as well." The High Council had issued a fatwa, a solemn religious decree, declaring the monks' abduction illegal and calling for a day of fasting to pray for their release. In his address on Pentecost to the faithful in the piazza of St. Peter's, Pope John Paul II said: "Despite our deep sorrow, we thank God for the witness of love given by these religious. Their fidelity and constancy give honor to the church and surely will be seeds of reconciliation and peace for the Algerian people, with whom they were in solidarity." Also on Pentecost Sunday, in a symbolically powerful gesture once again, Cardinal Lustiger relit the seven candles before the high altar of Notre Dame Cathedral as a sign of reconciliation, declaring that the monks had not died in vain, but rather "for life, for love, and for reconciliation." The Funeral The fullest confirmation of the sacrifice of the seven Trappist brothers came on 30 May, only a few hours before the abbot gen-eral's arrival in Algeria for the celebration in honor of the martyrs. That morning the mutilated remains of the seven monks were found in a heap beside the road not far from Mtdta. They had evi-dently been interred for a time at some other location. The remains were placed in very simple wooden coffins and taken to the military hospital in Algiers. There the abbot general had the sorrowful task of identifying the remains. On the same day as the remains were found, Cardinal L~on Etienne Duval, the father of the church in Algeria and a great friend and supporter of the monks, completed his life's journey at the age of ninety-two. His funeral Mass on 2 June would be one with the Mass in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Africa for his seven sons and brothers. The Holy Father sent Cardinal Francis Arinze to represent him and preside. The two surviving monks of Our Lady of Atlas, Fathers Jean-Pierre and Amedeus, stood at the altar with him, as did the archbishop of Algiers and the Trappist abbot general and procurator general. In the sanctuary were the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, three other French bish-ops, and five ministers of the Algerian government. Seven of Father Christopher's brothers and sisters were present. November-Dece~nber 1996 Pennin~ton ¯ Tbe Cistercian Martyrs Cardinal Arinze in his funeral oration amplified the words the Holy Father had used on Pentecost: "The monks suffered unheard of violence . They gave all men and women an exam-ple of total sacrifice in honor of God and religion . The monks of M6d6a established friendly relations with their Muslim neigh-bors. They offered their services, especially in the field of medicine . They also contributed to the development of spir-itual dialogue and in this way gave evidence that sincere Muslims and Christians are able to gather together and mutually enrich each other also in the sphere of the spirit." Two days later, on Tuesday, 4 June, a small party was trans-ported by helicopter to M6d6a and on to the now deserted monastery at Tibhirine under heavy military escort. The remains of the brothers had been brought there the day before. The Muslim villagers, who loved the monks and had so often benefited from their ministrations, had dug the seven graves in the ceme-tery by the monastic church. The funeral service within the church was simple and brief, that at the graveside even more so. No news media or outsiders had been allowed to come. The brothers were laid to rest with those of their community who had gone before. If these Trappist brothers have been singularly blessed in receiving the grace of martyrdom, in their heroic victory are not we all also singularly blessed? Their witness of steadfast faith and a love that does not flinch in the face of death not only inspires us, but wins for us the grace to follow their example, each in our own calling. We have all been baptized into the death of Christ. We live that death so that in death we may enter into his risen life, We can rejoice in the cruel death of these men because we know and believe they h~ve truly entered into that life, the life for which they longed with all their being. Review for Religious CATHY ARATA Death Questions and Life Questions Nila, short for Petronila, was a woman approaching fifty years of age when I first saw her, but to look at her one would have guessed that she was in her mid-sixties. There was little pleasure in her life, no leisure, lots of heartache, and plenty of hard work. It was now the end of September, and she had been suffering from a severe case of hepati-tis. Her doctor had told her many times that what she needed most was rest, but the doctor had no idea of the circumstances in which she lived and moved and had her being. Nila and her husband, daughter, and son lived in a small isolated village with fifteen other families. The vil-lage has no water and no electricity and is a steep, ardu-ous climb from anywhere else. All the houses are adobe, with tin roofs and earthen floors. There is no school, no health clinic, no store of any kind. To get her daily supply of water, Nila had to walk downhill for about fifteen minutes and then t.rudge uphill with a five-gallon jug of water on her head. She usually did this three times a day. When the housekeeping chores were done, she went to the stream to do the family wash. On the days that she needed firewood, it was another long walk to gather the wood and then return home carrying up to fifty pounds of it on her head. I had seen Nila a few weeks before. Her yellow eyes Cathy Arata SSND worked in El Salvador for seven years. Her present address is 6401 North Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21212. November-December 1996 life and death Arata ¯ Death Questions and L~e (~uestions gave ,no doubt that she did indeed have hepatitis. But that was back in July, and now we were entering October. It was about 7:30 in the evening, and I had just driven into the village where I live. As I was getting out of the car, someone told me that Nila had just been carried down the mountain in a hammock and that she was seriously ill. At first I did not pay much attention. It had been a long day and I was tired. I wanted only to get into my lit-tle house, close the door, and not be bothered. I was also impa-tient at the expectation that I would go and visit her. Well, I did go and was taken off guard by what I saw when I arrived at the place where they had taken. Nila. It was a small one-room adobe house, dark inside with a candle or two burning. The family, too poor to have closets, had boxes of clothing piled on tables along the wall. There were three simple wood-frame beds; on each one sat three or four children. Nila was in the mid-dle of the floor on a straw mat. She was, I guess you could say, semiconscious, writhing in pain. The small house was crowded with neighbors who had come to gawk at her. Close to where she lay, there were ten or twelve chickefis scratching on the floor for a morsel to eat. I was angry and frustrated with all the people who were stand-ing around "doing nothing," probably because of my own com-pulsive need to do something. So, when Nila's brother asked me if I could drive her to the clinic about three miles away, I readily agreed to do so. I went for the car, and the men began to lift Nila into the hammock in order to carry her to a spot where I would be able to meet them with the car. It was about 8:30 p.m. and the clinic was closed. In E1 Salvador all doctors and teachers have to give one year of com-munity service after their schooling. The doctor of this little vil-lage was a government doctor and was not happy to see us when we went to her home to tell her we had a patient who needed help. She was undoubtedly as tired as I, and she angrily said, "Why didn't you come during hours?" But she relented. Nila's brother and her older daughter literally dragged her from the car to the clinic because, although she was still alive, she was dead weight. Recognizing immediately that she needed a hospital, the doctor was harsh and cold and scolded us for not coming sooner. Nila died the next day in the hospital in Ilobasco, a small city about an hour and a half away. Her older son, a guerrilla.during the war and now a member of the newly formed National Police, Review for Relig4otts was with her. He borrowed money to buy the simple, crude wooden box in which to carry her back to the village. The box, with the remains of Nila, was placed on the back of an old pickup truck and driven over a dirt road much in need of repair. The news of Nila's death jolted me because I was taken off guard, not only by her death, but also by my own coldness and lack of compassion. That evening, when I arrived at the house where the wake was to be held, most of the community had already gathered, and, as was the custom, the men were outside playing cards and drinking homemade liquor while the women and children were inside praying and singing devotional hymns. The coffin was in the middle of the floor, in the exact spot where I had found Nila two nights earlier. It had survived the journey from Ilobasco and was now surrounded by flowers of many kinds which the neighbors had brought from their gardens. Most of them were placed in "vases" of Nestl~ instant-milk cans. A candle burned at each corner of the coffin, which was so constructed that a small piece of glass made Nila's face visible. But, because the house was so hot, steam had formed on the inside of the glass, and her face could not be seen clearly. The chickens were scratching around, but no one seemed to notice. After all, it is not unusual to have chickens roaming through the house. Two pigs came in and were shooed away. As we prayed the rosary, my mind flashed to Jefferson City, Missouri, where at the same moment Mary Margaret Johanning, our former SSND international leader, lay dying. I could not help comparing the way Nila died and the way Mary Margaret was dying. Both women were too young to die, and both believed fervently in an all-loving God. Perhaps that is all they had in common. It seemed obvious that, as Mary Margaret died, her God was present to her in the doctors and nurses who tried to lengthen her life, using all the newest technology that medicine has to offer. God was present to her too in the hundreds of cards and notes she received from her sisters around the world. Above all, The news of Nila's death jolted me because I was taken off guard, not only by her death, but also by my own coldness and lack of compassion. November-December 1996 Arata ¯ Death Questions and Life Questions God was present in her devoted family and host of loving friends who accompanied her in her dying. And Nila? Was God present as she writhed on the earthen floor surrounded by chickens looking for a morsel to eat? When her husband arrived at the wake drunk and vomiting, swinging his .machete in the air, was God there too? Was God outside with the men who were drinking and playing cards? It seems as if God treats us all very differently, and for a long time I have been angry with this God of ours. I have been resent-ful and frustrated that God is not the God I think God should be! God should not allow such things as Nila's cruel poverty and harsh dying and death, nor should God allow wars and concen-tration camps and bullets and bombs and mortars that carry atroc-ities beyond human imagining. God should put a moratorium on those things insurance companies call "acts of God," such as earth-quakes, floods, typhoons, and hurricanes. I have been resentful toward myself, too, because I am pow-erless in the face of such evil. My resentment has shown itself in my impatience, my coldness, my frustration at not being able to do what God is not doing: changing unjust structures, wiping out poverty, replacing wars with lasting justice and peace, and con-trolling the forces of nature. The past few months I have been gifted by my community with some sabbatical time: time to step out of a very active min-istry spanning thirty-three years and reflect on the meaning of those years, time to pause long enough to quiet my own com-pulsive need to right the wrong in the world and, in the silence and space, allow God to intimate to me that I was forgetting who I was and that I was assuming the role that was properly God's! Most of my questions, though, remain: Why such evil in the world? Why such a disparity between those who are poor and those who are rich? Why such a disparity of natural resources from country to country? Why th

Issue 53.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1994. ; 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 ¯ V~ashington, 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. for religious Editor Associat~ 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 Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NO\rEMBER-DECEMBER 1994 ¯ VOLUME 53 ¯ NqOMBER 6 contents religious life 806 Befriending the Wind Doris Gottemoeller RSM raises the question of ecclesial identity for religious and the question of mission in the postmodern world. 820 Recapturing the Sense of Mystery William F. Hogan CSC suggests that fostering a sense of mystery is essential for the growth and vitality of religious. 825 A Reflection on Living between the Times Margaret Ann Jackson FSM sees her ministry in working with homeless families as a connection with the sacred at the very core of life. 832 840 847 charism Motherhood--Elizabeth Seton's Prism of Faith Betty Ann McNeil DC draws a portrait of Elizabeth Seton, a wife and mother, revealing her insights about motherhood and its impact on her faith and the development of her Marian devotion. Reclaiming Our Name Joseph F. Nassal CPPS underscores the importance of knowing a religious congregation's charism as the energy source of its identity and ministry. Revitalizing Charisms Inspiring Religious Life Maryanne Stevens RSM presents the power and blessing of charisms as that which transforms religious orders and the wider church. 86O 866 prayer Learning to Curse Gina Hens-Piazza describes the catharsis, conversion, and communion moments found in the psalms of lament. Prayer: All My Comfort Sheila Galligan IHM considers how a familiarity with the prayer life of Elizabeth Seton can enrich our own spiritual life. 802 Review for Religious 875 Autumn Leaves: Poem and Commentary Joseph Matheis enters us into his own poem through a series of reflections on its spiritual implications. 884 892 898 903 ministry Keeping Our Focus ¯ Stephen Doughty explores insights and practices from Christian spirituality which help us maintain a focused ministry amid today's many fracturing pressures. Homesteading: A Metaphor for Life Douglas C. Vest suggests homesteading as an image for life which combines movement and stability, journey and homemaking. Serving the Lost Sheep Gerard B. Cleator OP proposes some models of ministry as he reflects on his ministry to gays in Bolivia. In Malindi James Martin SJ relates his experience of a Kenyan town to reflections made by the famous Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. 906 915 8O4 932 937 950 renewal Life in Abundance Patricia Barbernitz and Theodore K. Cassidy SM describe a spiritual renewal program for religious which is based on the process that guides Christian initiation. Towards Jerusalem: The Process of an Assembly David Coghlan SJ shares an experience of how a provincial assembly functions and then grounds the event in an organizational theory. departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: An Apostolic Exhortation to Religious: Redemptionis Donum Book Reviews Indexes to Volume 53 November-December 1994 803 prisms Recently in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, at the end of a rainy day the clouds on the west-ern horizon broke just enough to let the rays of a setting sun produce a brilliant and full rainbow. The rainbow lasted so long, the colors were so distinct, that local TV and newspaper journalists could not resist expressing their marvel. I was struck once again at how we humans are captivated by the phenomenon of light. If we want to celebrate a civic or social event, we light up the darkness of night with a dazzling array of fireworks. The beauty of a modern city is often measured by the lighting, sometimes hard and defining, at other times soft and mellow, which enhances its major buildings and mon-uments. The wonder of Christmas displays, whether sec-ular ones in store windows or religious ones in church and home, is generated by the twinkling of myriads of starlike light bulbs. We find a fascination with light, even if we are fortunate enough to live in a take-it-for-granted electric light world. Perhaps our fascination with light remains because we feel so easily oppressed by earth's darkness. In a win-ter season we endure with some dismay the shortness of daylight hours bracketed by both late-morning and early-afternoon darkness. In season and out, we suffer the dark burden of sickness and death among family and friends. Exposed to media coverage, we feel weighed down by the dark oppression of people's hatred, prejudice, torturing and killing of one another, whether it be in Bosnia or Rwanda or our own city. During the months of November and December, church tradition emphasizes two aspects of light shining 804 Review for Religious into the darkness of human experience. The sure coming of the reign of God shines out in the month of November, as we approach the end of Ordinary Time, through three distinctive feasts--~l Saints, All Souls, and Christ the King. All Souls, the commemoration of all the faithful departed, might seem at first sight to be a "dark" feast that sets the tone for this month of our remembering the dead. But the companion feastdays of All Saints and All Souls become twin lights beckoning all of us in the church on earth to struggle on in our graced efforts to let God's reign shine forth here and now. The feast of Christ the King suggests searchlight beams striding across nighttime clouds and presenting a preview glimpse of the incarnate Son's eschatological, joy as the Father brings "all things in the heavens and on earth into one under Christ's headship" (Ep 1:10). Our faith is stirred to shine through any present darkness: "We believe in the life of the world to, come." In the rainbow light of these feasts we are led again to /15rofess in word and in action the sureness of our faith's goal. Then we turn from the darkness that seems to obscure human life's purpose and direction to a darkness in which not despair and death but the beginnings of hope and life are hidden. December holds the dark tradition of centuries-long human searching and hoping portrayed in the season of Advent, which breaks forth into the pure shining beam over Jesus' birth, the cel-ebration of the nativity of our Lord. We proclaim that "a light has shone in our darkness." Celebratng Christmas we do not just remember a past event, but we enter anew into our own Christian responsibility to "shine like the stars in the sky while holding fast to the word of life" (Ph 2:15-16). As we celebrate the mystery of God's light and darkness in our liturgical year, the staff of Review for Religious prays that joy and peace--God's own gift in Christ lighten your life and witness to your faith now and into the new year. David L. Fleming SJ Nobember-December 1994 805 DORIS GOTTEMOELLER Befriending the Wind religious life Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads The wind is passing by.' This whimsical lyric by Christina Rossetti reminds us how susceptible we are to the influence of unseen forces. The wind's traces may be gentle, as in the poet's vision, or fierce. At one moment wind soothes, shapes, and guides; at another it rips and tears. It rustles leaves, lifts kites, powers sails, and supports wings. It can also destroy homes, uproot trees, and down power lines. Invisible but not silent, wind whispers and sings and sobs and roars. Wind can be fickle or frightening; it can also be life-giv-ing and renewing. Anyone who has lived apostolic women's religious life in the United States in the last thirty years knows what it is to be buffeted and shaped by powerful but sometimes Doris Gottemoeller RSM, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, gave this presentation as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) at their national assembly in August 1994. The presentation was pub-lished in Origins 24, no. 14 (15 September 1994). Her address is 8300 Colesville Road #300; Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-3243. 806 Revie~ for Religious unseen forces from every side. Continuing the analogy, we could liken the pressures on us to winds from the four compass points. From the east came the expectations of the institutional church, whether Roman or American: conciliar documents, "Essential Elements," canonical requirements, diocesan policies and proce-dures. These influences helped to launch and validate our renewal. They also created tensions between our own insights and official mandates and interpretations. From the south came the winds of liberation theology. The bishops at Medellin and Puebla and our sisters missioned in Latin America sent messages of a new way of being with the poor, of doing theology, of being church. Our west winds were the forces of our own society and cul-ture. Enjoined by the Second Vatican Council to make our own "the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age," we adapted our lifestyles and ministries to new needs. At the same time we experienced and adapted to the revolutions in science, technology, communication, transportation, the polit-ical and social orders, popular culture and the media which char-acterized all of Western society. To the northern point on the compass we can assign the steadying influence of our own founding charisms and sound tra-ditions, newl)i researched and interpreted for contemporary life. From north, south, east, and west, then, the winds of change have carried us to this place and shaped our present reality. How can we describe that reality? Today's Reality In the decades after the Second Vatican Council the winds of change propelled us through some incredibly difficult terrain: misunderstandings without, polarizations within, loss of mem-bership, lack of resources, pastoral disappointments. Along the way we have acquired an unprecedented level of academic and professional preparation for ministry. But we sometimes confuse professional achievement with ministerial effectiveness. We have a spirituality cultivated through individual faith journeys. But we are less sure how to integrate it into a communal experience. We have highly developed skills in group participation, but less skill in calling forth and affirming in~lividual leadership. Overall, com-pared to twenty years ago, American women religious today are November-December 1994 807 Gottemoeller ¯ Befriending tbe Wind more grounded in charism, more self-aware as women, more appreciative of diversity, more aware of the interdependent causes of social ills, and as committed as ever to alleviating the suffering of the poor, the needy, and the vulnerable. Moreover, the processes of renewal have freed and empowered us. We have eliminated irrelevant and outmoded symbols and practices. We have grown into new theological, spiritual, educa-tional, psychological insights. So the moment has come to ask: What kind of future can we look forward to? The answer--our future--depends, as it always has, on the mysterious work of God's providence in our regard. But the future also depends, as it always has, on how we answer the depth questions. These are perennial questions which have to be answered in every time and place. The prospect that the upcoming synod may ask and answer these questions strikes fear in some. But there is no reason to fear. These are not questions that can be answered by a synod, or by assemblies or chapters or planning teams, no matter how moti-vated or sophisticated. The answers to these questions can only be born out of and lived within the hearts and lives of our members. Depth Questions There are only a small number of such depth questions, but in light of the theme of the 1994 LCWR meeting, charism and mission, I focus on two of them: the question of our ecclesial identity and of our mission in the postmodern world.-' The two questions are interrelated as being and action; identity is expressed in mission. Moreover, the four winds of change--messages from the institutional church, from liberation theologies, from our United States culture, and from our traditions--have given each question its distinctive form today. (I want to note that I am using the phrase apostolic religious life in an inclusive and nontechnical sense to distinguish our topic from contemplative religious life rather than from its monastic or evangelical forms.) Ecclesial Identity The question of ecclesial identity can be asked from two per-spectives: First, does women's apostolic religious life occupy an essential or unique place in the church? and second, is visible 808 Review for Religious membership and participation in the church critical to the iden-tity of women's apostolic religious life? How important are we to the church, and how important is membership in the church to us? The question of ecclesial identity seen from either perspective would have sounded absurd a few decades ago when the signs of our identification with the church were distinctive. Our dress, dwellings, lifestyles, and ministries signaled that we were a special and esteemed group in the church. The question of iden-tity had been answered along the same lines since the founding of most of our con-gregations. But one of the effects of renewal has been to lay open the question in our new context.3 First, let us examine it from the perspec-tive of our place in the church. History shows us that religious life began in the third century when disciples began to gather around the early desert solitaries. But most of our modern apostolic congregations arose after the Reformation, with the greatest number founded in the 18th and 19th centuries. Clearly, what has not always existed in the church need not always exist. Neither religious life in general nor apos-tolic religious life in the form in which we know it today is essen-tial to the constitution of the church. However, the Second Vatican Council affirmed that religious life is inseparable from the life and holiness of the ch. urch, an encomium which suggests a distinct identity.4 W-hat is that iden-tity? Generally, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church defines us as laypersons in a specific canonical state. I say generally because in one passage it says that laity are "all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the religious state," (31) thus sig-nalling a fundamental ambigu!ty: Are we laity or not? As we know, a key achievement of the Council was to transform our under-standing of church from that of a hierarchical institution, a per- We have grown into new theological, spiritual, educational, psychological insights. So the moment has come to ask: What kind of future can we look forward to ? November-December 1994 809 Gottemoeller ¯ Befriending the Wind fect society in which religious occupy a special "state of perfec-tion," into a People of God in which all members are equally called to a life of holiness. That ecclesial vision highlights bap-tismal consecration and the significance of the lay vocation; it is less clear in affirming any distinct contribution of religious life to the church. As the years have passed, this theoretical ambiguity has grown in the practical order. How many people really believe that reli-gious life is a gift to the whole Christian community, not just to the men and women who embrace it? What are the consequences of that gift in the lives of the hierarchy, the clergy, other laity, the poor and the marginated and those in need? What difference does the presence of apostolic women religious, as a specific group rather than as single individuals, make to the life of a parish, a diocese, or an institution? It is not enough for us to assert a dif-ference. How do we live and act in a way that is unique and dis-tinctive? It seems to me that the answer to the question of ecclesial identity is that, fundamentally, apostolic women religious are lay-women who have embraced and pub!icly committed themselves to a distinctive way of following Jesus Christ. Apostolic religious life is a way of life, a phrase which connotes a depth and breadth and intensity of commitment far beyond a lifestyle. Lifestyles can be taken up and abandoned by simply changing one's economic status, leisure activities, or diet.s By contrast, a way of life consists of a constellation of funda-mental life choices having an internal coherence and consistency. One has a way of life, defined by the choices one has made about relationship to God, to the Christian community, to sexuality, to possessions, to companions, to those in need. The way of life known as religious life is a radical response to the call of Jesus who says, "I am the way." By anal.ogy, the early church described itself as The Way, a commitment to following Christ to which every other choice is subordinated (Ac 9:2). Author Judith Merlde describes religious life as a categorical choice, that is, a choice that eliminates other choices. She notes, "Religious life involves more than social action, professional excellence, or holistic living. Rather, it is a life project built on a relationship" (pp. 8, 109). Religious life is a continual call to conversion. It is dynamic, as the fundamental choices deepen and mature and the consequences of those choices are played out in different circumstances. The total- 810 Review for Religious ity of these choices, lived with visible and passionate commit-ment, clearly distinguishes us from other laity in the church and offers a unique witness. I suggest that, in the processes of renewal, our identity has been weakened because we have not tended enough to the inter-nal consistency, the congruence, among the depth choides which define our way of life. Celibacy, prayer, community, mission should all interact and contribute to the fundamental unity at its core. For example, the witness of celibate community is a power-ful expression of ministry. Ministry engenders passion in prayer; prayer purifies the heart of attachment to material things; renunciation of material things brings us closer to the poor and the needy, and so forth. Is it accurate or helpful to describe our way of life as charis-matic? Yes and no. On the posi-tive side, this designation highlights the spontaneity, the diversity, the creativity, the gra-tuity of religious life. The Pauline passages on charism are eloquent and well-known. We must acknowledge, however, that they apply to all Christians. All--bishops, clerics, laity, religious-- are called and gifted in a variety of ways. Since the Council, how-ever, the term has been appropriated by religious to refer to the grace of founding a congregation, to its characteristic spirituality, to its mission, to the gifts and graces of individual members, and to religious life as a way of life. I suggest that the imprecision of the term has greatly diminished its usefulness. The distinctive-ness of each congregation might better be identified with its tra-dition or its deep story.6 Furthermore, the description of religious life as charismatic sometimes heightens the tension between insti-tutional/ hierarchical elements of the church and the charismatic in a way which is not helpful. The reality of the church is much more profound and complex than this simple dichotomy.7 In the processes of renewal, our identity has b~en weakened because we have not tended enough to the internal consistency, the congruence, among the depth choices which define our way of life. Noventber-December 1994 811 Gottemoeller ¯ Befriending the Wind Let me move on to the second aspect of the ecclesial identity issue: How significant is public membership and participation in the church to our identity as apostolic women religious? Those who have processed a dispensation for a sister who says that she is comfortable being a community member, but no longer feels at home in the Roman Catholic Chtirch, know what this issue is. Any who experience the tension among congregational members over including--or not including--a Eucharistic liturgy within a congregational celebration recognize another aspect of the issue. We struggle with the unthinkable: Is it possible to be a member of one's congregation and not a member of the church? If we go back into our congregational histories we recognize that our foremothers sought and prized public identification with the church. Some congregations experienced painful struggles when church officials threatened to withhold recognition that founders regarded as rightfully theirs. More recently, our per-severance through the process of approval of constitutions, despite requirements that were sometimes arbitrary, insensitive, or oppressive, testified that basically we know ourselves to be and want recognition as congregations within the Roman Catholic Church. This desire persists despite the growing pain caused by the transformation of our consciousness as women and our realization that the church itself institutionalizes sexism within and fails to denounce it without. How can we justify this continued commit-ment to public identification with the church, and what does it call us to? Our commitment rests on our knowledge that at baptism we were each born again into life in Christ and into that extension of Christ's presence and work throughout space and time known as the church. Within the church we are taught, nourished, for-given, reconciled. The church is not just a spiritual concept or an individual personal experience. It is a collection of human beings from every race and nation and condition, united by the one Spirit in a visible and public community of disciples. At religious profession we renewed our baptismal commit-ment and thus signaled that membership in 'the church is intrin-sic to the way of life we were choosing. The choice for a life in union with Christ is a choice for a life within Christ's church. The choice of membership in the church is part of that constel-lation of fundamental choices which define a way of life. 812 Review for Religious Sometimes this is not an easy place to be. We share member-ship with those who are flawed, confused, limited in many ways. In our more honest moments we recognize flaws and limitations in ourselves. Furthermore, within the church there is a differen-tiation of roles, responsibilities, and gifts. To paraphrase St. Paul, "Not all are apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of mighty deeds" (1 Co 12-13). But the greatest gift, the one that is the hallmark of a Christian and the criterion by which all else is judged is love. It is our love for Christ and for the community united in Christ which impels and sustains our commitment to membership. To allow ourselves to be alienated from the church is to surrender our birthright; it is to deprive ourselves of life-giving nourish-ment; it is to be exiled from our true home. Furthermore, public estrangement from the church deprives its other members of the witness of our love, our truth, and our fidelity. To summarize the first part of these reflections: Apostolic religious life is a distinct way of life within the Christian com-munity characterized by a complex of fundamental choices. Among these choices is the choice for explicit membership in the Catholic Church. Religious congregations, because they exist to facilitate and promote the way of life of their members, also have a public identity within the church. The Mission of Apostolic Religious Life Our second depth question is: ~What should be the mission of apostolic women's religious life today and in the future? Our world today is very different from that in which "our missions were first articulated. The immigrant poor of the 19th century have moved up the economic ladder. Many of our traditional works have become public responsibilities; the rest of the laity have expanded their role in ministry. Still the way of life we have espoused is radically for others. We have made a life-long commitment to mission within the context of our individual congregations. Therefore we need to reexamine and, if necessary, restate our mission for this new time and place. This is a work for each con-gregation, but I suggest that the mission apostolic women religious are called to today should be integral to our way of life, prophetic, global, and corporate. Mission as integral to a way of life. Each of our religious con-gregations was founded to express some facet of the church's mis- Noventber-December 1994 813 Gottemoeller * Befriending the Wind sion. Mission is at the heart of our self-understanding, an expres-sion of our identity. The choice to be "in mission" is part of that constellation of fundamental life choices which constitute our way of life. As self-evident as this seems, the identification of mis-sion with our way of life has been eroded from several sides. For example, David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis in the Future of Religious Life Study describe the "parochial assimilations" of reli-gious life: Religious are regarded as interchangeable parish work-ers, without any significance attached to their identity as religious (p. 3 7). The sense of mission as integral to a way of life has also been weakened as a result of financial pressures. Sometimes a "job"--anything thatpays an adequate salary--seems like the only possible choice of work. The sense of mission is weakened from still another side when, in the absence of a strong commitment to prayer or community, an individual allows her world to be wholly defined by work. Professional ambition and workaholism can replace zeal for mission. As apostolic women' religious, our mission expresses our iden-tity as laity, as women, and as religious. I use laity here in contrast to the clerical vocation. It is true that many of our members are performing ministries which used to be the responsibility of priests. However, the fact that we are doing them demonstrates that they are expressiong of the baptismal vocation, not the priesdy vocation. Our congregations do not. have two classes of members, lay and clerical; we do not have hierarchy built into our way of life. Our radical equality as baptized Catholics is part o~f who we are within community and it makes us one with the overwhelming majority of the church's membership. Our identification with women and as women animates and shapes our' mission. With women because we have made ourselves present to other women in their hopes, fears, achievements, and struggles. We understand the needs of people for healthcare, hous-ing, education, economic justice, political representation, moral guidance, spiritual inspiration from a woman's perspective. As women because we bring to ministry our personal gifts of courage, compassion, sensitivity, honed through our own life experience. Finally, our identity as religious shapes our mission. Individual ministries are expressions of a congregational mission; they are shaped and focused by ~he congregation's tradition. But beyond that, our public identification with a distinctive way of life is itself a witness, a prophetic statement. 814 Review for Religious Mission as prophetic. To describe religious life as prophetic does not necessarily connote dramatic speeches and gestures, although some occasions do call for them. Rather, it signifies a transparency to the divine which is the fruit of a life focused on Jesus and which is the real meaning of prophecy--speaking of God. It is not a matter of individually prophetic persons, but of a way of life which, because it involves the deliberate, daily, and publicly identifiable following of Jesus, is prophetic by its nature.8 The notion of being publicly identifiable is a challenging one, given the absence of the former markers of public identity such as habit and proximity to a church and employment in a particular setting. It does not mean adopting these outward symbols again° Nor does it necessarily imply being recognized as a religious by every casual observer. It does not mean fading into anonymity. It means being recognizable to all who would see, who are inter-ested or who inquire. It requires a facility in drawing the gaze of the inquirer from ourselves to the Gospel which we proclaim and which animates us. Prophecy demands inculturation lest the word spoken fall on deaf ears. It leads to diverse expressions of religious life as the word is adapted to differing circumstances. Prophecy requires engagement in the public issues of the day if the Gospel is to speak to contemporary human needs. Prophecy requires that we hold our sponsored institutions accountable for the clarity of their Gospel witness. Mission as global. A prophetic mission today will also be global in its perspective and outreach. We know from personal experi-ence and observation how the poverty and suffering in one part of the world have their causes in decisions made in another part, and how the elites of the world conspire to enhance their own positions at the expense of the poor and marginalized. We kn6w that greed, lust for power, racial and ethnic animosity, and rape of the earth and its resources know no boundaries. Women and men religious constitute a worldwide network of communication and potential response to human suffering and exploitation. Many of our congregations transcend national borders. Others have mem-bers missioned in some of the remotest corners of the globe. Furthermore, we have organizational ties with religious through-out the world through the LCWR conference and through the International Union of Superiors General. November-December 1994 815 Gottemoeller ¯ Befriending the Wind The twofold test of whether a congregational mission is more than rhetoric is how effectively it shapes each member's choices and how much it contributes to the public perception of the congregation. What is sometimes lacking is an appreciation of the valuable resource we have in our information about realities around the world and creativity in making effective use of the information. As individual congregations and as a Conference we have responded to new needs and specific crises in Eastern Europe, Liberia, Somalia, Central America, Haiti, Rwanda and many other places. Can we enlarge our commitment to information sharing, analysis, and coordinated action on behalf of a truly world church? Even if the mission of one's congregation is focused on a par-ticular local church or geographic region, this potential and impera-tive for global outreach exists through the Leadership Conference as well as through relationships with other congregations. Mission as corporate. Perhaps the most challenging dimension of future mission will be its corporate character. In the FORUS study Nygren and Ukeritis claim that many individual religious and groups have relinquished the power of corporate witness for a variety of individual commitments in effective but unconnected ministerial positions. "The emphasis on indi-vidual ministry, or, at times, simply procuring a position, has eclipsed the symbolism of, and statement previously made by, corporate commitments" (p. 35). The situation of individual min-istries is not easily reversed, even if it should be. There are only two ways to do so: Either everyone is employed within the same institutional ministry or everyone is committed to the same type of service such as ministry to persons with AIDS or to street chil-dren. The first solution is possible only where the congregation controls the institution. The latter solution assumes that the type of social problem being addressed will always exist to the same degree of need. Neither solution takes into account the differing talents, energies, professional expertise of the members. 816 Review for Religious A new way to think about corporate mission is needed, one which recognizes the changing social realities, engages and focuses the energies of the members, and expresses the public identity of the congregation. It is a corporate mission that is needed, not necessarily corporate ministries. The twofold test of whether a congregational mission is more than rhetoric is how effectively it shapes each member's choices and how much it contributes to the public perception of the congregation. Concluding Reflections The characteristics of mission outlined here--integral to the way of life of apostolic women religious, prophetic, global, and corporate--will be nuanced by the tradition and fresh inspiration of each congregation. Who are we? What is our hearts' desire? How will we spend our talents and energies? Our ability to answer these depth questions about identity and mission with clarity and conviction has implications for new members, for associates, for affiliates. They deserve to know what we are asking them to invest in and to help shape for the future. The questions are our questions. They belong to us before they belong to church officials or synod participants. It is time to speak and live our truth without compromise. There is a growing temptation among religious today to believe that our choices are limited. We feel constrained by age, by diminishing numbers, by finances, by professional education, by ecclesial expectations to carry on as we are, without really encountering the depth issues. Let us take a lesson from the suc-cessful sailor who makes a friend of the wind. Buffeted by contrary breezes, he chooses a tack and sets the sails. With one eye on the compass, the sailor strains forward toward the distant shore. Despite the winds buffeting us, we too can set our direction. Our compass is Christ; our sails are woven of faith and hope, courage and love. We can face only forward. Renewal has often invited us to look backward toward the great persons and events of our past. Now it is time to look forward, to the new leaders and cre-ative deeds in our future. There was no golden age of religious life. There were only women and men, human as we are, who loved God, cared for persons in need, and dared to dream. We are as human, as flawed and gifted as they were, and still in touch with the dream. November-December 1994 817 Gottemoeller ¯ Befriending tbe Wind We began by reflecting on the four winds of change which have brought us to this place. Let us end by invoking the wind that comes from another direction, the breath of the Spirit which blows where it wills. S6metimes a zepher, sometimes a mighty gale--God's Spirit can nudge our timid choices, strengthen our frail resolve, reverse any misdirected course. Before he left us, Jesus promised the apostles that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit would come upon them, and they would be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (Ac 1:8). Later, when their time was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. "And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were., and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak . . . the Spirit enabled them to proclaim" (Ac 2:2-4). Now it is our time. Spirit of God, fill us and send us forth with the power and passion of your Word! Notes ~ R.W. Crump, ed. The Complete Poems of Cbr#tina Rossetti (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1986), p. 42. z Joan Chittister OSB names ten critical questions which deal with "the very existence of religious life, its relationship to the church, its present character, its purpose, its spirituality and its energy" in the National Catholic Reportel; 18 February 1994. 3 The significance of this question was highlighted by David Nygren CM and Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ in the Religious Life Fntnres Project: Executive Summary (Chicago: University Center for Applied Social Research, 1992), p. 36: "The most compelling result of the FORUS study indicates that a significant percentage of religious no longer understand their role and function in the church. This lack of role clarity can result in lowered self-confidence, a sense of futility, greater propensity to leave religious life, and significant anxiety. The younger religious experience the least clarity, and among them, women religious experience less clarity than their male counterparts . For both women and men religious, Vatican II substantially reinforced the role of laity in the church but did not clarify for religious the unique contribution of their vocation." 4 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 44. s Judith A. Merkle contrasts "life-style enclaves" with communities in Committed by Choice (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 21. In the former, persons share some aspects of their essentially private lives; in the latter, they share their deeper meaning system or commit-ment. On the contrast between way of life and lifestyle see also David L. Fleming SJ, in Religious Life: Rebirth Through Conversion, ed. Gerald A. Arbuckle SM, and David L. Fleming SJ (New York: Mba House, 1990), pp. 23 and 33. 818 Review for Religious 6 Tradition is appropriate because it connotes both preservation and development, content and process. Bernard J. Lee SM suggests "deep story," a category of interpretation that comes out of structuralism, as a method for interpreting group identity in "A Socio-Historical Theology of Charism, "Review for Religious 48, no. 1 (January-February 1989): 124-135. 7 For helpful distinctions between biblical, theological, and socio-logical uses of charism see Christian Duquoc, Casino Floristan, et al., Cbarisms in the Church (New York: Seabury Press, 1978). 8 Elizabeth A. Johnson observes ". a new combination of ancient elements is beginning to define the essential character of religious life. The emerging understanding of this life is primarily that of persons and communities called to prophetic ministry embedded in a contemplative relationship to God." Review for Religious 53, no. 1 (January-February 1994): 12. Thirty Days Bruised beauty, sleep-starved struggle to be the Handmaid of the Lord. Shot silvered silken strands-- gentle kiss of your hair within my hands. And all this only a vague shadow of inner glory: outward reflection of your hidden mysterious love story. Chris Mannion FMS In September 1994 the Rwandan government confirmed the death of British Marist Brother Chris Mannion, a member of the Marist general council in Rome. He was reportedly killed by members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front while on official visitation. He had written the poem during a recent thirty-day retreat and had hoped our readers "might identify with its images and sentiments," as Brother Sefin Sammon, vicar general, wrote in his cover letter. R.I.P. November-December 1994 819 WILLIAM E HOGAN Recapturing the Sense of Mystery with a particular dominant theme that integrates different aspects of religious life. Whether or not it is stated by the authors, these works are an attempt to present a theology of religious life from a practical point of view. Such presentations offer serious reflec-tion, even though it is not feasible to champion one theological approach that will effectively embrace all religious institutes, given the uniqueness of each group from its founding charism and its particular evolution in history. Authors use a variety of starting points in their works, for example, mission, discipleship, service, justice and peace, the prophetic, the charismatic, and something could be said in favor of any of the theses or integrating themes. One can readily nod in agreement with almost every approach as it unfolds, unless the author seems to push the fundamental premise too much or dis-counts some aspect involving a conviction important to the reader. Much richness has been gained from the various presentations; insigh(s that had disappeared with the passage of time have been brought to our attention once more. To some extent one could speak of an intellectual explosion of ideas and a clearer under-standing of consecrated life since Vatican II, such that ~a person should be able to approach commitment to it more intelligently. But most gains include some loss. In this instance, the loss fac- William E Hogan CSC continues to serve in the general administration of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. His address is Casa Generalizia; Via Framura, 85; 00168 Ro~ne, Italy. 820 Review for Religious tor concerns the aspect of mystery--that which cannot be known but only experienced. The more we analyze religious life, the more we expose ourselves to the danger of taking the mystery out of the mystery of religious life or at least of losing a sense of the dimension of the mysterious. To have as many insights as possible into consecrated life is of great worth, if one is to respond to its demands and be faithful to a call. Yet over and above all the human knowledge we receive, the way God is present in rela-tionships and in the corporate journey of a group under the leadership of God when the members are serious about liv-ifig out their faith deeply is inexplicable. The particular experience of the sacred in the historical development of a community defies human understanding and categoriza-tion and is often realized only in retrospect. Every person's life experi-ence is a mystery. The people with whom we share our lives, those with whom our lives intersect, the events we expe-rience- these and other factors have a special effect that we can-not always grasp or name. Frequently through sufficient analysis we can understand some of the reasons why a life has taken a par-ticular development; but we are also confronted by many facets that cannot be fully comprehended and can, in a faith context, be attributed only to Divine Providence (or where there is no faith vision, to chance). Experience always involves an aspect of mystery. Where that experience includes God and a call of God, there will be a sense of the mystery, a living with a consciousness and conviction of mystery (the grace of the event). As Jesus is mystery, the church is mystery. Life in Christ is mystery; so too is consecrated life mystery because of the presences of God beck-oning us into ever deepening relationships. To lose or diminish a sense of the mystery opens one to the possibility of becoming deprived of some facets of a faith approach Life in Christ is mystery; so too is consecrated life mystery because of the presences of God beckoning us into ever deepening relationships. November-December 1994 821 Hogan ¯ Recapturing the Sense of Mystery to religious life, especially placing one's security in the Lord who leads us through some unknown paths on the pilgrimage of faith. Important as it is to analyze religious life and to act in accor-dance with the resulting knowledge, there is danger in too much intellectual analysis because of the tendency to fit what we discover into already established categories, thereby losing some of the uniqueness. The transcendent element eludes classification, and the dimension of transcendence is at the heart of consecrated life. Where a sense of mystery is weak, faith will be weak, and one would have reason to question the vitality of the faith journey. Our times seem to be overly characterized by a belief only in the evident, in what is verifiable. Faith ends up by being reduced to a purely human act--a cold, technical type of faith that certainly does not energize. Such an approach to faith would be death-dealing instead of life-giving for religious life. A person would not be moved toward ongoing conversion, entering more pro-foundly into the mystery of Christ wherever he would lead by the power of the Spirit. St. Paul speaks often of maturing in Christ and growing into the fullness of Christ. This message would fall on deaf ears if the faith were primarily human and the mindset one of wanting to know all that is entailed. Transcending self and transformation in Christ is not an intel-lectual process, even though knowledge is involved. Conversion occurs only with willingness to embrace the mystery. We can find ourselves living out and acting on insights concerning religious life without experiencing the life in depth, a sort of textbook approach to living without entering as a committed disciple into the unfold-ing of the adventure of following Christ. Life becomes mere for-mality and is not centered on Christ. Though the knowledge about Christ and mission may be great, Christ will not be expe-rienced; nor will there be transformation of the self into the mind and heart of Christ, nor a real passion for mission as it touches all of life's moments. There may be much activity in the name of the Lord, but it may be more professional work than ministry. Theory will have supplanted life in Christ. Unfortunately this has been the experience of some of us, something of which we remain unaware until the Lord jolts us in one way or another and we grasp the emptiness of what we have been living: an intellectualizing and a shallowness in living, at least in part because of not being pos-sessed of the awesomeness of the mystery of Christ. But our God never gives up on us and continues to call us to let God move us 822 Review for Religious to real faith in the person and mystery of Christ and to center all on Christ. In consecrated life the commitment is to the Lord and his people, not to the life in itself as an end, and not to our under-standing of the life as such. The constitutions, customs, tradi-tions, study of the elements of religious life--all have their place in helping us grasp the meaning of the life, its limits and basic norms. The commitment is made in accordance with them. Yet our pledge of self is to the Divine Persons and all the mystery therein embraced. We vow to God, not to ideas or ideals and do so in a spirit of relating to the Trinity of Persons. What is entailed in the relating cannot be spelled out or even understood, if there is a willingness to try to surrender the self to God with an openness to uncon-ditional following the divine leadership on pilgrimage. Without a sense of mys-tery we can unconsciously stop short at the juridical aspects of the vows and com-munity without meeting the God of the vows and com-munity. This happens when means are confused with the end and give rise to distortions of what the means were meant to bring about in fostering the relation with God. Recent history bears witness to this. We can define and program religious life too tightly in its many facets; mystery requires some flexibility and openness to where the Lord wants to take us and to be for his people. Our security must be in the Lord and not in knowledge, insights, research, history--and not even in the elements of the consecrated life of the institute as such. The challenge of living in Christ is to put one's trust in the Lord and to experience the mys-tery with its incomprehensibility. A leap of faith is required beyond the theory of religious life and witness. The leap of faith must be We can define and program religious life too tightly in its many facets; mystery requires some flexibility and openness to where the Lord wants to take us and to be for his people. November-December 1994 823 Hoga.n . ¯ . Recapturing the Sense of My_ste. ry made over and over again as the surprises of journeying together into the mystery of Christ keep coming along. All too frequently we do not continue to make the leaps of faith and move forward into the mystery of life in Christ. Despite the many changes that have been made, too many of us still live in a programmed way that lacks a dynamic faith response. There are still individual and community barriers between ourselves and the Christ we declare to follow in discipleship. Past formation emphasized particular patterns of response (and even non-response at times), and today we still experience the effects of that approach. Are religious being formed today to fos~ ter the sense of the mystery present in religious life and a spirit of adventure with and in Christ? History reveals that when new forms of religious life were developing, the times were charac-terized by an enthusiasm about the spirit of mystery present when what was known and accepted up hntil that time gave place to a new approach. It is only those brave leaps of faith by the power of the Spirit that broadened the charisms of consecrated life to enrich the people of God with those special gifts of the Spirit. Something of the same is occurring today in the blossoming of many new forms of Christian community. Yet we might well ask whether it is just to new groups that the Spirit of God is speak-ing today, ls there not an invitation being extended to all to recap-ture the sense of mystery with its many paradoxes? The rational/practical side of us may not like the ambiguity and cloudiness of mystery; there is a preference for clear defini-tions and limits. But the faith/believer side should, in openness to God, go beyond the known to plunge more deeply into the obscurity of the mystery aspect of experiencing and sharing life in Christ to the fullest. "1" In Memoriam "1" Mary Margaret Johanning SSND died of cancer in Jefferson City, Missouri, on 1 October 1994. Sister Mary Margaret, general superior of the School Sisters of Notre Dame from 1977 to 1987 and from 1989 chancellor of the Jefferson City diocese, was a founding member of our advisory board. Please remember her in your prayers. 824 Review for Religious MARGARET ANN JACKSON A Reflection on Living Between the Times g~'~g'~ etween the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern ,tg-~ Experience of God," (Review for Religious, January- February 1994) by Elizabeth Johnson rang true within me. What is more, it gave me a new way to interpret and understand my own three-year experience of working with homeless families in the Missouri Hotel, a large shelter in Springfield, Missouri. Johnson rightly says: "Contemplation is a way of seeing that leads to union. It arises from an experience of connection with the sacred at the very core of life . As a result, a certain intuition arises by which one begins to know and love the world as God does" (p. 6). The Experience of Homeless Families Homeless families find themselves stripped down to the very core of life, struggling to pro, vide the basics for themselves. With few exceptions, artifice and hypocrisy are not present. When fam-ilies are forced to resort to living in a shelter, they rarely play the game of trying to convince others that this is a desirable option. Having used all the ordinary supports of their life, they are reduced to living with strangers. They have arrived at our shelter because of problems, whether one or many, but typically there are many. Margaret Ann Jackson FSM serves as the family and children coordinator in the Missouri Hotel, a homeless shelter in Springfield, Missouri, Her address is 3177 East Linwood Drive; Springfield, Missouri 65804. Nove~nber-December 1994 825 Jackson ¯ A Reflection on Living Between the Times Often it takes time for a family's deeper problems to come to the surface. The hopelessness may have its origin in chemical dependency, mental illness, or a childhood full of physical and/or sexual abuse. Some of the parents have simply never known real stability, and their children find the shelter to be one of the bet-ter places they have lived. Our shelter networks with a variety of resources aimed at dealing with these problems, often with suc-cessful outcomes. But it is all too common to find that federal or state money for this or that purpose has run out, or some do not quite fit the eligibility criteria for the resources they desperately need. As Johnson's article put it, "naming what is unjust" then becomes easy and obvious. It likewise leads one to become an advocate who evaluates proposed legislation critically from the viewpoint of the poor. Actually, those working with the poor can become more angry than the poor themselves at the upside-down values and priorities of our so-called progressive nation. When resources are available, it is equally frustrating to dis-cover that someone is not yet ready to seek or accept help for the underlying cause of their difficulties. This is perhaps the core poverty of being human. The wall of denial may have slipped far enough for the person to admit that the problem exists, but it is still too threatening to tackle or even let others begin the pro-cess. The homeless are not alone in this experience; in fact, they are just like the rest of us in this regard. This experience of entering into the problems and frustra-tions of homeless people is further intensified when it is the chil-dren who urgently need the help that is not welcome. At times this can be an excruciating experience of powerlessness. The cross is certainly present, both in me and in them, when I am powerless to give what they do not want to receive, and it seems certain that their lives will continue on an unmanageable and chaotic path. Those who suffer the most are not the parents making these decisions, but the children who have no choice of their own to make. As a professional, I know that I must not identify too closely with my clients in feeling their pain, but neither do I want to become immune and uncaring. Prayer and Contemplation as Response As a woman, as a religious, as a child of God, I must bring all this to prayer. I complain to God. More often I just sit there with 826 Review for Religious it and with God. There have been times when it has entered into and become an integral part of a deeper prayer experience. Sharing the concerns of homeless families does induce and influence con-templation, but that is an oversimplification. This kind of ministry can too easily consume all time and energy, with little of either left for contemplation. Carving out prayer time, even reflective time, is a constant struggle. In the same vein, burnout can be just around the cor-ner, along with the temptation to become a codependent, overly help-ful savior who has all the answers. A variety of human ways to counter burnout and codependency are avail-able, useful, and necessary, but even when they have gratefully become a part of one's life, they simply cannot reach as deeply as prayer and con-templation. When one is continually faced with different forms of pow-erlessness, eventually it dawns that only God can deal with it, and the more a person becomes one with God, the more one can become the presence of God to others plunged in these human situations. Some would assume that min-istry in such surroundings would be unendingly sad and depressing. I do not find it so. It is hectic and stress-ful, yes, but also rewarding. All is not hopeless, and many families make progress, move out, and sometimes return to tell us how grateful they are for the help they found with us. These success stories keep us going, but for me, it is more often when homeless fami-lies are at their lowest point that I find myself most awed and inspired. I interview the families soon after they move into the shelter, and I frequently find myself touched by their obvious sin-cerity and goodwill. When I hear what they have been through, the obstacles they have met with, and the few resources available, I doubt that I would have done as well when faced with the same When one is continually faced with different forms of powerlessness, eventually it dawns that only God can deal with it, and the more a person becomes one with God, the more one can become the presence of God to others plunged in these human situations. November-December 1994 827 Jackson ¯ A Reflection on Living Between the Times challenges. Every now and then I have a clear sense of the Holy coming through to me as they explain their predicament and their hopes and fears. It is an unmistakable flash of Goodness. Occasionally I tell them that it is a privilege to be part of their lives because this is truly a special time, even though it may not seem so to them. I do not have the boldness to say to them that it is a sacred time, but I believe that it is. Learning from the Homeless My experiences with homeless families have taught me a great deal. While what I have learned is on a personal level, I believe that it can also teach us about religious life "between the times." Thus far, I have learned two truths. First: The quality of one's presence means more than specific activ-ities. The poor are hungry for understanding and encouragement. It does not take them long to figure out whether someone is with them or against them. If they know a person truly cares about them, they will forgive all kinds of mistakes, including impatience and forgetfulness and grouchiness. They free me to be human just like them. And they somehow receive what they need, even when I do not know what it is I am giving. A mildly retarded young man taught me about this one day. He was grieving over his recently deceased mother, even though she was an alcoholic who often abused him. He was very upset, and it seemed to me that it would be helpful for him to verbalize his feelings about his mother. So I took him to a quiet prayer room, and in the context of a rather vague prayer invited him to. close his eyes, remember his mother and talk to her. Then I sat there holding his hand, watching his face wrinkle. Evidently some-thing was going on, but I did not know what. I wondered whether I should say something. Fortunately, I kept quiet. Then he opened his eyes and said: "She came. She came and told me everything will be OK." He hugged me and then left the room transformed into his usual cheerful self. There was also the family who stayed in our shelter while trying to learn how to better cope with two sons with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a teenage daughter who had a~ttempted suicide. Eventually they got on their feet financially, moved out and seemed to be doing fairly well. Then one day the mother showed up to tell me that her husband had gone to inpa- 828 Review for Religious tient treatment for alcoholism, a problem which he had success-fully hidden from our staff. She asked for my help in explaining her predicament to the food pantry which had helped her in the past, for she feared that they would not understand that their needs had changed now that his paycheck would be missing for a month. She said: "I came to you because you never judged me." Moving past the apostolic era of religious life does not mean there is nothing left to do. Instead the emphasis is on how we do whatever we do, how we are brother and sister to one another. Brother and sister are not titles of honor that situate us at a level in society. Instead they become true relational realities. Second: Having nothing is not that bad. There is quite a differ-ence between a newly poor and homeless family and one that has been that way for some. time. The new ones are tense and fearful about being in a shelter for the first time. At some point they nervously tell me that they have only ten or twenty dollars left, and they just do not know what they will do when it is all gone. The ones who have been poor and/or homeless for much of their lives are calm and relaxed compared to the new ones. These are the survivors. They know how to work the system to get the basics they need from complex bureaucratic agencies that are not par-ticularly "user friendly." They often do not have two dimes to rub together, but it is no big deal, because they know how to get by on nothing. They ask for what they need, readily share with others reduced to nothing, and more or less roll with the punches that life gives them. I suspect that most religious congregations are very much like the first group, the newly homeless. Because we have become so used to being solidly middle class, we can find ourselves in a I suspect that most religious congregations are very much like the first group, the newly homeless. Perhaps we need to reflect upon what it was that formerly gave us a sense of security and why we now feel threatened. November-Deconber 1994 829 Jackson ¯ A Reflection on Living Between the Times demoralized, even frantic state of mind. We nervously count up our members, especially the dwindling active ones and the few new vocations. And we wonder what will happen to us, what threatening snowballing effect may yet lie in store for us. We do not know how to handle being reduced to nothing. Perhaps we need to reflect upon what it was that formerly gave us a sense of security and why we now feel threatened. Can we learn from the second group, the homeless who are survivors? Can we let go of our anxious defenses and accept the poverty that is becoming part of our lives? I have not yet made that transition, but I do have hope that ~eventually we as religious will find that it is no big deal, because we will have learned how to get by on nothing, just like our foundresses and founders did. They asked for what they needed; they readily shared with oth-ers reduced to nothing, and they more or less rolled with the punches that life gave them. They were happy and holy people who trusted in God to provide while they were busy answering the Lord's call as they heard it in the lives of the poor around them. And God did indeed provide. I think of my own foundress, Mother Odilia Berger who arrived in St. Louis with four companions and five dollars. They immediately began caring for smallpox and cholera victims. A few years later she sent thirteen of her small band of thirty-one sisters to other cities to care for victims of yellow fever. Five contracted the illness and never returned; undaunted, she continued. The Changing Idea of God Elizabeth Johnson does get to the heart of the matter when she asks how our idea of God is changing. While I cannot speak for religious life as a whole, my own idea of God has changed considerably throughout my life and continues to be influenced by my experiences. For some time now the image of God or Jesus as King has not appealed to me. I am not even sure what glorious means when applied to God. I can relate a glorious sunset to the glory of God, whatever that glory may be. But much that is con-sidered glorious and impressive in our American culture is little more than a glitzy sham quite unconnected to God. The idea of an omnipotent war-making God is the opposite of my experience. Our God is a God of conversion and transformation, but not by force and violence. The Berlin Wall was kept in place by force 830 Review for Religious and violence, but now it is gone. Why? Because only when peo-ple change does real change happen. The ethnic struggles in the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia show us clearly that military force was a fleeting kind of power that made no sig-nificant change at all, for it did not reach people's hearts. I have seen the negative power of a lack of love. I have seen individuals who will probably be able to function at only a min-imum level the rest of their lives because of the physical and sex-ual abuse that surrounded them in their formative years. "Love one another" is powerful indeed. If I could wave a magic wand and make one change worldwide, I would choose to eradicate abuse and its terrible aftermath, for it would surely transform the entire world. For me, God is the Compassionate One who is always with us in all our difficulties. This God lets us learn from the conse-quences of our actions, which is both the hardest and the surest way of learning. This God is the Patient One who waits and waits until we are ready. Were we to "play God," we would operate quite the opposite, for we would push and force things along, ready or not. God is the Mysterious One who understands all that happens and seldom shares the final answer we want to know. God works with whatever is happening in order to draw good from it, good that often seems to lie beyond our horizon. God is definitely not like the television dramas that are resolved with a thrilling climax in the last ten minutes of a sixty-minute show. I yearn to become one with this God, for then "a certain intuition arises by which one begins to know and love the world as God does." Noventber-December 1994 831 charism BETTY ANN MCNEIL Motherhood-- Elizabeth Seton's Prism of Faith Bishop Simon Brut4 SS cited devotion to the Blessed Virgin as one of the halhnarks of Elizabeth Seton's spiri-tuality. 1 As one biographer observers, "It was the bond of motherhood that helped Elizabeth comprehend the coln-passion of Mary [and] her role as co-redemptrix, even before it had been taught to her" (Dirvin 8). Inherently open to newness, "motherhood involves a special com-munion with the mystery of life."-' Who was this woman who professed that she "would gladly make every sacri-fice., consistent with my first and inseparable obligations as a mother?''3 Wife and Mother--Steps to Sanctity Born an Episcopalian in New York, Elizabeth Ann Bayley (1774-182 i) married William Magee Seton (1768- 1803) in 1794. Their marriage was blessed with three daughters (Annina, Rebecca, and Catherine Josephine) and two sons (William and Richard). Healthy, happy, and enjoying the comforts of social status and prosperity, the young family soon encountered bankruptcy because of Betty Ann McNeil DC holds a Master of Social VVork degree from Virginia Co~mnonwealth University and has served in var-ious social worl~ roles in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Currently involved in fund development for the Emxnitsburg province of the Daughters of Charity, she may be reached at Saint Joseph's Provincial House; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727-9297. 832 Review for Religious financial reversals in their business. When Wil!jam became ill with tuberculosis, he and Elizabeth and their eldest daughter Annina embarked on a sea voyage in a desperate attempt to regain his health. Upon arrival at the Italian Rivera, the family was quar-antined in a damp, dark lazaretto which was but a dramatic pref-ace to Elizabeth's widowhood at the age of twenty-nine. The Filicchi family, William's business associates, befriended Elizabeth and extended gracious hospitality to the young American widow and her daughter. During their stay in Leghorn the Setons learned about Roman Catholicism from the Filicchis. After return-ing to the United States, Elizabeth converted to Catholicism (1805), struggled unsuccessfully to support her family in New York, and then moved to Maryland (1808) at the invitation of Reverend William Dubourg SS, to begin a school in Baltimore. Through the generosity of a benefactor, the school relocated (1809) to rural Emmitsburg where the Sisters of Charity, the first religious institute founded in the United States, was established. For her sisters Mother Seton adapted the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity developed by Saint Vincent de Paul (1581- 1660) and Saint Louise de Marillac (1591-1660). Elizabeth championed the cause of justice and charity in health care, social works, and education, especially for women. Like Our Lady, Elizabeth became a model of faith and commit-ment as wife and mother, and her maternal journey through the joys and sorrows of life led her into deeper discipleship with Jesus Christ.4 Canonized in 1975, Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native-born American declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. From Daughtei" to Mother Elizabeth craved mothering herself as a child but truly became the "mother of many daughters''5 as the religious foundress called Mother Seton. She herself acknbwledged that "the bonds of nature and grace all twined together. The parent offers the child, the child the parent, and both are united in the source of their being, and rest together in redeeming love" (Dirvin, 75). If Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton were to describe her relationship with Mary, the Mother of God, she would do so in the first per-son using her own words. Her account might be based on the events and reflections that she herself recorded in her numerous letters November-December 1994 833 McNeil * Motherhood and journal entries. Elizabeth would convey her own powerful feelings as she retold her inspiring story about the challenges and opportunities she encountered in Italy, New York and Maryland. The narrative style of this article now changes to first per-son, using quotations from Seton's letters and other writings woven with words of my own creation. By this process I hope to describe her prism of faith from her own experience of mother-hood and how that drew her to Mary. The resulting bonds united these maternal hearts and generated a wellspring of Marian devo-tion for Elizabeth.6 Heartache in Italy . One of my dearest remembrances is feeling called to "full confidence in God" when the "Ave Maria bells [rang] as we entered the port of Leghorn while the sun was setting." As an Episcopalian I came to know Miriam of Nazareth through read-ing my Bible. Later in life she played an important role in my own journey of faith, and I referred to her as "the first Sister of Charity on earth." I endured piercing pain and heartache in Italy. Having five children myself, I felt a special closeness to the joys and sorrows of Mary's maternal heart. After my husband's tragic illness and death in Italy, my cross seemed so heavy. While I was staying in the Filicchi's home,7 "I looked up to the blessed Virgin appealing to her that as the Mother of God, she must pity me, and obtain from him that blessed faith of these happy souls [the Filicchi fam-ily] around me. I then noticed a small prayer book open on the table and . . . my eye . . . fell on Saint Bernard's prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary--How earnestly I said., that Memorare." Acknowledging my pent-up grief, I soon confided rather poignantly to my "soul-sister" Rebecca Seton8 that: God would stirely refuse nothing to his mother. [and] that I felt really I had a mother [now] which you know my fool-ish heart laments to have lost in early days--from the first remembrance of infancy I have looked in all the plays of childhood and wildness of youth to the clouds for my mother, and at that moment it seemed as if I had found more than her, ~ven in tenderness and pity of a Mother-- so I cried myself to sleep on her heart. The Filicchi family introduced Annina9 and me to their 834 Review for Religious beloved Catholic faith. In Florence we visited the lovely Church of the Annunziata where I experienced a deep sense of peace, despite my grieving heart. "I sank to my knees in the first place I found vacant, and shed a torrent of tears . " In the church of San Lorenzo by the Medici chapels, my heart simply burst. "A sensation of delight struck me so forcibly that as I approached the great altar. I prayed 'My soul doth magnify the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.' These words., came in my mind with a fervor which absorbed every other feeling." Later at the church of Santa Maria Novella the large painting of the Descent from the Cross "engaged my whole soul. Mary at the foot of it expressed well that the iron had entered into her--and the shades of death over her agonized countenance so strongly contrasted the heavenly peace of the dear Redeemer's that it seem[ed] as if his pains had fallen on her--How hard it was to leave that picture." For hours after I left it, ". I shut my eyes and recall[ed] it in imagination." At the Shrine of Our Lady of Grace in Montenero, I reflected that "I am a mother, so the mother's thought came also. How was my God a little babe in the first stage of his mortal existence in Mary?" Since she was the mother of Jesus, I intuitively felt her maternal solicitude for nay bereaved situation. That thought drew me into deeper relationship with her who was "always, every-where, in every moment, day and night, conscious [that] she was his mother." Discernment in New York When I returned to New York on 4June 18041 was discern-ing my future--how could I provide for my darling children? I yearned for Jesus in the Eucharist and felt drawn to Mary, his mother. My Episcopal communion did not condone Marian devo-tion, and I wondered how I could believe that the "prayers and litanies addressed to the Blessed Lady were acceptable to God." I was earnestly searching for the true faith. I was an "uncertain soul" and hesitated to teach my children the Hail Mary in our Protestant milieu. I still fondly recall that August evening in 1804 when Annina coaxed me to lead "our first Hail Mary in our little closet." I was saying night prayers with the children "when Nina said, 'Oh, Ma, let us say Hail Mary.' 'Do, Ma,' said Willy. And the Hail Mary we all said with little November-December 1994 835 McNeil ¯ Motherhood Bec looking into my face to catch the words she could not pro-nounce, but in a manner which would have made all laugh if Mother's tears had not fixed their attention." "I asked my Saviour why should we not say it [the Hail Mary], if anyone is in heaven his mother must be there . . . so I begged Mary our mother with the confidence and tenderness of her child to pity us and guide us to the true faith, if we were not in it, and if we were, to obtain peace for my poor soul, that I [might] be a good mother to my poor darlings . So I kissed [Mary's] picture that [Amabilia] gave me, and begged her to be a mother to us. I saw faith [as] a gift of God to be diligently sought and earnestly desired. So I prayed to Mary to help me. I begged. God to look in my soul and see how gladly I would., joyfully show [his mother] every expression of reverence., if I could do it with that freedom of soul which flowed from the knowledge of his will." After my decision to become a Catholic,1° my doubts were replaced by an abiding love of the true church and devotion to the Blessed Mother. I was easily moved, and so I expressed my reli-gious sentiments warmly and impulsively. I took Mary as my con-firmation name to "sort of fill out the trio of mothers" already honored by the name Elizabeth Ann. I recognized that my life, like Mary's was really grounded in the paschal mystery with all its struggles, grief, and hope. This realization helped me to discern God's will. I often found peace through praying the Memorare. I found strength in contemplating the suscipe of Jesus in his crucifixion, primarily in the painting by the Mexican artist Jos~ Vallejo that hung in Saint Peter's in my native city. Vision in Maryland Finally I came to Maryland on a mission. In Emmitsburg, where I founded the Sisters of Charity, I came to a deeper under-standing of the Glories ofMa~7. I saw her as my model and teacher in the spiritual life, particularly in herfiat and feminine resilience as a courageous woman of faith. I often reveled about the ". virtues of Mary--the constant delight of the blessed Trinity--she alone giving them more glory than all heaven together. Mother of God! Mary! Oh, the purity of Mai'y! The humility, patience, love of Mary!" I tried to imitate her as much as possible and believed that "our best honor to Mary is the imitation of her virtues--her 836 Review for Religious life a model for all conditions of life--her poverty, humility, purity, love--and suffering." Mary's example led me to discover "Jesus in Mary, Mary in Jesus in our prayers--her name so often in the divine sacrifice. Like Mary, our blessed mother, we will possess Jesus. born for me, lived fir me, died fir me, and now stays on earth to be with me as my father, my brother, my com-panion and friend--to be . . . near me in the holy Eucharist. and as certainly to come to my heart as he came to. the arms of his Virgin Mother." Prayer taught me "how sweet to entreat Mary who bore him in the bosom of peace to take our own case in hand. If she is not heard, who shall be?" I realized that "Jesus delighted to receive our love embellished and purified through the heart of Mary, as from the heart of a friend." I never slept without "my crucifix under my pillow and the Blessed Virgin's picture pressed on the heart . " Mary's divine motherhood touched and moved my own maternal heart. So often grieved by separation and loss, I forged a strong spiritual bond with her and reflected that "We honor her continually with our Jesus. his nine months within her., what passed between them., she alone knowing him-- he her only tabernacle Mary, fidl of Grace, Mother of Jesus." I pondered in my journal about "the infancy of Jesus--in her lap-- on her knees . . . caressing, playing in her arms. Jesus on the breast of Mary feeding. How long she must have delayed the weaning of such a child!" I identified even more with Mary as a sorrowful mother when I cared for my dying daughter Annina. During the stark days of darkness after her death, I found myself "begging, crying to Mary to behold her son and plead for us, and to Jesus to behold his mother--to pity a mother, this poor, poor mother." When "with a quiet satisfied heart" I reflected on Mary's com-passionate presence in the "thousand encounters with the cross" that had been my lot. "It seemed as if our Lordstood continuously by me in a corporeal form to comfort, cheer, and encourage me I identified even more with Mary as a sorrowful mother when I cared for my dying daughter Annina. November-December 1994 837 McNeil ¯ Motherhood in the different weary and tedious hours of pain. Sometimes sweet Mary, also, gently coaxing me . I sat with my pain in order to accept it as my share in the paschal mystery and discovered "how generous is our Lord who strengthened my poor soul." In our small chapel I prayed to know God's will. My painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe11 hung there and I often commended my sons in the navy to the care of Mary, Star of the Ocean, when they were at sea. Likewise, I asked Mary, Queen of Apostles, to intercede for the needs of the clergy, especially for my dear friend and confidante Father Brut& Conclusion My passion for seeking God's will often moved me to encour-age my religious daughters to greater spiritual vitality, challeng-ing them to be women of prayer. "Sisters of Charity, your admirable name must excite in you every preparation to do justice to your vocation." Together we reflected: "Jesus is as a fire in the very center of our souls ever burning. Yet, we are cold because we do not stay by it. How can we honor the mysteries of our Jesus without honor-ing Mary in them all?" Truly "How happy the earth to possess [Mary] so long--a secret blessing to the rising church. I thank God for having made me a child of his church . My deepest desire for you is that you always 'Be children of the church! Be children of the church!'" Notes l Brut~ listed the following characteristics of Elizabeth Seton's spir-ituality: "the Church, the Blessed Sacrament, prayer for herself and her children, the Blessed Virgin and the priestly character." See Joseph I. Dirvin CM, The Soul of Elizabeth Seton--A Spiritual Portrait (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 37. 2 John Paul II, "Motherhood---~rginity," On the Dignity and Vocation of~Vomen (1988), Article 18. 3 Ellin M. Kelly, Ph.D., and Annabelle Melville, ed., Selected IVritings of Elizabeth Seton, (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), p. 274. 4 John Paul II, "Behold Your Mother," Mother of the Redeemer (The Vatican, 1987), Article 20. s Elizabeth Ann Seton to Cecilia Seton, 6 October 1808. Quoted in Annabelle Melville, Elizabeth Barley Seton, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951; rev. ed. St. Paul, Minnesota: Carillon Books, 1976), p. 189. 838 Review for Religious 6 Quotations from Seton's letters and other writings used in the fol-lowing sections of this article are taken from Kelly, Selected l~Vritings, Dirvin, Soul, and Celeste, VVoman of Prayer. To maintain the flow of the narrative, no specific references are cited. 7 Having arrived in Leghorn 19 November 1803 the Setons were quarantined in the lazaretto, until 19 December. After their release they went to a rented home in Pisa where William Magee Seton died 27 December 1803. Elizabeth and her daughter Annina became the guests of Antonio and Amabilia Filicchi, business friends of the Seton family. They remained at Leghorn with the Filicchis until April 1804 when they left for the United States. They were accompanied by Antonio Filicchi on the return voyage. 8 Elizabeth Seton often referred to her sister-in-law as her own "soul's sister." Rebecca Seton (1780-1804) was a younger half-sister of William Magee Seton. 9 Anna Maria Seton (1795-1812), the oldest child of Elizabeth Ann and William Magee Seton, travelled to Italy with her parents in 1803. She was called Annina and also Nina. ,0 On 14 March 1805 Elizabeth Seton made her profession of faith in the Roman Catholic Church at Saint Peter's Church (Barclay Street, New York) in the presence of Antonio Filicchi and Reverend Matthew O'Brien. 1, Matthias O'Conway, a Spanish translator in Philadelphia, gave this painting to Mother Seton. It hung in the sisters' chapel and later in the novitiate. His daughter, Cecilia O'Conway, was among the first women to join Elizabeth Seton's new sisterhood in Baltimore (7 December 1808). 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. November-December 1994 839 JOSEPH NASSAL Reclaiming Our Name ~naeltx kto d aolwl tnh eth ne aamisele b orfa na dgsr oocfe aryn ys tpoarert aicnudl anro ptircoed tuhcatt, there are also some generic items. Generic brands are more eco-nomical and promise to give the same quality as the more expen-sive name brands. But walk into a store of religious life and you will notice this: There are no generic brands, only name brands. When an interested "shopper" takes one of those name-brand r~ligious congregations off the shelf, he or she is advised to read the label carefully. Religious life shoppers are given time to sam-ple the contents to see if this brand name is what they are look-ing for to be a healthy, happy, and holy human being. The candidate is given time to explore carefully whether this particu-lar congregation lives up to its name. And the community will do the same. In religious terms, we call this formation. There is, of course, the basic Christian spirituality that under-scores all we do. But founders of religious communities were inspired by the Spirit to give flesh to particular aspects of Christian spirituality by responding to specific needs in the church and world of their day. From the galaxy of gifts spun like stars from the hand of the Holy Spirit, various individuals were charged with the challenge to meet these needs. This does not mean that the charism of the Vincentians is more important than the charism of the Jesuits or that the Dominican charism is a higher calling than the charism of the Precious Blood. What it does is under-score that at the particular time these congregations were founded, Joseph Nassal CPPS is involved in retreat and renewal ministry for the Congregation of Missionaries of the Precious Blood. His address is Schaefer Mission House; 2110 Hughes Road; Liberty, Missouri 64068. 840 Review for Religious the church and the world were pleading for the Christian truth carried in these charisms. Many religious communities died, once a particular need was addressed, changed, and fulfilled. This is the dramatic and dan-gerous reality confronting many in religious life today. Some con-gregations are barely hanging on, and the crisis they are engaged. in has less to do with the lack of members and more to do with the lack of meaning or lack of clarity about charism. Some commu-nities linger on well after their original purpose has been exhausted. As in the case of invited guests who stay too long and wear out their welcome, one important dimension of religious life is to have the courtesy, good sense, and timing to know when to leave. To know when to die. Otherwise, we might linger to the point when our host, who is the Holy Spirit, whispers: "I'm going to bed. The last one out, turn off the lights." I know men and women in religious communities whose greatest fear is that they will be the last one left in their congregation. Clarity about charism is essential to any refounding efforts taking place in religious life today. If a community is not trans-parent in its identity and purpose, it should not wonder why it is not attracting candidates to its community. Instead, it should worry about why it is existing at all and begin to make the nec-essary arrangements for a ritual of dying. That is why it is impor-tant for candidates and community members alike to read the label carefully and check the expiration date. Charism as Energy Part of the process of reading the labels and forming com-munity is to tell the stories of our spirituality. When we tell the stories of our common life, we tap the energy source of our com-munity: our charism. I have always liked the description of charism as energy. Like a shooting star against the dark night of injustice and ignorance, founders of religious communities lit up the landscape with a burst of hope. Their energy source was the charism given them by the Holy Spirit; their passion was the spirituality they lived, a spirituality sparked by the charism. In the charism that captures the founder's commitment, there is potential for life. Our respon-sibility is to discover what that energy is for us today. It is the charism that calls us into being. November-December 1994 841 Nassal ¯ Reclaiming Our Name We are to be involved in the kinds of apostolates our founders would be involved in if they were alive today. In my own case, I am a priest of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood founded by St. Gaspar, del Bufalo in Rome on 15 August 1815. "For this I am a priest," Gaspar wrote, "to proclaim the merits of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ." A couple of years ago I.was giving a day of recollection for our can-didates in formation, and I spoke about Precious Blood spirituality for three conferences. One of the semi-narians asked me, "All you talk about is Precious Blood spirituality. There are other spiritualities, you know. Why do not you ever mention them?" "Because," I said, "I am a Precious Blood priest! And you are studying for a congregation imbued with the spirituality of the Blood of Christ. It is important in our discernment that we know who we are, what we believe, and what motivates us in our apostolic and communal life." The charism granted to the founder of a religious congregation was not given for his or her personal devotion or pri-vate use. The gift was meant for others. Though our times may be vastly differ-ent from our founder's, the same energy source is present: It is the Spirit of God enabling us to respond to the situation of these times by using our charism for the service o]~ others. Pope Paul VI said that the charism of the founder must remain in the community and be the source of life for the com-munity. If not, then we may be doing good work; we may be pur-suing lives of holiness, hope, and hospitality; we may be living in community and caring for each other with compassion. But unless we are animated and energized by the spirit of our founder, we are not living the name, the vision, or the spirituality for which we were founded. Our identity is found in our charism. The charism does not change. The energy source that sparked St. Gaspar is the same today as it was in 1815 when he founded the Society of the Precious Blood. What changes is our response that is shaped by the currents of history. In the pursuit of our original passion--the return to the 842 Review for Religious sources called for by the Second Vatican Council--some in my community would have us go back all the way. For example, preaching missions and giving retreats were the primary means by which Gaspar lived his charism. In a letter to Msgr. Nicola Mattei on 2 July 1820, Gaspar wrote: "Missions and retreats., are the two means of reform for the world." But at the present time, there are very few members of the congregation in North America who are involved in retreat and renewal ministry. Most of our members are involved in parish ministry. Some are in hospital work or campus ministry or other specialized ministries. History changed the expression of our charism. Though we were founded in Italy, it was a group of German-born priests and brothers who brought the community to the United States. They came to minister to German-speaking immigrants in Ohio. They became parish priests which explains why, in the United States at least, many of our current members still minister in parishes. Returning to our original charism does not mean we have to abandon parish ministry and have all our members involved in retreat and renewal ministry. But it does mean that in whatever apostolate we find ourselves, we are to be faithful to our charism and must be about the work of reconciliation and renewal that captured Gaspar's life. Adapting the Charism The criterion is .this: We are to be about the work of the founders. We are to be involved in the kinds of apostolates our founders would be involved in if they were alive today. It is my personal bias that Gaspar would still be preaching missions and giving retreats. I believe this not only because I am presently involved in this ministry but because in reading about Gaspar's life and times, I have come to the eerie conclusion that our present age is not much different from his time. Of course we are more tech-nologically advanced, but the roots of the problems Gaspar preached about in his time are still with us today. Gaspar lived at the time of the French Revolution. He went into exile rather than accede to Napoleon's request to take an oath of allegiance to the emperor. When he returned to Rome after Napoleon's defeat, the city was in chaos. Gaspar was called to preach missions to revive the citizens of Rome. He went to the streets, carrying the crucifix (still our official religious habit), November-December 1994 843 Nassal ¯ Reclaiming Our Name We need to answer the question, "What is the energy that inspires me and gives me life?" and preached the reconciliation won for us in the blood of the cross. He invited others to find safety in the shadow of the cross. He encouraged the people to whom he spoke to find healing in the wounds of Christ. Gaspar, like the apostle Paul before him, sought to "bring others near through the blood of Christ." Our world today screams for reconciliation. In the United States, we live in the aftermath of the Reagan Revolution. Depending on where we stand, we can char-acterize the fallout of the last two decades in various ways. But that is the point: We stand apart, often divided by barricades of mistrust and militarism, greed and economic exploitation, racism and sexism. In our multi-cultural society today, we are afraid to stand near each other. Our church reflects this same reality. In our diocesan newspaper a few years ago, two articles on the same page exemplified how separate we are. One of the articles was Leonardo Boff's moving letter about why he had to resign from the priesthood and his religious community. The other was a state-ment from Pope John Paul II reaffirming the hierarchical model of tkie church. We live in an age of clashing ecclesiologies. Sometimes the noise is so loud we hardly hear the music playing in each other's hearts. Now I must ask myself what impact these divisions, the sense of separateness, have on my own understanding of the spiritual- ' ity and charism of my congregation? I respond by believing that to be faithful to Gaspar's vision, I will do my best to listen to those voices of women who feel alienated and left out by a male-dominated, hierarchical church. (The example of Boff, whose writings and witness I greatly admire, begs the ancient question: What is the best way to change the system--from within or from outside the structure?) If I am faithful to my founder's vision, I will do my best to be inclusive and collaborative in my words and in my witness. If I am faithful to Gaspar's dream, I will seek to live a spirit of reconcil-iation that brings peoples together. I will listen to those who chal-lenge structures and rules and regulations that imprison rather than free the human spirit. I will speak out against injustice in 844 Review for Relig4ous society as well as the church while always seeking to live in the spirit of the Blood of Christ. This is how my father Gaspar lived. He had the words of Paul's letter to the Ephesians imprinted on his soul: Now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near through the blood of Christ. It is he who is our peace, and who made the two of us one by breaking down the barrier of hostility that kept us apart (Ep 2:13-14). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only authentic vision Christians claim. My founder, St. Gaspar, reflected this vision but highlighted the particular aspect of reconciliation. No one can claim the whole vision, but each religious community claims a part of it even as we seek to live all of it. In doing so, we artic-ulate in the language of our lives not only the vision of Jesus but the charism of OUR founder. The ingredients--the Gospel of Christ and the charism of the founder--become the norms for our ongoing personal and communal renewal. When we live the vision and capture the charism of our founder in the everyday stories of our lives, then the founder's dream becomes our own. And when the founder's passion becomes known in the natural expression of our commitment, we know who we are. We know our name. We know where and with whom we belong. Most importantly, as the losses keep mounting around us, we know why we stay. Rediscovering Our Identity To discover again what this charism is for us today, we need to answer the question, "What is the energy that inspires me and gives me life?" In reflecting on the charism of our congregation and the particular gifts I bring to the community's enterprise, I must tap my own potential. This means I ask myself what is it that motivates me, excites me, moves me? A few years as director of formation for my province, I was asked by my provincial to accompany one of our former priest members in the process of returning to the community. As part of this process, the provincial, vice-provincial, and myself met with the former member and a facilitator. At one point the facilitator asked each of us to answer these questions: "Why did you join this community? Why do you stay?" The questions forced me to look honestly at my commitment November-December 1994 845 Nassal ¯ Reclaiming Our Name to this congregation. I knew that I began studying for the com-munity because I wanted to be a priest and at that time (Sth grade), any community would do. But as the years of formation went by, I knew I wanted to belong to this community because of the people--the ones who taught me and mentored me; the ones who inspired me and befriended me; the ones who challenged and consoled me. But I also knew at the moment he asked the question, that these people were not the reason I stay as a member of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood. When my best friend in the community left a few years ago, his leaving shook my com-mitment as well. His leaving forced me to ask myself why I stayed. I stay because of the spirituality. I stay because of the passion I feel in my bones for the charism of Gaspar. I know I could live this spirituality as a lay person. I know I could reflect this charism in others ways as a priest. But right now in my life, I know in my soul why I am a priest: to proclaim the Blood of Christ. That is the energy source that gives meaning to my life as a missionary of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood. Gaspar's life, his ministry, his call were colored by the Precious Blood. The redeeming power of the Blood was why he did what he did. It is also the reason I do what I do. It gives shape to who I am and meaning to my life. It gives me my name. Petition God-man, enduring helplessness on Adam's tree, help those whose daily cross it is enduring me! Judith Powell 846 Review for Religious MARYANNE STEVENS Revitalizing Charisms Inspiring Religious Life ere is little doubt that religious orders of priests, sisters 1l and brothers in the United States have been in transition over the last thirty years. Called by the Second Vatican Council to "a constant return to the sources of the whole of the Christian life and to the primitive inspiration of the institutes, and their adaptation to the changed conditions of our time,"' they have examined every aspect of their lives: their prayer, work, dress, daily horarium, relationships with one another, the church, and society. One result is a major paradigm shift accompanied by the emotional and spiritual difficulties associated with massive change. Many members who had developed a fairly rigid lifestyle in their order of prayer, work, and recreation found it difficult to rethink even the smallest of details. Others, encouraged by a call freeing their gifts and talents from serving only in schools and hospitals, brimmed~w~ith possibilities for, new services to the impoverished. Some, either disillusioned by the changes or in recognition of a different calling, left their communities. No superficial innovations were involved here. Every aspect of life in religious orders became the subject of intense discussion both within the communities and within the church at large. A period of experimentation with new forms of ministry, community, and prayer ensued, and finally constitutions were rewritten and sub- Maryanne Stevens RSM has edited Reconstructing the Christ Symbol (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1994). She is associate professor of theology at Creighton University. Her address is 2500 California Plaza; Omaha, Nebraska 68178. November-December 1994 847 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Cbarisms Inspiring Religious Life mitted to the magisterium. The form of religious life is clearly different today than it was thirty years ago. Contemporaneous with the call to religious orders to rethink their presentation of themselves in the world was the church's reassertion of the Biblical understanding that the "Spirit of God distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank" thus making them "fit and ready to undertake the various tasks or offices advantageous for the renewal and the upbuilding of the church.''2 The church called all the faithful to rethink their response to baptism. What had become a tripartite hierarchy of ministers--cleric, vowed religious, and layperson--was abolished with the church's recognition of all baptized believers as sharers in the mission and in the function of the Christ. The revised Code of Canon Law, published twenty years after Vatican II, described Christ's faithful as "those who, since they are incorporated in Christ through baptism, are constituted the people of God . They are called, each according to his or her particular condi-tion, to exercise the mission which God entrusted to the church to fulfill in the world.''3 That is, we all have a vocation. Family life, religious life, the diocesan priesthood, the desire to remain single, the response of the lawyer, the doctor, the firefighter, the home-maker-- each is its own gift to building up the communion, the body of Christ. Today, the number of women and men entering religious orders has declined considerably, and the number of women and men not in religious orders serving as ministers within the church has mushroomed. Many believe religious life is dying. But such assertions are not easily proven, despite the rise in median age and the lack of new membership. In fact, a recent plethora of studies on various facets of religious life indicate a phenomenon baffling to the social sciences. Declining personnel and financial resources coupled with a lack of role clarity should indicate a death toll. Yet other factors which usually signal a dying organi-zation such as centralization of authority, fear of risk, loss of morale, cynicism, and an unwillingness to adapt to changing con-ditions are not present in large measure in religious orders.4 Some say the numbers would go up if the form of religious life prevalent before the Council was readopted. Even the official magisterium appears concerned about what the Council set in motion. The retrieved and rearticulated correlations between baptism and ministry coupled with the renewal of religious orders 848 Reviezv for Religious did precipitate a crisis for religious orders, a crisis I prefer to call a "new opportunity," but the crisis is not about what form religious life should specify nor about the type of dress a sister or brother should wear, or what kind of daily schedule one should follow. It is not even about whether feminism should be allowed to influence women religious or whether they should pledge obedience to the ecclesiastical authorities. Form is never the first question; function is. The real crisis for the church is about the function of religious orders. The role of religious orders seemed clear enough in the United States prior to the post World War II prosperity of American Catholics. The exten-sive emigration of eighteenth-century Europeans to the United States, coupled with the enslav-ing throes of the industrial rev-olution, found U.S. bishops calling on men and women reli-gious to provide the Catholic immigrants with health care, education and social services. By the 1950s, largely because of the educational opportunities of the post World War II GI bill and the great work of Catholic religious orders in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Catholic Americans were no longer an anomaly within a society dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. There was less and less need for a massive labor force to help ghetto outsiders meet their needs within a strange culture. U.S. Catholics had, by and large, "arrived"; they were understood as contributors to the American way of life. They were ready for the call of the Second Vatican Council. In fact, the 1929-1959 heyday of the lay apos-tolate movement in the United States is the harbinger of the church's reaffirmation of all baptized believers as called to min-istry, s The church affirms the assertion of the Second Vatican Council: All baptized believers are called to ministry; all baptized believers are called to prayer; all baptized believers are called to What is the function or the purpose of religious life in our church and in our society today? Is religious life necessary? November-December 1994 849 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Cbarisms Inspiring Religious Life holiness. Why, then, might our church, a family, or a parish encourage women or men in their midst to enter a religious com-munity? The Serra Club and inany vocations committees in parishes are organized ~o promote vocations to the diocesan priest-hood and religious life. Clearly the diocesan priesthood is central to the availability of Eucharist, but why religious life? What is the function or the purpose of religious life in our church and in our society today? Is religious life necessary? Are Charisms of Religious Communities Still Prophetic? Implicit in the confirmation of a particular charism or gift of a founder or foundress of a religious order by our church is an affirmation on the part of the church of the purposefulness of the gift. Religious orders are groups of men or women who have come together because of the inspiration of a charismatic person, that is, a person who had a gift for understanding and responding to a particular need within the church or society. (Charismatic here does not mean that special quality of leadership that cap-tures the popular imagination, as in naming a populist politician charismatic.) Charism, when used theologically, indicates a free gift of grace emanating from the Spirit of God. Church tradition affirms the necessity of charisms or divinely granted gifts to bear witness to the nature of the church. The church is holy because of the actual faith and love of God in its members, and faith and love are the result of the Spirit's action within us. As holy, the church compels faith and is a reason for faith in its outward appearance, but it could not do and be such without the freely given gifts or charisms of the Spirit. All the baptized share in many of these gifts--the gifts of patience, peace, ioy, and kindness. Yet there are some specially given--the gift of teaching, the gift of tongues, the gift of tongues in.terpreted, the gift of prophecy. In addition to these special charisms familiar to us from the epistles, the church teaches that an essential feature of the church's holiness is the appearance of charisms in con-stantly new forms to meet new situations. Our church has rec-ognized the evangelical counsels of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as charisms ordered to the upbuilding of the church and the good of the world. It has further confirmed as God-given the gifts of particular founders or foundresses of religious corn- 850 Review for Religdous munities through which the evangelical counsels of poverty, celibacy, and obedience traditionally have been focused. Thus we speak of the charism of Francis of Assisi, of Ignatius, of Catherine McAuley, of Benedict, Clare, and Elizabeth Seton. The confir-mation of these charisms is an acknowledgment on the part of the church that the insights fueling the passion of these great men and women are needed gifts if the church is to be church. Indeed church tradition presents the indestructibility of the church as due in part to the charisms continually given to it.6 For exam-pie, in confirming the gift of Francis of Assisi by pontifically char-tering the Franciscan community, the church said we, the church, need the witness of outrageous self-chosen poverty if the church is to be church. Or by confirming the charism of a Benedict and a Clare, the church said we, the church, need the gift of contin-ual prayer if the church is to be church. The memories of the social and cultural situations of these great men and women testify to the prophetic character of their gifts. Walter Brueggemann argues that prophecy in the Old Testament included the twin roles of criticizing and energizing. "The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.''7 Isaiah, Jeremiah, and, paradigmatically, Jesus, did not just address specific public crises. They addressed the enduring and resilient crisis of the domestication and co-option of the vocation to contribute to a world of no more war, no more tears, a new heaven and a new earth. In nurturing a Christian vocation, one must assert that false claims to authority and power cannot keep their promises (criticize) and at the same time bring expression to new realities (energize). The role of a Dominic in denouncing the fourteenth-century church's heresy and at the same time forming an order of preach-ers, the role of a Catherine McAuley calling attention to the plight of poor women in the eighteenth-century Irish church were suc-cessful attempts to criticize the then present practice of the church and to awaken it to a new aspect of what the call of Jesus entailed in a particular historical circumstance. By confirming (albeit reluctantly) the gifts and charisms of these religious orders, our church confesses their necessity. Furthermore, canon law charges the religious order with the pro-tection of the legacy of their founding inspiration, what Paul VI termed their "constancy of orientation.''s Canon 578 states, "The November-December 1994 851 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Cbarisms Inspiring Religious Life The function of religious life is precisely the protection of the orientation, the founding insight which the church needs so it might remain true to its mission. intention of the founders and their determination concerning the nature, purpose, spirit, and character of the institute which have been ratified by competent ecclesiastical authority as well as its wholesome traditions, all of which constitute the patrimony of the institute itself, are to be observed faithfully by all.9 The function of religious life is precisely the protection of the orientation, the founding insight which the church needs so it might remain true to its mission; the function of religious life is not to preserve a specific form of life for the future. It is this function that Vatican II recognized when it asked religious orders to adapt their "primitive inspiration" to the changed condition of our time. Theologian Johannes Metz refers to this function when he describes religious orders as the "shock-treatment" of the Holy Spirit within the church, an institution-alized form of a "dangerous mem-ory." Dangerous memory is a term used by Metz to denote those memories which challenge and make demands on us, as opposed to those memories in which the past becomes a paradise or refuge.1° Religious orders, if true to their charismatic and prophetic role, should challenge us to new understandings of our role as baptized believers and energize us with hope in God's promises. To take our church or Metz seriously is to realize that nostalgia for a past form of religious life which attracted great numbers to serve the educational and other social needs of an immigrant church is to dull the proper role of reli-gious orders. This is not to imply that there are not others within the church who might shock us into remembering our role as disci-ples of the Christ. In fact, there is a cloud of witnesses, among them Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, John Howard Griffin, and Penny Lernoux. But just because others function in a similar 852 Review for Religious fashion does not mean that the church does not need to designate particular groups (historically, religious orders) to fulfill the role of awakening us to the potential domestication of our call to fol-low Jesus. Such a reflection on religious life and its proper role in the church gives rise to at least one question which must be openly faced by religious orders and by the church. Is the traditional vowed life well suited to incarnate these prophetic charisms within the church today? I would like to outline the beginnings of the conversation about this question and then conclude by calling attention to several challenges religious orders face if they are to aid the impulse of the Spirit in protecting these special charisms in our church. Is the Vowed Life Suited to Prophetic Ministry Today? My initial answer to this question is, "yes, but . " The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are well suited to prophetic ministry today, but focusing one's discipleship of Jesus through the life of a figure whose charism has been confirmed by the church does not necessitate the vowed life. In other words, the charismatic insight of the founders and foundresses of religious orders does not belong to those within religious orders, even though a par-ticular religious order's legacy and responsibility involves atten-tion to the continuance of the charism. The originator of the charisms is the Holy Spirit and thus, a particular prophetic impulse belongs to the whole church (the Roman Catholic church included), to all who are claimed by the passion of a particular figure. There may be others who are called to focus their disci-pleship through the prism of a particular special charism who are not at the same time professed in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. This is what I understand to be the basis for the rise of programs for non-vowed associates of religious orders today and for the energy behind mission integration programs in institutions sponsored by religious communities.11 But what of those thrice-vowed? Are they, as groups, suited to continue the needed prophetic ministry today? Certainly poverty, chastity, and obedience, if lived with integrity, do nor hinder one from calling attention to the claims of discipleship within the contemporary world. An adequate theology of the vows is yet to be articulated. However, the history of religious orders attests to November-December 1994 853 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Cbarisms Inspiring Religious Life self-chosen poverty, chastity, and obedience as sources for the development of strategies for being in and for this world to encourage the liberation of all persons from the tyranny of that which hinders Jesus' vision. Because the original impulse for religious orders has been overshadowed in recent history by the prevailing norms of clois-ter and the industrial-age demand for labor, it is possible that the proper role of a religious order within the church has not yet been fully understood either by religious orders themselves or by the church at large. Indeed, the indication that a significant per-centage of religious no longer understand their role and function in the church was one of the most compelling results of the recent Nygren-Ukeritis study on the future of religious orders in the United States.12 This finding, however, should not surprise those aware of what historian David J. O'Brien terms "the most impor-tant single fact about our contemporary historical situation:" We must choose who we are going to be?3 The world of our fathers and mothers has died. The social institutions and cultural symbols that once provided security, legitimacy, taken for grantedness--in short, role clarity, not just for religious, but for mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, politicians, bankers, teachers, and clerics--have been eroded. Self-conscious choice is the norm for the smallest of our decisions, and it is necessary because of the awesome power we have made our own. Thus, we must think through our choice of diets, schools, and liturgies and agonize over assisted suicide, abortion, and nuclear power. Analogously, those in religious orders must decide how to use their power to affect the church. If these special charisms are necessary to the church's con-tinued holiness (and I think they are), then canon law rightly places a special responsibility on the religious orders who have been claimed by the particular charisms. Two particular chal-lenges must be borne in mind as religious orders seek the revi-talization of these special charisms. The first is the retrieval of the concept of vocation; the second is education about the charisms of religious orders. How Do We Retrieve the Concept of Vocation? First, the word vocation must be retrieved as a valid way of speaking about the focusing of one's discipleship of Jesus. One who possesses a charism that can be traced back to a great person in 854 Review for Religious the church does not become a member of a prophetic club; one is claimed by the Spirit for a purpose not fully defined by oneself. Words matter or, as Michael Bucldey notes, "words have an effect like architecture.''~4 Language either expands our percep-tions or limits them, as the buildings we inhabit allow us to see certain spaces in certain ways. Language is our means of com-munication with each other and the vehicle through which we think about ourselves, about others, and about God.Is New words are not coined just because new ways of seeing the world occur to us; new words or sets of words themselves have the power to transform reality. As Rebecca Chopp argue.s in The Power to Speak, "language can birth new meanings, new discourses, new signify-ing practices.''~6 On the one hand this can be most helpful; we need new meanings, new discourses, and new signifying practices that attend to those heretofore overlooked on the margins of our society and church. For example, the use of inclusive language in liturgical discourse makes it possible for women to know them-selves as addressed by God and as fully invited to worship of God in public. Or, we may need to suppress certain language patterns, such as the association of dark cake with "devil's food" and white cake with "angel's food" for the sake of people of color. However, changing words and expressions can be a double-edged sword. The risk of choosing new words to help dismantle an old order often means the lose of the valuable as well as the invaluable in the old. While the church did well do abandon use of such phrases as "you have a vocation," which often reduced the great mystery of responding to God to a possession of the elite, the substitution of member and membership to indicate par-ticipation in a community whose common self-understandings flow from a prophetic passion is a poor substitute. The word member indicates a juridical relationship defined by rights and responsibilities of a person in relation to an institution. We talk about being members of automobile clubs or other such groups to which we pay dues in return for services. Membership implies an exchange mentality where rights are honored only if one lives up to one's responsibilities. Vocation is a more adequate word to indicate the mystery of being claimed by a charism of the Holy Spirit and committing oneself to respond accordingly. The word vocation, to be called, is used in both religious and nonreligious circles to properly describe the mystery of finding oneself continually compelled to perform November-December 1994 855 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Charisms Inspiring Religious Life a certain function or enter a certain occupation. In specifically .religious circles vocation indicates the mystery of knowing one-self as called to throw one's talents and gifts behind a certain way or ways of manifesting the Gospel message. Although one may find the reception of such a call problematic or even confusing, demanding a certain receptivity, reflection, and discernment, the word itself points clearly to the reality indicated, whereas mem-bership does not. By arguing for a retrieval of the word vocation to indicate the mystery of call and response to a particular charism confirmed by the church, I am not suggesting a return to a two-story Christianity, where nuns and pri.ests were given privileged status or assumed to be somehow closer to God. The Baltimore cate-chism, familiar to many Catholics over the age of 35 and popular in United States Catholic catechesis from the late 1800s through the 1960s, implicitly taught an understanding of vocation with its first two questions. The questions "Who made you?" and "Why did God make you?" proclaimed a belief in all of us as called to work out our lives in tandem with the mystery of God's life within us. M1 of us must give shape to the strength and talents we have received as gift; all of us must allow our contribution to the fullness of God's dwelling in our midst to unfold. Implicit in the Baltimore catechism questions was a belief in vocation--one's personal purpose is not completely determined by oneself. We are here for a reason, for a meaning not completely of our own making. Self-conscious choice is only part of the story. Our lives are purposeful even when or if we cannot ascertain their purpose. Our purpose, our reason for being here at this time and in this place, in this body with this identity, is bound to a call beyond us, a call from the ultimate mystery of mysteries, our God. My desire is not to restrict the use of the word vocation; it is rather to suggest to those in religious orders to continue to use the word to express the reason for their affiliation with a partic-ular community and to suggest that those not in religious orders adopt the language to speak about their self-understanding of the call to all baptized believers to contribute to Jesus' mission. How Do We Educate about the Necessity of Charisms? Traditionally we educate about that which we deem important or valuable. For example, if we think table manners important to 856 Review for Religious one's acceptance by others, we teach them to children. Or, if we think Shakespeare valuable to one's understanding of Western civilization, then we encourage the reading and dramatization of his works. Thus, it would follow that if we considered the power of the charisms inspiring religious orders important to the church, we would educate those within the church about them. Those in religious orders need to anticipate, encourage, and be willing to respond to questions such as "Who is a Sister of Mercy?--a Jesuit?--a Benedictine?" Responses to these questions ought to be common knowledge within the church, and religious orders bear special responsibility not only for answering the ques-tions, but for encouraging such queries. Correlative questions are "Who is Catherine McAuley?--St. Ignatius?--Elizabeth Seton?" and "What does it mean to say this is a Jesuit institution?--a Charity hos-pital?" If religious orders recognize the need for these charisms to inspire our future church, then edu-cation about them must become as routine and ordinary as education in computer skills has become in our parishes, hospitals, schools, and social service agencies. Historically, education of chil-dren was the premiere work of religious orders in the United States. Today, the work of education in faith is much more com-plex and more urgent than it was when the Baltimore catechism flourished and the parish was a primary agent of socialization. If historian Patricia Bryne is correct in naming the dual challenge confronting church education in the United States today as the assimilation of Vatican II (which implies a criticism of the cul-ture) and the construction of a religious identity not linked to cultural separatisms,~7 religious orders might reflect upon how they have assimilated Vatican II and constructed a religious iden-tity not linked to the cloister, a form of cultural separatism. Religious orders met this challenge in general by focusing on If we considered the power of the charisms inspiring religious orders important to the church, we would educate those within the church about them. November-December 1994 857 Stevens ¯ Revitalizing Cbarisms Inspiring Religious Life their founding charisms and considering how to adapt them to the signs of the times. It is the power and blessing of the charisms that transformed religious orders; perhaps their power and bless-ing can continue to transform our church. Our society needs the good works of religious orders, their efforts in health care, education, and social services. The church needs the charisms of these communities. Unfortunately, the legacy of the necessary adaptation of the charisms to the signs of the times is their present invisibility within the church.18 These charisms if known, celebrated, and claimed by those thrice-vowed and allowed to be engaged by those other than the thrice-vowed, are the key to the continued renewal of the church. Their power should not be underestimated, nor should the responsibility of the religious orders for their continuance be neglected. Notes * "Decree on the Up-To-Date Renewal of Religious Life," #2. All Vatican II quotations are from Abbott, Walter M. (ed.), The Documents of Vatican H (New York: America Press, 1966). 2 "The Constitution on the Church," #12b. 3 Canon 204, 1. see James A. Coriden et al (eds.), The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1985). 4 See in particular Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh! Women in the Vanishing Clo

Issue 42.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1983. ; Rt vtFw I-or Rvt IGIOU~, (ISSN 0034-639XL published every two months ~s edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St Lout,, Umverslty The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis. MO 63108. REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOtJS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Instltute of the Society of Jesus. St. I.ouis. MO. © 1983 by REVIEW FoR REI.IGtOtJS, Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW VOll RELIC, IOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor Jan./Feb., 1983 Volume 42 Number I Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGtOt~S; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVtE'W EOR RELtGtOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108, "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Review for Religious Volume 42, 1983 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Sep-tember, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright © 1983 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Signs of Hope in Religious Life Today Stephen Tutas, S.M. Father Tutas has been Superior General'of the Marianists. and is now assigned to their forma-tion center in California. The September-October, 1982 issue carried "Preparing for the 1983 Synod." Father Tutas resides at the Marianist Formation Center. 22622 Marianist Way: Cuper-tino, CA 95014. One of the most important contributions religious women and men can make to the Church in any era is to be signs of hope, encouraging others in their own response to Gold's call by a witness of joyful dedication. This call to religious to be signs of hope is as urgent today as in any other time in the history of the Church. The preparatory document for the 1983 Synod of Bishops states that "the dominant characteristic of our era s~ems to have become that of tensions and divisions., situations of incomprehen~ion, of estrangement, of conflict, of schism, of reciprocal condemnation . " In response to this, 1 believe it is absolutely necessary that we religious today strive to be outstanding men and women of hope. We must really believe--and show our belief--that the Holy Spirit is active in the Church today, and that this active presence of the Spirit is the basis for our hope. Points of Convergence For some time now, ! have been especially sensitive to the signs of hope found in religious life. I was privileged to see some of these signs of hope as 1 met with other superiors general of both men and women religious congrega-tions. The various formal and informal meetings in Rome and elsewhere were for me inspiring moments when we were able to share with each other what we experienced in our visits to communities. It was very heartening for me to see how many points of convergence there were as we discussed the main themes of religious life and were able to refer to so many encouraging examples of 4 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 what was actually being realized on a day-by-day basis in religious communi-ties throughout the world. My personal experience included contact with communities of the Society of Mary (Marianists) in thirty one countries on all the continents. As I found in my exchange of views with others, my experience reflected well the general thrusts in religious life as 1 came to identify these through visits and reports. Obviously, not all that I experience is positive and encouraging. I am painfully aware of the inadequacies in my own life and in the lives of others. It ,is always true that the Church "is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified."~ But while recognizing our failures as religious, I believe it is much more life-giving to look at the signs of hope so evident in the lives of many religious women and men and build on these so that together with other members of the Church we can move forward to the third millennium in a spirit of hope. I often pray in the words of Pope Paul VI that "the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the Good News not from evangelizers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the gospel whose lives glow with fervor, who have first received the joy of Christ, and who are willing to risk their lives so that the kingdom may be proclaimed and the church established in the midst of the world."~ After completing my terms of service as Superior General, 1 was privileged to have several months to devote to prayer and reflection before taking up my new assignment as Director of the Marianist Formation Center in Cupertino, California. Most of this time of prayer and reflection was spent in the Mother-house of the Dallas Province of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Irving, Texas, where I served as chaplain under ideal conditions that made it easy for me to look back with gratitude and to look forward with hope, while sharing my experience of gratitude and hope with the community as I tried to live fully in the present. Now that 1 have taken up my new life and work in California, With the specific responsibility to promote continuing formation in the Marianist Prov-ince of the Pacific, I would like to share with the readers of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS a gummary of the signs of hope that I see in religious life today. Ten Signs of Hope I have selected ten signs of hope that I find particularly striking. It is evident that these signs do not exist everywhere. And where they do exist, the signs .vary in clarity and intensity. But these signs do exist, and my daily prayer is that they become ever stronger and more general throughout the Church, I hope the readers of this article will find in the list a confirmation of their own experience, and a further encouragement to continue working to make these signs ever more clear and ever more general. 1. A strong commitment to ongoing renewal, emphasizing: - personal and communitarian prayer, making union with God clearly the Signs of Hope in Religious Life Toda.v / 5 basis for religious life: - the building of community, recognizing this bonding in view of a shared ideal as the sign of being a true follower of Christ; - the concern for a greater simplicity of life: - the positive understanding of celibacy as a way of loving rather than as a simple renunciation of marriage and of family. These four points constitute a truly radical change in religious life which is often unnoticed as we ourselves go through it. It is not that the value of prayer, community, simplicity and celibacy were lacking in the past, but that we have been able to give new expression to these values in a changing world. I have selected these four characteristics of renewal as being the most life-giving. First and foremost, of course, m,ust be the contemplative dimension of religious life. I find it significant that the "Conclusive Document"just issued by the Vatican as a follow-up to the 1981 International Congress of Bishops and Others Responsible for Ecclesiastical Vocations declares, in speaking of religious states, that "the contemplative dimension is the true secret of spiritual renewal and apostolic fruitfulness in religious life.'~ All renewal programs begin with this contemplative dimension. Efforts are also being made to emphasize community as a sharing of faith: faith is given expression in a concern for simplicity of life: the commu~ nity of faith is always being urged to look beyond itself. These are outstanding fea-tures of various renewal programs. Perhaps never before in the history of religious life has so much attention been given to providing assistance for continuing formation. This itself is certainly a great sign of hope. 2. A rediscovery of the relevance of the founding charism, along with a renewed interest in the person of the founder or foundress, and also a renewed understanding that the founding charism is just as important for the Church of our time as it was at the time of the actual foundation of the community. The document, "Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious," is an important encouragement for us religious to renew the offering of our cha-risms to the local church, and this with a renewed awareness that we are needed and wanted for the specific gifts God has entrusted to the various religious families in the Church. General chapters, especially in writingconstitutions in response to the Second Vatican Council, have expressed very forcefully how the founding charism is able to meet the urgent needs of the Church in our time. 3. New directions in evangelization, in continued response to that great docu-ment of Pope Paul VI, Evangelization in the Modern World, which followed the 1974 Synod of Bishops on Evangelization. 1 found it very rewarding to read Archbishop Robert Sanchez' address to his .fellow bishops at Collegeville last summer in which he gave heavy emphasis to the dynamic orientations implicit in Pope Paul's statement, saying that "it 6 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 would be difficult to exaggerate the importance that this document will have in revitalizing and prephring the Church for the future . -4 For us religious, this Apostolic Exhortation has sparked and encouraged a gratifying transition from concern about ourselves--even about our survival-- to a greater sense of mission and outreach. 4. The greater insertion of religious corhmunities in the local church and a more ecclesial thrust in solidarity with other religiotls and in collaboration with all others in the local church. As we look back over the past twenty-five years we can appreciate what dramatic changes have taken place in terms of greater collaboration among religious themselves, but also in terms of the active involvement of religious in the life and structures of the local church. The Unions of Superiors General and the national conferences of superiors have provided excellent leadership in this regard. At the same time, more and more bishops are recognizing the unique contribution religious communities can make to the life of the local church. Here, as with the other signs of hope, much needs to be done, but the first step in making this sign clearer and more general is to acknowledge the great strides that have already been realized. 5. The increasing concern for the promotion of justice and peace. 1 am temp~ed to write more extensively aboiat this sign than any other because, as President of the USG Commission Justice and Peace during most of my years as Super-ior General, I was able to witness first hand the response religious have made to the call of the 1971 Synod's document on Justice in the World. Perhaps the simplest statement is best: if the movement to promote.lustlce and peace has developed so strongly in our time. it is in great part due to the courageous initiatives on the part of so many religious throughout the world. 6. The promotion of the laity. It may be surprising to some that ! ha~,e chosen to underline the promotion of the laity as a sign of hope for religious. But ! believe the attention that has been given to the vocation of the laity since Vatican II has served to clarify even more the specific vocation of religious men and women in the Church. Among the significant consequences of this clarification has been greater attention by religious to the witness they give by the quality of their religious life. There is a definite priority given today to being. Religious life, theh, will not be evaluated simply in terms of doing. As important and vital as our work may be, the first and most important contri-bution we religious can make to the Church is in terms of our life. This emphasis religious give to being is a wonderful response to the call of the Church in our time, as this was stated so clearly by Pope John Paul 11 shortly after his election: "What counts most is not what the religious do, but what they are, as persons consecrated to the Lord."5 I also find it encouraging that more and more r~eligi0us ar,e emphasizing a greater collaboration with the laity, recognizing the unique values that each Signs of Hope in Religious Life Today can offer the other. One of my hopes, as a consequenge of the last Synod of Bishops on the Christian Family, has been for a more effective collaboration between the community of religious and the Christian family in the local church. 7. Collaboration in the promotion of vocations. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has been calling upon all Christians to work together in promoting all Christian vocations. The Conclusive Document referred to ear-lier is an excellent guide t9 help toward the realization of this objective put forward by the council. What I find as a heartening sign of hope is that so many religious communities are making well-organized efforts to collaborate with each other in the promotion of vocations rather than seeking unilaterally to promote their own vocations. Religious who see clearly their responsibility to promot~e a sense of voca-tion in the lives of all, and who offer their own charism to those whom God may call are themselves great signs of hope for the Church in our time. 8. Trends' in .formation and government that assure the best conditions for human development, such as: - concern for affective maturity; - emphasis on freedom and personal responsibility; - endorsement of animation as a way of exercising authority; - general application of the principle of subsidiarity; - appreciation of collegiality on all levels. Each of these points is itself a sign of hope. Taken together, these trends offer great promise for the future of religious life. 9. A reassessement of the role of religious life in the churches of Africa, Latin America and ASia, featuring both a new thrust (from missionary to collabora-tor) and new foundations to implant various expressions of religious life for greater and longer-lasting service to the local church. The kind of thinking sparked by Buhlman's "The Coming of the Third Church" has been both challenging and stimulating for many religious communities. The transition from missionary to collaborator is not easy, but it is being done. and done very well, in so many places. The new foundations, despite the overall decline in numbers and the stead-ily advancing age of communities, are remarkable signs of confidence in God's Providence, that a generous response to the evident needs of God's people is the only way to live. 10. The spirit of hope that is evident in so many leaders of religious today. I am strongly convinced of what 1 like to call "the apostolate of administration." There is nothing more life-giving than a religious leader who is a man or woman of hope and is able to share that hope with others. We religious are blessed in having many women and men of hope among us at this time in the history of religious life. I! / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 As I look at these ten signs of hope, I sense in religious life today a real desire for a way of life that, in the words of Cardinal Pironio, is committed, serious, profound, fraternal, ecclesial. Something really tremendous is happening in the Church today, and this amid the tensions and struggles of life. And so it is very life-giving for us religious to look beyond the day-to-day struggles, the evident failures and shortcomings, to see how God is at work in our lives and to share this experience with each other. Not all that is happening in religious life can be attributed to the Spirit. There is need for continual discernment. But the good that is evident in religious life is a sign of the Spirit at work among us and deserves to be recognized and proclaimed. We are in an age of transition as we experience the death of much of what was familiar and as we experience the birth of a new era in the history of religious life. May our constant prayer be for the grace to believe in the potentiality of our religious communities, recognizing that religious life does have a great mission in the Church today, and that each religious community is called to serve the Church in a special way, offering.its particular charism to be incarnated, adapted and enriched in so many different people. NOTES ~ Lumen Gentium, n. 8. 2Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 80. 3The Conclusive Document, p. 53. *Origins, Sept. 2, 1982, p. 181. 5October I, 1979. quoted in The Conclusive Document, p. 53. Our Images of God Michael T. Winstanley, S.D.B. Father Winstanley's "The Eucharist as Light and Life" appeared in the issue of November/ December, 1982. He continues to live and teach at Ushaw College: Durham DH7 ORH: England. This is eternal life: to know thee who alone art truly God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent (Jn 17:3). The quality of our praying and living, and of the service we offer to others, depends a great deal on our image of God. The words of Jesus quoted above provoke me to ask: Who is this God whom 1 am invited to come to know genuinely, to whom 1 pray, for whom 1 strive to live? A correlative question follows: What image of God do I communicate to others, do we communicate as religious, as Church? We all have our image of God, though perhaps we have never paused to articulate that image in words. And whether we advert to it or not, we "reli-gious" people cannot avoid conveying an impression of our God to others. We do so, for instance, by the way in which, as parish workers or priests or headmistresses or nurses, we treat the people to whom we minister. And simple, ordinary things can speak loudly about our image of God, things like the architectural design of our churches (especially the position of the altar), the siting and decoration of our community houses, clerical dress, our style of worship. Since all religious have their particular image of God, it is obviously important that, as followers of Jesus, our God be the God of Jesus, the God whom he came to reveal, the God to whom he prayed. It would be rash to presume that his God coincides with mine! It would be equally rash to pre-sume that the image of God we project coincides with the God of Jesus! 9 10 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 Recently, I attended a lecture by the retired Anglican theologian, E.L. Mascall. He was discussing the role of theology in the university. Theo-logy is a word about God. He questioned whether the word about God that was declaimed in the lecture theater was verified in its turn by the word about God so eloquently proclaimed by the life-style and structures of the Theology Department--an interesting question, one that is capable of being transposed to our Churches, hospitals, classrooms, religious communities. A recent con-tributor to this review maintained that the structures and patterns of seminary life have considerable influence (for the worse) on the students' image of God.~ This in turn has a negative effect on their prayer. From what do we fashion our image of God? Later in this article I shall attempt to share with you some reflections on the Scriptures' image of God. With my head ! can acknowledge it as accurate and authentic. But deep down I have another image, a "gut-level image," and this is the image that so often seems to determine my living and my praying. 1 sometimes feel as though I'm watching a slide show in which two projectors are being used and the slides fade into one another. There are the scriptural slides, and then there are the "experience" slides. Sometimes the transitions are smooth and corroborative: at other times there are conflicting and distorting idol-images. One of my friends is a keen golfer. Over his fireplace hangs a picture of a little man in a flat cap who has hit his ball into a bunker and is having difficulty in extricating it. He is just about to move it by hand--ever such a little--when he looks round at the skies and sees a vision of God: an elderly gentleman, with long, flowing beard, his finger waving threateningly. I find it easy to identify with the little golfer. I had a marvelous relationship with my father. I was always sure.of his love and understanding and help. l knew he was on my side; I could trust him implicitly. On the other hand, when 1 was about ten years old, l went for a holiday to the seaside. We were staying with a Catholic family, and they had two children of my own age. On Saturday evening we went to confession. 1 hadn't too much to say, and as I was preparing, l read through the pages of sins which, according to my prayer book, Catholic boys could commit. As a variation on the usual lies and disobedience, I thought I'd add something from the section on the sixth commandment. After all, l had kissed the little girl we were staying with, and maybe that was adultery! The priest behind the grill in that dark box was not amused, but tore strips off me, making me feel utterly evil and rejected by God. When we returned to the hotel, 1 broke down in floods of tears. The scar remains. That slide often fades on to my screen. Maybe God is like that--just maybe. An acquaintance of mine told me that when he wa_s young, he never felt sure of his mother's love. If he was naughty, she gave the impression of withdrawing her love. This made him fearful and anxious and unsure, desper-ately keen to please and not to make mistakes. Our Images of God / "1"~ It is factors like these that have helped to fashion our "gut-level image" of God. Figures like parents, teachers, priests, novice-mistresses have made it easier or more difficult to accept and make really our own the scriptural revelation of God, the Christian image of God. One writer says: "1 am con-vinced that one of the basic reasons for the current difficulties in both Chris-tian and religious life and practice is that we have .lost touch with our God."~ By "our God," he refers to the God of the Bible. So let us explore a little this biblical image of God. The Loving Faithfulness of Yahweh One of the deepest convictions of the people of Old Testament times was that their God, whom they .had come to know as Yahweh, had come out of his distance and mystery, and had approached them, spoken to them, and inter-vened in their history. "At various times in the past, and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets. (Heb I:l). The story began with the call of Abraham--way back somewhere between the nineteenth and seventeenth centuries B.C. Abraham risked changing his whole way of life in leaving behind homeland--and all that was familiar to him--livelihood, status and security, and migrated to the land of Canaan under the impulse of God's engaging presence in obedience to a promise. The most dramatic intervention of God in their history, chiseled indelibly into the national memory, was the Exodus event. This theme recurs like a leitmotiv throughout the various movements of Old Testament literature, and was made present again in the annual celebration of Passover. In one of the descriptions of the call of Moses, the prophet chosen to play such a key role in God's purposes, we read: I am Yahweh. 1 will free you of the burdens which the Egyptians lay upon you. 1 will release you from slavery to them, and with my arm outstretched and my strokes of power, I will deliver you. I will adopt you as my own people, and I will be your God (Ex 6:6). And Yahweh, they believed, did in fact deliver them in dramatic and exciting fashion from their oppressors. In the ensuing.events of Sinai this motley grouping of nomads received a new unity and identity as God's own chosen people, specially favored and uniquely privileged. Yahweh's relation-ship with them and theirs with him were sealed in the Covenant. One of the salient features of the Old Testament writings is the profound consciousness which Israel evinces continually that she belongs to Yahweh, that she is his community, his people. An extract from Deuteronomy provides ideal expression of this awareness: You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people of his own possession out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you. for you were the fewest of all peoples: but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers . 12 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 Know therefore that the Lord.your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations (Dt 7:6-9). Israel was called, then, because of the love of Yahweh and his enduring faithfulness. And she was called to respond in love and faithfulness to him: this is the meaning of covenant pledge. Again Deuteronomy expresses this in language which is amazing for the height of its idealism and the totality of its commitment: Hear, O Israel, you shall 10ve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Dt 6:4-5). Unfortunately, however, Israel did not in general respond very well. Time and again throughout the undulating course of her history, she turned away from Yahweh, falling far short of the demands of love and fidelity, wanting rather to be like the other nations and to follow their ways. Her infidelity is mirrored in the catastrophes which befell her, like the fall of the N. Kingdom to the Assyrians in 721. But the tragic experience of failure brought growing insight into the nature of her God, the kind of God Yahweh really, is. This insight is spelled out most. movingly and beautifully by her prophets. These men were sensiti~zdy awareof Yahweh, of Israel's special calling, of the demands of the Covenant; they were deeply distressed by her waywardness and infidelity. Their image of God, their understanding of him, can be summed up in the twin concepts of love and faithfulness which we have already met. Does a woman forget her baby at the breast. or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, 1 will never forget you. See, I have branded you on the palms of my hands. (Is 49:14-16). For the mountains may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never he shaken (Is 54:10). I will betroth you to myself forever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love: I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness, and you will come to know Yahweh (.Ho 2:21,19,22,20). I have loved you with an everlasting love, so I am constant'in my affection for you (Jr 31:3). And with this realization of God's constancy amidst their failure is born a firm hope for the future. As Jerusalem was about to fall to the Babylonian troops, Jeremiah proclaimed: Our Images of God / 13 Behold the days are coming, says the Lord. when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah . I will put my law within them. and I will write it upon their hearts: and I will be their God and they will be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and teach his brother, saying '~Know the Lord," for they shall all know me. from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord (Jr 31:31-34). And there are those inspiring words of Ezekiel: Then I am going to take you from among the nations and gather you together from all the foreign countries, and bring you home to your own land. I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed: I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols, l shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you: I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies, and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws and respect my observances. You will live in the land which I gave your ancestors. You shall be my people and I shall be your God (Ezk 36:2513. Yahweh, then, is constant: he continues to be present with his people, present in love, and in faithfulness to his choice and to his promise. The Loving Failhfulness of Jesus Centuries later, a man was wandering through the towns and villages of lakeside Galilee, preaching and healing and exorcising. From amongst those who were interested in him, he singled out twelve, as Mark says (Mk 3:!3-15), "to be with him," to share his friendship, life, ideals, and "to be sent," to share his mission. But these men consistently failed to understand him and his message, they were unable to accept the implications of discipleship. They continued to foster the old expectations, to cherish the old dreams, to think in the categories of success, political and nationalist liberation and prosperity, power and glamor. They failed to grasp the meaning of the kingdom he constantly talked about. They lacked insight to perceive who he was, this Jesus from the backwoods of Nazareth. But Jesus did not go back on his choice. One evening, as they were at supper in Jerusalem around the feast of the Passover, he spoke to them with sadness in his voice, telling them that one of their number would shortly betray him, and another, their natural leader and spokesman, would deny all knowl-edge of him. He went on to say that they would all run away and desert him in the end. At the same time, as head of the table, he broke bread and shared it with them as a sign and pledge of his love and friendship. And he offered the cup of wine, and spoke of the longed-for new covenant, the new fellowship with God, his Father, that would be sealed in his own blood. And one of them did, in fact, betray him very soon: Peter denied all acquaintance with him, cursed him even: and the rest of them took to their heels in flight, to a man. The Roman authorities executed him by the hideous and shameful torture-death of crucifixion. The God whom he had proclaimed to be near seemed very far away. 14 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 But early on the Sunday morning, some women friends found that his tomb was empty. Shortly afterwards, this Jesus appeared to Peter and then to or'hers of the group, and they came to know that the Father had raised him from death. Thus, their Risen Lord brought together again his disillusioned and scattered band, whom he loved still, and forgave, and whom he still looked on as his. his chosen ones, to whom he was fai'~hful still. And he breathed his Spirit into them, and constituted them the nucleus of the new covenanted People of God, a God whom, like him, they could now address as Father. These men came to realize that in Jesus they had encountered the love and faithfulness of God present in their midst, enfleshed. The Loving Faithfulness Which is The Spirit The Farewell Discourses of John's gospel provide us with valuable insights into the way in which the love and faithfulness of the Lord are expressed in the age of the Church: It was before the festival of Passover. Jesus knew that his hour had come. and he must leave this world and go to the Father. He had always loved his own who were in the world, and now he was to show the full extent of his love (13:1). After washing their feet as an expression of his loving service, a prophetic sign of his self-giving on the cross, Jesus returns to recline in their midst. Judas departs into the night. And Jesus opens his heart to his friends: "My children, for a little longer I am with you . . . where I am going you cannot come" (13:33). There is an atmosphere of sadness, of impending loss and bereave-ment: "You are plunged into grief because of what 1 have told you" (16:6). Jesus seeks to comfort and reassure them: "Set your troulSled hearts at rest. Trust in God always: trust also in me" (14:1). Jesus' love for his friends is palpable. Evident, too, is his strong desire to remain with them, faithful to those whom he has chosen. They are his friends, not servants. He has disclosed to them everything that he has himself heard from the Father. He has shared with them all his secrets. His willingness to lay down his life is token of his love for them. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Dwell in my love" (I 5:9). The manner in which Jesus shows his faithfulness and love (and therefore continues to reveal the nature of the Father as Faithful Love), and also con-tinues to be present with them after returning to the Father, is through the gift of the Spirit, the Paraclete: If you love me and keep my commandments, then at my request the Father will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot accept since it neither sees nor recognizes him: but you do recognize him since he remains with you and is in you (14:15-17). For John, the mission of Jesus is to reveal the Father and to give life. The Paraclete is almost another Jesus. His role is to continue Jesus' mission, to be his presence now that he is absent. He functions as teacher and guide, and as Our Images of God / 1'5 witness to the disciples and to the world (see 14:25-26; 15:26; 16:7-11; 16:13-15).3 A similar understanding of the Spirit's role is to be gleaned from the letters of Paul. When writing to the Church at Corinth, he says: And if you and we belong to Christ, guaranteed as his and anointed, it is all God's doing: it is God also who has set his seal upon us. and as a pledge of what is to come has given the Spirit to dwell in our hearts 12 Co 1:21-22). As in the Old Testament, we find again an emphasis on the free, elective love and initiative of the Father, bestowing that profound reality and sense of belonging, and pledging his enduring faithfulness. It is the Spirit dwelling within us who grafts us into Christ and assures us of a future. In Galatians Paul tells us: "To prove that you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, crying 'Abba, Father!' You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then also by God's act an heir" (4:6). Through the Spirit we are caught up in the relationship of Jesus and his Father, and so come to know God as love, as Father, just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel promised. The fact that we are God's children, and therefore heirs, means that this relationship has a lasting future, that God is faithful. in that magnificent hymn in the Letter to the Romans we meet those lines which celebrate the heart of the Good News that God is love and faithfulness; If God is on our side, who is against us?. Then what can separate us from thelove of Christ?. For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or iia life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in the heights or depths--nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (8:31-39). ISon¢lusion The God of the Bible is best understood as Faithfulness and Love. In this way Yahweh reveals himself in the Old Testament period. In his ministry and passover, Jesus reveals the love and faithfulness of the Father~ In the post-resurrection time, the Holy Spirit takes us up into the enduring love and faithfulness of Father and Son, enabling us to know and to live in that mystery. We find, then, a threefold expression of the faithfulness and love which is our Christian God. Returning to our starting point, we need to ask ourselves whether this is in fact our image of God, whether we genuinely know God in this way. "Have I been all this time with you, and you still do not know me?"(Jn 14:9). We must ponder the interaction in i~ur lives and prayer between this biblical image and those many other images which the experiences of our past have fashioned and which tend to become superimposed, creating a distorted picture, preventing us from seeing the God of Jesus in sharp, life-giving focus. Why do we find it so difficult to surrender fully to this God in loving trust? We stand in such great need of healing and integration. 16 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 And what about the image of God which we communicate to those with whom we live, those we meet in our work? Partners in Christian marriage are meant to show forth, the one to the other, something of the love, acceptance, forgiveness, tolerance, understanding and faithfulness of God--for Christian marriage is a sacrament, is a sign of God's faithful love. Their experience together is intended to be a window into the mystery of God, to be revelation. The high incidence of marital breakdown amongst Christians is a tragedy! In a similar way, we in religious and Church communities are called to mirror to one another the authentic face of the God of Jesus. Communities where there exist intolerance, lack of care and compassion, refusal to forgive, authoritarianism, selfishness, harsh judgments, are actually idolatrous; they betray their whole raison d'etre. Parents, we know, have a vital part to play in shaping their children's understanding of God. Whilst making the demands necessary for growth to maturity, parents must convey to their children a sense of being valued for who they are (and not for what they can achieve), a sense of being loved with a love they cannot lose. Sadly, the imperfeciions of parental love can so easily impart an unfavorable image of God. Likewise, in our ministry within the Church and our mission to the world, we religious are constantly and inevitably (albeit at times quite unconsciously) projecting an image of God to those we meet. We need to be alert to and critical of those aspects of our dealing with others, and of our life-style, those facets of our structures, institutions, regulations, forms of leadership and min-istry, which give the lie to the joy-filled Gospel we announce, which present to our world instead an image of God which is a travesty, perpetuating idols of power, success, security, possessions, which instills fear, guilt, anxiety and hopelessness. Jesus prayed to God as Father. The kernel of his preaching was the kingdom, God's nearness to us in acceptance and saving love. He described the prodigality of God's forgiveness in his parables. More importantly, his own way of living and relating proclaimed in language more powerful than words the palpable reality of his mercy and love, especially for the poor and outcast. The source of Jesus' remarkable freedom, his intuition into what in life is really important, his prophetic overturning of so much that had been acceptable in the society, politics and religion of his day, his breaking down and crossing of so many barriers that kept men apart, was, 1 believe, his image of God. Because Jesus knew that God is Father and is very near, and because he surrendered to the exigencies of such a vision, he could serve others in deep compassion and healing care, he could be near to them in self-gift with a courage and faithfulness that did not balk at death. In killing Jesus, men sought to destroy his God, for they perceived that such a God was too uncom-fortable to live with, and the implications of accepting him were too challeng-ing and demanding, calling as they did for radical conversion in outlook, attitude and way of living. Our Images of God / 17 Perhaps there is still much in our Church and in our religious communities to suggest that we perpetuate the attempt to deface and destroy the God of Jesus, and present instead to our world a caricature, a dreadful distortion. In John's gospel, Jesus, in a moment of controversy with the Jews, exclaims: "I was sent by the One who truly is, and him you do not know . It is the Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, 'He is our God,' though you do not know him!" (7:28; 8:54)--words which leave us much to ponder. But Jes~s also speaks these words of great reassurance and challenge: If you dwell within the revelation I have brought, you are indeed my discip~.es: you shall know the truth, and the truth will se~ you free (8:31-32). NOTES ~Stephen Happel, "The Social Context of Personal Prayer in Seminaries," REVIEW FOR REI.I-GIOUS 39 (1980), pp. 846-854. 2Francis J. Moloney, Disciples and Prophets (London: DLT, 1980), p. 19. SR.E. Brown. The Gospel According to John (London: Chapmans, 1972), pp. 1135-1143. Discovery Why do ! find so much of me within a wood? As if I stumbled on that part of me most pure and good. There, 1 am wise and simple: I know and am understood. (Why do I find so much of me within a wood?) Why in a wood is my soul set free, - Where my eyes like wild things the silence see And ears hear color marvelously. Why in a wood am 1 free? Why in a wood is truth so true And ! in a wood shot trembling through With a worship terrible, ancient, new? Perhaps ! find in a wood---not me-- but You . Sister Ann Maureen, I.H.M. 11201 Academy Road Philadelphia, PA 19154 Scripture: Literary Text and the Word of God Emmerich W. Vogt, O.P. Father Vogt is a doctoral student of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union. He is enrolled in a joint program of these institutions in Near Eastern Religion, focusing on the Old Testament. He is also an instructor at Holy Rosary College (Fremont), and resides presently in the Berkeley Priory: 2401 Ridge Road: Berkeley. CA 94709. With the rise of the modern critical sciences and the subsequent and grow-ing concern for scientific critical study, the historical character of the Bible has again and again been called into question. In their scientific investigations, scholars concede that the biblical narratives are not necessarily factually accu-rate. Some narratives, though perhaps based on actual historical events, are themselves fictional. Moreover, literary and form criticisms have shown evi-dence of various literary techniques and genres, such as mythological lan-guage, present in various narratives. To many, this scholarship has led to a certain skepticism regarding the revelatory character of Sacred Scripture and its reliability as the Word of God, something which has been proclaimed by Christians throughout the centuries. Some are led, on the one hand, to deny any authenticity to Scripture as revelation, while others, more fundamentalist in their approach to Scripture and seeking to preserve their faith in it as the Word of God, become hostile towards all historical and literary critical endeavors. The person of faith, having neither the expertise to make a scholarly inquiry, and lacking sufficient instruction from local pastors or religious educators (who themselves are often confused as to the nature of biblical literature), i~ lbd to reject either his or her faith or the methodology of the modern critical sciences. And this situation is present among both clergy and laity. In essence it is a dilemma which stems from a lack of understanding regarding the nature of Scripture as at once a 18 Scripture: Literao, Text and the Word of God / 19 reality of literary language and the Word of God. An illustration of this dilemma can be seen in the life of John Ruskin, a renowned nineteenth-century English art critic. Raised as an Evangelical Christian, from an early age he was taught devotion to Scripture as the Word of God. However, as a grown man in his thirties he lost this faith largely because of a conflict he saw between Scripture and science. He confided this to a friend, Henry Acland, in 1851: You speak of the Flimsiness of your own faith. Mine, which was never strong, is being beaten into mere gold leaf, and flutters in weak rags from the letter of its old forms: but the only letters it can hold by at all are the old Evangelical formulae. If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.~ Geology had been successful in weakening the faith of many Victorians, cast-ing doubt on biblical stories such as the Flood. It is very odd, indeed, that an artist and art critic like Ruskin would have had this difficulty. As an artist he "asserted that art itself must be regarded as a 'universal language,' which spoke not to the connoisseur alone but to the whole of modern mankind: a work of art was closely linked with all the other aspects of contemporary civilization.'"- What Ruskin failed to realize was that Scripture is the Word of God in human garb. It is art, it is literature. It is the Word of God, but the Word incarnated in human language. We have come a long way since Ruskin's time in our understanding of both science and of Scripture. Today we are much more accepting of Scripture's true nature as literature. Yet, we hesitate, and for that very reason, to accept Scripture as the Word of God. "We somehow are under the mistaken assumption that if God were to communicate with us, he would have to do so in exact, scientific terms, revealing to us scientific realities. Recognizing the mythopoeic nature of Scrip-ture, we are inhibited from accepting this as a valid means of divine communi-cation. This was Ruskin's problem, which led him to deny Scripture as the Word of God. An examination of the nature of literary language and its prevalence in human culture, however, will manifest its suitability to express the Word of God. The Nature of Literary Lanaguage The preacher captures the attention of his congregation with a moving story that illustr~ites a certain belief. What holds the interest of the listeners is not abstract religious truths bt~t rather religious truths conveyed in image or story forms. What the artist does with images-in-colors the preacher is able to do with images-in-words,~ and the result is a captivated audience. The human person is intrigued by such story-telling. We are image-form-ing people, and this phenomenon is clearly understood, appreciated, and pur-posely exploited by the artist, whether he be painter, song-writer or storyteller. Colorful images and not sterile abstractions are what captivate the human mind. This is illustrated by Erich Fromm in his study of dreams. 20 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 Let us take a mood in which you feel lost, deserted, where the world looks gray, a little frightening though not really dangerous. You want to describe this mood to a friend, but., you find yourself groping for words and eventually feel that nothing you have said is an adequate explanation of the many nuances of the mood. The following night you have a dream. You see yourself in the outskirts of a city just before dawn, the streets are empty except for a milk wagon: the houses look poor, the surroundings are unfamil-iar, you have no means of accustomed transportation to places familiar to you and where you feel you belong. When you wake up and remember the dream, it occurs to you that the feeling you had in the dream was e~actly the feeling of Iostness and grayness you tried to describe to your friend the day before. It is just one picture, whose visualization took less than a second. And yet this picture is a more vivid and precise description than you could have given by talking about it at length.4 This phenomenon is not something new to the human experience. "The ability to make images is:primeval, and it is no accident that the earliest records of human activity show men making pictures."5 The us~ of literary language, however, involves insight, and our endeavor, if we are to fully enjoy and appreciate the artist's creation, is to elucidate the insight the imagery is meant to convey. The words used, the structure within which they are expressed, and so forth, are all carefully laid out by the designer. Luis Alonso Schoekel makes this point in reference to the literary language of Scripture: In literary language, words have an absolute importance, and they are sought with the greatest care~ They are not merely a way of saying something completely separable from what they say. Words are important for their sound quality, for their rhythm in a phrase, for their aura of associations, and for their resonances in the periphery of our consciousness . 6 The choice of words, the creation of moods through images, the ability to effect "resonances in the periphery of our consciousness" give literary language a charism not possible with philosophical abstractions. However, since the modern world has been so greatly influenced by the scientific mind, oftentimes the value of literary language is not appreciated as a valid means of conveying very real truths about human existence. Nevertheless, human literary achieve-ments give witness to this charism: The power of stories, parables and literal untruths to give us information can well be illustrated in the case of proverbs and "cautionary tales." The tales of the Hare and the Tortoise, the Monkey and the ,lar of Nuts, the Ass in the Lion's Skin, and many others like them, have lasted for centuries, passed from one culture to another, and still appeal today. They have survived not just because they are good entertainment, but because they each have a credible point--that life is like that. The same is true of popular proverbs, "The early bird catches the worm," "Too many cooks spoil the broth," "Empty vessels make the most noise". We test them, not by verification of their literal sense, but through living by them and finding them to work out in experience.7 Trained to search for precise, scientific data, however, the modern mind often misunderstands the nature of mythmaking and storytelling as a valid means of teaching morals or handing on true insights drawn from our com-mon experience. "For the philosopher of the age of reason, myths are barbaric superstitions that grossly befogged the mind of man . -8 Scripture: Literary Text and the Word of God / 2"~ An example of this mentality can be seen in an incident related by John Knox about a man who thought an error had crept into the text of Shakes-peare's As You Like It which reads, "books in running brooks, sermons in stones."~ This man thought that the lines must have originally read, "sermons in books, stones in running brooks." Reflecting on the man's observation, Knox remarks: A work of art is called "truer when it effectively embodies a real vision or mood of the artist, though its correspondence with any objective reality is remote indeed. Even in such a case, however, it would be rash to deny any kind of objective reference. When one calls a work "true,"does one not imply, at the very least, that the vision or mood is to some extent or at certain moments shared by others besides the artist and is therefore not entirely subjective? And does one not probably imply that there is something in the real situation of man in the world which gives rise io, or answers to, the artist's feeling? ¯ . . In other words, when we say there are "books in the running brooks," we are making a statement which, if we regard it as true at all, is for us objectively true--quite as much as the statement that stones are there. We mean that "running brooks" have something to teach us--that they really do.t0 The imagery used in a story possesses a certain power--a power not possessed by mere clear and distinct ideas as such--todraw the mind to truths by way of the imagination. However, clear and distinct ideas expressed in conceptual language is thought by many to be the only valid means of com-municating truth, as we can see from the words of the eighteenth-century philosopher, David Hume: If we take in our hand any volume of divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain quantity or number? No. Does it contain an experimental reason-ing concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it to the flames. For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.~ This mentality fails to grasp that the nature of literary language is such that stories created by the imagination, while not factual in themselves, nevertheless present the reader with certain truths about reality. It is the "kind of language that can somehow work upon men and lead them to insight and even action, where a more conceptual language might fail."12 Fiction can contain truth precisely as imaginary; it can be expressive of reality.13 The human mind is not drawn by abstract reasoning alone, and man's life entails more than ideas. We come to learn from sense experience, and such experience cannot be conveyed adequately in abstract reasoning. This charism of literary language was not understood by the rationalist, Humian mind. To misunderstand this charism is to "alienate man from his own nature," a point stressed by Edward Schillebeeckx: We might say that it is empirically demonstrable that man is alienated from his own nature if he thinks he has finished with the symbolic thinking of the religious conscious-ness . But in our one-track Western culture we can also demonstrate that the exclusiveness and absolutism of purely, scientific and technological thought., allows whole areas of our humanity to die out or become stunted, and precisely in doing so alienates man from himself.~a 22 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 A ~:lose look, however, at the literary compositions appealing to popular society will reveal that, despite the tendency to downgrade the role of literary language in expressing truths, this charism of language is very prevalent in our contemporary world. Contemporary "Rock," for example, manifests the artist's expression of "truth through images." Simon and Garfunkel's famous song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," uses such imagery to tell of devoted friendship in a time of personal struggle. Elton John, whose mu.sic appeals to millions of people throughout the world, expresses in ima~gery an autobio-graphical situation from his early adult life in a song entitled "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." In the song he speaks of his former relationship with a woman he describes as "a princess perched in an electric chair." By way of such imagery, he conveys to the listener something of the reality of that relationship. And many articles have been written about the great influence of the Beatles' songs on contemporary society.15 Their songs abound with colorful literary expressions~ It is by way of such imagery, and not in spite of it, that their message is conveyed. These are but a few examples from contemporary popular imagery-in-music that demonstrate the usage of imagery and symbol to convey thought. "People cannot live by abstractions alone"~6 but ~appeal time and again to the image, and this appeal is perennial. It is found not only in contemporary music but in contemporary literature. The current popularity of the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is evidence of the charism of literary language in contemporary culture. Those who read them are well aware of their fictitious nature, as are those who flock to see the Star Wars sagas and or.her such science-fiction marvels. "Our knowledge that the stories are not factual is neither here nor there. For the stories themselves have power to arouse certain moral attitudes . In addition to its function of allowing the human mind to be creative in conveying truth through story, there is another reason why the .human person seeks to express himself in some medium other than with clear and distinct ideas and conceptual language. This was touched upon.above in the quotation from Erich Fromm: oftentimes we cannot adequately express ourselves through conceptual language alone. Furthermore, not all of our experiences are capable of such expression. Such is the case with re!igious experience. Some other form of expression is needed. Mythopoeic Thought and the Charism of Literary Language Because of the charism of literary language, linguistic expression can be given to that part of reality which escapes scientific scrutiny but which is, nevertheless, real and a part of our existence. Such is the case, for example, with our human urge for survival, for justice, for happiness. These urges, which are universal, experienced by people of all cultures and generations, come into conflict with the historical, existential living out of our lives.~8 The desire for survival is our common experience. We do not desire life for a given Scripture: Literao, Text and the Word of God / 23 number of years only, but eternally; if given a choice we would not have our lives terminate. Whether by witch doctors or miracle vitamins, we seek to prolo.ng our lives, to avoid aging and death. The same is true regarding happiness: we seek happiness not for a predictable number of years but for all our years. We do not want finite happiness as contingent beings, but infinite happiness as immortal beings. The conflict arises when we find ourselves cruelly thwarted. The experience is traumatic. Answers to queries arising out of this conflict escape the scientist; they evade his scientific scrutiny. From the experience of ourselves as contingent, we realize that "man cannot ground the possibilities of his own existence, his knowledge and his ability in his own planning and his own reflection."19 Out of the conflict arises the question of God, and a merely scientific, conceptual language is not adequate to deal with such a reality as God. The human person, being at home with imagery pre-cisely as a human person, resorts to mythopoeic thought to give expression to queries such as the origin of evil and injustice; man's loss of immortality which he so ardently desires; "the origin of the world and of man; the nature of deity; the origins of society and of social institutions; the ultimate validation of moral principles; the purpose and direction of human existence."z° Incapable of being adequately expressed in conceptual language, such queries find expression in mythopoeic thought. Because the language of conversation rarely enables us "to share all the wealth of an experience, or to communicate the richness of what we live within ourselves,TM mythopoeic thought finds expression in and through the charism of literary language. Although the religious experience deals with "problems that lie beyond sensible experience,"~2 the mind can nonetheless give expres-sion to this experience. John Knox saw this need for mythopoeic expression in religious language: In a word, we find ourselves dramatizing or mythologizing. Use either of these terms you will or find some other: bul however you want to say it, the main point is clear and undeniable: we are no longer speaking factually or literally. We cannot speak so when we are speaking of God, for our speech can use ,only the terms provided by our human .experience and thought, and God transcends both. The divine, however near to, even pervasive of, the human it may be, is still essentially transhuman or superhuman.2s God-talk by its very nature den~ands an expression beyond that of the discursive language of the philosopher, an expression that transcends the philosophical. Schillebeeckx cautions that although our talk of God may be inadequate, that is no reason.for silence: Unless linguistic expression is given to the reality which escapes us but grounds our being, even though this may only be through the "poverty" of symbolic expressions, it threatens to disappear into forgetfulness.24 What the person of faith "has experienced," however partially or brokenly, and therefore needs to affirm is, in its fullness or at its source, 'out of this world.''~ When we read the Christian mystics, we notice their frustration at attempting to find words adequate enough to convey their religious experien- 94 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 ces.26 The very stating of the experience seems to make it something less than it is. This demonstrates that the mythopoeic form of expression is not simply an entertaining way of speaking, as in fairy tales, but is necessary if we would convey all of our experience of reality. If we are going to appreciate the language and literature of the Bible, we need to understand mythopoeic expression and how it was used by the peoples of the ancient Near East. Out of the cultures of the ancient Near East came the literature of the Bible, which we call sacred. Literary Language in the Ancient Near East For many centuries the literature of the Bible had to be studied and interpreted simply on its own merits since no extra-biblical literature was known that could elucidate its past. For example, there was no corresponding historical material to enable the scholar to judge the nature of the historical books of the Old Testament. Did they contain history properly understood by modern terms? Knowledge from the cultures of Israel's past was greatly lack-ing, knowledge that would help answer such questions. This situation has changed drastically over the last century due to the discovery of a great number of ancient Near Eastern texts relating to the Hebrew Bible that not only predate it, but bear some strong resemblances to its subject matter. The ancestors of Israel's traditions did not live in isolation but were greatly influ-enced by the predominant cultures of their day. Pius XII, in his encyclical on the study of Scripture, recommends the study of those ancient cultures: It is absolutely necessary for the interpreter to go back in spirit to those remote centuries of the East. and make proper use of the aids afforded by history, archaeology, ethnol-ogy and other sciences in order to discover what literary forms the writers of that early age intended to use and did in fact employ.27 By discovering the literary forms used by Israel's literary ancestors, we better understand the nature of the biblical literature. Innumerable parallels between the cultures of the ancient Near East and the Scriptures have been documented by scholars.28 The wealth of ancient Near Eastern texts discov-ered since the middle of the last century has revealed, among other literary genres, such genres as "epics and myths, hymns and lamentations, proverbs and 'wisdom' composition,"~9 and these from texts of various cultures: Egyp-tian, Mesopotamian, Hittite and Ugaritic.30 Mythopoeic expression was common throughout the ancient Near East. Would this have had an influence on the literature of Israel, even though this latter is said to include the "Word of God"?. Nahum Sarna explains that there was such an influence, and the influence was no slight one: In actual fact, no advanced cultural or religious tradition has ever existed in a vacuum; it cannot therefore be studied in isolation. This is all the more true of the people of Israel. who strode upon the stage of history at a time when the great civilizations of antiquity had already passed their prime . The ancestors of Israel originated in Mesopotamia, wandered through Syria and Canaan, and settled for a prolonged stay in Scripture: Literao, Text and the Word of God / 25 Egypt . The land of Israel enjoyed a location of unique strategic importance as a corridor connecting Europe. Asia and Africa, as well as a window to the Mediterranean lands. Through it crossed the arteries of international communications, and into it flowed the powerful cultural and religious influences of surrounding civilizations. It is no wonder that the culture of Canaan was a mixed one. for its geographic position perforce imparted to it a richly international character that impeded the maintenance of individuality and the development of cultural and religious independence. In view of all this. the discovery of numerous parallels between Israel and her neighbors should hardly occasion surprise and chagrin?~ It can be said, then, that Israel and her literature were certainly influenced by the dominant cultures of her past, just as the world today is influenced by dominant cultures: McDonald's golden arches are found in Paris; Levi jeans are worn in Africa; and Shakespeare is read in Polish. Israel utilized those methods of expression common in the ancient Near East. and she borrowed from their subject matter and imagery, all the while, however, making it her own. Her literature, then, can no longer be naively regarded as a "dictated" Word of God as if somehow removed from human experience and the modes of expression utilized by the human community. Rather, it is the Word of God mediated through a rich literary language. Literary Language in the Bible Although great progress has been made in our understanding of the Bible since the discovery of ancient Near Eastern texts, a confusion has resulted. Sarna remarks that ¯. the modern student of the Bible has at his disposal a formidable array of primary and secondary tools, the fruits of a century of intensive scholarly endeavor. Excellent new translations into modern English, a deluge of popular works on archaeology, a plethora of enyclopedias, dictionaries, historical atlases, reliable non-technical commen-taries of recent vintage, all deprive any literate person of the excuse of ignorance . But the crux of the matter is that in the eyes of modern, secularized man, the Bible has very largely lost its sanctity and relevance?2 ~ We seem to meet with two extremes among readers of the Bible: those who accept the results of the modern critical sciences and have come to understand the true lite'rary nature of Scripture, but as a result do not regard such litera-ture as inspired, and, on the other hand, those.who, intent on maintaining their faith in Scripture as the Word of God, reject the results of the methodologies of the critical sciences when applied to Scripture. Why is this? The predominance of evolutionary theories, the general awareness of the findings of modern science regarding the "birth" of the universe, and the results of comparat.ive studies showing the influence of ancient Near Eastern mythol-ogies on Scripture--all this has had great ramifications regarding the inspired character of the Bible. Genesis has lost its credibility, having been understood literally for so long and by so many. The modern critical sciences have done much to shed light on the literary characteristics of this literature. As a result of such studies, we know that Scripture expresses its message not simply through 26 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 historical narrative, but also by way of poetic narrative. Because the Bible is great literature, it may contain such literary genres as myth, fairy tale, fable, saga, legend, etc.33 For Jews and Christians the Old Testament is sacred and canonical. Faith proclaims that it is inspired: it is the Word of God. Now, when the modern critical sciences discover the presence of mythopoeic expres-sion in Scripture, should the person of faith regard these sciences as a challenge to his or her faith? Or does the Word of God in revelation find expression in and through the charism of literary language? In studying what he calls "the immanence of transcendence: the possibility of expressing the reality of revelation,''34 Schillebeeckx maintains that "trans-cendence lies in human experience." Revelation itself is not a reality apart from human experience: it can be expressed only in and through the medium of human language in such wise that God's revelation comes in the form 'of human ideas and words. This emphasis on the human situation will help us underStand just how God has acted to communicate his word to the human community. As Thomas Aquinas taught, "In the divine Scriptures, divine things are conveyed to us in the manner to which people are accustomed.''35 We experience reality. What is our common mode of expressing that expe-rience? Oftentimes. imagery and mythopoeic expression. If this is the manner to which we are accustomed, and the manner to which people of the ancient Near East were accustomed, should we be surprised, or our faith challenged, because the mythopoeic nature of some of the biblical narratives is made apparent by the modern sciences? Or should we be surprised that God would use this means, to which we are accustomed, to communicate his Word? On the contrary, such an understanding can only serve to enhance our apprecia-tion of that sacred literature. To lack this understanding is to misinterpret and invalidate the scriptural message. "The devastating effect of all this upon faith, when faith was exclusively identified with a literalist approach to Scripture, is abundantly obvious.''36 If for no other reason, Scripture has lost its credibility because modern man has failed to understand that God's word has come to us precisely in our human garb, the human garb of our language, so to speak. It is a failure on the part of the Christian to commit himself or herself to a living and pervading faith in the Incarnation. Scripture is the Word of God mediated through a mythopoeic expression, and richer by that very mediation. NOTES ~George ,P. Landow, The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 266. "-The Ent:vclopedia Americana. 1978 ed. s.v. "Ruskin, John." -~Mhson Olds, Stor.v: The Language of Faith (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America. 1977). p.5. '~Erich Fromm, The Forgotten language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams. Scripture: Literary Text and the Word of God / 27 Fairy Tales and Myths (New York: Rinehart, 1951), p. II. ~Gerardus van der l,eeuw, Sacred and Profane Beaut),: The Holy in Art (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1963), p. 155. 6Luis Alonso Schoekel. The Inspired Word: Scripture in the Light of Language and Literature (New York: Herder & Herder. 1965), p. 160. 7peter Donovan, Religious Language (London: Shelden Press, 1976). p. 29. 8Philip Freund. Myths of Creation (New York: Washington Square Press, 1965), p. 20. '~John Knox, Myth and Truth." An Essay on the Language ~?f Faith (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1964). p. 19. The reference is to Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act II, Scene I. ~Olbid., pp. 20 & 21. ~Donovan, Religious Language. p. 16. ~2John MacQuarrie, God-Talk." An Examination of the Language and Logic of Theology (New York: Harper& Row. 1967), p. 205. MacQuarrie is citing from Hebert's The Bible From Within, p. 176. ~JDonovan, Religious Language. p. 29. ~'~Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ." ~he Experience ~f Jesus as Lord (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), p. 58. ~See, for example, 77me. Dec. 22, 1980. ~rRene Wellek and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1956), chapter 12. ~TDonovan, Religious Language. p. 26. ~SThe following are ideas expressive of those heard in a class at the Graduate Theologic~il Union from Professor Kevin Wall. This notion of the conflict between a person's expected desires or urges and his actual, existential situation of life lived in the world is referred to by Professor Wall as the "myth/history conflict." ~gSchillebeeckx, Christ, p. 47. -'°John L. McKenzie. "Aspects of Old ~estament Thought~" Jerome lh'blical Commentary 77:23 (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 740. -'~Alonso Schoekel, The Inspired Word. p. 159. 2~McKenzie, "Aspects," p. 740: -'-~Knox, Myth and Truth. p. 5. ' 2'~Schillebeeckx, Christ. p. 55. ~SKnox. Myth and Truth. p. 81. ~'Such was the case, for example, with St. Catherine of Siena. During a mystical experience brought,on in prayer, Raymond of Capua (her confessor) heard her say, Vidi arcana Dei: "1 have seen the secret things of God." Raymond recounts that, "When, after a great length of time, she returned to her bodily senses sh,e kept repeating the expression Vidi arcana dei. Wishing to know the reason for this 1 said, "Mother. why do you keep saying the same thing over and over again. instead of drawing out for us as usual the meaning o,f what you say, or of adding a word or two of explanation?' 'Because,' she said, '1 find it quite impossible to say anything else. or put it into other words.' "But why,'~ I asked. 'do you find this so now, when you never did before?". 'Because.' she said, 'on this occasion ! am so conscious of how inadequate human words are to express .what I saw. I should feel as if I were only belittling God, and profaning him, by any words I could say. When the mind is rapt in God. and is granted the light and the ability to fix its gaze on him. what it contemplates so far surpasses anything that can be put into words that the one thing seems to be the negation of the other. No: this time I cannot attempt to give you even a faint idea of the things 1 have seen. They cannot be encompassed within the limits by which human speech is bound'" [emphasis added]: Raymond of Capua. The Life of Catherine of Siena, tra,ns, by Conleth Kerns (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1980), p. 179. ~TPius XII. Divino A.fflante Spiritu. EB 560. -'SNahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. xxvi. ~S.N. Kramer, Sumerian Mythology: A Study ~f Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944). p. 13. ~0See Walter Beyerlin. ed. Near Eastern Religious Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Phila-delphia: Westminster Press, 1978). -~Sarna. Understanding Genesis, pp. xxvi-xxvii. -~'-Ibid. p. xx. ~-~See John I. McKenzie. "The Literary Characteristics of Genesis 2-3," Theological Studies 15 (1954). p. 546. See such scriptural pas'sages as I K 17:7-16; 2 K 4:1-7: 14:9: Nb 22:22-35: and the story of Sodom in Gn 19. ~Schillebeeckx, Christ. p. 55. 35St. Thomas says, "In scriptura autem divina traduntur nobis per modum quo homines solent uti. "Comm. on Heb. ch. I, 1,4 ,quote0 in Alonso Schoekel, The li~spired Word. p. 44. Images of Job Jesse Nash, O.S.B. Brother Nash resides in St. Meinrad Archabbey; St. Meinrad. IN 47577. Every age has its heroes. Religious ages venerate saints and martyrs. Rebellious and turbulent ages tend to venerate rebels and even anti-heroes. Our age is curious in that it is characterized by both tendencies. One would naturally suppose that the heroes of traditional religious groups will sharply clash with those figures idolized by more secular, non-traditional groups in our society. Ahd such is typically the case. What the religious imagination sees as'a virtue, the non-religious or secular imagination disdains. Rarely do both camps find themselves prizing the same figure, whether histori-cal or legendary, as a hero. But the literary character Job is an example of such an exception. Both the traditional religious imagination and the contemporary imag-ination, which includes rebellious religious persons as well as non-religious ones, claim Job as their own. It is the oddity of this dual claim which has prompted this essay. The Book of Job as a Story Like an intricately designed puzzle, the book of Job frustrates the scholar and exegete. It is difficult, some say impossible, to translate. As to how the book came to its final, present form, which is a combination of poetry and prose, scholars are not in agreement. Nor are they in agreement as to how the various parts of the puzzle should really be fit together into one harmonious whole. The questions the book raises are legion. In spite of scholarly difficulties ,with the book of Job, the character of Job has been for centuries a hero of the religious imagination. For Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Job the man has been a hero to be imitated.~ More specifically, .lob was thought to be a model of patience in the face of a~Jversity. St. James represented all Images of Job / 29 three of these great religious traditions when he used Job as an example for his congregation to imitate: "You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, and how the Lord is compassionate and merciful" (5:11). In more recent times Job the man has become a hero of another sort altogether for both the religious and the secular imaginations. Job as a model of patience has been replaced with the model of Job the rebel. Job has even been adopted by the existentialists as one of their own. Today the Job who shakes his fist at the heavens in outrage and the Job who broods over the meaning of life is of more fascination than the older, more traditional view of Job. Scholars and. laity alike are more attracted to Job the impatient than Job the patient? How, we might ask, could two such contradictory models be constructed around the same literary figure? One reason for this difference in models lies in the structure of the book of Job itself, which looks something like this: 1. Prologue chapters I-2 11. Job's Laments and Debates chapters 3-27 111. A Hymn to Wisdom chapter 28 IV. The Debates Continued chapters 29-37 V. The Divine Speeches chapters 38-41 VI. Epilogue chapter 42 In the prologue and epilogue, the book is basically in prose. The rest of the book is mostly poetic in style. In the prologue Job is patient, and at the end of the divine speeches he surrenders to God, repenting in the end (40:3-5: 42: I-6). From these sections of the book the model of Job the patient was constructed. A different picture of Job is found in his laments and in his argumehts with his friends--here Job is not only impatient, he is rebellious. Thus we have the two models. Of course, the problem with either model is that it relies only on sections of the book congenial to the desired model. The book as a whole is often ignored. When this happens we are only given a glimpse of one image of Job when in fact there are three distinct images of Job in the book: one of patience, one of impatience or rebellion, and one of repentance. The images, at first glance, appear to be contra-dictory. How do we reconcile Job's rebellion with his final repentance? Some have chosen to ignore the repentance as though it were out of place in the book. But as Bernhard Anderson has pointed out, the fact that Job repents is the key to the book as a whole.3 Several scholars, along with Anderson, have stressed that the book of Job should be read as a story.4 By reading the book as a story with each of the various sections belonging together, we find that we do not have to choose between the model of Job the patient and Job the rebel. Neither model really reflects the whole story, so to speak. To choose ,lob the rebel over Job the patient or repentant (or vice versa) neglects the fact that in the book we catch glimpses of at least three moments in the life of a literary figure as he attempts to understand himself, his suffering, his world and his God. To read the book of Job as a story is to read the 30 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 movement of one person from self-assured patience to open rebellion to finally repentance and reconciliation with God. From Patience to Impatience In the prologue, chapters I-2, Job is presented as a successful family and business man with considerable wealth in terms of land, livestock, and servants, He was also blessed with many children. Both the extent of his wealth and the number of his children were signs of God's blessing in the popular piety of the day. Of course, the reason for this blessing was Job's righteousness. He was "blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil" (I:1). 'The depth of his piety can be seen in his concern for the spiritual welfare of his children: ¯. he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said. "lt may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually (1:5). Such a description not only serves to draw attention to Jo.b's piety, it also points to his wisdom. Although his children had every reason to be contented and thankful to the Lord. the possibility of alienation from God was always present. When misfortune did strik~ Job's children, servants, and property, he reacted as a wise man should. He mourned his loss and worshipped God (1:20). He was steadfast, as St. James said. and reconciled his loss with his faith in God: Naked I came from my mother~ womb, and naked shall 1 return: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this he did not sin or charge God with wrong ( 1:21-22). Even when Job himself is afflicted with sores over his body, he remains stead-fast. To his goading wife, he retorts: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil" (2:10)? Job's so-called patience was maintained because of his conviction that come what may, good or bad, it comes from God. Thus suffering was something to be endured. This too was part of the popular piety of the Ancient Near East (see Pr 3:1.1-12). ' Needless to say. Job's patience does not last long. As Job's patience ends in the story so does the prologue and thus begins Job's poetic lamentations and debates with his friends. Still, Job does not curse God. Rather. he curses the gift of life: "Let the day perish wherein 1 was born, and the night which said. 'a man child is conceived'" (3:3). His friends protest his outburst. Life. as a gift from God, was sacred to these people. Moreover. and here is a point often missed. Job's outburst is out of character for him. Eliphaz chides him: Behold, you have ,instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble.knees. But now it has come to you, and you arc impatient: it touches you, and you are dismayed (4:3-5): Images of Job / 31 Having helped others, Job now finds himself unable to cope with his own suffering and pain. He is forced to admit he hasn't the strength to be patient (6:11-13).~ Sheol is a nicer alternative than his present life (3:13-19). Sense of God and Sense of Self Job's patience and wisdom crumble before his pain. He is not being true to form, his friend Eliphaz notes. He becomes rebellious and argues with his friends. Claiming that he has not sinned, he argues that he does not deserve to stiffer in such a way (6:10). His outbursts are directed against God as well: "Why hast thou made me thy mark? Why have 1 become a burden to thee" (7:20)? Being bold in his anger, he would even presume to argue face to face with God to defend himself and the record of his life (13:3-5). Such a posture from Job has led John Bowker to think that Job's "sense of God" has been radically altered. Job no longer knows what to expect from his God, who is supposed to reward the righteous and not punish them.5 But is this actually the case? Did Job's experience of suffering cause him to question the very God he worshipped in the prologue? This question is crucial because'on it hinges the model of Job the rebel. Roland Murphy sheds some light on the question. He notes that Job is expe-riencing "the dark side of God.''6 This side of God'is not new to Job or the reader of the book. In the prologue we are told that God is going to allow Job to be tested (1:8-12: 2:3-6). This is the Hebrew way of saying that God is not above such a thing. The reader is almost immediately confronted with "the dark side of God," Job himself in the prologue relates his misfortunes to the hand of God and claims that evil as well as good should be accepted from God. And in his laments Job never doubts the existence of this side of God. The God Job worships in the prglogue is the same God he rages against in his lamentations. True, Job does rebel, but he rebels because he himself has become a victim of this side of God. Where before he counseled and consoled the victim, now he is one himself. Ironically, he asks: What is man. that thou dost make so much of him, and that thou dost set thy mind upon him. dost visit him every morning, and test him every moment? (7:17). Job has always been aware of this side of God, the testing side. But now that he personally is affected by it he questions the rationale .behind this possibility of the God-human relationship. Becoming more rebellious, he even questions the ration-ale behind punishing sinners: "It~ I sin, what do I do to thee, thou watcher of men" (7:20)? It is Job's "sense of self" that has radically shifted. He complains about the nature of a person's sojourn on earth in general--it is like that of a hired-hand (7:1). Old age also stares at him: "my life is a breath" (7:7), he tells his friends. Angrily, he is forced to conclude that suffering is only an additional complicating factor in the problematic nature of a person's life. 32 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 Job's sense of self is shattered by the greeting he gets from his social world. His friends wrongly associate his affliction with sin. His affliction (remember, he is covered with sores) has ostracized him from his natural acquaintances (19:13-19). Worst of all, "I am repulsive to my wife" (19:!7). His frfistration and rage are exemplified in his protest to his friends: "Why should I not be impatient? Look at me, and be appalled, and lay your hand upon your mouth. When I think of it I am dismayed, and shuddering seizes my flesh" (21:5-6). And while all this has hap-pened to Job, the wicked prosper and grow old peacefully (21:7-21). Tested by God and shunned by his social world, Job rebels. One can under-stand his preference for the peace and rest of Sheol (1:13-19). What one cannot understand is how Job got the reputation over the centuries for being patient. But neither is Job's rebellion the last word in the story. To Repentance Job demanded a face-to-face showdown with God so as to resolve the issues he had raised. Yet when God does appear, much to the surprise of the reader, God does not defend himself by resolving the issues. In the divine speeches (chapters 38-41) God is on the offensive, asking some questions of his own: where was Job at creation or can Job control creation? Job is overwhelmed and concludes: "Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee" (40:4)? And finally, "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee: therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:5-6). But why does Job repent? God does not actually absolve Job as he had demanded. Instead, Job is given a whirlwind tour of, in G. K. Chesterton's famous phrase, "an idiotic universe," a universe in which the wild ass (39:5ff), the wild ox (39:9ff), the ostrich (39:13ff), Behemoth or the hippopotamus (40:15-24), and even Leviathan or the crocodile (the subject of all of chapter 41) are the wonders that attest to God's glory and power. God here literally sings a hymn of praise to the ostrich, the hippopotamus, and the crocodile, creatures ugly or dangerous to humans. But these are the wonders of the universe according to God. He even seems proud of his "idiotic universe." God's description of the wonders of the universe catches Job off guard, so to speak. "What is man that you make so much of him?" Job had asked earlier. God replies by making much of creatures ugly or dangerous. The divine speeches force . Job to realize that he is not the center of the universe and that humans are not the only concerns God has. In regard to the meaning of the divine speeches, Robert Gordis notes: "The universe was not created exclusively for man's use, and therefore neither it nor its creator can be judged solely by man's standards and goals,w ' Job's rebellion was against his world and his God. God appears and shows him how little Job actually knows and understands. To demand to know the reason for suffering is to ask for more than is possible for humans. But God does not himself offer an easy answer. He confirms Job's suspicions that he has indeed created "an Images of Job / 33 idiotic universe." Nevertheless, a person's first obligation is not to understand but to give glory to the creator come what may.8 By his rebellion Job has caused an imbalance in the divine-human relationship. His repentance restores that relationship. onclusion Perhaps the unnerving thing about the book of Job for the reader of any age is that Job does repent. God in his confrontation with Job never addresses the problem of the suffering of the righteous or even the problem of ordinary living, both of which came to frustrate Job. Rather, God in the divine speeches accepts the world as his creation. He lays claim to it in spite of how crazy the world may appear to us. Job repents, but God declares to his friends that Job had spoken correctly of God (42:7). By his repentance Job accepts God in spite of unanswered questions and "an idiotic universe." Herein may lie a model worth our imitation, a model more challenging than those of Job the patient or the rebel. NOTES ~Nahum N. Glatzer, The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 12-34. 2Qoheleth has also been appropriated by some as a rebel or as an existentialist. For a critique of the use of Job and Qoheleth in such a manner see Robert Gordis, Koheleth-- The Man and His World. 3rd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), pp. 112-28. 3Bernhard W. Anderson. Understanding the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Eng!ewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 559. 4See Glatzer, p. 4: Robert Gordis, The Book of Job: Commentao', New Translation, and Special Studies (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and KTAV, 1974): William J. Whedbee. "The Comedy of Job," in Semeia, 7 (1977), pp. 1-39. 5John Bowker, The Religious Imagination and the Sense of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 100. ~'Roland E. Murphy, The Psalms, Job, Proclamation Commentaries (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). p. 79. 7Gordis. The Book of Job, p. 435. SAnderson. p. 558. A Word On Tomorrow's Renewal M. Helen Hardebeek, O.S.B. Sister Helen has been a member of the Benedictine community of Boerne, Texas. since 1960, and is presently working with Benedictine Sisters in Mexico City. She has attended both public and private universities. She writes "influenced by the totality of these experiences . prompted by a strong desire to encourage my sister and brother religious to see the long-range nature of our renewal efforts." Sister Helen may be addressed at Rio Bamba #870: Delegaci6n Gustavo Madero: Mexico 14. DF. 07300. Tired of talking about renewal? Want to know when we are finally going to settle down? You may be in for a shock: we've only just begun. The thing about renewal is that it never should have stopped happening in the Church in the first place. But stop it did--and that fact stands to warn us that stop it can again. We are made of the same weary bones and tired blood and change-resistant mentalities as those who first began to settle for the routine churchiness which provoked John XXIII to call for an opening of windows in the 1960's. Fifteen to twenty years later, most American Roman Catholic religious communities have lived through renewal processes; whether they have lived through renewal experiences remains an open question. Ask a representative religious (if you cannot find a representative religious; ask just any religious you come across), "How is your community renewing itself?." The answer very likely will be, "We already did." Thus do we set ourselves up a~ marvels of.grace or as paragons of delusion. It is a little like asking, "Are you looking forward to springtime?" and being told, "l've already seen one." Members of a community may feel that they have "renewed"just because they have studied and revised constitutions, set up group-defined goals and objectives, and established committees to evaluate the results of the efforts directed toward achieving those goals and meeting those objectives, While 34 A Word on Tomorrow's Renewal such efforts do indicate a willingness to travel toward renewal, they are no indication that renewal has indeed taken place. True, many aspects of our communities have changed, but l~t's face it: not all change is in the direction of renewal, and we are not always wise and clever and alert enough to catch the difference right away--although we may be scandalized at the thought that for all our prayer and sincerity, We, as groups, actually can make mistakes. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes we are tempted to make is that of canonizing ourselves before our time, thinking that because we have asked the Spirit to guide us and have trusted the Spirit to guide us, thereby we must have made excellent decisions. The truth is that we--none of us--are immune from the probability of making some mistakes--even in prayed-over group deci-sions. We get together, trust, and do the best we can with the information and inspiration at hand. Nevertheless, it can turn out that, with the best will in the world, groups have made decisions which ultimately do not result in the authentic renewal of ministries and of lives that was intended. And~that does not say that the Spirit hds not been with us! After all, whole masses of populations lack success, lack necessities, lack knowledge, even though the working of the Spirit in their lives may be pro-found-- so profound, in fact, that our age probably will not know what groups and which actions have been truly effective in renewing the face of the earth. Looking at the poor and the oppressed and the ignorant~ one could judge that all they do and have done is to make mistakes! But we don't know. And we don't know about ourselves~ either. So one day we may discover that we have made some bad decisions. Does that mean that the Spirit is not with us, "or was not present at the time of the decision-making? Let us transpose the questions to another level: Is the Spirit not with prayerful poor or oppressed or ignorant persons? H~ive we made successful results to be our criteria by which to judge the value of prayer? It is-not necessarily success that characterizes the value of our renewal efforts. True renewal is characterized by love--a love that keeps growing in the same Spirit~regardless of success or failure, a love that does not allow factions to develop--factions made up of those who knew better all along, those who should have known better in the first place, and those who, in the clear light of hindsight, can now tell us better. Is renewalactive within the hearts of the cOmmunity members? If.so, then renewal is active within the fiber of~the community, and that community will be renewed. Ask ~f the community is loving, open, to the ideas of each person, or are there m(mbers whose ideas are always disregarded a priori because, for example, they "talk all the time without thinking!" Some people, unfortunately pei'haps, think by talking: as a result, much of what they say gets tuned out. Yet, in a "controlled-process situation," where solitary reflection is insisted upon as a pre-requisite to the sharing of insights, the tuning out of anyone by any6ne else is definitely a sigff of bad will, and a hindrance to the renewals process. 36 / Review.for Religious. Jan.-Feb. 1983 Another instance: does a clique of judges hold court privately on the inner workings and outer behaviors of the group? Thoughtful dialogue about per-ceived problems and weaknesses can be a sign of a loving community because thoughtful dialogue imp!ies a sincere desire to include ever more intensely Christ who is present where two or three are gathered in his name; but carping criticism is as different from thoughtful dialogue as chewing gum is from eatirig a hearty meal. Attempts at dialogue with chronic complainers are a wrong-way drive down a one-way street--just that pleasant, and just that effective. On the other hand, dialogue, which includes elements of constructive criticism, can be useful and invigorating. is the community loving? Does every person feel free to express opinions and to raise questions, knowing that the opinion expressed will be valued, and that questions asked will be seen not as signs of stupidity, but rather as signs of sincerity? ls the community loving? Or would a member cringe who has to ask for a substitute to wash dishes, a driver to the doctor, a helper on a project which is running late. So many indications of love, or its absence, could be listed--and most of them come down to simple, everyday acts which indicate an unselfish-ness, a lack of self-importance, a kind way of thinking. The process of renewal should, of its nature, be !ight, joyful, and exciting. What was old is becoming young again! What was broken is being healed! What was listless is being invigorated! When renewal is experienced as tire-some, dull, irksome, something is wrong. The mark has been missed. Better to stop and play a game or put a vase of flowers on the table: to sing a song or have an ice cream party. If we are truly renewing, we are becoming more and more like the happiest people who have ever lived: Jesus, whose awareness of the Father kept him headed toward the breathtaking experience of Resurrec-tion; our founders, whose glimpses of what it means to help others come into contact with Eternal Beauty made their lives adventure stories. Our founding documents brim with the possibilities open in life for you and for me. If we are not filled with happy thanksgiving for creation, not convinced that life is a splendid opportunity for sharing a magnificent message, then we still need renewing. How do we become and stay renewed? A lot depends on attitude. We can go through a group process and come out animated or disgusted--it depends on attitude. Any process can fail if those who come to it are disgruntled because they have to work in small groups, or because they had to stop what they were doing to come to "another meeting," or because they have convinced themselves that processes are for the purpose of manipulation. If process after process results in a heavy, sarcastic atmosphere, it may be time to say, "Per-haps we are not going to be renewed. Maybe we are going to die." And a funeral service could well be the next process--to lay to rest the hopes and dreams of the founder, the hopes and dreams that this group had been ¯ intended to realize today. A Word on Tomorrow's Renewal As we have seen, negative attitudes can sabotage renewal efforts. Positive attitudes, however, can enliven these efforts with ease and graciousness. Con-sider, as an example, the study of revised constitutions. As mentioned earlier, a study does not, in itself, guarantee or signify renewal--but the spirit in which a study is undertaken can be, indeed, a sign of renewal, if the corporate and individual qualities of Christian love highlight the interaction as the members explicate their documents together. Usually revised constitutions are couched in current theological terms-- which undoubtedly are interpreted differently among the membership. A study of these terms and of the varying understandings can be a fruitful "grassroots" source of reflection; and when it turns out that interpretations do differ, perhaps drastically, that is just fin!! Why not? Go through your community's constitution by yourself sometime. Is every phrase crystal clear? Is every underlying assumption apparent and familiar to you? Do you have a suspicion that there is more being implied than a cursory reading indicates? Or do you have other suspicions: that you know exactly what particular passages mean to certain others of your group and that your own interpretation differs vastly from theirs? The process of revising constitu-tions was intended to provide a theoretical framework wherein renewal could take place. The riches of our revised documents may be far greater than we realize, especially if we have not given ourselves the benefit of taking a close look at the fine print, and more especially, if we have not taken advantage of the opportunity to share our insights with others, and of learning from their impressions and reactions. Firm understanding of our own thought takes time; firm understanding of one another's thoughts is an even slower process. It is also tricky in that we must constantly allow for change (growth) in our own and in the other's thinking. However, if we are to know both ourselves and our documents, we may need to face up not only to the inspirational aspects, but also to the hard questions that result when differing interpretations are discussed openly. Did anyone ever say not to question our documents? The asking of searching questions may be a great source of renewal, particularly the asking of searching questions by our own Companions, within the context of our own communities. If we are fortunate enough to belong to a group that is honest, open, and tolerant, we can increase in our appreciation of the elusive nature of truth. As we ponder truth's way of moving past our present understandings, its way of surrendering itself only to the most persistent of pursuers, we can grow in our appreciation of the ongoing nature of truthful renewal--and we will not grow tired. On the contrary, we will grow livelier as we support one another as individuals, as we contribute to the cohesiveness and effectiveness of our communities, and as we witness in our ministries that ongoing efforts are needed if we are to become an ever-renewed people on our way to an ever-new God. Am I Growing Spiritually? Elements for a Theology of Growth Matthias Neuman, O.S.B. Father Neuman is a Professor of Theology at St. Meinrad Seminary. An earlier article, "The Contemporary Spirituality of the Monastic Lectio." is still available as a reprint. Father Net~man may be addressed at St. Meinrad Seminary: St. Meinrad, IN 47577. ecently a student at our seminary expressed his judgment about the quality of the theological and spiritual training offered to him: "Because of the many talents, and abilities of our faculty I am sometimes overwhelmed by the,vast-ness of what one should know and be. This has contributed to .a feeling of insecurityand incompetence on my part in tackling pastoral duties and spir-itual responsibilities." In a later conversation this student indicated that the variety of theological disciplines, the pluralism within each discipline, and the multiplicity of personal spiritualities forced him toward too many choices and subsequently a stalled indecision towards his professional and spiritual devel-opment. This young man. rather sharply reflects the problem that confronts many people today. The American religious scene corrals a grab bag of inter-ests, from mysticism to social action, from pure rationalism to biblical funda-mentalism, from family-c~ntered religion to process cosmology. The spiritually minded individual, fortunately or unfortunately, gets exposed to most of these religious trends at"some time or other. Besides being intellectually confusing this incredible mixture tends to stall one's personal integration, growth and competence in the spiritual life. In this article I wish to explore the possibility and issues of a viable "theology of spiritual growth.L' I would like to search out some concrete directives by which a Christian adult might seriously look at his or her life and give a satisfying response to the question: "Am ! growing spiritually?" 38 Am I Growing Spiritually? / 39 This tremendous concern of faith-minded adults for their o~,n spiritual growth cannot be separated from the larger thrust of American religion into the realm of interiority and spirituality. At the outset it would be good to take some time to clarify what is meant by the two terms spirituality and spiritual growth. At least in Roman Catholic circles, and I suspect beyond, spiritualio, has become a "hot" subject in recent years. Books, workshops, prayer seminars and directed retreats proliferate and vie for the increasing crowd of concerned believers intent on deepening their faith. This movement in spirituality high-lights a number of concerns in American religious practice. There is, first, the desire to break through the abstractions and formalismsof religion to gain a personal, immediate contact with God. This desire also wants to go beyond the generality of scriptural l~hrases such as "life in the Spirit" and "following the Lord." These are certainly important but they need to be fleshed out with a commonsense language of our time and culture. Second, prayer is viewed,as "being-in-the-presence-of" the Divine rather than an obligatory addressing of the Deity; it is personal communion with God. Third, by means of spirifuality people wish to free their emotions and use their real-life experiehces as their primary religious foundation in place of theoretical dogmas. And, lastly, the spirituality thrust calls each man and woman to develop a very persOnal and intimate religious practice. These concerns convey some of the flavor of the spirituglity movement, but they do not make precise the structured shifts that take place in the religious practice.of people. Fo.r this we need to know the basic elements of any spiritu-° ality. I would like to suggest four constitutive elements which are always operative, either explicitly or implicitly, within a given spirituality9 I. The point at which God touches people in their dai~v lives. The~real, generating source of any spirituality is found where the person oi" per~ns s~e~nse the p,resence of Mystery or of the Transcendent in their everyday lives. Wher-ever we sense that a power beyonff draws us out of ourselves and gives us a feeling of awe or of selfless love (the Holy), then a spirituality begins.2 Those everyday moments, places, events or persons which join us to the Transcen-dent ground the structural origin of any sPirituality. 2. The supports constructed to protect and nourish this experience of Mystery. The instinctive reaction to an experience of the Holy is to surround it with activities: derived from our best abilities, which are intended to'shore up and protect, and thus contribute to the likelihood that the Mystery will appear to us again. Whatever form these follow-up activities take, they constitute the intrinsic "devotions" of the spirituality. 3. A method of.focusing one's attention,for the renewed encounter with Mystery. Such styles of "attending" are, in fact, methods of prayer. From a phenom, enological perspective, every style of prayer--meditation or contem-plation, communal or ritual movement--reflects a particular way of organiz- 40 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 19~3 ing and stimulating consciousness to prepare for Mystery. 4. A method of growth and conversion. Every spirituality encloses some plan for extending the benefits and riches of one's contact with God into all other areas of one's life. To meet the Transcendent must rearrange values, and that rearrangement must automatically push itself into all other parts of a person's total !ife-world. A spirituality, then, inherently implies some kind of spiritual growth. This last item of the structure of spirituality needs development, thus bringing us to the major concern of this paper: a theology of spiritual growth. Our American culture is obsessed by the need for progress. People feel compelled to constant growth--intellectually, personally and spiritually. Not unlike so many consumer products that we buy, each year (we feel) we should be able to measure ourselves as "new and improved."This often rabid quest mirrors the ethos of American modernity itself, the cumulative result of indus, trialization, technology, mass media and the.myth of prbgress.3 This cultural storm has flooded into the religious milieu of America as well, engulfing all the branches of the Christian tradition. The myth of contin-ual growth, the American dream, has ever so forcefully incorporated itself into our religious practice and hopes. People feel an intense need to be able to measure and plot their progress toward God. They ask for special courses and practica in spirituality, faith formation and prayer. They seek out spiritual directors with whom to identify evidences of their spiritual growth. This state of affairs generates a plethora of problems. First of all, few people seem to have any clear idea or conviction about what "spiritual growth" really consists of, or how to measure it. Like myths about sex, views of spiritual growth get passed around from popularized article to popularized conference. Countless people strive constantly to improve, to grow, but end up terribly frustrated because they aren't sure if they are getting anywhere-- because adequate criteria and a coherent theory are lacking. Marshall McLuhan once wrote: "The price of eternal vigilance is indifference,TM an ominou~warning for so many who cast themselves headlong into plans of spiritual regeneration. This presents us with a serious problem in Christian spirituality today. In the remainder of this article, I will try to indicate some componen~ts of a theology of spiritual growth which might assist Christians to make a better evaluation of their lives in their journey towards the Mystery of God. Three points, will be specifically addressed: i) the necessity of a critique of cultural theories of human growth; 2) a better use of Christian religious rcseurces as a foundation for valid spiritual growth; and 3) the importance of increasL,g *he role of personal responsibility for one's spiritual growth. The Necessity of a Critique of Growth Theories In the last quarter century, under the onslaught of the psychological revo-lution, an ~er-increasing array of theories of human growth have established Am I Growing Spirituall.v? / 41 themselves as elements of the American cultural scene. Philip Rieff's prophetic warning has ~come of age: Psychological Man lives by the ideal of insight--practical, experimental insight leading to the mastery of his own personality. Psychological Man has turned away from his Occidental preoccupation with transforming the environment and converting others. Rather. he now more nearly imitates the Oriental ideal of salvation through self-contemplative manipulation.5 Some perception and schematizing of human growth has traditionally bei:n a part of all folk wisdoms and religious traditions. The transition from child to adult was always hcknowledged, and a large portion of folk literature dealt'with the shifts in behavior, attitude and community-esteem that attach to the passage from boy to man or girl to woman. Similarly, religious traditions Of every kind have alwa3)~ sought to understand the fundamental ~hifts that occur in the course of human life and how this changes the individual relation-ship with God; the Hindu schema of Student-Householder-Wanderer-Holy Person serves as a typical example.6~However, these traditional understandings of human growth have been sharply accentuated and developed in our hyper-psychologized milieu. Not too long ago psychologists began to delineate more precise stages of growth--down to year-by-year and month-by-month. In addition to more narrowly identifying the temporal sequence, they also expanded the list of means by which such growth should occur. One fairly recent book lists a sample of the ways available to contemporary Americans, offering us growth by means of play, breathing, extended perception, smell, taste, touch, sex, family, encounter groups, peak experiences, gestalt therapies, LSD dreams, meditation, training intuition, psychedelic experiences and-- finally--relaxation .7 In such a supercharged atmosphere, is it any wonder that people start Worrying about "having to grow"?. They check themselves month by month to keep tabs on the normalcy of their progress. A man in a parish once told me of his anxiety that his mid-life crisis hadn't started on time! People can get abnormal trying too hard to be normal. A good theology of spiritual growth ought to address this issue head-on. Available theories are legion in our society. Just consider the complexities of balancing together Piaget's cognitive development,8 Erikson's psycho-social theory of growth,9 l~ohlberg's stages of moral development,10 Richard Jones' structuring of imaginal growth,~ Daniel Levinson's modeling of adult life-transitions, 12 and Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross' enumeration of the stages of dying.~3 Apparently the negotiation of one's way through that maze begins with the first month of life and never ends until the final breath. It would be a grim and determined individual who would seek never to sway from the tough road of.such normalcy: "Narrow is the path that leads to life and few there are who follow it" (Mt 7:!4)! What I find distressing is how easily and totally those growth schemas are imported wholesale into spiritual thinking and writing. Piaget and Kohlberg 42 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 are assumed to present ready-made outlines for faith development.14 Erikson's schema is accepted as the basis for identifying the major steps of adult religious conversion.~5 Levinson's adult life-transitions provide the hidden key to a mid-life "spirituality of crisis."16 . 1 would like to suggest that a theology of spiritual growth ought to provide a much deeper and more detailed critique of these'theories of human growth and their uses for spirituality. While there is much excellent research in these cultural theories of growth and development,and while they certainly offer a mine of insights to be tapped for a theology of spirituality, there is still a need for religious prudence in the acceptance of them.' Too often, for instance,, one encounters the feeling that the accurate following of this or that theory becomes binding ,for human happiness. "Normalcy" equals happiness and fulfillmen!! A theology of spiritual growth should exercise some critical defla-tion of such expectations. ,. Again, readers of psychological theories frequently assume~that a particu-lar age-related growth pattern can be made the target of personal decision and attacked forthwith. They forgetthat the most such schemes can accomplish for any individual is to provide possible awareness-points along the way toward long-range programs and decisions, points which might possibly help people to locate the source of some of their present blockages in one or other unre-solved issue of their past lives. There are, in other words, no instant panaceas. In seeking for balance in the utilization of these chronological growth patterns, a theology of spiritual growth would do well to brush off discarded philosophy books, rehabilitating, for instance, the existentialist notion of "event."~7 In the making of a human life, the setting of attitudes, actions and hopes is as much the result of the particular and unique events which happen to an individual as it is of the unfolding of any chronologically structured growth scheme. Most life events occur without our previous consent,'even though others may be defiberately planned and executed. The powerful exis-tentialist insight into event, however, has recently been smothered, philosophi-cally, in the waves of' structuralism. Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison provide a good example of one man whose mind, heart and vision had been irrevocably changed and shaped by his unplanned prison experience.~8 Other areas cannot be developed here. But let me suggest that any ade-quate theology of spiritual growth must incorporate and develop four basic d~,namics of human and spiritual deepening. I have drawn these from a theory that combines social phenomenology and cultural anthropology. ,I. Chronological Growth Stages. This dynamic encompasses the many theo-ries that seek to explain how the structural human being (mind, emotions, sociality, and so forth) moves through the trajectory of life. Its purview.is the time line, and it locates the person as moving successively out of. oqe set of structures into a future set. Most of the growth schemas menti.oned above-- Erikson, Kohlberg, Levinson, and so forth--are good exp?sitors of, this Am I Growing Spiritually? dynamic of human growth. Knowing these chronological stages can give us some positive insight into how we have negotiated the human need to cope With emotional maturity, sociality, intellectual responsibility, and so forth. We need to know this, and it can serve as a fundamental indicator of our spiritual growth toward the mystery of God.19 2. Cultural Exposure. Just as significant for a basic human and spiritual deepening is the dynamic of cultural expression to which a person has been exposed. Here growth opportunities point to a richness or expansiveness of social, personal and religious experiences of life. This may be the. most ne-glected of all the basic areas of human and spiritual growth. Americans espe-cially hax~e been provincial---even to the point of denigrating the cultural riches of other peoples. Yet we have ,to realize that there are many ways of meeting the fundamental issues of life in family and society, of entering into interper-sonal relations, and so on. To limit oneself exclusively to the learned patterns of one:s own family or culture is, in effect, to deny the possibility of other ways of growing that God has offered to the human race. Cultural openness is also a means of grasping more profoundly just how God's life me~rges with our own. A personal example may illustrate what I mean here. 1 was raised in a small midwestern town, in a culture strongly shaped by traditional Germanic values. A cardinal belief of that culture was: You never get something,for nothing. That limited experience kept me from really understanding and inter-igrizing the New Testament notion .o.f charism--a gift of God freely bestowed. It wasn't until I had lived in another culture (Italy)~.f.or four years that the cultural expression of pure gift became an experienced part of my reality, enatiling me to interioriz_e this New Testament meanin.g. I doubt that this could have happened if 1 had clung rigidly to my inherited convictions. A broadbased cultural exposure can be a vital dynamic of both human and spiritual growth. Not only should we recognize this, but we should be ,willing to let ourselves be challenged by it. 3. The Depth of TranSformational Possibilities. This dynamic considers'to what extent the indivi~lual recognizes the opportunities that are available for changing one's life~ The previous element cab present numerous possibilities and values to test One's ability to go~ beyond and enrich one's inherited and socialized culture. This dimension of human deepening, though, looks far mor+ r~dically and openly to the future hnd to the goal of humanization than do the previous two areas. It incorporates the hope and realistic expectation that 6ur live~ can actually be reshaped and renewed into a creative new pattern that combines inherited values and newly-learned cultural expressions. The full reality of spiritual growth, then, must internalize the possibility that the true spiritual person will be the result of a creative religious act.2° 4. Integrative and Creative ~)ecision. This final dynamic specifies that unique moment when the three preceding dimensions are brought into mutual interac- 44 / Review for Religious, Jan.-Feb., 1983 tion. Chronological growth, cultural possibilities, and projected changes are balanced and ready to be creatively merged by free decisions. This truly inte-grative dynamic of spiritual deepening is the traditional meaning of Wisdom. Christian theology has also called it "discernment in the Spirit of the Lord."!t is an axis of human and spiritual growth which reaches far beyond the simple importation of cultural growth theories into religious spirituality. These four elements of spiritual growth ought to provide at least a basic framework that would take us beyond a simple application of the chronologi-cal growth stages. Spiritual directors and reflective Christian adults should examine all four areas for material to answer the question: Am 1 growing spiritually? Christian Resources and a Theology of Spiritual Growth Having considered the problem of understanding growth in contemporary spirituality and the human social sciences, we must further inquire." Does the Christian religious experience offer any special contributions to this issue of spiritual growth? Does the Christian tradition add any unique perspectives in ascertaining the precise goals, means or methodological steps of authentic spiritual deepening? First, let us acknowledge that Scripture surely affirms some kind of reli-gious maturation. The Apostle Paul gently reprimands his congregation at Corinth: "I treated you as still infants in Christ. What I fed you with was milk, not solid food, for you we.re not yet. rea.dy for it" (I C° 3:1, 2). In another passage he contrasts the ways of Children with those of adults as a norm for spiritual deepening (! Co 13:9-12). Paul further notes the real possibility of regression or backsliding on the" spiritual journey: "! am astonished at the promptness with which you have turned away from the one who called you." (Ga 1:6). Along with other biblical writers (see Jn o16:12) the Apostle of the gentiles presents a definite conviction of the need for growth or deepen-ing on the spiritual journey. But we will look in vain for any systematic description of a life-pattern of holiness in the Scriptures. Alas, no biblical Erikson has appeared to lead us into this Promised Land. At best we can discern religious situations, spiritual responses to the situations, and recogni-tions that people have not progressed as far as they should have. Secondly, from a purely linguistic and cognitive viewpoint the Scriptures complicate the matter of trying to formulate a coherent theory of spiritual growth. This complication results from the cultural and religious pluralism that lies behind the,early Christian writings: this pluralism results in a variety of central symbols--all concretizing the same Christian wa~y.2~ The New Tes-tament encompasses a variety of goals in the spiritual process: the pascha~l pattern of Christ in us (Paul), the kingdom of God (Jesus), the holiness of God (I Peter), the life.and ministry of Jesus (synoptic gospels). Similarly diver~e are the means to attain these goals: aft active moral love (Paul), the new com-mandments (Matthew), loving knowledge (John) and personal conversion Am I Growing Spiritually? (Jesus). As if this were not enough, one fails to find the least evidence of any systematizing method which would trace the step-by-step procedures of spiri-tual growth through the means to the end. While many later Christian writers have attempted to formulate systematizing examples, they all impose a later schema on the earlier texts,z2 The absence in the New Testament of a step-by-step explanation of spiri-tual deepening should be understandable in a moment's reflection: these canonical writings are occasional pieces, not systematic expositions. Moreover, in the cultural milieu of their composition, subjective spiritual growth was not a high priority: it is our modern viewpoint that has elevated it to a primary concern. And yet the richness of spiritual experience in the Christian heritage does possess an immense wealth in its own right, one that need not be clipped or stretched to fit within our cultural categories of human growth. Methodo-logically, this suggests that a revisionist method of theology, such as the one outlined by David Tracy, should be introduced more forcefully into the realm of spirituality.23 The Christian heritage should challenge" contemporary culture, as well as vice-versa. I would like to suggest one issue which might be pursfiEd in this dialectical exchange. The question should be raised: Does the Christian religious vision even allow that spiritual growth have any single necessary ground-plan? Ought we not consider as a real possibility that the reason it is difficult to find a methodo-logical statement of spiritual growth in the Bible is because there isn't supposed to be one? These writings are open-ended! They provide no abs61ute goal of spiritual growth: they offer no absolute means of holiness: they organize no steps in an absolute methodological pattern. Taken as a collection of accumu-lated experience these writings simply give us a variety of examples of men and women who are "on the spiritual way." Like the parable of the Good Samari-tan which avoids a direct answer to the question: "Who is my neighbor?" the wholel import of the scriptural collection deliberately leaves a great deal of latitude for people to choose their own path. The implied message of the Good Samaritan story, "Be loving and you will recognize your neighbor," may be symbolic of the entire scriptural message. Paul's great theme of freedom in the Galatian letter forcefully accents that same open-endedness. "Before faith came, we were allowed no freedom by the Law . The Law was to be our gua~rdian until Christ came . lqow that that time has come we are no longer under that guardian" (Ga 3:23-25). That warning may be spoken against any absolute plan (including a growth plan) that would shackle human freedom. When Paul pleads with his hearers to be guided by the Spirit (5:26), he is admonishing people to remain open and a

Issue 65.3 of the Review for Religious, 2006. ; Bei~ Religiofis ~QUARTERLY 65~3 2006 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with Godi .dialogue with ourselves, and dialog4~e with one another about the holiness we tryto live according to gts~ari~s o.f Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul VI said, our way Of being dsurcb is today tlse~, way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindel] Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ Pontifical College Josephinmn 7625 North High Street ° Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Rdigious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, NIN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2006 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. ~gournalof Catholic ~piri~uality view for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Webmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Clare Boehmer ASC Stephen Erspamer OSB "Kathleen Hughes R$CJ Louis ~nd Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ QUARTERLY 65.3 2006 contents prisms 228 Prisms 230 coming together The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress: A Restrospective Karen M. Kennelly CSJ summarizes the thinking and the participants' interaction at the 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress held in Rome and proposes that some themes should impact local chapters and congregational meetings. ¯ Reflection and Discussion Questions 244 A New Way of Meeting . Rachael M. Harrington SNDdeN describes one carefully planned attempt to capture new life and meaning that might be incorporated into the usual chapter or congregational meeting. 226 255 meeting God Aspiratory Prayer, a Welcome Addition to Contemplative Prayer Ernest E. Larkin OCarm describes the prayer of aspiration, reviews its hisory in spirituality, identifies a few of its main proponents, and suggests ways that we might make it part of our lives. Reflection Questions Review for Religious 272 "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises Philip Shano SJ reflects upon the purpose and use of repose days within the Ignatian thirty-day retreat and raises questions for retreat directors. 283 Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Lantern out of Doors": A Contemplative Response to Loss Charles P. Farrar praises the spiritual theology of Hopkins's sonnet which describes the experience of personal loss with the metaphor of a lantern passing in the night. What first seems subjective and formulaic proves to be psychologically and theologically insightful. 293 3O4 being religious Today's Candidates: Who Are They, What Do They Expect? Raymond R. Ryan OSA allows younger members within the religious congregation to present a snapshot picture of their hopes and desires for community life and mission. These Strawberries Are Divine! Sisters and a Spirituality of Living on Earth Colleen Carpenter Cullinan provides a glimpse of the contributions of Catholic religious congregations of women in founding farms and Earth centers as places to raise organic food and educate people about the deep human connection to God's creation. Prayer / Reflection and Discussion Questions departments 319 Scripture Scope: Reading the Gospel of John 323 Canonical Counsel: Archives of Religious Communities 328 Book Reviews 65.3 2006 prisms Tintroduce the Gospel story of the Annunciation, St. Ignatius Loyola would have us picture the three divine Persons of the Trinity in dialogue about how better to accom-plish the salvation of humankind. We might describe it as the first communal discernment. The meetings that people hold when things are to be decided--meetings sometimes so contentious that they seem "eternally" long--can be seen as human strivings to imitate the wise personal planning of the Blessed Trinity. As our journal's mission statement declares, Pope Paul VI identified dialogue as a way of being church, especially in our time. Our world, with its instant communication by radio, television, Internet, and cell phone, has often taken away from us our black-and-white, simplistic judgments about who is the enemy, about who is being saved, about what other religions believe, about under-standing sexual orientations and various complex life issues, and about the cultural values of a world society. In the Old Testament's Book of Genesis, Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" has been answered definitively by our Christian faith. Jesus in giving us his one commandment allows for no wiggle room: we are to love God with all our mind, soul, and strength and our neighbor as our-selves. And loving, as all marriages and deep friendships know, takes a lot of dialoguing. We all are aware that our love of God devel-ops through a dialogue called prayer. Mthough there are many books describing some classic Re~iew for Religious forms of praying, usually drawn from the practice and example of the holy men and women preceding us, we still must make our conversation with God our own. We are not on stage, reciting lines written by some playwright. God and we share from our hearts. That is why prayer, even in its quiet moments, is always a dialogue. As in every deep human relationship, the dialogue of sharing never has an end. In fact, this signifies the promise of eternal life with God. For many of us today, meetings seem a way of life. We see it in world diplomacy, we know it in business, we par-ticipate in it in our parishes, in our religious communities, and in our neighborhood associations. Most of us desire fewer meetings, more efficiently run meetings, meetings with clearer outcomes, and meetings which bring about something better for everyone involved. For we are aware of many frustrations in communal dialogue. We have exam-ples on the international scale, on the church level, and in religious-life interworkings where dialogue breaks down or perhaps is never entered into. Just as personal dialogue with God (prayer) portends our relational life with God forever, so group dialogue in meetings, conferences, and religious chapters needs to be valued as our way of enter-ing more closely into the dialogical life of God. "Dialogue is our way of being church." We are the church. Our identity is not just in our prayer; it is lived out in the necessary human interactions of today's com-plex world. In our meetings, conferences, and religious chapters, let us work to discover how God is entering us more deeply into God's own life--a life of shared dialogue. If the incarnation is the result of our trinitarian God's meet-ing, in what ways are God and divine grace present to the world in our human meetings? David L. Fleming SJ 65.3 2006 KAREN M. KENNELLY The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress: A Retrospective coming together 230] A myriad of thoughts and images come to mind as I look back at the Congress on Consecrated Life held in Rome in November 2004: hundreds of faces, a babble of languages, colorful multinational garb, and icons of the Woman at the Well and the Good Samaritan focusing us on the congress theme, "Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity." The mixed composition of the congress made it unique. For the first time, leadership from both women's and men's congregations met in an international con-vocation to address a common agenda. Repre-sentatives of the national and international conferences of religious, groups of young religious and theologians, and editors of religious journals joined religious superiors as full participants. Karen M. Kennelly CSJ, a member of her congregation's leadership team, may be addressed at Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet; 2311 S. Lindbergh Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63131. Review for Religious A further note of uniqueness lay in the process used to prepare for, carry out, and follow up on the meeting. Preparation spanned a four-year period involving "envisioning" and "theological summary" groups. The first group sought to achieve consensus on the actual reality of religious life today by eliciting facts and testimonials from around the world. The second analyzed the collected information from a theological perspective and summarized it in a working paper sent in advance to all congress participants. We all had an opportunity to express our preferences for small-group discussions on topics drawn from the working paper. Theologians responsible for composing the paper came from Norway, Spain, France, Italy, the United States, the Philippines, and Burkina Faso. Others, from Mexico, Germany, and Peru, collaborated via the Internet. During the congress a third or "Listeners" group gathered impressions and ideas as they were expressed in papers presented by the major speakers, in written reports from groups, and in comments from the floor. This group's work culminated in a synthesis presented to the congress on the last day. My experience as a member of the Listeners group made me aware of the congress planners' painstaking efforts to be as pluralistic and inclusive as possible, achieving active participation by those present to the extent that numbers, languages, and ~ime permitted. As with the other groups, our membership comprised about equal numbers of women and men, drawn from every continent. From day to day our dialogue grew in intensity as we listened, exchanged impressions and observations, and began identifying common threads among the multiplicity of ideas brought to the floor. The principal speakers brought unique perspectives to the assessment of contemporary religious life, beginning 6~.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress 232 ] with a joint paper by two Italians, Bruno Secondin and Diana Papa, a Carmelite and a Poor Clare. They invited the 847 participants, gathered at some ninety round tables and aided by simultaneous translations into six languages, to begin the adventure of immersing themselves in the themes articulated in the working paper. Dolores Aleixandre, of Spain, a Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a theologian, brought scriptural exegesis to the congress's theme, religious life as passion for Christ and for humanity. She saw in the icons of the Samaritan Woman and the Good Samaritan "a call to center ourselves on the essential, to a different way of relating to each other, of supporting each other intercongregationally, of making room for the laity" (cited from her paper as published in Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity, Pauline Books and Media, 2005, pp. 91-125)--insights that were to be echoed frequently by congress participants in the days to come The Brazilian Jesuit Jo~o Batista Lib~nio brought a sociological and liberation-theology perspective to religious life at the beginning of the third millennium. He spoke of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as having significance today only in relation to three elements: an experience of God, community life, and mission. He challenged us to rethink consecrated life from the bottom up in the light of contemporary reality with all its "ambiguity, perplexity, and paradox" (PCPH, pp. 127-171). The British Dominican Timothy Radcliffe asked "what signs religious life offers" in the wake of the World Trade Towers' destruction on 11 September 2001, an event he views as symbolic of the world in which religious life exists today, paradoxically bound ever more tightly together by instant communication and ever more deeply divided by violence (PCPH, pp. 173-189). How, he asked, Review for Religious can religious be a "sign of humanity's common home in God" in a world suffering a crisis of homelessness? What future awaits religious life in a world seemingly offering only a future of violence? What has religious life to offer as the culture of control and the struggle for hegemony intensify? A North American voice was heard in the person of an Immaculate Heart of Mary sister, Sandra M. Schneiders. She picked up on a topic Radcliffe had noted as fundamental but had not explored, namely, the culture of consumerism and our -:~ witness to poverty. Her reflections involved a discussion of how religious incarnate renunciation of the "world" and go about creating "the alternate world generated by the profession of the vows" (PCPH, pp. ' i '~ " ~ ' ' 191-218). Characterizing the . ~ . "' -' ~ . . religious lifestyle as one rooted in the "public, lifelong commitment of the members, as individuals and as communities, to a characteristic approach to material goods, power, and sexuality," she caught the assembly's imagination early in her talk with her arresting statement that she would discuss, not "the future Of religious life," but rather "religious life of the future." Schneiders's imaginative and theologically profound exploration of evangelical poverty as the "economy of the reign of God," and of prophetic obedience as the "politics of the reign of God," gave us much to think about as Vincentian Franc Rod6, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL), brought the series of formal presentations to a close with a recapitulation of major .¢":t~lig!oU~ life,'in a world ~seemingly offering only ~a~tu~e ff v~ole~ce? 65.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress 234 themes in recent papal documents such as Hta consecrata and Novo millennio ineunte (PCPH, pp. 219-2 3 6). Participants next divided into continental groups to look at sociological factors touching upon consecrated life in their own continents, noting both positive and negative effects these factors were thought to have on the capacity of religious to be passionate for Christ and for humanity. Some of the most acute observations expressed in the congress--whether from the floor during open-microphone time or in the hastily written reports-- flowed from these gatherings. As Listeners striving to perceive the essence of group contributions, we constandy had to make allowances for the great diversity within the somewhat artificial continental categories. The Europeans prefaced their report by describing it as a "communion of intentions" and "truly an exercise in European communion," given the different languages and situations in which Europe finds itself. Asians noted the vastness of their continent and its diversity of languages, cultures, religions, and political and economic systems before commenting on their many shared concerns. The Africans' preface included this in bold type: "Note: in Africa it is not possible to generalize. There is great diversity in the situations." Those from Oceania, the smallest segment of the congress, nevertheless noted the extremes they represented: countries with predominantly Western European lifestyles and countries where the lifestyles are indigenous to Melanesia and the Pacific. Only the North American and Latin American groups dispensed with such cautions and addressed directly their shared task of identifying the impact of sociological factors on religious life as they experienced it. Themes from the continental groups that seem worthy of special attention, whether for their singularity Review for Religious or their commonality, include gender issues; war, violence, and disease; globalization; aging, institution-alization, and rigid structures; and clear signs of new life among religious. Religious from every continent saw gender issues as adversely affecting contemporary religious life. Europeans referred to "the open question of gender" and felt that, "because of the sexual abuse and the impact on the mass media, consecrated life is reduced in energy and its ability to witness: a sense of desolation pervades and passion is suppressed." Asians underscored "male North Americans were succinct in ~their assertion that "the ~ ~,!sociology' within the church is-an obstacle to the passion for Christ and for humanity." domination in society and church" and "machismo and male domination" as sociological factors adversely affecting them. The African report alluded to the problem in rather oblique fashion by noting that "the idea of relations between men and women continues to be very much determined by the culture." North Americans were succinct in their assertion that "the sociology within the church is an obstacle to the passion for Christ and for humanity. The lack of inclusivity . . . results in feelings of displacement in the church, a sense of being marginalized by many, particularly in women's communities." Those from the Latin American (and Caribbean) continental group cited as important values "awareness of the processes of exclusion and the greater involvement of women." They felt they were being called to "generate a feminine 65.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress religious life with more involvement and responsibility for the building of a new history and a feminine consciousness-raising that challenges the machismo in society and in the church." The Oceania report minced no words in seeing as a problem the "public face of the church: powerful, antiwomen, and hypocritical." It came as no surprise that Europeans were the most forceful in pointing out the "aging of the population, the generation gap in religious life," and "rigidity in structures, even of consecrated life" as sociological factors with negative effects on religious life. In other words, they asserted that the passion of religious for humanity is blocked by the "way in which our structures are closed and in which we are closed towards the world of the laity." Less predictable was the echoing of this view by other groups. The Asians, for example, felt that institutionalization in their region had created a gap between them and the people, "especially the poor, who identify us with the rich," and that "religious structures have stifled the spirit and dynamism of religious life. The young feel restricted and their freedom hindered by structures the old always lean on." A similar concern shows up in the African report; it lists as negative aspects "the weight of tradition" and "a way of seeing authority at the level of leaders, a traditional conception which still dominates both society and religious life." This report speaks urgently of a need for reflection on consecrated life that is distinctly African, a need to find an African way of following Christ. Such thoughts question the worth of structures inherited from a colonial past. These concerns surfaced also in the Asian group, which considered it deplorable that "Asian religious have been uprooted from their rich culture." The report from Oceania, too, alluded to rigid structures when it asserted that "restorationism" in the church, Review for Religious while attracting people looking for security, has caused consecrated life to lose credibility as a radical commit-ment to justice. The Latin Americans saw sociological factors to be causes or occasions of religious being "tamed by the institution [of religious life], tired, with little hope, disenchanted, adapting, living in indifference, [possessing] little consciousness of [consecrated life's] own identity, of its own ability to search, [experiencing] great difficulty in having deep interpersonal relationships with others and with God." They offered the intriguing possibility of countering this loss of the prophetic and mystic elements of religious life by working with the "small utopias which act in favor of humanity and in collaboration with other ecclesial, intercongregational, and extraecclesial groups that search for the same reality/values/things." The impact had on contemporary religious life by war, other forms of violence, and disease was noted by every group but particularly by the Africans, who noted the prevalence of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases and the instability resulting from wars and ethnic and religious conflicts in that continent. "Violence is growing: it questions us," said the Europeans. Asians expressed serious concern over effects of war and violence, especially in the Middle East, and over the "rise of religious fundamentalism, resulting in communal violence." North Americans deplored the "normalization of violence" and what they perceived as its causes. All groups saw globalization as exerting a great influence on society and on consecrated life today. The Africans saw it--along with urbanization, unem-ployment, and migration--as contributing to poverty at various levels. They blamed it for "hindering a deep form 237 ,i 65.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress 238 of communication" and for contributing to a lack of reflection specifically on African consecrated life. Asians saw "elitist globalization" as having destructive effects on the poor and marginalized, on families, and especially on youth. Latin Americans described "neoliberal globalization" as destroying "what is particular to/in our countries," as especially damaging to young people, and as a spur to migration, with its multiple social dislocations. Oceania observed globalization as affecting the entire region-- countries indigenous in character and countries predominantly Western European--by widening the gap between rich and poor and "elevating greed to the status of a virtue." This summary of.the continental group reports, brief though it is, suggests a major accomplishment and a major flaw of the congress. Those present heard the voices of religious from every corner of the world with a wonderful immediacy and force. On the other hand, we simply did not have time for much dialogue of a more personal kind. Each of the continental reports, however, concluded with a very provocative section on signs of hope and of new life. Groups cited a growing sense of communion among congregations and between laypersons and religious, of the importance of personal relationships, of commitment, of community and of belonging, of greater interiority along with a lessened grip of institutionalism. Europeans made the arresting statement that secularization, despite its negative consequences, is also "causing us to love the world as it is with hope." Asians remarked that our times are ripe with opportunity: "As Asians in Asia, we have our own experience of God. By this, perhaps, we can contribute to the vitality, of religious life. It is time for rebirthing our institutes with our Asian Revie~ for Religious identity." Africans saw themselves as bringing to religious life the gifts of a deep sense of God and of the family which leads to sharing and attentiveness to one another. One young African, during the all-too-brief open microphone time in a plenary session, good-naturedly scolded his European elders for perceiving death for religious life in the future, whereas their "children" from other parts of the world, hoisted on the shoulders of their European parents, can see farther ahead to future life! North Americans ventured the opinion that aging could be looked upon as "saging," an opportunity to draw new life from the wisdom of the elderly. Diminishment, they thought, provides "a freedom to reshape religious life." Participants barely had the continental group reports in hand before moving on to topical discussions in groups ranging in size from six to over a hundred, depending on people's interests: ¯ Justice, peace, and the suffering of humanity. ¯ Inculturation--the embodiment of consecrated life in a culturally pluralistic world. ¯ Interreligious dialogue. ¯ The arts: imaging and expressing a new song. ¯ Mass media and the communication of values. ¯ Liberating the prophetic: solidarity in a world of exclusion. ¯ Liberating the prophetic: celibacy and life-giving relationships. ¯ Tilling the soil of Sacred Scripture. ¯ Thirst for God and the search for meaning. ¯ Ongoing formation for personal conversion and corporate transformation. ¯ Congregational culture. ¯ Community as mission. ¯ Partnership with the laity. ¯ Leadership and authority. ¯ The ecclesial dimensions of consecrated life. Although the time allocated for these discussions was brief, each topic was based on material in the working paper 65.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress 24:0 distributed well in advance of the meeting. Participants came prepared and were assigned their first choice among the three topics in which they had indicated interest before coming. As a result, they shared many thoughtful insights with one another; a summary appears in Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity (pp. 237-241). Those of us present for the congress received the somewhat longer reports composed by group reporters on site. Some Conclusions For me, the challenge posed by the congress was at the time and remains today one of assimilation and communication. The rich papers presented by speakers, along with participants' voices as reflected in reports by the continental and topical groups, left our table of Listeners with the nearly impossible task of assimilating content and shaping it into a synthesis at the final session. Our summary, "What the Spirit Says Today to Consecrated Life," compressed into an hour's oral delivery the reflection and discernment that had absorbed us during the entire congress. Rather than repeat that synthesis (see PCPH, pp. 243- 255), I want to share what stand out for me a year later as the two most significant messages conveyed by this unique gathering. The first is that the Spirit is at work among us today, regardless of how old or young we are as religious, no matter how old or young our congregations, and no matter whether we come from north, south, east, or west. The second is that a contemplative approach is required of the members of our congregations if we are to discern what the Spirit is saying to us at this critical moment of our history, some forty years since Vatican Council II invited religious to renew their lives in the light of the gospel, their foundational charisms, and the signs of the times. Review for Religious The Spirit calls us to revive the enchantment, the passion, we had when we first responded, as congregations and as individuals, to Jesus' call to love God and our neighbor with all our heart. The Spirit calls us to personal and institutional renewal, to inculturation and to interreligious dialogue. The Spirit calls us to an inclusive attitude toward the laity, .and this, in turn, calls for new structures and a new language expressive of the inner reality Of our consecrated life. The Spirit calls us to esteem personal relations over structure, and to develop ourselves as religious capable of loving human relationships. We are called by Jesus to be passionate and to exercise ",~ and alfenation,of any kind. compassion toward others, particularly toward all who suffer the indignities of poverty, discrimination, and alienation of any kind. The congress experience brought home to me anew that we are living through, a period of vast and deep change in consecrated life--a sort of gestation period heavy with the promise of new birth. The seeds have been planted in good ground and are being warmed and watered by the life-bearing winds of the Spirit. We have only to tend the garden and pay attention with a discerning eye to the sprouts of new life lest we uproot them as noxious weeds.before they have a chance to flower and bear fruit. 6Y.3 2006 Kennelly ¯ The 2004 Consecrated-Life Congress Our congregations are being called to collaborate with the Spirit in bringing to birth the consecrated life of the future. It was apparent at the congress---its participants a cross section of more than six hundred congregations of women and men from all over the world--that the vision, the hopes, and the sense of urgency are widely shared. The modes of discernment and dialogue will necessarily differ from country to country, depending on culture and opportunity, but the desire for intra- and inter-congregational reflection and collaboration is present among religious in every continent. As a practical matter, I would urge congregations to take advantage of their forthcoming chapters to follow up on major themes explored at the congress. Chapters are periodically convened by every congregation; agendas and processes can readily be shaped to facilitate the kind of individual and corporate reflection we need and desire. Although successful use of this option is not without difficulties, it would seem to offer .the best chance for congregations to address the congress message in a timely way, and to seek the implications of that message for themselves. Clearly there are a few obstacles to surmount if we are to facilitate contemplative chapters that make good use of the theological and sociological perspectives offered at the congress. International congregations, whose members often constitute a microcosm of the multicultural 2004 gathering in Rome, in many cases still experience subtle Western attitudes that prevent the kind of dialogue modeled by the congress. Smaller local congregations may need to push beyond parochial concerns to help members achieve a broader vision and seek greater goals. But all must beware of a tendency toward activism, the preoccupation with doing rather than being that marks our contemporary world. Review for Religious Whether we come from large or small congregations, from apostolic, monastic, or contemplative "families" of religious; whether we can trace our history back for centuries or only a few years; and whether we are Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans, or Oceanians, we are all called by the Spirit to use the congress and our own experience as a springboard to dive into the deep pool of Holy Mystery in which we religious live and move and have our being. It is for us at this crucial point in our history to delve deeper, to listen, to reflect, to dialogue, and to discern the spiritual realities of the life and mission we share as religious, to ask ourselves how we need to be if we are to do the works of persons passionate for Christ and passionate for humanity. Suggested Reading Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity, Pauline Books and Media, 2005. Reflection/Discussion Questions 1. As I/we read the responses from the different continental groups regarding the future of religious life, which response gave me/us new insight and which response would I/we want to discuss further? 2. How can we take advantage of the "aging" of religious life members in our country to draw upon their wisdom ("saging') for our apostolic life and direction? 3. What practical steps do I/we need to take in order to adopt a more contemplative approach to listen to and follow the movements of the Spirit within our religious life context? 6Y.3 2006 RACHEL M. HARRINGTON A New Way of Meeting 244 Dissatisfaction with the timeworn chapter for-mula for the meetings of our congregation, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, as an international congregation of pontifical right resulted in a mandate from the 2002 chapter for us, the newly elected congre-gational leadership team, to explore new ways of assem-bling that took account of our multicultural identity. The dissatisfaction focused on the number and variety of pro-posals submitted for chapter discussion, the abundance of paper generated before, during, and after each chapter, and the dominance of the Western cultural model for meeting and discussion. Canon law offers little help. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, it provides for each institute the right to establish its own legislation for chapters pro-vided this falls within certain norms. Our constitutions, approved in 1989, contain several articles and directives for conducting chapters, no more restrictive, we think, Rachel M. Harrington SNDdeN is a member of the generalate lead-ership team of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Their address is Via Raffaello Sardiello, 20; 00165 Roma, Italy. Review for Religio~s than many, and certainly tried and tested and not lightly to be discarded. One suggestion, superficially attractive, was to separate the chapter of affairs from the chapter of elections. Our general treasurer pointed out a major flaw in this proposal: chapters are expensive meetings. So we continued to talk and dream. Our directives, or rather the traditional interpretation of them, provide for a "midchapter" meeting,, an inter-national gathering at the midpoint between chapters. Beyond prescribifig that at this time the congregational leadership and the provinces evaluate their implemen-tation of the constitutions, there are no further direc-tives. So, with some trepidation, we determined on this midchapter meeting as our chance to experiment. We decided to offer two sisters from each province the opportunity to experience a different type of gathering. We hoped to stimulate creative thinking to improve the next chapter in 2008. We began in May 2003 by writing a letter to each sister in the congregation, inviting her to respond to three questions. We based the questions on one of the constitutions from the section on chas.tity: Our celibacy, deepened and enriched by God's love and that of our sisters, bears fruit in a love which reaches beyond the limits of family, tribe, or nation. It enables us to be free to go wherever we may be called in the ser-vice of God's kingdom of justice, peacei and love. We asked each sister how she felt that this constitu-tion had been realized in her life and what helps or hin-drances our community had ,given her in reaching "beyond the limits of family, tribe, or nation." We encouraged sisters to respond alone or after group dis-cussion. To avoid burdening province leadership, we sug-gested that all responses be posted uncollated to the congregational leadership in Rome. We assembled an 65.3 2006 Harrington ¯ A New Way of Meeting We wondered how many sisters would take, the troublet~, respond to our lettel~/ and we were overwhelmed by the number Who dld).~ 246 international planning group to help us review the responses. Membership of such groups is often pre-dictable, so we made a point of inviting sisters without previous experience of working on international groups, and, instead of looking for organizational skills, we looked rather for a different order of talents. To our delight, all of the sisters whom we approached accepted our invitation. In October 2004 we met in Rome: an economist teaching in a Kenyan university, a patristic theologian from a British univer-sity, a psychologist from Peru, a theolo-gian from Congo, an artist-liturgist from Britain, a photogra-pher with poetic writ-ing skills from the United States, and a musical-artist-liturgist from Zimbabwe. On our own team we had two cultural anthropologists, from the U.S.A. and Congo, a biblical theologian from the U.S.A., an educationist from the U.S.A., and a canon lawyer from Britain. We needed to give very little thought to the selection of facilitators; we knew whom we wanted. Sister Gabrielle Stuart RSM and Sister Mary Harrington SUSC had run facilitation workshops for leadership in Rome, and we had benefited from their expertise. That they were free and willing to be with us in this experiment was a huge encouragement.1 Traditionally our chapters are held in the U.S.A. or Europe and our midchapters in Africa or Latin America. In 1998 the midchapter took place in Peru, and so we Review for Religious selected Kenya for 31 July to August 2005. We invited a British sister serving there to be the on-site coordina-tor and to attend the Rome planning meeting. We wondered how many sisters would take the trou-ble to respond to our letter, and we were overwhelmed by the number who did, almost half the congregation. Considering the many who were too old or sick, this was way beyond our expectations. We spent the first day of the meeting reading these responses, with a checHist of questions: How do I feel? What do I think? What sur-prised me? What delighted me? What became clearer? What shocked me? What insights did I gain? What ques-tions remain? Reading the responses moved us all deeply. Our sis-ters had responded sincerely, from the depths of their experiences as celibate women working for the poor in a variety of situations. Most acknowledged a deepening of their understanding of the call to religious life as they took risks and endured suffering, separations, rejections, and misunderstanding. All expressed gratitude for the years spent in the congregation and for the richness of life offered by membership in an international group. We compiled our reactions and, after much discus-sion guided by the facilitators, agreed upon a goal for the midchapter meeting: to enable participants to explore, express, celebrate, and live the goodness of God in a love which reaches beyond the limits of family, tribe, or nation. Our foundress, St. Julie Billiart, bequeathed to us the charism of striving to discover and become the very goodness of God in the world, and, as we read the responses of our sisters, we realized how much this was integrated into their lives. A statement made about Julie by a contemporary cardinal in Belgium, "A spark from out the heart of Christ fell upon the heart of a woman who knew how to believe and how to love," somehow 65.3 2006 Harrington ¯ A New Way of Meeting 248!I captivated our thoughts as we read, and we decided to use "Sparks from the Heart of Christ" as the theme of the midchapter meeting. With the facilitators' help, we sorted ourselves into four groups: theologians, social scientists, the "fire department" (the liturgists), and the planners. We drew up questions which, as a result of our reading, we felt needed to be answered, and then we allocated tasks to each group. Everyone with a relevarit area of expertise agreed to present a paper in Nairobi on that topic to stimulate discussion. From April 2003 we spent some time at leadership meetings--held once a year on the Continent and twice a year in the U.S.A.--talking about our hopes for the meeting and encouraging the provincial leaders to choose as representatives one sister from each province who had no previous international experience and was willing to "go with the process." We also wanted one member of each leadership team to attend, so that any implementa-tion or follow-up would proceed smoothly. Although we never used the word '~delegate," and although we stressed repeatedly that this was not a chapter and not a deci-sion- making meeting, not everyone heard this. Shortly after our October 2004 planning meeting, the congress "Passioh for Christ, Passion for Humanity" took place in Rome within walking distance of our gen-eralate. As well as welcoming many of the participants to our home, we were able to access the papers on the Internet in four languages and encouraged our sisters to do likewise. Unfortunately, Internet access across the globe varies considerably, and so not all were able to take advantage of this resource. Attempting to compen-sate for this, we excerpted a couple of passages from the working paper and suggested that sisters meet in groups to discuss how they experienced the charism of our con- Review for Religious gregation in the light of their reflections on these pas-sages. We encouraged those chosen as representatives to bring the fruits of these discussions to the meeting in Nairobi. We hoped that this task would keep interest alive in the proposed meeting and enable the represen-tatives to feel that they were coming prepared. The planning group assembled in Nairobi with the facilitators on 30 July 2005, the day before the others were due to arrive. By this time we had added our gen-eral secretary and the director of our mission office to the group. We held the meeting in the Dimesse Sisters' Centre in Karen-Nairobi. Contrary to our hopes, we were unable to move in until after noon on the day we had hoped to begin. One of our biggest problems, shared by all interna-tional congregations, is that of language. We had arranged local translators for . French and Spanish, but Flemish, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese are more difficult to provide for, especially as only relatively few sisters speak only these lan-guages. People skilled in simul-taneous translation are expensive, and we also need others who can provide necessary written trans-lations fairly rapidly. We are con-stantly learning in this area and are extremely grateful to those sisters who, proficient in two languages, generously help in translating. We mar-vel at the patient endurance of those who spend days on end listening through earphones. In social situations, as well as during the sessions, many struggled heroically to communicate across the language barriers using gestures and the few words they could manage. We provided play- 65.3 2006 Harrington ¯ ~l New ~Va~ of Meeting ing cards, jigsaw puzzles, and games without words to encourage this interaction. We had invited sisters from Japan, Nigeria, the U.S.A., and Congo to help with translation and secre-tarial tasks, so altogether we numbered sixty. Every day a brief account of the meeting, composed by one of these, was sent out on our congregational Intranet in English, French, and Spanish. Access to computers was limited, but whenever they could most participants sent home enthusiastic accounts of their experiences. As we began the meeting, each province brought some "report" on their reflections about our charism; several of these were poetic or beautifully presented in visual form. During our sixteen days together we had an enormous variety of experiences, most of which involved sharing our thoughts and feelings about specific ques-tions with a sister from another culture. The facilitators guided us into these moments, which were often deep and moving, with rituals involving simple gestures, gen-tle dances, and repetitive chants celebrated around ever-changing focal points in the meeting room. As the days went on, art work created in the course of the meeting was displayed on the walls of our meeting room--pic-tures, words, designs, charts--all reflecting our moods, our perceptions of our province realities, problems we faced, questions that we raised. Over the course of the two weeks, one of our cul-tural anthropologists gave us an illuminating presentation on "unpacking culture"; the other spoke of how African myths speak of God's goodness. The theologians pre-sented talks on the goodness of God from their varied perspectives, as revealed in the Bible, in African forma-tion programs, in living religious life in Congo, and as expressed in community life in the 4th-century church. The psychologist talked on "Chastity: A Love Which Review for Religious Goes beyond the Limits." All were translated later and made available to the whole congregation. Our economist assembled three university lecturers who made brief presentations on Kenya's progress (or lack of it) towards the United Nations' millennium devel-opment goals in regard to health, education, and the environment. A fourth panelist, representing an organi-zation that works with nongovernmental organizations, spoke about the frustrations he faces in his work, where the ideal partnership between aid organizations and gov-ernments falls far short of being realized. The four stayed on for the whole morning to lead group discussions and answer questions. The sisters from each province also spoke about their ministries and tried to communicate the realities of their daily lives. Most moving were the testimonies from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and from Zimbabwe. When we had afternoons off, those who wished were taken in small groups to visit various pro-jects in housing and employment, schools (including the famous Starehe boys' school and its newborn sister school for girls), and the homes of people from Saint Mary and Joseph's, the parish where some of our sisters live and work. Other optional outings were to a safari park or to see Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) home, famous from the film Out of Africa. Two of the most memorable excursions were for Mass. On the first Sunday we went to Saint Mary and Joseph's, where we were welcomed in truly memorable fashion by the parish priest and by the "mother of the parish," who told us we were all their daughters. The dancing was led by small girls all attired in snowy white tee shirts advertising U.S. baseball teams. The choir was amazing and untiring, and the packed church sang along and swayed and clapped throughout the three-hour cel- 6Y.3 2006 Harrington * A New Way of Meeting ebration. The ladies of the parish had prepared dinner, so we moved the benches around to form tables and sat down to a lavish feast of beef stew, rice, and beans. On the second occasion we were hostesses to those who came to celebrate with us the opening of our novi-tiate in Langata, Nairobi, our fourth in Africa, and a real benchmark in the history of the province. We sat outside under awnings during the Mass celebrated by the bishop; afterwards the house was blessed and a flame tree planted. The meal, prepared outside in huge pots over open fires, was enjoyed by all. In the last days of our meetings, we focused on ques-tions that had arisen during our sharings, and we brain-stormed about how to prepare for the next chapter. During the closing In the. last~ days,(~our'tneet.in~s;~rz-~ we focused on"questio~.~ ~ . h.'afl:~[ ["~ arisen duringour shariftgs, ' and we brainstormed about how, to prepare for the°ne~.t:chapt~e~(.i~ to women after any meeting. We reverently and ceremoniously placed these artifacts on the floor around the centerpiece a mock fire, built around a candle, with sparkles scattered about. Then we were all invited to collect a prayer card and some sparkles and to light a candle from the cen-tral flame. To do this we had to walk toward the center and then away, through the spread-out paintings, pic-tures, charts, designs, and pre.sentations~a sort of sym-bolic acceptance of all that had taken place and been ritual we thanked all planners and participants. We removed the vari-ous artifacts we had displayed on the walls, per-forming the clear-ing- up ritual that is traditionally left Review for Religious shared over the previous two weeks and a commitment to carry the experience home. At the beginning of the meeting we had been reminded that in this meeting no decisions would be taken: we were there to experience what it means to belong to an international, multicultural, multilingual congregation. Nonetheless, some few in their evalua-tions expressed wonderings about the apparent lack of an agenda. We knew this was a risk. There was general dissatisfaction with the three celebrations of Mass which we had together during the meeting days--not the Sundays. Bringing in clergy, out of touch with what we were experiencing together, was felt to be artificial and awkward. Communion services led by ourselves might have proved more meaningful. Some found the days long and tiring. Most wrote that this had been a life-changing experience, creating bonds across cultures and languages, inspiring hope, and providing memories to last a life-time. The deep exchanges about cultural differences gave all of us new perspectives. Throughout we had been dependent on our two facil-itators, whose style pleased all but three of those pre-sent. Every day began with a review of the purpose of the meeting, of our hopes and concerns, and of the val-ues and behaviors we intended to live by during the meeting. After the morning ritual, there was a report on the questions raised, the previous day. At day's end we gathered in our "home groups" (the same multicultural group for the entire meeting), shared our day's experi-ences, and arrived at issues or questions for the coordi-nating committee to resolve. This committee, five members of the original planning group, met with the facilitators each day for forty-five minutes after the evening ritual, discussed the matters arising from the home groups, and planned the next day. When we eval- 65.3 2006 Harrington ¯ A New Way of Meeting uated our work, we realized thatthere were things we could have done differently and better. We had learned from our experience and from the feedback---another purpose of the meeting realized. The big anxiety of all present was how to communi-cate the fruits of the meeting to the sisters at home. We had papers and photographs, but these were two-dimen-sional, having meaning mainly for the participants. Carrying home fragile "sparks from the heart of Christ" challenges each of us to a new way of being, of believing, and of loving so that the sparks will ignite others and kindle new flames to spread the awareness of God's good-ness in all the events and circumstances of our lives. Note ' They can be contacted at GLOIR; 27 Catherine Street; Newry, Co. Down; BT35 6JG, Northern Ireland. E-mail: gloirinstitute@btopenworld.com Glass It's as if Benedict's single ray of light is scattered across the tables like loose jewels or a broken mirror. We sweep and pick through trays of glass, sharp bits of orange and yellow with a blue that's almost black until I hold it to the light, and I am full of a temporary completeness. Even the thunder seems gentle. Alicia Kleiman OSB Review for Religious ERNEST E. LARKIN Aspiratory Prayer, a Welcome Addition to Contemplative Prayer Aspirations (aspiratory prayer) were a treasure in' European Christianity in the late Middle Ages and one of the great legacies of the Touraine Reform in 17th-century France. This reform took place in "les Grands Carmes," the popu-lar name in France for the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance (OCarm). The style of prayer that goes by the name of aspirative or aspiratory prayer, or simply aspiration, is almost unknown in contemporary spirituality. The pre-sent article is a move to fill this lacuna and to suggest how the prayer of aspirations can con-tribute to the contemplative renewal of our times. I will first give an overview of the prayer in tradition and highlight its three outstanding proponents: the 13th-century Carthusian Hugh of Balma, the Franciscan Henry Herp (+1477), and the Carmelite John of St. Samson (1571- Ernest E. Larkin OCarm last wrote in our 64.4 issue (2005). His address remains St. Agnes Catholic Church; 1954 North 24th Street; Phoenix, Arizona 85008. 65.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspirator)/Prayer 1636). Finally I shall make some suggestions on how to revive the practice. What Is Aspiratory Prayer? Aspiratory prayer is a warm, human approach to God that is inexorably affective. It proceeds by way of fer-vent desires of the heart. It was considered a shortcut, a direct route, to intimacy and oneness with God. Its struc-ture is simple: frequent and intense desires breathed out to God. It has only one goal, union with God, so it ceases to have a role when mystical union is achieved. Aspirations are not the same as ejaculations, though they are like each other. E aculatory prayer.describes any to this prayer? ,.:Those and all brief prayers sent like darts to heaven for help, thanksgiving, adora-tion, or any other good motive. "My Jesus, mercy" is an ejaculation. Aspira-tions are only and always passionate desires or fer-vent acts of love of God. They are expressed in words or sighs or silence. "My God, I love you" is an aspiration. To aspire means to breathe out, with the con-notation of breathing hard after something. In aspira-tory prayer one breathes out heartfelt desires for God. It is yearning for God, like gasping for God. Aspiratory prayer is simple and focused, though in the beginning it may cover a wide sweep of emotions and feelings. Practice simplifies and unifies the faculties to give them a single thrust, much as the prayer of sim-plicity consolidates the multiple affections of affective prayer into a single attitude of loving presence. Aspiratory prayer sets the heart on one goal, divine Review for Reli~io~ union, and is a positive step in that direction. Not every-body can use it. It is not for beginners, but for those who have come to know God and themselves through Bible reading, reflection, and loving conversations with God. When a person has put her house in order and has come to love God in truth, she is ready for this prayer. For those who love God, it will become as natural as breathing. Catholic teachers in the past were sticklers in assign-ing different prayer forms to different stages of growth. The prayer of beginners was discursive meditation and affective prayer, that is, first much thinking and ~hen many affections. The next stage was contemplative, and it featured forms like simply looking at the tabernacle as in the Cur6 d'Ars' "I look at him and he looks at me," or today's resting in God in centering prayer, or saying the mantra as in Christian Meditation. Today we prob-ably pay less attention to the degrees of prayer, though we still honor them. Centering prayer and Christian Meditation have democratized contemplative prayer. Certainly some knowledge and love of the Lord is pre-supposed for contemplative prayer, but a little knowl-edge and love go a long way. Those who are comfortable with centering prayer and Christian Meditation will be at home with aspirations. Who, then, are called, to this prayer? Those who are fervent and serious about their relationship with God and have a great desire for intimacy with God. They are look-ing for the "more." The classical teaching placed the prayer in the illuminative way as part of the contempla-tive life. Two categories are involved here, and both are second stages: the illuminative comes between the purga-tive and the unitive way, and the contemplative life between the active and the mystical life. The three divi-sions correspond to beginners, the proficient, and the 65.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspiratory Prayer perfect. Active life has to do with external behavior, con-templative with inner prayer, and the mystical life with high sanctity. The purgative way is concerned with con-version and purification, the illuminative way with enlightenment, and the unitive with union with God. The three ways and their content are criticized today for being too dependent on Neoplatonic philosophy, the system that canonized the immaterial and denigrated the bodily.' Aspirative prayer rises above this controversy and in fact is a corrective against exaggerated spiritual-ism and minimizing the physical and bodily in the spir-itual life. Aspirations welcome and embrace the emotional and the sensible; these human qualities lead to the highest realms of the spirit. They move the experi-ence of God away from the intellectual and into the realm of affection and love.2 Aspiratory prayer comes out of the same tradition as centering prayer and Christian Meditation. The latter two are contemporary constructions from that contem-plative tradition, a development that aspiratory prayer has yet to find. But all three systems appeal to the same sources, the same authors, and even the same texts for their grounding and justification.3 This fact and their constant location in the middle stage of spiritual devel-opment argue to their commonality. Centering prayer and Christian Meditation seek silent presence and quiet resting in God. At the same time they are active prayer, rightly called meditation of a nondiscursive or contemplative type. They are not clas-sical contemplation in the sense of infused prayer, but are products of human effort and ordinary grace. Aspiratory prayer is obviously active in the same sense. It uses the language of intense, passionate love and expresses the yearning of the heart and delights to rest in the Lord. Review for Religious Aspiratory prayer is more than loving conversation with God. It expresses a strong act of the will that desires to experience God. So it is more than a t&e-a-t&e, even in the loving language of affective colloquy. The differ-ence is intensity. Affective prayer engages the feelings but in a diffuse way, whereas a strong will and urgent longings for intimacy dominate aspiratory prayer. Aspirations fit nicely into the perspectives and prac-tice of "love mysticism," which is a form of relating to God in spousal love. The language of spousal love is very human, amorous, and passionate. Its biblical source is the Song of Songs or St. John's Gospel, and it is a fre-quent feature in medieval women mystics and also in writers like St. Bernard or St. John of the Cross. Janet K. Ruffing has written a guide for the spiritual direction of those called to this way. She gives many examples of its language, one of which is the following conversation in Mechthild of Magdeburg, who says to God: "God, you are my lover, / my longing, / my flowing stream, / my sun, / and I am your reflection." And God replies: "It is my nature that makes me love you often, / for I am love itself. / It is my longing that makes me love you intensely, / for I yearn to be loved from the heart. / It is my eter-nity that makes me love you long, / for I have no end.''4 Aspirative prayer is not limited to spousal love. It is at home with a nonspousal love of God, which Janet Ruffing calls simply apophatic. The mysticism of the more matter-of-fact Cloud of Unknowing features whole-hearted love, often without obvious passion. In this lat-ter case the love is sublimated into disinterested love in a style of relationship that is reserved and controlled. Mystics in this pattern will practice their own brand of aspirations. Aspiratory prayer is thus a technical term, but it is not "one size fits all." Its normal form is sensible-spiri- 6~ .3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspiratorg/Prayer 260[ tual love. For Henry Herp only this love qualifies as aspi-ration. For him its follow-up, which is pure spiritual love, is not aspiration, but unitive love. John of St. Samson, however, treats pure spiritual love as a form of aspiration, and for him this higher aspiration leads one into the furnace of God's love in transforming union. For both authors the will is the driving force for aspira-tions and for unitive love. In sensible-spiritual love the sensibility is the carrier, but the momentum comes from the will, which makes the love truly spiritual. Do not think that the practitioner lives on a perpet-ual high. The expression Of loving desires for God con-tinues in down days and dryness as much as in times of sweetness and sensible consolation. The feeling element is still there. It must be genuine, not faked or pretended or forced. Th~r~se of Lisieux is a perfect example of the expression of passionate desires of love for God in the darkest moments of life.5 There are degrees of the practice corresponding to the person's habitual love of God and the grace of the moment. John of St. Samson sees it as leading directly into a mystical expression, in which the Holy Spirit breathes out enflamed desires for God. His conditions for practicing this prayer are demanding. Persons who take up the practice must be mortified, humble, and self-effac-ing as well as robust in health. In his view aspirations go beyond the enthusiasm of a newly baptized Pentecostal or charismatic and belong to persons advanced in the love of God and on fire for the summit. The History and Theology of Aspiratory Prayer Aspiratory prayer flourished in the late Middle Ages in northern Europe, especially the Rhineland and France, from the 13th to the 17th century. At the time of the Touraine Reform, the practice was common in popular Review for Religious religious culture. Aspirative prayer appealed to the archi-tects of Touraine because they saw the practice as dove-tailing with their view of the goal of the Carmelite order, which was to live continuously in the loving presence of God.6 Intimations of aspiratory prayer are found in the New Testament, in St. Augustine and John Cassian, who were contemporaries, in St. Benedict and Guigo II, and in other early authors. The first to give aspirative prayer a central place in the spiritual life was Hugh of Balma, whose Tbeologia Mystica exerted wide influence, partly because it was thought to be the work of St. Bonaventure. Hugh of Balina taught the way of the heart, and aspira-tory prayer was its chief expression. First one must know one's weak self and the goodness of God, since anyone filled with self is unable to yearn for God. This knowl-edge prepares one to rise up to God in "anagogic con-templation." Anagogic contemplation means moving from crea-ture to Creator, from the text of Scripture to the living God, enflamed with desire and love. Such is aspiratory prayer. The love is both natural-spiritual and purely spir-itual, and God is the direct object. The love increases with the simplification and unification of the faculties until ultimately there is mystical union with the Trinity in the high point of the soul called the apex mentis. Henry Herp and John of St. Samson will pick up on these per-spectives and expand them with the help of Jan van Ruusbroec's theology (1293-1381). Hugh had many imitators, especially among the Carthusians, who promoted and developed this teach-ing so effectively that Everard Mercurian, an early gen-eral of the Jesuits, warned the Society about "the Carthusian method of prayer" for fear that its popular-ity would marginalize Ignatian prayer in Spain.7 The 6Y.3 2006 Larkin * Aspiratory Prayer 14th-century anonymous English text The Cloud of Unknowing is likely a Carthusian document, both because it can easily be interpreted as a full exposition of aspira-tory prayer and because its anonymous author may well be .a Carthusian.8 A number of familiar quotations from the book are obviously formulas of aspiratory prayer. Henry Herp OFM (+1447) Henry Herp wrote the first synthesis of the whole spiritual journey around the topic of aspirative prayer. His map is the structure of the soul as delineated by the great Flemish mystical writer Henry Herp wrote the first synthesis'of the~ around the topici of ~aspirativ~ prayer. : ~ o o Jan van Ruusbroec. The soul is three concentric circles, each of them representing a different level of human activity. Herp offers a detailed plan for moving through the outer two levels and arriving at the inner circle of highest union with the Holy Trinity. He lays down instructions for each of the phases of the journey, but his chief contri-bution is to show how aspirative prayer moves one through the middle circle. Ruusbroec calls the three circles "spheres" or "uni-ties," whereas Herp names them mansions or dwelling places like Teresa of Avila. The first is the region of the senses, the second that of the spirit, and the third the "fond" or ground, the dwelling place of the Holy Trinity. One must traverse each level to get to the center, and the way is introversion, a concept that goes back to St. Augustine. Herp calls it "ascension." Persons "ascend," that is, they are lifted up by a sweeping action that carries them through the given circle and toward Review for Religious the center; the searcher for God leaves behind the lesser level or part of it in favor of the higher one. This process of introversion means making the powers on each level converge toward the center. The activity of each level is collapsed into the next step. In this imagery the outer circle of exterior behavior is introverted into the mid-dle circle, and in the middle the lower faculties of the irascible and concupiscible appetites, and of reason and free will, are introverted into the spiritual faculties of intellect, memory, and will. These latter will finish the task and bring the soul into mystical union in the center. The introversion or ascension starts with the outer or exterior circle, which represents the active life. The means set down by Herp for this first introversion are "truth and compassion." Truth means understanding the goodness of God and the bankruptcy of the human, and compas-sion is appreciating God's love and attractiveness. The middle level is the field for aspiratory prayer and unitive love. Aspirations address the "interior infe-rior powers," especially the concupiscible appetite, which in Herp's view has a spiritual quality about it. Unitive love is exercised by the spiritual faculties. Understanding guides the process: hence the importance of regular med-itation and of the use of prepared ejaculations that recall the supreme attraction of God and serve to inflame the soul with love. The awakened will moves the sensory faculties to yearn for God, progressively spiritualizing the person for the work of unitive love, For Herp, uni-tive love takes over the task begun in the lower interior faculties. The acts of pure, unitive love finish the task of the introversion of the spirit level and open the way to the center. In the center the love is fruitive love. The contemplative way is left behind, and the soul now lives the "super-essential life" of oneness with the Trinity, a union that is not ontological but psychological. ¯ ,263 65.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspiratory Prayer Herp offers some good pastoral advice. The stages are to be addressed in order and none can be skipped. Basic conversion is presupposed for undertaking aspira-tory prayer, and that means an adult knowledge of God and one's self and the acquisition of the moral virtues. Aspiratory prayer begins with rote expressions of love and fervor. According to Herp, these feelings crescendo into what he calls an explosion of love, which has its own danger of entrapping the person in the delightful, sen-sible sweetness. The love is gradually purified and becomes the unitive love that will lead the soul into the center. Unitive love too undergoes its own purifications, and the follow-up experiences may be as dark and dry as the initial entry was exalted. The challenge at this point, as at every point in the spiritual life, is marginal-izing the self, that is, letting go of everything that is not God. The holy soul practicing spiritual love will con-tinue to work at the total gift of self to God, and its tasks are listed by Herp as self-offering, searching for God's will, letting God's love destroy all defects, and being united with God. John of St. Samson (1571-1636) John of St. Samson is an immensely important figure in the Carmel of the Ancient Observance. He was a mys-tic of profound experience, and, in spite of the blindness that afflicted him from the age of three, he was well edu-cated and well read, keeping in touch with currents of spirituality in the very rich 17th century. He has been called the French John of the Cross and is highly esteemed by religious historians like Henri Bremond and Louis Cognet. John of St. Samson lived a century and a half after Herp, but Herp's work was well known to him in the numerous Latin and French translations and in the Review for Religious plethora of spiritual writings that popularized aspiratory prayer. John of St. Samson became expert in the teach-ing of this way, building on Herp but adding his own points of view. There had been a lot of writing, but lit-tle development since Herp. After a careful comparison of the two authors, Canisius Janssen concludes that John's doctrine is Herp in a new packaging. "Certain things have been left out," he writes, "others developed; in short the whole has acquired a new face.''9 John belongs to the same Dutch school of mys-ticism as Herp, both of them appropriating the worldview of Ruusbroec. We come from God as created images in the Uncreated Word, and our life goal is to return to our place in the Word in full consciousness of our unity in God. The goal is put I ," bY engaging oi r feetings t " : and iemo.tions. I as well as'our spiriL rather abstractly as "the state of consummation of the subject in the Object" in a "union without difference or distinction." Such is the transforming union, in which the soul is caught up in the fire of the divine life. The way to the goal is introversion according to the same divisions as in Henry Herp, but with the adaptations in nomenclature. John is particularly eloquent is explaining how spir-itual love guides the whole process of introversion once aspirations become the way. Spiritual love is at the heart of sensible-spiritual aspirations, and it constitutes the spiritual aspirations that lead one into the center itself. Aspirations have the genius of putting our full humanity to work by engaging our feelings and emotions as well as 6~.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspirator)/Prayer 266 our spirit. Sensible love is the starter, and it houses the spiritual love in sensible-spiritual aspirations. When the aspirations become "more vigorous, more on fire, and more detached from sense," they are pure spiritual love. This spiritual love, with or without a sensible compo-nent, is the engine that drives the introversion process into the furnace that is God. Aspiration thus has a mystical quality in John, as is clear from the following quotation: Aspiration is not only an affectionate colloquy. ; that is what aspiration is born of and comes forth from. Aspiration, then, is an outpouring of the whole heart and spirit on fire with love. By it the soul quickly tran-scends itself and all of creation, becoming intimately united with God in the intensity of its loving expres-sion. Expressing itself quintessentially in this way, the soul transcends all tender, sensible, cerebral, and com-prehensible love, reaching by the vehemence of God's spirit and its own effort, not just any divine union, but a sudden transformation of its spirit into God. In the abounding and ineffable sweemess of God him-self lovingly embracing one's spirit, it transcends, I say, all familiar and intelligible love. This is the essence of aspiration, in itself, in its cause, and in its effect.1° Heart (that is, the sensibility) and spirit (that is, the loving will) are the framers of aspirations, and heart even-tually recedes in favor of pure spirit. In the beginning there will be multiplicity of thought and feelings, but with growth this richness will give way to ever increas-ing simplicity and a state of pure elevation in God. Intensity is of the essence, since only strong love can break the attachments of the faculties to their natural objects. Frequency is a necessary quality, since the goal is to make aspirations like second nature, as natural as breathing. Humility too is the essential underpinning of all true love. But in all these efforts balance and moder-for Religious ation must prevent any violence or excessive force. John of St. Samson, experienced spiritual director, has good advice on how to begin and how to grow in this beauti-ful practice, and his reflections will help us put our topic in perspective. Who are candidates for this prayer? The prayer is not for everybody. It is not for intellectuals or for shal-low people who live on the surface of things and whose fire burns up quickly like straw. It is for generous souls of strong will who are concerned about their interior life. When to begin? Brother John sees aspirations as a higher form of prayer; hence he is hesitant to promote it indiscriminately. Aware of the dangers of too much emo-tionality as well as its necessary predispositions, he coun-sels against beginning the prayer prematurely. Strain and force must be resisted lest there be physical or psycho-logical harm. It is necessary to guard against a too san-guine assessment of one's love of God. The apostle Peter felt a great love for Jesus that led to presumption and his denial of Jesus in the courtyard. John's basic condition for the practice is a mortified life. He fears the unguarded attraction of the sweetness of this love. So he writes: "To begin this exercise it is absolutely necessary to die to ourselves, to humble ourselves, and to be self-effacing (mepriser)."llJohn is probably thinking of his own novices and their year of novitiate whenhe writes that candi-dates for this prayer should have spent "a good year" in discursive meditation and affective prayer before taking up aspirations. He also warns newcomers that begin-nings will be troublesome, even painful, but practice makes perfect and easy. The process of introversion follows Herp detail for detail. Like Herp, John of St. Samson is lyrical in his descriptions of the outcome of introversion, which is 65.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspiratory Prayer entrance into "the marvelous effects and the spiritual inebriation" of touching the fond or ground of one's being, where the Holy Trinity dwells and the essential union with God takes place. This mystical state is trans-formation in the fire that is God. Aspiratory Prayer in Contemplative Life Today It remains to suggest ways in which this body of teaching can be put into practice in today's contempla-tive setting. A first step, and one that is often presented in the literature, is to connect aspirations with the practice of the presence of God. This means to murmur aspirations frequently during the course of the day to remind one-self of the presence of God and to offer up the present task. This is one application in The Carmelite Directory of the Spiritual Life by John Breninger OCarm and in the works of his student Kilian J. Healy OCarm.~2 A second application is to introduce aspirations into one's daily meditation in whatever form that takes. This will be an affective addition in the nondiscursive medi-tation of Christian Meditation, which features the mantra "Maranatha." The mantra itself could be the vehicle expressing love and desire. Bringing aspiration into cen-tering prayer may be a bit more difficult, since this prayer eschews thinking and emoting. Aspirative prayer may be disruptive of the silence of centering prayer. Perhaps aspirations that are expressed without words and in silence can be a friendly addition and add warmth and fervor to centering prayer. A third way to practice aspirations in one's daily prayer is to structure it much like the two disciplines of contemplative prayer. Periods of aspiratory prayer could be cultivated each day, twenty minutes to a half hour in length, with the whole time given over to aspirations. Review for Religious The aspiration could be a mantra, one phrase repeated over and over again, or it could be spontaneous expres-sions of love and desire. The single mantra may be more compatible with the contemplative nature of the prayer than multiple expressions. Whatever the exact structure aspiratory prayer will take, it will usually be prefabricated and perfunctory in the beginning. But it soon becomes part of one's approach to God in mental prayer. Hopefully it will bring the rich rewards promised by the tradition. Notes ~ Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality and History (New York: Orbis Books, 1995), pp.186-189. 2 Aspiratory prayer is more at home with the language of love than with the Greek categories of contemplation. The literature of the Touraine Reform seems to prefer the evangelical language. One of my esteemed Carmelite teachers and mentors over a lifetime, whose life and studies were dominated by Touraine, frequently showed annoyance at the ambiguities of the vocabulary of contemplation. He preferred to speak of "love" and "loving" as the true measure of prayer rather than dif-ferent forms of "contemplation" or "contemplative." Instead of describ-ing Carmelite life as "contemplative," he preferred the simple word ,prayerful." I interpreted his attitude as a reflection of the viewpoint of Touraine. 3 Canisius Janssen OCarm surveys the sources of aspiratory prayer in the first of two excellent articles on the history and theology of aspira-tory prayer, "Oraison aspirative chez Herp et chez ses pr~d~cesseurs," Carmelus 3 (1956): 19-48. It lists the sources of this prayer in earlier times before its first major exponent, Henry Herp. These sources turn out to be the same texts cited in studies on the roots of centering prayer and Christian Meditation. An example of the latter is Robert W. Ginn's defense against critics, "Centering Prayer: Reviving the Ancient Christian Tradition in Modern Times," a manuscript dated 5/26/05 and circulated by Contemplative Outreach. Janssen's second article is titled "L'oraison aspirative chez Jean de Saint Samson," Carmelus 3 (1956): 185-216. I wish to express my gratitude for these two studies and my indebtedness to them in the formation of the present paper. 4 Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings (New York: Paulist, 2000), pp. 9-10. Christian mystics from Origen on applied the imagery of the Song of Songs to their relationship with God. St. Th~r~se of Lisieux 65.3 2006 Larkin ¯ Aspiratory Prayer belongs to this group, and a dominant feature of her prayer was aspira-tion. See Romero de Lima Gouvea OCarm, "Vivre d'amour: la pri~re aspirative chez Th~r~se de l'Enfant Jesus (1873-1897)," Carmelus 47 (2000): 19-40. s See Ernest E. Larkin OCarm, "The Little Way of St. Th~r~se of Lisieux," Review for Religious 59 (September-October 2000): 507-517, at 514-515. 6 The Touraine Reform is not as well known as its counterpart, the Discalced Reform begun by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross in 16th-century Spain. Touraine began in Brittany in northwest France in the next century. Like the Discalced Reform, it was a radical return to the primitive spirit of the order. Unlike the Discalced Reform, Touraine did not become juridically separated from the old order, but remained in the trunk and spread to every province as the "strictior observantia." See Kilian J. Healy OCarm, Methods of Prayer in the Directory of the Carmelite Reform of Touraine (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1956), pp. 15-2 i. 7Janssen, Carmelus 3, p. 27. s This is the conclusion of James Walsh SJ in his introduction to the Classics of Western Spirituality edition of Tbe Cloud of Unknowing (New York: Paulist, 1981). 9 Janssen, Carmelus 3, p. 210. ~°Jean de St. Samson, L'dguillon, les flammes, les fl~cbes, et le miroir de l'amour de Dieu, in Oeuvres completes I, edition critique par Hein Blommestijn (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1992), p. 98. Aspiration donc n'est pas seulement un colloque affectueux. ; c'est d'icelui que nait et procede l'aspiration. Aspiration donc est un poussement amoureux, enflamm~ de tout le coeur et l'esprit; par lequel l'ame surpasse pronte-ment elle mesme et toute chose cre~e, s'unissant ~troitement ~ Dieu en la vivacit~ de son expression amoureuse; laquelle ainsi .Essentiellement exprim6e, surpasse tout amour sensible, raisonnable, intellectuel et con-prehensible; arrivant par l'impetuosit6 de l'esprit de Dieu et de son effort, ~ l'union de Dieu, non tellement quellement, mais par une soudaine transformation de l'esprit en Dieu. L'esprit, dis-ie, surpasse en lui m~me tout l'amour connessable et intelligible en l'abondante et ineffable suavitd de Dieu mesme, auquel il est amoureusement englouti. Voila que c'est que l'aspiration Essentielle en elle m~me, sa cause et son effet. (The passage is cited by Janssen in the article on John of St. Samson, p. 195. The translation has been made from the text in the c.ritical edition cited above.) li Janssen, Carmelus 3, p. 204. 12 The translation of the Directorium Carmelitanum was made from the Latin by Leo J. Walter OCarm (Chicago: Carmelite Press, 1951). See Review for Religious also Kilian J. Healy, Walking with God (New York: Declan X. McMullen, 1948), reprinted as Awakening Your Soul to the Presence of God (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1999); see also his chapter in Methods of Prayer, pp. 60-75. Reflection Questions 1. What have I learned about aspiratory prayer as I have read Larkin's article? 2. How might I begin to make aspiratory prayer a daily part of my prayer life? Growing Old The new hearing aid magnifies sounds I've not heard for years and discover I haven't missed. It is not my ears that hear the call to live the soul's desire. I can see tiny print with trifocals but not the messages in everything. I can no longer storm heaven's gates, have lost the need to do so. I am learning to wait gracefully with gratitude for them to open from inside. I am preparing to accept the invitation to eternity. "Growing old" begins with growing. Bonnie Thurston 6~.3 2006 PHILIP SHAN0 "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises A few words by St. Ignatius Loyola in the Contemplation of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (§§91-98) have been .understood to refer to "repose days." 1 Ignatius says, "This exercise [the kingdom] should be gone through twice during the day, that is, in the morning on rising and an hour before dinner, or before supper" (§99).2 George E. Ganss SJ describes this day as "a transitional day of relative repose with only two peri-ods prescribed." 3 It is Ignatius's introduction to the rest of the retreat. In a note Louis Puhl SJ says Ignatius's words show that the "kingdom" day is a "day intervening between the First and Second Weeks.''4 In this study we will look at the historical roots of the contemporary notion of repose days in the hope of raising some ques-tions for spiritual directors to discuss in their planning of Twentieth Annotation (thirty-day) versions of the Spiritual Exercises. Philip Shano SJ is novice director and superior at the Jesuit Novitiate of the North American Martyrs; 1035 Summit Avenue; St. Paul, Minnesota 55105. Review for Religious An early historical reference to a repose day comes from the directory of Father Juan Alfonso de Polanco, Ignatius's secretary. Polanco's directory, completed years after Ignatius's death, is generally considered the finest of those which preceded the official Directory in 1599, pre-sumably because of his closeness to Ignatius. Polanco says of this day during the retreat: "When it is time for the exercitant to move on, he should be allowed to catch his breath by giving him the meditation on the kingdom of Christ to be made twice, once in the morning and once in the evening. On that day nothing else should be given. Then, toward evening, he should be given the exercise on the incarnation to be made the next day at daybreak.''5 Note, the retreatant "should be allowed to catch his breath." Similar words are used in later directories--"as he catches his breath for a bit.''6 An anonymous direc-tory dating from the 1580s speaks of the retreatant tak-ing "a rest from his exertions until evening.''7 The directory of Father Gil Gonzfilez Dfivila, from about 1587, says the retreatant "should rest., without being given the usual load of exercises. He may, however, occupy himself with some easy meditation suited to'this time.''8 Finally, the "Official Directory of 1599" brings together some of the earlier directories: "After their gen-eral confession and Communion, those planning to con-tinue the Exercises beyond the First Week should take at least a day's rest from the intense labor of meditation. However, in the meantime they can think over and apply to themselves the parable of the Prodigal Son or some-thing similar. Moreover, they should be given a prepa-ration for their Communion so that they will approach it with reverence, faith, and spiritual relish. They should be given some suitable meditation for this.''9 A present-day handbook for directors of the Spiritual Exercises suggests that, in order to deepen the grace of 65.3 2006 Sbano ¯ "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises the First Week, it is important to have a day of easier presence to the Lord. "The desirable thing is simply to enjoy the day with the Lord, rejoicing in his love and praising him. This time precedes the meditation on the Call of the King, and it is not a break day. Some directors refer to the day that separates any two major sections of the Exercises as a ¯ - break day. Others call it a day of repose. Whatever the words used, this day provides time for transition from one empha-sis to another. It usually includes . some relaxation ~ ~- from the intensity of the retreat . Relaxing after the First Week and preparing to enter the Second Week, the retreatant con-siders the material in one prayer period before taking the break and another at its conclusion.''1° It is clear from early directories that the idea was to give the exercitant a pause and then, later that same day, to resume the usual rhythms of the retreat. Considering that Ignatius is known for attentiveness to every detail of a retreatant's life, it is my assumption that he did not see any problem with having repose days. Considering that the Exercises were generally given to individuals, it is furthermore my assumption that repose days were dis-cerned together by the director and the retreatant with a view to the retreatant's particular needs at that juncture. That is, director and reteatant were not ruled by a cal-endar date set for the convenience of someone or some Repose days becom important intensity relievers during anyone's Twentieth Annotation experie de of the Spiritual Exercises. group. Review for Religious Repose days become important intensity relievers dur-ing anyone's Twentieth Annotation experience of the Spiritual Exercises, an experience where "the exercitant withdraws from all friends and acquaintances, and from all worldly cares" (~20). These days fit into the Exercises as helpful pauses. They are not a move away from the retreat, but an approach to it from a different angle. In his look at the kingdom, William Peters sJ observes a number of stylistic differences (this "strangely structured exercise") from the other exercises. He sees "Ignatius's rather exceptional way of proceeding" here as a part of Ignatius's intention that "the retreatant is given a day of rest, of repose, a day to recuperate after the strenuous efforts of the First Week." 11 Peters's view on the place of the "rather gentle consideration" of the kingdom exercise within the entire retreat downplays the kingdom.12 He sees the "transition" day as revealing Ignatius's real pur-pose, namely, "the relationship between the unfaithful courtier and his king." 13 For Peters, the exercise is a low-key consideration, destined for a day of repose. Most directors of the Spiritual Exercises include one, two, or three repose days in the structure of the retreat. Days of repose are an integral part of the Twentieth Annotation retreat. On these days, being with the Lord interiorly and yet dealing with some ordinary aspects of life has an intensity that affects retreatants. The repose "day" is a period of the retreat (several hours ideally) when one steps back from the four or five periods of prayer that are normally recommended to retreatants. On a day of repose, individuals take a break or a "pause" from their normal retreat activity. When the retreat involves a group, the day might involve a common out-ing, a picnic or something similar. It does not mean that retreatants do not pray that day. The repose day is a break from the intense prayer of the retreat mode--noth- 65.3 2006 Sbano * "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises 276 ing more. That break from intensity is important. The retreatant may not feel the need for a break, but spiritual directors can perceive from their vantage point that a break is essential for the person, especially if they have prayed with matters of great importance in their lives. In a few cases, individuals make the Spiritual Exercises on their own, meeting daily with their spiritual director. More commonly, individuals make their indi-vidual retreats in a group (at a spirituality center, as a class of Jesuit novices, and so on). Exercitants experi-ence repose days differently when they are alone or in a group. Those making their retreat on their own take a break from the usual prayer pattern, but they may or may not interact with others (such as the host commu-nity, their family, or their religious community). What is crucial is the pause from the intensity of the retreat. On the other hand, those making individual retreats within a group are ipso facto doing more than taking a pause. They are interacting with other retreatants, per-sons who are experiencing diverse spiritual movements. Whether intended or not, such repose days contribute to the good of community-building. Before the repose day, savvy directors ask retreatants not to compare retreat experiences during the repose day, but to restrict their communal conversation to "safe" topics: comical moments they had together, favorite or least favorite meals, the weather, and so forth. Inevitably, however, many make comparisons during that day. "Why is that young man so enthused and gung ho about his experi-ence? Why is that woman so serious and intense about hers? What's wrong with that man who seems so dour and sad? Why does that older man seem so self-assured and so clearly ahead of me?" Regardless of how many times the directors point out that there is no "ahead" or "behind" in the spiritual life (it operates on God's time!), Review for Religious retreatants, especially those in the midst of many interior movements, tend to quantify and measure their spiritual life. Competition in life is not always explicit; often it is beneath the surface. Hardly realizing it, retreatants may ask themselves, "Why am I so blas~ compared with that person's energy and zeal? Why am I so slow compared with that person's apparent pace? Thank God I'm not as disengaged as that person seems to be!" Competition readily occurs whether we recognize it, acknowledge it, give words to it, or not. A common date for a repose day for an entire group of retreatants results from the pace and structure of life today: the calendars of all the spirituality-center workers, all the directors, and all the retreatants and the desire to "make sure it all works out neatly." Whether the directors feel that their retreatants are ready for the repose day or not, the general pattern 6 n n[date or la repqye daY for an entire group of retre tants i r"esuits f orn pace ¯and stru tureoflife today. is to give them all a repose day together and then to work around the movements it causes or interferes with. For Ignatius, the spiritual life was marked by spiritual movements. Whether consolation or desolation or ambi-guity, there is movement. That movement requires dis-cernment. That is why he included so many rules for the discernment of spirits in his text, so many details that seem obsessive to the casual reader. Retreatants in a state of serious prayer are already shaped by movements and stirrings. On a repose day with other retreatants, they will inevitably "breathe in" other persons' movements, regard-less of their director's instructions. They have a way of being almost "allergic" to the movements of others. 65.3 2006 Stsano ¯ "Repose Days" during the I~natian Exercises 278i In twenty years of directing the Spiritual Exercises, I have rarely encountered an aware and prayerful per-son who returned from a repose day without being moved interiorly in some way. How do retreatants and their directors discern these movements? Many retreatants can acknowledge the movements and get back to the business of the retreat. Others get "hooked," whether on consolation or desolation. It may be a momentary enthusiasm or aggravation or, on the other hand, a movement that goes to the very heart of who the person is. A wise director needs to be attentive to this and find ways to deal with it head-on. One wants to ensure that the movement does not interfere with the significant movements that Ignatius is seeking in the discernment of the Second Week. Sometimes it is movement that is important to the per-son's prayer, for instance, an insight into a way of pro-ceeding in relationships. Sometimes it is an unhelpful distraction, taking the person "off course" with a con-versation about church or state politics. Many directors fail to ask enough questions about the repose day and its movements in people. They may say to themselves, "Well, both of us have had a good break and now we can move on to the Second Week," and fail to find any deeper meanings in it. Ignatius would want some probing, as he implies in the Sixth Annotation .when he urges directors to ask about the supposedly peripheral aspects of the day (§6). The day of r.epose may easily have caused the retreatant to go into a tailspin, one that could last for several days. Directors who are unsavvy may assume all kinds of reasons for the discouragement, tepidity, or lethargy. The reasons could be much closer to home. The movement could, indeed, reveal important aspects of how God is working with the person. It could also be a move-ment that distracts the person from the ways of God. Review for Religious Communal interaction is good, but, like any "good," it needs to be discerned. One can easily be deceived by its seeming goodness, but sometimes the movement on a repose day can be advantageous to a retreatant. The woman who was apathetic or tepid up till then may com-pare herself with others and realize that she has to get more serious about the spiritual life and her patterns of prayer. The man who was too intense and racing may real-ize that he needs to be more discreet, deliberate, and paced about his prayer. I refer to these movements as "the grace of the repose day." It can spur a tepid person or slow down a fast-paced person. But there can also be serious disad-vantages. What if the movement is artificial? What if the movement from the repose day interferes with movements that were already going on in a person's prayer? What, then, are some of the things that wise and cun-ning spiritual directors need to be aware of when they direct individuals of a group making a retreat, one that includes repose days that may come along at times that are inconvenient to their retreatants' natural movements? First and most essential is the need for discernment. Directors should not think that they are wasting their time, but that they are helping.the exercitant to appro-priate the repose day's meaning for their prayer. Many directors recommend, or even guide retreatants through, an examen of consciousness to discern exactly what the repose time included: life-giving or life-draining con-versations, feelings of gratitude or impatience, of hope or ennui. Quite often the fifth rule (§3 3 3) of the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits for the Second Week is men-tioned. There Ignatius has the retreatant look at the whole course of events pertaining to a spiritual move-ment-- the beginning, middle, and end. Perhaps the exercitant can be asked to read other Rules for Discernment as well. 65.3 2006 Sbano * "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises A second thing regarding a scheduled day of repose for the individuals of a group is that some individuals are ready for that repose day and some are not. If all make it, comparisons will be made regardless of directors' urging not to make them. Directors should ask them-selves, "Should this particular retreatant do the repose day or not? Considering where the person is, will a repose day help or hinder the movements he or she is experiencing?" We can easily be caught by "groupthink" and assume that a ~ o. ~ :' .~.'~ person should havea ,question ~ repose day simply " ~ because the calendar lists it for the conve-nient operation of the retreat center. The truly discerning question is whether or not the individual is ready for a breather. For the per-son who takes part in the repose day (or does not), what instructions should be given? I would recommend not giving the retreatant a repose day just because everyone else is doing it. Directors should ask, "Will this retreatant benefit from the repose day?" The Spiritual Exercises are for the retreatant. Retreatants should not have to bend to accommodate themselves to the schedule of the spirituality center or the team of directors. Third is the structure and length of the repose day. The early directories do not give the impression that there Was a full day of repose. Yet the increasingly common practice is to lengthen the day and perhaps forgo the daily direction period. Teams of directors need to ask carefully what they will suggest for the day. One retreat center's Web site says that a repose day is a good day for an out-ing to a local mall. The cynical mind would see this activ- The truly disce?nihg is whether ,or not the individual is ready for.a breather. 280 Review for Religious ity as giving the retreatant suitable prayer material for the Two Standards meditation coming in just a few days, as if retreatants do not have enough data already. Another director might wonder what a trip to a mall could offer someone who is praying for poverty and the Third Degree of Humility. The length of the day also requires team dis-cussion and discernment. What is the right length--for time to breathe but not go into a tailspin. The practice of repose days is often taken for granted. Directors and teams do not ask enough questions about it. The aim of this article has been to encourage ques-tioning. Notes ~ This note on "repose days" was inspired by three Jesuit novices whose retreat I directed. By their experiences, openness, and questions, Vincent Strand nSJ, Brian Rademacher nSJ, and Christopher Krall nSJ never stopped quietly calling me to move forward in faith. I offer them these words in gratitude. 2 Spiritual Exercises, §99. Unless noted, all quotations to the Exercises are from the translation by Louis J. Puhl SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1951). 3 George E. Ganss SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), p. 159. 4 Puhl, p. 177. s Number 62 in "Directory of Juan.Alfonso de Polanco," in Martin E. Palmer SJ, On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of I Y99 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), p. 131. The Latin text is: "Peracta confessione generali, cum ulterius progrediendum est, ut respiret qui exercetur, meditatio de regno Christi ei proponetur, quae bis fiet, mane scilicet et vesperi; et pro illo die alia non proponantur; deinde sub vesperam Exercitium incar-nationis proponetur, postridie faciendum in aurora." 6 Number 81 in "Directory of Father Antonio Cordeses," in Palmer, p. 275. 7 Number 60 in "A Short Directory for Giving the Society's Exercises Effectively," in Palmer, p. 212. ~ Number 87 in "The Directory of Father Gil Gonz~ilez Dgvila," in Palmer, p. 250. 65.3 2OO6 Sbano * "Repose Days" during the Ignatian Exercises 9 Number 140 in "The Official Directory of 1599," in Palmer, p. 318. 10 Marian Cowan CSJ and John Carroll Futrell SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola: A Handbook for Directors (Denver, Ministry Training Services, 1981), p. 69. 11 William A.M. Peters SJ, "The Kingdom: The Text of the Exercise," Way Supplement 18 (Spring 1973): 9. ~2 Peters, pp. 16 and 11. ~3 Peters, p. 13. 282] Tinsel in August Scraps of it, in the evening grass, Left over from last Christmas's tree Dragged by its stump to its shreddedness, Casting garlands and crowns on its path, Still catch moon-sparks - like the cat With tinsel eyes, going forth into night With glitter afoot from May's prom-party Dress, and June's wedding gown, that drifted Crystal and spangles over the family pets, Over carpeting, over dancers and through cracks In the house. Overhead now, the tinsel Of summer stars slowly shreds with the sullen Advance of thunder and sheet-tinsel garlanding Horizons far to the West. Cat-tag tinseling, Lucifur comes home wet from his tryst. Nancy G. Westerfield Review for Religious CHARLES P. FARRAR Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Lantern out of Doors": A Contemplative Response to Loss Seometimes the clearest way to describe an experi-nce is metaphorically. When an experience is unique and mysterious, we link it to something more common to make it more understandable. According to its Greek roots, metaphor means "to carry across." A well-conceived metaphor carries meaning across from one plane to another, thereby elevating the reader's con-sciousness. Metaphors have always been effective in the deft hands of writers of good spiritual theology: they suggest insights about God. The English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a master of the spiritual metaphor. His poems' everyday images elevate readers' minds to fresh spiritual understandings. In the follow-ing sonnet a lantern conveys the experience of loss. Charles P. Farrar works as a hospital chaplain in Detroit. His address is 1930 Piper Drive, apt. 204; Rochester Hills, Michigan 48307. 65.3 2006 Farrar ¯ Lantern out of Doors 284, The Lantern out of Doors Sometimes a lantern moves along the night. That interests our eyes. And who goes there? I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, With, all down darkness wide, his wading light? Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite. Death or distance soon consumes them: wind V~at most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind. Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amend There, dyes them, heart wfnts, care hfunts, foot f611ows kfnd, Their rfnsom, their rescue, find first, ffst, last frMnd.1 The metaphor here, developing gradually through the two quatrains and the first tercet, is wonderfully subversive. What we think is a lyrical reflection about an ordinary event surprisingly turns out to be much more. The speaker leads us from a concrete observation (a nighttime lantern moving through the speaker's vision), to a more abstract observation about how the lives of beautiful people "go by" him until they disappear from view. What Hopkins is "carrying across" is the striking similarity between the way nighttime travelers pass by on the road and the way peo-ple come and go in our lives. But that is not all. In the last tercet he carries us to another plane of meaning, making a beautiful Christological statement: that Christ can do something which we cannot. He can keep up loving friendships with all those people whose departure from our lives had sad-dened us. This metaphor has carried us contemplatively from an everyday observation to--presto!--the healing of that sadness of ours. Review for Rdigious The first line and a half moves smoothly enough. Then we are jarred by "who goes there?" Suddenly the speaker becomes aware that the moving lantern implies a person. In lines 3 and 4 he drifts into a reverie about the whence and whither of the person "wading" like a lantern through a sea of darkness. All he knows of the person are the few moments of light present amid o.bscurity. The second stanza reflects on the beauty of certain people in the speaker's life, whether physical or internal beauty ("in mould or mind"). Such people are "bright" and "rare," like lanterns in the dark, like "rich beams" that "rain" against the "marsh air" of our mundane life. Notice how subjective this is. He is not primarily describ-ing the beauty in these people or the brightness in the lanterns. Rather he describes how these qualities affect him. (In this way Hopkins follows the tradition of Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Keats, and Rilke.) Consequently, when in line 8 these people leave the speaker's ken by "death or distance," they, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist. The word "quite" in line 8 seems to mean "completely." They disappear com-pletelyJhow tragic! The next tercet (lines 9-11) is a bit twisty to under-stand. And appropriately enough, for the action is the speaker's vain effort to keep these people in view as they go down a winding, twisting road. The Hopkins scholar Peter Milward says: "How eagerly soever he follows the winding steps of such men as they recede into the dark-ness, he cannot 'be in at the end'--that is, follow their subsequent history to its end.''2 The speaker concludes this thought with the clich6"out of sight is out of mind"--as though he is too numb emotionally to come up with a fresh phrase. We cannot help being struck by the loneliness of all this. The poem tells us nothing about these beautiful 65.3 2006 Farrar ¯ Lantern out of Doors The poem tells us nothi 2,861 lantern-like people. It does not reveal any empathy toward them; there is no relationship here. All that mat-ters is how the speaker feels: he sees them as "interesting," "beautiful," "bright," and "rare," and his seeing falls short. It seems he is psychologically trapped inside his own emotions. Notice how, for emphasis, Hopkins chimes the "I" sound three times in: "I about" thkse behut l may eye after, be in at the ¯ "~"~v~,~ia'tern*liv°'~a'i~ ~,,, end / I cannot." To find any happiness, he must be rescued from this solipsistic sighing. The rescue comes quickly in the last three lines. Simply by the sound of them, the reader senses that the speaker's mood has picked up. Thanks to Hopkins's "sprung rhythm," it all bursts to life sis-boom-bah. After lamenting that the beautiful persons disappear from his own mind, the speaker quickly adds that in Christ's mind they live on. Christ, too, is "interested" in those beauti-ful people, but his interest is objective, not subjective. He is interested, not in his feelings about them, but in their welfare. He never fails to "avow" all that is good in them, and he works to "amend" whatever they fail in. The words "~yes them, heart wfints, care hfiunts, foot f611ows kind" run together breathlessly,3 demonstrating an urgency of concern. This urgency, however, comes, not from last-ditch hopes groping in the darkness, but rather from the desire of Christ's heart. It comes from Christ's unconditional interest in them, not because of some particular beauty in them, but simply because of God's unfailing love for them. Christ can succeed where the speaker of the poem fails. His omniscient vision "eyes" all people without Review for Religious interruption. The speaker gladly acknowledges that from heaven our Lord gazes on them perpetually. And his "foot" can "follow" them without interference. This phrase "foot follows kind," incidentally, is a remarkable terse statement of the mystery of the incarnation. Thanks to the Son's taking on a human nature, he can "follow" us, as of one "kind" with him.4 As Hebrews puts it, "since the one who saves and those who are being saved have a common origin, Jesus does not hesitate to treat them as a family.''5 Being divine, Christ can follow us; with a human nature, he cannot help following us. From this, the sonnet's last line flows smoothly, both in its music and its logic. Being our "rescue" (the Messiah saves us from death) and our "ransom" (his sacrifice itself saves us), he has proven himself to be our "first, fast, last friend." Friendship is what the lantern-seeker yearns for but is denied. Abiding friendship, however, is precisely the promise which Christ fulfills.6 From the speaker's existential, self-absorbed lament about his unfulfilled affection for certain beautiful people, he arrives at a place of peace. His conviction that Christ's love for these peo-ple is complete, unlike his own, consoles him. One apparent weakness in the argument of this poem is that the conclusion seems to have been reached too facilely. It seems superficial or unreal that the speaker could assuage his sadness simply by calling Christ to mind. A study of Hopkins's life, however, suggests that the bur-den of this poem was likely learned and earned through a real personal struggle. One episode in his life shows how this sonnet may be somewhat autobiographical. In the winter of 1865, when he was a twenty-year-old Oxford student, he met a young man several years his junior named Digby Dolben. Dolben's cousin Robert Bridges appears to have asked Hopkins the favor of help-ing the younger man gain admission into Oxford. Dolben 65.3 2006 Farrar ¯ Lantern out of Doors was unforgettably vivacious and artistic. The two young men shared a passion for religion and poetry composi-tion. According to Hopkins's celebrated biographer Robert Bernard Martin, Dolben must have made a pow-erful impression on Hopkins's soul.7 His feelings, how-ever, were ambivalent: he relished this friendship, but also struggled with his desire to deepen it. When cir-cumstances required that Dolben move away later that same year, Hopkins was left feeling empty. When he learned of his friend's tragic drowning two years after-wards, he was devastated. Although Hopkins did not elaborate on these feel-ings in his letters or journals, there is a laconic journal entry from 1873: "I received as I think a great mercy about Dolben." This line was written immediately after a ten day spiritual retreat. It is remarkable that this per-son, with whom he had enjoyed communication only for a number of months, would be on his mind all these years later. It is more remarkable that the memory would surface as a consolation after a time of intense prayer. What had been going on in Hopkins's mind all this time? I believe the "Lantern out of Doors" provides a key. The connection between this episode and the sonnet-- albeit speculative--is compelling. Dolben's passing through Hopkins's life was much like the poem's lantern. In Hopkins's quiet and introverted life, Dolben's effer-vescent personality and artistic sensibilities must have been "rich beams" glinting in Hopkins's "marsh air." Moreover, Dolben's departure, first by "distance," then by "death," probably left him feeling much as the poem's first eleven lines leave us readers feeling. We can speculate that Hopkins tried to cope with this predicament psychologically. At this time he was embarking upon an earnest spiritual journey, one which would lead him first to become Catholic and then to join Review for Religious the Society of Jesus. It was a fertile time for him, spiri-tually and artistically. His journals and letters give ample evidence of a soul immersed in wonder and contempla-tion. Hopkins's Ignatian spiritual formation inspired him to seek God's presence in all things. Doubtless, his sad-ness about Digby Dolben entered into his contem-plative exercises. That journal entry referring to the mercy he received about Dolben was most likely a fruit of these devotions. The inspiration of the last three lines of the sonnet might, then, have flowed quite naturally. In a moment of contemplating Christ, the consolation mer-cifully came to him concerning Christ's invincible friend-ship with Dolben. If we could indulge in further conjecture about this sort of contemplation, it is reasonable to suppose that a key might be found in St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises. For Hopkins as a Jesuit, this text could have been foun-dational; any experience of consolation could well have been understood in its light. One teaching in the Exercises stands out. The fourth point of the Contemplation to Attain Divine Love instructs the exercitant "to consider how all blessings and gifts descend from above. My lim-ited power, for example, comes from the supreme and infinite power from above. In like manner, justice, good-ness, pity, mercy, etc., descend from above just as the rays from the sun, the waters from the spring, etc.''8 Here one is being directed from a consciousness of blessings and gifts toward a contemplation of the God from whom they descend. It is plausible to imagine the 65.3 2006 Farrar * Lantern out of Doors 290 young Hopkins--still staggered by the radiant gifts that Dolben had brought into his life--in an effort to come to terms with his loss, contemplating the infinite power of Christ, who made these gifts shine through his late friend. And would this not have inspired Hopkins to trust that Christ's light will continue to shine upon and through Dolben for all eternity. Whether Hopkins can see it or not, he can still experience the healing which comes from the conviction that his friend is in very good hands. As Peter Milward elegantly puts it, "the last word 'friend' emphasizes the truth that the 'lantern out of doors' has its end in the love of Christ.''9 Perhaps many of us have had similar struggles and breakthroughs. I, for one, am constantly reminded of feelings of attraction toward the lantern-like people in my life: and also of the helpless sadness of separation. One example comes to mind, which arose out of my work as a hospital chaplain. I responded to a patient's request to visit him. Let us call him John. We enjoyed a rich conversation, about an hour long, about his spiritual his-tory, his family, his hopes for the future, and the mean-ing of life in general. It was the same the next two days. These visits were very fulfilling for me. It was no trou-ble for me to squeeze my schedule to find time for John. On the fourth day, to my surprise, the bed was empty. I discovered he had been discharged just a short time ago. A flood of questions came to mind: What did this mean? Was he feeling better? Why didn't he tell me he was leaving? This last question vexed me most. Like the sonnet's lantern-watcher, my thoughts were more on my letdown than on John's welfare. I felt guilty about that. I also felt guilty about getting so close to a patient. I remembered the hoary old adage of Clinical Pastoral Education: "Be careful about letting the ministry be a satisfaction for your personal needs." Review for Religious But why should I deny the good feelings that these visits with John had given me? They made me feel valu-able as a chaplain, and I wanted more. Like Hopkins contrasting the "much-thick and marsh air" of his mun-dane life with the "rich beams" some people's lives send forth, I wanted to feel that light. It helped me feel com-petent and useful. It gave my ministry an emphatic sense of purpose. I felt connected with this patient and wanted to connect some more. Then, like a lantern in the night, he was gone. I wish I could say that I rebounded immediately and arrived at a profound conviction akin to the insight of the last tercet in Hopkins's sonnet. But to this day I still feel some emptiness about John. As I later spoke with a friend about this, I realized how much emptiness there is in my heart about the many interesting people who have passed into and then out of my life. While I may not have "gotten over" the various sorts of grief occasioned by these losses, I often experience moments of consola-tion about them. I will find myself in the Liturgy, in prayer, in a conversation with someone, or reading, for instance, when some kind of assurance mysteriously comes. It is a consoling belief that Christ is watching over all God's children, that somehow they are all safe in his care. My attempts to analyze or describe these moments of consolation invariably, end in futility. What I can say is that they give me peace. I suppose what hap-pens is that my attention graciously moves from my own self-centered emptiness about the loss to a contemplation of where these individuals are in Christ's perspective, that is to say, watched over, loved, cared for by him. They are welcomed into friendship by their "first, fast, last friend." There are manifold ways to deal therapeutically with loss. Books teaching cognitive techniques consistently 65.3 2006 Farrar ¯ Lantern out of Doors find their place on bestseller lists. Granting the effec-tiveness of these techniques, I hope that believers will also consider the simple insight offered by this lovely poem. I hope we will forever keep our hearts open to seeing that those who have journeyed beyond our eye-sight remain within our Savior's. And there is a consol-ing corollary, that Christ watches my lantern too. Notes 1 Norman H. MacKenzie, ed., The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), no. 113, p. 40. 2 Peter Milward, A Commentary on the Sonnets of G.M Hopkins (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985), p. 62. 3 This effect is aided by the fact, as Milward (p. 63) observes, that the accents are on the verbs. 4 "Kind" has a double meaning here, nature and benevolence. These meanings are especially lovely in contrast to the rhymes (1) "mind" in the phrase "out of mind" and (2) "wind," the speaker's futile visual pursuit of the lanterns' apparent windings. The suggestion in the word "kind" is that the remedy for the speaker's sadness is that Christ is of a kind with us and is kind as well. s Hebrews 2:11, from Eugene H. Peterson, trans., The New Testament in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002). 6 See John 15:13-15. 7 Robert B. Martin, Gerard Manley Hopkins:/1 Very Private Life (London: Harper, 1991), pp. 80-170. 8 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Anthony Mottola (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 104. 9 Milward, Commentary, p. 63. Review for Religious RAYMOND R. RYAN Today's Candidates: Who Are They, What Do They Expect? Occasionally, as I try to explain to interested questioners what is going on in the novitiate, their eyes glaze over and I hear them internal-izing W.C. Fields's famous comment, "There's less here than meets the eye." Actually there is much more here than meets the eye. Formation today is dynamic, not static; not only for "them," but also for "us." Otherwise it is only a game, a series of hoops to be jumped through with blithe disregard for the future. Concern for that future, however, has prompted a great deal of research on the char-acteristics of today's candidates for religious life and priesthood. Perhaps a few findings from that research will help us better understand our new-comers, our novices. The fall 2004 issue of Touchstone, the official publication of the Raymond R. Ryan OSA, a former novice director, writes from the Augustinian Provincialate; 20300 Governors Highway; Olympia Fields, Illinois 60461. being religious 65.3 2006 Ryan * Today's Candidates ConversiOff iS ctnii iuou s through: initia[ a nd formation, and.it n ver s opS.i National Federation of Priests' Councils, features an arti-cle by Dominican Andrew Carl Wisdom: "Why Every Generation Matters in Preaching." He indicates that every congregation is made up of four or five distinct commu-nities: Builders (1901.-1924), Silent Generation (1925- 1942), Baby Boomers (1943-1964), Generation X (1964-1981), and Millennials (1981-present). He chal-lenges preachers to be aware of this intergenerational phe-nomenon and address homilies to each generation. It is not uncommon for a novitiate class or a postnovitiate for-mation community to have three generations represented. One of those younger men puts it this way: "I am not simply in formation, but in a real sense in re-for-mation. I am already someone with a full life, commitments, and deeply held con-victions. I don't know that the order is all that ready for people like me." Another, reflecting on his for-mation experience, remarks: "It is understood that we all have faults and reach various levels of maturity dur-ing different stages of our li~'es. However, it is of par-ticular concern when . . . one who has a reasonable, relatively healthy sense of self is now in formation with others who are considerably younger or much older, or have not yet resolved such pressing identity issues as their own sexuality. A formation team must be equipped to recognize and address such disparities within a for-mation community, rather than treat everyone with a one-size-fits-all approach." These observations make us aware that formation today is quite a venture. The two brothers quoted had Review for Religious good insights. One looks for re-formation. For the other, one-size-fits-all formation can be deformation. Obviously, intergenerational living with various levels of maturity and immaturity not only is a challenge, but can be a heavy cross. We who are supposedly "formed" can attest to how adult immaturity adversely affects our communal life. Before mentioning some formation components as they relate to today's candidates, I quote Msgr. Dennis Sheehan, senior Catholic chaplain at Harvard University, regarding some current candidates: Today's seminarian is older and more experienced . My fear is that at times we will form a priest accord-ing to all the directives and requirements. But, if he has not tracked that with the ongoing conversion of his intellectual, moral, and religious life, we are likely to find a formed priest who is only a partial Christian. ¯ . In this generation, when so many come to us chronologically and psychologically older, it is far more difficult to change basic assumptions. They will learn the Scriptures and theology and pass examina-tions . . . but then what? Often enough they can become a canonical enforcer. The collaborative can-didate becomes a clerical Caesar. (Seminary Journal, fall 2004) While Msgr. Sheehan is concerned with priesthood can-didates, his observation can also apply to candidates for religious life. His concern is that both initial and con-tinuing formation be considered matters of unending conversion, a quite Augustinian outlook. Life is a con-tinuing call to change and grow. Conversion, then, is continuous through initial and continuing formation and it never stops. For this reason, today's formation programs have both a strong programmatic component, which presents the elements of Catholic, Christian, and Augustinian (or Benedictine, Franciscan, and so forth) spirituality, and a 65.3 2006 Ryan ¯ Today's Candidates 296 personal/communal component. The latter has four interconnected goals, asking each candidate to: ¯ know himself and his stow; ¯ commit to building and sustaining healthy intimacy in his life; ¯ learn, or continue to learn, and understand that integration is a lifelong process. The gospel calls us to work at continuing conversion and to invite others into that lifelong and life-giving call from the Lord; ¯ allow himself to live in the tensions encountered, accepting that these are a part of integration. We cannot always reconcile tensions or "fix" things. God's presence is experienced just as surely in darkness as in light. The practice of solitude brings perspective, sometimes peace, but always a centering in Jesus, self, and others in our actual circumstances. These goals are spelled out more concretely in some of the following ways. Candidates have spiritual directors at all levels of initial formation. Directors meet those in formation monthly. The history and continuing stoW of God's call is a part of these discussions. When I was in a peer supervision group while novice director, our facil-itator, a Dominican sister with age, wisdom, and grace asked us, usually at a time of conflict or self-doubt, "And what's going on in you right now as you relate your stow?" I did not like the question, even after four and a half years in the group. Why? Because it forced me to clarify what I did not want to face or did not want to integrate into my life. Indeed, sharing ourselves brings deeper self-knowledge and a deeper realization that, the more personal the problem, the more universal it is. Formation today, along with the previously men-tioned personal elements, encourages the communal dimension, in ways perhaps strange or at least fleetingly uncomfortable to some. The "climate check," which we Review for Religious in our province used, is helpful. It is a simple statement of some truth about ourselves, our families, and our lives; it helps us "tune in" to each other--or perhaps find our-selves "on the same page," discovering a commonality of experiences. When community members suffer from misunderstandings or hurts, they are encouraged to meet together. One-on-ones, especially in conflict situations, can help them work through interpersonal difficulties. Sometimes things do not work out as hoped; that can be helpful too. We can ask what this tells us about each other and ourselves: "What's going on in us right now?" Postnovitiate formation invites all of the community members to attend house chapters and community meet-ings-- our more formal community structures. These can effectively introduce newer members into our time-hon-ored ways of being together. Contemporary Augustinian formation encourages personal and communal sharing. This is done not because psychologists have invaded our mid

Issue 67.4 of the Review for Religious, 2008. ; Personal Witness Heart -Knowledge, .Spiritual Reflection QUARTERLY 67.4 2008 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul Vl said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih review@slu.edu ¯ 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 5.5806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2008 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial 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. ~ gournal of Catholic ~pir~ual~ for 0 religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scop~ Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer sJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Paul Coutinho SJ Martin Erspamer OSB Margaret Guider OSF Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD QUARTERLY 67.4 2008 contents 340 prisms Prisms 342 personal witness Thomas Merton's Legacy: A Personal Reflection Richard Hauser SJ gives personal witness to Thomas Merton's influence in five areas of spirituality: models of spirituality, personal prayer, the sacred and the secular, nonviolence, and interreligious understanding. Personal Reflection / Group Discussion 358 Our Ethnicity.en Route to God Ruth Bolarte IHM, recalling her early religious formation as a Peruvian woman in the United States, points out the need for everyone's ethnic cultural roots to be recognized and made good use of in spiritual direction and in faith and religious-life education. 366 heart knowledge Constitutions and Heart Knowledge Beatrice Eichten OSF proposes that women and men religious may ~ell review their ¢onstitntions and question how they live out in practice their co ,mmunity life and governance today. Personal Reflection / Group Discussion Revie~ for Religious 380 Can New Life Arise from the Rule Book? 386 Nestor Gregoire OMI suggests ways that the Rule Book of a religious congregation can become user friendly and be a part of the community's prayer life. Monasticism's Rooted Adaptations Joel Rippinger OSB paints a picture of the contemporary demands on the monastic community and the adaptation required to remain true to monastic life. 392 4O4 413 Revisiting Hope William P. Clark OMI ruminates on all the richness that the virtue of hope gives to our daily living and to our witness-ing to our Christian faith. Becoming All Fire: Thoughts on Religious Identity Hedwig Lewis SJ offers reflections on the Jesuit as "a man on fire" in the light of Decree 2 of General Congregation 35. Though applied here to the Society of Jesus, the ideas have relevance for all women and men religious and for others who desire greater commitment to the Lord. A Source for Prayer Undreamt Of A. Paul Dominic SJ proposes ways that we might find content for our prayer in the dreams that God may use in speaking to us. 425 Scripture Scope: The New Perspective on St. Paul 430 Canonical Counsel: The Lacuna Canon: Common and Constant Opinion 435 Book Reviews 443 2008 Index 339 67.4 2008 prisms 3401 Nvember is the month in the Catholic liturgical tradition devoted to a commemoration of the faithful departed. We remember, those who have died and now have a different role to exercise in the communion of the saints. We remind ourselves that death is not an end, but rather a door passed through to life forever. Some years ago the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner wrote a long essay in the Quaestiones Disputatae series entitled On the Theology of Death. One of the challenges that Rahner pre-sented was for us to view death as a beginning. Obviously in our Christian faith in the resur-rection of the body we acknowledge that in dying we rise to new life. Although physical death can be seen as an end, that same death can be seen as a beginning. Rahner, however, was drawing our atten-tion to how we prepare for our Christian death by how we live. If we truly 7want to enter into living our Christian faith, we should spend our lives learning how to die. All the little dying opportunities in our life allow for this growth. Something so simple as the physical act of fall-ing asleep at night and waking to a new day can be an exercise in dying. We can't make ourselves sleep, but we can give ourselves over Review for Religious to its possibility. And that attitude/action of "giving our-selves over" is what makes death a beginning. In our everyday life, there can be a lot of bringing things to a completion or to an end (a dying), and then we find ourselves giving ourselves over to a new project. Every time we face an ending or a dying, we are learning how to die by giving ourselves over to something new. As Christians, then, we truly can be said to be peo-ple who spend their lives learning how to die. In fol-lowing Jesus, we are his disciples even up to his death on a cross. Even suffering an unjust and cruel death by crucifixion, Jesus saw and freely accepted his death as a giving over of himself to God and to us--his own gift of self in love. This is the gift God makes present to us in every Eucharist--the eternal stance of Jesus giving himself over to the Father and to us, and inviting us to be with him in this gift. So as we enter into every Eucharist, we again are exercising our learning how to die--a giving of ourselves over to new life. November is also the end of the church's liturgical year. We begin anew our liturgical year with the sea-son of Advent. Just as in the secular ending of a year and then the beginning of a new year, we find ourselves challenged to acknowledge that this year we are one year closer to dying, no matter our age. It seems to be a good time to ask ourselves; as Rahner would remind us, how we accept death as a beginning and how each day we are learning how to die. David L. Fleming SJ The Review for Religious advisory board members and editorial staff pray for a blessed Advent and Christmas sea-son for all of you, our readers. 341 67.4 2008 prayer RICHARD J. HAUSER Thomas Merton's Legacy: A Personal Reflection 342 The Newsweek cover of 19 November 2007 proclaimed 1968 as "The Year That Made Us Who We Are." Prominent among the events recalled were the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April and Robert Kennedy on 6 June. For me the year recalled another death, Thomas Merton's, on 10 December, and Newsweek's title led me to reflect on how Merton had made me and many of my genera-tion who we are as Christians. This surprised me. I had never explicitly assessed Merton's contribution either to 20th-century spiritual-ity or to my own. Then I received and accepted an invitation from St. Mary's College, South Bend, to speak about Merton's legacy to contemporary spiritu-ality. I began delving back into spiritual devel-opments after the Second Vatican Council. Richard J. Hauser SJ writes from Creighton University; 2500 California Plaza; Omaha, Nebraska 68178. Review for Religious To be safe I narrowed my topic to Merton's influence on me, but I soon felt that Merton had influenced my entire generation, affecting major writers such as Henri Nouwen and Thomas Keating. From 1969 to 1972 I studied in the Department of Religion and Religious Education at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. There I became fascinated by Abraham Maslow's self-actualizationpsychology, espe-cially his approach to peak "religious" experience. Deciding for my dissertation to compare Maslow, an agnostic, with a Christian spiritual writer, I did not take the suggestion to use Ignatius Loyola. I had read Seven Storey Mountain in high school; as a young Jesuit I had not become further acquainted; but I would become familiar with him. I chose Merton. Looking back now, I am aware that Merton signifi-cantly altered my approach to spirituality in at least five areas: models of spirituality, personal prayer, the sacred and the secular, nonviolence, and interreligious under-standing. Models of Spirituality Merton transformed my understanding of not only spirituality but also human nature. He moved me from a behavior-centered approach to a contemplative, heart-centered approach. And for the first time I began under-standing the role of grace. In my Jesuit formation from 1955 to 1968, we strove to do God's will as indicated in the daily order. Our day included Mass, meditation, examinations of conscience, the rosary, and other prayers. It included times for work, study, play, eating, and sleeping. Our, day was spent doing things for God. Holiness, as I understood it throughout my Jesuit formation, was in fidelity in doing God's will 343 67.4 2008 Hauser * Thomas Merton's Legacy: .4 Personal Reflection by observing the daily order and keeping the rules: "Keep the rules and the rules will keep you." I frequently failed in observance. I was a perfectionist and experienced guilt. I had migraine headaches during my early years. During my studies at Catholic University, I began rethinking my model of spirituality and of human nature. Though I had never formally articulated it, my understanding of human nature throughout my forma-tion was Freudian: Human nature cannot be trusted because it is dominated by the strong self-centered instinctual impulses of the Id, and so spirituality strives to repress and control this unruly nature. Abraham Maslow's personality theory challenged this model. Maslow describes human nature in a posi-tive series of needs leading to full self-actualization. This actualization occurs as we recognize and respond to our nature's promptings. For my dissertation I sought a theological perspec-tive on human nature that would complement Maslow's psychological one. Merton's theory of the True Self pro-vided that perspective. He stresses that the True Self is the self in an existential union with God. This union is capable of transforming the self if we live in tune with it: "The secret of my identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But, unless I desire this identity and work to find it with him and in him, the work will never be done." Also: "There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find him I will find myself, and if I find my true self I will find him.''1 For the first time in my life I was exposed to a Christian approach to the self that stressed not sinful- Review for Religious ness but grace. For me, Merton was describing grace as it worked transforming the various levels of Maslow's series of needs. Merton's "self-realization in Christ" was the perfect complement to Maslow's agnostic "self-actu-alization.'~ But Merton's approach to the self was not naive. He realized that discovering our True Self is difficult because we are shadowed by a False Self. This False Self is a product of our secular, materialistic culture; it leads to an understand- ¯ ing of the self that does not include God: "Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. My false and pri-vate self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love--outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self can-not help but be an illusion .A.ll sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered" (Seeds, 34-35). Merton's approach to spirituality focuses not on behavior but on the habitual consciousness underlying actions. Spirituality seeks to recognize and respond to God's presence at the center of our self, our True Self. This includes recognizing and rejecting the patterns of our False Self that separate us from God. It is not unlike Paul's contrast between following Christ by faith-ful observance of the external law and following Christ Merton's approach to spirituality focuses not on behavior but on the habitual consciousness underlying actions. 67.4 2008 Hauser * Thonms Merton'~ Legacy: .4 Per~onM Reflection 346 by responding to the law of the Holy Spirit written upon our hearts. This insight illumined my spirituality. When I began my university teaching, I was asked to teach a graduate course called Approaches to Mysticism. Merton's contemplative spirituality became my guide. Personal Prayer Merton transformed my personal prayer, helping me experience prayer as an authentic and fulfilling expres-sion of myself before God and not only as a prescribed religious obligation. He helped me recognize the Spirit's role and become aware of actual contemplation in my life and prayer. I believe that contemplation is the key to Merton's spirituality. ' Daily personal prayer was a regular part of our Jesuit formation. We were given Jesuit-authored meditation books that presented scriptural passages for each day of the year. We were taught the Ignatian methods of meditation and contemplation presented in his Spiritual Exercises. We were instructed to reflect on those passages using memory, understanding, will, and imagination. We prayed for fifty minutes each morning beginning at 5:30. I found these prayer hours difficult and did not look forward to them. They seemed irrelevant; I often experienced distraction, boredom, and sleep. I was faith-ful to this regimen for the first nine years of my Jeslait formation. As part of my formation I taught at a Jesuit mis-sion in South Dakota. Life at the mission was difficult, both in community life and in ministry. The students showed little enthusiasm for the courses I taught or the activities I ran. Discouraged, I wondered if I had fol-lowed the right vocation. I began taking walks alone late at night down the country road. I poured out my Review for Religious discouragement to the Lord. The walks stabilized me; in the stillness I often found peace. I looked forward to these walks and would not miss them if I could help it. I determined to continue serving the Lord. But I did not consider these walks personal prayer-- they were not the Ignatian prayer I was trained in. Needing sleep, I soon was sleeping through the morning prayer hour and getting up in time for the 6:30 Mass. I felt guilty, but one day I realized I was not skipping prayer--I was doing it at night. From that moment my personal prayer changed. I felt that prayer does not have to be a strenuous concentration of mem-ory, understanding, will, and imagination. Simply being with the Lord anywhere--in chapel or outside--was prayer. Theologians might not agree with me, and this was not the Ignatian prayer I was taught--so I kept my ideas to myself. In graduate school Merton gave me a theological foundation for my prayer. He helped me realize I was holding on to a Pelagian understanding of prayer. He showed me that prayer is really more the work of the Holy Spirit than my work: "It can therefore be said that the aim of mental prayer is to awaken the Holy Spirit within us, and to bring our hearts into harmony with his voice, so that we allow the Holy Spirit to speak and pray within us, and lend him our voice and our affec-tions that we may become, as far as possible, conscious of his prayer in our hearts.''2 Merton showed me that prayer can actually be easy and that we can pray from wherever we are in our lives. It does not have to be a strenuous effort to forget our daily lives and to concentrate on Scripture using mem-ory, understanding, and will. "In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you 347 67.4 2008 Hauser ¯ Thomas Merton's Legacy: .4 Personal R~ection Merton gave me the theology and language to explain and justify what had become my regular practice of personal prayer. 348 deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything; but we don't know it and we don't experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.''3 Finally, and unbelievably, I learned that my prayer sometimes fulfilled Merton's description of contem-plation- being touched by God in a way transcending words. What I had considered merely natural human expe-riences-- Maslow's peak experiences-- were actually encoun-ters with the divine: "Contemplation is a sudden gift of aware-ness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid - ¯ - awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being. An awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being 'touched by God'" (Seeds, 3). I realized these experiences happened most frequendy for me--and for Merton--in nature, and they happened most frequently outside of formal prayer times. He showed me that contemplation is not merely the preserve of cloistered monks and nuns, but that we are all called to it by our baptism. In short, Merton gave me the theology and language to explain and justify what had become my regular prac-tice of personal prayer. This had several enduring effects Review for Religious on my rhythm of personal prayer. I moved toward more and more silence in prayer, allowing the Holy Spirit to pray within me. I began daily prayer with my personal concerns rather than Scripture. I arranged my place of prayer to ensure I could always view God's creation. I altered my annual eight-day retreats: I stopped going to retreat houses and went to places of great natural beauty near a mountain or an ocean--and I began looking for-ward to these retreats. The Sacred and the Secular Merton's ideas had many ramifications in my life. He helped me transcend an artificial distinction I had made between the sacred and the secular. He helped me recognize that daily life is sacred. Before the Second Vatican Council and throughout my formation, I had lived with a basic misunderstand-ing about spirituality and holiness. I believed that spiri-tuality is primarily faithful performance of devotional practices aimed directly at worshiping God, such as Mass and visits to chapel, and that holiness is measured by fidelity to these practices. I did acknowledge other things as important, such as doing God's will and charity toward others, especially toward the most needy. These things, however, seemed not as central to holiness as the explicitly religious activities. When the council came, I was deeply influenced by the document "The Church in the Modern World" (Gaudium et spes). The council clearly taught that being a good Catholic is more than simply performing reli-gious obligations faithfully. A good Catholic must also be actively involved in serving the kingdom of God by living in love in ordinary daily life, and especially by working for justice in the world and working for the poor. 349 67.4 2008 Hauser ¯Tbomas Merton's Legaiy: A Personal Reflection This call occasioned a crisis in my life. I began to feel there had been too much emphasis on religious activities and not enough on service to others. I questioned my commitment to daily Mass and meditation. For a while I dropped daily personal prayer. I had set up a dichotomy between sacred activities and secular activities. Merton helped me overcome this dichotomy. His understand-ing of the True Self was key. The True Self exists in an existential union not only with God but also with the entire human family. There is no true union with God without union with one another, and so the Holy Spirit moves our hearts not only to love God in religious activ-ities but also to love one another in our daily activities: "Christ prayed that all men might become One as He was One with his Father, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit. Therefore when you and I become what we are really meant to be, we will discover not only that we love one another perfectly but that we are both living in Christ and Christ in us, and we are all One Christ. We will see that it is he who loves in us" (Seeds, 65). Living a life of service to others is not a distrac-tion from union with God but actually a condition for reaching this union: "One of the paradoxes of the mys-tical life is this: that a man cannot enter into the deep-est center of himself, and pass through that center into God, unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of a selfless love" (Seeds, 64). Merton emphasizes that the quality of prayer affects the quality of our action. The more deeply we are united to God in prayer, the more energy we have to serve our neighbor. "Action and contemplation now grow together into one life and one unity. They become two aspects of the same thing. Action is charity looking out- Review for Religious ward to other men, and contemplation is charity drawn inward to its own divine source. Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring. The spring remains more important than the stream, for the only thing that really matters is for love to spring up inexhaustibly from the infinite abyss of Christ and of God.''4 Merton gave me the theology to dedicate myself to both prayer and service. Since both flow from the Holy Spirit, both are sacred. This theology impelled me to social action. Soon after I began my university teaching, I initiated a campus boycott of iceberg lettuce to sup-port the farm workers' union. I encouraged nonviolent picketing of the food service lines. The boycott took more than a year but was ultimately successful. Nonviolence Before reflecting on Merton's spirituality, I had a lim-ited understanding of nonviolence. I thought of it sim-ply as conscientiously objecting to the war in Vietnam and, influenced by Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, as not retaliating physically when attacked. Though I admired these positions, I saw those who took them as rare, highly idealistic, and a bit naive. Merton revolutionized my understanding. His description of the True Self showed me that an attitude of nonviolence is an integral part of living the gospel and following Christ. Since God dwells within every human being, this com-munion has radical consequences for how we think and how we act. When we are in tune with God at our center, in our True Self, we experience our oneness with others, even with our "enemies." Our behavior changes. Merton helped me realize that Western understand-ings of the person foster secularism, individualism, materialism, competition, and a sense of superiority. 67.4 2008 Hauser ¯ Thomas Merton's Legacy: A Personal R~leaion Merton helped me.realize that Western understandings of the person foster secularism, individualism, materialism, competition, and a sense of superiority. This False Self has the illusion that our existence is not connected with God or with others, and this illusion leads to violence: "People who know nothing of God, and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambi-tions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appro-priating for them-selves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and other men who have less than they, or nothing at all" (Seeds, 47). Merton concludes simply: "I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God but in other men. I will never be able to find myself if I isolate myself from the rest of mankind as if I were a different kind of being" (Seeds, 51). The transformation Merton calls for happens most profoundly in contemplation. In a busy Kentucky city, Merton experienced his most well-known contemplative awakening: "In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of Review for Religious separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.''s Such consciousness is the foundation for Merton's understanding of nonviolence. It can move us to deal with our neighbors always with compassion and love, not violence. We seek nonviolent ways to show our neigh-bors the divine within them as it has been shown joyfully to ourselves. This is the way Merton was leading me to radical implications of being a Christian. How inad-equate my understanding of nonviolence had been! Merton lived during the turbulent 1960s and applied nonviolent principles to social movements. He became the prophetic voice for many involved in these movements. While studying in Washington, I attended many mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I remember a group of marchers on Pennsylvania Avenue carrying a ban-ner slandering President Nixon. Merton helped me realize that this was not true nonviolence. Without compassion and love, it was merely a redirection of hatred. Truly non-violent social movements exclude hatred, because we are all members of one human family with God as our Father. I began applying nonviolent principles to personal con-flicts. I realized how often I sought to resolve conflicts by some sort of psychological intimidation. I saw anew the need for prayer. And I began teaching a course titled Faith and Nonviolence. We read the New Testament, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Daniel Berrigan, and Merton. The course applied nonviolent principles to both societal and personal conflicts. Interreligious Understanding Although I had taken several courses on world reli-gions during my theology studies, I understood these religions mainly as institutions with distinctive creeds, 67.4 2008 Hauser * Thomas Merton's Legacy: .4 Personal Reflection codes, and cults. Through his approach to contem-plation, Merton led me toward an empathetic under-standing of them. Key to this deeper understanding was Merton's insistence that the contemplative experi-ence of the divine is beyond words: "Contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, beyond our own self." "It cannot even be clearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized. The more objec-tively and scientifically one tries to analyze it, the more one empties it of its real content, for this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and rationalization" (Seeds, 2 & 6). Since all human beings share the same human nature, and since the same God dwells within us all, we may indeed share similar experiences of God. Reading Merton's Inner Experience confirmed this idea for me. Buddhist descriptions of satori are not unlike Merton's descriptions of contemplation. Merton presents a poem. Devoid of thought, I sat quietly by the desk in my official room, With my fountain-mind undisturbed, as serene as water; A sudden crash of thunder, the mind doors burst open, And lo, there sits the old man in all his homeliness. Merton comments: "There sits Chao-pien himself, the same and yet utterly different, for it is the eternal Chao-pien, one with no familiar name, at once humble and mighty., utterly beyond description or comparison because he is beyond yes and no, subject and object, self and not-self. It is like the wonderful, devastating, and unutterable awe of humble joy with which a Christian realizes: 'I and the Lord are One.'''6 Review for Religious This was a major breakthrough in my understand-ing. After my own experiences of contemplation, I could now allow Merton's books and essays on Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Judaism, and Hinduism to lead me to deeper understanding of these religions. Since I wanted my students to understand the centrality of prayer and contemplation for every world religion, I began adding these readings to my courses. We all mourned Merton's untimely death in Bangkok on 10 December 1968, during his three-month trip to Asia. This death was especially sad because his firsthand Asian experiences would have given him further data on similarities between Eastern and Western mysticism. My Debt to Merton I realize that many today take for granted the five areas of spirituality that I have described. But Merton's insights were presented before the council and offi-cial Catholicism accepted them. Indeed, his own abbot general censored his 1961 antiwar writings. Merton's writing became foundational for a new generation of Christians and spiritual writers. This fortieth anni-versary of his death is the first time I have stopped to acknowledge my debt. I do not consider it an exaggera-tion to say that Merton was a prophet heralding a new age of spirituality. Merton paved the way for my own understanding of the council's teaching on the Holy Spirit in Christian spirituality. Merton's insistence that the True Self is ontologically united both to God and to all humanity and that the Holy Spirit is the source of this communion transformed my previously unrecognized American indi-vidualism. I had never grasped that the indwelling of the Spirit has actual effects in daily life and daily prayer. The 67.4 2008 Hauser * Thomas Merton's Legacy: .4 Personal Reflection combination of Merton's description of the True Self and the council's message on the Holy Spirit revolution-ized my spirituality. I was so energized by these insights that I wrote three books and dozens of articles. I am indebted to Merton for "bringing me home" to Ignatian prayer. Merton's descriptions of prayer flow-ing spontaneously from daily life led me to reconsider my understanding of it. I realized that Ignatian prayer is not simply to be identified with intense concentra-tion on scripture texts as found in the meditations and contemplations of the Spiritual Exercises. Prayer more characteristic of Ignatius is found in his Contemplation for Obtaining Divine Love and flows from daily life. Observations of Ignatius at prayer, like the following recollection from one of Ignatius's first companions, assure me that I am on the right track: At night he would go up on the roof of the house, with the sky there up above him. He would sit there quietly, absolutely quietly. He would take his hat off and look up for a long time at the sky. Then he would fall on his knees, bowing profoundly to God. Then he would sit on a little bench because the weakness of his body did not allow him to take any other posi-tion. He would stay there bareheaded and without moving. And the tears would begin to flow down his cheeks like a stream, but so quietly and so gently that you heard not a sob nor a sigh nor the least possible movement of his body.7 Merton helped me internalize that hallmark of Ignatian spirituality "Finding God in all things." He also paved the way.for my understanding of Ignatius's discernment of spirits, but that is another article. I have asked myself why my journey into Ignatian spirituality took so long. I recognize now that Iowas blocked by invalid False Self assumptions. I needed Review for Religious someone to address them directly. In God's providence Thomas Merton was that person--the person who with God's grace most made me who I am today as a Catholic Christian. Notes 1 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), pp. 33 & 36. Hereafter, in the text, Seeds. 2 Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1960), p. 67. 3 David Steindl-Rast OSB, "Recollections of Thomas Merton's Last Day in the West," Monastic Studies, Vol. 7, pp. 1-10. 4 Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island (New York: Doubleday Image, 1955), p. 65. 5 Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday Image, 1989), p. 156. 6 Inner Experience, pp. 300-301, taken from L.S. Cunningham, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). 7 W.W. Meissner SJ, Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 280. Personal Reflection / Group Discussion Has Thomas Merton or another spiritual writer influenced my practices of the spiritual life? Like Hauser, how would I describe the change? 67.4 2008 RUTH BOLARTE Our Ethnicity en Route to God ~ elonging and "distinctness" are both .signifi- ~ cant dimensions of my life. Years ago I left my country of origin, Peru, and began religious life in the United States. During those first years, away from fam-ily and friends and the emotional and material support they had been for me, my desire and need to belong and be one of.the group made me conceal a part of myself, my Peruvian culture. My initial years of religious for-mation did not acknowledge my Hispanic heritage and the spiritual treasure it was. My being Hispanic was only a curious novelty, something to be asked a few questions about. Without any intentional fault of those guiding me on the spiritual journey, I neverthe-less received the unspoken message that I should abide by the new codes and values that were presented to me and somehow forget what I had learned in Peru Ruth Bolarte IHM, a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, is director of the Catholic Institute for Evangelization; 4404 North 5th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19140. Review for Religious about God, life, and people. Eventually, little by little, my God-friend became the God of rules and formality. Spontaneity, touching, and initiative disappeared, and a "prove yourself" attitude emerged. I believed in my heart that hard work, silence, and distance were the key to my religious life in the United States. In order to be recognized as one of the group, I adapted myself to the mainstream culture and disre-garded my images of God, of prayer, of life and death. When the opportunity presented itself, I limited my "ethnic sharing" to external aspects of culture: food, music, stories, and dance. These were safe issues and did not upset anyone. People, consciously or not, were simply not interested in listening with open hearts to the heart of my culture: my experiences of God through family, nature, joy, and suffering; my views on authority, poverty, power, or church. I was not raised with a code of beliefs and rules to obey. We.entrusted ourselves to a loving God who walked, ate, laughed, and cried with us throughout the events of our day. Church was not the only place where we could worship God. We gave glory and praise to God through our family celebrations, our processions, and our dead. In later years I would find out that my traditions of religion were what theologians and the church named "popular religigsity." Pope Paul vI explains this concept in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi: " One finds among the people particular expressions of the search for God and for faith, both in the regions where the church has been established for centuries and where she is in the course of becoming established. These expressions were for a long time regarded as less pure and were sometimes despised, but today they are almost everywhere being redis-covered. l 67.4 2008 Bolarte ¯ Our Etbnicity en Route to God The Holy Father explains that these religious expres-sions are susceptible to many misinterpretations. If, however, they are well oriented through the pedagogy of evangelization, they are rich in value since they reflect the thirst for God that 0nly the poor and simple can know. Popular religiosity is a major part of the spiritual life of Hispanic people. Hispanic spirituality is divine and human at the same time; it is incarnated spiritual-ity. 2 God is perceived as all-powerful, sovereign, and superior to all human beings, but also as a member of the family--someone who sits at the table and does not need a special invitation. God is not a far distant image in heaven; God is Emmanuel, always at our side, accom-panying us all day every step of the way. Since these expressions of faith were not acknowl-edged during my formation years, my cultural identity became dim. I only became aware of this only when I visited Peru after having lived in the United States for five years. I began to feel this tension between two seemingly opposite forces, my Pei'uvian culture and my adopted American one, between my yearning to "belong" and my efforts to hold on to my "distinctness." What a surprise it was to find that I did not "belong" anymore to the place where I had lived most of my life! Two cultures, American and Peruvian, had shaped me into a new person I only pardy understood. Returning to my homeland made me conscious that somehow my identity and personhood were rooted in both the American and Peruvian cultures. Once I became aware of this, I felt a need to inte-grate both cultures in my life, whether I resided in Peru or in the United States. The questions for ~e were, How do I do that? and who will understand? Many questions arose, 'and there was no one to talk to about Review for Religious them. Even though I had spiritual directors, I did not feel comfortable bringing up these "cultural" issues. For ten more years I lived with the questions and the ten-sions of being different and trying to belong to a com-munity, a parish, a church that was at the same time borne and foreign. During this time I learned to assert myself and prove to others that I was as capable and prepared as any other religious in the United States. I have come to believe that wholeness in our lives is a process of becoming,, something we undertake each day. Tension is an opportunity for growth and devel-opment. Becoming conscious of my longing to "belong" while also recogniz-ing my "uniqueness" and sense of inde-pendence marked the beginning of a long road borne. Only when I started to ask myself questions about my Latina identity, reading the works of various Hispanic theologians and reflecting critically on my experiences in the United States, was I able to be at borne with the tension of being part of two worlds. I had the opportunity for this reflection while doing the research for my thesis. After so many years living in the United States, I was finally able to name struggles and hurts, and more than anything I could identify, cel-ebrate, and rejoice in my cultural heritage. The tension I had felt became a source of wealth and fulfillment Becoming conscious of my longing to "belong" while also recognizing my "uniqueness" and sense of independence marked the beginning of a long road home. 361 67.4 2008 Bolarte ¯ Our Etbnicity en Route to God As my own "true self" was gradually revealed to me and then to others, a new person emerged, one that was freer to relate to God and others. rather than being a barrier to my social and personal development. The cultural wealth of our various ethnic groups, yours and mine, is a main component in our human and spiritual development. It is crucial that those involved in religious formation, spiritual direction, and ministry consider the cultural factors in people's spir-itual journeys. People need a sense of belong-ing and historical con-tinuity. If we deny our family origins and his-tory, we deny ourselves. 0nly when we feel affirmed in our identity can we be free, open, and welcoming to other cultural groups. On the other hand, people often develop a sense of inferiority, a poor self-image, when they feel minimized or attacked in their ethnic identity. In many cases these feelings become a defen-sive or aggressive attitude toward the dominant ethnic group or toward other minority ethnic groups. Since spirituality involves all aspects of life--psy-chological, physical, social, and political--we need to recognize that all cultural groups have distinctive ways of facing life, sickness, family, power, pain, and death. An inte, grated spirituality recognizes that all of our lives must be subjected to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. We hear and appropriate the Good News of Jesus from our various cultural perspectives. Those perspectives influence how we understand the message Review for Religious and how we respond to it. Vgho can be sure of a univer-sal description that is the norm for all? The ministry of Jesus is to reveal the meaning of life and offer humanity an opportunity to enter freely into a loving relationship with God as adult daughters and sons. Because an important root of spirituality is found in the self, we must integrate the psychological value of self-affirmation, self-fulfillment, or self-realization with the Christian tradition of self-denial, self-emptying, or self-surrender. From the moment of birth we seek in our human development a proper balance, the right connectedness with others and the right separateness from others. The challenge for everyone is to achieve relatedness without symbiotic engulfment and indepen-dence without alienation and emptiness. As my own "true self" was gradually revealed to me and then to others, a new person emerged, one that was freer to relate to God and others. In faith I had the power to respond to the gift of my being and abandon the "false self" of pretenses; concealments, and fears. It was this "false self" that I was called to deny, the self that hid my ethnicity. Thomas Merton summarizes this dynamic when he affirms that if we find God we find ourselves and if we find our own selves we find God.3 For Merton, maturing in the spiritual life is a discov-ery journey, the discovery of oneself and of God. One of the tasks of those involved in faith formation is to search for and reveal the seed of God that is already there in her and her culture. They must lead her to recognize Christ in herself and challenge those aspects of her which need purification so the complete image of God can be revealed. All through human development, critical reflection is required. As people grow in maturity, there is a shift 363 67.4 2008 Bolarte * Our Etbnicity en Route to God from being acted on by the world to acting on the world. In my experience of tension between two worlds, it was only when I internalized and reflected on being a part of two cultures that I could incorporate the tension into who I was. Duringthis internalization, I needed to grieve my cultural losses, experience the pain of the hurts, and forgive those who purposely or not had discriminated against me. Sometimes people do not perceive that ignoring cultural differences is a form of discrimination: it deprives someone of her distinctive cultural identity, the unique person she was created to be. Our spiritual journey in Christ requires accepting that our worth, our value, our selfhood as children of God is given to us as our birthright. It means knowing deeply that we are known, loved, and invited to partnership in being with the God who from all eternity intended us and who desires our love. To answer the question "Who am I?" we need to incorporate all our past--including the past of our family, culture, religion, and national group. Only this person can be the subject of our own destiny. Knowing that I am loved by God, I need not live in anxi-ety, or seek affirmation through achievement or some other form of power, for I learn to accept imperfections and strengths, my own and others'. God's grace invites us to become the persons we were created to be. God's love does not absorb, anni-hilate, or force itself upon the beloved. Instead it longs for the beloved to become more and more "other" or differentiated. Without such "letting be" of the beloved, the dialogical intimacy essential to a loving relation-ship would be impossible. God allows unique persons to emerge and become capable of deep relationships because, God, "how could you give yourself to me unless you had fii'st given me to myself?.''4 Review for Religious By no means is my endeavor to integrate cultures within myself and my religious life a finished task. It is a process that every day makes use of the newness I encounter in the many kinds of relationship in my life. Sometimes I long for the support of my Anglo friends because they can understand my experience; other times I look for my Latino support group because they can feel forme. There are times when I feel alienated from one or both of the cultures, like a fish out of water; at other times I am tired of the tension of the two worlds and I just want to run and hide. Being a "bridge per-son"-- gente puente--is dangerous business. One takes the risk of being hurt or judged--becoming the scape-goat for one of the cultural groups. At these times I remember Who called me to be a Latina woman reli-gious evangelizing in the United States. God is the one who gifts me with the ability to interact with two ethnic groups. Yes, the gift entails pain and suffering--dying to my "false self." But in Jesus' resurrection I find the hope and joy of new life and the courage to continue living in a tension that is a source of new life for many, including me. Notes ~ Pablo VI, Evangelii nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World), §48. 2 Rosa Marfa Icaza, "Prayer, Worship, and Liturgy in a United States Hispanic Key," in Frontiers of Hispanic Theology in the United States, ed. Allan Figueroa Deck (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995), p. 136. 3 Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (New York: Dell, 1960), p. 53. 4 Cited by Nicholas of Cusa as quoted in John Haught, God aj%r Darwin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2000), p. 40. 67.4 2008 heart BEATRICE EICHTEN Constitutions and Heart Knowledge knowledge 366 In this article I suggest that religious--you and I, wherever we are--reflect on our vari-ous constitutions, on what we say about our life together and on how we live what we say. For most congregations the original con-stitutions antedate all the members. They were written to carry the inspiration and hopes of founders, foundresses, and early members regarding the possibility of living the gospel with charismatic idealism and practical action. They contain many elements--identity, vowed life, community, mission, prayer, membership, governance, and stewardship--all matters of relationship. After Vatican Council II ~any members were involved in adapting to the changing times. This called for re-visioning and revising the constitutions and having them Beatrice Eichten OSF here offers an adaptation of words to a Franciscan Sister's community. Her address is/577 Huff Street, #1; Winona, Minnesota 55987. eichten.consuldng@gmail.com Review for Religious approved. Now, many years later, it may be helpful to review our constitutions and ask (possibly in a second-ary document) how our community life and governance are lived today. This would be a practical effort, not an academic one. In the fast pace of life today, with many calls on our attention, have we lost touch with the heart of who we are and why we are here? Few members entered their community because they read compelling statements in their congregation's con-stitution, and it is surely the same today. Women enter a community because they are drawn to members who embody its charism, who have been claimed as God's own and who love and live for, hope and work for, God's kingdom on earth. Such women have the energy and spirit of the founders and the early members. They may not be able to quote the constitution, but they know its values and challenges. They have "heart knowledge" of their constitution, from their experience in the presence of God and their community. One could say that they know their constitution "by heart." Their lives express their constitution, the dreams and hopes and challenges it contains. We all know persons like this--we may even be one! How do people acquire that "heart knowledge"? By persistence. I am reminded of my training as apastoral psychotherapist. We were told that only after we learned the training center's theory well would we know when to adapt or depart from it. I remember the foundational text--it was like reading a foreign language! I read it diligently, paragraph by paragraph. Some sentences were a paragraph long! I would read them several times silently, and then out loud. I even underlined the sub-ject, verb, and object as I tried to figure out what they meant. Bit by bit, as I studied the text and saw it used 367 67.4 2008 Eicbten ¯ Constitutions and Heart Knowledge by skillful practitioners, I came to know and understand the theory very well. The text became a practical work-ing document for me, one that was useful and which I felt comfortable adapting as needed. Your constitution is like that. It captures the funda-mentals of your way of life--who you say you are as a congregation and how you will live your life together. As you study it and live it, you begin to live it "by heart." You make some adaptations that are, hopefully, faithful to the intent of the original document. After a while you live your life without conscious reference to your constitution--and you may have lost some of the motivation and challenge it carries. A wise Sufi teacher said of the Koran that'it is like a map. If it is used well, if you follow the rivers of life it charts out for you, it helps you make progress in living a faithful life. If you do not use it, why have it? But, he added, it is important to remember that, unlike maps, rivers change course over time. If you insist on follow-ing the river as it is mapped, you will miss the flow of life. Our constitutions are like that map, and charism, vows, and mission are rivers of our lives. Vghen maps are used wisely, they help. Ernie Larkin OCarm offers another image for our constitutions. He says we "emphasize the presence of God in all things, but may tend to forget the envelope that contains it." Our constitutions are the envelope that contains the essentials of our community way of life, essentials that are "the medium through which God comes." Our constitutions contain our "Now," which is "the only place where one can meet God." Fundamentally, then, constitutions exist to articu-late "heart knowledge," and are not the mere sets of rules and laws that a legalistic mindset too easily makes Review for Religious them. St. Clare of Assisi was aware of this. She insisted that her Rule, the guideline for the Poor Ladies' reli-gious life, express clearly her sisters' impulse in coming together. Essential to her vision was the privilege of poverty, a privilege and obli-gation which she insisted be written into their official Rule. It contained inspiration or poetry along with obliga-t_ ion or requirement. It became a living document when its followers lived by it. C.S. Lewis expresses the idea: "poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience." Constitutions contain both inspiration and require-ments. Congregations sometimes register only the inspi-ration while bypassing the requirements. Sometimes they bypass the inspiration and register only the require-ments-- and chafe at them. So how do we make our constitutions truly living documents that honor both poetry and obligation? In our relationships with God and one another, do we "mind the music and the step"? Are joyful inspiration and gracefully disciplined foot-work changing us into Jesus' disciples? Fundamentally, then, constitutions exist to articulate "heart knowledge," and are not the mere sets of rules and laws that a legalistic mindset too easily makes them. Conversion Religious constitutions come from our relationship with God, from our desire to let God be the center of our life. There are different ways to do this. Franciscan 369 67.4 2008 Eicbten ¯ Constitutions and Heart Knowledge constitutions seek conversion of life. The Third Order Regular Rule of St. Francis says this: "With all., who wish to serve the Lord; the brothers and sisters of this order are to persevere in true faith and penance. They wish to live this evangelical conversion of life in a spirit of prayer, of poverty, and of humility." You and I know that conversion is not a comfortable experience, nor is it one you can program for yourself: "I think that this year I will be converted to poverty, or nonviolence, or . " Typically, conversion comes to us unbidden, in ways that surprise and perturb us. Dr. Ann Ulanov, a Jungian psychoanalyst, says: "Being truth-ful with ourselves can be messy business. [We think] the illusions we have created . . . will be more readily received than our true self." She goes on to say that we all have protective armor which can look like virtue or competence or generosity. Nonetheless, it is armor designed to hide our wounds and messiness and keep us safe and protected. The human reality is that those very wounds create chinks in our armor. Conversion occurs because God will always find the chinks and slip through them to unsettle us and invite us to make "soul decisions," decisions to recommit our hearts to a pilgrim's journey in witness to the gospel. Soul decisions open us to be changed by God's abundant love into true disciples. Sister Helen Prejean resisted the gospel's social-justice dimension until, at a presentation by Sister Maria Augusta Neal, she heard the phrase "integral to the Good News was that they would be poor no lon-ger." Helen adds, "And I got it. She cracked me open." Perhaps her very resistance was the source of that con-version moment. She moved a year later from a suburb to a housing project that was "less than five miles . . . Review for Religious but it was galaxies away." She could not have done that without a profound soul decision. How do our relationships in community open us to "soul decisions" or conversion moments? I see four movements. Relationship with God We all entered a communal life of prayer and con-templation, of working relationships, and of minis-try that fulfills and stretches us. Communal life, lived fully, offers ample opportunities for conversion. Parker Palmer says we enter religious life with the illusion that outside there is jealousy, compe-tition, resentment, power struggle, status difference, and more, but in religious life there will be only love, sharing, working together, generosity, equality, and so forth. We find, however, after living in a religious community for a while, that people are the same both inside and outside religious life. We pour effort into learning to commu-nicate, to deal with conflict, to share our faith, to do many other things, hoping thereby to have the perfect community. Guess what? Even if we do learn all these things, there is still iealousy, resentment, and failure. We learn that there is no perfect community. We have to face, says Palmer, our "illusion of salva-tion by interaction." In the face of contradictions and In our constitutions and in our living of them we are called to center our lives on God, realizing that God longs for us and desires our love. 371 67.4 2008 , Eicbten ¯ Constitutions and Heart Knowledge differences, we are called to "go deep inside [ourselves] beyond the polarities to a place of unity where every-thing holds together." We know that place as God. Etty Hillesum says of this place: "There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there too." In the midst of our real relationships, in our prayer and letting go and giving over to God, we move to the awareness that salvation is from God. We only come to know that when we come to know the mystery of God--that God is for us and is given to us. In our constitutions and in our living of them we are called to center our lives on God, realizing that God longs for us and desires our love. Coming to believe this leads us to have room for others, seeing.in them the face of Jesus, accepting, lov-ing, and receiving them because God loves them and receives them. This leads me to the second interper-sonal movement. Relationship with Others in Community Our commitment to life in community is not some-thing casual or optional. It is a lifelong commitment to our congregation, to its shared life in the Spirit, and to its members rights and responsibilities. As members we are interdependent financially, structurally, and relation-ally. Sandra Schneiders says that a constitutive element of communitarian life is "a permanent acceptance of the community itself as the primary and determining rela-tional context of one's life." It means loving, and living today at this particular time, in this particular commu-nity, with these particular women--with all our gifts, limitations, and idiosyncrasies. Our diversity is "authored and authorized by the Source of all life, in whose Mystery diversity poses no Review for Religious threat to unity." When we become aware that the very diversity that delights God troubles and disturbs us, we have stepped into a special moment for conversation and conversion. We realize that diversity need not be a threat to unity. Rather, in our diversity, we realize the need to make "a commitment to sustained and deliber-ate conversation for the purpose of achieving a common ground." Michael Blastic OFMConv points to St. Francis as a prime example of relationships with the other: Francis allows the other to be other. His sense of self is an openness to and for the other. Francis continu-ously looks to the Other, Jesus Christ, as the content of his self. By definition. Francis's self was room for the other. Francis was "a person in full possession of him-self, but [was] never by himself. In order to be an example for others, Francis needed to work at being himself---it did not come naturally., for him. Fran-cis did not nor could he accomplish this identity for himself by himself. One cannot become a self with room for others by oneself for oneself. In our constitutions we call ourselves to this kind of awareness of the other, challenging ourselves to embrace diversity within the congregation as a sign of the Spirit and, by doing so, to proclaim the possibility of harmony on earth. Accepting diversity, however, does not mean that individualism reigns, even though we remain differ-ent and retain our unique characteristics (the only way we each have to express our humanity). Accepting our diversity enables us to give a countercultural witness to a new kind relationship, a relationship based on unity, on a mutuality where there is no "other." This witness of community, says John Allen, a Catholic newspaper cor- 373 67.4 2008 Eicbten ¯ Constitutions and Heart Knowledge respondent in Rome, is the most powerful gift we have to offer our fragmented and troubled world today. Relationship for Mission We are in our religious community not simply for ourselves. Our vowed commitment "does not exist within the individual alone, but within the context of community . . . a community fully engaged in con-versation about its life." The mission statement in my community's constitution challenges us to "be a com-munity of compassion, reconciliation, and reverence for all creation, to rebuild our own society, and to reach out in solidarity to our sisters and brothers throughout the world." Becoming part of the spirit and flow of energy that is our religious community stretches us and opens us to God's great energy working in the world today. As reli-gious we have a great responsibility. We need to know and to claim that we are the face of God to those around us, and we need to open our eyes and hearts to see the face of God in creation and in every creature. How we live that responsibility is a challenge. Marie Chin RSM, in a presentation to my Franciscan community, said that we are challenged to take a crucial step in recognizing that we can no longer equate community with mere group living or, to put it more blundy, simply living under the same roof for expediency or convenience. Community has to be for a greater project than self. Somehow we have to change our root image of community as a place of security where we have all our needs met and instead begin to explore the chal-lenges of justice, the challenges of forming relation-ships that are right and just and which are potentially present in community. Review for Religious Her challenge confronts our tendency to become, as Laurie Brink OP says "settled religious, [who have] lost sight of the power and passion of our original covenant with God." It is not that we are not involved in commu-nity life or engaged in a valued ministry, but rather that we are settling for comfort and "good enough"--which in turn means liv-ing with little zest and passion for life and ministry. It means not being willing to take risks or make changes that might unset-tle. Ron Rolheiser OMI says that the problem for reli-gious today is not that we are not good people, doing good things, but that we are not great people. We have settled for giving ninety percent of ourselves and held on to the ten percent that would give witness to the pas-sion and energy of God alive in us. When we entered, I would guess, we wanted to give ourselves a hundred percent. Avis Clendenen offers an interesting reflection on how we may have adapted Jeremiah's response to God "from 'too young' to 'too old'; Ah, Lord God! I am weary from speaking the truth in love. Our best days are behind us. I am too old." And God says, "Do not say 'I am too old,' for even now to all to whom I send you you will go; be not afraid, for I am with you to deliver you." Are we holding back? Can we live more fully every moment of our life today and on into the future? The problem for religious today is not that we are not good people, doing good things, but that we are not great people. 67.4 2008 Eicbten * Constitutions and Heart Knowledge 376 Relationship with Structure and Authority Our constitutions are about holding with care the relationships that shape our life together. They assume and emphasize our relationship with God, which in turn is expressed in relationships with other members and associates and with the church and society. Treating these relationships with care can only happen when both members and leaders take seriously their responsibility as part of community. As individuals, you bring your personal power to the community, ideally making it a force for growth, bridge building, and healing, rather than a force for negativ-ity, divisiveness, and controlling behavior. Together you affirm that your congregation is there to facilitate your religious way of life and your ministry, and you accept responsibility as members to participate in defining and working towards the purpose of your community. The goal of your congregation's governance is to exemplify and facilitate the living of your congregation's charism, weaving "the organizational elements of shared values, mission, and vision and translating tl~em into reality, into a course of action." In the governance of our religious congregations, we have various indications of history and personality. Rigid authority structures have left many with scars and cautions, and efforts towards new models of communal living have not always been successful. Leadership functions amid our practice and expec-tations of ourselves as members of our communities. Patricia Wittberg SC offers three models of relation-ships of community and authority. Hierarchical/Bureaucratic Model: This model offers an organized way to carry out the purpose and mission of the congregation. The value it emphasizes is effi- Review for Religious ciency; the mode of operation is dependency. Power and authority are concentrated at the top and flow downward, as does communication. There is little individual responsibility. The young are mentored, and the model can continue without changing. Every congregation has some elements of hierarchy/bureau-cracy which are needed for effective functioning of an organization. Associational Modek This model values individual fulfill-ment; the individual "I" is at the center of the model. Relationships are one-on-one and dependent on the individual's choice of persons to whom s/he wishes to relate, both within'the organization and outside it. Persons live as if this were a professional organiza-tion where membership is equated with paying one's dues or meeting basic requirements and participating as one wishes. Leadership is often not acknowledged or is reluctant to call for difficult actions on the part of members. This model is not likely to reproduce into the next generation. Communitarian/Relational/Intentional Modek The value for this model is the common good; interdependence is the desired mode of operation. Relationships and communication are mutual and are focused around a sense of common identity--"we" with members and leaders working together for common goals. In this model, individual members are willing to sacrifice or limit some personal goals for the common good. There is a mutual shaping of the future. Wittberg says today'~ congregations have their ¯ Toe in the Hierarchical/Bureaucratic model; ¯ Torso in the Association model; ¯ Hand reaching out to the Communitarian model, but fearful of sacrifice or of retreat to the Hierarchical model. She offers this reflection: Religious congregations, precariously balanced between the competing commitment models of 67.4 2008 Eichten ¯ Constitutions and Heart Knowledge 378 ] bureaucracies and intentional communities, may. ¯ have mutually contradictory expectations of their leadership or of their members . Congregatio.ns which refrain from addressing the ambiguous roles of leadership [I would add membership] may miss discov-ering creative and psychologically healthy new ways of filling them. Most communities, I wager, create goals based on the Communitarian model while denying or not acknowledging that the other models exist and may even predominate. There is no right/wrong, good/bad to any model; each has good elements. It might be worthwhile to reflect together on the blessings and challenges of each model as you experience them in your community. The challenge may be to identify and implement the best elements in each as we move into the future. Governance is part of the process of communal transformation. It invites members to a continual com-munal effort toward conversion of heart, mind, and spirit. We bring together our individual selves with our dreams, passions, idiosyncrasies, and personal power. Through the design of our constitution, we seek together the common good for the sake of the gospel. We are one with many, experiencing a range of relation-ships that offer the possibility of transformations into people mutually empowering and accountable. All of these relationships--with God, with one another, with authority, and in mission--are what constitutes your religious congregation and mine. Relationship calls for risk, trust, hope, and moments of conversion, moments to be followed up with firm "soul decisions" to give our all to God's grand dream "that all may be one." Review for Religious Personal Reflection / Group Discussion "Fundamentally constitutions exist to articulate 'heart knowledge,' and are not the mere sets of rules and laws that a legalistic mindset too easily makes them." Have I experienced a "heart knowledge" approach to the reading and study of the constitutions of my congrega-tion? What are some necessary steps for me to take in order to read the constitutions in such a way? What happens to me when I approach the constitutions of my congregation in terms of relationship~to God, to community, and to mission? How do I understand my relationship to structure and authority? Dark Matter It should not surprise us that we encounter darkness and unknowingness within; two-thirds of the cosmos is dark energy and we are offspring of that unfolding mystery, pregnant with possibilities, gestating, incubating in our wombs. The shapeless masses and undeveloped forms lie clogged in a fathomless morass, yet the Potter takes the no-thingness, gently birthing it into a new creation. Barbara Mayer OSB 379 67.4 2008 NESTOR GREGOIRE Can New Life Arise from the Rule Book? 380 ~iin every religious congregation the religious Rule s the distillation of the community's spirit, ideals, goals, and governance. It is the result of years of reflec-tion and prayer, revisions and constitutional changes. It is meant to be the mission statement (long before the term was ever developed) of all the members of the religious congregation: novices, newly professed, and those with perpetual vows. But have the rules become too much a document of doctrinal values and governance procedures in too nar-row a sense? While they are read and studied, reflected upon and taught in many conferences, are they a source of nourishment at the grass roots? Do we consult the Rule Book about what to do, or do we use it for prayer and as inspiration for our prayer, our liturgy, and the community's day-to-day life? Is it more reference book than prayer book? Nestor Gregoire OMI lives at 504 - 3rd Avenue East; Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan; S9X 1H5 Canada. olppastor@sasktel.net Review for Religious How do the Rule Book and the constitutions serve your congregation? Is it very directive, constricting the community's life and spirit, or does it improve vision and expand the horizons of community members? Does the text go beyond expressing doctrinal correctness and touch the community's lived experience? How does the Rule actually fit in the day-to-day living of the local community? Do particular rules have noticeable par-ticular effects? Are there unintended consequences? The Rule Book must be more than a reference book that the novices study, consult, and know parts of from memory. It must become user friendly and be a living part of the community's prayer life. A good indicator of this would be how worn the pages of our personal copy of the Rule Book are. Are they library fresh, or do they have fingerprints, personal notations, and other signs of frequent use? Does the book appear to be one that is close to the heart of a community member? User Friendly Each community can work to make the Rule user friendly in its own way. There are many ways that indi-viduals and communities can find to do this and thereby nourish their own and the community's spiritual life. No one size fits all. Be creative. In the publishing world there have always been meditation books to serve our prayer and reflection, often with a page containing one thought or insight for each day of the year. The reader need not delve into a developed chapter. Often religious congregations will prepare a book of meditations for each day of Lent and Advent and send it out to their members. One of the best ways to make the Rule Book user friendly is to ask members of the community to develop 381 67.4 2008 Gregoire * Can New Life Arise from the Rule Book? 382 a series of meditations and prayers that arise from the values, the vision, and the actual words of the rules. What themes recur frequently throughout the rules? What resources are there available to assist reflecting and praying about the meaning and implications of indi-vidual rules and their contexts? With the Rule Book as our source document, it is possible-to develop a series of meditations which incor-porate the values and teachings of general chapters, writings of our congregation's past and present spiri-tual teachers, and stories of members who served well, lived the charism with joy, and even may have given the congregation its particular tone. Bring the character and flair of these members to the meditations. The stories and the experience of members who have preceded us can help us discover in the Rule mean-ings that are new to us. Each congregation's Rule Book did take on flesh, in joy and tears, in earlier members. What possibilities does the same Rule challenge us to try and perhaps fulfill today? By preparing a series of meditations on the rules and constitutions of my own congregation, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, I discovered new connections being made between the documents of the past four general chapters, the talks of our superior general, and the text of the Rule. New depths appeared in my own under-standing of our "mission statement." The Founder's Writings There are many opportunities to take bite-size quo-tations and insights from the talks and writings of the founder to flesh out the meaning of particular state-ments in the Rule: We can parallel today's text with passages which ring with the conviction of the founding Review for Religious members. The writings of the founder and founding members can help us appreciate and integrate the offi-cial text into our daily lives. Using the actual words of our congregation's founder can develop a fuller understanding and application of this particular rule. Our understanding of the present text must not be based only on its meaning on the page. It must be broadened to the possibilities that are given to it through the insights of our foundation documents and the firstmissionary endeavors. Allow the writings of the founder and the early members to give new flesh to our understanding of our community charism, the religious values and idealism of our institute. When we try to broaden the possibilities for new insights into and understanding of the Rule, we can find togetherness and nourishment in our foun-dational days and in our church's mission in our mod-ern world. Not only must we seek the contributions of the past to our living the Rule today, but we must be receptive to the new insights and challenges that our situation brings to the Rule. The Rule must always be in dialogue, giving to and receiving from our current mission work, our reflections, and our prayer. Daily Prayer The words of the Rule can be used in composing prayers for the community's daily life. Take individual statements of our rules and constitutions and adapt them into prayers of intercession for the daily office. A little editing can bring the rules' clear and concise statements into our prayer with God. Here are two examples, from our Oblate Constitutions and Rules. The text is not just read but becomes a living part of our prayer. 67.4 2008 Gregoire ¯ Can New Life Arise from the Rule Book? Leader: Lord Jesus, may we always work in cooperation with you, our Savior, and imitate your example-- Response: --by committing ourselves principally to evan-gelizing the poor (Constitution #1). Leader: We pray that the community of the Apostles may with you, our Jesus, be the model of our life (Constitution #3). Response: May we come together in apostolic communi-ties of priests and brothers, united to God by the vows of religion, cooperating with you, our Savior (Constitution #1). We must search for other places in the Rule that can be used in composing new prayers for various community gatherings: at the beginning of meet-ings, on renewal days, at funeral prayer services, and so forth. 384 Poetry and Song Our Rules are meant to be user friendly, to be alive in us, to be at home in our emotions and in our heartfelt prayers. They must touch us in order to move us, to energize us tolive the religious values and the charism our Rule expresses. In her classroom a good teacher makes sure that her students not only pay attention and read the lesson on the board, but also write it, sing it, recite it, and put it .into bodily motion whenever possi-ble. There are so mgny ways that lessons can and should become part of her students' minds and hearts and lives. Too often our religious Rule has been limited to the printed text. Can we express it in new ways? One of the most underused possibilities for our Rule to become more user friendly is to turn it into poetry and song. Where are the gems of religious thought that are seeking to get off official printed pages and be sung Review for Religious as proof of our willing service of Christ and as ways to bring joy and love to the poor? Has the text of our Rule ever become a hymn or a refrain? Have we asked the poets in our midst to look at the Rule and allow the poetic muse to bring forth through them new pic-tures for our imaginations, fresh words that touch our hearts? And what of the photographers, the painters, and those who can sketch? Can they create visual expres-sions of the valued teachings in our Rule? Can the text evoke in them color, pattern, and depth that they can share? For the next community gathering, can one of our photographers bring together a collection of sym-bolic photos and significant texts to help us see our Rule in new and vibrant ways? Let the imagination within your community enable your Rule to be absorbed by your community through all five senses. How else? Let me draw a picture from many a childhood. Will your community's Rule Book be like an encyclopedia that was bought years ago to give the children a learning atmosphere but was hardly ever used? Or will it be like your mother's cookbook, tat-tered, pages falling out or sticking together, scribblings in the margin, flour stains, memories of mother calling us or fragrances inviting us to just-baked cinnamon rolls or to supper? Cookbook, prayer book, rule book--all redolent of love and devotion and sharing. How differ-ent are they? 67.4 2008 JOEL RIPPINGER Monasticism' s Rooted Adaptations ~f~irtainlmg oass ta f porrotyfe ysseeadr sm ionn ak cwohmom hausn liitvye odf Benedictines, I am aware of the reality that, at the beginning of the third millennium, monasteries of men and women living according to the Benedictine Rule constitute an endangered species. We run the risk of becoming an exotic form of religious expression, with our communities acquiring the character of religious theme parks and our spiritual tradition being taken over by increasing numbers of nonprofessed laypersons intensely attracted to the monastic charism. Several developments have been part of this phe-nomenon. Vocations to vowed monasticism have been in decline for some years, especially in North America and Europe, and that course seems to be continuing. With this decline there has been a marked increase of lay oblates and affiliates to monastic communities. Joel Rippinger OSB writes again from Marmion Abbey; 850 Butterfield Road; Aurora, Illinois 60504. Religious Many of those bringing with them this new interest in monastic life have adopted and are putting into prac-tice much of this ancient heritage. Indeed, one of the remarkable aspects of the recent rise in popularity of all things monastic has been the spate of books and articles by such non-Catholic and nonprofessed writers as Kathleen Norris. Norris and others have brought to monastic life both an inherent sympathy for its spiritual character and an outsider's insights into its distinctive charism. They have brought to wide circles of believers their insights into monastic common life and liturgical prayer. The contemporary phrase "family values" has a spiritual counterpart in what book publishers have pro-moted as monastic values. In fact, it seems that attaching the very word Benedictine or monastic to any book can assure many readers. The number expands when it takes in American and British television productions chroni-cling life inside monasteries for visitors from outside the cloister. The recent surprise hit from the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps, "Into Great Silence," was an exploration of the most austere monastic order, the Carthusians. All of this has generated some striking spiritual scenarios. Increasing numbers of the laity are seeking retreats and spiritual direction at monastic houses, even as the professed monastic men and women struggle to maintain sufficient staff to care for their visitors' needs. Diocesan priests, who once were sent unwillingly to monasteries as a place to be disciplined and do pen-ance, now willingly sacrifice time and personal comfort to make personal retreats in the solitude and silence of monastic guest rooms. A cottage industry has arisen to publish material on St. Benedict's Rule as a model for corporate management, ecological balance, and family 67.4 2008 Rippinger ¯ Monasticism's Rooted Adaptations The hospitality called for in the monastic tradition trumps demands for orthodoxy or religious conversion, life. And, as we have said, programs of spirituality are likely to attract sincere searchers if they use the terms Benedictine or monastic in their publicity. At one level, all of this is cause for rejoicing. An ancient and revered tradition of spiritual formation and communal observance has been retrieved. What only a few decades ago many considered an arcane and irrelevant current of church life is now prized as a source from which to draw the gospel's living waters. Nor does it hurt that monasticism repre-sents a strain of tra-dition that antedates the Reformation and the more polemi-cal and controver-sial categories of the Catholic Church's public profile. Protestants and other non-Catholics come to pray and to dialogue in monastic settings, and they feel at home. The hospitality called for in the monastic tradition trumps demands for orthodoxy or religious con-version. Moreover, the sacred space of monastic cloisters attracts an intriguing variety of searchers. There are those seeking the soundness and insights of spiritual direction, pursuing like Tony Hendra the wisdom of the "Father Joes." There are those drawn by the aesthetic appeal of Gregorian chant and the spare beauty, not of bare ruined choirs, but of natural landscape and architecture that inte-grates silence and a life shared in community. There are those who, caught in the frenzy and rootlessness of what passes for contemporary culture, see in the deep-rooted witness of monastic communities a safe haven. Review for Religious At another level, there is cause for concern. The fact that some monastic communities are dying is a reminder that this is part of a historical cycle that has been in place for well over 1500 years. The dying also alerts us to an unsettling prospect for the near term. There will be fewer and smaller communities of pro-fessed monastic men and women in North America and in first-world countries generally, along with the emer-gence of an ever larger number of nonprofessed devo-tees of all things monastic. The irony here has already been referred to. Devout "outsiders" come to a monas-tery today for the experience of leisure and for restful rhythms of prayer, but they also expect to encounter monastics, whose own time for spiritual direction and holy leisure is now much eroded from what it was in an era of bulging novitiates. It may in fact be a blessing that the outsiders look-ing over the cloister wall are now faced with the real-ity of human struggle and imperfection that is always present in monastic enclosure, but too often in the past has been disguised by various romantic views of monas-tic life. The economy of monasteries is of a piece with its marginal status in society--always a bit parlous and never capable of assuring a comfort zone for those who are committed to it. At the same time the interface with a nonmonastic public has changed. The services pro-vided by the larger monastic communities have evolved with the passage of time. No longer anchored exclu-sively in such institutional ministry as education or pas-toral care, many of the more contemplative houses now emphasize the signature monastic marker of hospital-ity. Monasteries that were once remote in both a physi-cal and a psychological sense now have accessible Web sites and accommodating retreat centers. While some of 67.4 2008 Rippinger * Monasticism's Rooted Adaptations Monasteries of the third millennium have broader borders their contact with an outside public entails the selling of caskets and caramels, fruitcakes and jam, greeting cards and icons, another dimension consists in offering guests the freedom of a room without HBO or wireless com-puter hookup, but with the amplified sounds of nature and the silence of the cloister. The counsel of a wisdom figure and the simple rhythms of a daily round of prayer and work constitute for many guests the unique spiritual ambience of monastic hospitality. If monastic life has been de-romanticized in recent years, it has also been given a wider religious compass. Monasteries of ~e third millennium have broader bor-ders than their predecessors. An international com-munity like Taiz6 illustrates an ele-ment of young than their predecessors, people that is quite at home in the lit-urgy and life of a monastic commu-nity. Thomas Merton would no doubt be impressed at how his Trappist community at Gethsemani recently invited a number of victims of clergy sex abuse to their community to have the monks hear their stories. The spirit of ecumenism and religious renewal heralded by Vatican Council II is incorporated in the variegated communities of Bose and its satellite houses in Italy. The number of non-Catholic and non-Christian com-munities that have claimed monastic connections in recent years is not small. These include not just tra-ditional communities of the Anglican and Lutheran tradition that follow the Benedictine Rule, but variants Revie~v for Religious of the Orthodox faith that follow the different forms of Eastern monasticism. This has led to some fascinat-ing boundary crossing, such as Pentecostal seminarians in Missouri taking regular weekend retreats at a local Trappist monastery or a Monastic Institute sponsored by St. John's Abbey in Minnesota inviting representa-tives from Buddhist and Islamic traditions to speak of monastic hospitality. A measured look at the future should not induce too much anxiety. Monasticism in the third millennium can count on doing what it has always done: adapt its timeless liturgical round and its particular work of com-munity life to fit the needs of a changing world and ever more complex demands. To do that in a way that is faithful to its spiritual pedigree and open to a wider public will require drawing both old and new from its storehouse. The shape of a future monastic identity will have less to do with drawing people by the charm of its physical surroundings and more with the substance of spiritual life. However newly configured it becomes in the course of the coming generations, one can only hope that monasteries will remain places where a wide variety of people can find a place of peace, a place where the work of inner transformation can be encouraged and expedited. 391 67.4 2008 WILLIAM P. CLARK Revisiting Hope spiritual reflection An Irish-American author, by the name of Frank O'Connor, writing of his growing up in Ireland, told how he and his pals enjoyed hiking in the countryside. Sometimes they would come to a wall separating one farm from another, a wall that seemed too high to scale. They would then toss their caps over it and thus be motivated to scale it. When obstacles daunt, we need to use our hope like those caps. In one of Graham Greene's novels, a man speaks of hope in a strange way. He refers to it as a disease. If it is a disease, it is a disease which both comforts and strengthens and is an antidote for the cancer of despair. We very much need hope after all the disheartening things we have experienced in our world and in our church in recent years. We need hope William P. Clark O!VII, in active retirement from teach-ing philosophy, writes from St. Henry's Oblate Residence; 200 North 60th Street; Belleville, Illinois 62223. Revi~-w for Religious in our own public and private lives. Charles Spurgeon offers a good image of hope: "Hope is like a star--not seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only discovered in the night of adversity." Hope seems especially important as we grow older. As adults we come to realize that choices really do not exist in the way we thought they would when we were children. We expected the regal power of adulthood to provide clarity and insight and control. In the light of humbling realizations, hope takes on increased impor-tance. According to an oft-quoted saying of Julian of Norwich, "The highest honor we can give God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of that love." We can give God that honor only through faith and hope. We know of God's love through faith. The primary object of hope--and our destiny--is to be perfectly united with God in love. Diametrically opposed to hope is the belief that existence is meaningless. If existence has no mean-ing, why would anyone want to continue living? One of our most intimate experiences is of ourselves as incomplete, as unfinished. As someone put it, "In this life there are no finished symphonies." We are drawn beyond anything we manage to achieve. Regardless of the level at which we find ourselves, we feel an attrac-tion to something still higher. In a certain sense, we leave every achievement behind in the very moment of accomplishment. When we achieve what we most want, our pleasure in it often fades. We even may be most acutely aware of our failures precisely when, after some achievement, someone praises us for it. Even in our achievements, we experience the need to go beyond where we are. We still hunger for what is "not yet." Desire outstrips satisfaction. Desire or longing is a driv- 393 67.4 2008 Clark * Revisiting Hope ing force in our lives. It can show itself as aching pain or as hope. As Christians we deal with the future by choosing to believe that life, not death, is the ultimate reality. We choose to turn continuously to our God in hope. That hope rests on the conviction that we are free and thus we have real control over our future. We can turn from where we are to what we want to be. Hope is confidence in God's power to do all things. Hope is the "nevertheless" of faith. In spite of every contradiction, we believe in the divine life within us and that God will bring it to completion if we but persevere in trust. We believe God will preserve and guide the church. Sometimes believing those things is difficult. That is why we must again and again ask the Lord to strengthen our hope. Hope might well be described as the dynamic force of faith and love. Because we are pilgrims, because we. do not see God and do not yet share God's love defini-tively, our faith and our love need to be permeated with hope. We know we cannot attain final fulfillment on earth. We know equally well how decisive our life on earth is in regard to final fulfillment. It is through hope that we press on. Hope offers a vision beyond the inevitable difficul-ties of our human condition, beyond human suffering and even death. It is hope that enables us to choose life, even in a deathlike situation. In hope we trust God can bring life out of death. Sooner or later virtually every-one has to face a deathlike situation in which they are challenged to choose life. It is a deathlike situation to be forced (in fear) to enter long-term nursing care. It looks like the end of the road, the gateway to death. From a purely human Revie~ for Religious point of view, there seems nothing to look forward to except the loss of privacy and freedom, humiliating dependence, chronic pain, and loneliness. To many it appears worse than death. How do people find the courage to carry on in such a situation except through hope? Persons with severe disabilities, persons who have undergone some crushing loss or misfortune, how can they find the courage to go on except through hope? Obviously the hope in question is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking. Rather it is the kind of hope that the Catechism calls a "theo-logical virtue." That terminology is helpful, emphasizing two charac- .teristics our hope should have. By saying it is a virtue, we are saying it is a well-intentioned, stable aspiration. By saying "theological" we are saying it is directed toward God and is a gift from God. Christian hope is not based on self-confidence. Self-confidence is fragile even in a purely human sense. A combat pilot in World War II put it this way in his book God Is My Co-Pilot: "Those who knew no strength except their own to lean on soon found that fear can sabotage even the strongest hea~'t." As Christians, the fulfillment we hope for is pure gift. It is not something we deserve because of our own talents, or efforts, or merits. Nor should hope be confused with optimism. Hope and optimism are quite different. Optimism often distorts reality, making it look better than it is. Hope is the assur-ance of God's fidelity even in the most troubled times. Hope means surrendering everything into God's hands. Christian hope is not based on self-confidence. 67.4 2008 It is not unusual for people to lose hope, to become disillusioned, even bitter, when years of hard work bear no apparent fruit, when little of a desired change is accomplished. Such temptations can surface in any life when one's efforts and prayers seem to be without result. We may be tempted to confuse unseen results with waste, utter waste. That is a mistake. Real faith and hope pro-vide the remedy for that temptation and that mistake. For whatever reason, hope seems to be a some-what neglected virtue. In the Christian tradition we find much more emphasis on faith and charity than on hope. Simply consider the output of books and articles, whether in academic theology or in popularization. Hope also seems an underdeveloped virtue. One finds people whose faith is firm who nevertheless experience considerable fear and anxiety. In his book The God 1 Don't Believe ln, Juan Arias tells of a conversation he had with the great Dominican theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. The conversation took place toward the end of Garrigou's life. He is quoted as say-ing: "How difficult is hope! I feel I shall soon reach my God. I cannot deny that my faith and my charity have been purified and that they are virtues which I possess in peace, but hope is my torment." Scripture scholars tell us it is often difficult to dis-tinguish faith and hope in the Bible. One reason sug-gested for' this is that the original Hebrew text uses the same root word for both ideas. Thus there seems to be a scriptural basis for saying that hope is not something apart from faith. Bernard H~iring calls hope "the inter-nal dynamism of faith." Faith is more than intellectual assent to a body of propositions. The fullness of faith is the gift of one's whole being to God as Truth itself. The biblical con- Review for Religious cept of faith includes trust in the Lord, who is faith-ful, who pledged to remain with us, who gave us that hope-inspiring message recorded by John: "Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God and trust in me. There are many mansions in my Father's house; if there were not I should have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you also may be" (Jn 14:1-4). In the Bible, faith is understood as a joyous, grateful acceptance of the One who is our savior and our hope. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, there is a close con-nection between faith and hope. "Faith is the confident assurance concerning things we hope for and conviction about things we do not see" (Heb 11:1-2). Scripture scholars tell us this is not a formal definition of faith. In any case, the passage gives us a good insight into the dynamic nature of faith. It suggests how hope is implied in faith. We think of hope as a reaching beyond. Faith is depicted here as enabling us to reach beyond ourselves and our own powers in a double sense. The first part of the passage, "Faith is confident assurance concerning things we hope for," represents reaching beyond our-selves into the future. It concerns what is not yet pres-ent but is confidendy awaited. The second part, "Faith is. conviction about things we do not see," represents reaching beyond ourselves to grasp a present reality that is unknown except through faith. Together these two dimensions describe essential characteristics of Christian existence. First, Christian existence is marked by the assurance that the goods promised by God will be ours. Second, Christian existence is marked by the conviction that the past and present facts on which that assurance is based are indeed facts and not illusion. 67.4 2008 Clark * Revisiting Hope The assent of faith is a surrender to God reveal-ing himself and his kingdom to us, a surrender based ultimately on the testimony of the Spirit, not on the strength of any argument. Faith gives assurance to our hopes because God does not reveal abstract, philosophi-cal ideas, but trust-inspiring truths of salvation, or, better, God reveals himself as a lov-ing Father. To put it another way, by faith we not only believe in God but we also believe that God believes in us. Typically we focus on the first part of that statement. Most people, if asked what ° they mean by faith, would answer with a simple formula such as "It means belief in God." We fail to appreciate the implications of the second part of the statement, that God believes in us. This latter idea is the basis of our hope. Saying God believes in me means he knows I am capable, of being totally fulfilled. It means I have such a capability because God has so willed it. This is possible because God's faith in me does not depend on me, on my goodness. That faith in me comes from the fact that God first loved me. That love is the foundation of my goodness and my value. As Fulton Sheen used to say, "God does not love us because we are good. We are good because God loves us." God's love is unshakable. God loves us without the possibility of regret or reversal. The Bible constantly reminds us of God's initiative. It tells us over and over again of God's loving invitation to us, that he does not regret his work, that his friendship is everlasting. It is By faith we.not only believe in God but we also believe ¯ that God believes in us. 398 Re~iew for Religious not easy to believe in this faith God has in us. It is not easy to sustain the hope that belief implies. So we often minimize God's generous love. We hesitate to believe that God believes fully in us. Only too often do we have to face our limitations and our brokenness. In spite of that, God seems to be telling us: "I know everything about you but I still believe in you." In Isaiah we read: "The mountains may depart, and the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you, and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken, says Yahweh" (Is 54:10). God does that in spite of our infidelities, our sins. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool" (Is 1:18). We can trust completely in God's faithfulness even though it is beyond our ability to measure. According to our narrow standards, even a mother can lose faith in her child. But God never loses faith in us: "Does a woman forget the baby at her breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you. See, I have branded you on the palm of my hands" (Is 49:15-16). Even if we deliberately turn away from God, God continues to believe in us. He goes on believing in our capacity to return. Like the father of the prodigal son, he will go out every morning and evening to wait for us with open arms. When he sees us returning, he will run to meet us and prepare a feast for us. There is not one text in the Bible mentioning sin and judgment without some reference to the hope to which God calls us. This conviction that God believes in us, this hope, is obviously important in our spiritual life. It also has great witness value. Traditi6nally we have been encouraged to witness to our faith by the way we lead our lives. In 399 67.4 2008 Cl~rk * Revisiting Hope 400 today's world it is vital also to witness to our hope. In our shrunken world we are constantly made aware of the problems, the suffering, the evil that exists in virtu-ally every corner of the world. That led Louis Evely to say, "Hopelessness gnaws at our era." We are called to witness to the meaning of Christian hope. We need to show by our lives how our hope gives us strength and courage to face the difficulties and problems that inevitably come into our lives, to show, as Isaiah says, "Those who hope in Yahweh renew their strength, they put out wings like eagles. They run and do not grow weary, walk and never tire" (I~ 40:31). It is important to bear that witness. In Lumen gen-tium the council fathers urged Christians not to hide their hope in the recesses of their hearts, but to bying it to bear on the external structures of daily life. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was fond of saying, "The world belongs to those who offer it the greatest hope." Christian hope is a gift, a gift of peace, but also a deci-sion. Christian hope means that in and through Christ we can courageously face sin and evil in the world and in our own lives. Hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present with the deep trust that God will never leave us, but rather will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart. It is important to realize that Christian hope is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking. It is a Christian virtue, not a purely human virtue. No one naturally hopes for victory in the face of helplessness or defeat. In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul utters a triumphant cry of hope: "Condemnation will never come to those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit which gives life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (Rm 8:1-2). Paul's hope arises Revie~ for Religlous out of his personal experience of the inward struggle and anguish that characterize the human situation (Rm 7:14-23). He ends that description with a desperate cry: "What a wretched man am I? Who can free me from this body under the power of death?" And Paul answers: "God--thanks be to him--through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rm 7:24-25). What distinguishes Christian hope is that it arises in the very face of human helplessness and defeat and is anchored in Jesus Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews says: "This is the anchor our souls have, reaching inside the curtain, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever of the order of Melchizedek" (Heb 6:20). This does not mean we are to leave the present world as it is and simply wait for God to make it new. History reveals that the Christians who did the most for the world in which they lived were precisely those who thought most of the next. We need to look not only at what we hope for but also at what we are doing when we are hoping. Hoping implies looking ahead, but it is not just envisioning something we do not yet possess. The experience of hope includes three things: desire, we want what we hope for; belief, we believe what we hope for is indeed possible; doubt, we fear what we hope for may not hap-pen. Those are the elements of human hoping. Hope, as a Christian virtue, is something different, something more. The difference lies in the third element. Christian hope does not include doubt. Christian hoping is not just believing in the possible. It is a conviction about what is sure. Christian hope is the gift of certainty that what God has promised will surely be ours. St. Paul calls it a "hope that never disappoints" (Rm 5:5); in 401 67.4 2008 Cl~rk * Revisiting Hope Christian hoping comes only as a gift of grace. 402 Hebrews it is called "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul" (Heb 6:20). Christian hoping comes only as a gift of grace. It is rooted in faith, which is itself a gift. Our faith and our hope are not based on history. A natural reading of history surely does not provide us encouragement to hope. In fact, that reading of history suggests that noth-ing will ever change radically for the better. That reading of history provides no model of people living together in mutual respect and universal love. In fact we see just the opposite. The human appe-tite for violence is enormous. A cynic would say history shows that people love killing each other. Almost three thousand years ago Homer wrote in the Iliad: "Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing, and dancing sooner than war." One need look no further than the last cen-tury for ample evidence supporting that view. But there is another history, the history of God's definitive intervention in our world in the person of Jesus Christ. Our faith and our hope are based on that intervention, on God's word--his word in Scripture and his incarnate Word. In his second letter, St. Peter tells us: "What we are waifng for, relying on his promises, is the new heaven and the new earth, where uprightness will be at home" (2 P 3:13). Old Testament prophets have spoken of "swords beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks" (Mi 4:3); "lions sleeping alongside lambs, the poor given justice, the weak raised to strength, and no hurt or harm done on all God's holy mountain" (Is 11:6;9). Preaching to the Jews, Paul said: Review for Religious "To keep his promise God raised up for Israel one of David's descendants, Jesus, as savior" (Ac 13:23). Hope is a challenging virtue. There are times when our hopes seem to be in vain. Hoping for, if not an end, at least a lessening of suffering and evil in the world seems almost a futile effort. And, from time to time in our personal lives, we are disappointed in our hopes. Often we may feel we have only enough spiri-tual bread in our basket for one day, and we are fearful about tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come. But we do not live in those tomorrows. We have no guarantee there will even be a tomorrow for us. In any case, just as the past is history and should not preoccupy us, so the future is mystery and should not preoccupy us. There is a difference between living for the future and living in the future. The former is done in the present; the latter alienates us from our real life. Among the ancient Christian symbols in the Roman catacombs, there is one which depicts an anchor with two small fish attached to the points of the anchor. The symbolism is clear. We Christians are the small fish attached to the anchor of our hope, Jesus Christ. God offers us the fullness of hope in Jesus Christ. Christ, as the fulfillment of God's saving love, is our hope. Christ is the great visible sign of God's fidelity and love for all men and women. Christ is our hope as victor over all the negatives of life, over the disappointments and frustrations, over anguish and pain, over sin, and even over death. "In the power of the Holy Spirit, may you be rich in hope" (Rm 15:13). 403 67.4 2008 HEDWIG LEWIS Becoming All Fire: Thoughts on Religious Identity Abba Lot, one of the Desert Fathers,. on a visit to Abba Joseph, confided: "Abba, when I am able, I recite a short office, I fast a little, I pray, I medi-tate, I stay recollected. As far as I can, I try to keep my thought pure. What else should I do?" Abba Joseph rose to his feet and stretched out his hands to heaven. Suddenly his fingers became like ten lamps alight. He turned to Abba Lot, eyes sparkling, and whispered, "If you will, become all fire." 404 A young Jesuit, in one of his regular sessions with his spiritual director, asked searchingly: "What is it to be a Jesuit today?" The older Jesuit grabbed a hard-copy of the Decrees of General Congregation 35 (GC35) that lay beside his compute.r, raised it aloft, and said, emphasizing every phrase: "To be a Jesuit today is to be 'a man on fire.'" Many a mystic has written about the "spark of the divine" in every human heart. Divine Providence graces each Of us with potential to turn that spark into a blaze. Hedwig Lewis SJ, th~ author of several professional and psycho-spiritual books, reside~ at St. Xavier's College; P.B. 4168; Ahmedabad 380 009; Gujarat, India. His website is http://joygift.tripod.com. Review for Religious We can let it burn so fiercely that everything around catches fire, spreading far and wide, destroying despair and detestation, creating space for hope and harmony. Hearts Inflamed Fire has often been used to express diverse emotions we experience: purification and passion, comfort and control, devotion and devastation. "Becoming all fire" would mean controlling these conflicting tensions and living life to the full--hearts on fire with Love. And Love then spreads out, setting other hearts afire. All religious are called to be on fire with Love and to let Love shine forth through their good works, in keeping with their charisms, so as to bring glory to God and spread the joy of the kingdom. The Jesuits recently rekindled their own fire. Over a period of about two years before GC35 (held in the first months of 2008), they met in their provinces and came up with suggested topics for discussion, which were sent to Rome. These were scrutinized and presented to the delegates of GC35, who zeroed in on six themes and drafted them into decrees. These were promulgated in early June. Decree 2, titled "'A Fire that Kindles More Fires': Rediscovering Our Charism," defines Jesuit iden-tity today. It responds to questions like: What does it mean to be a Jesuit in a globalized world? What mean-ing and message do Jesuit life and identity bring to people of diverse identities? Drawing inspiration from this decree, I offer here some reflections on what it means to be % man on fire" in the Society of Jesus. I hope this article will serve as a source of enlightenment to Jesuits, to those who share the Ignatian constitutions, and to other men and women religious, and will help them to be "persons on fire." 405 67.4 200g Lewis ¯ Becoming.41l Fire: Tbougbts on Religious Identity The Enkindling Spirit Religious founders have been "men and women on fire," and members of all religious orders and congrega-tions today can tell stories of how they originated as a spark that enkindled other sparks and became a flame. A torch was handed from generation to generation. The first Jesuits "began a narrative, they lit a fire.''t GC35 beautifully summarizes this tradition in the opening paragraph of Decree 2: The Society of Jesus has carried a flame for nearly five hundred years through innumerable social and cul-tural circumstances that have challenged it intensely to keep that flame alive and burning: Things are no different today. In a world that overwhelms people with a multiplicity of sensations, ideas, and images, the Society seeks to keep the fire of its original inspi-ration alive in a way that offers warmth and light to our contemporaries. It does this by telling a story that has stood the test of time, despite the imperfec-tions of its members and even of the whole body, because of the continued goodness of God, who has never allowed the fire to die. (§1) When we read the histories of other religious communi-ties, we find them echoing these sentiments. The story of the Society of Jesus begins with St. Ignatius Loyola. The very name Ignatius suggests fire. Ignatius faced not only cannon fire but also the ecclesi-astical canons that almost had him burned at the stake. His spiritual journey as a "pilgrim" takes a defini-tive turn after his "sublime illumination" at the River Cardoner in Manresa (§5). He set myriad hearts on fire with the love of God, sharing his spiritual experiences through "conversations" and his "school of prayer," the Spiritual Exercises. He enlightened a few enthu-siastic men on the ways of God, forming a group that Review f~r Religious would share his vision of spreading Christ's kingdom. As the Eucharistic Preface of his feastday liturgy states, Ignatius provided the church "with a society of apostles on fire with [God's] love." A letter that Ignatius wrote in 1546 reflects his fiery spirit. A certain Friar Barberan in Spain had publicly expressed a wish that all Jesuits from Perpignan to Seville should be burned at the stake. Ignatius, in Rome, heard of the outburst and wrote to a friend, "Please tell Father Barberan from me that I wish him and all his friends and acquaintances, not only between Perpignan and Seville, but throughout the whole world, to be set on fire and burned up by the Holy Spirit, so that they may all attain to great per-fection and signalize them-selves gready, to the glory of his Divine Majesty." St. Francis Xavier, the pioneer apostle of the Society, ventured beyond physical and socioreligious frontiers "to set the world on fire." Through five centuries to the present, Jesuits have been inflamed with the same spirit and have followed the blazing trails of their predeces-sors and created new paths (§25;.Decree 1, §6). As "men on fire," charged by the Ignatian magis, Jesuits are urged to spread the fire of God's love even in the darkest parts of the world's civilizations (§22). They must gather people around and warm their hearts, listen attentively to their varied stories, encourage them to dance in harmony with their different melodies, and thus "give them meaning and provide focus in a frag-mented world" (§1). The Jesuit vision is to re-create a divine milieu by manifesting "a strong sense of the The very name Ignatius suggests fire. 407 67.4 2008 Lewis ¯ Becoming All Fire: Thoughts on Religious Identity sacred inseparably joined to active involvement in the world. Our deep love of God and our passion for his world should set us on fire--a fire that starts other fires! For ultimately there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look" (§ 10). Hopefully GC35's decrees will bring to reality the prophecy of the Jesuit visionary Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, and gravity, we shall harness for God ener-gies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world we will have discovered fire." 408 Persons on Fire The "new" fire that GC35 has lighted engulfs the "spirit" of the Jesuit identity as spelled out in the pre-ceding three general congregations. To be a Jesuit today is to be "a man on fire." The fire at the heart of a Jesuit's identity and mission is Jesus Christ (§2). The "man on fire" is an alter Cbristus, for Christ is his con-stant companion (§3). The "man on fire" lets his light shine through good works for the greater glory of God (§22). He enkindles other hearts with the Love that burns within him, for that was Christ's deepest yearn-ing: "I have come to cast fire on earth!" (see §21). From an Ignatian perspective, it is a "fire" that con-sumes and cleanses, for the Jesuit is "a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus." It is a fire that cannot be contained, for the Jesuit is "a man for and with others." It is a fire that urges the Jesuit, a "servant of Christ's mission" (§7), to the edges of society (§24) in the ser-vice of faith and the propagation of justice (both human and environmental) (§7, §24; Decree 1, §6). The fire is kept ablaze by the Jesuit living out generously the Ignatian "polarities": "being and doing, contemplation Review for Religious and action, prayer and prophetic living, being com-pletely united with Christ and completely inserted into the world with him, as an apostolic body" (§9). Our near-contemporary St. Alberto Hurtado (of Chile, 1901-1952) was "a fire that enkindles other fires" (§25). He established the nonprofit organization Hogar de Cristo (the Hearth of Christ) to aid the homeless. It provides both shelter and human warmth for body and soul. Hurtado not only enkindled these unfortu-nate people, but wanted his experience with them to intensify the fire in his own being. He made this conviction abundantly clear: "Love them in order to make them live, that a more human life may develop in them, unlocking their intel-ligence, putting an end to their backwardness. May the errors anchored in their hearts prick me continuously. May I be tor-mented by the lies and illusions used to intoxicate and enrapture them; may the mate-rialistic press that pretends to enlighten them irritate me; may their prejudices stimulate me to show them the truth. And this is nothing more than the translation of the verb 'to love.' I have placed them in my heart so they may live as people in the light, and the light is none other than Christ himself, the true light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world. All the light of natural reason is really the light of Christ; all knowledge, all human science. Christ is the supreme science. ,2 Father Pedro Arrupe SJ was described in 1952 as "a man on fire" by a seventeen-year-old student in Madrid, The "man on fire" is an alter Christus, for Christ is his constant companion. 409 67.4 2008 Lewis * Becoming All Fire: Thoughts on Religious Identity Adolfo Nicol~is.3 Like Hurtado, Arrupe had sheltered the hapless victims of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Given his training in medicine, Arrupe ministered to those suffering from severe burns. His experience would inflame his own heart with greater compassion and love - - for the suffer- ,~ ing. Later, as the Jesuits' superior general, he would open centers for refugees (see Decree 1, §6). Arrupe's is also a good example of how "men and women on fire" foster religious vocations: they walk their talk and talk their walk in the service of the Lord. Arrupe's lecture on his experiences at Hiroshima had rekindled in young Nicol~s's heart the burning desire to become a Jesuit. Nicolas would later follow the great missionary to Japan and eventually succeed him as supe-rior general in Rome. The Jesuit "man on fire" must realize that "the Jesuit identity is relational." He shares in the life of a com-munity, each member drawing its fire from the same source: Christ. Together as "friends in the Lord," they bear witness to the Light. A glowing community life, one that is intensive and joyful, attracts people, "inviting them--above all the young--to 'come and see,' to join us in our vocation and to serve with us in Christ's mis-sion. Nothing could be more desirable and more urgent today, since the heart of Christ burns with love for this world, with all its troubles, and seek~ companions who can serve it with him" (§ 19). The Jesuit "man on fire" must realize that "the Jesuit identity is relational. Review for Religious Playing with Fire Jesuits are also, by choice, "firemen" in Christ's brigade. The "demons" of this age are on a rampage, spreading on earth the fires of the underworld through irreligion, injustice, and consumerism (see §21). As firemen in Christ's brigade, Jesuits have been called to unflagging commitment to Christ and his mission of extinguishing the fires that defile human dignity and ravage natural resources. The Jesuit fireman plays with fire and becomes vul-nerable to the "inferno" he has to confront. It often means getting burned by rampant injustice or religious fanaticism. He comes under fire when he ventures beyond the frontiers--as is evident in the long list of Jesuit martyrs for social justice in recent times. Yet he remains committed regardless of thorns, threats, and thrashings and moves ahead fearlessly under the banner of the cross (§11; Decree 1, §9). The pathway is not always bright. There are periods in the Jesuit fireman's life when the fire within him burns low, threatened by storms inside or out, or the path is hidden in thick smoke. He experiences, in short, the challenge of the cross--where "the Divinity is hidden." The light flickers or fades in the struggle, and doubts and anxieties oppress. The time may compare with what mystics have described as the "dark night of the soul." "The experience of a hidden God cannot always be avoided, but even in the depths of darkness the transforming light .of God is able to shine" (§7). The "man on fire" must not lose hope, but seek and find that "light" so as to rekindle his fire. After the example of Jesus our companion, whose "entire life was a kenosis," he must feel supported and continue on his mission (§ 14). 411 67.4 2008 Lewis * Becoming/Ill Fire: Thoughts on Religious Identity While GC3 5 was in session, every Jesuit community around the globe kept a small lamp lit in the chapel as a symbol of oneness and solidarity, uniqueness and unity. Every Jesuit, in his own God-given way, must more than anything else be "a man on fire." And then, merging his flame with the flames of other religious "men and women on fire," together with "all persons of goodwill" (§21), he must set the world ablaze. Notes ~ GC35, Decree 2, §2. The texts of all the decrees are available at www.sjweb.info. Paragraph numbers of this decree will be given in the body of the article thus: (§2). 2 Albert Hurtado, personal reflection written in November 1947, quoted in "Saint Hurtado's Christocentric Mindset" by Hedwig Lewis sJ, Ignis 2005, no. 4, Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, Anand, India. 3 Adolfo Nicolfis sJ, "Eight Encounters with Father Pedro Arrupe," Province Express, Australia, 14 November 2007. 412 A Birthing On my way to Damascus I was tripped by Grace, and fell Into the hands of Love. My brain lay scrambled And pride lay wounded I felt blinded. Deep within my labored soul Faith gave its birth cry. Paulson V. Veliyannoor CMF Review for Religious A. PAUL DOMINIC A Source for Prayer Undreamt Of God speaks first in one way, and then in another, but no one notices. He speaks by dreams, and visions that come in the night, when slumber comes on mankind, and men are all asleep in bed. Then it is he whispers in the ear of man, or may frighten him with fearful sights, to turn him from evil-doing, and make an end of his pride; to save his soul from the pit and his life from the pathway to Sheol. (Jb 33:14-18; JB) If it is true that God speaks to us in dreams, what fol-lows? Or what should we do? We should speak in turn. Or we should at least desire to do so and try. Speaking to God in dreams as God does to us in dreams is not normally at our command. However, whether we dare speak to God after we have dreamt depends on us: it is definitely within our power. Such speaking to God is prayer indeed. Prayer linked with dreams may start in dreams and end in them or continue after them, or it A. Paul Dominic sJ last wrote for us in our 66.4 (2007) issue. His address is Human Development Centre; Port Mourant, Corentyne; Guyana (South America). 413 67.4 2008 Dominic ¯ A Source for Prayer Undreamt Of 414 may begin only outside them, drawing inspiration from them. Both kinds could be learned, though for now my interest is in the second,~ which is simpler: it is prayer following the dreams. The literature on prayer has been mosdy on how to pray rather than on what to pray. Is it worthwhile to con-sider the manner and matter of prayer separately? In any case, being persuaded myself that more deserves to be said about what to pray about, I would like to deal with the hardly dreamt-of topic broached above. To state it explicidy, whatever you dream at night can well serve as food for your prayer. I believe that something sensible can be said about dreams as source material for our praying. The idea proposed here is really part of what Christians generally use in their meditative or contem-plative prayer, namely, the Bible.2 They use the whole Bible, even if not every page and even though they most often use Gospel passages.3 Even in the Gospels, some paragraphs may seldom be considered prayer-worthy. It is a rare person who will pray over the genealogy of Jesus given at the beginning of Matthew. Still, the Bible in all its multiplicity and variety serves Jewish and Christian prayer. I think this is true of the bibli-cal passages about dreams, albeit they are not noticed much.4 Biblical dreams are found here and there in both Testaments. For many, they could prove to be a new wellspring of prayer. God Active in the Unconscious A

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

Issue 45.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1986. ; Vocation Ministry A Sociological View of Commitment Religious and Secular Institutes Imagination Within the Act of Faith Volume 46 Number 2 March/April, 1986 REvIEw FOR REI,IGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at'Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. REVIEW EOt~ REI.IGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, M O © 1986 by REVIEW FOR RELtGIOOS. Composed. printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A. $ I 1.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (postage). Airmail (Book Rate) $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editor March/April, 1986 Volume 46 Number 2 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGtOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of p~int~ issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major po~on of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY I0010. The Vowed Life in a Secularized World Desmond O'Donnell, O M.I. Father O'Donnell's earlier "Focused Freedom: To Someone in Formation"appeared in the issue of January/February, 1985. He is a General Councillor for his community and, though often on the road, may be addressed at its Generalate: Oblati di Maria; C.P. 9061; 00100 Roma Aurelia, Italy. ouring out a plethora of easy answers to complex questions does not bring us any closer to permanent solutions. Neither is it helpful to offer a new one-word solution for everything taking place in the Church at this time. And yet secularization might be a useful umbrella-word ~,to explain much, of what is taking place both, to the Church and to the vowed life today. If it is in fact found to be a satisfactory seminal term, it will also help us to focus rather than to diffuse our response. It can aid the process of discernment. Situating the Question The good news about our way of life is that a deep spiritual renewal is being experienced by many and that the importance of prayer is being rediscovered. There has been a notable updating in theology and real--if not always successful--attempts to build authentic faith-communities. There also is a growing freedom and practice of discernment about our apostolates and about our private lives as well. There is other news which does not' seem so obviously good, such as the large numbers who left us, the small numbers joining and the increasing median age. In some places, community life is moving towards becoming politely-shared space, enclosing many unspoken polarizations about deep realities among us. Authority has tended to go from heavy-handedness to 161 "i69/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 ¯ laissez-faire and so consensus about anything of serious communal signifi-cance is often hard to come by. Governments gradually move in to take over our institutions, either because we have chosen to let them or because they have helped themselves. The degree to which all this is related to secularization is disputable, but related it is, and I will try to show why this is so. Before we go into this, may I look at some more personal experiences of vowed people in most countries today--experiences which I think are related to secularization even more deeply than those mentioned above. Many of us have been through more or less severe vocational question-ing of some kind in recent years, because the rationale of our way Of life did not seem capable of answering the questions popping up all around us. Maybe it was triggered off by simply seeing one of our now-married novitiate companions do equally good apostolic work and do it well. It may also have been that we grew tired of mobility, or just vaguely short of motivation for the continual questioning of our chosen lifestyle. Many of us have found some new difficulties in prayer, as God seemed to withdraw and leaqe the world to evil pebple. Or maybe the emergence of so many small friendship-groups has left us out in the cold called "com-munity life." The variety of new prayer-forms and so many seminars, have a way of increasing our desire for some stability and wondering if it might not be found elsewhere, In response to'all of this, many felt the growing ambiguities and endless updating led them to personal selectivity in belief and practice. Others moved to the edge~of the storm by choosing some form of fundamentalism or an atheism' which expressed itself in mere social horizontalism while still remaining in the ~3ongregation. Some of us chose to becom~ left-wing unloving critics of the present and others moved to become right-wing uncritical lovers of the past, as the middle ground grew unpopular and became such a solitary exprience. These deeper and more personal phenomena~ are related to modernization and secularization too, as I will try to demonstrate. And so the response to these experiences, might first be to understand the meaning of modernization and the resultihg secularization-experience. Modernization The amount of knowledge in the world continues to increase because of constant research and it is rapidly diffused through very efficient communicatioh systems. Modernization is what happens when the knowledge is~ transferred into technology, which then has ~increasing and unforeseeable effects on economic growth, on social systems and on political decisidns. Inevitably the individual too is affected in his or her The Vowed Life in a Secularized World / 165 values, attitudes, beliefs and behavior. Most of us remember the discovery of plastic 'in the 40s, of the transistor in the 50s, of computers in the 60s, of microcomputers in .the 70s and now we observe technology move forward into genetic engineering in the 80s. All of these have affected people and systems in serious and often irreversibl~e ways. This march of modernization shows no signs of slowing down and often appears to have its own~self-propelled, autonomous momentum. It took one hundred twelve years for photography to go from discovery to commercial product, fifty-six for the telephone, thirty-five for the radio, fifteen for radar, twelve for television and only five for transistors to find their way from the laboratory into the market. Again, as each of these products comes on the market, it touches--and in the case of genetic engineering, tampers with human nature and human systems in often lastingly significant ways, It is with the human effects of modernity that we are concerned and these are sometime.s good, sometimes evil, and often ambiguous. Moder-nity can lead to human community and comfort,-.or to pollution and poverty for millions; it can facilitate or disrupt human values; it can enrich °a poor country or steal its unrenewable sources of energy; it can help in the diffusion of truth or of lies through the media and it can pass on productive information or child,pornography. In each of our .lives it can .make the superfluous become the convenient, ~the convenient become the necessary and the necessary become the indispensable, thus changing human nature itself. ~ Peter Berger's definition summarizes, all this: "Modernization is the transformation of the world, brought about by the technological innova-tions of the last few centuries having economic, social and political dimen-sions all immense in scope." With many otherwriters he goes on to outline the many very,personal effects resulting from the economic, social, political ones in his definition, Secularization is a very significant one of these. Secularization It is important to stress that we are not talking here about secularism which is a theory, an ideology denying the existence of God or at least his action and relevance in the world. Nor is secularization .to be equated with atheism when in fact it might be the very opposite experience for many who are desperately trying to hold on toGod who seems to be withdrawing from them. And certainly it would be simplistic to think that secularization is the same as materialism, Secularization is claimed to.be more a fact than a theory, a reality more than an ideology, a process taking place more than.a point of view. While it "i64/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 can lead to secularism, materialism, or atheism, it is in fact none of these. Some religious people find words like secularism, materialism and atheism convenient labels for what is happening in the Church or in_the vowed life today and it may be a description in some cases, but it is not addressing the deeper and more pervasive reality we call secularization. Secularization manifests itself when explanations of reality previously attributed to mythical or religious sources, are shown to have .rational ones, as when the~scientist takes over from the witch doctor, the. psychologist assumes some previously priestly functions or when a technological discovo ery,disintegrates a theological theory. A group of Animists in Java lost their gods a few years ago when a new seismographic station began to foretell and explain volcanic eruptions more accurately than the local holy man, The Diak people of Borneo lost their fear of and their belief in their forest gods when bulldozers razed the jungle. For some people, the study of a good theology of providence could have a similar effect. These people are experiencing secularization. In a similar way, many modern Christians first felt uncomfortable and then felt their faith questioned by a good church-history book, an accurate TV documentary, a skilled psychiatrist, two men on the moon, an old law proven pointless, a church authority found unworthy, a symbol disappear-ing or a culture collapsing~-all more or less the result of modernization. The resulting discomfort and questioning within the individual person, is close to the secularization-experience. It is an experience of no longer having one overall reference-point--a feeling of increasing disintegration. If you are experiencing that somehow God is withdrawing because religious explanations are increasingly less necessary, that the quantum of the secular is increasing at the expense of the sacred, that maybe~ God is now less necessary as a postulate for human living or that because of modern evidence your longheld experience of God is no longer a comfort-able one, you are probably undergoing the pressure of the secularization-experience. This is not a decisionnor even a desire to become an atheist; even if it could lead to it. Nor is it necessarily the result of "giving in" to materialism or to less-than-moral behavior, admitting, of course, that both of these can easily increase its momentum. If you are not undergoing the experience of secularization, then it is still important to uiaderstand it, because most of the peopl~ you are trying to evangelize, especially in the developed world, are probably experiencing it. It is from this fact that the present great missiological question arises--how announce the Good News of Jesus Christ to a secularized world? Moderni-zation and its result in secularization are now recognized as cultures, new cultures, ever-changing cultures and it is at this point that we recognize the The Vowed l_Jfe in a Secularized World / 165 break between faith and culture today. Thus for the modern person, secularization is a feelin~ of dissonance in .trying to hold together what is happening in the world and what the Bible seems to say about God's providence or what is often said in churches and what is taking place in real life around us. It results in discomfort with one's present experience of God. Any naive belief in the immediacy of God will be challenged .by secularization and modernity. Old fashioned god-words and some ecclesiastical jargon will appear increasingly irrelevant to sincere secularized persons everywhere. Secularization can be defined as the grad-ual disappearance of mythical and religious legitimations or explanations of society. Living with the ambiguities of the secularization-experience leads to a temptation to take refuge in fundamentalism which can be described as believing more and more in less and less in order to feel secure, or in agnosticism which is a lazy neither-nor ~land excusing one from the strug-gles, doubts and decisions which are part of any faith. Let us now try to analyze the challenge and opportunity which secularization offers the vowed life. The Vowed Life For the vowed life, secularization can be a deep call and a deep grace. Lumen Gentium calls us to enrich, challenge, encourage and stimulate the Church by our lives and our action (Par. 44). This is all the more reason why we must study, understand and give a gospel response to seculariza-tion, to a secularized world. Because secularization implies change at so many levels of human existence, we should recall that sociologists stress the vital importance of internal consistency for all groups in time of change. This internal consis-tency- our basic authenticity measured against what we claim to be--is now a matter of survival. Institutions which lack internal consistency are likdy to disappear in tim~s of rapid change, especially if their external image is also unclear. For these reasons, we who profess the vowed life must address the phenomenon and the grace of secularization. May I suggest that there are five areas where God might well be speaking to us in all this? ~ansmitting a New Integrating Presence of God Secularization, as we saw, forces us to find a new presence of God, a presence which permeates, integrates, energizes for action and which brings human and divine values into secular realities. Karl Rahner spoke of the vowed woman as having a profession which has no justification from the "166 / Review for :Religious, March-April, 1986 secular point of view even if she performs many useful secular tasks. What then might her iprofession and that of vowed men be? It is surely--as it always was--to give or rather to share with people their own experience of God. This is a demanding task; it demands that we each have such an experience first of all. We will have to pass on "so.mething which we have seen with our own eyes, that we have watched and touched with our own .hands" (1 Jn l:l'b) and it will be vital that "in Christ we speak as men of sincerity, as envoys of God and in God's presence" (2 Co 2:17), It seems to be a call to discover and lead in a new integrating mysticism as this quote from John Macquarie expresses: ¯ It is interesting to note that Bonhoeffer, though he advocated a 'worldly' Christia°nity, made it 'perfectly explicit that the kind of w0rldline~ss that he had in mind has nothing to do with the immersion in"material pursuits and enjoyments that we commonly associate with the "worldly' man. Bon-hoeffer makes a :statement that ought to be'pondered by those who invoke his support for a thoroughly secularized Christianity. He says: 'In Christ we are offered the possibility of partaking in the reality'of God and in the reality of the world, but not in the one without the other The reality of God discloses itself only by setting me entirely in the reality of the world, and when I encounter the reality of the world, it is always already sus-tained: accepted and reconciled in the reality of God.' There is a dialectic here that takes us beyond any naive world affirmation, just as it rules out any false religiosity. God,is met in the world, but the world is known in its reality only as Grd's world? Back in 1970, Karl Rahner wrote: Maybe we [he was addressing his own Society] ourselves have been super-f! cialized by the consumer society. Maybe we ourselves have not come to any original experience of God. Maybe we have not taken .the .trouble to let others participate in the mystical technique leading.to such an expe-rience. If all that is the case, we have of course, no alternative but to take refuge in a secular horizontalism which tries to interpret and live our own lives on the same level . The coming thing is the spiritual dimension, the experience of God, the taste of eternity no matte~ how valid our social involvement (with ~regard to which we have a terrible'lot to make up). The coming thing is sober peace, in face of all the absurdity of existence, the absurdity which no social involvement will spirit away. That rather bour-geois- chequered spirituality which was found--to outward appearances at least--in the orders before the first world war and which influenced reli-gious life too much~ may belong to the past and the young may say rightly that it is useless.from the start. But a new spirituality in religious life and in the Church will be assured of a real future. Whatever form this new spirituality will have, it must surely~be a very 7he Vowed life in a Secularized Worm personal "faith in the Son of God who loved me and who sacrificed himself for my sake" (Ga 2:20) and a very integrating one, enabling us to "bring everything together~ under Christ" (Ep 1:10). This--it seemsto me--is the most serious challenge which secularization puts to vowed communities today. Integration Through Reflection As we saw, one of the deepest effects of secularization is disintegration. There is no longer any one overarching human legitimation for the think-ing person today. We, even as vowed people, stand and struggle side by side with the modem person in loneliness, doubts, fears' and feelings of disinte-gration. We too are among the "new poor." The third world is closer to us than we think; it is inside our shirts especially if we have already chosen the still greater poverty of fundamentalism with iis moral, dogmatic and spirit-ual naivet6 and ~elitism. We are, however, expected to .stand with our fellow Christians in seren-ity and in a "peace which the world cannot give" (Jfi 14:27). We stand with them in a spirit of confidence too, as Jesus did with his disciples, when for him and for them everything seemed lost; "I have told you all this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but be brave; I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:23). Only a life of prayer can discover and sustain this peace, this joy in the midst of a secularizing experience. Jesus led a busy life and had constant calls on his service, but we find the source of his power in the actual physical withdrawal, to be with God: "His reputation continued to grow and large crowds would gather to hear him and to have their sickness cured but ~he would always go away to some place to be alone and pray" (Lk 15:16). The form of prayer for today would seem to be what Macquarie calls "prayer as thinking";5 it is a prayer.which reflects on what God is doing in the world more than on what he,has done in scriptural times, without of course neglecting this latter. It is a praye~: which keeps our spiritual faculties alive. All reality, especially fast-changing or disintegrated reality~ is opaque and this is especially true in the m6dern world when ambiguity is part of life everywhere. We need to sharpen our spiritual eyesight to see what Bonhoffer described as the "holy depths" of.things and events. It is not so much a prayer "giving us time to refuel, but a prayer'which gives us increased awareness for better and deeper involvement and which motivates us for the human task of offering the world salvation from '~'everything that oppresses the.human person especially sin and the .evil one" (EN n. 9). Lest we ourselves succumb to the burnout of compulsive activity or the dropout of ceaseless seminars this life of "prayer as thinking" 1611/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 seems essential. . A long time ago, Christopher Dawson observed: "Men today are divided between those who have kept their spiritual roots and lost their contact with the existing order of society, and those who have preserved their social contacts and lost their spiritual roots." Could this be a descrip-tion of vowed persons today? Relativization of All Reality ~ I read somewhere that the Talmud says we will be held accountable to God for all the legitimate pleasures we have not enjoyed. When all this is said and dqne, there still remains the fact that so many of life's legitimate-- or even essential--pleasures are denied millions today, in even our devel-oped world. There also stands the fact that "we have not here a lasting city" (Heb 1:3:14) ahd that we possess only the certaintY of Christian hope: "We have a sure hope and the promise of an inheritance that can never be spoilt or soiled and never fade away because it is being kept for you in the heavens" (1 P 3:4). One part of our mission is to keep.Christian hope clearly before people and thus relativize reality, both good and evil. Secularization or not, the human person has a tendency to appropriate goods, material and spiritual, to hold them closely and even to be possessed by them. Our lives if they are lived in the simplicity and detachment which we .profess, will relativize the enjoyment or deprivation of material things and remind others that t.hey are to be shared: "Warn those who are rich in this world's goods, that they are not to look down on other people and not to set their hopes on money which is untrustworthy but on God, who out of his riches, gives us all that we need for our happiness. Tell them that they are to do good and be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share"(l Tm 6:17,18). We can do this "telling" by our lifestyle, before we do it in words, the opportunity for which may never come our way. We also speak to the poor enabling them to relativize their desire for justice and to recall that while they struggle for their rights, there isan opportunity for growth in their poverty too. "Listen, my dear brothers, it was those who are poor accord, ing to the world that God chose to be rich in faith and to be heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him" (Jm 2:5). Modernization has created so many who are enduring forced celibacy through broken marriages or infidelity and who are still avalanched by the media's sexual imperative. We can support these people even without speaking, because our lives experience the same yearnings and our minds are exposed to the same urgings and yet we struggle successfully on, with-out the assurance of genital involvement. But all this depends on our Vowed ~'fe in a Secularized World / 169 manifesting balanced and happy personalities, as people who have inte-grated their relationships and their sexuality in a healthy way. For secular-ized persons--many of whom suffer from confused psychosexuality--we can be supportive signs of survival and of fulfilled happiness through our lived celibacy. Individualism is a mark of the secularized person, coming very often as it does from hurt, insecurity and alienation. This can be so in our own communities too. The insecure person lives ambivalently between a desire to be accepted through cooperation and a fear of being dominated by submission. This is part of the disintegrating experience of modern life. If alienation is the pathology of our age, individualism is one of its clearest manifestations. By our vow of obedience lived out and seen not as "doing what one is told" but as discernment of what is best leadership in and through a caring community, we have much to say to the modern person about finding his or her own best expression of self in a confused world. It is even humanly true that "none of us is as wise as all of us." The secularized person, tempted to extreme individualism needs to rediscover this; for the good of ¯ families, local groups and for national and international survival, o Process.and Pilgrimage , It is clear that we vowed people will not be on the edge of the human experience of secularization and its consequential feeling of disintegration much longer. We share with men and women everywhere their search for stability and for lost certainties as the river of secularization tries to move all of us up, down and forward. To an extent, we found ourselves insulated from the human condition until recently, but no longer. Even if it were. not through necessity, we know that if we are to hold conversation with and to evangelize the world, we must pitch our tents within it; as God did. We must be prepared to pilgrimage our way once again and enter into the human process which we'should never have deserted. The fact that we accept this, will help so many others who find it difficult and who drop out into drugs or other forms of anomie and despair. Again, our vows lived authentically prepare us for the pilgrimage, ready us to keep moving, because we have publicly professed not to hold on, not to settle and not to be held. By our lived poverty, we refuse to be possessed by any material consideration and by our vows of chastity we also refuse to be possessed by ahy relationship. Obedience enables us to keep listening and looking at the map of moving events with eyes of faith and lbve. To quote Karl Rahner again from the same article: "The concrete future of Christianity, the Church and religious life remains largely hidden 17{I / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 from us . what historical and social form the Church and ecclesial Christianity will take in the future, remains largely hidden from us., we have to fight for victory without.a prognosis of victory" (p. 136). He was not° referring tothe effects of secularization at that time, but what he wrote is truer than ever now, and it puts us side by side and hopefully hand in hand with the modern man or woman as they endure the sec-ularization- experience. Interdependence and Involvement Our communities are not islands of isolated peace in a troubled uni-verse. No, they are sources from which we. emerge to makea more human and so a more godly world. Our vows enable us to do this; having freed us from, they also free usforLin a liberating way. ~',~ Our vow of poverty truly lived, makes us free for involvement. Because we have nothing to lose, we can carry the struggle for justice .further and when our lives are skilled in dispossession, we are not open to criticism from the rich~whose lives we question for the sake of the poor. Our good news for the poor has to be in some way perceived as bad news for the rich and they will readily point to any beam or bank account in our own lives if these are obvious. Only 'by relinquishing the power of possessions .can we demonstrate our competence to communicate freedom. Our vow of chastity makes us free to keep moving and to freely ask even our close friends: "Do you want to go away too?" (Jn 6:67). Again, we can take risks which married people with concern for their,families and for each other cannot be asked to take. Obedience, as we saw, offers us a freedom to live out a ,radar-like listening to God's word in the world around us. Truth comes only with listening :and discernment and these take. place best among a group of sharing people~ Obedience is .a public statement, that we bind ourselves to listen within and are missioned by a community through its leaders. This offers a model~for others to do the same in the Church. The quality of relationships and of concern for anyone at a distance suffers greatly in this time of disintegrative secularization, as each one looks to his or her own very personal success or survival. Nations do the same. This di-ama is, played out on a smaller scale every day in the average city too. Surely our communities have something important to say to people in this bleak situation. In our public interaction with one another° and for those who visit our communities,.the prayer ot~Jesus for his whole Church must tend towards .fulfillment: "_May they all be one, Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me" (.In 17:21). The Vowed Life in a Secularized Worm / 1.71 In' conclusion, I submit that we are approaching the ideal today, as we find the vowed life standing less at a point of comfortable distance from the world and more at a point of painful dialectic with it. At this point it must be ready to say a confirming yes or a challenging no--and do this by its life and activity--to all the results of secularization. To quote .the Anglican writer, Macquarie again: Here it must be said with regret that the trouble with some of our less responsible contemporary Christian secularizers is that they have taken up the ideal of holy worldliness, but seem to have promptly forgotten the adjective and reduced the ideal to a worldly concern tout court. They tell us that Christianity is a purely secular movement, their ideal of the good life seems scarcely distinguishable from the one that is so assiduously propagated by Madison Avenue, and the more extreme among them, in their horror at any supposed 'withdrawal' from the world, come near to advocating that the time has arrived to replace "poverty, chastity, and obedience with affluence, promiscuity, and autonomy as the highest goals for human life, or even as (he new evangelical counsels! The s!ogan for all this'is that w'e sho.uld 'say yes' to the world. But I do not think thata simple world affirmatioa will either help us to find God in the world or help the world to know his presence.6 - ~ Indeed, if we are to follow the words of Lumen Gentium, Chapter VI, par 44, the vowed life must say yes and no even to the Church itself. NOTES ~Facing Up to Moflernity, New York: Basic Books, 1977, 2John Macquarie, New Directions in Theology Today, Vol. III, p. 67, Philadelphia: 1981. 3"The Future of Religious Life" in Supplement to Doctrine and Life, Dublin: Domini-can l%_blications, May, 1972. 4The Greek' word anakephalasiosastai~is used in secular literature to express the con-ceptof many different ideas being subsumed under one theme. 5John Macquarie, Paths in Spirituality, Chapter 3, SCM Press, 1980, 6Op tit 2, p. 66. Vocation Ministry: Continuing the Invitation of Jesus Thomas E. Clark, ES.C. Brother Clark, Associate Vocation Director for the Chicago Province of the Christian Brothers, sees his work to be very much a ministry. This article is based on a presenta-tion he gave to the faculties of his congregation's schools in the Chicago area. He may be addressed at his .office: 200 De La Salle Drive; Romeoville, lllinois 60441. y ~vork 'as a full'time vocation minister for my community has often given me the opportunity to speak with young people, both individually and in groups, about the experience of being called by the Lord. My message to them is nearly identical to that of hundreds of other vocation ministers: each of us is called by God, each of us has a vocation, and it is up to each of us to discover what that vocation is. Onthe surface, the message seems clear, theologically sound, and understandable. However, what I have become aware of recently is th~at, in the two years I have been deliver-ing the message that each of us is called, the feeling with which I have been delivering that message has sometimes left something to be desired. Rather than offering a challenge to the young people with whbm I speak--a ch~allenge to discover a meaningful and significant way of living the Gospel ¯ in today's world--I've often felt that I am offering instead an apology for the choices I have made. It is as though the challenge of the Gospel might be just a little too naive for today's world, and to invite anyone to take it seriously may seem foolish and unrealistic. And even more foolish might be the invitation of young people to consider religious life and Church ministry as real options for themselves, ways of living out the Gospel challenge. I would certainly be out of touch with reality, I sometimes feel,-if I were to think that these people sitting in front of me--healthy, normal, 172 Vocation Ministry American young adults might consider religious life and Church ministry as serious-options for themselves. Thus when I speak with them, my invitation is sometimes clouded over with justifications ("I'm here today simply to make you aware of some choices I've made"), or sprinkled with "escape clauses" ("Any career you choose can be ministry"). The'underlying message, of course, is "I don't really expect you to consider any of these things for yourself." (In citing the above examples, of justification and "escape clauses," I do not mean to imply that there is no place in vocation ministry for "awareness education" or for a broad understanding of minis-try and community. On the contrary, these two approaches are essential to vocation ministry. They do not, however, constitute the whole of vocation ministry, and are sometimes used to avoid its more challenging aspect: that of invitation.) In speaking with a number of religious who are involved in vocation ministry, I have discovered that they, too, have much the same experience at times. Put simply, there are times when I do not believe there are any people who would be open to considering religious life as an option for themselves. Such an attitude is easily communicated to others, though it may not be directly stated,'and has the effect of turning away anyone who may consider religious life as a personal option. Further, a religious who holds such an attitude could never extend a confident and joyful invitation to an individual to consider religious life. It is my belief that such an attitude will keep religious not just from extending invitations to people to consider religious life, but on a deeper and more fundamental level, will keep us from fulfilling the responsibility we have to call people to build the kingdom of God. It is this invitation to the kingdom which is at the heart of vocation ministry, and which I wish to explore in more detail. In doing so, I shall consider several related topics: the model of invitation which Jesus gives us in the Gospels; vocation ministry as a means of living out that model; the philosophy of vocation ministry which has emerged in recent years; and finally, the challenge which we religious have been given in regard to vocation ministry. Jesus: Model of Invitation A simple perusal of the Gospels will show that Jesus had no hesitation about inviting peopl~ to follow him. His invitations are clear and concise. There is no misunderstanding what he means; the challenge is laid out on the table and nothing is hidden: Come after me and I will make you fishers of men (Mr 5:19). Follow me (Mr 9:9). Come and see (Jn 1:39). 1"/4/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 While such invitations may have been disarming or even~ unne ,rying to his listeners, it is difficult to imagine their being misunderstood. Jesus .has asked someone'to be his follower; it is as simple as that. ~ Neither does Jesus fail to make known to his followers his expe~ctations of them. In fact, his~requirements are so clear that~ sometimes they sound almost harsh. Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny his very self, thke Up his° '~ cross each day, and follow in my steps. Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it (Lk 9:23-24). ~.Let the dead bury their dead; come away and proclaim the kingdom of God (Lk 9:60). The requirements of following Jesus are great. He knows this, and does not hide this frown those whom he invites. At the same time, the invitation is issued with a certain excitement stemming from urgency of the call as well as its promise: Tliis is the tim~ of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Refo~-m ~our lives and believe in the Gospel! (Mk 1":5). Go a~d sell what you have and give to the poor; you will then have treasure in heaven. After that, come and follow me (Mk 10:21). This last invitation of Jesus was issued in response to the question of the rich young man, "What must I do to share in everlasting life?" (Mk 10".17). An.d it is here that we find out why Jesus issues the invitation t[iat he does: He knows everlasting life, and wants to share that with us. Again and again, Jesus promises us the kingdom and all that goes with it: fullness of life (Jn 10:10); complete joy (Jn 17:13); knowledge of th~ true God (Jn 17:3); the freedom of the truth (Jn 8:32); his own peace (Jn 14:27); the hundredfold and ~verlasting life (Mk 10:30). Jesus knows the k.ingdom and the gifts of the kingdom, and wants that experience for those to whom he has been sent. Herein we find the motivation behind his in~vitation, his c~all to take up the cross, [o sell all our possessions, to follow him. It is becaus~ he knows it will lead to the kingdom and everlasting lye,, arid he wants nothing less for us. It is love which has produced the clear, concise and even harsh invitation we find in the Gospel. With what kind of response .did Jesus' invitation meet? The Gospels sl~ow us pictures of every kind of response imaginable: Peter and Andrew "abandoned their nets and became his followers," as did James and John (Mt 4:20-22); Matthew left his post as tax collec~tor (Mt 9:9). The rich young man went away sad because of his many possessions (Mk 10:22). In a particularl~ poignant episode ~ecorded in John's gospel, Jesus' teaching leads many of his disciples to protest and ultimately to break away from his company. On seeing this, Jesus asks the Twelve if they, too, will leave him. Vocation Ministry / 175 Peter responds, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words :of eternal life" (Jn 6:60 ff.). Thus, the responses to Jesus' invitations are many and varied, for Jesus always allowed the individual to respond freely. What is evident, however, is that Jesus never stopped inviting, no matter what kind of response he met with. For Jesus, the important thing is that everyone be invited to follow him and to proclaim the kingdom. Negative responses, while disheartening, must not keep one from continuing to:issue the call, for all people deserve the opportunity to respond to the call. It is a matter of no :smalLsignificance, I believe, that the final words of Jesus in John's gospel are: "Follow me" (Jn 21:22). Continuing the Invitation: Vocation Ministry What does this never-ending invitation mean for us religio.us? What does it tell us, not only about our own response to Jesus' call, but about the mess-age we takb to the ~vorld? We have noted that Jesus' invitation flows from his expe~rience. He knows the Father, and the life that the Father gives~ Be.cause he knows, he Can ~nvite clearly, concisely and with authority. As men and women who have made life choices for the kingdom, and who have shared, at least in part, in the life of the kingdom, we too can invite others to embrace th~ kingdom. As men and women who have clearly chosen community and. ministry in the Church, we can invite others to conside~ community and ministry in the Chhrch as optionsfor.themselves. As men and women who have experieficed joy and. peace and life in these choices, as well as hardship and even pain, we can invite with the same confidence of Jesus, for we, too, know the burden and the gifts of the kingdom. In fact, Oot only can we continue to issue the invitation of Jesus, but in a certain sense, we have a responsibility to issue that invitation. !n a world where nuclear holocaust seems imminent, where starvation is the daily experience of millions, where poverty, unemployment and illiteracy a.re the lifestyle of whole ~egments of the world population.---in such a world, we who have been given the knowledge of the kingdom have a responsibility to call others to build that kingdom. In a world where people, especially young people, are searching for meaning and significance in their lives, where many live in confusion caused by crises of every kind, where whole societies are caught in the race for economic and political superiority--in such a world, we who have been promised the everlasting life of the kingdom have a responsibility to share that gift with this world. It is not that we .are holier o.r wiser than the rest of the world. Rather, we have been given the gift ~of a vision of how things can be. It is not our vision; it is God's vision that we have been given. And because we have 176/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 been given the vision, we must also bear theresponsibility--sometimes the burdgnsome responsibility--of calling others to God's vision. As religious, we have publicly proclaimed with joy and faith our desire to be a part of the kingdom, and that desire has been accepted joyfully by God. Now we must set ourselves to the task of inviting others, with our lives, to the ultimate meaning and significance which God's vision, the vision of the Kingdom, holds for the world. In the course of this lived invitation, we, like Jesus, must invite others clearly, concisely and directly to join us in bringing about God's vision for the world. We have the responsibility to say to people: "Sell all you have, give to the poor, and come away to proclaim the kingdom of God!" We must invite those with whom we work and pray and live to "Come and see" what we have seen. Like Jesus, our invitation will have authority if its motivation is love and its roots are found in our lived experien.ce. Thus, if we have found the meaning and significance of the kingdom in our religious commitment, in our community life, and in our ministry, then we must invlte others to that same experience. If religious life has been the context of God's kingdom for us, then we must invite others to consider that same context for themselves. We cannot deny others the opportunity that is ours, the gift we have been given in religious life. I believe that not to make others aware of this gift, not to speak of God's vision for us, and most importantly, not to invite others to consider this gift for themselves would constitute such a denial. I believe that vocation ministry if you will, the ministry of invitation and discovery--can be a powerful means of carrying on the invitation of Jesus. A Philosophy of ¥ootion Ministry Vocation ministry has emerged in recent years as a valid and accepted ministry in the ~Church. This emergence is due in large part to a new u~nderstanding of vocation ministry, an understanding which has its foun-dation in the model of 'invitation which Jesus provides in the Gospel. Unfortunateiy, this approach to vocation ministry is not' understood by many religious, and consequently keeps them from supporting the voca-tion efforts of their communities, and even more importantly, from involv-ing themselves in these efforts. As we have seen, vocation ministry, when considered as a ministry of invitation, is modeled by Jesus. But such an understanding of vocation ministry is relatively new. There was ~ time in the not too distant past (and which still e~xists today in some circles) when vocation ministry was consi-dered to be "recruitment," and the person who did this work was known as the "recruiter." This designation was appropriate at the time, for the person Vocation Ministry / 177 who served as a recruiter for a religious community attempted to find and enlist people, especially young peol~le, who seemed suitable for her or his particular community. The religious recruiter was searching for people to carry onthe work--the good work---of her or. his congregation. The job of the religious recruiter was similar to that of recruiters for the military, for schools or for corporations: namely, to ensure the continuance of the group's interests. The beneficiary of this process was the group and in 'the case of the religious recruiter, the beneficiary was her or his community and the people the community served. The term "recruitment" and the philosophy ~vhich it designates does not fit what Jesus does in the Gospels when he invites people to follow him. I believe that as the work of "recruitment" becomes more and more pat-terned after the model of invitation which Jesus provides, we need to call it by another name. It is at this point that we can begin to speak of "vocation ministry." The difference in language is reflective of the difference in philos-ophy and practice. It is, in fact, the difference between "recruitment and ministry," and it is shown in a new role for the person who does this work. This role is no longer one of serving primarily the needs of the congrega-tion, but is one of serving the needs of the people with whom the vocation minister works directly, the people whom she or he assists in discovering how and where and with whom the Lord calls them to build the kingdom. The priorities of the vocation minister have changed, from a focus on ensuring that the life of her or his congregation continues by enlisting people into the order, to a focus on ensuring that people discover who it is that God calls them to be. The agenda from which the vocation minister works has changed, from being primarily the order's agenda, to being primarily God's agenda. To some, such differentiation rhay seem too subtle to be of any impor-tance; .it may even seem like hairsplitting or word games. I believe, how-ever, that it is not too subtle, nor is =it hairsplitting, nor is it word games. For when looked at from the perspective of the person attempting to discern God's call, and especially the young person faced with fife-choices to make, there is a world of difference between the recruiter who wants that person to be a sister or brother or priest, and the minister who wants to help that person discover where God calls him or her to build the kingdom, where life will hold the most meaning for him or her, with no preconceived notion of where that might be. I contend further that, when considered from God's perspective, there is an ~ven more profound difference between "recruitment" and "ministry." It is the difference between the recruiter who believes that the continuance of her or his congregation is in the recruiter's hands, and that it is up to the recruiter to supply the needs of the order; and 1711 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 the minister.who trusts that God callg people to build his kingdom as sisters,, brothers, priests, married people and single people, and belieVes that her or his role is to act as Jesus did in inviting people to listen for God's .call and to act on it. Such a stand places the responsibility for supplying the needs of the order in God's hands, and~ recognizes the responsibility of the vocation minister and° the members of the congrega-tion to act as instruments-of his call by issuing the invitation to the kingdom. ~ Vocation ministry, and not recruitment, is the responsibility of every religious. It is a responsibility which stems not from fear for the future of religious life, but rather from the fact that each of us has been given a great and wonderful gift in religious life, a gift which must be shared with others. Our invitation to religious life is given in the context of the kingdom: because we have known the kingdom in our life and ministry with one another, we'invite others to that same experience. It is not recruitment for a particular order that vocation ministry is about; it is an invitation to nothing less than the kingdom of God that we,. as religious, must be about. The Challenge to Re!igious When vocation ministry is seen not as recruitment but as a ministry whose foundation is the model of invitation, which Jesus himself offers, an entirely new challenge is given to .religious. It is a challenge which brings about a n.ew set of questions: --Have I ~experien~ed the kingdom of"God? Where and with. whom was that experience~of the kingdom ? --Is the experience of living in religious community and doing Church ministry an experience of the kingdom for me? --Do I sense both the responsibility and the desire to share the king-dom with others by inviting them to build the kingdom? -~Am I willing to invite others to consider religious community and Church ministry as a way of building the kingdom, a way which has been life-giving and Satisfying for me? I believe that we religious can continue to invite others to join us i~n community and m~nistry. Some Of those whom we invite will join us; others will find another flay of building the. kingdom; still others~will go away sad. But vhatever the response, we can continue to invite, secure in the knowl-keidngged otmha~t,, tion wouhric rhe lwigei oinuvs i~teo mthmosiet mwehnotm, w we eh maveee tb. eOenu rg iinvveinta"ati osnh ai'sr.em iont it-he vated not by fear of the fu(ure, but rather by a sincere desire to share the gift we have been given, With joy ~and confidence we can coniinue to spe~k the invitation of Jesus: "Come away and proclaim the kingdom of God!" Gentle Exile: Reflections on Formation Mary Ellen Dougherty~ S.S.N.D. After a long stint in formation work for her community, Sister Dougherty has returned to the teaching of English. Sh.e may be addressed at The College of Notre Dame of Maryland; 4701 N. Charles Street; Baltimore, Maryland 21210. Shortly.before I finished a long term in formation work, I told myself that eventually I would write an article that might be of use to others in that ministry. I waited. I needed distance. After a year or so, subjectivity settled into uncertainty. I did not know what I wanted to say. Now, more than four years later, I think 1 do. ~ Initially, I would have commented on the characteristics of candidates currently interested in religious life, the inevitable challenges in dealing with them, and the necessity of both structure and latitude in a formation program. I would have talked about the generosity of young people in ministry, their ambivalence about vows. Now, however, I would like to focus on formation, personnel. 1 address my remarks especially to those who are in the work, and to those who .are considering it as ministry. In more than.eight ye~ars in this ministry, I worked, directly, in various team arrangements, with eight different directors. As director of novices, I participated, with the novices, in intercommunity programs in which directors shared on a regular basis. I speak, then, out of my own experience, and out of some ongoing reflections with at least two dozen directors, men and women. And I speak, still, tentatively. These are my insights now. In many ways I was nbt an effective director. In some ways I was. I have learned from both. I do not think there is a standard profile for a successful director~ There are countless variations on virtues that could be 179 1110/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 considered. Certainly a consistent attitude and practice of prayer, along with a keen mind and a clean heart, are essential. Inner freedom issuing from a clear depth of uncluttered spirituality is central. It is not my intention, however, to explore these here. That, perhaps, is another article. I would like, instead, to address three fundamental areas which, in practice, prove t.o be crucial: experience, affectivity, and integrity. Experience Age, I think, is only a factor for the director insofar as it permits experience. What one has done is not necessarily what one has experienced. To receive experiences of poverty, failure, darkness, in the light of grace, balanced with experiences of fulfillment and productivity, requires time; one must have lived long enough and well enough to know the inevitability of the rhythm, to expect the seasons to change. In that sense, age is important. It is not just what one has experienced, but what one has not experienced that should be consid~reff. One who has been given the time to live as well as the time to die, and has learned to receive both with equanimity, has lived long enough. And one who has not, should not be expected to deal with her own discoveries easily in the context of formation work. Events may always surprise us; the curr~nt of life should not. Affectivity I am not professionally equipped in terms of academic background t6 talk about the psychology of affectivity, or stages of affective development. My observations are purely practical: when the affective or relational life of a director is undeveloped or undernourished, there are generall~ relational problems with those she is directing; these are Often lodged in some variation of dependency, usually mutual. The director, from my observa-tions, usually takes the relationship more seriously, in the long run, than the candidate; the director seems to have some expectations of permanence, whereas the candidate, especially if she is young, is more than likely to tr~insfer her emotions rather quickly. There often is, however, some degree of mutual destruction. It is essential, 'then, that formation directors have the capacity for, and the activity of, peer relationships, that over the years they demonstrate an ability to interact in friendship with inutuality and absence of unwarranted dependency. The demands of formation work are constant and draining, especially if the director is living ~vith her directees. Candidates, especially younger ones, often exhibit a love-hate response toward authority. Unless the director has a belief in her own lovableness, created by a deep personal sense of God, and the experience of significant peer relationships over the years, she can be quickly undone. So can those Gentle Exile / 1111 she directs. Oia the other hand, a director who has a variety of relationships, and who is secure in at least a few of them, is not likely to need her directees. She may, over the months or the years, develop some friendships among them, but these will be a matter of choice, not of necessity. Integrity, Given a person who has lived long enough and loved hard enough, we come to the point of integrity, which I use in a limited sense here. I speak only of that dimension of integrity which enables one to experience some independent clarity about the truth, and to be faithful to it in spite of opposition. It is not my intention to suggest moral judgments. Like many people in positions of authority, formation directors must be able, if necessary, to stand alone. They must be capable of making and living out graced decisions which may create great conflict. And they must be as capable of independent thinking as, they are of consultation. A director who is not comfortable thinking for herself, who relies too heavily on approval and too little, on her own graced instincts, is usually transparent to her directees; wittingly or unwittingly, they may use her. While the need for dialogue, for collaboration, for consensus cannot be overstated, neither can the need for slow, clear, independent decisions that begin in the deepest level of self, where, in the face of opposition, integrity, a matter of grace, becomes a manifestation of courage. When all is said and done, it is fidelity (or infidelity) to the graced self with whom one must live. There is nothing new under the sun. The ability to receive experience and to let it become wisdom; the calbacity to love and to be loved without ownership; the self-possession and the faith to risk a gentle (or not so gentle) exile--these are characteristic of any authority who claims Jesus as her source. If formation work is anything, it is daily. If anyone needs Jesus as her source, a formation director does. Working with the Young Adult with Temporary Vows Vito Aresto, EM. S._ Brother Aresto is Vice Provincial and .Director of Formation for,the Poughkeepsie (NY) Province of the Marist Brothers. Heohas been ,working with brothers under temporary profession for more than six years. He may be addressed at his Vice-Pro-vincial Office: 4200 W. l i5th Street; Chicago, Illinois 60655. Much has been written over the last several years about_the conditions and problems of the yoeng adult within formation programs of, religious life. Since many of the young people who come seeking this new lifestyle come after years 9f college or work experience, formation directors are finding that the traditionally tried and true methods, of formation~seem to contain significant gaps when dealing with this new kind of person. The problem becomes even more complicated when the young person is in t~emporary vows. In this paper I would like to delve into some of the significant areas that have emerged in my working with our temporary professed. For the most part they are young men who have achieved rather comfortable recogni-tion professionally. They have taken their first vows in their middle twen-ties and look forward to years of growth and service within religious life. Final profession comes somewhere around age thirty. Developmental psychology has examined this period of growth young adulthood with great earnestness. Clearly, it is being recggnized that as life develops it confronts, struggles, and tackles successive issues in life's fabric and resolves them only to move forward to confront still newer issues towards growth. Such progress is noted as maturation, growing in one's potential, developing into a full human person. ~Vorking with the Young Adult . When the issues of spirituality are overlayed upon this rich process, we begin to see something of the concept of conversion. Obviously, when one begins to probe conversion, there is a point where even the best of the social sciences"pales before the mystery of faith: But nonetheless, we can learn much about growth and developmenL particularly in the struggles of a young adult who is attempting to find his or her place within a religious .family. This unfolding of life's grandeur and mystery is not at all easy. It can never be pain free if it is authentic. For the formation personnel working with young religious a good grasp of this process is obviously needed. Crisis needs to be viewed as part of the human drama, and neither .overstated nor underplayed. Rather the formation director can be a calming influence for~ individuals as they probe the' issues and unravel a course of action. In this light it is also very important to note that the director ~should be very comfortable with assisting the young adult to tap into such helping services as therapy or spiritual direction. It is important to realize that the varying issues which emerge are not all vocational conflicts. Rather some very necessary growing-pain situations may be interpreted as "vocational,' which in actual fact are merely struggles with growth issues. At other times personal,life issues may be confused as stress issues needing therapy, but are deeply vocational. Finally, there may be.a blend of both. It is the task of the formatioh director .as calming influence to help the young person wade through the issues, and recognize where they lie. In naming the dil~.~a, the course.to resolution becomes less threatening. For most young religious the transition from novitiate life to active ministry carries with it some straining adjustments. There is a great differ, ence between accepting the need to integrate the essential elements of reli-gious life and actually attempting to do so. This strain to interpret and realize the ideal can either bring about growth in young persons, or have them develop a selective sense which, ma~y in the long run distort growth. Each person must face honestly that the balance of the essential elements of the religious life structure cannot be merely put aside for some personal notion of the greater good. In the long run true growth for the young religious only takes place in confronting each aspect of vowed life as important, and then developing a proper rhythm for themselves. Fidelity to their vowed commitment must be presented as their primary work, By doing this they will be realistic in discerning this lifestyle within their congregation and how it truly fits into their own needs ~ind response to the Lord and his people. This approach, one that asks young persons not to compromise any aspect of their vowed commitment, even when faced with the tremendous 11t4 / Review for Religi~ous, March.April, 1986 pressures of the varying adjustments of prayer, community and apostolate, is utterly honest in recognizing and treating religious as adults. The fact remains that as they unravel their dreams and expectationsi they must also be totally immersed in what actually is the life they now share in their new religious family. This task can become even more burdensome as the young religious begin to recognize and feel the depth of confusion, and even sinfulness within their chosen religious family. Yet, within this sobering reality one fundamental task for.the temporary professed religious is to come to real-ize whether their dreams can be honestly integrated within this particular congregation. If this cannot be done then an honest and courageous act would be to depart. The Lord is not asking anyone to surrender his or her dreams, nor is he asking the impossible in great and massive adjustments to what a person holds sacred to the purpose and direction in life. It becomes the task of the formation director to help and accompany the young religious in this discerning process. But the director should never water down or compromise in the name of charity what he or she knows are realities incompatible to the values and goals of the congregation. Furthermore, the director must a.lways make the distinction between fidel-ity to a lifestyle and fidelity to the Lord. The young must come to realize that commitment to Jesus as their Lord can be lived in all the genuine forms and calls to holiness within the Church. Hopefully, the novitiate process has solidly grounded these young persons in their commitment to Jesus. Temporary vows must focus on the parameters of this particular religious family and charism as one valid and true means towards holiness for this young religious. Therefore, a truly respectful and, honest relationship must exist between the formation direc-tor and the young religious so that.real growth and integrity can develop. It is of paramount importance then, that the young,~religious' dreams must be found to be possible in the congregation they have chosen to enter. This is not only vitally important for the growth and development of the young religious, it is also vital for the growth and development of the congregation. The life given to this young religious by God is also a gift of life for all the members of the congregation. When such interaction is in process a certain sense of peace and purpose prevail. When it is. not present one readily begins to sense and hear bitterness, sarcasm, and resentment., Understanding the vital need of a dream in a young religious' life must therefore be one of the important areas into which a director must examine and explore. The novitiate will set up ideals that are solidly grounded in spiritual and scriptural foundations, but these ideals will not be realized except in the attempt at the actual riving out of community within, a local Working with the Young Adult / 1115 setting. It must be realized that each local community is itself struggling to unravel the full meaning and purpose of its shared life direction. Although young religious may leave the novitiate in full recognition that life is a process of growth and integration, it will only be in the experience of community that they will begin to understand the journey with their broth-ers or sisters that they have begun. Therefore, understanding the dreams and also knowing deeply the real struggles of this religious family is a task that each formation director must grasp when dealing with temporary professed. Ultimately, the focus must be turned completely on the Lord. He must remain the very purpose and intention of the young religious. Service will only .spring from the well of deep commitment to the Lord who loved all people even, unto death. More times than not, the young religious' grasp of the importance of intimacy is also wrapped up in their understanding of their dream. They do not enter religious life accepting the fact that there will be little or no intimate relationships in their lives. Obviously, religious life does afford the opportunities for a rich relational life; but that can only come through the struggle of integrating the vows in the light of each one's intimate relational needs. For young religious who must deal with this issue through the maze of the various transitional periods of growth, the very issue of intimacy can become pivotal to successful integration, and thus to peace within this chosen lifestyle. The movement towards dealing with one's~relational life also has impli-cations for community and ministerial life. In community this can expand one's depth of compassion, and in ministry it can help focus one's work beyond the notion of career to an expression of the Lord's service con-tinued through his Church. Each step of this awareness will heighten the young religious' recognition that he or she has truly been called by Another. Gradually imprinted upon the life and work of each young reli-gious is the paschal ,mystery, each one's transformation into Christ. The weathering of growth issues can therefore be the seed for a deepening of vocational understanding that is not only personal but intimate with the Lord. As young religious move closer to their thirtieth year there is to be noted a very subtle but careful evaluation taking place. Some significant issues have emerged and been confronted. The young religious also begin to recognize.that all the aspects of their dreams and aspirations may not be completely realized. They begin to feel, and not merely know, the implica-tions of being chaste and obedient. The cultural values of their society, with its push towards success, ambition, and recognition weigh on their poverty. Ultimately, as final commitment approaches, so does the trauma of the 186 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 "second calling." It is at this moment that the formation director must gently accompany~the young religious. The time for mentofing has ended. It becomes important that unconditional acceptance pervade the whole relationship, If the journey through those years of temporary vows has been honest and rich in successful and mature handling of life issues, then the response to this second calling--a permanent commitment to the Lord within this congregation--will~ be made with the totality possible to this young adult. Fundamentally, as one accompanies young adults~through their initial years of religious commitment, one quickly realizes that formation is.lrela-tional growth. The young religious come eager to respond to the Lord~. Their response has been wrapped and colored within their dreams of Ltheir future life and ministry. Novitiate naturally assists in a solid grounding and underpinning, but it°is not until there is full immersion in the daily routine of life in common and in ministry that they begin to confront and grow within their religious commitment. For the formation director the journey of this pilgrimage is one of trust and love. Ultimately, the individual must come to a sense of'personal peace. This peace is only born in the honest relational growth between each individual and the Lord, between the individual and his or her brothers or sisters, and the individual and the people they are sent to work with and serve. This peace should become the full flowering of a love that rests solidly on the motivation and direction of a life-decision made to the Lord and his people, within this special band of disciples that he or she chose for a religious family. '~ Reflectively, we can turn to Jesus as the model for the formation director who works' with young adults. Particularly is this so if we. focus upon his dealings with Peter. Here we note the care and compassion that must be evidenced by the director. For three years Jesus guided, taught and challenged Peter. These lessons werenot ~beyond the scope of correction and prodding, but they were also done in sincere and tender cbncern. And yet when the supreme :momefit for Jesus arrived, his hour of glory, Peter was still unaware of the magnitude of Jesus' mission. Much like the novice who enters first profession, Peter needed to continue to grow and ~be challenged, even in the darkness of near despair. It was not until the depth of his relationship with the Lord was securely grounded that Peter was ready to shepherd. Only then did he fully comprehend the-initial call that was repeated in the marvelous second calling at the end of John's gospel, "Do you love me? . Come, follow me!" Strangely enough in that rich relational bond between Peter and the Lord did his fondest dreams become rei~l. He no longer needed~io hold Working with the Young Adult / 187 tightly to privilege or rank. Now he no longer saw himself as solely the "rock," but rather could he challenge all that he shepherded to be "living stones," part of the "edifice" of the Lord and his Church. He understood clearly all that was needed to continue the process of growth, a journey into wholeness and holiness. For the young religious the journey is similar. The director must guide and accompany them so that the echo of the initial call of the Lord can be profoundly realized and incorporated into the very identity and dreams of these young persons. Permanent commitment becomes a full expression of a relationship that is central to their meaning and purpose. Christ the Center of Our Vowed Life by" ~Boniface Ramsey, O.P. Father Ramsey's three articles on .,the vows of religion are available as a single reprint: i - The Center of Religious Poverty ii - Christocentric Celibacy iii - Cru~ciform Obedience Price: $1.75 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review ~or Religious Rm 428 ~3601 Lindell Blvd. St: Louis, Missouri 63108 Commitment in a Religious Order: A Sociological View Joseph C. Doyle Dr. Doyle teaches at Seton Hall University (South Orange Ave; South Orange, Neff Jersey 07079), where he may be addressed. There is a special quality about people who are committed to something, whether it be to another person, a group, an organization, a career, or an idea. That quality can be captured by such words as "loyalty," "allegiance," or "steadfastness." For to be committed is to be involved in a relationship which has priority in one's life over alternative relationships or only one-self. This does not mean that a person's other involvements are ignored bu.t only that when push comes to shove this relationship has singular importance. Obviously, this is a key feature of religious life, for the purpose of religious orders is to foster growth in each member's commitment to Christ. In fact, it has often been assumed, both by people within and without such institutions, that this is the sole ~ocus of the members' ~om-mitments-- that they "have the faith." In the past fifteen years or so, how-ever, the large scale exodus of members from the various forms of religious life has raised serious questions in many quarters concerning this one dimensional view of religious commitment. In particular, such authors as ~Marie Augusta Neal,~ Helen Ebaugh,2 Lucinda San Giovanni,3 Richard Schoenhern and Andrew Greeley,4 and Patricia Wittberg5 have all attemp-ted to shed a social scientific light on some of these questions. This paper is meant to be a reflection on some themes developed out of this tradition. It will attempt to present the results of some findings gleaned 188 Commitment in a Religious Order / 1119 from interviews with twenty women involved in a religious order in the eastern United States. Its major interest will be the way commitment in religious life passes through different forms, forms which seem to be affected by the kinds oof structures established by religious orders and by the way their members respond to these structures. It is, of course, danger-ous to generalize from a group 6f this size. Thus, the following remarks should be read as an'effort to explore some pertinent issues in the quality of commitment rhther than to offer a definitive statement on these issues. I. Sociology and Commitment Because this paper relies upon insights developed in sociology, perhaps it would be helpful to first briefly explain some key sociological ideas concerning commitment before delving into the material from the in/er-views. Over the past thirty years or so, sociology has developed a number of concepts for dealing with the experience of commitment. By and large, these ideas are rooted in the perspective that c6mrnitment is the result of certain ,mechanisms operating in groups or organizations that mold indi-viduals into loyal members. Thus; the primary attention is on how these social factors operate to produce a committed person. One of the more prominent efforts in this field can be found in the work of Rosabeth Kanter, particularly in her book Commitment and Community.6 While the analysis that follows utilizes these insights, it also attempts to show how individual members of a religious order responded to these forces and tried to grow beyond them. Kanter views commitment in terms of three interrelated dimensions: instrumental, affe.ctive.and moral. In addition, each of these dimensions is the result of a set of factors bY which a community leads its novices into full membership. By instrumental commitment Kanter means a felt attachment to a social role that is more rewarding or less costly than the roles outside of the community. In this kind of commitment the person wants to live up to the behavioral expectations that others in the community have of him or her. This attachm~ent is achieved, according to Kanter, by having the novice undergo experiences ,whereby the individual has to invest her time and energy in doing the work of the community and to sacrifice her own possessions on behalf of the community. In this way the person finds himself or herself wanting to remain because of all that has been expended ¯ in the effort to achieve full membership. As Kanter puts it: When profits and costs are considered, participants find the cost of leaving the system would be greater than the cost of remaining; "profit," in a net psychic sense, compels continual part;_cipation.7 190/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 By affective commitment Kanter means an attachment to a set of relationships whose ties are more gratifying than the ties with .alternative relationships. To find a particular,~set of relatio, nships more gratifying than others means recognizing that set as the,primary source of. affection and support in one's life. This dimension is realized by having novice members renounc6 all previous ties of affection as being primary for them and by involving them in communal activities with members of th~eir group. In these ways the new participant comes to develop emotional ties with these others and a cohesive bond develops amongst them. Finally, by moral or normative commitment'Kanter means an alle-giance to the values and norms of the community and a willingness to obey the authority structure of the community as the ultimate interpreter of those norms and .values. However, this allegiance doesonot necessarily develop after a careful evaluation of these norms and structures. Instead, Kanter sees this dimension arising from a set of beliefs and values that have been internalized in an often irrational or unc_ritical way. In Some respects, commitment to norms and values resembles the concept of superego, which binds the evaluative components bf the self t6 norms of a system through an internalized authority.8 The moral commitment of members is achieved, Kanter notes, by techniques that encourage novices to'deny significance to their own ideas and desires and to place their trust more in the community than 'in them-selves. Thus, new members come to see the way of life of the coinmunity as more meaningful than that of competing alternatives. This sociological view of commitment may, at first sight, be rather upsetting to people who form a community in order "to ddepen their rela-~ tionship with God. '-I Would suggest that this reaction is a rather well-founded one. For what sociology has uncovered, and what many of the" religious women 1 interviewed realized after being in their order for a few years, is that there can be a very real difference between commitment to God and commitment to a religious organization. For this latter institution attempts to offer its members a way to God, but lhis "way" is embodied in historically realized rules, procedures;practices and customs that can often become ends in themselves in the minds and hearts of these members. The sociological point, of course, is that a religiouscommunity hasto empha-size these aspects if it is going to survive and so it has to foster commitment to them. Naturally, a religious institution hopes that its" members will develop spiritually by such practices, and many have done so. Nevertheless, as the' following analysis will show, the danger can also be that the corn= mitment does not get beyond these dimensions. How that can'happen and what can be done about it are the concerns of the rest of this paper. Commitment in a Religious Order / "191 II. A Sociology of Commitment in Religious Life A. Internalizing a Theme ~ The model of commitment presented by Kanter can be a useful tool for interpreting the experiences of the twenty women I interviewed. While these women all came from the same order, they varied as far as age (32-63), length of time in the order (9 years to over 40 years), and the kind of positions they held at the time of the interview (teaching, pastoral and the central administration of the order). Nevertheless, they all described their early years in religious life in ways that can b~e captured by Kanter's categories. 1: Internalizing the Instrumental Dimension One of the interesting findings of these interviews was that many of the nuns felt that the years taken up by their training were preoccupied with the proper performance of their duties, with what they called "the externals." In Kanter's terminology they were committed to the role of a religious person. She claims that it is possible for a person just to behave in a committed way, i:e., remain in the group but not necessarily care about the ideals or values of that group.9 While she'herself did not think that this was a full commitment, she did seeit as a possibility. When the nrns were asked about significant changes in their lives, one of the events frequently brought up was when they recognized that they had been caught up in the mere activity of being a nun. For example: when I came to religious hfe I switched to the externals because that is what I thought I was supposed to do and that was what was always talked about., how you dressed, how you performed this and how you did your chores, but I wasn't co~mfortable with that. When we first entered, the activities were important as you grow into being a member of the community. I think at some point you get caught up in the reception of the habit., that is a big day in your life., and you try to act like the pdrfect nun and" that sort of thing. ~ In addition to acting out the role of a reli~gious woman, many of the respondents reported recognizing, a period in their lives when their minis-try, or more pr.ecisel3~, their work, was mrre important to them than any other dimension. Years ago, I guess I was work-oriented and it was the thing that people saw. And the thing I could let go of was my prayer life because no one ever saw that and I wasn't accountable for it. I cou.ld go to confession and say I didn't haeditate that week and that wruld t~ike care of the guilt part. But I never made ~ny cofinectionJwith the rest of iny life. 192 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 As these quotes indicate, the focus on minist.ry and on the proper fulfillment of the "externals" of the religious role were the dimensions to which most of these women became initially committed. ,And, for some of these sisters, the ministry remained central for them well beyond the period of their training. However, while this was a key feature of religious life for many of these women, they eventually began to question the validity of this preoccupa-tion, and for some this orientation is no longer dominant in their lives. 2. Internalizing the Affective Dimension Kanter's second type of commitment was also evident at an early stage of the nun's training. For some of these women, this. involvement in community life coincided with their involvement in ministry. What did you think you were committing yourself to at that~time? I thought I was committing myself to ministry and to community life but not to a deep personal prayer life. I was still struggling with thaIt t.r.i.e. d to take time for it but more often than not, that got pushed aside. What was there about ministry and community life that made you want to commit yourself?. I just" saw goo~d in it. I saw myself functioning very well in it, being comfortable in it, not having any kind of desire not to be there. Some of the other nuns, however, found that a focus on community followed, in time, a commitment to ministry, and sometimes the tension between ministry and community would be resolved in favor of community¯ , ¯. I consider myselfa community-minded person; for whatever reason, ~ prefer working within the community., like coming to the infirmary and working right here with our sisters. I was more than happy todo that. I didn't find myself looking to go really outside of the community. (I. Why was that~ Well, I guess in that it's doing for my own sisters, primarily, rather than people on the outside¯ You are doing the same kind of thing but for whatever reason my preference would be my sisters first. Thus, while ministry may be seen as rewarding, by itself it does not suffice. For this woman and for others, it was and still is a matter of the emotional bond one has with the group with whom she rhinisters that is crucial. Where ministry can be judged in terms of rewards and costs, more non-rational considerations have to be used to judge the relationships one has with others. However, ~s was seen in the discussion of instrumental commitment, this affective dimension did not r6main as dominant for all the nuns. As the following quote suggests, this orientation is no longer as crucial as it once was. Commitment in a Religious Order / 1~ ¯ I really don't know how we remained faithful then. I'm sure if it was another type of community, I don't know, maybe it's because we're more of a family, you know, we feel for one another, um, and that was always our sister, and if you didn't hang in there because your superiors were no good, you'd hang in there because your friends were there. Your commitment to them kind of seemed important to you. 3. Internalizing the Normative Dimension Finally, the third of Kanter's types of commitment was also a focus of allegiance for most of the women during their training. This is particularly obvious in the way many of them had accepted the authority of their superiors during that period. ¯. 1 never felt pressured or stepped on or however people fed. I never felt that. I guess as I entered community it was something I wanted to do. or the Lord called me to do, so I did what I was supposed to do . However, while there were nuns who were very compliant, some found themselves questioning the purpose behind some of the orders. For them, willing obedience was built on an obedience motivated by a fear of being dismissed. Were there people in your class who questioned a lot? Yes, they are no longer here. In novitiate I was very docile. I was probably stupid. If they told me tO do it, I did it because if you didn't do it, they were going to send you home. ~. So you did it out of fear more than anything else. Yes. Yet I liked the days of formation and everything else, but if they said do it, I did it; and when we did it and thought it was crazy, we Used to laugh about it, but we still did it.°, there was no heart in it or anything like that, but we did it to shut them up and get them off our backs. Whether this emphasis on atithority and obedience was complied with willingly or out of fear, it had a dual effect in the training period: it seemed to focus attention on role conformity or the "externals," as was seen before, and it created a sense of dependency on the leadership of the community in many of these women. But in the minds of some Of the nuns, this would often translate into valuing obedience to the rules 'over the needs encountered in one's ministry. Let's say the mother of one of the children was pregnant and her husband had just kicked her in the stomach and kicked her downstairs, and she came to me after ~chool, as did happen once, and when I tried to share with her and show her a little sympathy, I got in trouble because I stayed over in school even though it was that type of thing. I didn't mind getting into trouble, but ! just couldn't understand that whole thing. And in those 1~ / Review for Religious, March-ApriL 1986 days, if she came again, I would probably say "I can't see you," thinking that obedience was the greater thing at that time~ While some of the evidence suggests that many of the nuns interpreted this dependency on authority as something they have left'behind, this is not so for all of them. Even with the much publicized changes in convent life, with the "loosening up of the structures," the importance of the normative dimension of commitment still comes through for many of them. As this following quote demonstrates, however, it is internalized dependency: The change that has been significant has been in the individual being responsible for he~'self. We still have in our community superiors in our local convents. However~ the emphasis has been on individuals being responsible for themselves, for the cbmmitment that they have made, for' living according to the rules and the constitution, for keeping the vows . B. l/ariations on a Theme . ~ Hopefully, the preceding exploration has shown that the women I interviewed responded to the demands made upon them in their formation years in the convent .in ways that the order wanted them to respond. In effect, they internalized the theme of religious life espoused by their order. This, of course, is not to pass judgment on the sincerity of intention of any of these women or on the integrity of those tesponsible~for their training. It is instead to recognize what most of these sisters have realized and what Kanter's model of commitment can help us to see: religious commitment is more than simply doing religious things. When attention is concentrated on the activity of being religious without an ~ffort at helpi~ng the novice to discern the place of these activities in an overall lifestyle, then the only result will be religious conformity and a commitment to the means established to realize a life in Christ rather than to that life itself. However, as many of the above quotes intimated, the story of the commitments of these women does not end in mere conformity. Most of the nuns found that by the time of their final vows or in the five years or so after final profession, t.hey had begun the process of perso~nalizing many of the practices they had learned. This effort at personalization took one of two forms: varying the order's style of religious life to meet o~ne's own personality and characteristics, or creating a style of religious life that was in keeping with the core values of that lii~ but no longer was solely modeled on their order's particular historical interpretation of those values. I would now like to explore the first of the~e responses which I will call "variant commitments." In the third pai't of this paper, I will examine the second form.- The term "variant commitment", refers to a more reflective response to 'Commitment in a Religious Order the demands of convent life than the conformist response did. The idea for it comes from another sociologist named Robert Merton.~0 Writing in a different context (but, nevertheless, in one that is still applicable to our purposes), Merton referred to people who were sensitive to the demands of their institutions but were willing to test some of the limits of those demands. He had in mind men of science like Pasteur or Einstein who were committed to the goals of science but who engaged in the kind of research that resulted in new ways of conceiving the world around us. In a similar way, many of the nuns I interviewed were very much committed t9 the goals of their order, but they were also involved in efforts to alter its style of religious living. Where their training had taught them to exhibit routine adaptations to the expectations of the order, they later became more willing to modify these demands while still remaining within the normative character of the community. By briefly looking at some examples of these variant responses in the light of Kanter's model, it will. be possible to show concretely the kind of changes that took place in these women, 1. Variations on the Instrumental Theme It will be recalled that in this dimension of commitment members involved themselves in the performance of those activities that hdped maintain the community as an ongoing entity. In religious life, one of the more important of these role expectations was a faithful participation in the liturgy. For sisters in training the ordinary round of prayer activities became part of the behavior of the "ideal" nun. By the time of final vows, these activities had become second nature to them. Following the Second Vatican Council, however, the order began to loosen its rather rigid structure, and local convents wer9 allowed to establish their own format for commu.nal prayers. This usually involved a group decision concerning the times to be set aside, as well as the particular style the prayer activities would take. In addition, there was also the expectation that individual sisters would develop their own schedul~ and forms for their personal prayer life. Thus, new regulations were made which allowed for more decentralized variation and individual freedom in fulfillment of the order's goal to develop prayerful sisters. The result of these reforms appears to be a more conscious involvement on the part of most of the nuns in this dimension of their lives: The .emphasis, I think, in the younger days was not on my personal religious or spiritual development, as much as it is now., the job is important but the prayer part of it is more important. Ifa decision was to be made that I would have to give up my prayer life to be an 1~ / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 administrator, I think I would give up the administrator part. I'm sure years ago I couldn't have said that. I'm going into my fifth year here, and I was very nervous coming here because I had heard about their prayer life~ But it's really been good. It's more spontaneous than at other places. Like we do the reading of the day, and then we share with each other what they are saying to us or one of us will give a homily. As these quotes indicate, within the overall values of communal and personal prayer, the nuns have sought to fashion attitudes and practices that reflect a more conscious appreciation for these features than was true in their earlier days. This consciousness in some cases was an attitudinal shift, such as the rededication of oneself to a life of prayer;'or in other instances, it was a greater willingness to participate in a variation of public prayer that had not been tried before. In'both examples though, a shift to a more reflective response is evident, and this allows for personal and local variations of a communal expectation. 2. Variations on the Affective Theme The second area of religious life to which most of the nuns can be said to have been reflectively responding is the communal dimension. On both a formal and an informal basis, it is expected that the members will participate in the affairs and functions of the community and that this group will be primary in each person's life. In the period before the Vatican Council, these expectations usually meant a high degree of uniformity among the order's members. In the years following the Council, they frequently have involved rather innovative attempts to develop a greater sense of camaraderie among local community members. This can be seen in the following instances which suggest a changing vision of the meaning of community and a willingness to put into actual practice what some have only been able to dream about. What is your vision of community? I would like it more personal, um, with small groups where there is sharing not only of your work but of your basic spirituality, your vision, and maybe with people that you could work it out with so that your vision could: become a reality. I think the great disillusionment with religious life is that your vision remains a vision and there's not too many to share that vision. We were pioneers. My first year in grad school and after that we lived in a convent and commuted to school. We used to pray together and just try to share our lives. We could do creative things like alternative prayer styles and a lot of sharing about community and about the Lord. Commitment in a Religious Order Of course, not all the women in the group were as originally so enthusiastic about this new style, as the above excerpts may suggest. Nevertheless, those who have tried it have overcome their initial restraint and now see it'as a more beneficial way of living than the older style. Once again, a relaxation of rather rigid structures has allowed for a greater amount of reflective expression and thus for the introduction of alternative approaches to a goal of the order. 3. l/'ariations on the Normative Theme The final dimension that exhibits the effects of a more reflective response to religious life concerns the commitment to the norms and values of the community. According to Kanter this commitment is demonstrated in the supportive attitudes members have toward those in authority and toward the ideology of the group. One of the areas in convent life where an important shift in this dimension has occurred is in the vow of obedience. In the days when the nuns I interviewed first entered and until quite recently, obedience to the "Will of God" meant, in fact, concrete submis-sion to what the s,uperiors interpreted what that "Will" was. Today, this submissiveness, while still expected on a daily practical level, is somewhat tempered by the recognition, in their order's rule, that all the sisters share a genuine responsibility for th6 goals of the community. This basically seems to mean that the individu~il sisters are left alone to freely do what is expected of them rather than have a local superior enforcing each of the rules. Naturally, such a situ~ttion leaves room for individual variation, both attitudinally ahd behaviorally. I guess my attitude is that this is not somebody or something imposing on me, or the constitution saying I have to do it, or I feel that my superior is going to say that you are not doing this or that. There are days, for exahaple, when I don't spend much time in prayer at all for one reason ~or another, because it's ministry, or I'm getting in at midnight and I can't function the next day. But ifI don't do it for a couple of days, I know it and I really.have to say, I have todo it tonight regardless of what else turns up, so that it becomes a priority. I think it puts more responsibility on the individuals for their own lives. Ten years ago the superior was saying no, you may not go. I think it places more responsibility on the individual not to maybe abuse missing prayers or Mass or house meetings or meals . . . there is a little more freedom and people are more relaxed . , . to be more responsible for themselves. As these quotes indicate, members are freer to interpret when a particu-lar rule should be obeyed and when it should not. Of course, this does not i911 ] Review for Religious, March.April, 1986 mean that they can or would do whatever they please with no sense of normative .obligation, Thus, the conscious choice on the part ~of~the member is to decide when there are legitimate exceptions to a given rule and toact on those exceptions. In the long run, however, the orientation of the nuns is to the normative expectations of the order. - ~ C. Creating a Theme Hopefully, the previous section has shown that the story of the com-mitments of the twenty women I interviewed took a new turn in the years after their final vows. Because of the changes in the formal structures of the order, these nuns were able to move from a rather conformist-oriented appioach to religio.us life to an approach that reflected more of each individual's perso~nality and needs. However, while this newer style was more personalistic than before, it still was within the definition of religious life as formulated by the order. Thus, it is still possible for members to be committed to the instrumental, affective, and moral dimensions of their community (albeit, in their contemporary forms) rather than to the com-munity's underlying purpose, i.e., to one's life in Christ. Of course, as I indicated earlier, this is not necessarily in all instances what has happened. Instead, it is to point out a continual danger in community life, a d[inger that some of the nuns themselves have recognized: structured behavior and attitudes, even when they are loosened up, can become a substitute for personal responsibility for the purpose of those structures. This danger and a potential way to avoid it can be captured more clearly by examining the second type of reflective response that the women I interviewed exhibited. Nine of the twenty nuns responded to the ques-tions I raised in a way that was somewhat different from the others. I have called this type of response "creative commitment." By this I mean a commitment to a notion of religious life that reflected the women's struggle with an appropriation of a set of ideals and interpretations that trans-cended the institutionalized approach in which they found themselves. This did not mean an outright rejection of their community. Rather, it was an attempt to combine themes learned from sources outside the order with the basic values learned from the community into a more personal style of sisterhood than the one in which they had been trained. Their involvement in the community, is now no longer predicated on the constraints the institution can bring to bear on them. Instead, since their commitment is to a vision~of what religious life can be, they have relativized the role that the community has in their lives. This rather abstract definition can be made more.concre[e by compar-ing some of the "variant responses" some of the nuns made to the questions Commitment in a Religious Order / 199 I asked with the "creative responses" nine of the women mad~ to the same questions. As before, these responses can be presented in terms of the model developed by Kanter. I. Relativizing Instrumental Commitment The first dimension of concern will be the attitudes of the nuns toward the role of a sister. In order to ascertain the overall quality of a member's role involvement in the order, I asked what perception each one had of herself as a sister. As the following quote exemplifies, many of the~s.e women have adopted the role of a nun as traditionally defined, ~that is, as one who is supposed to represent in a special way the presence of the sacred in human life. To be sure, they do not appear to be caught up with the prestige symbols of the role--the habit, the title, the little signs of respect. But they dowish to see themselves perceived as religious women, as part of a religio, us organization, and in this sense, the institutional role is important to them. How do you see yourself as a sister? That's hard to answer. I guess. I am living out what I think I am called to be, but I am not just living it for me. but for other people~ Do you mean what effect you have on people? ¯. Yes, like when people ask me to pray for them or for members of their families. I'm not just some fixture or some teacher. Do I convey the o message of Christ to people? Do I carry the name of (order's name) well, and what that community is about, or do I downgrade the community? In comparison with this perception, the following nun appears to dis-tinguish herself and her role as. a sister. While being a nun is important to her, it is not her whole self. This type of perception cropped up °quite often in discussions with these nine women. In effect, the role has been redefined from being a place in an overall organization to being a vehicle for allowing a more personal style of religious life to be expressed. What that,style is depends upon the individual and how she understands herself; but in general, it seems to encompass an effort to live out the central values of Christianity as these are being interpreted by contemporary thinkers. This woman's notion that "sisterhood" includes her relationships with whom-ever she meets is an indication of this redefining process. when I first came to the community, I saw a sister as functional, whereas now I see sister as a relationship that is not only to the people that I work with but it is. much more universal in a sense. It is me as I relate to whoever it may be . It's much more a sense of I am who I am and a good part of who I am happens to be a sister and what lproject is all of me, the totality of life. 200/ Review for Religious, March,April, 1986 2. Relativizing Affective Commitment The second area of discussion deals with the emotional ties members develop toward the relationships they have in the order and toward the order as a whole. The quality of these ties can be captured by the reaction of members to questions concerning the possibility of the order disbanding. While this is an admittedly hypothetical situation, the reactions of the sisters revealed their attitudes towards the community as a whole. For example, as the following citation suggests, many of the sisters see their well-being as tied up with the well-being of the order.~ Because they tend to seetheir lives as coextensive With the life of the community, these women can be said to~ have Committed themselves to the institution. What would happen if your community died? I would be very sad. As a person I think it would be devastating. I guess the charisma of the (order's name) community is important to me. I chose to belong to a group, and this group meant something to me. for whatever reason they became important. I chose to make final vows, and I chose to make it something permanent in my life. When this response is compared with the following one, however, a different understanding of this relationship is revealed. According to this woman, the institution exists to serve a need; and if it no longer can do this, then the nuns should disband and find other communities. This willingness to let go of what must be a home for this woman suggests a degree of autonomy that was also present in the other more innovative nuns. But this autonomy should not be interpreted as a cold independence from the order for-it seems to rest, for each of these women, on a distinction they have made between tbeir particular order and their understanding of religious life in general. In their interpretation of the order, it exists as a means to realize their religious ideals. Thus, religious life is always broader than the order's way of approaching it and for them it is their approach to that life that counts. I don't know exactly. I don't know if I would; then I would look and see if another group would like to get together to form something else, or if I would join another group. I don't think I would be upset. I wouldn't feel that my whole life has gone because I think what this community has done UP to this point has been very good and very worthwhile, and if it is not necessary, it's not necessary. I don't feel any urge to prolong somethin~g that is no longer necessary, so that would not bother me. Another indicator of the relativization of the order in the lives of these women is their willingness to look beyond it for sources of emotional support. While they.were in training, the community encouraged them to develop their personal relationships with their fellow members by severely Commitment in a Religious Order limiting outside contacts, even with members of their own families. Although these nine women still have deep personal ties within their order, they have also consciously developed friendships with others outside of that community, including laypeople. A couple of them have also become part ofqocal communities that are made up of nuns from bther orders instead of the more traditional, homogeneous units. Most of my really close friends have left the community., but it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds because I do have a couple of very good friends who have been very supporting, one who is married who has always supported me. Then. one who I'm even closer to who was in the community who has left. She continues to be one of the most supportive people in my life. It's fine with her that I am here; ~nd it's fine with me that she is there. How many friends do you have outside the community? I'd say that it's probably about fifty-fifty between people within the com-munity and people outside that I really consider myself close to. Four of us broke off from that larger grou.p because we are for'a simpler lifestyle, and we are now living in a house., the three of us from our order, one happens to. be the school person, and two of us who are in .other ministries and then the fourth sister who is from (another order) who is also in another ministry. That's working out pretty well now. 3.' Relativizing Normative Commitment ~ The third area deals with the willingness on the part of members to allow the community to control their lives. Over the past fifteen years or so, the order has loosened up its authority structure somewhat so that now the nuns are encouraged to speak their minds more so than they were in ~he past. Nevertheless, the ultimate expectations for many of the women is .that it is their duty to obey the wish of the superior. As this example demon-. strates, the notion that "the voice of the superior is the voice of God" dies hard. My attitude towards religious life, I don't think, has basically changed in the sense that I still fed that my superiors, those who are in charge, whatever they would ask I would accept it in the same wa~y I did years ago. I would question now, not saying that I wouldn't.do what they asked, but I would question it now. While the above quote demonstrates an attitude toward obedience that can be characterized as superior-oriented, the next citation reveals another approach to this subject. Instead of first looking to what the superior wants, this nun believes that one should first be obedient to oneself. The distinction is crucial for it places the sister on a par with her superior.and 902/ Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 enables her to exercise genuine responsibility for her own life. This is probably the most important characteristic of the innovative nuns because it seems to be that which distinguishes them most clearly from the others. Although these others often spoke about the necessity of being self-respon-sible, their 6rientation very frequently was to the community and their superiors. On the other hand~ the innovative nuns more frequently were willing to look beyond the institution for grappling with the issues of religious life and to examine any ideas in terms of where they might fit into their own lives, I believe in obedience to the Lord in tune with what is going on with my own inner' feelings, as contrasted to what I may believe in terms of the' voice 6f the superior although I don't deny that. I think you have to listen ¯. but I would say I would be more in tune with obedience to God; I would say that it's a little more,obedience to myself than I would say obedience to the vow or to the superior. Interestingly enough, one of the ways in which these women have sought to take responsibility for themselves is precisely in the area of the vows. One of the features that comes across very clearly is their desire to distinguish their understanding of the vows from the institutionalized ver-sion. This does not seem to mean an idiosyncratic interpretation of them that is divorced from what other approaches, even institutionalized ones, may offer. Instead, it seems to involve an effort to formulate a conception of the vows that takes into consideration what others,may say; but at the same time, ~it-attempts to create out of ,them an understanding that responds to the personal needs and goals of the individual herself. It should be pointed out that by the term "other interpretations" is meant sources of meaning outside the order, including the general culture, contemporary sourcbs' within the order, as well as the more traditional interpretations, whether they come from formal or informal sources. What seems to be crucial, .in any event, is the consciousness of these sisters of the difference between saying what others have understood what the vows mean and saying ,what they personally think they mean. I took these vows, but I thought. I'm doing my job, I'm praying, so don't b~ther me about the vows . !~ow looking back, I probably detached the vows from the life, or I said I have to take these vows in order to live this religious community life that I want to live. Now what's it like? ~ Now it's thinking about it and reflecting on it and saying there is some-thing more to this and I don't know what it is yet . I could tell you what ~ so and so says and what the books say, but personally., what do I think, Commitment in a R~ligious Order that's what I'm coming to. When you started to reexamine the vows, did you find yourself coming to a personal interpretation of them, or did you sifnply accept the given interpretation? Oh no! I made my own interpretation, and whether that's right or wrong, it's something l'm going to have to live with. No, I think it's my own personal thing . I have been attempting to distinguish creative responses to institutional demands from variant responses to these same demands. Hopefully, this has clarified the difference between the two. If 1 have been interpreting this material accurately, then a commitment can be said to be creative when the individual personally recognizes the primacy of her relationship with God in her life. That happens, it seems, as the individual assumes greater and greater responsibility for that relationship and the role of the order becomes more secondary as far as that relationship is concerned. In other words, the institution becomes a vehicle whereby a person can live out a way of life that she has created. As the following sistei~ asserted in ~ rather straightforward fashion, the order has become a means to an end hot arl end in itself. I say I commit myself to the Lord through this institution and I never expect that I will break that commitment to t~he Lord. I am not .always saying that 1 make a commitment to an institution: (I. Why no~t~ R. It's just the medium for me. Conclusions I ~began this paper by remarking that religious 9ommitment is often understood in a one dimensional way, as simply a commitment to Christ. Utilizing the insights of sociology, however, it is now possible.to see that religious commitment is a multi-dimensional affair which can often inter-fere with the fuller realization of a Christocentric lifestyle. For instead of a single focus on the proper spiritual characteristics of being a religious woman, this analysis found that members of an order can become more concerned about the instrumental, communal and normative dimensions of sisterhood. The result of this is a preoccupation with the means of religious life rather than its ends. Because this was a sociological analysis, it highlighted the fact that this preoccupation was, in part at least, the result of the order's necessary concern with its self-preservation. This does not mean, however, that such a preoccupation is inevitable. As the information concerning the more creative women has shown, it is also possible to relativize the impact of the " 2011 ] Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 social requirements of communal living and to begin to achieve the under-lying purpose of religious life. But to do this requires an effort on the part of the order to become sensitive to the effects its structures have on the spiritual journey of each of its members and an effort on the part of each member to be radically honest with himself or herself about the real con-cerns which occupy one's life in a religious setting. NOTES ~Marie Augusta Neal, "The Relation Between Religious Belief and Structural Change in Religiiaus Orders: Developing an Effective Measurement," Review of Religious Research 12, 1 (Fall, 1970), pp. 2-16. 2Helen Ebaugh, Out of the Cloister (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1977.). 3Lucinda San Giovanni, Ex-Nuns (Ables, Norwood, New Jersey, 1978). 4Rich~ard Schoenherno and Andrew Greeley, "Role Commitment Processes and the American Catholic Priesthood," American Sociological Review 39 (1974) pp. 417-426. ~Patricia Wittberg, "Transformations in Religious Commitment" REVIEW FOR RELI- ~31OtJS, Vol. 42 No. 2 (1985), pp. 161-170. 6Rosabeth Kanter, Commitment and Community (Harvard University Press, Cam-bridge, 1972). 7Ibid, p. 69: 8lbid, p. 69. 91bid, p. 67. ~ORobert Merton, ~Social Conformity, Deviation, and Opportunity Structures: A Comment on the Contributions of Dubin and Cloward," American Sociological Review 24 (1959), pp. 177-188. Two Forms of Consecrated Life: Religious and Secular Institutes David E O'Connor, S. T. Father O'Connor holds the chair of the Department of Church Law at Washington Theological Union and resides at Holy Trinity Mission Seminary (9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Maryland 20910). His previous article in these pages was "Lay Associate Programs: Some Canonical and Practical Considerations," which appeared in last year's March/April issue. Th~ 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law in, canons 573-730 designates both religious and secular institutes as Institutes of the Consecrated Life. This is a new classification in church law, In its simplicity, it is open to some misunderstanding as a juridical oversimplification because, in fact, both types of institutes are very different. This may just be another exam-ple of the limitations of all canonical categories which are not capable of fully expressing the charisms and gifts of the Spirit to the Church. While the members of both forms of~the consecrated life do profess the evangeli-cal counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, their lifestyles manifest two rather divergent forms of ecclesial dedication. The intention of this brief article is to explore some of the similarities and real differences between these two types of consecrated lives and to promote a better appreciation of the distinctiveness,~ the identity and the place each one has in the Church. Let it be stated at the outset that neither form of ecclesial dedication is presented as better or superior tO the other. While canonical religious life has been a recognized and important part of Church life for centuries, it has taken a variety of shapes and forms. Secular institutes, canonically and historically, have received ecclesial recognition only within the last fifty years and are still in the process of trying to have their uniqueness under- 205 906 / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 .stood and appreciated. The new Code of Canon Law is a welcome and innovative move in this direction. It is a positive step forward in giving secular institutes the canon-ical identity and ecclesial status which they deserve. In canon 710, the new code describes a secular institute as one in which the Christian faithful living in the world strive for perfection in charity and work for the sanctifi-cation of the world, especially from within. Canon 607, §2 describes a religious institute as one in which the members, according to proper law, pronounce public vows, either.perpetual or temporary, which are to be renewed when they have lapsed, and live in common as brothers or sisters. A quick perusal of these canonical descriptions makes apparent some of the. differences between these two types of institutes. The members of secular institutes are to "live in the world" and work for its sanctification "especially from within." On the other hand, religious are to live "in com-mon as brothers or sisters" and profess "public" vows. These and other distinctive features of both forms of ecclesial dedication need to be more closely examined and elaborated upon in order to manifest the special style of consecration lived by the members of the different institutes. In order to facilitate this examination, a comparison of these two types of consecrated life has been organized under the following five headings: Secularity, Community Life, Apostolic Activity, Evangelical Counsels and Canonical Status. There will be, necessarily, some repetition involved because it is impossible to treat the distinctiveness of each institute without there being some overlapping of ideas. For example, it is not possible to consider the evangelical counsels as lived in religious institutes without considering them in the context of common life. Nor is it possible, to con-sider adequately the evangelical counsels as lived by members of secular institutes without examining them in the context of the secularity which is essential to the life of the members. I ask the reader to be patient in this matter as efforts are made to emphasize the genuine distinctiveness and special characteristics of each form of the consecrated life. Se~.ulariff. The primarY and foremost characteristic of secular institutes is that they are secular. This has been repeatedly emphasized in all the ecclesiasti-cal documents which address the nature and role of these institutes, from Provida Mater Ecclesia (February 2, 1947) and the Motu Proprio, Primo Feliciter (March 12, 1947), through the documents of Vatican II (1962-1965), especially ,Perfectae Caritatis,, 11, to the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It is "secularity" which totally colors the way oof life of the members and is the most significant characteristic of their consecrated way of life. Two Forms of Consecrated Ltfe/ 207 The members remain lay people or secular priests. They are not reli-gious ~nor are they expected to live in any manner which approximates or imitates the religious life.~ In every, sense of the term, they are to cultivate their consecrated secularity as ordinary people; living "in-the world and, as it were, from the world. "~ They should be involved in the social milieu and professional life proper to each member in the concrete circumstances of that member's place, time and culture. Indeed, members are to have a secular outlook and acknowledge themselves as "part" of the world and committed to sanctifying it from within) Hehce, the style of life of the lay members of a secular.,institu~te is that~ of a consecrated person living a rather inconspicuous and ordinary life, holding down a job or involved in a profession, while living alone or wi[h family or friends. Externally they will not appear to be different from any other lay person in a similar situation. Indeed, Pope John Paul II has encouraged them to develop their professional life and to be, at the level of Knowledge and experience, really competent in their specific field of endeavor.4 Religious, on the other hand, are required and expected by/heir own consecrated way of life to have a certain "separation from the world prpper to the character and purpose of each institute.'~ Obviously, this is expressed very differently by monastic communities and by apostolic reli-gious. Members of apostolic religious institutes frequent~ly find themselves immers~ed in the world with similar demands made upon them to have the professional competence required in their particular formJ of apostolate or ministry. Yet, at the same time, they may be more likely to think of themselves, while at the service of people and the Church,.as "being in the world, but not of it." Indeed, they are often readily identifiable as "Church-people" even if they are not wearing a habit or clerical garb. Furthermore, they often live in houses or convents associated with their ir~titutional apostolate which helps identify them as Church-workers. Thus their com-munity lifestyle and their corporate apostolate or form of ministry, in one sense, sets them apart and "separates" them from" the ordinary lifestyle of lay people. There are incarnational and eschatological dimensions" to the life of every Christian. However, it appears that the Church considers thai the incarnational should be especially clear in the Christian life of the dedicated laity and that the eschatological or transcendental should be-particularly manifested through the dedicated life of members of religious institutes. One form of the consecrated life the secular institute emphasizes the goodness of the world and of all God's creation (Gn l:3,1); the Other the religious institute emphasizes the radical discipleship of Jesus which involves some separation from or renunciation of the world (Jn 15:19). 901t / Review for Religious, March-April, 1986 Community Life Some form of life in common or community life has been a part of religious life from timeqmmemorial. It is a clear requirement of the new Code of Canon Law.6 Members of a religious community are to live in a house-of their own institute with their brothers or sisters and under the autl~ority of a religious superior.7 This is the place where they conduct their day-to-day life and offer their companionship and support to one another. It is the place where they gather about the eucharistic table and pray together. It is from there that apostolic religious reach out to others in a variety of ministries and dedicated ecclesial service. Therefore, some form of commu~nity life has been a perennial dimension of religious~ life and presented as an ecclesial witness of Christian love. The common life of religious does differ somewhat fro~a community to community, and is radically different for: monastic and apostolic religious. However, it is a necessary dimension of religious life and one of its special characteristics. Common life is not a part °of the consecrated life of members of secular institutes. While some institutes may have, as part of their particular tradi-tion, residences which belong to the institute, community life is not an expectation, requirement or characteristic of secular institutes in general. In fact, it has often been positively discouraged as contrary to a truly secular style of life and an unfortunate move toward the imitation of a life approp-riate to a religious institute. ~ The secular quality does not permit of community life on the part of mem-o ~rs, even as an option. It is too easy to slip from the notion of a "group" life to that of a "com.mon" life inconsistent with the personl liberty and the vari-ety of commitments which the ideal of presence in the world entails.8 The new 9od,e does not require the administrators or leaders of a secular institute to have their own residence, nor is it necessary to have a house where formation programs can be conducted.9 Members of secular i~stitutes are expected to live as ordinary lay people, either alone or with their families, or in a group as brothers and sisters.~0 Diocesan priests, who are members of a secular institute, likewise, are expected to live as the other priests in the diocese. That is, they are to live in the rectory to which they haye been assigned by their bishop. There is to be nothing unusual or exter-nally distinctive in their style of life in the world. However, as canon 716 of the code states, the members of a secular institute are urged to share actively in the institute according to their own proper law. They are to maintain a certain "communion" among them-selves arid carefully foster a unity of ~pirit and genuine relationships as brothers and sisters. The constitutions and statutes of each institute should specify how this is to be done, but should not imply that cohabitation or Two Forms of Consecrated Life / 209 any form of common life similar to that of religious is expected. It is the obligation of leaders and moderators in the institute to promo.te this spirit of unity and an active participation of the members)~ Apostolic Activity The new Code of Canon Law succinctly expresses the manner in which apostoli~ activity is to be exercised by the members o

Issue 35.1 of the Review for Religious, 1976. ; Review ]or Rehg~ous ~s edited by faculty members of the School of Dwmlty of St Lores Umvers~ty, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Braiding. 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute: St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copy-right (~) 1976 by Review ]or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.75. Sub-scription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders shot, ld indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to Review /or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent Review ]or Religious. Change of address requests should inclt, de former address. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read, Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor January 1976 Volume 35 Number 1 Renew',ds, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for .answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl- ¯ vania 19131. Review for Religious Volume 35, 1976 Editorial Offices 539 North Grand Boulevard Saint Louis, Missouri 63103 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read, Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant EditOr Review ]or Religious is published in January, March, May~ July, September, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edi-tion of Review 1or Religious is available from University Microfilm; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright (~) 1976 by Review ]or Religious. What Does. the New Expect of the Priest? Ritual of Penance Rev. V. Joseph Finnerty Father Finnerty teaches theology at Cathedral College of tl~ Immaculate Conception, the college seminary for ~the dioceses of Brooklyn, New York and Rockville Center. The seminary is located at 7200 Douglaston Pkwy.; Douglast0n, NY 11362. The problem with the sacrament of Penance is not about to be solved merely by external ritual changes. A new liturgical book though critical and long overdue is not an instant panacea for this problem. What is needed is a change of mind and attitude on different levels because the problem of Penance has many dimensions. Many topics sliould be dis-cussed prior to the prorriulgation of the new rite especially: a definition of sin, an understanding of conscience vs. superego, a rediscovery of the virtue of Penance, an emphasis on the e~:clesial aspect of the sacrament, a per-s0nalization of the ritual, an honest evaluation of devotional confession, a study of thi~ forgiveness present in the Eucharist, a look at the~ relationship between Penance and baptism. Most important of 'all is the change of atti-tude asked of the minister of the sacrament. What the Ordo requests of the priest-confessor is more demanding than any of the recent reforms relating to other sacraments. The Ministry of Jesus Let us look first at the ministry of Jesus since it is paradigmatic for our own. Scripture reminds us that a work of the Spirit is the shaping of a prophet. Jesus is that proph,et~ announcing a word of reconciliation, but He does not begin without first having received the Spirit's anointing. His first sermon began with the Isaian theme: The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor . (Lk 4, 18) 4 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 The Lord's preaching was not especially intellectual: the Father loves us; men are brothers; the kingdom is at hand; life continues. It is not so much what Jesus said but what He did that is significant for us priests. He con-stantly reaches out to the riffraff. With scandalous ease Jesus is at home with a publican, a tax-col'lector, a prostitute. Jesus is a friend of sinners. That's the message. The message so upset the Pharisees that they wanted Him dead. It is hard to imagine anything that would be more offensive to the religious leaders of Jesus's day than to have meal fellowship with the riffraff who were considered beyond the pale. Yet this is what Jesus did. He risked being ostrasized, alienated or contaminated so that He could eat with sinners and minister to them. He did all of this joyfully? ~ Christianity is a-sinner's religion. He was given the name Jesus because He would save men from their sins (Mt 1:21). When John saw Him, he cried that here is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus gave His life so that men's sins might be forgiven. Before He died He took bread and wine, proclaimed these to be His body and blood, broken and poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The mystery of forgiveness of sins stands at the very center of the Christian kerygma as the sign of the king-dom. Do~es not the great prayer of the kingdom unite these two concepts "Thy kingdom come" and "forgive us our trespasses"? Simply put, if we priests fail in our celebration of the mystery of forgiveness, we fail at what stands at the center of the Christian message. The Minister as "Healer" " One of the first things to be said about the minister of reconciliation is that the model of priest as judge is inadequate. For too long Penance has been dominated by one image, that of the courtroom, with a judge and a defendant. The sinner accused himself, listed number and species, pleaded guilty, and. requested a pardon from the judge. The Ordo Paenitentiae is dis-satisfied with the image of priest as an examining magistrate. The priest is not primarily a judge who sits in judgment about another's misadventures. The dynamics of the courtroom offer a poor example of what Jesus did. The pries[ is a judge, but he is more than that. He is a physician who exercises a ministry of healing. It is not those who are well.who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous but the sinner. (Lk 5:31-32) The Rite of Penance refers to sin as sickness and the sacrament as a healing ministry more than twenty times; it uses the image of judgment only twice. The image_of "Physician of Souls" has a long tradition in Scripture, in early Christian sources, and qspecially in the liturgies of the Eastern Churches. 1Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables (New York: Charles Scribner, 1966) p. 97. New Ritual o[ Penance ahd the Priest / 5 The theology of forgiveness contained in the ritual is a challenging one. There is no one-sided emphasis on the sacrament working ex opere operato; no top,heavy statement on priestly power; certainly n,o min!st~y that can be exercised in a mechanical or perfunctory manner. First of all the setting for this healing ministry is less formal and more personal; No reference is made to the "confessional," the ritual speaks only of the place for the sacrament (~12) which national bodies of bishops are asked to define even more precisely (~38). It is not the purpose of the ritual to deny people their right to anonymity in the confessional dialogue. It is wrong to insist that people only experience the ministry of priestly reconciliation in a face to face situation. Pastors and liturgical experts must prepare creative sacred space for the sacrament in sucha way that it re-spects the option of being seen or unseen by the confessor. We must meet our people where they are, but God help us if we do not bring them any further. A thoroughg6ing personal exchange in the sacrament of Penance is x~hat is called for. The directive which says, "the priest welcomes him (the penitent) warmly and gr~eets him with kindness" (~41) reminds~ us of the para~bles of Luke where Jesus teachi~s that God takes 'the initiative. Metanoia, comes from the penitent's heart, but, it is first of all a response to the overture of the father's loving kindness. He searches out the sinners; he looks for us. One warning! This is a friendly greeting, not a slap on the back. The dynamics of this ritual are not those needed to get class reunions off to a gQod start. The celebrant of Penance must not hesitate to be him-self but he must not communicate only himself he must'communicate the Holy One of God. The minister of healing must not act as though he has nbt experienced healing in his own life. He must know that he himself is a man forgiven. He cannot announce Church doctrine in a cavalier (take it or leave it) atti-tude. He never loses respect for the penitent while not condoning his sin.ful actions. A year ago an article.in L'Osservatore Romano highlighted this healing work of the priest: ¯ . . no sacrament involves the personal action of the minister so much as the sacrament of confession. The believer seeks a minister who will devote time to him; he seeks a patient man who will listen to him and believe him; he seeks a charitable man who will not pour salt but balm on'his wounds. He seeks a wise man who will not place on his shoulders burdens that he cannot carry; he seeks a serious and experienced man who will understand and then apply the yardstick of the Lord of conscience. He seeks a prudent~ ,discreet man, who will not delve where it is not necessary, who will teach where he is certain and will ask only for an upright conscience in cases, where the com-plexity of life makes it impossible to give a peremptory definition of obliga-tions and solutions . It is not unusual to hear the complaints of penitents whose feelings have been hurt in the very act of seeking Christ through the painful and dignified accusation of their sins . A not unusual complaint, 6 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 due--let us be clear--not to criminal or juridically blameworthy behaviour on the part of the confessor, but to acts of carelessness, impatience, arbitrari-ness, and sometimes--to be frank---~f t~ndue and incomprehensible pressure of one man on another, in the most sacred realm of conscience. Is it not too much to ask every priest, who is a minister of forgiveness about his usual attitude to the ministry of the confessional? Does he devote to it, joyfully or at least patientlyi all the time it requires? Does .he receive every penitent with Christ's mercy, without discrimination? Is he prepared to listen rather than holding forth sententiously?. Does he bring to the confessional the spirit of a friend, a brother, a'father, who does not judge the other more severely than the Lord would? Does he endeavor to discover extenuating cir-cumstances and to see the good that always exists in a soul alongside the bad? . . . Those whose primary obligation it is to save confession from a crisis that seems to be threatening it, are first and foremo:~t .the priests, to whom it has been entrusted by Christ through the Church.: The Holy Spirit and the Ministeroof Forgiveness A study of the journey and route taken by the Ordo Paenitentiae on its way to the Vatican printing press over the past ten years is very interesting for many reasons. Such investigation reveals that a major sou. rce from which the new rite draws its inspiration is ,the Eastern churches. It is a fact that the role of the Holy Spirit in the liturgy of the W~st has not received due attention. The most :striking and far-reaching reform has been to bring the Holy Spirit into the center, to the heart of the sacramental happening, thereby fulfilling the mens of the .,council, even if this was not voiced in lettera. The Cons'titu-t! pn on the Sacred Liturgy helped us to rediscover Christ; the post conciliar liturgical reform will help us to rediscover the Holy Spirit.:~ The rite~,~attempts to do for the West what the East has never forgotten, namely to unveil' the primordial link established in the gospel of John be-tween the Spirit and forgiveness. Receive the~ Ho.ly Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained. (Jn 20:22-23) Time and ~time again' this theme is presented in the rite itself. Just as the penitent is moved by the Spirit to seek forgiveness (:;q:6), so too the minis-ter acts by the power of the Holy Spirit to declare and grant forgiveness. Whether it be the c6mmunal rite or the rite for the reconciliation of the indi-vidual penitent, the minister and the penitent are told to pray together for a few moments asking for the gifts of the Spirit (#!5). Many of the .sug-gested Scripture selections emphasize the role of the Spirit. Finally all of this reaches a climax in the prayer, of absolution spoken by the minister -""The Minister o~ the Sacrament of Penance" L'Osservato~re Romano, February 7, 1974. ¯ aGodfrey Diekmann,'"The Laying on of Hands" Proceedings o] the Catholic Theo-logical Society o! America 29 (1974) p. 349. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest / 7 who announces the reconciliation accomplished "by the Holy Spirit sent among us for the forgiveness of sins." Imposition of Hands--Sign of the Holy Spirit The proclamation of forgiveness is accompanied by the ancient gesture of the imposition of hands. For centuries the sacrament of Penance was known as "the laying on of hands ad paenitentiam." Charles Borromeo tried to restore the penitential laying on of hands but he also introduced the con-fessional. He could not have it both ways, so only the remnant of the solemn gesture remained, namely the vertical extension of the right hand. The laying on of hands is not a peripheral rite restored by liturgists who have a bizarre archeological mentality. The renewal of this ancient sign tells us that it is the sacramental gesture par excellence. It reminds us of the healing ministry of Jesus who so often cured with a touch of the hand. But most important of all, this basic sacramental gesture, reinstated now in the liturgy of each of the sacraments, teaches that an epiclesis, a calling on the Spirit to effect change, is not restricted to the Eucharist. During an earlier age when the liturgy of reconciliation had no specific formula of absolution this gesture was never eliminated. It had a power all its own. It meant that the forgiveness of sins was the work of the Holy Spirit. One 0t~ the problems with Penance has been its symbolic poverty (this is true not only of Penance but of much of our liturgy a baptismal bath that is'not a bath, Eucharistic bread that is not real bread, etc.). We are great with words but weak on symbolic action. Henri Nouwen says that even young clergy who should know better are systematically eliminating every trace of symbol in favor of more and more verbal discourse, chatter, explanation, endless and infuriating pedagogy. That this is liturgy's death should be, by now, apparent." Too often our liturgy ~s wordy beyond toleration. The ges-ture of the imposition of hands, a_t_ the climax of the liturgy of reconciliation, speaks more eloquently than a thousand words about the meaning of Sacra-ment. At first many priests will find the imposition of hands strange and un-comfortable. It demands of the physician of souls closeness, gentle.ness, and communication of strength. It will not be easy for us to overcome a training that emphasized reserve and distance in dealing with penitents. It will take time and a great deal of common sense. At this point in the liturgy the penitent should kneel as the priest stands to impose hands and proclaim the words of forgiveness. Naturally the gesture is impossible except in rooms designed with the new ritual in mind. Much depends on the i~articular penitent and the mood of the moment. For some, this physical gesture would be a wonderful sign of forgiveness, rec-onciliation and acceptance. For others its newness could cause some mis- '~Henri Nouwen, Reachit,g Out (Doubleday, 1975) p. 30. Review [or Religious, I/olume 35, 1976/1 understanding and create further tension in a sacramental situation already filled with anxiety. The confessor open to the Holy Spirit and sensitive to the disposition of the penitent must judge each person se!earately . Certain priests may need to push themselves into a more physica~l, touching manner of healing sinners. Others may find they must restrain a natural effusiveness which can alienate . Both types of confessors obviously should be on guard in these charged circurhstances when a troubled penitent might mis-construe the laying on of hands. Lonely, injured spouses or sexually immature individuals could see this as a kind of advance. Whiie a sympathetic priest may feel compelled to comfort and console, he should be aware that his well in-tentioned action may instead confuse and complicate,r' The Priest as "Spirit Bearer" The initial key "needed to unlock the theology of the minister of recon-ciliation found in the Ordo is the idea of the priest as "Spirit bearer." This was a frequent description of the priest in the early church (Hippolytus, Cyril of Alexandria, Didascalia). Gerald Broccolo remarks in Concilium that for years we have considered the priest as alter Christus--someone wholly configured to Christ. While this is true, alter Christus seems to be the com-mon vocation of. every Christian, every member of the priestly people of God. Perhaps, he says, it might be more fruitful to view the priest as "a sacramental personification of the Holy Spirit." There is a great similarity between the. function and mission of the Holy Spirit and the role of the priest. The priest personifies the spirit when he consoles, encourages, gives guidance and support, convicts the world of sin, and teaches the Christian vision of human existence. Even though other Christians can frequently minister to the human family :in some of these same ways, the priest has been given the special charism of office to do so.'; Discernment of Spirits The celebrant of the liturgy of Penance must'possess the quality of spiritual, discernment (:~10A). He has the key function of raising the penitent's consciousness about gospel values. The confessor's manner should lead the penitent into an experience of discovering the truth about himself°on a deeper level. He is the catalyst who helps the penitent recognize the root causes of sin. He helps in the discernment of hidden sins, unsus-pected'offenses, and unrepented deeds that escape secular man today but which rip at the fabric of every community. Too often we pray for the wrong "things, we confess the wrong sins, we deal with symptoms and never treat the real illness. Why is it that go many settle into mediocrity and become lukewarm in a search for union with God? The monotonous cata-logue of sins that routinely comes to the penitent's lips keep him from ¯ ~Joseph Champlin, Together in Peace (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974) p. 145. ~'Gerald Broccolo, "The Priest Praying in the Midst of the Family of Man," Concilium 52 (1970) 56-72. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest seeing his true self. To know one's tru'e sins is grace. To have a healthy sense of guilt is gift. It,is-the result of prayer. A prayerful and mutual dis-cernment in the dialogue of confession under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is the first step in a process of discovery. "The Spirit Js the first step in a process of discovery" (1 Co 2:10). We need the Spirit to help us face the truth about ourselves. The Confessor as "Pray-er" The more ancient phrase, "Spirit bearer," says a.great deal not only about who the priest is but also about how he should act. If he is "Spirit bearer" in the midst of the penitential assembly or for that matter in the Eucharistic assembly, he must act in a way that stimulates the faithful to pray~ A primary presupposition of all liturgical reform, and most especially of the sacrament of Penance, is that the sacrament is prayer. John Gallen r(marks that "What the contemporary reform of the Church's liturgy needs most in this~moment of its history is the rediscovery of liturgy as prayer.''z It is no accident that the first request made by the ritual' is for the priest and the penitent(s) to pray together (:#: 15, 16). Familiarity with the many suggested .prayers in the ritual is important but free prayer in one's own words is called for as well. The minister of reconciliation is not conducting a counseling session,. nor is he giving a conference on spiritual direction (:#:7B). While it is frequently necessary to give a word of counsel and direction, any serious situation which demands extended attention might~more profitably take place ¯ ¯ elsewhere. The ,ministry of reconciliation cannot be effective unless the confessor is a good "pray-er." Whether it be in a communal liturgy of penance or in the rite for the reconciliation of individual penitents, the priest is the celebrant who truly prays. The priest is "Spirit bearer" by public deputation of office, so that when he prays among men he must do so in a way that stimulates others to pray. His manner of prayer must engender the gift of the Spirit in the people around him. This cannot remain merely an intellectual conviction for the minister, rather he must endeavor to communicate this conviction in a humanly tangible manner. It is unfair to make tran'slations and texts bear the brunt of negative criticism with regard to liturgical reform. The even more commonly voiced disappointment with the r~sults of contemporary liturgical renewal can frequently be traced to the lack of a celebrant's internal dynamism of the Spirit being communicated to the assembly. The liturgy~cannot be rushed, it demands preparation, it rakes time. In an earlier age, canonical Penance was presided over by the bishop with the assistance of his presbyters and deacons who were joined in this act 7Johrl Gallen, "Liturgical Reform: Product or Prayer?". Worship 47 (1973) p. 587. Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 of worship by a community of 6elievers interceding on behalf of the penitents. The penitents themselve3 did not appear at this assembly without having spent months (even years) in prayerful preparation. Make no mis-take, we have no desire to slavishly imitate a sixth century liturgy in the twentieth century, but the Ordo Paenitentiae does have every intention of recapturing an understanding of reconciliation as a profound prayer ex-perience of the Holy One of God. In this act of worship, we attempt to communicate the incommunicable. Reconciliation cannot be mass produced. The-practice of "frequent confession" or "confession of devotion" will need redefinition so that the Sacrament will not be reduced to superficial ritual observance. After seven centuries of unbalanced emphasis on causality to the neglect of the signs, the Ordo Paenitentiae is another example of Post Vatican II's rejection of an unthomistic stress on causality that led in the past to a more or less mechanistic view of sacraments. Whittling down a penitential liturgy or any other sacramental celebration to what is abso-lutely essential for validity can erode its prayer context. More is required for fruitful celebration than a basic minimum. If celebrants use emergency rubrics as the normal procedure for the parochial experiences of the Sacra-ment, no translation, no text, no liturgical book will be of any help in solv-ing the problems of Penance. The American Bishops put it well. "Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. Good celebrations foster and nourish faith. Poor celebrations weaken and destroy faith.''~ :The Protestant community will be less likely to dismiss the sacrament ¯ of Penance if it sees it as a prayerful experience between minister and penitent(s) who stand under the word of God with faith prior to a procla-mation of!forgiveness. It is not magic. It is not over and done with in a few moments. It is now, as it was in the early Church, a process, an event that takes time. If Penance in our time has hit rock bottom, it will rebound only if we rediscover Penance as prayer. For this critical ministry the Church needs charismatic men at ease with situations which permit a free flowing prayerful exchange with penitents under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Tension Between Ecclesial and Individual Elements The Ordo Paenitentiae reminds the Church of the~ diversity of ways in which a Christian obtains forgiveness (prayer, Eucharist, works of mercy, Scripture, etc.) (:~4). The ritual of Penance now includes a rite which in-corporates general absolution after only a general confession of sinfulness. Kenan Osborne in a report made to the Catholic Theological Society of America remarks that with the Ordo "a definite break has been made; a door has been opened officially, and although the document takes a strad- SMusic in Catholic Worship" Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, 1972. New Ritual of Penance and the Priest dling position, the openness to new forms cannot be saddled or bridled . ,,9 With regard to the limited use of general absolution the Ordo may be termed a transitional document, an important first step. Pastors anticipate an openness from the National Conference of Bishops ~ for expanded use of this rite in the years to come. However in age of personalism, being ministered to as "a face in the crowd" is no instant cure for the problem of Penance. True conversion, real change of heart, a new direction to one's llfe, and authentic reconciliation with God and Church does not happen more easily by eliminating a personal meeting with a sensitive minister of the Church. The second rite integrates the ecclesial and individual dimension of rec-onciliation. It must be said that with large congregations, even when many priests are available, it will prove awkward. At other times, with small congregations it may pose no real problem. However, in the lives of busy people it may prove impractical to expect everyone to wait until the entire group of penitents has confes~sed individually before concluding the ceremony. It will be pastorally and practical!y better in many parishes to conclude the. Penance service first and then invite the participants to individual confession and absolution. This will prevent truncating the. dia-logue of prayer" which is confession. Over the past ten years it is understandable that priests have spent most of their time attending to liturgical renewal as it relates to Eucharist. However during this same period many ~ther prayer services once familiar to Roman Catholics have disappeared. As a result we feel we have little choice when we come together for prayer. Is it not true that most Catholics labor under the false impression that the word "liturgy" means "Eucharist"? The Eucharist is the preeminent liturgical action, it is the "summit" of our worship, but it is not the entire mountain, We have placed too heavy a burden on the Eucharist to answer eyery .spiritual need of all the people all the time. We misuse the Eucharist by overuse as though it were the only prayer form that our people know. The rite,for the reconciliation of many penitents with individual confession of sins and the suggested non-sacramental penitential services in the Ordo are part of the answer to our prayer needs. These? rites (even when all do not individually confess) must be highlighted as important ways of. reinterpreting what is meant by our~ traditional concepts of "frequent confession" and "confession of devotion." Further, these rites are a good response to Vatican II's request for a. less individualistic liturgical piety. Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the 'sacrament of unity,' namely a holy people united and :,Kenan Osborne, The Renewal o] the Sacrament o! Penance (Washington: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1975) p. 48. Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 organized under their bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole body of the Church; they manifest it and have effects upon it; but they concern individual members of the Church in different ways according to the diversity of holy orders, functions, and degrees of participation.~° It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make ~provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active partici-pation of the faithful, this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, as far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private,it Every sacrament must' be celebration of Church. In an earlier age, the bishop presided over a penitential~liturgy that literally included every-one, priests, deacons, and laity. Today the priest is asked to work with liturgical committees in the formation of ministers of the Word, readers of prayers and examinations of conscience, musicians, acolytes, etc. In addition to this collaboration, the priest must ~sense that each l~enitent actually celebrates with the Church in the rite of individual con-fession and absolution. "Thus, the faithful Christian, as he experiences the mercy, of God in his life, celebrates together with the priest the liturgy of the. Church by which she continually renews herself" (~11). Since the penitent is in dialogue with the confessor in this rite, it is appropriate to encourage him to read the passages from" Scripture, to allow him time to make an act of sorrow, and even have him suggest an appropriate penance. Although not every Catholic is capable of such participation and we should not burden people who are not prepared, neither should we patronize or underestimate the ability of many American Catholics who desire from their priests "something more." Standing Under the Word of God Finally, it might be helpful to remember the bishop's mandate given to all priests moments before ordination: "Share with a~l men the word of God you have received with jby." Like Jesus the minister is anointed by the Spirit to bring the Good News of forgiveness to his people. HiS min-istry of "breaking the bread" of God's word in teaching the people by means of the homily is an essential part of the liturgy of Penance. Even in the rite for ~the reconciliation of individual penitents the priest should be reluctant to omit those few verses of Scripture and subsequent words of encouragement. Karl Rahner says that there are forgotten truths about the sacrament of Penance that need to be rediscovered. The homily within the ritual of Penance is a privileged opportunity "to teach as Jesus did" about the true meaning of sin and about the need for reconciliation with God and with the Church. Almighty and merciful God, you have brought us together in the name of your Son 1°Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy #26. 11Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy #.27. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest / 13 to receive your mercy and grace in our time of need. Open our eyes to see the evil we have done. Touch our hearts and convert us to yourself. Where sin has divided and scattered, may your love make one again; where sin has brought weakness, may your power heal and strengthen; where sin has brought death, may your Spirit raise to new life. Give us a new heart to love you, so that our lives may reflect the image of your Son. May the world see the glory of Christ revealed in your Church, and come to know that he is the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. (Ordo Paenitentiae :~99 Opening Prayer) Bibliography' Alszeghy, Zoltan. "Reform of the Rite of Penance,"~Theology Digest 23 (1975) 100- 106. Buckley, Francis. "Recent Developments in the Sacrament of Penance:' Communio I (1974) 83-93. Champlin, Joseph. Together iJ, Peace Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1975. Colborn, Francis. ',Psychotherapy and Conversio9," American Ecclesiastical Review 167 (19:.73) 75-90. Curran, Charles. ~'The Sacrament of Penance Today," Worship 43 (1969) 510-531, 590-619; 44 (1970) 2-19. Diekmann, Godfrey. "The Laying On of Hands: The Basic Sacramental Rite," Proceedings o/ tire Catholic Theological Society o[ America 29 (1974) 339-366. Donnelly, Doris. "The Problem of Penance," America 129 (1973) 324-327. Duffy, Regi'~i ~'Concelebration of Penance and a Therapeutic 191odel," Worsl, ip 48 (1974) 258-269. Gallen, John. "Liturgical Reform: Product or Prayer?" Worship 47 (1973) 580-591. -- "The Necessity of Ritual," Tire Way Oct. 1973, 270-282. -- "A ~PastoraI-Liturgical View of Penance Today," Worship 45 (1971) 132-150. Poschman, Bernard. Penance attd the Anointing o[ the Sick, New York: Herder, 1964. Prieur, Michael. The Sacrament o] Reconciliation Today, Bethlehem: Catechetical Comtnunications, 1974. Rahner, Karl. "Forgotten Truths about the Sacrament of Penance," ~Theological vestigations Volume II. -- "Problems Concerning Confession," Theological'Investigations Volume II. -- "Penance as an Additional Act of Reconciliation with the Church," Theological Investigations Volume X. Schillebeeckx, E. Sacramental Reconciliation New York: Herder, 1971. Sottocornola, F. A Look at the New Rite o] Petratrce Washington: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1975. Vogel, C. "Sin and Penance," Pastoral Treatment b] Sin ed. P. Delhaye New York: Descle6, 1968. Renewed Religious Life: The Dynamics of Re-discovery George Kosicki, C.S.B. Father Kosicki is on the staff of Bethany House of Intercession, a center of spiritual renewal that emphasizes intercessory prayer on behalf of all priests. His address is: Bethany House; Seminary of Our Lady of Providence; R. R. No. 1; Warwick, RI 02889, Six years ago, my superior general, Father John C. Wey, C.S.B., released me from University teaching and research in the field of biochemistry to work full time with prayer groups and to give retreats. He asked me to experiment with prayer groups and communities and bring back what I could for the renewal of our own religious ~ommunity, the Basilian Fathers. He advised me to search out various approaches and not to get. tied down to one thing too quickly. In following his advice, I have experienced a variety of communities and traveled extensively giving retreats, mainly to priests and religious these last years, searching for some understanding and some answers. It has been a time of being a pilgrim and I have found some in-sights and factors that I think need to be part of renewed religious life. Experiences by Decades My experience of religious life began after high school with the no~,itiate in 1946 in Rochester, New York. I remember it as a joyous time; a time when I wanted to give myself to the Lord without reserve. I felt ready to give whatever was asked of me with generous heart. There were no agoniz-ing questions, no searching for answers; all was there in the community and the rule, In 1956, two years after ordination, I was director of our scholastics (college seminarians) at Assumption University, Windsor, Ontario. It was a time of intense activity: studying, teaching, research and counseling. Con- 14 Renewed Religious Li[e / 15 cerns with the scholastics centered about the rule, spiritual exercises, aca-demic achievements, work with the boarding high school students and sports. Ten-years °later in 1966, as director of the. scholastics, I was involved in seminars on the documents of Vatican II and deeply immersed in the construction of a three-quarter-million-dollar house of studies. We had more novices than we had rooms! One of the concerns was the right layout and atmosphere that would "form community," such as the color of brick and the arrangement of rooms. .~ By the time it was opened we could not fill it. Now, approaching 1976, I .am searching for ways to renew religious life. I am trying to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the communities. There are no scholastics at the university and neither am I there. During these past years I have.been exposed to a variety of communities' experiments that have added to both my experience and non-experience of community. While traveling to many parts of the world giving retreats on faith renewal, I made my home base in various living situations. At the university I lived with fellow Basilian priests in an academic atmosphere where many were of one mind on our work, but so many of our hearts were off in different directions; in different theologies, different psy-chologies, different styles of living. ' During the summer of 1970 in Detroit I was part of a seven week program of sharing and prayer with a group of priests. It was a temporary community that inspired us to continue the searching. During the academic year of 1970-71 a group of students and a few priests came to live together as a community, using a former convent in the inner city at Santa Maria Parish. ,We were of one heart but never made cl~ar our agreements and found that we were not of~one mind. We thought that our common involvement with the large central prayer group at Gesu Parish, Detroit, would form us into a community; but we had no clear headship and a random pattern of living developed. In the beginning of 1971 a nucleus of five priests was attracted to a vision of a community committed to ~he renewal of priests. They joined,me at Santa Maria and on several retreats. We spent the summer together in sharing and prayer. It was a strained situation because the focus began with our interpersonal relationships, dealing with areas of trust and lack of trust, and seemed to continue at that level. In a sense, we were our own first customers; we were the ones who experienced healing, but there was so much more needed for so many brothers. The two priests, who stayed on with me (1971-72) in the retreat work with priests, found it increasingly difficult to work with the renewal of priests. Our community experience was good but not good enough. ,We tried to be of one heart and one mind but diversity of interest, of calling, and of talent seemed to dominate. Our temporary commitment worked against our making the needed agreements. For the next two years I moved to the Word of God Community in 16 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a base of operation. The leaders of the com-munity asked me to come and live with them and receive the Christian support I needed for the retreat with priests. The Word of God is an ecu-menical lay community of more than 1200 people living in extended family households. It is a life ~of prayer and common worship that over-flows in service. The bond of unity is commitment to the Lord and to one another. I came to experienc6 the pattern of their community life and to see before me re-discoveries of many basics of religious life. In living with a family household, I came to appreciate the enormity of the love and fidelity of the parents, at least thirty-six hours a day. I came to be aware of the devastating impact of the school, peer group pressures~ TV, movies and .advertising on the lives of the children, I realized the need of a Chris-tian space to be free to be Christian and the need of common worship to support the members. Then, in living with a household of young menocom-mitted to a single life as brothers, I came to experience the rediscovery of poverty, obedience and celibacy. I watched before my eyes young men committing their whole lives to the Lord, to one and another and to service of the community with an eagerness and simplicity that I knew many years ago. There is no lack of commitment among the young; it is being directed toward these vibrant communities. These community cells are the remnant clusters that,.~are rediscovering the basic elements of religious life in our times. They are rediscovering: commitment, prayer, obedience, sub-mission, ~order, celibacy, poverty, forgiveness and confessing of sins to one another, healing, admonitions, service, brotherly affection, and love. ~ During the past year I~have been living with a small group of Basilians attempting to apply some of these re-discoveries into our "Basilian Way of Life." It is a simple, experiment: (an we live our Basilian way of life in a simple way? We came to experience the support of each other in regular faith-sharing of God's movements in our day, in praying together daily, in our Eucharists and meals and in our weekly hour of intercession for the needs, of our fellow Basilians and the Church. We found ourselves of one heart.We could freely share and pray together and for each other, but our different apostolic works took us in different directions, limiting our time together, At the present. I am preparing for another community experiment: a house of intercession for priests by priestsl As a result of the power of heal-ing and unbinding we experit~nced in a forty-day period of intercession for priests last summer (1974), six of us have been released by our major superiors to form a core-community of intercession. We are inviting others tO join us for a week or mori~ of thisoministry of prayer for our brothers. The six of us (two Basilians, a Maryknoll missioner, a Trappist, a Jesuit, and a diocesan pastor) want to live as a community putting into practice some of the re-discoveries of religious life. We want to be a healing com-munity that will help unbind our brother priests. Renewed Religious Lile / 17 It is interesting to note that a parallel change took place in our seminary in Toronto during these same decades. In 1946 St. Basil's Seminary con-sisted of some fifty theologians and faculty housed in an old orphanage, A great emphasis.was placed on the theology of St. Thomas and on teaching. In 1956 the classroom extension on the new seminary marked the beginnings of the "New Theology." By 1966 the new freedom expressed itself in new patterns of studies, small group encounters, and a general ~democratization of life style. Now, approaching 1976, a remnant of Basilians is part of a theological union at St. Basil's College. What can be said about 1986? What will religious life be like? I have some. questions that concern me and some re-discoveries that have given me hope. Questions about Religious Life What can I say about the renewal of religious life in light of this back-ground of experience? I wish 1 had the answers. What I do have. is the anguish of many concerned questions and the insights of some re-dis-coveries. Will religious life, as we have known it, die out? Isoa remnant to preserve this way of life for a future restoration? Can the new wine of renewal be put into old wineskins? I would like to answer these questions with the surety that would give hope, but I am confronted with the reality of dying communities--empty novitiates, closed seminaries, the average age of membership increasing dramatically, continued resignation of mem-bers. Another question that concerns me is the :nature of the apostolic work usually done by religious communities; such as, schools, hospitals, and social work. Where does the religious community enter a government controlled structure and how does it survive as a work of mercy and charity in the midst of a bureaucratic system? A related question confronts religious com-munities: Do we dare sell our institutions or are we secure in them like the young rich man in the Gospel? Can we be secure in insecurity? Another concern ~about religious life is its isolation from the full ecclesial community. Have religious communities become churches unto themselves? Have they been more interested in their self-perpetuation and the advancement of their own apostolic endeavors than in the welfare of the people of God and the proclamation of the Kingdom? Another concern is that many religious communities have attempted renewal by a single directional thrust; that is, the lessening of discipline and order. The usual result has been the lessening of the time given to prayer by the individual and by the community. This type of renewal was not an experiment; it was just a change. There was little, if any, evaluation and no time limit set for the termination of the change. A greater emphasis was placed on personal responsibility and initiative, but so many of us have come to realize how much we need the mutual support of each other that is expressed through order. Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 Another thrust has been on pluralism within the community. I, among others, was a strong proponent of pluralism at our renewal chapter of 1968, but now I see the need of unity, of unanimity, of being of one heart and mind in our community and apostolate. What has been the effect of these changes? The drastic changes in .the last decade have been devastating to the morale of many older members. Nonverbal communications came across: that what was done before~was not good and what we are bringing in is better. The renewal has ushered in new and good things. But have we discarded some of the treasures of the old? From my experiences of living in various communities, I have come to some insights into re-discovering some of these discarded treasures. Insights into Re-discoveries I have come to see that there is no lessening of cofnmitment among young men and women. It is being directed, however, to new styles of life, to the lay communities and not to the traditional forms of religious life. Religious communities and leaders in the Church need to take a sincere look at what is happening in these lay communities, not with a stance of "wait and see" or of tolerance, but of active participation and encourage-ment. The Spirit is speaking to these communities and .the Church needs to hear wtiat the Spirit is saying. ~, Religious communities will find that the basic practices that have been rejected in our renewal process are now being "re-discovered" by these lay communities. What richness they are finding in common and private prayer (what used to be called office, meditation, holy hours), in Scripture reading, in teachings (conferences), in an ordered life under headship (obedience and rule), in support, encouragement and admonitions, (moni-tions, spiritual direction), in confessing their sins to one another and praying for one another (examen, chapter of faults), in times of sabbath (grand silence). But, above all, the basic commitment to ~the Lord Jesus is made explicit and is freely, talked about and regularly renewed. The reality of Jesus as Lord of their lives together is what makes these com-munities vibrant and alive with new members. I have come to be less discouraged with the conflict experienced in religious communities, realizing that the source of the conflict is often the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit convicts us so that we would get off dead-center, so that we would not be self-satisfied with our security. The message of the Spirit to religious communities may well be the message of the Spirit to the Church in Laodicea: You keep saying, "I am so rich and secure that I want nothing." Little do you realize how wretched you are, how pitiable and poor, how blind and naked! Take my advice. Buy from me gold refined by fire if you would be truly rii:h. Buy white garments in which to be clothed, if the shame of your nakedness is to be covered. Buy ointment to smear on your eyes, if you Renewed Religious Li]e / 19 would see once more: Whoever is dear to me I reprove and chastise. Be earnest about it, therefore, repent! Rv 3:17-19. The message of the Spirit is to repent, to be renewed. It is not a call just to a change, but ,to a change for the better, to a renewal. I see that religious communities need tO keep searching and re-discover their founda-tions. Experimentation I would encourage religious communities to cbntinue experimentation; that is, to try what is possible with agreed-upon limits. The difficulty with many experiments is that they were tried without an understanding of the nature of experimentation. It was not experimentation but change. Experi-mentation means actually doing something with pre-set limitations that allow evaluation. For instance, so often an "experiment" is attempted with no termination date and, when it finally does terminate, it is usually because it just fails due to the nature of the situation and the members feel the failure as frustration and/or guilt. A'termination date allows an evaluation of positive and negative features. Also, experimentation calls for oneness of heart and mind. The members of the group need to agree on their ideals and on the practical' steps necessary to achieve them; such as, time commit-ment, prayer schedules, work assignments, finances, order and headship. Experiments in community life fail so often because of the lack of agree-ments among the members; agreements are needed on the ideals as well as on the practicalities of day to day living and on the authority to call: one another to fulfill the agreements made. Agreements are the limitations set on the experiment that allow evaluation. The professor who directed my ~dissertation research in biochemistry insisted on two principles in regard to experimentation: One, "Don't talk about it, do it;" and the .other, "An experiment never has enough controls." ~(Controls are the fixed limits set on the experiment that make possible its evaluation.) And so~.in regard to experimenting With renewal of religious life, I would encoutage religious communities to "try and try again" and to ¯ "set specific agreements on what is to be done." I would encourage experi-mentation not just change, o ~ The Church needs many examples of what can be done. We need living models of renewed religious communities that can be a sign ot~ hope to other communities. We need religious~communities to be living witnesses of the Risen Lord Jesus. It would only take a few t6 spark a spiritual revolution in the Church. The Charismatic Renewal and Religious Life The charismatic renewal cannot be igno~'ed; it just won't go ,away by not paying attention to it. The message of the charismatic renewal is to the whole Church and in a special way to religious communities. We need to Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 hear what the Spirit is saying no matter what our experience of the charis-matic renewal has been. There are a variety of messages spoken directly to religious communi-ties, some of which can be easily accepted and others causing tension. The many people who have been renewed by a new fullness of this Spirit challenge religious to be renewed and have their hearts set on fire with the love and the power of the Lord. This fire expresses itself in the ways that should be part of religious life: by the presence of God, in the prayer of praise, in the power of ministry, gifts of prophecy, healing and discernment, in the love of Scripture and speaking of the Lord. This new fire is available to all religious for the asking, that is, if we ask with hunger for the Lord and the expectancy of faith. The challenge of the charismatic renewal is not only to the individual member of religious communities but also to communities themselves to rediscover the essential factors of their life together. This kind of challenge causes tensions. Many religious as individuals have experienced the power of their "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and have been set on fire with new life but confronted a tension when they returned to their home community. For many, the prayer-meeting with people not of their own community is the occasion of love, fulfillment, and prayer; but when they return home they find bickering and superficiality. Others, on returning home are confronted with the challenge: Why can't you find your fulfillment at home? I see that the major cause of the tension is the Holy Spirit Himself; He is healer but He also is.judge This is true of the individual and of the community.This tension is good and from the Spirit Who brings the sword. We are being challenged to be renewed. Are there any religious communities that have been renewed by the charismatic renewal? Some~have been founded anew, such as, St. Benedict's Abbey, Pecos, New Mexico. But we need more models of renewal. People are waiting for a community to say, "Here we are!" We need some :.real evidence of the Lord's work and we are waiting. We need to be patient and wait for the Lord's time-table. Some religious communities are experi-encing a charismatic renewal by "osmosis," that is, a gradual absorption of ' various aspects, such as, shared and spontaneous prayer,,a greater rever-ence for the Word of God, renewed interest in the Lord. But we also need the direct renewal of deeper conversion to the Lord Jesus. The greater yielding to the power- and ministry-gifts of the Holy Spirit and the deeper relationships of love for one another in full community, What can an individual religious do when there is tension within the community over the charismatic renewal? Love much and love still more. It is the witness of love expressed in daily service, care, forgiveness and patience that melts tensions. Only by asking for this love in daily prayer will we be able to love in this.way. ~n addition, the individual religious will need to find support in a praying-healing community. For a while this may Renewed Religious Life have to be outside the "religious" community! What a contradiction that a member of a religious community would have to go outside that community to find spiritual support. And yet I have seen far too many religious who have had to do just that. There are many lay communities that are experiencing a renewed li~e in the Spirit and are challenging religious communities to drink deeply of the new wine and be what they are called to be. Religious communities are being challenged to be leaders of renewal in the Church, to be an integrated part of the whole Church, to be a believing, confessing witness to the world, a charismatic witness to the Church. Religious communities ought to be charismatic communities with all the gifts of the H01y Spirit operative; including wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discern-ment of spirits, tongues and interpretation (cf. 1 Co 12). Religious com-munities need to make use of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are given for the upbuilding of the Body of Christ. Religious communities have been challenged to renewal by the Second Vatican Council to look to the charism of their founders. Such a looking to, and renewal of, their original charism may in some cases be a "re-discovery" and in others a restoration. Com-munities do have a charism that identifies them. It may be a ministry or a life-style but always it is a fire. It is the fire that enkindled the founder and set on fire the hearts of those who followed. The characteristics of this fire can be seen in the early Church itself, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. Surely the whole Church needs to experience its founding charisms and it will if religious communities become charismatic. Factors in Renewed Religious Life From my experiences of failure and success in a* variety of community experiments, I see that there are basic factors to be taken into account in any renewed community. The factors I would like to stress include: common commitment, agreements, headship and submission, sin and forgiveness, prayer in private and together, Eucharist, celibacy and mutual support, poverty, discipleship, :apostolate and brotherhood (companionship) and witness. The order of importance of the various factors depends on the nature and state of the existing community and apostolate. There needs to be a dynamic equilibrium of being disciples, apostles, and brothers (com-panions). 1. Common Commitment: The common commitment to Jesus as Lord is the fundamental factor of Christian life. Each of us, individually and together, needs to profess Jesus as Lord. He alone can be the center and reason for our lives together. We need to allow Him to be the Lord of our lives. It is His Spirit dwelling in our hearts that binds us into one body. This dimension of community exists prior to us and we enter into it, that is, the community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit pre-exists. As we enter into the Spirit of the Lord Jesus we enter into a pre-existing community. Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 We do not "form" community in the sense of giving it birth~ but rather we allow it to grow the more deeply in each of us as we enter into the Spirit and allow Jesus to be the Lord of our lives. As we enter into a relationship with the Lord, we enter into a common-union with Him and so with all the others who also have entered into this union. Our common-union-in-Christ is the bond that forms community. This is the bond that needs to be made explicit, public, vocal, and regularly renewed. Many religious communities continue to assume ,,that this basic rela-tionship is real in their members. My experience.,testifies that this assump-tion cannot be made universally and needs to be made explicit. We need to make explicit our relationship to Jesus as the Lord of our lives, that is, we all need to support one another in continued conversion. One way of supporting each other in this relationship is by our daily prayer support and faith-sharing (see below for further development) which gradually begins to counteract the domination of other "lords" in our lives. And we have been deeply influenced by "lords" other than Christ in these past decades: by the dominance of success, by the fallacy of numbers, by the influence of materialism, by the ideals of self-fulfillment, etc. We need to renew our basic commitment to the Lord Jesus. 2. Agreements: We cannot assume that we are of "one heart and one mind" (Acts 4:32); we need to re-discover how to make agreements and come to oneness of heart and mind. It is a process that takes time and listening to all the members but it also involves laying down our own pre-conceived ideas and desires to achieve a unanimity but not a uniformity. It means that we want to be reminded of our agreements so that we may keep them. Agreements need to be clear and even written down so that we do not have misunderstandings. The agreements that are not clear are usually the source of "double expectations." One person expects to do B and another C and neither is fulfilled. We need to agree on our expectations, our ideals, and on the daily, practical ways they are to be achieved. Agreements are the "controls" of the experiment; they set the limits of what can be done together, limits of time commitments, involvements and duties. When evaluation is done, we need to look to our agreements. They will show us how the experiment is working. 3. Headship and Submission: Each member needs to be under the authority of another, not in the sense of being under a superior~ as we knew it in the past, but in the sense of being a part of the body. Each member of the body needs to be in submission to and in support of the whole, body if the body is to function as one. In the past we had separated the roles of superior, confessor and spiritual director so that the superior was not to involve himself in the spiritual life of the individual and the spiritual director or confessor was not to involve himself in the daily life of the individual. We need tore- Renewed Religious Li[e / 23 discover the role of a "spiritual elder" who would take responsibility for the whole welfare of the person. Each person needs such a "head" to reflect his needs, to challenge him, to confront him with his agreements, to foster his total growth. Such a "head" has the responsibility to see that the individuals and the community are growing; he is to see that decisions and agreements are made and problems are faced up to but he does not have to make the decisions himself. Such headship means support and submission of all the members of the body to one another, not just to the head. This re-discovered concept of headship would extend obedience beyond the vertical relationship to the horizontal as well. It would mean a submission and reverence to one an-other as members of the same body. It would mean that members iaf a brotherhood would not be just keepers of their brothers, like Cain, but rather be brothers to their brothers in the Lord. ~" 4. Sin and Forgiveness: One of the major factors in the. daily living of Christian community that needs to be re-discovered is the effect of sin and the need of forgiyeness. Sin has a drastic effect on community. The sin of any one member of the body affects the whole body. My sin of resentment or anger affects you and your sin affects me. Sin is a communal responsi-bility. In the recent past we have made sin. a private matter mainly to pro-tect the privacy of conscience. We have relegated sin to the privacy of confession or to the spiritual director and have separated the office of confessor, spiritual director and superior. We~ need to reconsider the effect this has on community. Sin is not a private matter. We need ways to confess our ~ins to one another, forgive one another and pray for one another s6 that we be healed (cf. Jm 5: 16), In the past religious communities have had ways of confessing sin to one another; in chapter of faults and in monitions, but these became stylized into dead rituals and were dropped by many communities. There are simple ways of confessing our sins to one another that should be in-corporated into our daily life. Sin will continue to be a reality that we need to deal with daily. Seventy times Seven times a day we will have to forgive one another. 'Community exists not when sin disappears but when we learn to forgive four hundred and ninety times a day. We need to learn to ask for forgiveness, to give forgiveness and to receive it. When we exchange forgiveness we acknowl-edge sin but ~ve also'acknowledge that our love is greater than sin. To the extent that we have forgiveness--to that extent we have~ community (Bon-hoeffer). If there is any one single factor that needs to be present in com-munity, I think, it is forgiveness. Sins against our.relationships are the major factors that destroy community. Forgiveness, as we ourselves have been for-given in Christ, is our mission of reconciliation and restores community. 5. Faith Sharing: One of the ways that our common commitment to the Lord Jesus is supported is by faith-sharing. Daily we need to share our 24 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 faith experiences and how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. In the past we had examen as a time to review our lives, but the emphasis was on ourselves, our sins, our virtues; it became a time to make a list ot~ our faults. The daily sharing at the end of the"day can become a new form of common examen. For example, beginning with a period of silence we can let the Spirit reveal to us where He acted today so that we could recognize His action in our lives; then each in turn can share two or three moments when they recognized the action of the Spirit and corresponded to it or did not correspond to it. In listening to one another we come to hear how the Spirit works in each of us. We can respond with joy, prayer and en-couragement. Daily faith sharing becomes a very special time of closeness in the local communities. We come to know and support each other; we come to know ourselves and the delicacy of the movements of the Holy Spirit. Our faith grows as we hear the faith of our brothers expressed. Faith comes from hearing and we need to hear the faith of one another as well as see it. As trust grows among the group, the confession of~.our weakness and sin becomes possible. It is in this kind of sharing that we can confess to another, pray for one another and so be healed. 6. Prayer: To be a Christian community, each member needs to be faithful to daily prayer. I would place the minimum for each person at an hour of private prayer each day. We need a block of an hour to be before the Lord, to let Him love us, heal us and teach us. If we are to work with Him, we must know Him and this takes time. There is no substitute for this daily time of drawing nourishment from the Lord; it would be better to miss a meal than to miss this time of being apart with Him. To be Christian, the community needs to pray together. The prayer of the' Church Calls us together several times a day, But over and above that, I have come to see the power of hours of prayer spent together in inter-cession for the needs of the Church. In interceding for others, we join Jesus before the throne of the Father. The Father waits for us to ask for our needs in the name of Jesus. Prayer is the time of drawing spiritual nourishment for life. Without prayer we are inviting death to reign in the community. Each individual needs to feed the community with his prayer and, in turn, the communal prayer strengthens the individual. It may well be that the lack of prayer in religious comn~unities, both~ private and communal, has been the major factor in the increased signs of death--decrease in commitment and decrease in vocations. If I were to venture a guess at the major factors among those listed, I would point to the lack of prayer and lack of forgiveness. We need to rediscover prayer--not a return to reciting prayers, but truly praying. We can make use of every form of prayer available to us: the official prayer of the Church, shared prayer, spontaneous prayer, prayer in Renewed Religious Life / 25 the spirit, silent contemplation, lectio divina, holy hours, litanies, the rosary, novenas, and any other form. In this time and state of the Church, we need to make use of every channel of power to cry out in our need for mercy. The prayer of Our time is just this: lamentation. To weep with Jesus forthe ChurCh and the world. ~' 7. Eucharist: The celebration of the Eucharist, I have come to experi-ence, does not "form" community in the sense of giving it birth, but it rather is the cause of growth of community. It nourishes the life that is there and celebrates it. The Holy Spirit gives birth to community and He must be dwelling in our hearts in order that we be nourished by the Eucharist. This means that we need to approach the altar with forgiveness and conversion of who we are. If we do not recognize the assembled body for what it~is as the body of the Lord, we eat and drink to. our own judg-ment and "that is why so many among you are sick and infirm, and why so many are dying" ( I Co 11 : 30). The Eucharist can be an escape from facing the real 'issues that divide us.,On the other hand, the Eucharist can be and should be the source of healing of our divisions. To be healed we need to confess both our sinful-ness and our faith in the two-fold presence of the Lord:' The Lord is present as spiritual food and as the assembled body. Our faith is expressed in,the invisible presence and our submission .and obedience is expressed to the visible presence of the assembly. To be truly one we are to be one in faith and one in obedience. Is the real source of divisions over this obedi-ence? Do we approach the Eucharist "listening to" (the real meaning of obedience) the Lord and one another? Do we approach the body of the Lord with reverence, submission and obedience? When we celebrate the Eucharist, confessing who we are and confessing who Jesus is, we truly will recognize the Lord in the breaking of the bread. He will open our hearts and minds and heal us so that we might be one. Eucharist ought to be and can be th~ summit and source of our life to-gether when we approach the table of the Lord as a, "confessing com-munity." 8. Celibacy: Mutual Si~pport o[ Love--Consecrated celibacy is a way of living for the Lord in a singular way. It is a gift of the Lord for the upbuilding of community by which we are freed to love more broadly and serve with greater commitment. In a sense, celibacy is a gift of time for the community; it frees us to give time to love and service. On the one hand; celibacy is freeing but, on the other hand, it limits us to be served and be loved by the community. To live as celibates we need to receive the support of community. This involves mutual 16ve and concern. It is a marriage to the bQdy of the Lord, His Church. I have come to re-discover the need of small celibate communities within the larger ecclesial communities because it is in the small com-munity that this mutual love, concern, and support is expressed in a daily Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 way. The mutual support of love can be expressed in a number of ways: praying for each other and over each other for support, healing and deliv-erance from various kinds of bondage, sharing of faith experiences, con-fessing our sins and .forgiving, speaking to each other the tru~th in real love, facing our fears fearlessly, sharing the daily events of work, recre~ation, meals and the special events of celebrations, submitting to one another so that each person is under headship, expressing our affection for each other in visible signs. "Greet all the brothers with holy embrace" (I Th 5:26). This sign of affection may seem like a small or silly thing but it is not. We cannot embrace a brother with a resentment against him.It has been a fascinating discovery for me to realize that the very signs of affection that were so definitely discouraged in novitiates and seminaries because of the fear of homosexuality, are the most effective way of avoiding the problem. A warm affectionate community is not only the greatest antidote to homosexuality but also is needed to live out our consecrated celibacy. 9. Poverty: Poverty needs to be re-discovered. I see that poverty has two fundamental aspects: possession and dispossession. The first movement of poverty is to be possessed by the power and the presence of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are possessed by Him we are rich and truly free. The second movement of poverty is to be dispossessed---of all that is not of Christ: of things, attitudes,, and relationships. To me this means that we. may become poor in new ways as well as in the old: poor in the extent of involvement, poor in the use of our time, poor in productiv-ity, poor in successes; as well as poor in material goods, food, clothes, housing and transportation. When we are dispossessed, we stand weak and stripped before the Lord and man, and allow ourselves to be posSessed with the richness of the Lord; He becomes our power and joy. Religious communities are called to be poor, not just in spirit, but also in fact. Our sign to the world is that we are rich in the Lord, Can re-ligious communities be the sign of contradiction that confronts the "lords" of our age: materialism, competition, and ~ivarice? 10. Disciples-Apostles-Brothers: I am coming to rediscover the need of a dynamic equilibrium between three aspects of religious life. We need to be disciples, apostles and brothers (companions), that is, all three need to be renewed, not just one or the other. As religious, I see that we are called by Jesus as His disciples to follow Him, and sent by Jesus as His apostles with His power to do the work of the Father, and united as His brothers by His love to be a witness to the world. In renewing religious life we need to emphasize the word ltis; we are to be ltis disciples, ltis apostles, l-lis brothers (companions). Have we attempted to renew our communities according to our own patterns, making ourselves disciples of our founder, or apostles of our own brand of apostolate? Or have we attempted renewal of our communities by approaching the renewal of just one aspect, such as, Renewed Religious Li]e / ~17 the apostolate or the community? Community life cannot be renewed with-out the renewal of discipleship and the apostolate; they are all inter-related. I have experienced, however, that the aspect that is most easily passed over: is discipleship. We have a tendency to assume that all our mem-bers are undergoing continous conversion and all are praying.and know Jesus Christ in a personal way as Lord and Savior. My experience bears witness that this assumption cannot be made. To put it in another way, many religious need to be evangelized. Many more than we like to admit need to come to experience the presence and power of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. l 1. Ecclesial Witness: The religious community ought to be and can be the living witness of what it means to be Christian. It ought to be able to say to those in need: "Come and see." "Come and live with us that you may know how to live." The religious community ought to be and can be the yeast that leavens the Church with a ferment of new wine, bringing new joy and hope to the Church and a world that so needs new vision and good news. The religious community ought to be and can be a confessing com-munity; confessing both its sinfulness and that Jesus is Lord and Savior. The confessing community speaks the truth in love: we are in need ot~ help and Jesus is given for our help. The world needs to hear this truth spoken in great love. The religious community ought to be and can be a poor and praying community 'that is the sign to the world that Jesus is alive in our day. The religious community ought to be and can be charismatic and serve the body of Christ with all the ministries of the Holy Spirit., Steps Toward Achievement What can be done if, in fact, we are not experiei~cing the ideal? I would suggest some practical steps that could be taken to work toward it. These steps are possible at any time. 1. Ask the Father in Jesus to send Their Holy Spirit of love and power to draw men together; 2. Forgive, forgive, forgive and remove the obstacles to our being one; 3. Share to the extent possible; sharing our burdens, our prayer, our faith experiences, our goods; 4. Listen to the Spirit revealing Himself to each of us and through each other. We need vehicles of communal listening in otieying the Lord. If we want to know what the will of the Lord is, we need to look with discernment to what He is in fact doing and saying. A further step then follows: as the Lord calls together a core of leaders who are similarly drawn to meet (step 5) on a regular basis, even Review Ior Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 daily, to carry out steps 1, 2, 3, and 4, this calling will lead the leaders to commit (step 6) themselves to one another. Around such a core of committed leaders, a believing and witnessing community can grow. There are some Christian communities who have grown in this way. We need to look to them for the message they are speaking to the Church in our day. They are living and speaking a radical message. Do we darer listen? Pastoral Ministry. For those who want to more. Trinity College offers a unique program integrating scripturel theolog~ and professional skills to 15elp you be of greater service to your fellow man and A combination of theoretical and 'practical preparation offers opportuni-ties for specialization in health care, the aging, correctional work, the parish or education. Choose from a 4 semester MA degree program, a 2semester non-degree program, or a 5 week Summer Institute starting June 28, 1976. Fc~r more information write or call Sister Mary Louise Norpel, S.N.D., Director, at (202) 269-2276. Trinity College Dept. 02 Washington. D.C. 20017 Please send me more informalion. narr~ address dry state__ZIP___ TR N H[NGTON The Art of Religious Leadership Sister Noreen Murray, F.M.M. Sister Noreen resides at 225 East 45th St.; New York, NY 10017. As a student at St, Louis University, School of' Social Service, I had the opportunity to participate in a Values and Ethics course that helped me to take a closer look at who I have become because of the values I hold. I selected the topic of leadership for ~'ne Of our assignments because I be-lieve that good leadership is essential for the growth of individuals. The emphasis of this paper is on the role of religious women who have assumed the responsibilities of leadership. As used in~ this paper, the term, "leader" is synonomous with the terms of "superior" or "coordinator" that are presently being used by many religious communities. The art of religious leadership is the creative process which unravels as an individual accepts responsibility to help other persons or organizations, strive to achieve the goals or ends for which they have come together with a shared vision. A religious leader is an individual who responds to life with her whole being; aware that every person she meets and every breath she takes is a gift from the ;Father for her. The discovery of God in her life has brought new insights and .meanings to everything she does~ She has been able to come,to a deeper understanding of' who she is, as she reflects on her womanhood, religious commitment and responsibilities. God has gently touched her and whispered her name, beckoning her to assume the office of leadership. I believe that a religious woman has a lot to contribute as leader, both within her own community and also in public organizations. The focus therefore of this paper will be on the various dimensions of creative leadership which are applicable to both settings and will be indi-cated by reference made to a leader with responsibilities in community. The importance for a religious leader to be aware of the reasons why her community was founded cannot be stressed enough. For when a leader 29 30 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 is able to step back in time and become immersed in the history of her :ommunity, she is able to have a better perspective of where the community has come from and what is its potential for the future, In doing this, the leader may have to call the community to accountability because over the years they have become so involved in "doing" that they have lost the freedom of "being." The call to accountability is sometimes a painful one for the leader to initiate and yet if the community is to be viable, it must be one of life rather than of technological necessity. As a religious leader looks at the community, she realizes that it is a dynamic interaction of individual women who have come together with a shared vision, in the hope of one day attaining their goal. The uniqueness of each woman in the community gives a richness to the life of the com-munity, when she is allowed to be herself and grow to her potential. Com-munities that have been in existence for years have sometimes become so involved in their Work and apostolate that they get further and further away from the real meaning of their existence. The encouragement that a religious leader is able to give to women in her community to become sensitive to the roots of the community and see how the roots can remain firm as they branch out into various works, will often be a bond of unity for all.'involved. Personal reflection on the community enables the women to have a better understanding of what part they play in its growth and de-velopment. With this enriched insight, there is often a renewed dedication and commitment that occurs in the life of each woman. Although the religious leader cannot escape the complexity and magni-tude of the work she is confronted with each day, she can approach the situation responsibly. An awareness of who the women in her community are, may be one means she can use to delegate some of her work. In dele-gating work to an individual, the.leader is giving her ~the opportunity to utilize her talents and gifts and expand her potential. Once the leader has delegated what work can be done by others, she is then in a better position to see what she has to do. By taking time to list' in a priority sequence the things that are to be done, she,~will have a more realistic perspective Of what can be achieved. As this priority list is developed, the religious leade'r realizes the possibility of frustration has been lessened when she is not able to cover all the work that is before her because the demands that she has placed on herself are more realistic and in line with what can feasibly be accomplished: A religious leader is as human as the next person and like the rest of mankind, she must take time to step aside from her work and be re-freshed. It is important for the leader as well as the community to realize this because unknowingly in her desire to help others, she maybe over-doing things and stifling her own potential for growth. The community can be very supportive to her by respecting her humanness and acknowledging the efforts she makes to bring them closer to their goals. While the religious The Art o] Religious Leadership / 31 leader shares with her constituents the proposals and decisions that are to be made, it is often she alone who bears the brunt of mistakes and failures that have occurred. I believe that it is important for the women in community to accept the responsibility of our failures, as well as our suc-cesses with our leaders. We are human beings and any one of us is capable of making mistakes. We must learn to accept ourselves with our weaknesses as well as our strengths. The creativity of a religious leader to initiate new dimensions for change is often met with resistance from the community members. The stability and comfortableness that has existed for years does not want to be shaken. The question of "Why is it necessary to have these changes?", is often posed by some of the sisters to the religious leader. The prayerful preparation that has gone into formulating these changes gives the re-ligious leader the openness to listen to each one and respond in such a way that all have a better understanding of what is involved in these changes. The element of risk is often involved in any decision and one must be willing to pay the price for that risk, if one is going to be true to herself and her calling. To step into the unknown can be a frightening experience and yet as one begins the journey and stumbles and falls along the way, she is often in a better position to pick herself up and proceed onward. The channels of communicationthat are accessible to all the women in the community, is a very important consideration to which' the leader should be sensitive. If'the leader is to speak to the members of the community, it is important that she realizes there is more than one way of expressing our ideas, and if we are to speak to a group, we must see what method will be most receptive by this particular group. The ability of the women to com-prehend what is being said is important, and the leader must make every endeavor to make the arch of distortion ever smaller. The arch of distor-tion is affected not only by the acoustics of the room, its physical situation in the comm._ unity, but also by the importance and relevance that this com-munication will have on the individual sisters. The growth of community is not a one-sided effort but rather the interaction and exchange of all the women in the community. Because of this, it is imperative that the means of communication be accessible and used by all the members. Even though the religious leader may not have personal expertise within the area of financial management, it is important for her to be involved in the formulation of the budget and other financial expenditures. This principle highlights another aspect of leadership and that is the ability to select .persons who have expertise within a given field and the capability of utilizing this expertise on a broader scale. Once the leader is able to share various leadership responsibilities with qualified persons, she is relieved of many pressures and is therefore able to extend herself in a more human way to others. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 The vision of a religious leader often extends beyond her immediate community to the larger community of the neighborhood,, city, nation or world. If her community is to be a dynamic witness to others, it is impera-tive that it has interaction with others. The call to leadership does not stop at one's doorstep, rather it calls one forth to become responsible in new and varied ways. Leadership is dynamic, if we-will allow it the freedom to be creative and responsive. When a religious leader knows what her beliefs are, it is important that she stands up to be counted. Christ's call to discipleship was never one of ease but rather self-giving. The truth and sincerity of religious leaders speak loudest in the silence of their presence and the beliefs to which they give witness. The emphasis of this paper has been on religious leadership in both communities and public organizations and was expressed from the view-point of religious leaders in community. I believe that the responsibilities for a religious leader in a public organization would basically be the same. By substituting the word organization for community in the paper, I think one can understand the validity of this statement. The presence of religious within a public organization can be a very powerful force in helping the organization grow to a new dimension. Change does not happen overnight in any organization but the influence that a religious can have on an organi-zation by her presence and convictions may stimulate the organization to have a greater accountability for its existence and policies. I believe that it is a challenge and responsibility that religious have to step out of our comfortable environments and into the realm of risk and venture forth into the unknown. Religious leaders do not have all the answers; they are striving as best as possible to encourage a great degree of collegiality in decisions that are made, for they recognize the ability that each woman has to enrich the community by sharing her ideas and insights. It mfiy seem as though I pre-sented an ideal type of leadership that is not very real, however I believe that it is very difficult to jud.ge or criticize another for mistakes when I am not totally aware of all the intricacies that are involved. My presen-tation was one of potential, something that should be strived for by all leaders. When we open ourselves to the humanness of our leaders, we ha~,e a greater appreciation for their efforts and stumbles they have made as they try to enrich our shared vision. The creativity that is involved in leadership brings each of us to new dimensions and possibilities. Are we willing to accept the guidance of religious leadership that may lead us into the unknown, facing us with the possibility of taking risk? If we do not have all the answers, are we willing to pursue that truth which will lead us to its discovery? Shall we take this journey through life, or shall we sit by the shores and watch the waves come in? The response that is to be given to these questions is a personal one. Are we ready to make that response and live with the choice we make? The Holy See, the Society of Jesus and the 32nd General Congregation Vincent O'Keefd, S.J. Father O'Keefe, past president of Fordham University, has been an Assistant General resident in Rome since 1966. He has frequently acted as Vicar General during Father Arrup¢'s absences from Rome. His address is: Borgo S. Spirito, 5; C.P. 9048; 00100 Roma, Italy. Introduction The modesty of that title reminds me of a course we had as novices. It was entitled, "From Adam to Pius XII." Anyone studying the 32rid General~Congregation now or at some future date will place its distinctive note in the deep and continuing concern and the decisive intervention of the Holy Father. I'd like to reflect on this with you and follow this order: first of all, a brief outline of the sequence of events which will provide a kind of framework of reference and indicate the essential documents; then a consideration of what happened at the congregation to bring about the personal inierventi0n of Pope Paul VI; this will enable us to look into the concerns of the Pope, and the stance and approach of the congregation; and finally, we'll try to sum up and indicate where we go from here. Sequence of Events 1) On Easter of 1972, Fr. General wrote to the pope of his intention of convoking a general congregation "during 1974 or in early 1975, and thus was cancelling the Congregation of Provincials which would have been held in 1973. Cardinal Villot replied, on April 18, 1972, in the name of the Holy Father, who was pleased that a general congregation would be convoked 33 34 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 and indicated what he considered to be important orientations. 2) On September 8, 1973, Fr. General issued his letter of convocation, setting the date of the 32nd General Congregation for December 1, 19~74. On September 15, 1973, Pope Paul VI sent an autograph letter to Ft. General in which he indicated the lines of authentic renewal in the spirit of Vatican II. 3) On November 21, 1974, Pope Paul VI received Ft. General, who gave him a copy of the postulata, along with a memorandum listing the topics which the general congregation would probably treat in accordance with the postulata and the preparatory period of the congregation. 4) The members of the 32nd General Congregation were received on December 3, 1974, by the pope, who pronounced a lengthy discourse which is the key document of the Holy See with regard to the general congregation. 5) Cardinal Villot sent a letter, dated December 3, 1974, in the name of the pope. In his meeting with the Holy Father on November 21, 1974, Fr, General had raised the possibility that the congregation in the course of its discussions might ask that the fourth vow be extended also to non-priests. Cardinal Villot's letter said that such an extension could present grave difficulties that would prevent the necessary approval of the Holy .See. 6) On January 22, 1975, the general congregation, .after serious and prolonged discussion, held an indicative vote, a sort of straw ballot, with regard to extending the fourth vow. More than two-thirds of the assembly voted affirmatively, and this was conveyed to the Holy See on the same evening. ~ 7) .P.ope Paul VI sent an autograph letter to Fr. Ge~neral on February 15, 1975, saying that the~e could be no innovation in the fourth vow and requesting that all the decrees of the congregation be forwarded to him before their publication. 8) On February 20, 1975, the pope received Fr. General. 9) On March 7, 1975, the pope received Fr. General ~nd the recently elected general assistants, and gave them a comrdunication for the con-gregation. 10) On May 2, 1975, Cardinal Villot wrote to Fr. General in the name of the pope, to authorize the publication, of the decrees of the general, con~ gregation. Along with the letter were some general norms of interpretation and particular observations on several of the decrees, The official edition of the documents of the 32nd General Congregation will contain those documents which the Holy See considers necessary .t0 evaluate: the congregation, and to assure that our religious and apostolic activities, are in conformity with the Ignatian Charism and obedient to the fatherly orientations which .the pope gave to the general congregation on different occasions. These documents are: 1 ) The H01y.Father's discourse of December 3, 1974 2)~ Cardinal Villot's letter of the same date The Holy See and~the 32nd General Congregation / 35 3) The autograph letter of Pope Paul VI on February 1 ~, 1975 4) The communication of the pope to Fr. General and the general ~. assistants on.March 7, 1975 5) The letter of Cardinal Villot on May 2, 1975, authorizing the pub- =~ lication of the documents of the congregation o The" Congregation With this background, let's consider what happened at the congregation. In its initihl stages it determined~its approach: and modus operandi. Right from the start, .it' wanted .to determine its agenda in the sense of what matters it should, treat, before launching into any particulhr question. This led to the drawing up of .a list of priorities--those matters to which the congregation wanted to direct its immediate attention. This was not meant to indicate the absOlute importance of any issue, but was rather an effort to select those items which the congregation as a whole felt it should0treat at the outset. One of these priorities dealt with the nature of formal membership in the order and such related ques~tions as differences in "grade" or official .status among members. One of the commissions formed dealt with the. matter of the grades and presented several reports to the congregation. It is to be recalled that Pope Paul VI alluded to this matter in his discourse of December 3, 1974, where he said, You are likewise priests: this too is an essential character of the Society, without forgetting the ancient and established tradition of enlisting the help of Brothers who are not~ in Sa~red Orders and who have always had an honored and effective role in the Society. Priesthood was formally required by the Founder for ali professed religious, and this with good reason, be-cause the priesthood is necessary for the Order~he instituted with the special purpose of the sanctification of men through the Word and the sacraments. o- Effectively, the sacerdotal character is required by your dedication to the ,active life--we repeat--pleno sensu. .~ In Cardinal' Villot's letter of December 3, 1974, he mentioned that the Suprrme Pontiff had studied the possibility raised: by Fr. General in the audience of November 21, 1974, of extending the fourth vow of special obedience dirca missiones to all Jesuits, including flon-priests. The Holy Father said that, after having studied the matter, such an innovation. seemed to offer grave difficulties which" would prevent the necessary ap-proval of the Holy See. This communication was sent so that it~ would be kfiown during the disCusgions of the congregation.' The congregation discussed the matter of grades seriously and at length. Several ,options were possible, e.g., make no Changes; ektend the fourth vow 'to all priests but not to .brothers; simply accept no more as spiritual coadjutors; abolish ~the distinction of grades, etc. In order to aid the com-mission in its arduous work of preparing a definite report, the congregation voted to hold an indicative vote, a straw ballot, The vote was held on 36 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 January 22, 1975, and a vote in excess of a two-thirds' majority in favor of suppressing the grades was the result. This was communicated to the Holy See on the same day by means of a personal messenger, Fr. General had arranged to keep the Holy See fully informed on the proceedings of the congregation. In addition to a personal messenger from the congrega-tion, the Acta and the news bulletins were sent regularly to the Holy See. The news of the indicative vote proved very disturbin~ and upsettin~ to the pope. After a report was sent to him of the reasons which led to the indicative vote, the Holy Father sent an autograph letter to Fr. General on February 15, 1975: He repeated what was in Cardinal Villot's letter of December 3, ~1974, and said that there was to be no. innovation with regard to the fourth vow. He. wanted ~no change in the Formula of the Institute. He also expressed doubt about certain .orientations and attitudes that emerged from the work of the congregation, exhorted it to reflect profoundly on its responsibilities, and asked that the decrees be sent to him before publication. ~ The congregatibn was deeply unsettled by this turn of events, and confused, It was a time that called for spiritual insight, humility and cour-age, and these qualities were not lacking. There was a situation of difficult communication and misunderstanding; a painful situation since the Holy Father himself was involved. The congregation tried to explain to him what it had intended in all loyalty. The Holy Father stated what he expected of the congregation. ~ Why Did the Congregation Treat This Matter? The question of the fourth vow is connected with the distinction of grades. It is a problem that the 32nd General Congregation had inherited from the 31st General Congregation. This latter congregation had mandated the constitution of a commission to examine the whole problem of the suppression of the grade of Spiritual Coadjutor, and also the advantages and disadvantages of granting solemn profession to Temporal Coadjutors. The commission was set up and prepared a first report which the secre, tary of the Society sent to all the provinces in 1970 as a helpful factor in deciding the VOte for calling or not calling a general congregation. Replies were expected from the province congregations on the possible options proposed in the commission's report. After the province congregations, the commission completed its work and presented a second report to the congregation of procurators in Sep-tember 1970. The 31st General Congregation had recommended the constitution.of another commission, w~ich sought to aid and stimulate the execution.of its seventh decree on Temporal Coadjutors, and also sought to clarify the profound theological aspect of the vocation to the Society of a religious who is not a priest: A complement to this activity was an International Congress The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 37 of Temporal Coadjutors, the results of which were presented to the congre-gation of procurators. The congregation of Jprocurators discussed this question fully and underlined it as one calling for an urgent solution. Thus also for this pur-pose, it was fitting,that Fr. General convoke a general congregation within three to four years. After the convocation ,of the general congregation, the question of the grades, was the object of much work and study by special' groups in prepa, ration for the province congregations. The result of this intense work was the presentation of 65 postulata which directly treated the distinction of grades; and of these,,41 postulata from provinces called for the abolition of this distinction. The Commission set up by the 32nd General Congregation to deal with this question felt it was committed to study this matter, keeping in mind the letter of Pope Paul VI of September 15, 1973,,his discourse of December 3, 1974,.and Cardinal Villot!s letter of December 3, 1974. ¯ Since the problem of the distinction of grades in its totality and in the variety of its possible solutions went beyond the concession of the fourth vow, the.commission offered the congregation an accurate analysis of the postulata and the different .options possible which derived from them. Two reports were submitted which included the reactions and observations of tlie delegates. When the congregation voted on whether they should treat this question, 228 voted in favor of treating it. The commission presented its document for an initial discussion and an indicative vote on all the options. The results of the presentation and discussion were these: 1 ) ,the congregation was aware of the mind of the pope; 2) any decision of the pope would be accepted in full obedience; . 3) the congregation .wanted a full discussion of the matter, to arrive at an awareness and knowledge of the real state of the Socii~ty on this question, of the real difficulties involved, and of the possible remedies; 4) the congregation felt that if it should conclude that the only way to meet the difficulties was by the abolition of the grades, it would not only be possible but would also be.a duty on its part, in view of its responsibility to the Society, to present these difficulties to the Holy See by means of a genuine Ignatian rep.rese.ntation; 5) the congregation intended such an Ignatian representation to pre-cede any kind'of definitive act or action. The elements of a" genuine lgnatian representation were brought out. In the lived experience of the Ignatian life style, it is a primary feature of the fatherly mode of governing proper to the Society. It doeg not imply a will contrary to obedience, but rather a desire for common collaboration in the search for and discovery of the divine will.(Cf. Ex. Gen. 131; Const. 38 / Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 292, 543, 627.) It presupposes always an authentic spiritual discernment, a disposition of interior indifference, and a total openness to the ultimate decision of the superior who in this way will be better informed. The discussion in the Congregation Hall was prepared by discussions in 18 small groups, The discussion itself was long and full; some 57 speakers aired their views. The meaning of the indicative vote was solely that of giving the future work of the commission and the subsequent action .of the congregation a more concrete orientation, and avoid long and useless work. No one could predict with-any degree of probability, however, what the end result of the vote would be. This, then, was the background of the congregation's indicative vote. The pope's reaction showed that there had been a misund~rstanding,,that he was displeased, and that there was a difference of approach and stance between him and the congregation. Fr. General was received by the Holy Father on February 20, 1975, who evidenced how grieved and concerned he was at the action of the con-gregation, which did not seem to be responding to his expectations. The pope was surprised that the congregation had not understood that he had meant to exclude discussions on the fourth vow right from the beginning. His discourse of December :3rd, 1974, did not seem to have received the careful attention it should have gotten. The congregation was following a line quite different from the one he had indicated. The pope showed by concrete reference that he was reading the Acta and the bulletins. He also mentioned specific~ally that he was praying every day for the congregation and offering Mass for its success. Fr. General expressed the regrets of the congregation that the Holy Father had been so grieved, and assured the pope of the obedience of the congregation. The pope insisted on the necessity of continuing discussions with him and said he was. ready to receive the general whenever he wished. The congregation then went on to follow the pope's wishes in com-pleting the decrees. A special group of delegates was named to study the different communications of the Holy See and to see whether the points mentioned in .these communications had been treated in the various de-crees of the congregation. This led to the formulation, discussion, and en-actment of the Introductory Decree as well as to a careful treatment of the other decrees. On their completion, the decrees were submitted to the Holy Father be-fore publication and promulgation. The congregation ended on March 7, and the last of the documents reached him just after mid-March, On May 2, 1975, Cardinal Viilot wrote to Fr. General in the name of the Holy Father, authorizing the publication, of the decrees, and including general norms for interpreting,the decrees properly ~as well as particular observations on five of the decrees. The Holy See and the 32nd Geheral Congregation Against ,this background let's look into the concerns of the Holy Father, and the stance and approach of the general congregation. The Pope's Concerns 1) The pope looked beyond the Society to the effects of the congrega-tion on all religious orders and congregations, and on the whole Church. In his .letter of Septerfiber 15, 1973, he said he was well aware of the.im-portance of the congregation, which could be an hour of decision for the Society, for its future destiny and work in the Church, as it is also an hour of decision for other religious families. He repeated this in his discourse of December 3, 1974, and added, You are at the head of that interior renewal which the Church is facing in this secularized world, especially after the Second Vatican Council. Your Society-is, We say, the test of the vitality of the Church throughout the centuries; it is perhaps one of the most meaningful crucibles in which are encountered the difficulties, the temptations,, the efforts, the perpetuity and the successes of the whole Church. This view of the Pope, embracing all religious families and the Church, is a constant theme in his dealings with the 32nd General Congregation. 2) The Holy Father wanted no changes in the Formula lnstituti lulii III, and describes himself as the guardian of the essentials of our institute. In his eyes it is 'fidelity to the Formula and to the basic documents of the Society' that make it the fit instrument of service to the Church that it has been for so long a time. He favors an updating and adaptation of our insti-tute, bUt.~always in conformity with the spirit and charism of our founder. 3) The pope considered a change in the so-called "grades" as a dam-aging mutation in our Formula, one that would change the nature of the Society, particularly in its distinctive note as a presbyteral order. In his eyes it would affect our lgnatian charism. For the Holy Father, the question of the grades was connected with a thrust for promoting justice, and'this could lead to an undermining of a direct priestly ministry, could stress a political and social involvement, and bring about the involvement of more lay peopl6 in our endeavors. The tluestion of the grades was what provoked the first intervention of the pope after his initial discourse, but his concern clearly went beyond this issue, which was a manifestation of certain orientations and tendencies in the congregation which were the' real concern of the Holy Father. 4) The pope feared that the"notion of priesthood inothe congregation would not sufficiently underline the distinction between a common priest-hood and an ordained, ministerial priesthood. The move would be away from the notion of priests, "who administer the grace of God with the sacraments; priests who recei~,e thepower and have the duty to share organically in the apostolic work of sustaining and uniting the Christian community, esp'eci~lly with the celebration of the Eucharist; . . " This 40 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 could represent a drift from. a priestly order to a type of secular institute. 5) The same danger is present in the discussions on the relation between evangelization and justice. In the letter of Cardinal Villot, of May 2, 1975, there is a particular observation, about the decree on Our Mission Today: "Human development and social progress in. the temporal order should not be extolled in such exaggerated terms as to obscure the essential significance which the Church attributes to evangelization and the proclamation of the full Gospel." (This is a quote from the closing remarks of the pope to the Synod of Bishops in October 1974.) There is a danger of looking at the promotion of justice solely or most importantly in its economic, social, and political aspects. This applies to the Society in a special way since it was founded for a particularly spiritual and supernatural end. Every other undertaking should be subordinated to this end and carried out in a way appropriate for an institute which is religious, not secular, and priestly. Moreover, we must not forget that the priest should inspire lay Catholics, since in the,promotion of justice theirs is the more demanding role. The tasks "proper to each should not be confused. 6) The pope felt that the general congregation gave less attention and importance to problems touching the renewal of spiritual and religious life which is an indispensable condition for a fruitful apostolate, whereas recent years show the effects of a widespread secularization on the Society. 7) In the matter of fidelity to the Holy See, something proper to the Society, the pope felt that the congregation tUrned its attention to restricting the limits of a necessary fidelity rather than to correcting certain regrettable deviations in doctrinal and disciplinary matters during the last decade with regard to the magisterium and the hierarchy. 8) The pope felt~ that the publicity about the congregation's indicative vote on the grades put him in an unfavorable position, could seem to place him before a fait accompli, led him to a disagreeable correspondence. It should be noted here that the reports in the public press did not manifest an understanding of what the extension of the fourth vow would entail. In fact, most of them spoke of an attempt to lessen or weaken obedience, and this in spite of serious attempts to give accurate information to the press. 9) The pope had intended his December 3, 1974, discourse to serve as a program for the congregation, and was disappointed and felt that it had not received sufficient attention from the congregation. To express the matter in the spiritual shorthand of our day, the Holy Father felt that the congregation was over-emphasizing the horizontal di-mension and that there should have been more emphasis on the principles of religious and ascetical life. 10) Ultimately, the pope's concern was that the congregation and the whole Society which it represented, should be faithful to Ignatius and to itself. He judged it to :be a decisive moment for helping the Church, so prone The Holy Se'e and the 32nd General Congregation / 41 to deviations in these days, when the vast task of doing great things is still reserved to the Society of Jesus~ His concern was that we should be men of the Church. The Congregation's Stance and Approach Turning now to the congregation, the following should be noted: 1') For the congregation, the matter of the grades was a mandate from the 3 Ist Congregation, was something of real moment and interest to many in the Society, as shown by the postulata, and could.be presented to the pope in the form of an Ignatian representation. The indicative vote was no more than that. The information that was given out on the indicative vote was in the context .of informing the Society of the. work and progress of the congregation since the whole Society had been called to participate in the preparation of the congregation. As the only legislative body in the Society, the congregation felt it could supply to the Holy See, ~better than anyone else, the iinformation needed to judge the status of the grades' question in the Society. 2) In the indicative~vote for the abolition of the distinction of grades, the congregation's fundamental motivation was.based on the conviction that it'was possible t6 distinguish between the fundamental~ lgnatian charism and its concrete realization in history. The charism looked to the creation of a group capable of a generous and effective commitment to the Supreme Pontiff by an aprstolic service centered in a zealous and continuing priestly work. Its concrete realization was in a juridical structure, created by Ig-natius~ which was the distinction of grades. A decisive number of the delegates thought it possible to maintain the fundamental charism but with a different structure. The abolition of the dis-tinction of grades was 'desired, but with the conviction and under the con-dition that. the Society should remain a religious, apostolic, and sacerdotal order bound in a special way to the Supreme Pontiff. The arguments in favor of the abolition had a common presupposition, and that is the development of directives and concrete norms for a severe selection process, starting from acceptance into the novitiate andcontinuing through the~succeeding probations. Along with legislation for the future, transition~ai norms would have been required to provide for the juridical and personal situation of those already in th6 Society. 3) The congregation looked on its response to the Holy Father's reply on the grades as an act of full, mature obedience given by a group of men acting according .to Ignatian obedience, predisposed to accept whatever the decision of the pope might be. 4) It is true to say that the congregation considered things .from the point of view of the apostolate and apostolic needs, but this did not entail a neglect in treating the principles of religious and ascetical life, or rele- Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 gating this to a secondary status. When examining the questions of religious and ascetical life, the congregation found that its predecessor, the 31st Congregation, had done this very well and felt no need to ~'epeat.what had been well articulated. The 32nd Congregation would confirm what its predecessor had enacted. 5) The congregation felt that horizontalism is indeed a central note, but need not oppose a vertical dimension. It would rather express an enduring consciousness of the needs of man and a desire to respond to them. In its initial stages, the congregation discussed a so-called "priority of priorities., Some, unfortunately, thought that the congregation had chosen the promotion of justice as the "priority of priorities," for the Society and her apostolate. ~ This was not true and led to misunderstandings. The con-gregation chose as the priority of priorities the criteria for the apostolic service of the Society and the promotion of justice, per modum unius. The congregation accented the "service of faith. The promotion of justice is intimately connected with this, but it is quite different from transforming the whole end of the Society into the promotion of justice. It is true to say that ~oncern for the dimension, promotion of justice, accompanied the work of the congregation whether it dealt with our life or our apostolate. The congregation underlined and emphasized the dimension, service of faith, precisely to correct and counteract a socioeconomic tendency in an exclusive sense. The thrust of the congregation was towards a healthy inte-gration of the religious and social dimensions of our Jesuit mission. 6) As an aid to understand the actions of the congregation, it is important to recall that there is little continuity from one congregation to the next as far as the participants are concerned. Each general congregation has a substantially different membership. In the group from the United States, only two or three had previous experience at,a general congregation. The role of the general at a congregation not called to elect a new general is not understood by all. He has an obvious leadership function, but he is subordinate to the congregation, is a member of ,it, and cannot impose his views on it. ~ It should be noted that Fr. General's example during the congregation was as of a tower of strength, a real source of unity for the participants. The activities of the congregation .forged a bond of solid t~nity between Fr. General and the members of the congregation. In spite of some groundless rumors, there was never any mention of resignation during the congrega-tion. 7) The congregation did obey the Holy Father in what were ~difficult circumstances, aggravated by an absence of dialogue and a growing fatigue. Obedience was shown by integrating into the texts of the decrees and declarations, suggestions and amendments in line with the pope's directives. 8) The special group set up to study .the communications of the Holy See to see whether the principal points were covered in the documents of The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 43 ,the congregation, judged that they were covered, but the congregation went on to draft ano Introductory Decree due to the work of this special group. , .9) The,congregation sought a document which would put in modern-day terms~what the Formula lnstituti means today. This meant translating the propagation and defense of the faith, and the works of mercy, into what these t~rms mean" for us today. It was in this way that the congregation showed its commitment to and interest in the Formula lnstituti and our other basic documents. The congregation's approach was to study this matter during the con-gregation and put together a document little by little in the light of the dis-cussions. To some this could seem to be relegating this matter to a gecondary role,-but the congregation's mind was to make it a more meaningful docu-ment, to present the Formula in a vigorous statement ]or today's Jesuits .and today's mission. 10) The congregation was a lived experience of the complexity of relations with theHoly See. The ai~alysis we have been d6ing can seem clear and easy now. It was not quite the same during the congregation-itself. The clarity has ~come through prayer, reflection, soul-searching, and a form of frank exchange that was not always this way iw the past. Let me attempt to sum up something of what we've seen, with a few pointers for the future. -- Interventions of popes in general congregations are not unheard of. What is unusual with regard to the 32nd General Congregation is the per-sonal and continuing aspect of the intervention of Pope Paul VI. We have seen that, as far back as 1972, the pope was interested in the general congregation; his interest increased as the congregation grew nearer and continued right through the sessions of the congregation. He read the documents personally before allowing them to be published, and he shall certainly be interested in the implementation of the decrees. His statement, .given at different times, has been, "Show your fidelity by your actions." This~has~been a personal and direct interest on the part of the Holy Father himself and 'not handed over to one of his staff. In his eyes the congregation was to fulfill 'a: very important function for religious life. In his letter of September 15, 1973, and in his discourse .of December 3, 1974, the Holy Father's idea was to.set out a program and an approach for the congregation. There 'should be an effective renewal and proper adaptation in accord with Vatican II, but this could not follow a line that would be alien t6 the very character of the religious family, un-faithful to the charism of the founder, or that would lead to the abandon-ment of the primary values of a life consecrated to God. The common elements of religious life should be confirmed, and allowed to grow and develop. These elements are the following: the imitation of Christ as pro-posed in the gospel; the renunciation of worldly things so that the religious 44 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume,35, 1976/1 might live for God alone, and for the building up of the Church; a joyful and constant observation of the vows which should lead to the heights of the spiritual life, where contemplation is joined with magnanimous action. For the Society of Jesus this means a fidelity to its tradition based on Christ, the Church, and St. Ignatius. The congregation, therefore, was to attend to those principles of the spiritual and apostolic life which for cen-turies formed the structure holding the Society of Jesus together and made it a most serviceable instrument for the pastoral, missionary, and educa-tional apostolates, involving a cultural formation, of the highest excellence. The source of strength for the Society should be the foundations of religious formation, laid in the past. These are: a diligent, dedication to prayer; austerity of life; supernatural strength by which apostolic effective-ness is increased; complete observance of the vows, especially obedience, which 'is peculiar to the Society and a condition of its religious discipline; the ascetical value of community life and the advantage.s it offers for the formation of character; and, in a special way, fidelity to the Holy See. This was the program that Pope Paul VI traced for the.general congre-gation of an order that is religious, apostolic, sacerdotal~ and bound to the Holy Father by a special bond of love and service. ~ It was not clear to the majority of the delegates that this was intended to be the lines of a 'hard and fast program. It gradually became clear, after the ditiiculties arising from the treatment of the question of the grades, and after a good bit of discussion and reflection, Some had felt this from the beginning, but they were few in number. The congregation found that the 31st Congregation had treated the matter of prayer, the vows, and the principles of religious, and ascetical life, very well. The problem was one of execution rather than of articulation, and the 32nd General Congregation decided to confirm and renew the 31st Congregation. But this could seem to be neglecting these principles, or relegating them to a secondary place. Through his interventions, the Holy Father impressed on the congrega-tion the direction he wanted to be' followed. The congregation obeyed and followed this direction; and in his communication of March 7, 1975, the pope said that it was comforting to see that the congregation well under-stood the force and meaning of what he urged and that they accepted .his intervention in a spirit of cooperation. In all his communications; the Holy Father ,underlines the point~ that his actions are motivated by his deep affection for and attachment to the Society, and by his appreciation .of the role that the Society has played in the past and is to play in the future. Thus, he feels, that.he can,be frank in his remarks. I think that most preferred a frank and open exchange, rather than the circumlocutions of a diplomatic style of writing, Cardinal Villot's letter of May 2, 1975, conveyed the pope,s own observations on the decrees~ These are meant to assure the faithful imple- The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 45 mentation of the decrees. When several articles appeared in the Italian press which put the May 2nd letter in a negative light with regard to the congregation, the Holy See sent the Italian text of the letter, to help correct these false impressions, The pope could truly say that the congregation had not achieved the global result expected of it. When we realize his plans for the congregation, we can understand this. But it does not express a negative vote on the congregation. It indicates that there is work yet to be done; the decrees are to be put into execution, and this should be in accord with the pope's directives, especially those in the discourse of December 3, 1974. As Cardinal Villot says in his letter of May 2, 1975, the pope directed that the decrees be returned to Fr. General so that they can be put into effect according to the needs of the Society, with the hope that Jesuits may draw strength from these decrees as they continue their progress in genuine fidelity to the charism of St. Ignatius and the Formula of the Institute. We are called on to enter into the views that animated Pope Paul VI. The quality of our religious life is to be such as to serve as a safeguard against a continually threatening secularism. The priestly character of the Society is of particular and enduring importance and must be a part of all our apostolic choices. There is much work to be done in reflecting on the integration of our priestly nature and evangelization in religious life, in reflecting on our specific way of living and being apostles. ¯ We are called to reflect on and' revise our behavior with regard to the service of the ecclesiastical magisterium, to revise the sense of our presen-tation and faithful explanation of the declarations of the magisterium and o1~ the hierarchy. We are ca/led to be men of the Church. The work ahead of us is to study, assimilate, interiorize, and put into action the decrees of the congregation, with an eye to the pope's fatherly observations . and directives. We must avoid two extremes: not attending to the Holy Father's observations; .and dismissing the validity and relevance of the decrees of the 32nd General Congregation. The final word belongs 4(0 Pope Paul VI. He told us to carry on in nomine Domini, Evolution in Chapters William F. Hogan,, C.S.C. Father Hogan is an Agsistant General of his congregation, as well as Procurator General. He lives at Via Framura, 85; 00168 Roma, Italy. The last fifteen years have seen great differences in the general and pro-vincial or regional chapters of most religious communities; in fact, for many of them, this period has seen the real beginnings of .chapters as such. In not a few congregations, indeed in most, the Opening and closing° dates of chapter meetings were decided before the capitulants assembled, thus often precluding any real in-depth study of issues and evaluation of the religious life and mission. Frequently the chapters were conducted like superiors' meetings, with decisions being handed down from the president as faits accomplis for information or perhaps ratification. The principal business was usually the election of major superiors and councils, .and it was more common than rare that provinces or regions'~did not have their own pro-vincial or regional chapters outside participation in the general chapter. Chapters evolved slowly in religious institutes from the time of Pacho-mian cenobitism when the monks gathered at Pabau in the month of August and the superiors gave a report on the condition of their houses and new superiors were appointed. St. Benedict instituted the local or con-ventual chapter in his rule, although he doesn't use this term; the whole community of the professed was to be consulted on important matters and was involved in the choice of the abbot. Other monastic groups followed suit and there eventually arose the policy of "what touches all is to be approved by all," a principle later included in the Rules o/Law at the time of Pope Boniface VIII. Regional and general chapters find their formal beginnings in the Carta Caritatis (1119) of the Cistercians, even though there had previously been regional meetings of abbots in order to have uni- 46 Evolution in Chapters / 47 formity in the religious life. The Cistercian order by rule was obliged to hold annual meetings of the abbots of the order and to regulate

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

H. DeWayne Ashmead ; The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, WeberState University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ; 66p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 video disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Harvey DeWayne Ashmead Interviewed By Rebecca Ory Hernandez 22 October 2012 29 October 2012 26 November 2012 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Harvey DeWayne Ashmead Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 22 October 2012 29 October 2012 26 November 2012 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in the University Archives, which also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ashmead, Harvey DeWayne, an oral history by Rebecca Ory Hernandez, 22 and 29 October 2012 and 26 November 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. H. DeWayne Ashmead November 26, 2012 1 Abstract: H. DeWayne Ashmead (DOB: June 4, 1944), President and CEO of Albion Laboratories, Inc., shared his oral history with Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University during the months of October and November 2012. DeWayne sat with Rebecca in his executive office and shared stories about his life, including his childhood, his education, the history of Albion, Inc., his family, and his partnership with Weber State University. DeWayne spoke in detail about his father and the history of the Albion minerals business. DeWayne also expanded on his background in joining the company and developing Albion Laboratories into what it is today ROH: Today is Monday, October 22, 2012. We are in the office of Albion Laboratories. Present are H. DeWayne Ashmead and Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University. I would like to get started by asking you to state your name and tell me where and when you were born. DA: My full name is Harvey DeWayne Ashmead. I am named after my father, Harvey. I was born June 6, 1944, on D-Day in Brigham City. I could have had a lot of different middle names. My mother debated whether or not to name me Dwight after Dwight Eisenhower because it was D-day and he led the D-day forces. Ultimately, she decided to name me DeWayne, the "De" standing for D-day. ROH: Were you born in the hospital or at home? DA: In the hospital. My father was the head pharmacist at Bushnell General Hospital in Brigham City and my mother was also working at the hospital. There was a 2 4,500 bed hospital for the soldiers, but I was born in the civilian Brigham City Hospital not the military hospital. ROH: Why don't you tell me a little bit about your parents and your childhood? DA: My parents were really cool. I have often said that when I grew up I wanted to be just like my dad, so I'll start with him. His name was Harvey. He was born in a log cabin out on the prairie in 1916. This was in Camas County, Idaho near a community that no longer exist called Corral. He grew up riding horses and doing all the things kids did I suppose. When he was a toddler, the Indians tried to steal him and when they couldn't steal him they tried to buy him. Apparently, he was very attractive to the Indians. He grew up helping his father and brothers on what became the family farm at Corral. It was initially a cattle ranch until his father got into a dispute with the sheep men. The sheep men won, so the cattle had to be sold and they converted the ranch to a farm. He went to a single classroom grade school through the eighth grade with a single teacher that taught all of the grades at once. When he went to high school in the ninth grade, he had to move away from home and board with a family in the city of Fairfield about 10 miles away from home. At that point in time, it was too far to commute. He would stay there all winter and go to high school there. When he graduated from high school, his father wanted him to come back and help him on the farm. My dad wanted to go to college. My grandfather said, "That's stupid. I've got an eighth grade education and I've been very successful. 3 You've got a high school education you don't need to go to college." My dad persisted and he had to send himself to college and support himself. He used to say he was the best latrine cleaner around, which I suppose means that he was a janitor. ROH: Where did he go to college? ZD: He went to Idaho State University and graduated in pharmacy. Initially, that's what he wanted to do. My grandfather, upon learning that he was studying pharmacy, gave my father a little bit of money to help him in college because he recalled that during prohibition the local pharmacist made the best moonshine of anyone in the valley. He assumed that what my father was learning how to do was to make moonshine. Anyway, my father became a pharmacist. Later on in life he did not practice pharmacy, but he still maintained the license. After he was married to my mother, they went off to graduate school. My mother wanted to get a degree in speech pathology and my father wanted to get a medical doctor's degree. They went to Washington State University. They almost starved to death, so they had to come back and live in the real world. That's about when I was born. Ultimately, my father got a doctor's degree in biochemistry and considered himself to be a biochemist, not a pharmacist. My mother came from a family that was much more interested in education. My grandfather, who was born in the 1880's, had a bachelor's degree from the University of Utah. My grandmother had a degree from BYU. Since both had college degrees it was expected that all of their children would go to college. 4 My mother went to Utah State University and got her bachelor's degree in English and was qualified to be a school teacher. She wanted to go on for graduate work. Ultimately, she did her master's work at the University of Denver and got her master's degree and doctoral degree at the University of Utah in speech pathology and oral myology. They were both highly educated. ROH: Yes, indeed. Were you all expected to go to college? DA: Yes. I have three sisters. Two of them went to college. My oldest sister, who is three years younger than I, went to one year of college and said, "I don't like this." She got married instead. My other two sisters went on and both got bachelor's degrees and one got her doctorate. We were expected to go to college. ROH: Tell me a little bit about growing up and your childhood leading up to when you started grade school. Do you have any stories or memories from childhood that stand out? DA: Probably none that I really recall. I can think of two or three, but nothing significant. My mother used to tell a story that she liked to repeat frequently. When we were still living in Brigham City, at the end of the Second World War, there were a lot of Native Americans that lived in Brigham City. She talks about one occasion when I was just a toddler, I was playing outside and a family of Indians went down the street in single file from the father to the mother, then all the kids down to the smallest. My mother said that I watched them walk by and just got in line to follow them right down the street. There were all of these brown- 5 skinned Indians and a little white boy in a diaper going down the street. She said it was really a funny sight to see. ROH: Where did you go to school? DA: From Brigham City, we moved a lot. We moved to Salt Lake and ultimately moved to Denver where I started my public education. My father accepted employment in Brooklyn, New York, but my mother said, "I'm not going." We remained in Denver while Harvey started the veterinary division of Pfizer Laboratories in New York. He was one of the senior management at Pfizer and was one of the candidates for the presidency of Pfizer when he left the company. While at Pfizer, he would commute between Brooklyn and Denver while we stayed in Denver. I recall one of the things I did one summer in Denver. I attended a Methodist Bible School that summer which was kind of interesting. I graduated from the Methodist Bible School and don't recall too much about the classes other than that they gave me a certificate and a pencil, so that was important. I started grade school near our home. I may have used a school bus, but I don't recall it. As time went on in grade school I did use a bus and I'll come back to that in a minute. My mother talks about one time she was supposed to pick me up after school and she was late getting there. All of the teachers and students left and she still wasn't there. She said I hid in the bushes so people couldn't find me. I waited for her for a while and finally sat out on the curb until she came to 6 pick me up. She said my comment was, "I knew you'd come and get me." This school was from kindergarten to third grade. In the second grade, I had a girlfriend. For years I've struggled to remember her name and haven't struggled hard enough because I can't remember it. Nevertheless, she was really an important girlfriend. I wanted her to sit by me on the bus. I was terribly shy, but I bribed her by giving her the little prizes out of the cracker jacks boxes. I had a big collection so I'd give her a prize every day if she'd sit by me on the bus. Apparently, she liked me as well because the kids started teasing her about it and dared her to give me a kiss. One day, she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek and I was mortified. ROH: You weren't counting on that. DA: No, I wasn't, but it was wonderful. I brought her home from school one day to meet my parents and I had her wait in the foyer so I could go tell my parents. They told me I had to sit down and eat right then. So, I went back to the foyer and told her she had to go home and that's the last memory I have of her. Anyway, we started grade school with kindergarten. I remember having to take naps in kindergarten. It was an all-day kindergarten not a half day, but we had to take a nap. I remember very little from first and second grade except that a third grader was misbehaving and his teacher sent him back to the second grade as punishment. It was just to shame him. I can remember my second grade teacher having him sit next to me and we were doing an art project. I looked at what he was coloring or drawing and how much better it was than what 7 I could create because he was older and it really impressed me. I remember some of the early books, Dick and Jane books that we had to learn to read from and how stupid they were. In the winter, my mother would worry about me getting cold, so she insisted that I wear long-legged underwear. I hated them and did not want to wear them, but I did because she insisted. She even bought a pair for my father just to show me, "See, even real men wear long underwear." We had gymnastics tumbling. On one occasion, we were going to perform in front of an audience and my mother was supposed to bring me some regular short underwear because we had to wear short shorts and t-shirts for this tumbling. She didn't show up in time and I had to roll that long underwear up and try and hide it underneath my shorts. I wasn't very successful and I was mortified. I don't remember anything about the tumbling. I just remember that terrible long-legged underwear. ROH: Did you enjoy school? Was it always something that you liked? DA: I always liked school. I enjoyed school from grade school throughout my university career. In fact, if I had the time and the patience, I'd go back to school right now. I don't really have the time and I don't really have the patience to listen to some professor's pontificate on things that I know as much or more about. I just wouldn't put up with it. ROH: Tell me where you fall in line of your siblings. Are you the oldest? DA: I am the oldest. I have a sister who is three years younger, another six years younger and another that is 13 years younger than I. 8 ROH: Are they all still living? DA: Yes. They're all still living. ROH: You went through third grade in Denver. Did you stay in Denver that entire time or did you move back and forth from Kindergarten to third grade? DA: We moved some. My parents were struggling financially. I just learned that probably in the last year as I've been trying to write a little history of my parents. They struggled and for some of the time that we were living in Denver, my mother took my sister and me to Idaho. She dropped us off at her parents' home in Idaho and left her parents to raise us while she taught school in another community. She had a license to teach school in Idaho and Utah, but not in Colorado. My father was basically living in Brooklyn at the time, so it didn't matter if she was in Idaho or Colorado because he wasn't coming home. There were no jets, it was all prop planes and it was expensive. He would come home about once every couple of months and wouldn't stay more than a day or two or three and he'd be gone again. He was building a veterinary drug company for Pfizer in New York. I also remember one time being with my grandparents in Kimberly, Idaho and my mother was asked to be a substitute teacher. There was a teacher that wasn't able to fulfill the teaching contract and my mother agreed to teach grade school for a month or so until they could find another teacher. Idaho schools started prior to the Colorado schools, so she put me in school along with my cousin while she taught our class. My cousin would call her Aunt Allez until 9 he was teased into calling her Mrs. Ashmead. I called her Mom until I was teased into calling her Mrs. Ashmead. For about a month she was my grade school teacher and then we went back to Colorado. In about 1953, the financial difficulties that my parents were facing were becoming a crisis. They needed more money. My mother found employment in Utah working for the state. She had completed most of her requirements for her master's degree in speech pathology in Denver, so she told my father she was going to move back to Utah. She couldn't work in Colorado, but she could in Utah. My father decided that it was time for him to resign from Pfizer, even though they offered him the presidency. He quit and came back to Utah with my mother. ROH: Do you know why he quit? DA: Because my mother was moving. I suspect that his employment was putting a strain on their marriage and it was probably heading for divorce if he didn't quit. That's purely speculation. I never heard the "D" word at all. I never saw any indication that my parents wanted to separate. They were both highly motivated individuals trying to rise to the top of their careers, but when it came to the family and the marriage they pulled back together and my father decided to sacrifice his career to go with my mother back to Utah. He didn't quit immediately and move back to Utah. He moved to Utah and subsequently resigned from Pfizer two years later in 1955. 10 My mother went to work for the state of Utah in the education department as a speech pathologist. She went to the University of Utah to finish her degree and was awarded her master's degree at the University of Utah. She worked for the state of Utah for about a year and was then offered a position in Davis County to start a speech and hearing program. She accepted that and we moved to Kaysville because it was the center of Davis County so she could move in either direction. She started the speech and hearing program for the county initially on her own, but it grew into two employees that worked for her. Plus, she was supervising 12 students from the university who were also working for her. The speech and hearing program in Davis County became the model for the rest of the state. It then became the model for other countries. I can recall that she was invited to the Soviet Union to train them on how to set up a speech and hearing program for their school system. She went elsewhere around the United States on behalf of the state of Utah to teach others how to do this. She became quite well-known in this area and by the time she got her doctorate, she was one of six people in the world qualified to do what she did and the only woman. I am proud of her. She graduated the same year with her doctorate that I got my bachelor's from Weber. I've got pictures of her in her doctoral robes and me in my Weber State robes. ROH: Do you recall any conversations about why you weren't all just moved up to New York? 11 DA: My mother did not want to go any further East. During the First World War, my father worked on a research project to stabilize penicillin so it could be used to treat the wounded soldiers. He was successful in developing a stabilized form of penicillin. It became widespread in its usage around the world because of the work he did. While he was at Bushnell General Hospital, he started to work on an amino acid therapy for soldiers that were burned. Burn patients were losing amino acids, and the doctors said, "We have to give them amino acids." However, the amino acids were so vile that most soldiers that tried to drink the concoction would vomit it back before they could even get it swallowed. Some started even before then as they got it close to their nose. My father started working on a palatable form of amino acids. It was, for the most part, developed before the end of the war, but not in its final stage. The drug company, Mead- Johnson, hired my father at the end of the war to go back to Evansville, Indiana to finish the project. My father went back there and joined their research and development group and finished the project. In fact, if you look at the drink "Ensure" and the infant formulas, all of them have their genesis in the work that he did. I've had scientists tell me that they actually saw the notebooks that my father had written at Mead-Johnson and saw what he developed. During that time, I was an infant and I was left with my grandparents while my mother went with my father back to Indiana. When he completed that research, Mead- Johnson offered him full-time employment, but neither of parents particularly liked living in Indiana. They went on to New York, then to Florida and elsewhere 12 for several weeks looking around and neither of them were in love with what they saw. I suspect that my mother in reflecting on those initial trips said, "I don't want to go any further East than Denver. I was born and bred in the West, I'm going to stay in the West and I don't want my kids growing up in the East." They had purchased a home in Denver. I suspect they were having trouble making house payments, but it was still their home. I know that my mother did not have a car which made it difficult with two babies and having to take street cars to get wherever she wanted to go including a grocery store. ROH: It was probably rough. Let's continue with your education. DA: Our first home when we moved from Denver to Salt Lake was near a school where I went to the fourth grade. The principal was Mr. Walker, who plays a role a little bit later in my life, so I'll come back to him in just a minute. In the fourth grade, we lived near the school. I had a girlfriend. I had lots of girlfriends. ROH: You did. DA: I'm not a Latin lover but I had lots of girlfriends. I had a girlfriend named Sandra West. My father loved to tease and of course at that age these girlfriends are secret girlfriends. Somehow, he found out that my girlfriend's name was Sandra West. I can remember him teasing me about that with my cousins. They were trying to discover what my girlfriend's name was and I wasn't about to tell them because it was secret. My father said, "Well, it isn't north, it isn't south, and it isn't east…" Then he stopped. I was mortified that he had told them. ROH: Now I know where you get your sense of humor. 13 DA: Her parents were friends with my folks, and I don't remember where, but it was earlier than just being in the neighborhood. Anyway, she was my girlfriend in the fifth grade. Then, we moved and Mr. Walker had a home that was about two or three miles from the school. The house that we were living in near the school was on a one year lease and the owners came back and they wanted their house, so Mr. Walker said, "Well, I have a rental house next to my house, you can come and live in it." My mother said, "Yeah, but I don't want to put my kids in a different school again." He said, "That's not a problem, they can stay in the same school and I'll take them to and from school." My parents agreed and we moved to a house on the Mill Creek east of Sugar House which had a big impact on me. I'll tell you about that in a moment. Anyway, this thing with Mr. Walker didn't work out. He left for school too early in the morning for us, so my parents had to take us to school. My sister and I, who were both in school there, didn't like waiting until 4:30 or later for him to get around to going home. We began walking the three or four miles to home. He never transported us really. ROH: That's a long walk. DA: It was, but we had to do it. There was no other option because my mother was working full-time and my father was still traveling. So, it was either go with Mr. Walker or walk home. This house was on the Mill Creek and it was a wonderful experience for me. All of my free time was spent exploring the woods along the creek and getting involved with the creek. When I think about it now, it was probably dangerous, but I didn't think about that. I was in the water and I did all sorts of things. I collected bugs and animals on the Mill Creek. I just thoroughly 14 loved it so much that I vowed that when I grew up I was going to have a home on the creek. After my wife and I were married, I searched for years for a creek and finally found one. We did build a home on the creek. It was because of that one year experience on the Mill Creek. ROH: Is it in Salt Lake? DA: No, it's in Fruit Heights. We built it on Baer Creek. When my wife and I found the creek, I followed it and found some land that I liked and tried to buy it. They wouldn't sell it to me. I found some additional land on the creek that I really liked and went to Davis County to find out who owned it. I found the name of the owner and went to him and said, "I'd liked to buy some property." This was all undeveloped property. He said, "Well, if I were to sell that land I'd have to have $12,000 an acre." I said, "Well, great. I want 3 acres." He said, "But I don't want to sell it." I said, "But I want it." So, for an entire year every week I either went and saw him or telephoned him to see if he would change his mind. Finally, after a year I had worn him down to the point he said, "Just take it." So, I bought the three acres. It was never a question of how much I was going to pay. It was just trying to get the land. We bought the land and ultimately built our house there where we still live. That was in 1976. ROH: Have you ever been back to the original Mill Creek house? DA: No. In fact, I question whether or not I could even find it. I probably could if I looked up an address, but we always called it the chicken coup because it looked like a chicken coup. A flat roofed chicken coup that had just been renovated into 15 a house. It was in a cul-de-sac with two other houses. Mr. Walker's house was the most elaborate. Then there was a second house that was next to his and it had solar panels on the roof. It was a solar energy house, which really would have been Avant Garde. I can remember the solar panels. I don't remember the people or what the husband did. Across from Mr. Walker's house in the cul-de-sac was the chicken coup where we lived. ROH: Were your sisters all born at this point? DA: No. I was born in Brigham City and my next sister was born in Salt Lake in 1947. My father was living in Denver trying to set up a home for my mother and me when my sister was born. My mother went into labor, and she didn't have a telephone so she went to the neighbor and used the neighbor's phone to call a taxi to come and get her. The taxi dropped her off in front of the hospital, took the money and said, "Goodbye." My mother went in with her big suitcase. She talked about only having one suitcase, the one she used when she went off to college to Utah State University. It was a big suitcase, not an overnight bag, but she lugged the big suitcase in and had the baby. She called my father and he got in the car in Denver and drove back to Salt Lake. My sister was born by then. He saw her for a couple of days and got back in his car and went back to Denver. My mother was in the hospital taking care of herself because he couldn't leave work. In Denver, my second sister was born in 1950. My father was at home and my mother was taking courses at the University of Denver. One of them was an arts and crafts course. I don't know why she was doing that, but the instructor 16 told her that regardless of the fact that she was pregnant, if she missed classes, she would be dropped from the program. When she went into labor, she had my father go to the class to take her place. The instructor asked my father what he wanted to do while he was there and he said, "Well, I'd like to carve a horse out of wood." The instructor said, "There's no way you can do that. You'd have to be trained for years and years to balance the horse. You just can't do it." So, my father went home and took out his pocket knife and carved a Tennessee Walker perfectly balanced on two feet with all the right muscles and everything. He took it back the next week and said, "Here." He'd never done anything like that before and it was a wonderful thing. That started his woodcarving hobby. He was extremely good at it. All of the pieces were professional pieces. On one occasion, I had two coloring books, a Roy Rogers coloring book and Gene Autry coloring book, each cowboy was featured on his horse on the cover of these coloring books and each horse was rearing. My father looked at the pictures and carved the two horses out of wood. Each horse was about 12 inches tall and rearing. He mounted them on a wooden base so it appeared that the two horses were fighting. It was just beautiful. He carved horse heads. Each head was about 8 inches tall. They were so realistic that they even had the blood vessels in the horses head. He knew animals intimately and he carved them accordingly. He was very, very good at it. Speaking of carving, it reminds me of another thing with my father and mother. I had cowboy heroes when I was a kid and one of them was Hopalong Cassidy. I just loved him. He was great. I also liked Roy Rogers. I wanted to 17 change my name to Roy once upon a time. Hopalong Cassidy was one of my heroes. I not only watched him in the movies, but I would buy the comic books whenever I could get my hands on one. It was rare that I got a comic book because my parents didn't have much money. One of the comic books that I did purchase showed Hopalong Cassidy being manipulated by the bad guys. The way they portrayed that manipulation was by attaching strings to his feet and hands to make him into a puppet. That was the picture on the cover of the comic book. So, I told Santa Claus I wanted a Hopalong Cassidy puppet. I must have been six or seven at the time because I still believed in Santa Claus. Obviously, a Hopalong Cassidy puppet did not exist, even though my mother searched high and low in the stores to find one. They didn't exist. So, my father took wood and carved this Hopalong Cassidy puppet. He carved the hand with the arm up to the elbow and he attached that to the upper part of the arm wrapping it with cloth so that there was a joint that allowed the arm to move. Then, he attached the arm to the shoulder with a cloth so it could also move. My mother sewed the clothes for the puppet. Hopalong Cassidy dressed in a black outfit, so she freehand sewed all of the clothes to dress the puppet in. Where they found them I don't know, but they also found little cowboy boots that they put on him, as well as a hat and pistols. I don't know where they found the pistols, but my father had to make the holsters for the pistols out of leather. They attached strings to it and I got a Hopalong Cassidy puppet for Christmas from Santa Claus. It was a prized possession. My mother says I put on a Hopalong Cassidy puppet show for my school class on one occasion. I don't recall that, but 18 she talked about it. At some point, the puppet lost its strings, but I still have the puppet. That is a prized possession that my parents made for me. ROH: What it must have been like to see that on Christmas morning. DA: I can't remember seeing it Christmas morning, but that puppet has been part of my life as far back as I can remember. My father was extremely talented at carving wood and did so until his mid to late 70's. At that age he developed an allergy to the sawdust in the wood, so he couldn't carve anymore. The last thing he carved was a covered wagon with eight horses pulling it, which I have in my house. It's a beautiful thing. After that, he decided to make bronzes. I have a good friend who is a professional artist who has made millions of dollars with his artwork. One day, I was going to have lunch with him and my dad asked me to ask him how to make a bronze sculpture. I did and my friend said, "Well, you make a skeleton out of wire or whatever and then you put the clay on it and once you put the clay on it you put it in the oven and bake it. When that is done, you take it to the foundry and it is cast by the foundry." That's as much as I told my father. He said, "Okay." He sat at the kitchen table with a pair of pliers, coat hangers, and a torch and he welded pieces of wire together to make a skeleton. Then, he used clay and made his figurines. He then put them in the oven and baked them before taking them to the foundry. He's done beautiful sculptures. His first sculpture is of two fighting elk. You may or may not have noticed in the foyer at Albion, there's an eagle perched on a limb. That's another one he made. This is all amateur, but they look 19 like professional pieces. He also created one of a cowboy that has roped a buffalo which resulted in the cowboy, horse, and the buffalo all being in trouble because they are all tangled together in the rope. Another one that I thoroughly enjoy is a pond with swans on the pond. It is a beautiful piece. ROH: How old was he when he started doing bronzes? DA: He was about 78. He died when he was 82. He would produce them and give them away. He could have made a living as an artist if he wanted to, but he didn't. He just did it as a hobby. ROH: Today is Monday, October 29, 2012, we are in the offices of Albion with DeWayne Ashmead and Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State. When we were talking last week, you mentioned this really nice picturesque setting along the creek. DA: The Mill Creek. ROH: I wanted to pick up from where we left off there. DA: We moved to Kaysville to a rented home in 1955. I started the sixth grade at Kaysville Elementary School. It was interesting. I have thought about that several times and I don't know why one thing stands out in my mind. I had no friends until I went to school, so I was in the process of trying to make friends. We had our first recess and there were two boys in the class who were leaders. They were the top kids. I was a little skinny new kid on the block and when we went out for recess the boys all decided they wanted to play football. I had never played 20 football in my life. I didn't know how to play it or anything else, but one of these kids picked me to be on his team and that really made me feel good. He asked me what position I played and I said, "I don't know." He put me on the line and I promptly got knocked on my fanny the first time. I always respected that kid because he picked me and stood up for me at a time that I needed someone to do that. He didn't become a close friend, but throughout my junior high and high school days he was a kid that I looked up to. The sixth grade probably was a turning point in my life. My teacher was a man by the name of Elmer Wilcox, and he really liked science. He would take us on field trips. We went out to the Salt Lake and dug up crystals. He liked rocks so we collected rocks. He had a three stage microscope of his own that he brought to school to show us the invisible world. I became fascinated with that and for whatever reason, he took a liking to me and he would give me this microscope to take home on weekends. I was absolutely thrilled. I lugged this microscope in its wooden box home to look at things under the microscope. I studied all kinds of different things like water from the swamp or hair. I was just absolutely fascinated with it. Because of my interest, at Christmas my mother went to the University of Utah and purchased a three stage microscope from their surplus equipment. It was an old microscope, but it was still just like his as far as effectiveness was concerned. It was a professional microscope, not a toy. As the school year went on I became more and more interested in all of the aspects of science. I hadn't picked a single discipline. He fostered that and continued to encourage me in so many ways that he has always stood out in my 21 mind as one of the people who truly influenced me. When I entered the seventh grade, I went to Central Davis Junior high School in Layton. The science teacher at Central Davis at that point in time considered teaching science as just a job. He didn't really do much to encourage me or to help me with my scientific interests, but then my father started working with me. My father was deeply involved in the sciences and the fact that I was expressing interest in the same thing encouraged him to get involved with me. I wanted to enter a science fair in Utah and I decided that I would like to build a robot that was somewhat mobile that would speak through a record player by remote control. My father helped me build it and I won first place in the state. ROH: That sounds really ambitious for that age, how did you come up with that idea? DA: Actually, I read an article in Boy's Life scout magazine about a robot. It just intrigued me and I thought, "I want to do one like that." So, we did. In the eighth grade, I got more sophisticated and built a cloud chamber so I could see radiation particles from radium as they would go through an artificially created cloud. I won first place. I can't remember what I did in the ninth or tenth grade, but I won first place there. In the eleventh grade, I was working full-time at Albion while going to school full–time. I'll come back to that later. My father and I were collaborating on a drug to dissolve kidney stones and I had done a considerable amount of research on my own dissolving kidney stones in sheep. I presented my research on that and I won first place in the state and was subsequently sent to the national science fair with that research. Unfortunately, we drove to Seattle 22 where it was held and I had left part of my project at home and forgot it. The result was that I didn't do very well at nationals, but that's the way it goes. ROH: Did you participate in science fairs all the way through high school? DA: I did. I became known as, I guess in today's vernacular, a nerd. I was selected as the Sterling Scholar for science my senior year of high school in 1961-1962. I had a reputation for being quite intelligent and deeply involved in the sciences. Between Elmer Wilcox and my father, the two of them really fostered that love of science which continues to this day. ROH: Did you have any other friends that you would work on these projects together with? DA: I had friends, but none of these friends was as involved in the sciences as I. I didn't make friends easily. I was very shy and basically a loner. A lot of my research projects were too complex for kids to understand. They didn't see the value of them, so they would ignore me. ROH: Was that the end of your football career then? DA: In sixth grade? Absolutely. To this day, I really don't care for football. I shouldn't say that. I should say that I enjoy watching the game, but I am not passionate about it. ROH: It's really quite something to be that involved in science all through and it's no surprise then that you continued on into your career. You won lots of awards in high school and when you graduated as a senior, what did you do? 23 DA: I chased my girlfriend. ROH: You had a lot of girlfriends. DA: Well, I only had one that was important. That's the one I married. ROH: When did you meet Jill? DA: I met her as a junior in high school. We met in a history class because the teacher assigned us seats in history according to alphabetical order. I was the last "A" and she was the first "B" so she sat right behind me in history. She was a cute little girl, so I asked her for a date and she turned me down. I asked her for a second date and she turned me down. When I asked her a third time I figured, if she turns me down the third time I'll never ask her again. ROH: What were the dates? DA: I don't remember. I had a reputation of being a nonconformist in high school too. The fact that I'm science on the one side is one thing, but I went clear over on the other side because I was trying to fit in. I really didn't fit in anywhere in high school. She basically turned me down because of my reputation. The third time, she accepted. ROH: What reputation are we talking about? DA: I had the coolest car in school and I raced. I raced at the drag strips and I would race on the streets. You didn't ask me about that. ROH: Well, tell me about what you did for fun? 24 DA: I played with my car and still play with my cars. Finishing up with Jill though, the third time I asked her for a date she accepted and before we were out of our junior year in high school we wanted to get married. After that, we just continued to date through high school. I had several scholarships to various universities and she was going to go to Weber College, so I followed her to Weber rather than taking these other scholarships. Looking back, it was a good thing. ROH: So back to the car story. When did you get your license or were you driving before you got your license? DA: Oh yes. I started driving at about 13 or 14. I got my first car about a year before I got my license. I had a 1950 Mercury. I customized it, lowered it and put loud pipes on it. I got all sorts of tickets and generally not the same one twice. I raced that car. ROH: How did you buy your first car? DA: Actually, it was given to me. I got it from my parents. My parents bought this 1950 Mercury and had taken good care of it. It was really a good car and I probably destroyed it. I just thoroughly loved the car. I can remember one time, I wanted to leave high school early and the only way out at that time was through gates on the parking lot. They were locked during school hours so you couldn't leave school. On one of the exits there was a space between the pole that held the gate and another pole that was just wide enough to let the car slip through with about an inch or two on each side. My friend and I decided to leave school early one day by slipping through this space. That gate was between two 25 buildings. My car was so loud with the noise of the exhaust reverberating back and forth between these two buildings as we were trying to get out that it attracted everyone's attention. It brought every kid in the high school to the windows to watch us leave school. Shortly thereafter, they welded stakes perpendicular to the gate pole so I couldn't get out. I really liked the car. I liked cars because it gave me the freedom that I didn't have before. I went everywhere in that car. It was my whole life. I put over $1,000 into customizing the body, which in 1962 terms was a huge sum of money. I did a lot of the work myself and made a few mistakes, but I still enjoyed it. When I was a senior in high school in 1962, I decided I wanted a new car, so I went to the Oldsmobile dealer in Ogden and ordered a new car. I bought a 1962 Oldsmobile Cutlass in the last part of my senior year in high school. Jill and I dated in that car. Later, I sold it, but a few years ago when a car like it came up for sale I went and bought it just to try to recapture our youth. It didn't work, but Jill and I still enjoy putting the top down in that convertible and just driving. We still do it. Destroying the ozone layer is just a lot of fun because that's what we did when we were kids. We would drive up and down Washington Blvd and I would drag race anyone that wanted to drag race. I'd race on the streets and I would accelerate to about 80 miles an hour on Washington Blvd. ROH: Where on Washington Blvd.? DA: From stoplight to stoplight. Very rarely did I ever lose a race. I was a fast driver and had a reputation for always having a very fast car. 26 ROH: So that's why she was turning you down? DA: Yes. ROH: Are you still racing up and down Washington? Have I heard anything about you in the blotter? DA: No you have not. I haven't had a ticket for probably 25 years. ROH: Where do you ride now when you go for drives? DA: Generally on the back roads. The cars that I drive are very expensive and many of them are one of a kind, so people have a tendency to drive into me as they are looking at the car. So, I just avoid major highways and stay on the back roads where people don't see me. I drive for the sheer pleasure of driving and the experience of driving. With some of the cars you can put the top down and as you drive along you can smell the smells and hear the sounds and we just enjoy it. ROH: You loved science, cars and you obviously loved girls, one in particular. DA: That's right, one in particular. ROH: Jill is her nickname, so what was her maiden name? DA: Her real name is Eugele, which she hates and I love. I think it's a very pretty name. She was named for her uncle Eugene who was in the Second World War and not expected to come home. She was named Eugele Baird and nicknamed, Jill, which she prefers. 27 ROH: When did you and Jill get married? DA: That was in 1966. Probably didn't think I would remember that did you? ROH: I'm surprised you waited that long. DA: Well, you have to understand the dynamics. I followed her to Weber and we decided that we couldn't afford to get married and we should wait until both of us graduated from college. Jill was very religious, but I was not. She played better poker than I did. That's the way I describe it. She told me that she would not marry me unless we were married in the L.D.S. temple. I saw absolutely no reason to do that, but I would not be hypocritical about it and just go to the temple just to make her happy. We're all hypocrites, but for the most part I detest hypocrites. I started to study the Mormon Church to show her where she was wrong and why we didn't need to be married in the temple, and ultimately became converted myself. After I did that I went to her and said, "I think I need to go on an L.D.S. mission." She said, "Okay. You go and I'll wait." As luck would have it, I was called to go to France. The kids today go for 2 years and for part of that two year period they go into a very intensive training session where they learn the language. Back then, none of that training existed. If you went to a foreign country you went for two and a half years and the church figured it took you six months to learn the language and then you became effective. So, I went to France for two and a half years. ROH: What part of France? 28 DA: It was called the French Mission. I served in Paris, Bordeaux, Rennes, and Pau. Basically, the Western and Central part of France. ROH: That's pretty big territory. DA: Back then, there were only two missions in France. There was the French Mission and the French-East Mission. The French-East Mission covered Eastern France and the French speaking part of Switzerland. While I was there, they made the Franco-Belge Mission which was all of Belgium and the Northern part of France. Incidentally, that is where my youngest son went on his mission. I went to France for the two and half years and came home. I was determined to marry her as she was to marry me. Her parents didn't like the idea. They did everything they possibly could to persuade her to start dating boys while I was gone on my mission. She refused, and that created a lot of problems for her. She wrote me every day and would send the letter to me once a week. I would send her a letter every week. I would go without meals in order to save enough money so that by the time the two and a half years were over I had enough money to go to Belgium and buy a diamond ring for her. I designed it and purchased it. I came home in March of 1966. We were married in June and lived happily ever after. ROH: Where were you married? DA: We were married in the Salt Lake Temple, just like she said. It scared me to death. ROH: Did it? 29 DA: I was terrified. I tried to talk her out of it all the way to the temple. She wasn't about to listen to me. It was an off-handed way of talking her out of it, you know, "I'm too cool. I'm not going to back out," but I sure tried to talk her into backing out. I was terrified. I was also in a lot of pain. I had broken my foot the day before. ROH: How did you do that? DA: A plate glass mirror fell on it right across my foot and broke it. I refused to cast it because it would spoil her wedding pictures. So, I was in a lot of pain. ROH: Did you cast it after your wedding? DA: No. We left on our honeymoon and she did all the driving and I did all the moaning. ROH: Where did you honeymoon? DA: We went down to Bryce Canyon and I kind of hopped over the edge of the canyon and looked at it and said, "Okay, let's go." I was in too much pain, so we came home after a honeymoon for 3 days and I went back to work. ROH: All this time you were working for Albion, correct? DA: Yes. My father started Albion in 1956. He had previously been working for Pfizer and was in the line for the presidency of Pfizer. He was in senior management of Pfizer when he quit and came back to Utah where he started Albion. He had $250 and that's what he used to start Albion with. He had a concept that no one else had ever thought of and that was to sell veterinary pharmaceuticals to 30 farmers and ranchers. In 1956, if you had a sick animal, you would go to veterinarian and say, "Come look at my animal." He would look at it and you'd tell him what was wrong and then he'd sell you the drug at twice what he paid for it. What my father wanted to do while he was at Pfizer was to start selling these pharmaceuticals directly to the farmers and ranchers instead of going through the veterinarians. Pfizer refused to do that, so my father struck out on his own to show that it could be done. Well, the area that he envisioned was the Intermountain area in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, and Nevada. He had to travel throughout that area calling on the farmers and ranchers because no one knew that such an outlet for veterinary drugs existed. He had a retail store between 24th and 25th Street on Grant Avenue in Ogden. It was ideally located because the drugs that he sold throughout the Intermountain area could be packaged at the store and then taken to the post office which was on the corner of 24th and Grant or to the bus depot which was on the corner of 25th and Grant. So the store was half a block either way. Because he was out selling, someone else had to package and ship these drugs. At the ripe old age of 12, I went to work. I took a commuter bus, which was the Lakeshore Bus Line that went between Salt lake and Ogden. I'd pick it up in Kaysville, ride the bus to Ogden to open up the store after school. I would take the orders my father had written, package them and take the packages to the post office or the bus. I'd close the store at about 7 or 8 at night, 31 get on the bus, go home, do my homework, and go to bed. From that point forward, I just worked there. When I was on my L.D.S. mission, my father wanted me to come back and join him full time at Albion when I completed my mission. I said, "No, I don't want to." We had a lot of negotiations by correspondence and ultimately I said, "Okay. I will come back, but I won't work for you. I will work with you, but I won't work for you. Furthermore, if I come back, I would expect you to sell me part of the company at fair market price because I would never want anyone to say you gave it to me. So, I'll buy it and if you'll meet those two conditions, I'll come back." He said, "Fine." So, I did and by the time I got home he had named me the Vice President of Albion which really sounded cool until you saw all the work I had to do. Shortly after returning, I married Jill and went back to school at Weber while still working full time. Prior to my mission I had majored in chemistry at Weber College. While I was on my mission, I realized that if I were a chemist I would have to work for someone else. But, if I were a businessman, I could hire all the chemists I wanted. So, I changed my major when I came back to Weber and majored in business. I concurrently worked full-time at Albion and traveled extensively which made it very difficult to go to school. My father and I divided the responsibilities. He took production and R & D and I took marketing and administration. Part of my job was taking Albion from a small regional company to a national and then international company, which I did while I was still going to school at Weber. 32 ROH: How long did it take you to go national and then international? DA: Relatively quickly, probably a year or two. I was traveling a lot. I remember one convention that I went to that happened to be in Colorado that still stands out in my mind. I flew into Denver and arrived in the early evening concurrently with a blizzard that hit Denver. I had to go up to Ft. Collins, Colorado, so I rented a car. That was a terrifying ride on the freeway because the road was all snowed in. I arrived there late at night. The next morning I got up and went to work. I spent all day on the convention floor assisting one of my customers. That night, the customer wanted to go out to dinner and invited me to go with the employees. I told them I couldn't go to dinner and went back to my hotel room to study for a test that I had to take the next day when I got back to Utah. It was hard, but it was okay. Jill was working at Red Cross, but then she had the audacity to get pregnant on our honeymoon and nine months later our son came. She was awfully sick during her pregnancy so she quit and the responsibility of taking care of my wife and my soon-to-be baby was mine in addition to going to school. After he was born, she would come over to the college at noon and bring me a sandwich that I would eat as we walked back to the apartment where I'd get in the car and head off to work. I'd work until 8 or 9 at night and come home. I was still an undergrad. So, I did that and graduated from Weber. ROH: What year did you graduate from Weber? 33 DA: I think it was 1969. I went on and got a doctorate from Pacific Institute that was chartered by the state of California to give doctorates for research. It was not an academic degree, it was a research degree. I got that and later I went back and got an academic Ph.D in nutrition from Donsbach University in California. They wanted me to attend classes there and I just didn't have the time. I negotiated a deal with them that as long as I could pass the tests, I wouldn't have to go to class. Although everything was done by mail back then, the experience was much like doing coursework online today. I suppose in some ways I was a pioneer in doing online education. I graduated with a 4.0 from Donsbach and just continued on. ROH: You never got a master's? DA: I never got a master's. I have often wanted an M.B.A., but I'm too old and I don't have the patience. I don't need it, but I would like one. The biggest thing is that I don't have the patience. I can remember even in my undergrad taking a class in advertising and the professor wanted us to advertise an imaginary product. At the time, I had started a small advertising agency while working at Albion. I don't sleep much. Anyway, I had developed a campaign for a product. I developed the whole campaign, so it was not cheating. I had done absolutely everything. I didn't have the time to do busy work on an imaginary product, so, I took what I had done and presented it to the class. It violated some of the principles he taught. He got his master's degree at the University of Utah and drove 40 miles to Weber where he spent the rest of his life. He never had any practical experience in advertising. He started criticizing me in front of the class and I remember that I 34 lost my temper. I told him that he didn't know his fanny from a hole in the ground and I laid out what this advertising campaign had done for the company. Well, he was embarrassed and angry and he gave me a "C". I deserved an "A" but he gave me a "C". He never forgot or forgave me. He had a reputation for pulling kids out of the line as they were graduating and would say, "You can't graduate." I don't know whether that was true or not, but I believed it. When I was graduating I took my cap and partially covered my face before turning my head so he couldn't see me as I marched by. I was afraid he'd pull me out of line. He also became my major professor and made me jump through hoops to graduate. It was just a miserable time. The only consolation was that after I graduated, Weber offered me a job to replace him when he died. I didn't take it, but they did offer it to me. In my senior year, I joined a business fraternity because I was led to believe that it was where you would make contacts and that would be good for business. It isn't, but I was led to believe that. On one occasion they had arranged for us to go to a bank to tour the building and interview the vice president. We went down to what was then Commercial Security Bank on 25th and Washington in Ogden. I can still remember talking to the vice president. One of the kids had the audacity to ask, "How much do you earn as a vice president of the bank?" He puffed up and said, "I earn 450 dollars a month." I said, "Well, I earn more than that as a student, why would I want to be a banker." He looked at me and said, "Well, we get to play a lot of golf." I've never learned how to play golf, so I missed out on that opportunity. 35 One last thing on Donsbach University I ought to mention. About 1980, when four of my kids were in school, they were complaining about school work and saying that I didn't understand what it was like to go to school now because I went back in the olden days. More than anything else, that is what pushed me to attend Donsbach. I wanted to prove a point to them. I enrolled and I graduated one year later with a 4.0. I would come home from work and take care of my fatherly duties until about 9:00 p.m. I would study from 9:00 p.m. to usually 1:00 a.m. I would get up at 6:00 a.m. and would study again until it was time to go to work, work all day and repeat that whole thing. As I said, I graduated with a 4.0, wrote my thesis and got that approved and everything within that one year. The only time I went to California as it related to Donsbach was to get my diploma when I marched through at commencement. My kids came with Jill and me to commencement and after I got my degree, I turned to my kids and said, "Don't you ever tell me that I don't know what it's like." After that there was never ever a discussion about going to school or anything else and all of my kids have graduate degrees. ROH: Tell me about your kids. How many children do you have? DA: Five or six depending on how you count it. That always bothers a lot of people when I say that. I count it as six, but I have five kids. The sixth kid—a Navajo woman gave me her daughter and said, "She's yours, you raise her." I raised her as my own. I never formally adopted her, but I raised her, educated her and sent her to college. She still calls Jill and me "Mom" and "Dad" and her kids call us 36 "Grandma" and "Grandpa." As far as I'm concerned, she is a daughter. My blood kids all accept her as a sister. She's just one of us. ROH: What is her name? DA: Her name is Laurice. My first child was Stephen, who came about nine months after we were married. My next child was Jilane. She got her name while I was still on my mission. Jill and some of her girlfriends were composing names for their future children at one of her parties and she composed a combination of Jill and DeWayne. She wrote me and told me that her first daughter was going to be named Jilane. Next was Brett. Then came Angelique Racquelle—very French. My last was Heidi. ROH: Are any of them working in the business? DA: Three of them are. All of them have worked here. By the time my kids turned 12 or 14 at the latest, they had to go to work. They had to pick and choose what school activities they were going to participate in because they had to work. By the time they were sixteen they had to buy all of their own clothes. At 14, they would be preparing the meals and helping work around the house. Besides working, they had to work around the house and do yard work, but they didn't get paid for it. For better or for worse, none of my kids ever got into trouble. They were too busy working and doing other things. They never got into drugs or anything. All of them are workaholics and every one of them has risen to the top of his or her profession. All of them have had the opportunity to work at Albion and three of them elected to stay. Stephen joined Albion full-time while he was 37 married and a student. Angelique joined Albion after she got her master's degree and became a CPA. She was recruited extensively by most of the national CPA firms in Utah. She was an outstanding student. She chose to come to Albion although I did not have anything to do with it. Albion had to compete with the CPA firms to get her. Brett got his MBA and joined Albion after that. Jilane is the head of the English department at a junior high school and also teaches. Heidi teaches creative writing at a high school as well as having started her own business. ROH: You have quite a large family now. Did they get to earn allowances when they were younger? DA: No. Working around the house is what they owed me for giving them life. After I got married, I hit the road and was gone probably 60 percent of the time or more. On one occasion, I wanted to put in a spur on my sprinkling system and Stephen had helped me repair our sprinkling system in the past. He was about 13 or 14 at the time. I told him, "I want you to run a spur off there. I'll be gone on a trip so you just do it." He did and it worked very well. I still use it today. Another occasion, I told him to run a spur off in another area which had to go underneath the sidewalk. I didn't tell him how to get underneath the sidewalk, which was my mistake. So, he took a sledge hammer and broke the sidewalk to put the spur in and we had to pour cement and redo the sidewalk. They were expected to work and work hard and they did. When they were out working, they worked as adults—period. I worked with them whenever I 38 could, but the money that they received is what they earned from their employment. They had to learn how to budget it. I did one thing when they turned 16, I gave each of them a credit card and warned them about getting into trouble with it. Everyone did and every one of them went through the pain and misery of having to pay it off because I wouldn't pay their debts. It taught them the use of credit as well. I remember my oldest son, Stephen, still had a debt and he wanted to go on an LDS mission. I wouldn't pay his credit card off, so he had to stay home for several months to earn enough money to pay off his debt before he could go. ROH: Did all of the kids go on missions? DA: No, just my two boys. ROH: Did they go to France as well? DA: Brett went to France and Stephen went to Arizona. His Arizona mission was Spanish-speaking so he had to learn Spanish. He had to speak completely in Spanish all the time. ROH: What part of Arizona? DA: It would have been the Southern part. Tempe was the mission headquarters, but he spent most of his time in the South dealing mostly with illegal aliens. ROH: Is there anything else you'd like to add about your kids? 39 DA: I'm proud of every one of them. They're all good kids. They married well and everyone is a productive member of society contributing to the betterment of society. I'm proud of them. They are just good kids. ROH: Can you tell me a little bit more about this daughter you raised from this Native American woman? How did that come about? DA: The Mormon church had a program in the earlier days called the Indian Placement Program where they would bring kids off the reservation, house them with Caucasians, and let them go to school in a better environment. The church was in hopes of bringing them out of poverty, alcoholism and things that are associated with the reservations. Laurice started in that direction with someone else. She was not doing well in the school program and was a "D" and "F" student. She was basically dropping out of the program and they talked her into coming back. I was just asked to take her because she was failing. I said, "Fine." I treated her just like one of my kids, my oldest daughter had moved out so Laurice had a bedroom to herself. Angelique was older than she and Heidi was younger than she and both were straight "A" students. One pulled and the other pushed Laurice. She went from "D's" and "F's" to straight "A's." When she graduated, she wanted to go back to the reservation. Her ambition was to get a couple of horses and ride them on the reservation. I said, "There's no way in the world I'm going to let you do that. You've got too much potential and you cannot do that." She said, "Well, this program is over." I said, "I know, but there's still no way I'm going to let you do that." Her mother had come 40 up to her high school graduation and she could not speak English, had no electricity in her Hogan and had no running water, yet she gave this girl a computer for graduation and gave her to me at the same time. She said, "Keep her." So I did. I sent her to Weber. In fact, the future president of Weber, Ann Milner, pulled strings to get her in because while she received "A's" while she was with us, there were "D's" and "F's" from before so she was not really a good candidate as far as the university was concerned. Ann pulled strings for me at my request. Laurice earned "A's" at Weber too. Ultimately, she married and has remained here in Utah. She's a good kid. She's got two kids that are straight "A" students too. In fact, I just got an email from her this weekend telling me about what was happening with her kids. ROH: How old are her kids now? DA: They're in junior high and high school. ROH: You raised wonderful children and some of them work here. I find it interesting that the other two work in English related fields similar to your mother. DA: Well, blame it on my grandfather. One of my grandfathers had an eighth grade education. The other graduated from the University of Utah and spoke Latin fluently. Both were farmers, but my grandfather that graduated from the University of Utah had the uncomfortable habit of correcting everyone's English. In fact, my father remarked that it got to a point with him that he refused to speak around my grandfather because his grammar was so atrocious. My grandfather passed his habit on to my mother and she was a stickler for grammar. She 41 passed it on to me and I passed it on to all of my kids. I don't correct people like my grandfather did, but I would correct my children and I expected them to speak properly. I also passed on to them a love for books. I've got a room that is probably about a third the size of this office that is a formal library with bookcases that are perpendicular to the wall going floor to ceiling. I have thousands and thousands of books in there and I encouraged my children to read and to read the classics. We would talk about them and they love books. All of my kids are voracious readers and whenever I had the time and was in town, I would correct my children's written compositions when they were in school. I even did it when they went to college. Speaking correctly is important and they passed it on. It was my grandfather's fault. ROH: What was your grandfather's name? DA: Rupert Morrill. ROH: Today is November 26, 2012, we are picking up oral history with DeWayne Ashmead in his office with Rebecca Ory Hernandez. DeWayne, you were getting ready to tell me about a funny story. DA: In the early 1970's, we needed to establish some of our products nationwide. I went out and lectured and worked with a customer and his customers for about six months. I would leave on Sunday and come back on Saturday and turn around and do it again for about six months straight. I just worked very hard. One of the companies I was working for was in the Midwest. On one occasion, I flew 42 into Chicago and a company man picked me up in the middle of a terrible snow storm. In the Midwest, the snow drifts. We went to one place where I was scheduled to speak that had 250 people committed and not one person showed up. So, we went to the next town where we were going to do this again, but on the way we were going down the road and the snow drifted. It was 10 or 12 feet high on one side of the road and the department of transportation had only cleaned off one lane. We were going down this lane and a Volkswagen came toward us. The guy I was with wouldn't slow down. I said, "Buck, you need to slow down." He said, "No, it's my road." At the last minute, the driver in the Volkswagen realized he was not going to move off the road and the Volkswagen dove for the snow drift and was just buried. I said, "Buck, you've got to stop and help." He said, "Hell no, he was in my side." So, he kept right on going. I couldn't get him to stop. We got to a Holiday Inn that evening and there were so many travelers stranded that everyone was required to share a room with someone else. I was the only person in the entire hotel that had a room to myself. It was so bitterly cold that I turned the heater up in the room as high as it would go and took all the blankets off the other bed and put them on my blanket and it was still freezing. The next morning, I got up and snow had drifted underneath the door about two feet into the room. It was so cold it had broken all the pipes so there was no hot water. We turned around and went right back to Chicago and everyone went home. That was one of the 1970's storms. In spite of the storm, this form of promotion and speaking was a good experience. In six months, we went from 43 zero to $3 million in sales with only one product. It was an iron product for pigs. I can tell you all about pigs. I know a lot about them. I like to work with pigs in research. They are very similar to human beings. They have the same metabolism, so if it works on a pig it will work on a human or vice versa. I applied a lot of what I learned with pigs to human beings as we developed nutritional programs for humans. ROH: Tell me a little bit about the company and the kinds of product that you offer. DA: The company grew and as it did we started manufacturing vitamin and mineral supplements for animals. Ultimately, it became the largest manufacturer of vitamin and mineral supplements in the United States. We were manufacturing for lots of different companies, but never under the Albion name. Instead, the products went private label for other companies. Albion also started manufacturing veterinary pharmaceuticals and became the largest manufacturer of veterinary pharmaceuticals west of the Mississippi. All of these things were very price-sensitive and we were looking for other things to do that were less price-sensitive. One of the things we did that I got involved in at the age of 16 or 17, was help develop a drug that dissolved kidney stones. We got a patent on it and my father is named in the patent. I'm not named in the patent, but I did a lot of the research primarily with sheep. We got Food and Drug Administration approval to market this product in certain species of animals and it was a very successful product. It really started to make Albion. The drug operated due to the principle of 44 chelation, which is a chemical term describing how a chelating agent will grab a mineral and hold that mineral. In the case of this drug, it would hold the mineral so tightly in the urine that the mineral could not combine with other substances to form a stone. The animal would then eliminate the mineral as a chelate in the urine as it voided its bladder. We did a lot of research with humans as well, but never got an FDA approval for human use. We became experts in the science of chelation. Along the way, we noticed that the animals were not efficiently absorbing the minerals that were being provided in these vitamin and mineral supplements that the company was also making. We could pick up those same minerals in the manure. So the question was: why aren't the animals absorbing these minerals? Albion has always had the reputation for high quality, so we wanted minerals that would absorb. We learned that for the animal to absorb a mineral, such as iron sulfate, it had to take the iron and tear it away from the sulfate. The iron then had to be chelated by amino acids that came from the digested protein in the food. The amino acids would bind the minerals and basically form an organic molecule, which the animal could then absorb. If you look in your body or the animal's body, there are no inorganic minerals other that in the bones and teeth. They're all organic molecules. When we discovered that the animals had to create these organic mineral molecules in their stomachs and intestines, we said, "Well, why don't we pre-chelate them?" No one knew how to do that, so it took a lot of research. I was deeply involved in doing the research and we developed minerals that were 45 bound to these amino acids as chelates prior to ingestion. We were awarded patents on them. Today, we have about 150 patents on this type of product. When we gave these amino acids to the animals, we expected to see greater absorption. We were surprised when the performance of the animal also changed. They grew faster, had better feed conversion, less morbidity, less mortality and better reproduction efficacy. We suddenly discovered that we had opened a whole new area of nutrition. Over time, we eliminated the veterinary supply business at Albion, eliminated the vitamin and mineral supplement division, got rid of the pharmaceutical production and focused exclusively on production of amino acid chelates. We introduced these amino acid chelates to the human nutrition market in about 1968. By 1970, it was pretty much established. The animal nutrition market was before that in the earlier 1960's. That business was what I was trying to establish when I was traveling early on in my career. In 1975, we entered the agricultural market and started selling amino acid chelates for plant use. So, it was plants, animals, and man. We built on all three fronts and it was difficult because we didn't have sufficient money. My father was a product of the depression and he did not like borrowing money. He did, but it was hard for him to borrow money. Consequently, we built the whole the thing out of our profits. We still do that for the most part today. We can borrow millions and millions of dollars, but I refuse to let the company do it. We're qualified, the banks say we can borrow all the money we want, but we just don't. We paved the way in human nutrition. I remember in the 1970's the FDA decided that the amino 46 acid chelates were a new product class that was not approved, so they started seizing products made by other companies that were trying to copy Albion. No one made them the way Albion did, but that's been the marketing program for competitors from the very beginning, "We're just like Albion, but cheaper." Anyway, the FDA seized those products from the other company and we could see the writing on the wall that eventually they would get around to Albion. We decided to be proactive and sue the FDA in federal court. We said, "Our chelates are safe and effective. You prove they aren't." The FDA looked at our data and signed a consent decree saying they agreed that Albion products are safe and effective. We became the only chelated product that was approved by FDA to be on the market. It made sense to sue the FDA at the time, because if we had gone the traditional route the FDA could take 180 days to look at something and they could ask a question which we would answer. Then it was another 180 days. They could delay approval for years and in the meantime, we would have been out of business. By suing them in federal court, we forced them to look at our data immediately and make a decision immediately because it's in the court. Today, we still continue to focus on these amino acid chelates. During the recession of 2008, we sold the animal division. It was a hard thing to do emotionally, but it was the right thing to do business-wise. So, we sold it to another company, but we still manufacture the chelates for them. We're still in the business, but not under the Albion label. That's gone, but we still do the human and plant products under the Albion label. ROH: Tell me about how you've impacted the agricultural system internationally. 47 DA: Going to business school, I learned that the worst recession to occur since the great depression in 1956 was the year Albion started. When I learned about that I went to my dad and said, "Why did you start a company in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression?" He looked at me and said, "Recession? I didn't know there was a recession, I just knew it was damn tough." That was always my father's attitude, just plow ahead and forget all the problems or the reasons why you can't do something. Just go do it. We continue to do that today to a degree. Anyway, I took the marketing side of it and I went across the United States and built a national chain of outlets for the human and for the animal divisions. If you remind me I'll come back to the human, we did something that I think was quite clever. I started looking internationally and I started going to Europe first with the animal products for some countries followed by the human products. We started getting customers, suppliers and building up the business. One of the biggest ways to sell a product was to stand up in front of a group of people and tell them why these products were good and let them take shots at you. The scientists would and I would answer their questions and convince them. We went throughout all of Europe and established markets there. I spent a lot of time in Europe which is one of the reasons why I don't particularly care whether I go back now or not. I've seen all of Europe that I want to see. We did that and it was primarily building up the animal and human sales. I established human sales in South America using Brazil as my center of influence and in Central America using Guatemala as my center of influence and spreading out. 48 ROH: Is there a reason for those particular countries? DA: At the time, Brazil was the very best country for economic development of any country in South America. Even to his day, Brazil, Argentina and Chile are really the best countries in South America. They've got stable governments now and economically they're in pretty good shape. One of the things I refuse to do is deal in other currencies. I deal in U.S. dollars. A lot of these countries don't have the dollars. I never was able to truly establish the animal business in Central or South America primarily because they fed their animals differently than what we did in Europe or in the United States. Most of the animals are grass fed, not supplement fed and Albion products go into supplements. So, that didn't work very well, but we established our agricultural division with our chelates for plant use in South America and Central America and it has grown extensively there. At one time, I knew more presidents of countries on a personal level than did the president of the United States. I would be at their homes. For example, one of the presidents of Panama, President Royo, would invite me to his home and he and I would play baseball with his son and my son out on his front lawn. This is the man that Noriega put a gun to his head and said, "I'll give you one of two choices. Either you resign or I pull the trigger. Which do you want?" One of my other friends was President Anwar Sadat. We started to develop the agricultural area in Egypt. When Jimmy Carter was president he brokered the peace accord between Israel and Egypt. Anwar Sadat had promised his people that if he could get peace with Israel, he would take some of the money that he had been spending on defending the border between Israel and Egypt, and grow 49 food for the Egyptians. Well, they got the peace, so he called me and a few others to come to Egypt and help him set up agricultural programs that would fulfill his promise. I went to Egypt to meet with him and did surveys in Egypt to determine what needed to be done. He wanted to put American technology to work in Egypt, so I said, "What I'm going to tell you, I'm philosophically opposed to, but it's the only way you can do it." In Egypt, the father would divide his farm between the sons, who would divide the farm between their sons. The average Egyptian farm is one quarter acre in size. I said, "You need to go into a village and say, "Okay, all of you are going to grow cotton." Go to the next one and say, "All of you are going to grow beans." You will have to dictate what they do and then you can bring the American technology and the large equipment into Egypt in order to get your economies in scale. Unless you do that, there's no way that you can do it and bring American technology in." He agreed with me and started to set up the programs I had outlined before he was assassinated. Mubarak didn't care about his people the way Sadat did. He hadn't made the promise and he wasn't about to spend money on something like that, so he shut the project down. On one occasion, I told Mubarak that I could eradicate iron deficiency and anemia, which was the single biggest disease in Egypt. I even offered to guarantee in writing that I would eradicate it and it would cost him 34 cents per person per year. He said, "No, that's too much money, we don't care." So, it didn't happen. From that we expanded into the Middle East and had offices in Beirut and worked in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, and Lebanon. 50 ROH: Is this mostly animal? DA: This was the agricultural, plant division. It was growing bit by bit. One story I was going to tell you—a human story. Originally, when I set up the human business in the United States, it was through distributors. We would manufacture the chelates for nutritional companies and they would put their labels on our products and offer them for sale, but they wouldn't really go out and promote the products. They would offer them for sale as part of their entire product line. If the store wanted our products they would order them. The stores didn't purchase our products very often because they didn't know anything about them. I needed to go out and promote the chelates, but I didn't have any money to do it. I started another company called Rhondell, which was a division of Albion, but on the surface it looked like it was a separate company. It sold nothing but chelates to the customers of our customers. In other words, it was a competitor to our customers. Its mandate was to go out and sell these chelates and break even. I didn't care if Rhondell didn't make profit. They wanted to sell them at a lesser price than their competitors, but I didn't let them. They were always more expensive than the competition, but they sold chelates, talked about the chelates and advertised the chelates. Suddenly, the entire nutrition industry in the United States was abuzz with chelates. They'd come to Albion and say they want amino acid chelates that could compete with this Rhondell Company. We established the amino acid chelates in the in the marketplace and after they were established and everyone knew about them, I killed Rhondell. It never cost me anything to introduce and promote the products. 51 ROH: If one would have heard about chelation of blood for example, is that the same product? DA: No. There is a process called chelation therapy and I think that's what you're referring to. Chelation therapy is taking a synthetic chelate like EDTA, Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, and injecting it into the blood stream. The theory is that if you have atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis you have formed a calcium deposit in the blood vessels. The EDTA would come in and chelate the calcium in the blood and hold it so tightly that the body couldn't tear it away. The EDTA, being foreign to the body, would then be dumped into the urine and take the calcium with it. However, EDTA doesn't know the difference between calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium, etc., so it would chelate all of them. This could cause health problems. I was very critical of this except when it was done in a hospital. A lot of doctors were just doing Chelation Therapy in their offices and there were several people that died as a result. In fact, the pioneer of chelation therapy, Rudolf Alslaben, who was an acquaintance of mine, lost his license to practice medicine because he accidently killed a person with EDTA injections. Chelation Therapy was originally used for lead poisoning and done in the hospital. It's still done in the hospital for lead poisoning, but it can be very dangerous for treatment of atherosclerosis or arteriosclerosis. That type of chelation therapy is to get rid of minerals from the body. What Albion is doing is trying to get minerals into the body. 52 ROH: Tell me a little bit about your company today. What is the focus? DA: I guess today you'd have to ask others what they see. I'm a has-been. Today, the company is growing very rapidly. We have plans in place to expand the sales significantly in the days to come. I still hold the position of president and chairman of the board, but I am really not much involved in the day-to-day activities. We've got a good management team in place. They are working hard and are much younger than I am and have more energy. They're smart so they do it. My oldest son, Stephen, is involved. He is the heir apparent. My daughter Angelique is involved. She is the CPA and has a master's degree in accounting as well as a master's degree in computer science. She is a candidate for the CFO. My other son is over purchasing internationally, and has just been promoted to the chief operations officer for the company. These are Board appointments. I didn't have anything to do with them. We have outside people as well. We've got outside attorneys and the chief executive officer is not a family member. It makes a good team and they are all working hard. They do a good job, so I just let them go. ROH: Will the focus remain as you intended? DA: No, the focus doesn't remain as I intended because the situation changes and if I were to continue to go exactly the way I saw it ten years ago, we'd be out of business. We have to adapt. For example, I did not like the idea of selling the animal division. That pulled on my heartstrings because that's where Albion started. I worked hard to develop that business. If I had followed my emotions, 53 we would have never gotten rid of the animal division, but it was still the right thing to do. It was advocated initially by the CEO, Jim Hyde, as the right thing to do and as I analyzed his rationale. I agreed with him, but I didn't like it. So, in the future will we be exactly the same as we are today? No. We'll still adapt, modify and grow. We plan to be around another 50 years. ROH: The company is just one of these little secrets that we have here in our neighborhood. DA: Well, it is because our market is not in Utah. We live in Utah because we want to be in Utah. My kids had no idea who I really was or that I could walk into Anwar Sadat's home and be his friend, or walk into other famous people's homes and call on people around the world. They had no idea that outside of Utah I was quite famous. That was on purpose. I just wanted them to think of me as "Dad" and they did. Outside of Utah we are better known. ROH: How do you want to be remembered? DA: I don't care if I am. There are those that want to have buildings named after them and institutions named after them. I don't care about that. I really don't. I want my children to remember me and my grandchildren to remember me for what I stood for, what I was, and who I was and not what I've accomplished in a material sense. ROH: You're a very giving person, so I don't know if you're willing to talk about this on the record or not, but you've made some significant contributions to a lot of 54 different groups in the community, so tell me a little bit about your involvement with giving to Weber State. DA: As I told you earlier, I was working full-time and going to school full-time. For several years after I graduated I didn't have anything to do with Weber. I wasn't unhappy with Weber. I got a good education. I just didn't have anything to do with Weber. Then, Paul Thompson became president of Weber and had a focus that was different than previous presidents. I knew the previous presidents and still do and we visit from time to time. Anyway, Paul Thompson came into my office and talked with me about Weber and kind of sucked me in. I started paying attention to Weber and Paul asked me to be on the National Advisory Council, and that went on for a while. One day, Paul made a presentation at Weber about single parents that were struggling to get through school and how difficult it was. It really touched me, so Jill and I talked about it and we decided that we would start helping these single parents. We didn't care what their majors were or what the sex was, we would just help them. We started doing that and it just grew from there. ROH: You've served on lots of other boards as well, I'm sure. DA: I was asked to serve on the advisory board for the Goddard School of Business and Economics and I did that for several years. Ann Milner asked me to serve on the advisory council for the Health Professions, so I did that and continue to do that. They're trying to decide what they're going to be when they grow up and are having a hard time right now defining their objectives. That's not going very well 55 right now. The Arts & Humanities are talking to me about serving on that board. I haven't said yes, but I haven't said no we are just talking. I do that in addition to the National Advisory Council. I also serve on a board at the University of Utah, the board of the McKay Dee Hospital and the board of the YMCA. That is in addition to the boards of Albion. I also serve in a leadership position in my church. ROH: You've lectured I'm sure. DA: I have taught a few classes at Weber in business as well as the health sciences. I've done the same thing at the University of Utah and sit on a couple of advisory boards there too, but my heart really is with Weber. So, we just continue to go forward. ROH: You're being very modest. You also received an honorary doctorate degree from Weber. DA: Yes I did. ROH: What was that process like? DA: Well, you have to be nominated by someone else. I was nominated by someone, but I really don't know who. Carol Bittle came to me and said, "We need to put together a CV." So I helped her put it together and she submitted it to the selection committee and they said, "There's no way we're going to give him anything." Actually, they did turn it down. They didn't like what she had done, so she came back a second time and said, "We need to improve this." So, I did what 56 she asked and she re-submitted it and they selected me for an honorary doctorate. It's really significant from several points of view. My mother was still alive at the time and it really touched her and was really important to her. My mother had a doctorate from the University of Utah and my late father also had a doctorate. I had a doctorate from another institution, but this meant a lot to her to be honored that way. There was one other honor that I received that meant a lot to her and it was gratifying to receive. I was recognized as entrepreneur of the year by Ernest and Young. ROH: That's significant, DeWayne. DA: You think so? It was kind of neat. They came in and did a lot of interviewing and taping of the interviews with me and others that were being nominated. We went to a banquet and no one knew who was going to be honored. I really didn't want to go, but I went and I was awarded the recognition. ROH: Congratulations. DA: Thank you. ROH: Are there any other significant accomplishments connected to the company that you might want to mention? DA: I suppose one thing that is important is that I've authored eleven technical books on chelation. Some of them have been used as university textbooks. The most recent was published this year, 2012. It is a very defining book. It describes how a chelated mineral is absorbed into the intestinal cell, then into the bloodstream 57 and from the bloodstream into the cells of the body. I have been told that the research is Nobel Prize winning material. ROH: What's the title of the book? DA: It's called, Chelated Mineral Nutrition in Animals and Humans. ROH: Who is the publisher? DA: CRC Press, which is one of the major scientific presses in the United States. That made me feel good. I don't think there's another book in me like that. ROH: You don't think so? DA: Not like that. ROH: Except for the one you're writing about your father. DA: Well, that's a little different. When I started to write the last book on chelates, I got it about half done and had to go in for open heart surgery to correct a congenital problem. I thought, "Well, when I come out of surgery I'll be recovering for a while and I'll finish the book." I found that I couldn't even think for months. So, the book sat unfinished and when I picked it up to finish it, I couldn't remember what I had written so I had to start all over again and rewrite the book. So, it was about a three year process. The book went through about 23 drafts before I was satisfied with what it said. ROH: Goodness. DA: I then submitted it to the publisher. 58 ROH: So, you didn't mention the heart business earlier on, did you use any of your nutritional technology in recovering from your heart surgery? When did that happen? DA: Three or four years ago. I've known about this congenital defect, my valve would not close. When they got into my heart they also found that I had a hole in my heart that was congenital. The valve wouldn't close which on one hand was pretty good because it kept me out of Vietnam. I never wanted to go to Vietnam. It didn't really bother me, but for several years I was consulting a cardiologist just watching it because as I got older I recognized that this problem was going to manifest itself more and more. On one occasion, in the summer, we were doing a Concore d'Elegance— a car show where we brought cars in from all over the United States. I was involved in the management of this show and people that were on the organizing committee kept dropping balls and I kept picking them up. Pretty soon, I was juggling all the balls. By the time the show occurred in August of that year, I was absolutely exhausted. After the show was over, my wife and I decided to go on this little vacation and when we got to Colorado in the high country I couldn't breathe. She wanted to put me in a hospital and I refused to go to the hospital. I sit on the board of a hospital, I know what hospitals are like. We came back to Utah and I went to see the cardiologist. He said, "It's time." So, I went in for surgery. The cardiologist as well as the heart surgeon said, "Other than the fact that you have the congenital problems, you're really as healthy as anyone I've ever operated on. However, this is pretty serious business." The cardiologist told 59 me that I had less than a 50 percent chance of living through the surgery. The surgeon said, "I'm going to guarantee that you'll wake up, I just won't guarantee where. So, get all of your "T's" crossed, "I's" dotted and take care of all of your personal affairs because you may not make it." I did and went in for surgery and I did just about die. I was within two or three minutes of dying. They missed a bleeder and I about bled to death. They went through five or six pints of blood. ROH: Where did you have the surgery done? DA: McKay-Dee Hospital. North of Salt Lake, McKay-Dee is probably one of the best heart hospitals in the state. There are probably surgeons as good in Salt Lake, but I had a personal relationship with the ones at McKay-Dee and they were good too. They are nationally recognized, so it was okay. ROH: How are you feeling now? DA: Ornery. ROH: Good, you're back to your old self. DA: There you go. I feel fine. ROH: It must have scared your family though, and your business colleagues as well. DA: I think it probably did. They watched over me pretty carefully. My son wouldn't let anyone come in to see me. People from work would try to come and see me and he'd stand guard and just wouldn't let them come in. It was touch and go for a while. 60 ROH: You're doing great now, so what are your plans for the future? DA: Just more of the same. I have no intention of retiring. I like to work. If I were to retire, what would I do? I don't really have anything I want to do full-time other than work. As I said, I sit on the board of University of Utah, Weber, the hospital, and the YMCA. I'm happy doing what I'm doing. ROH: We talked a little bit about that last time. How many cars do you have now? DA: I don't know. See, if I don't know then I can honestly say in front of my wife, "I don't know." ROH: Is it more than 50? DA: More than 50. ROH: Should I stop there? DA: Probably. It's approximately 60 cars, but I really don't know. ROH: What is your favorite? DA: I don't have a favorite. That's like asking, "Who's your favorite kid?" The cars are primarily sports cars and performance cars. I have three criteria for a car. One, it's got to be a sports car, but I can make anything into a sports car. I can rationalize lots of things. For example, I have a 1966 Pontiac GTO and this Pontiac GTO raced the Ferrari GTO and beat it. If the Ferrari is a sports car, then the Pontiac must be a sports car because it beat the Ferrari. I rationalize it. Then, 61 it has to be rare or unique. I have a lot of cars that are the only one ever built. Third, I just have to like it. ROH: You love sports cars and you love art. Do you have any other hobbies? DA: Well you said, "Anything else?" I was going to say, "I love my wife." ROH: Of course, we know you love your wife and your family and your company. DA: I like genealogy. I do genealogical research. I wrote a book about my family tracing the Ashmead's back to 1530 up to 1968 which was the death of my grandfather. My father asked me not to write about him while he was alive, so I respected that and now I'm doing it. That book was published. My manuscript was about 1,600 pages and I had to go to a professional editor and have the editor pare it down to about 1,100 pages. I couldn't do it because everything I said was important, so the editor had to determine what was not important enough to put in the book. I published that, which was kind of a fun thing. It's in most genealogical libraries and major historical collections. ROH: We know you've met lots of important people throughout your life as well. Is there any particular meeting with a head of state or anyone in general that stands out in your mind? DA: There were three most significant events in my lifetime as far as I'm concerned. One was in 1957 with the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union. That was a major thing for me. Another was in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. The thing that really impacted me from a different point of view was when Dr. 62 Christian Barnard did the first heart transplant. That has always stood out in my mind as a major accomplishment. It was one of the most phenomenal things that had ever happened. Dr. Barnard, years later in the 1990's, read my published research. He was so impressed with it that he decided to come and see if I was really for real. He got on a plane and flew from South Africa to Salt Lake to meet me and we became good friends. Meeting Chris Barnard was one of the highlights of my life. He never looked at himself as being that spectacular and he'd say, "It was just another operation." For me, it was phenomenal. I've counted Chris Barnard as one of my good friends. He came to Utah several times and I went to South Africa several times. Ultimately, he was at a swimming pool in Greece when he had an asthmatic attack and didn't have his inhaler with him and died. I've always looked back at Chris Barnard as probably one of the more important people that I have met. ROH: What piece of your research was it that he read? DA: It wasn't a piece, it was the whole thing. He read the whole philosophy. Keep in mind, I have published about 250 magazine articles and 60 or 70 peer reviewed journal articles. I don't know what pieces he picked up, or if he read all of it. Somewhere in there he read it and after his first visit to Utah he called a press conference and said, "I'm going to spend the rest of my life promoting the concepts of Dr. Ashmead." ROH: How long did he stay when he came to visit? 63 DA: About a week. One of the things I did was organize a private dinner for him and all of the employees at Albion so they could all have dinner with Chris Barnard. I still remember one of the employees being so overwhelmed being in his presence that she just broke down in tears and just sobbed. When I opened China with the animal products, I went to China and was the first American to lecture in China following the closure of the borders by Mao. I lectured in Gaungzhou (Canton) at the university. My host for that was a professor that had been educated in the United States had gone back to China. During the Cultural Revolution, he was a ditch digger. After Mao died and China started to reinvent itself, he became a professor again at the university. He served as my translator and I lectured all morning. Somewhere around noon or 1:00 p.m., I quit lecturing and we broke for lunch. We went somewhere for lunch and when we came back, the lecture hall was filled with the same people. I turned to my host and said, "How did they know how long I was going to be gone for lunch because I had no idea where we were going?" He said, "They didn't know. They dared not leave for fear that they would miss something that you said. These people in the audience are all university professors and they have traveled from all across China to hear you. Some of them traveled for several days just to get here." That was very touching. I said, "I want you to arrange a banquet. I'll pay for it. I want to feed all of them while they're here." We did and it was an interesting banquet. I went around and toasted every table because they were all in the round tables. Since I don't drink they thought it was really funny the way I toasted them, but I did. One waitress lost her job because she didn't 64 give me the pigeon head, which was reserved for the most important person at the banquet. She gave it to someone else. I assured them it was perfectly fine, but she still lost her job. Later, I couldn't get the group at the banquet to go home. They sat there and sat there. Finally, I turned to my host and asked, "How do we get them to leave?" He said, "Well, you've got to excuse them. You go stand at the door and they'll get up and shake your hand and leave." I stood by the door and they all shook my hand. The old professors before Mau would bow and shake my hand and the young professors that were trained during Mau's time were ram-rod stiff, but would still shake my hand. It was a very touching thing to have professors from China come to Gaungzhou just to hear me speak. ROH: Is there anything that people might be surprised to know about you? DA: Well, if they couldn't see me on the camera I could say that I'm really good looking, but they can see me on the camera. I think that I have a lot of interests and when I focus on an interest I can become very focused on it. There are things that depending on which part of my life you're in, you would not know about the other parts of my life because I really focus on that single aspect when I'm there. We haven't talked much about it, and I won't talk much about it, but I'm really very religious and that is extremely important. I'm deeply involved in the LDS church and have been in a leadership position most of my life and continue to do so. If you saw me in a church setting, then I'm very religious and I hope it 65 translates into other aspects of my life. I hope that I still maintain that religious integrity. ROH: I think it does. I don't think people would be surprised by that. DA: That's important. If you deal in cars, I am really involved in cars and I am an expert in cars. I judge car shows all over the United States because I'm an expert. I am a master judge at these shows. If you talk about Albion, you can go one of two ways in the company. I'm a businessman and I really am a businessman. We have built an international business because of the work that I started and its now being carried on by others. I'm also a scientist and I am considered a good scientist and am well-known in the scientific circles for what I do. So, you've got those too. If you talk about art collections, I can get involved there. There are all of these different aspects of my life and if you only see one of these aspects, then I think you would be surprised at the others as you came to know me. My kids used to laugh at their friends because they would say, "Your dad is so serious and so strict." My kids would say, "You don't know my dad. He's got a great sense of humor and he's a tease." I am, but what these kids were seeing was one of my sides, not all of my sides. Whereas, my kids would see the other sides and know me differently. I don't know if that answers it. ROH: It certainly does—science and art, cars, and religion. Is there anything else that I haven't asked that you were hoping or expecting that I'd ask you? 66 DA: Not really. I would want it known that my wife is very important to me. She and I have been sweethearts since the age of 16 and at that ripe old age we wanted to get married. We waited until we were 22. We've been sweethearts forever and in three more years we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. She has been by my side the entire time. In the early days of Albion, she helped. She never got paid, but she worked at Albion. She saw the struggles and never once complained about my traveling. She never complained about my church work when I was at home. I would come home from work and immediately go do church work until late at night and she never once complained right up to the present. Yesterday, I left about 7:00 in the morning and came home about 6:00 at night and she didn't say anything. I appreciate that. She did a great job with raising our children. We've got five fantastic kids that were never in trouble and all of them educated. We've also got eighteen grandkids. I attribute that to my wife, not me. She's been my partner, my sweetheart, everything and that's more important than anything I've got. ROH: Thank you so much, DeWayne. We appreciate the time you took in sharing your story. I really appreciate your time. DA: You're welcome.

Issue 32.2 of the Review for Religious, 1973. ; Review ]or Religious is edited by faculty members of the School of Divinity of St. Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copy-right (~) 1973 by Review ]or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. Sub-scription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should" be accompanied by check or money order payable to Review ]or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent Review ]or Religious. Change of address requests should include former address. R. F. Smith, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor March 1973 Volume 32 Number 2 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts, books for review, and materials for "Subject Bibliography for Religious" should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. Religious and Social. Security William Quinn, F.S. . Brother William Quinn,F.S.C., is the Assistant to the President of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men of the USA; Suite 114; 1330 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20036. For some years the Internal Re~)enue Service of the U.S. Government has recognized that religious with the vow of poverty require a specific treatment under the law. In virtue of their vow of poverty, religious have no income in the sense in which this word is used by Internal Revenue Service. What-ever salary they might earn is in reality earned as an agent of their order, not for themselves personally. Because of this, religious have been exempt from the federal income tax; when the Social Security System was begun in 1936, .religious were excluded for the same reason: They had no income upon which to base the Social Security tax and which would serve to determine the level of benefits upon retirement or disability. In 1967 the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress passed legislation extending Social Security coverage to members of religious orders under a vow of poverty. However, when the matter was considered in the Senate, representatives of religious orders requested time for further study of the effects of coverage. The provision was not included in the Senate: passed bill which went to conference, and th~ conference agreed to post-pone the matter pending study of the orders. The status of religious under Social Security was not changed in the Social Security Amendments of 1967. The 1972 Provisions The provision for extending coverage to members of religious orders that is contained in the 1972 Amendments to the Social Security Act is based upon recommendations submitted to the Congress by a joint Social Security study committee, established by the two conferences of religious superiors in the U.S., LCWR and CMSM. 210 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 On October 30, 1972, President Nixon signed into law the Bill, H.R. 1, entitled Social Security Amendments of 1972; this Bill is now known as P.L. 92.603. The Bill provided many modifications in the existing Social Security legislation, but Section 123 is of particular interest to religious since its heading is: Coverage for Vow-of-poverty Members of Religious Orders. Religious orders are given the option of electing coverage under Social Security for their members under a series of rather well-defined conditions. The option is open-ended, that is, there is no time limit for when this option must be exercised, but it is irrevocable once it has been made. It will then be binding upon all present and all future members of the order. This new legislation recognizes the special situation of religious with the vow of poverty by creating for the purpose of Social Security coverage a unique definition of "wages": "The term 'wages' shall include the fair market value of any board, lodging, clothing, and other perquisites furnished to such member." Two things might be remarked about this definition: First, it is in no way related to the salary a particular religious might be receiving, and second, every religious in the order has an assignable "wage." The services performed by the religious might actually be carried out in an institution such as a school or hospital, but for the purposes of this Bill these services are deemed to be performed by the religious as an employee of the religious order. The obligation of paying the Social Security taxes members of the order falls upon the order, and not the particular institution for which the religious might be working. The effect of this legislation is to allow religious orders (or an autono-mous subdivision, such as a province or an independent monastery) the option of entering the Social Security system. The rates of taxation, the conditions for claiming disability, and the requirements for old-age benefits are the same for religious as all other participants in the Social Security pro-gram. A retroactive feature is built into the legislation, to allow the order to make the effective date of coverage any time'up to five years previous to the date of election of coverage. The order must pay the accumulated back taxes for all of its members, starting with the chosen effective date, but in so doing a number of older religious Will qualify immediately for old-age and Medicare benefits. The answers to specific questions about eligibility, tax rates, and bene-fits must be found in publicatigns of the Social Security Administration, or by consulting local offices of the Administration. These questions and answers are part of the daily routine of these offices and should not present any great difficulty. Special Questions Some questions, however, do pertain directly to religious, and some of these present rather difficult technical considerations. Examples of these Religious and Social Security might be: What is an autonomous subdivision of an order; are alien mem-bers of the order living in the United States covered; what about U.S.A. citizens, living and working in a foreign country; when is a religious retired? It is relatively easy to know when a lay worker in a business enterprise is retired. The case of one who stops working and who is no longer paid a salary is rather obvious, but even with the layman there may be some diffi-culty in establishing the fact of retirement. This would occur, for example, in the case of a self-employed person who would substantially reduce the time devoted to employment. In the case of a religious, where the "wage" is calculated on the basis of room and board and other perquisites furnished to him by the order, the question as to when the religious is to be considered as retired becomes more difficult. Retirement, for a religious under Social Security, is defined in the new legislation as the situation in which the religious no longer performs the duties usually required (and to the extent usually required) of an active member of the order. In spelling out the interpretation of this definition for the benefit of the religious superiors who will have to make the certification of retirement, the Social Security Administration calls attention to two con-siderations: a comparison of the nature of the work being performed before retirement with that performed after, and the amount of time devoted to this service. Should a sister, for example, be assigned to the motherhouse after fifty years of teaching and there devote herself to monitoring the phone, it is clear that she has retired. The case is more difficult, say, for a con-templative sister who gradually grows more feeble with age and who is not able to keep up the pace of former years. She is considered to be retired, for Social Security purposes, when the religious superior certifies that she is no longer able to perform the services required of active members. A Typical Illustration The operation of the new Social Security legislation could perhaps best be appreciated by considering a particular case as a typical illustration of how the law would work out in practice. Suppose, for example, that Brother John Doe, born in 1917, has taken a vow of poverty as a member of a re-ligious order. Suppose further thai the prov.ince of his order elects to partici-pate in Social Security by filing the appropriate Certificate of Election, with an effective date of January 1, 1973. The tables of eligibility for retirement benefits and for hospital insurance (Medicare) indicate that 31 quarters of coverage are needed in order to be fully insured; this means that Brother John Doe must have paid Social Security taxes on his "wages" for 31 quarters, at least, in order to be fully insured. An important parameter in the discussion is the amount of "wages" on which Brother John Doe pays the tax. This is an amount arrived at by the religious superior of his province as a result of considering the fair market 212 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 value of the board, lodging, clothing, and other perquisites furnished mem-bers of the province. Suppose for the sake of our illustration that this figure is $2,500 per year. The province, beginning in 1973, must pay a Social Se-curity tax for Brother John Doe at a rate of 11.7%, or $292.50 per year. The tax rate will remain at 11.7% until 1978, when it will increase to 12.1%. This rate will continue through 1980; from 1981-85 it will be 12.3%; 1986-1997 it will be 12.5%. This tax must be paid until Brother John Doe becomes disabled or until he retires. Brother John Doe will reach the age of 65 in 1982. At this time he may apply for old-age benefits. By 1982 he will have earned 36 quarters of coverage, and he will therefore be qualified for both retirement and Medi-care benefits. The amount of Brother's retirement benefits are calculated on the basis of his average "wage" over a period of 26 years (this number is given in a Social Security table, depending on date of birth and whether the person is a man or woman). In Brother John Doe's case his total earnings are 9 × $2,500 or $22,500; this divided by 26 gives his average yearly earn-ings as $865, or $72 a month. The Social Security Administration table of benefits indicates that Brother John Doe qualifies for the minimum benefit of $84.50 per month, or $1,014 per year. American Experience of Mortality Tables show that, on the average, men who reach age 65 will live another 15 years. Applying this figure to Brother John Doe gives his total old-age benefits as $15,210. Medicare Provisions After reaching 65, Brother John Doe automatically qualifies for Medi-care, Part A, the hospital insurance part of the health insurance program. This provides payment for services received as a bed patient in a hospital, or in an extended care facility, or at home as a patient up to 90 "hospital days" or 100 "extended care days" or 100 "homeohealth visits." The details of these benefits are spelled out in Your Medicare Handbook published by the Social Security Administration. After reaching age 65, Brother John Doe may elect to participate in Part B of Medicare which is a medical insurance program that helps pay for doctors' services, medical services and supplies, and other health care services. The cost of this insurance is reevaluated by the Government an-nually, but was $5.60 per month for the period July 1971-July 1972. Again, the details of this insurance program are contained in the same Handbook referred to above. Brother John Doe may continue to work after reaching age 65; should he do so, he will continue to pay Social Security on his wages. Further, the first $2,100 of his wages do not influence the old-age retirement benefits he receives, but the $400 beyond $2,100 (recall that our example set Brother John Doe's wages at $2,500) reduces his benefits by a proportion of one dollar for each two dollars earned over $2,100, or, in our example, by Religious and Social Security $200. Upon retirement, Brother John Doe would receive the full amount of his retirement benefit and would no longer pay the Social Security tax. Upon his death, a cash benefit of $251 is paid the beneficiary of Brother John Doe. However, for Social Security purposes Brother John Doe has no dependent survivors; after the deathbenefit is paid, no further benefits are paid on Brother John Doe's account. The Question Facing Each Religious Order Each religious order is now faced with a rather complex question-- what would be the economic consequence of exercising the option of joining the Social Security system. The order becomes liable to the Social Security tax on all its present members add all future members; it also gradually qualifies its members through quar.ters of coverage for the benefits of the Social Security program, chiefly disability, retirement, and Medicare. The order must make a careful evaluation of its age profile, its wage level, and its health and mortality experience.', to arrive at a prudent judgment as to lhe advisability of joining the Social Security program. The retroactive feature of P.IS. 92.605, Section 123, requires special consideration. This will allow religious who have recently retired, or those who will retire in the next several years, to qualify for full coverage, but the price that must be paid is the back Social Security tax for all members of the order who were active at the effective retroactive date. This date may be any number of quarters up to '~a maximum of 20 prior to the date of election of coverage. The effect of not choosing the retroactive feature is that some of the present older religious will not qualify for Social Security benefits, nor will they be eligible for Part A of Medicare after reaching age 65. Detailed information on Social Security matters is contained in the .publications listed below. Also, more specific reference to Social Security as it affects religious with a vow of poverty is given in the series of questions and answers that follow. Critical Social Security Questions Question 1. For purposes of the law relating to the Social Security coverage of religious (P.L. 92.603), what are considered wages? Answer. Wages for the purpose of this law shall include the fair market value of any board, lodging, clothing, and other perquisites furnished to a member by the order or autonomous subdivision thereof or by any other person or organization pursuant to an agreement with the order or subdivi-vision. Question 2. Does the law provide for a minimum or maximum amount for evaluated maintenance? Answer. The legislation specifically provides that the evaluated mainte-nance shall not be less than $100 per month. The maximum of course 214 / Review [or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 would be $10,800 under the 1972 amendments. The committee reports emphasize that the evaluation shall be on a reasonable basis. There is no indication that cost accounting principles must be applied. The committee reports also emphasize the understanding that there will be one established or evaluated wage for all of the members of the order regardless of the position which they occupy. Question 3. Are religious subject to both Social Security and income taxes? Answer. This law does not affect the vow of poverty but rather confirms it. Therefore, there would be no income tax liability on evaluated board and lodging. The Social Security taxes imposed on wages are limited by the law to orders which waive their tax exempt status for the limited purpose of Social Security coverage. Question 4. Will the religious be required to file any income tax forms? Answer. No, this law is not based on the self-employment concept as in ~the case of ministers. The only form filed is that which is required of tile employer; that is, the order or a subdivision thereof. Question 5. Who determines the level of income for a particular religious order or autonomous subdivision thereof? Answer. This is determined by the religious super:,or, based on a study of the actual situation existing with the members of the order or subdivi-sion thereof. Question 6. The order or subdivision thereof decides whether or not to come into the Social Security System; how is this decision made? Answer. The law does not specify how the decision is to be made. The provincial may get to~ether with the council and make the decision. Alterna-tively, the entire membership might be polled on the question. Question 7. If the order elects to come under Social Security, is this election irrevocable? Answer. Yes. Question 8. How many quarters of coverage are necessary in order to be fully insured under Social Security? Answer. Ultimately, the answer depends on the date of birth of the person being considered. It is necessary to go to a table supplied by the Social Security Administration to find the answer to this question. It should be observed here that, depending on the age of the individual, it may not be necessary to have as many quarters of coverage to secure Medicare coverage. This too depends on Social Security Administration tables. Question 9. Is it economically advantageous for a religious order to participate in Social Security? Answer. It is difficult to give a generalized answer to this question. It must be determined for each individual order. Three of the most signifi-cant factors are: the level of wages of the members of the order, the age distribution of the members of th+ order, and the benefits which would be Religious and Social Security / :215 receivable, that is, old age and survivors benefits, Medicare coverage and disability insurance and death benefits. Question 10. What retirement benefits are paid to a retired religious who has been fully insured under Social Security? Answer. This depends on the level of "income" on which the religious paid Social Security taxes during the years he was acquiring the necessary number of quarters of coverage; however, there is a minimum benefit paid to everyone who has the requisite number of quarters. At present this minimum is $84.50 per month or $1,014 per annum. Question 11. What is the situation with respect to a religious who pays Social Security taxes for ten years and then leaves the order? Answer. The credits a religious earns toward Social Security coverage belong to him/her as an individual; should the religious leave the order he takes the earned eligibility with him into secular life. Question 12. A religious man with sufficient quarters of coverage to be fully insured reaches age 65 but continues to work; that is, he is not retired in the technical sense of the term. What is his status under Social Security? Answer. Upon reaching the age of 65 the religious who has earned the required quarters of coverage may apply for Social Security benefits and he would be entitled to the same. If he continues to work, that is, he is not retired, the order must pay the Social Security taxes on his wages even though he is receiving old age benefits. If his wages are $2,100 or less, there would be no reduction of his old age benefits. If, on the other hand, they are in excess of $2,100 there would be a reduction of one dollar for every two dollars in excess of $2,100. The above answer would apply to a member of a religious order of women with the exception that she would be eligible for Social Security at the age of 62. Her benefits, however, would be somewhat reduced. Under the 1972 amendment a man may likewise be retired at 62 but his benefits would be reduced. Question 13. Is there any significant difference in the Social Security law as it applies to men or to women? Answer. The age at which women may receive benefits, and is the nor-mal retirement age for women, is 62, whereas it is 65 for men; however, men may retire at 62 and receive i'educed benefits. The required quarters of coverage to be fully insured differs for men and for women. The exact details should be checked with table~ supplied by the Social Security Administration. Question 14. Is there any time limit in which to elect coverage? Answer. No, an election may be made at. any time the order so desires. Question 15. Is there any time limit for electing retroactive coverage? Answer. No; however, if. the order defers the election of retroactive coverage for a significant amount of time it will be more costly when the order does elect to come in on a retroactive basis. The rate for the retro-active purchase of coverage is determined by, existing tax rates during the :216 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 five year period. For example, if an order elected five years retroactive cov-erage in December the tax rate for 1967 and 1968 would be 8.80%; for 1969 and 1970 it would be 9.60 and for 1971 and 1972 it would be 10.40. In 1973 the rate will be 11.70 and by 1978 it will rise to 12.10. In addi-tion to the increased costs it is possible that some religious will not be covered if the retroactive buy-in is deferred for a substantial period of time. Some members, for example, may retire and, consequently, will not be cov-ered in the retroactive purchase. Question 16. Must one elect for a retroactive period of five years or may one elect for a lesser number of years? Answer. The order may elect to "buy in" for any number of years it wishes, the maximum being five. Question 17. If a religious is active during the retroactive period and alive at the time of election but no longer a member of the order should he be counted in determining retroactive coverage? Answer. Yes. Question 18. When must the order pay for the retroactive coverage? Answer. By the end of the quarter in which the election is made. This payment must be made in a lump sum; there is no provision for an install-ment buy-in. Question 19. May an order elect coverage before the forms and regula-tions are finalized? Answer. Yes; notification of election of coverage may be sent to your district Social Security office. Question 20. When should a religious secure a Social Security number? Answer. As soon as possible. It is not necessary to have Social Security coverage in order to acquire a number. Acquisition of a number might speed receipt of benefits when an election is finally made. Question 21. If a religious subject to a vow of poverty performs ser-vices not required by the order but merely with the approval of his or her superior may he or she receive the benefit of this law? Answer. No, the services performed must be at the requirement of the religious order or subdivision thereof. Question 22. If a religious receives board and lodging from another organization (parish) how shall the wages be determined for Social Se-curity purposes? Answer. The tlat rate which is adopted for all religious shall prevail. Question 23. How much would it cost to buy in retroactively for a five year period at an evaluated wage of $100 per month? Answer. It would cost $612 per member who was active during the five year period and alive at the time of election. Some Available Literature 1. Social Security Handbook (SSI 135). This is available from the Religious and Social Security / 217 Superintendent of Documents and provides o]~erall ~nformatlon but nothing more recently than 1969. It will be 3 to 6 rrionths, before anything like its counterpart will be brought out. The volume c~sts $2.25. 2. Your Medicare Handbook (DHEW ,Publication; SSA 72-10050). This is available from the Superintendent of Documents at 35 cents in bulk rate, free for a few copies. The Handbook is available to anyone entitled to Medicare. 3. Your Social Security (DHEW SSA 72-10035). This provides gen-eral information and is available free from the Superintendent of Documents. 4. If You Become Disabled (SSA 73-10029). Available free even in bulk. 5. Your Social Security Earnings Recordi (DHEW 73-10044). Avail-able from the Superintendent of Documents. 6. How Medicare Helps You When You Go to the Hospital (DHEW 72-10039). This may be free in bulk. 7. Estimating Your Social Security Retirement Check (SSI 47). Avail-able free. Theological Reflections on the Ordination of Women Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices The Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices is a committee of the' National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Foreword This report prepared by the Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices has been approved for publication by the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The report is not definitive. It deals only with the question of ordination to diaconate and priesthood, leaving aside the question of installation of women in ministries of lector and acolyte. It is a contribution to the con-tinuing dialogue on a subject of great importance. Its purpose is to encour-age further study and discussion while making honest efforts to identify the major questions which must be examined in depth before conclusive answers can be given. We are conscious of the deep love for the Church which underlies the growing interest of many women in the possibility of ordination. Our own appreciation of their indispensable contribution to the life of the Church underlies this effort at honest dialogue. Other churches are also engaged in a study of this question. While their reflections have been helpful to us, we hope ours may be helpful to them. Theological Reflections on the Ordination ot Women The question of ordaining women is an old one in the Church, but it has not yet been thoroughly researched for Catholic theology. There is no explicit authoritative teaching concerning the ordination of women that settles the question. The topic should be given exhaustive study. The theological reasons for and against the ordination of women need to be developed in careful and 218 The Ordination of Women / 219 objective fashion. A thorough study is required not because of sociological trends, but because of developments in the Church within the past decade. The encyclical Pacem in terris (no. 41) in 1963 listed the emancipation of women as a positive development of modern times. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (nos. 9, 29) in 1965 rejected any discrimination based on sex. The admission of women as auditors to the last two sessions of Vatican II (1964-65), the proclamation of St. Theresa of Avila as Doctor of the Church (1970), the discussions on this subject in the Third Synod of Bishops (1971)--these trace a considerable recent development concerning woman's role in the Church. The revelation given in Galatians 3:28 shows the equality before God of every Christian: "There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus." In the Church then there is no distinction of persons: Discriminatory lines have been erased by Christ. In the Church there can be no discrimination. The basic text and basic teaching, however, do not mean that there are not different ministries in the Church, or that one ministry is to be pre-ferred over another--as the same St. Paul taught in 1 Cor 12:4-14: 1. In spite of this doctrine of the equality of all in Christ, no woman has ever been pope, bishop, or priest. At the present time it cannot be proven or disproven that women were ever ordained deacons. It is Church law (Canon 968) that women are not eligible for orders. Several scriptural and theological justifications have been proposed to explain why women are not eligible for ordination. They are here listed-- in a general order of increasing importance--with some brief comments. 1. In the Old Testament, authentic priesthood was limited to males. The Aaronic priesthood and the levitical service (a service somewhat analogous to the diaconate) were similarly limited to males (cf. Exodus 28, Leviticus 8). This was in keeping with the strongly patriarchal Hebrew society. Be-cause we accept the law as invested with divine authority, we accept this limitation of Old Testament priesthood to men of one family within one tribe of Israel as expressing God's will-for the Old Testament. The exclusion of most males and of all females was then also God's will. This entire presen-tation, however, seemingly has no direct bearing on the issue at hand. We of the New Testament are studying the will of God concerning the New Testa-ment priesthood of Jesus Christ. 2. In the New Testament there is mention of a woman who was called "deaconess" (Rom 16:1) and of other women serving as deacons (1 Tim 3:11). Similarly in the early centuries of the Church, and especially in the East, there were deaconesses. Unfortunately no clear conclusions can be drawn from this information. There is no way at present to determine whether these women were called by this title in a formal or an informal way, whether the women in scripture were wives of deacons .who aided their deacon hus-bands, whether they were ordained, whether any ordination they received 220 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 was sacramental, etc. The uncertainty of Scripture scholars concerning an "order" of deaconess is illustrated in the Jerome Biblical Commentary, 53: 136; 57: 21. A similar uncertainty seemingly exists concerning the deaconess in the early Oriental Church. This deaconess tradition is helpful in approach-ing the present question. However, we must beware of constructing a case for or against the sacramental ordination of women on such fragmentary and indefinite information. 3. Saint Paul repeatedly directed that women hold to a subordinate posi-tion in the Church, keep silence in the Church, keep their heads covered, tend the home and family, etc. (cf. 1 Cor 11:2-16; 14:33-36; Eph 5:22-24; Col 3: 18; Titus 2:5; cf. 1 Pet 3: 1-7). There seems to be little question but these texts are of Pauline authority alone. The developments of the past decade in the Church listed in this letter, and the authorized functioning of women as lectors and commentators, further demonstrate that these Pauline texts should not be cited as arguing against the ordination of women. 4. The New Testament doctrine on "headship" as reflected in the order of creation is given to justify the leadership of men and the subordination of women in the Church (cf. 1 Cor 11:3-12; 1 Tim 2:8-15). This same reasoning is advanced to explain the ordination to the priesthood of men but not of women. This doctrine of the dependence of woman on man is seem-ingly the teaching of Genesis (cf. JCB 2:18) as well as of Saint Paul (cf. supra). However, much further study is needed before conclusions can be drawn. 5. The incarnation is given as a reason for the ordination of men only. The word of God took on flesh and was made man--as a male. This then was the divine plan. It is stated that this divine plan is expressed in the person of Christ (cf. Decree on the Ministry and Li]e o[ Priests, no. 2). It is argued that a male priest is required to act in the person of the male Christ. 6. The selectivity of Christ and of the early Church presents another ap-proach. It is known that Jesus did not hesitate to contravene the law and sociological customs of his time. Yet Jesus selected only men as his apostles and disciples. Further, the replacement for Judas was to be specifically one of male sex (Acts, 1:21 in the Greek), even though women who fulfilled the other conditions were present and available. Similarly the seven assistants to the apostles (Acts 6:3) were all men, even though the work was to be that of serving widows. This limitation to men, it is argued, goes beyond socio-logical conditions of that day and points to a divine choice. 7. Revelation is made known to us from tradition as well as from Sacred Scripture (cf. Constitution on Divine Revelation, nos. 8-10). It is then necessary for theology in this question to look to the life and practice of the Spirit-guided Church. The constant practice and tradition of the Catholic Church has excluded women from the episcopal and priestly office. The-ologians and canonists have been unanimous until modern times in con- The Ordination of Women / 221 sidering this exclusion as absolute and of divine origin. Until recent times no theologian or canonist seemingly has judged this to be only of ecclesiasti-cal law. It would be pointless to list the many authorities and the theological note that each assigns to this teaching. However, the constant tradition and practice of the Catholic Church against the ordination of women, interpreted (whenever interpreted) as of divine law, is of such a nature as to constitute a clear teaching of the ordinary magisterium of the Church. Though not formally defined, this is Catholic doctrine. These seven approaches have been used to document the exclusion from ordination of women. From them we attempt to draw six somewhat tentative conclusions: 1. Reasons no. 5 and no. 6 call for considerable further study in order to measure their validity. 2. Reason no. 7 is of ponderous theological import. Its force will not be appreciated by those who look for revelation and theology in Scripture alone, and who do not appreciate tradition as a source of theology. Because of rea-son no. 7 a negative answer to the possible ordination of women is indicated. The well-founded present discipline will continue to have and to hold the entire field unless and until a contrary theological development takes place, leading ultimately to a clarifying statement from the magisterium. 3. This question is extraordinarily complex. It is influenced by the indi-vidual's point of departure, viewpoint, and choice of terminology. Even in this study some helpful distinctions have not been spelled out for the sake of brevity. It would seem that neither Scriptural exegesis nor theology alone can give a clear answer to this question. The ultimate answer must come from the magisterium, and the current question is whether the magisterium (as reason no. 7 explains) has already given a definite and final answer. And at this level of doubt, only the magisterium itself can give" ultimate clarification. 4. It is possible to draw distinctions between the diaconate and the epis-copal- priestly order, and within the diaconate itself. Assuming that the diaconate is of ecclesial and not divine, institution, and that it can be sep-arated from the sacrament of orders, it would seem possible that special study be given to the possibility of a diaconate of service, non-sacramental and non-liturgical, which would be conferred on women. It has been noted that Pseudo-Denys in the 5th century made such a distinction within the diaconate. 5. Some contemporary writings on this subject approach priestly ordina-tion as "power" rather than service, and speak of a "right to ordination." Such views appear to overlook the clear doctrine that priestly ministry is service to the People of God, that no Christian has any right to ordination, and that it involves the mystery of God's free election. One who is not an ordained priest is not thereby, a lesser Christian, a lesser minister, or a victim of discrimination. In the Church there are many ministries, but all Christians do not have all charisms, and the hearts of all should be set on the greater 222 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume 32, 1973/2 gifts of God's love (1 Cor 12:4-13:3). Further, all Christians share in the common priesthood of the faithful (cf. Constitution on the Church, no. 10); from among these some are chosen by God to minister to the others by priestly service. In such a context should this question be presented. 6. Beyond the question of theological possibility is the further considera-tion o~ what is pastorally prudent. For the present, however, we can see from theology only a continuation of the established discipline. Considering the strength of that discipline and the numerous uncertainties detailed in this paper, the needed study on this question is now just beginning. As is evident, every one of the points listed in this report calls for a major study. The German theologian Ida Friederike Gorres reminds us that it is God's will and plan that must be determinant in this question: The Catholic priesthood is a unique phenomenon, springing solely from the faith, the doctrine, the history, the growing self-consciousness of the Church: not from the religious needs of the Catholic people, certainly not from any principles or theories concerning the rights of men and women, nor yet from the necessity of particular functions which could be assigned at will to various persons. The one and only exemplar of the Catholic priest is the living person of Jesus Christ, in his relationship to the Church: in the mystery of the one, perfect, indissoluble life he leads, with her (Catholic Transcript, Dec. 17, 1965). Pluralism in the Works of Karl Rahner with Applications to Religious Life Philip S. Keane, S.S. Philip S. Keane, S.S., is the Vice Rector of St. Patrick's Seminary; 320 Middlefield Road; Menlo Park, California 94025. As a working theologian moves from place to place, he finds himself being asked questions on a wide variety of subjects and his interests tend naturally to move towards those questions which he is asked over and over again. In the past twelve to eighteen months there is no question which I have been asked about more frequently than the theological meaning of pluralism. The question has come from virtually all segments of the Christian community, but it has been asked with special urgency by the members of religious communities, with at least one religious community having enough concern about the issue that it has called for a serious study of pluralism in its newly adopted constitutions.1 Pluralism a Perennial P~oblem In a certain sense I have found the repeated questions about pluralism amusing. My amusement has come from the fact that my questioners (sisters in particular) so often seem to be presupposing that pluralism is a brand new issue, perhaps even a .brand new toy, which theologians have just lately discovered. Some of the questioners seem very excited about this new issue as if it will solve all their community living problems while others are quite frightened by it, but they all seem to have the idea that pluralism is a totally new problem. This I find amusing inasmuch as pluralism is a perennial problem which theologians have .wrestled with for centuries; it is hardly a new issue. Many of today's older theologians such as Karl Rahner aConstitutions o] the Sisters o] St. Joseph o] Carondelet, a Congregation o] Pontifical Right, St. Louis, 1972, p. 29. 223 224 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 have been working with pluralism for 30 or 40 years, that is, since before a number of my excited questioners were born. Thus perhaps the first point to be made to those who are either nervously or excitedly asking about theologi-cal pluralism today is that it is anything but a totally new theological concept. Nonetheless, theological plurfilism is a most important issue for the whole Church today and for religious communities in particular. Also, it is an issue which is not well understood especially from the theological view- . point. Hence, the goal of this article will be to aid our understanding of pluralism as a theological reality by presenting the concept of pluralism found in the works of Karl Rahner and by applying this concept to the situation of the religious community today. In the past 10 or 15 years Rahner has written very extensively and incisively on pluralism'-' and his work on the theme should surely be a help to us in forming a workable theological concept of pluralism. Divisions and Presuppositions Our reflections on the theology of pluralism will be divided into five parts: first, pluralism as a basic theological reality; second, the unique character of pluralism today; third, some consequences of today's pluralism for the Church as a whole; fourth, pluralism and the oneness of our faith; and finally the implications of pluralism for religious community life. The first four parts will gather and coherently organize Rahner's ideas on plural-ism. The final section will move beyond what Rahner says explicitly, but it will seek to be faithful to his views on pluralism. An important note before beginning the explanation of Rahner's writings on pluralism is that, as with any Rahnerian topic, the vastness and.depth of Rahner's total theological synthesis are such as to render the treatment of a particular Rahnerian theme such as pluralism somewhat difficult without at least some grasp of the whole of Rahner. In our particular case, for example, Rahner's metaphysics of human knowing as bipolar (explicit and implicit), his concept of God as indescribable mystery, his explanation of Christianity as an openness to all that is genuinely human, and his concept of man as ~Rahner's major articles on pluralism include "The Theological Concept of Con-cupiscentia," Theological Investigations (hereinafter T1) [8 volumes 1961-71; vs. 1-6, Baltimore: Helicon; vs. 7-8, New York: Herder and Herder], v. 1, pp. 347-82; "The Man of Today and Religion," TI 6, pp. 3-20; "A Small Question Regarding the Contemporary Pluralism in the Intellectual Situation of Catholics and the Church," ibid., pp. 21-30; "Reflections on Dialogue within a Pluralistic Society," ibid., pp. 31-42; "Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, pp. 17-29; "Philosophy and Theology," Sacramentum Mundi (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968-70), v. 5, pp. 20-4; "Theological Reflections on the Prob-lem of Secularization," Theology o] Renewal (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), v. 1, pp. 167-92; "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith," Concilium, v. 46 (1969), pp. 103-23; and "Glaube des Christen und Lehre der Kirche," Stimmen der Zeit, July 1972, pp. 3-19. Pluralism in Rahner / 225 a future-oriented being whose most fundamental virtue is hope are all themes which form a substratum for his theology of pluralism? These themes will be given brief explanations as needed and the reader less familiar with Rahner is advised to consider them carefully when they occur. Pluralism as a Basic Theological Reality First of all then, what is the basic theological meaning of pluralism? Rahner began to develop his thinking on this matter in his well known 1941 article on concupiscence.4 Therein while discussing Heidegger's distinction between human person and human nature, Rahner makes the point that the human person, the source of human freedom and human longing for God, can never fully dispose of himself in a single action. Instead, man's person finds himself limited by man's nature as a material or incarnate spirit. Man cannot make a total act of movement towards God, an act which is uni-formly effective in all the aspects of human nature. For man's person which freely seeks God lives in an insuperable tension with his nature which limits his ability to move towards God. Some years later (1959) Rahner explained this kind of thinking further in another context when writing about the mystery of God) Here the point is that the mystery of God so totally tran-scends human knowledge that no concrete human experience or human expression can ever fully encapsulate the mystery of God. This mystery which is at the very root of man's being constantly eludes man's efforts to grasp or formulate it. At the level of concrete human knowing man does not have a total understanding of God. Rather man in his materiality and there-fore in his limitation has only partial knowledge of the mystery of God. The more he learns about God the more there is to learn, for God will always be the mystery who exceeds the depths of our understanding.~ Our life then is a day by day effort to see, follow, and love God more clearly, nearly, and dearly as the popular song from Godspell puts it. All this of course is no new insight. St. Paul said the same thing centuries ago: "Oh, :~Good background reading on these themes includes "Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ," TI 5, pp. 199-201; "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," TI 4, pp. 36-73; "Anonymous Christians," TI 6, pp. 390-8; "On the Theology of the Incarnation," T) 4, pp. 105-20; and "The Theology of Hope," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, pp. 78-87. ¯ ~"The Theologi~:al Concept of Concupiscentia," TI 1, pp. 347-82. For what follows see especially pp. 368-9. In recent articles Rahner has explicitly shown how his present thinking on pluralism is rooted in his early writings on concupiscence; for example, "Theological Reflections on the Problem of Secularization," Theology o] Renewal, v. 1, pp. 187-8. 5"The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," TI 4, pp. 36-73, especially pp. 46-8. 6Rahner pushes this position about God as absolute mystery to its ultimate radicality when he argues that God will still be m. ystery for us in heaven (ibid., pp. 53-60), and that in God all the mysteries of our faith are ultimately one (ibid., pp. 61-73). 226 / Review ]or Religious, Vohtme 32, 1973/2 the depths and the richness of the wisdom of God; how incomprehensible his judgments are, how unsearchable his ways" (Rom 11:33). Unavoidable Pluralism Putting these ideas together, we can see that both man's unlimited desire to choose God in freedom and his ceaseless yearning to know God with his intellect are limited in such a way that in actual fact man only chooses and knows God through a series of particular or partial acts of choice or knowledge. His choice of God comes through a multiplicity of human choices, his knowledge of God comes through a multiplicity of human acts of knowing.; All this leads Rahner to a basic dictum of his religious or theological anthropology, namely, that the inherently limited and seriated character of all human choice and knowledge of God means that all human experi-ence of God has about it a necessary and unavoidable element of multiplicity or pluralism. Since man cannot fully embrace the mystery of God in single actions, he must experience God through many actions. Pluralism thus be-comes a basic or fundamental element of man's relationship to God. Rahner states this in many ways in his works. He states that man is ever subjected to the agony of pluralism,s and even more strongly he calls pluralism a radical or irreducible fact of human existence.'~ Because God made man as a material or embodied spirit, man cannot escape from pluralism, from the fact that he must learn about God, and indeed about all of life bit by bit, part by part. There just is no other way for the human spirit. Any form of mysticism which tries to escape from man's bodiliness and multiplicity is a pseudo-mysticism in the opinion of Rahner?° It is particularly important to note that since Rahner's concept of plural-ism is founded upon man's way of knowing and choosing God, it is a radi-cally theological concept, that is, a concept asserting a basic aspe.ct of man's relationship to God. This is significant today because very often pluralism is bandied about as a sociological or political concept, whereas Rahner's idea of it is much deeper. The trouble with those who limit their concept of pluralism to sociology or political science is that, whether they like pluralism or not, they can very easily look upon it as a fad which will pass away. In :Rahner uses both Scotist approaches (the limitations of our freedom) and Thomist approaches (the limitations of our knowledge) in explaining pluralism theologically. In later years he tends mostly towards knowledge oriented or Thomist examples, perhaps most celebratedly with his concept of "gnoseological concupiscence" ("The-ological Reflections on the Problem of Secularization," Theology o] Renewal, v. 1, p. 187). But both ways are possible for him. Slbid., pp. 190-1. :"'Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, p. 22. 1°Hearers o] the Word (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), pp. 77-9. Pluralism in Rahner / 227 particular those threatened by pluralism will wait for it to pass if they view it as a fad. But pluralism is not a passing fad. Its basic point is that no two of us ever experience and formulate our approach to God in exactly the same way. We are truly moving towards the "many mansions in our father's house." Ultimately then we must see pluralism as a theological issue. Problems of Pluralism Rahner's language in describing the fundamental phenomenon of pluralism raises some interesting questions. Why does he describe man as "subjected" to pluralism? Why does he call pluralism agonizing? Why did he begin to develop his treatment of it in the context of a theology of con-cupiscence? The answer to all these questions is that in Rahner's view it is man's irreducible pluralism which makes it possible for man to sin. It is precisely man's ability to explicitly grasp only partial goods or values which enables him to sin, to sin by absolutizing one or some of these partial values and thus shutting himself up in the finite,~1 closing himself to the unfathom-able mystery of God. The agony for man is that he experiences or perceives value only in partial and thus plural realizations. His very way o~ being drives him towards the multiple or plural values. The temptation to ab-solutize such values is the temptation to sin. Rahner's whole theology of hope, of man as a being who must be open to the future, a being who must refuse to absolutize the partial values of the present, is, of course, echoed here.l~ These thoughts bring up another problem. Do pluralism's close connec-tions with concupiscence, and hence its status as the occasion which renders sin possible make pluralism a bad or evil thing? Definitely not! This rejection of a condemnation of pluralism is one of the most emphatic rejections in Rahner's entire theological system. His whole reason for beginning to write about man's concupiscent movement after multiple and partial values was to insist that such movement cannot be called fundamentally evil?:' Rahner holds that it was the all good God who made us .as material and pluralistic beings and that, therefore, we must accept ourselves as we are in faith, in hope, and in love. Rahner is determined to teach that we should love the nature God gave us and this means that we must openly embrace our radi-cal, God-given pluralistic state. We simply cannot flee from it, agonizing though it may be. Are we ready to accept Rahner's challenge on this point? The Unique Character of Pluralism Today Our reflections so far have shown us that pluralism is a basic constituent of man's experience of God affecting all men at all times. But another vital 11,,Thoughts on the Possibility of Belief Today," 7~1 5, p. 10. V-'For a position similar to Rahner's on this point see Wolfhart Pannenberg, What is Matt? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970), pp. 68-73. ~:t"'The Theological Concept of Concupiscentia," TI 1, pp. 369-71. 228 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 point needs to be made. Why is it that pluralism, always a part of man's situation before God, has become such a particularly pressing concern in our times? Why are so many in religious communities suddenly talking about it? Why has a man like Rahner written so much on pluralism in recent years? To put all these questions more precisely we should ask the following: Is there something specifically unique about pluralism in the 20th century? Are there new factors today which further complicate man's fundamentally pluralistic situation? In answer, the first assertion to be made is that Rahner very definitely feels that 20th century pluralism is a specifically unique phenomenon in the history of the human race. He explains the uniqueness of 20th century pluralism by referring to the tremendous, historically unparalleled explosion in human knowledge which is taking place in our century.TM Man has prob-ably learned more (and therefore appropriated more multiple or plural values) since the beginning of our century than he learned in all the previous centuries combined. Thus, specialization has become the byword of our age. Each individual human being is learning more and more about less and less. Human communication is becoming harder and harder. In the 19th century those who went to college or graduate school could be rela-tively certain that their studies would include a good deal of the "liberal arts" and that they would arrive at basically similar value systems. Even in the early 20th century this was still so. Today, however, people are sent away to school to study various disciplines (art, sociology, psychology, literature, mathematics, and so forth) and they come home with such varied value systems that for all practical purposes they are speaking in different languages. Many segments of society experience this problem in-cluding religious communities. The situation is especially burdensome for persons in authority insofar as persons in authority are never again going to be able to learn enough to understand all the varied value systems and languages of the people under them. A Qualitatively New Situation Rahner gives his position on the uniqueness of 20th century pluralism a deeply radical meaning when he refuses to explain today's pluralism on a merely quantitative basis, that is, on the basis of the increased number of plural values which different men are learning about today. Rather he holds that the numerical increase in man's knowledge of pluralistic values has placed mankind in a qualitatively new situation,x'' The qualitative l~"Reflections on the Contemporary Intellectual Formation of Future Priests," T! 6, pp. 114-20; "Reflections on Dialogue in a Pluralistic Society," ibid., pp. 39-40; and repeatedly elsewhere in Rahner's works on pluralism. ~z"Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith," Concilium 46 (1969), p. 104. Pluralism in Rahner / 229 difference is this: In the past the number of insights and values known to man was limited enough that it was at least possible in principle for one person or one group of persons to gather together the known human insights and values in such a way as to formulate one coherent worldview or philosophy of life which could be accepted and embraced by all men at least in a given part of the world. Further, in the past, the world's great civiliza-tions (Western, Oriental, African, American) were so insulated from one another by "cultural no-man's lands" that the fact of one civilization's philosophy of life not including the values known to other civilizations made no difference in practice,a'~ Today, however, the whole world is different; the barriers between the great civilizations are collapsing, and the number of pluralistic insights and values has so increased that it is simply impossible for any person or group to embrace all known values and thus establish a worldview which can attain anything approaching a universal acceptance by a civilization or civilizations.1~ This is why Rahner says that 20th century pluralism has put man in a qualitatively new situation: man can no longer thematize universally acceptable worldviews. 20th century pluralism is therefore radi-cally new. The adjectives which Rahner uses to describe it become stronger and stronger as the years pass. He describes today's pluralism as irreduc-ible, indomitable, unconquerable, unsurpassable, and so forth,as Another way of describing the qualitative difference between today's pluralism and that of the past might be to say that in former times the plural values perceived by man could be conquered by inclusion within one philosophical worldview so that they were reduced to diverse aspects of that worldview, to diversities within one philosophical system. But the differing values of today cannot be conquered or reduced to one system; thus we no longer have diversities within a system but instead we have something much more radical, we have a pluralism which is in Rahner's words unconquerable and irreducible. Rahner never precisely uses the words diversity and pluralism to characterize the old and new aspects of human multiplicity, but such a terminology certainly seems to fit in with his description of the qualitative difference between today's pluralism and that of former centuries. In any case the point is that pluralism, while ~"Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, p. 22. ~r"A Small Question Regarding the Contemporary Pluralism in the Intellectual Situa-tion of Catholics and the Church," TI 6, p. 22, and in a number of other places in Rahner's works. ~SAmong many examples of Rahnerian language of this type are: "Theological Reflec-tions on the Problem of Secularization," Theology o] Renewal, v. 1, pp. 188-90; "Reflections on the Contemporary Intellectual Formation of Future Priests," TI 6, p. 117; "The Man of Today and Religion," ibid., p. 20; "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith," Concilium 46 (1969), p. 107. Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 always a fact for man before God, presents us with a new series of problems in our times. Consequences of Today's Pluralism for the Church What should be the attitude or response of Christianity towards the qualitatively new phenomenon of 20th century pluralism? Six different aspects of Christianity's response to today's pluralism can be distinguished. The first of these aspects is a general picture of Christianity's response to pluralism; the remaining five are specific consequences of the new pluralism for the Church. First then and in a general way, it can be said that throughout his writings Rahner comes across very strongly as a man who is deeply con-vinced that one of Christianity's most vital and essential tasks for our times is to accept and embrace the pluralistic situation which God has given us today just as all men in ages past have had to accept the experience of pluralism which God gave them. This open thinking is found in Rahner's works on non-Christian religions,19 on the secularity and godlessness of today's world (which Rahner says we must bravely and courageously accept because it has a positive meaning and challenge for us),-°° and on the pluralistic sciences which he espouses and encourages.21 Even the shrinking of the Church in today's pluralistic world must be accepted ~vithout fear and loved by the Christian as part of God's plan for us, part of salvation history?-° Definitely, theret~ore, Rahner sounds a clarion call to the 20th cen-tury Church to face without fear or escapism the task which God has given us of coping with the new pluralism. I have little doubt but that in future centuries, Rahner's brilliant and insightful challenge to the Church on this matter will be one of the things for which he will be most remembered. In so many ways it can be said that for Rahner the name of the game for the Christian today is to be open. The whole thrust of Rahner's thinking on anonymous Christianity suggests this. Specific Consequences Secondly and more specifically, Rahner holds that in the light of modem pluralism Christianity must give up the idea that its entire message and value system can be embraced in any one philosophical system and in par: ticular it must give up the idea that the Thomistic philosophical system can continue to be the one decisive dialogue partner in which all Christian in-ag" Christianity and the non-Christian Religions," TI 5, pp. 115-34. =°"The Man of Today and Religion," TI 6, pp. 1 I-2. '-'1"Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, p. 27. "-'~"The Present Situation of Christians: A Theological Interpretation of the Position of Christians in the Modem World," The Christian Commitment (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), pp. 3-37. Pluralism in Rahner / 231 sights can be expressed to the world. Rather in the future Christianity will simply have to accept a who~le host of diaiogue partners (the arts, the be-havioral, social, and pure sciences, Oriental philosophies, and so forth) in expressing the Gospel messa'ge to the world. Rahner says this explicitly at least twice~3 and gives many other hints of it as well. For instance, he says that we must study all the great philosophies of the world because in an anonymous way they may be,' as much or more Christian than our explicitly Christian philosophy. In other words we are moving into an age of Christian philosophies and worldview!, instead of an age of a univocal Christian philosophy and worldview. Note carefully that Rahner who is a Thomist never says that Thomism sl~ould be abandoned as a philosophy. What he does say is that Thomism can no longer be given the absolute, monolithic status ascribed to it in the 15ast by the Church. Instead it must constantly criticize itself, realizing that it can never express the fullness of the truth of God. It must relentlessly op.en itself to the lns~ghts of other philosophies, which must in their turn be~ open to it. No longer will there be any one philosophy of life (in the sense values) upon which the Chu~rch or communities within it can operate.~' Thirdly as a consequence of pluralism for the Church Rahner holds that since theology depends on philosophical thinking for its mode of ex-pression, the fact that there can no longer be only one exclusively Christian philosophy suggests directly that there can no longer be one theology in the Church. Instead there Will be many theologies, a fact that the Church I ¯ " must bravely accept as Rahner puts it. no way denies our oneness of faith (Rahner calls it credal oneness) but it does demand that in the future our expressions of the one faith will be plural, in accord with the plu~iformtty of human experience. Next, and closely related to the idea of many theologies, Rahner argues I . that the magisterium or teac, hmg office of the Church finds itself cast into a whole new situation by tod.ay's pluralism.-oG Rahner points out that on rare occasions the teaching office[of the Church will have to continue to operate in the traditional mode, that [is, by rejecting this or that theological formula-tion as inconsistent with the faith,z7 Much more often, however, Rahner holds that in today's plurahst~c world the magisterium will have to take on z~"Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial ~ssue, 1968, p. 18; 'Phdosophy ~nd Theology" Sacramentum Mundt, v. 5, p. 23. ~4This position does not deny the underlying unity of our faith, a matter we shall consider later. '-'SIbid., pp. 23-6. Rahner does speak herein of a sense in which there is still one theology, but this will emerge in our forthcoming consideration of our one faith. "-'Glbid., p. 26; "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith," Concilium 46 (1969), pp. 112-3. ~7"Pluralism in. Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith," Concilium 46 (1969), p. 113. 232 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 a new function, a function which can be well described as a challenge func-tion rather than a judgment function. The idea of this challenge function of the magisterium is that no longer can the teaching Church understand all the formulations of all the theologians as it did in the past. Thus the Church will often not be in a position to judge the works of an individual theologian. But she can challenge him. She can urge him to be certain that his formula-tions are faithful to the Christian tradition. By so doing the teaching Church can render real service to the individual theologian and to the Christian community as a whole. Obviously a magisterium which challenges more than it judges will have to be more trusting of its theologians, trusting that they are faithful to our traditions even when the magisterium is not totally clear on how the new formulas of theology relate to the faith. Rahner states that this new challenge aspect of the Church's teaching office is already occur-ring. 2s The whole situation also suggests to Rahner that today's magisterium will generally refrain from proclaiming new dogmas, as it refrained at Vatican II. A fifth consequence of pluralism for the Church today is a fact which we previously alluded to, namely, that persons bearing authority in the Church (including bishops, pastors, religious superiors, and so forth) are placed in an extremely difficult but still very important position by con-temporary pluralism. All of us, therefore, should be deeply sensitive to the burdens of those who hold ecclesial office. Rahner points out that at times such authorities may have to exercise authority traditionally, saying no to this or that.-09 In most cases, however, office bearers in today's Church will follow the style of the new magisterium by challenging their subjects rather than judging them. In this context a particularly important task for Church authority figures will be to maintain openness, that is, to keep any of their subjects or groups of subjects from so locking themselves to a partial set of values (whether liberal values or conservative values) that they fail to be genuinely open to the mystery of God and thus commit the ultimate human sin of absolutizing finite values. Need for Constant Dialogue The last and perhaps most important implication of contemporary plural-ism is that in our times Christianity must engage in a constant and genuine dialogue with itself and with the world around it. Since today's man realizes that his philosophy of life can never be a total or absolute system, he must constantly seek to correct and expand his own viewpoint by dialoguing with other men. Rahner points out that genuine Christian dialogue is truly possible in a pluralistic society because for the man of faith all true values in 2s"Philosophy and Philosophizing in Theology," Theology Digest, Sesquicentennial issue, 1968, p. 27. 29"The Future of Religious Orders in the World and Church of Today," Sister Forma-tion Bulletin, Winter, 1972, p. 7. Pluralism in Rahner / 233 various philosophical and theological systems are seen to be rooted in the one mystery of God. Values not rooted in the mystery of God are not true values and will be shown as such in the dialogue. Hence as we journey through history together, there is hope that men can come to understand how their partial expressions of value are integrated in the absolute mystery or absolute future of man which is God. Those of course who lack faith will not see human differences as resolvable even in our future in God. But for those of us who do believe, there is hope that full unity will be attained in the eschaton. And in this hope we can keep on talking with each other despite repeated misunderstandings. Our age is peculiarly an age of going to meetings, and no doubt many of us get tired of meeting after meeting. But, if we are to be Christians in these pluralistic times, it seems we must keep on having meetings no matter how boring they, become. As Rahner sees it, dialogue is the only possible mode of coexistence for mod-ern Christian persons."~° In ending this section an observation which ought to be made is that none of these consequences of pluralism we have just reviewed really solve the problem of how the Christian is to live and form community today. For in all honesty we have to face the fact that pluralism as it now exists is a new problem which the generations who have preceded us did not face in the way we face it. Thus nobody today really knows how to cope with our pluralism and our inability to form worldviews which large scale segments of society can accept. Rahner makes some suggestions on the matter for the Church as a whole, but even he admits that he is far more asking the question about pluralism than answering it.~1 This lack of answers to the challenge of pluralism may not make us feel comfortable, but we must realize that that is where we are. Pluralism and the Oneness of Our Faith An especially nagging question seems to underlie much that we have said. Is pluralism something like the dualisms of former centuries with their many gods? Does pluralism have some effect on our faith in one God? In the Rahnerian thought world the answer is quite simple. Theological plural-ism positively does not weaken the oneness of our faith; if anything it strengthens that oneness by focusing us on the true source of our faith instead 'of on the more superficial sources of unity upon which we too often relied in the past. To understand Our oneness in faith in Rahner's system, we must advert to a basic theme of Rahner's theological anthropology or vision of man, namely that there are two poles or levels to human exis- :~°"Reflections on Dialogue within a Pluralistic Society," TI 6, p. 35. The whole article is valuable on dialogue. :~lThis point is made clear by the title and substance of Rahner's article, "A Small Question Regarding the Contemporary Pluralism in the Intellectual Situation of Catholics and the Church," TI 6, pp. 21-30. 234 / Review lor Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 tence.3~ One of these poles, in fact the more obvious of them, is the pole of concrete human activity and experience. This is the pole of human expres-sion, of human speech, of explicit consciousness and choice. On this pole or level the effects of man's materiality and limitation are clear, and thus man operates from this pole in a radically pluralistic fashion. He has many con-crete acts of learning and many forms of speech. He makes many choices. There is, however, another, a deeper and ultimately more significant level to human existence, a level which precedes the level of the concrete and multiple. This is the level of man's preconscious existence, of his deepest self-awareness before his God. Those who speak of man's funda-mental option are referring to this level of man's life. On this level rather than multiplicity and a myriad variety of human acts of knowledge and choice, man, if he is a believer, has a basic and simple openness to his God. On this level man in his radical openness no longer experiences a pluralism of values. Instead he knows one Lord and one faith. He and his neighbor may not be able to describe their faith in the same way, but as believers they are surely experiencing the one ineffable God. This level of transcen-dent human openness to God makes Christian faith community real. Our faith, therefore, is not hindered by pluralism. In fact, pluralism only serves to buttress our faith, because it forces us to realize that our faith can only be genuine faith if it is based on the unfathgmable mystery of God. No other source but this mystery can stand as an adequate ground for us as believers. Surely with this ground we can cry out in the words of Malachy: "Have we not all one father? Has not the one God created us?" (Mal 2:10). The Foundation in Tradition Rahner's position on human openness to the ineffability of God as the source of our faith and upon (he inevitable pluralism which begins to ensue as soon as we start expressing that faith finds much support both in the tradition of the Church and in modern authors. Traditionally, for instance, Christian authors have emphasized that the ways of knowing God by specific affirmation (via allirmativa) or negation (via negativa) had a validity .but still a clear limitation. Thus traditional authors appealed to a third way of knowing God, to the way of eminence or transcendence (via eminentiae), that is, to a primal recognition by man of the mystery of God. As Henri de Lubac has pointed out this third way is really the first and most fundamental way. a3 Among modern authors Bernard Lonergan in his new book, Method in Theology,34 gives particularly noteworthy support to Rahner's idea that we 3'-'"Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of Christ," TI 5, pp. 199-201. a:~Henri de Lubac, The Discovery o! God (New York: Kenedy, 1960), pp. 122-3. 34New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. In our context see especially pp. 265, 323, 326-30. Pluralism in Rahner / :235 all share one ineffable faith despite our various perceptions of that faith. Lonergan's insistence that true objectivity in man is not an "out there now real" set of facts, but rather man's honest habit of mind as he keeps him-self attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible would seem to place faith on the deepest level of human openness while realizing that faith will be expressed in various formulations. Even more explicitly, Lonergan's carefully reasoned argument that what is permanent in our dogmas is their meaning, not their formula supports Rahner's effort to place faith at the core of the human person while being open to pluralism on other levels of human perception or choice. Perhaps the title of Rahner's article "Pluralism in Theology and the Oneness of the Church's Profession of Faith" sum-marizes all this very nicely?5 We may have to use many words but we still have the Word of God. Pluralism thus creates no fundamental faith problem. It helps us to see that our faith must be based on the mystery of God. Our openness to this mystery is the primary source of our existence as a faith community. It is true, of course, that Christians need other levels of communal togetherness and organization besides this primary mystery of faith level. Some of these other or "second level" approaches to community will be considered in what follows about religious communities. First, however, we must realize that none of these other levels will have any meaning unless we begin by seeing ourselves as united on the primal level of faith in God. Implications of Pluralism for Religious Community Life~ With less specific guidance from Rahner, but in the spirit of all that we have seen, what can be said about the implications of contemporary plural-ism for religious communities in the Church? First, if we accept the idea that a religious community is called to be a genuine sign of hope to the whole Church and if contenlporary theological pluralism is one of the most critical and fundamental challenges facing the Church today, the task of opening itself to and coping with man's radically pluralistic situation is one of the most formidable and vital tasks facing the religious community today. It seems to be the kind of issue concerfiing which the religious community must live up to its eschatological nature as a sign of transcendent hope for the whole Church, a sign that real Christianity is possible in the modern pluralistic world, a sign to the Church of where she is going. It is an historical fact that over the centuries, religious com-munities have been leadership organizations in the Church in times of crisis. :~SA section of Lonergan's new book has almost exactly the same title (pp. 326-30). a6White the title of this section speaks of religious communities, surely the remarks herein can be taken as referring to the various n6ncanonical religious groups in the Church today as well as to the canonically approved religious communities. Indeed, the noncanonical groups may have an especially important task in showing religious communities their possibilities in our pluralistic world. 236 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 In our times pluralism is the crisis and millions of persons throughout the world are seeking to overcome the alienation which can exist in our plural-istic world. New experiments in communal living abound. In the crisis of pluralism can the religious community live up to its historic role of leader-ship for the future? Second, if religious communities do face up to this challenge of assuming a leadership function in showing the Church its role in a pluralistic society, probably the most realistic forecast which can be made is that the days ahead are going to be days of agony and suffering for religious communi-ties, agony because of the very nature of pluralism, and because no one right now knows precisely what to do about pluralism. This does not mean at all that religious communities should give up hope or lose faith, but it does mean that the years ahead and the paths to adapting to pluralism are going to be most difficult. Just one example of this difficulty will be that almost in-evitably more religious will have crises of faith and perhaps leave com-munities, even later in life?7 For an honest facing of pluralism will create more options for the religious and these options will create more crises. Third, it would seem that the option being taken by a few communities of refusing virtually all change and forward movement simply is not a viable option in the light of the theology of pluralism. With the greatest respect for the good faith of the leaders and members of these communities, there is an honest question about how such nondialoguing communities can continue to exist in our pluralistic .world. It is true that these communities are doing rather well as far as incoming candidates are concerned. But are these candidates accepting the vocational task of building community amidst the pluralism which God has given us all? Or are they fleeing from that task and seeking after a security which refuses to admit that pluralism exists? The Option of Fragmentation Fourth, and of special importance, the option of "fragmentation," the option of a larger religious community dividing itself into two or more smaller groups with each group representing a particular viewpoint would also seem to be foreign, at least in principle, to Rahner's theology of plural-ism. Many religious are heard to call for this option today when there is so much clamor about the bigness of organizations and the value of small, intimate communities. While I can see real value in religious communities working out living arrangements based on small, relatively homogeneous groups, I would argue that the large community structure with its varying viewpoints should be retained in our pluralistic world. My reasons for saying this is that there would seem to be a great possibility that smaller groups of religious in cutting off dialogue with other thinking about religious ::rKarl Rahner, "The Future of Religious Commonities in the World and Church of Today," Sister Formation Bulletin, Winter, 1972, p. 4. Pluralism in Rahner / life would become ineffectual, would fail to grow in maturity, and would stand in a real danger of closing in on themselves in such a way as to become unresponsive to the demands of a pluralistic society. Incidentally, the danger of a select group becoming closed would be just as great for a progressive group as for a conservative group. The Pharisees are the classical example of a progressive group who closed in on themselves and subsequently became of little value to society. Further, the fragmentation option for religious seems to ignore another of Rahner's noteworthy themes, namely that the power inherent in a larger organization can be a genuinely redemptive value in a pluralistic society.3s The foregoing remarks against the fragmentation of religious com-munities should not be taken as an absolute stand against such fragmenta-tion. Rather these remarks are a general or "in principle" statement. Rahner himself points out that in some hopefully exceptional cases in life there is so little possibility of creating understanding that a particular dialogue must be broken off so that a group can keep dialoguing at all."~ In these cases other forms of dialogue must replace the broken ones, since genuine dialogue is essential for human coexistence in a pluralistic society. There have been a few cases in recent years of religious communities dividing; and who are we to say that these particular terminations of dialogue were not genuine in-spirations of the Holy Spirit, genuine efforts to establish other forms of dia-logue when one form had become impossible? In general, however, dialogue between differing viewpoints is so essential in a pluralistic society that the option of fragmentation should not be taken except under extreme and oppressive circumstances. Experimentation and Incarnationalism Fifth, if the religious community accepts its leadership mission for the world, and if it refuses the anti-change and fragmentation options, it be-comes clear that the most helpful (and also most difficult) option for a religious community today is to let its structures become open to genuine dialogue and pluralism in such a way that the community becomes truly re-flective of the actual condition of the whole Church today. This will mean as Rahner sees it that the religious community will be engaged in a constant process of. experimentation as it seeks to face up to new perceptions of value in our pluralistic world?" Such experimentation will stem from all levels in a community: individuals, groups, and organized authority. Only through such experimentation will a religious community achieve the true openness and dialogue needed in a pluralistic ~ociety. ~S"Theology of Power," TI 4, pp. 391-409. :~:~"Reflections on Dialogue within a Pluralistic Society," Ti 6, pp. 40ol. ¯ "~"The Future of Religious Communities in the World and Church of Today," Sister Formation Bulletin, Winter 1972, pp. 6-7. 238 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 Lastly, a religious community living amidst pluralism must advert to what Rahner calls the "incarnational principle" of Christianity.'1 This principle means that the ineffable faith unity which we share in the depth of our being must somehow become incarnate, must somehow be incorpo-rated into tangible structures. Otherwise we could never experience our faith unity. More particularly, a religious community as a small unit in the Church can never embrace all the possible incarnations or concrete ex-pressions of faith value. A religious community is thus only one form of faith expression. It is only one "social institutionalization''42 of Christianity. All this implies that in addition to its underlying faith unity, a religious community will necessarily have to embrace certain second level values (the first level is always our faith), certain particular incarnations of the mystery of God. Such second level values are genuinely worthwhile in a pluralistic society for they do lead us to the one God, though in a limited way. Traditionally, the second level values around which religious com-munities have been organized have included the confession of the members of a community (Roman Catholic), their apostolate, their sex, their vowed life, their prayer, their communal living, and so forth. Openness and Second Level Unifiers Now what, in our pluralistic society, can be said about religious com-munities' second level sources of unity? Two main points must be made. First, important though these second level unifiers are, they are not ab-solute expressions of the mystery of God. Thus the place, meaning, and even the continued existence of such second level unifiers of a religious community are subjects which cannot be exempted from dialogue if a re-ligious community is going to be genuinely open to the pluralism of today's world, to our inability to form a total worldview as we did in the past. A religious community which seeks to be open to the absolute mystery of God is not absolutely open to that mystery if it absolutizes any other points besides the one mystery. And when a religious community says that values such as the vows do not call for further dialogue and understanding, it is precisely absolutizing something other than the mystery of God; it is sub-mitting to the ultimate temptation created by our pluralistic situation, the temptation of seeking particular goods instead of the good. It would be most paradoxical if today's religious community were to submit to this temptation. The whole history of religious communities has been one of protest (by vows) against the absolutization of partial human goods such as marriage, wealth, and power. And even though this protest has had tremendous impact in the history of salvation, can a religious corn- 41"Membership of the Church according to the Teaching of Pius XII's Encyclical 'Mystici Corporis Christi,'" TI 2, p. 34. a~Karl Rahner, "Reflections on Dialogue within a Pluralistic Society," TI 6, p. 31. Pluralism in Rahner / 239 munity absolutize its means (and its understanding of this means) of dialoguing with the world, of showing the world where it must move in the spirit of Christian hope? Many examples of how a religious community must be open to dialogue about second level values could be cited. Apostolates obviously need to be reconsidered today. The vow of poverty is in great need of reassessment inasmuch as the mere fact that one cannot dispose of his or her own funds does not make one poor if he or she belongs to a rich community.4'~ To take another example which has probably been thought of a good deal less, who are we to say that religious communities are always going to remain ex-clusively Roman Catholic? Granted that Vatican II has already described the other Churches as true ecclesial realities, granted that Eucharistic Inter-communion is probably not too far off, granted that many young people in the other Christian confessions (especiall.y young women) find an idealism, way of life and apostolic zeal in Catholic-religious communities for which there is no parallel in their own confessions, and finally granted that more and more the real need is for a united Christianity to show its value to a secular (and sometimes atheistic) world rather than for Catholicism to show its value to Protestantism or vice versa, might it not ultimately be-come a genuine call of the Spirit for the Catholic religious communities to accept members from other confessions? While not offering an absolute answer, I hope the example at least helps make the point that dialogue on the values which I have called second level in the religious life seems to be an inescapable consequence of the theology of pluralism. Necessity of Second Level Unifiers Our second major observation on religious communities and second level values or unity sources is a strong reminder that, granted that these values are a constant subject of dialogue, growth, and change, a religious community movement simply cannot exist without some sort of second level value commitment and organization. The religious community must operate through a concrete value-unity structure in order to be open to ultimate value. It must have a concrete vocation if it is going to have a vocation at all. It cannot have its absolute, transcendental goal (the mystery of God) without expressing this goal in concrete goals. A religious community's concrete vocation and concrete goals are so necessary sociologically that, in the midst of all the open dialogue about them, they should be seen as a requirement for membership in the community. Those who do not agree with a religious community's particular goals may be perfectly good Christians, but a community will only retain its societal identity insofar as its members agree upon a particular sociological format for moving towards the mystery of God. This is why Rahner argues that authority in a religious community 43On this point see Karl Rahner, "The Theology of. Poverty," TI 8, especially p. 172. 240 / Review jor Religious, Volume 321 1973/2 may sometimes have to operate in the traditional yes or no method. Surely the yeses or noes of a religious community's authority can never be more than provisional since the community's self understanding and consequent second level values will grow and change in dialogue. But the fact remains that the growth process of permanent religious commitment (and this is what permanent commitment is, a growth process) can only function at a particular point in space and time through the acceptance of second level goals.44 Religious communities which have forgotten this point in recent years have had their troubles as a result. Conclusion By way of a concluding thought, especially for those who are fearful of what will happen to religious communities as they face their future with all its pluralism, I would like to make the very joyful and hopeful point that there are already some indications that an honest, pluralistic dialogue on religious life's second level values will probably do a great deal more to reinforce rather than to downgrade the traditional wisdom of the Church on religious life even though this wisdom may not be asserted as absolutisti-cally as it was in the past. For instance, I have noted and been truly inspired by the fact that Christian virginity has been emerging as a very deep seated value in the lives of some members of the noncanonical religious com-munities in which it is required neither by Church law nor by any public vow. In an era when so many priests, brothers, and sisters are questioning celibacy and virginity, this is most refreshing; it suggests that our pluralistic, open-ended society (which is, after all, God's gift to us) is not so much a thing to be feared as it is a genuine opportunity for spiritual growth. Per-haps it will teach us some things we have been trying to learn all along. ¯ ~4The insistence of second level goals does not of course imply anything like the detailed agreement which existed when religious communities operated from a homogeneous worldview. But some admittedly evolutionary sociological coherence on the second level is a necessity. Pluralism and Polarization among Religious George M. Regan, C.M. Father George Regan is associate professor of theology at St. John's University; Grand Central and Utopia Parkways; Jamaica, New York 11432. The recently published sociological and psychological studies of priests in the United States have no counterpart as yet in special studies about religious men and women. Tempting hypotheses could be constructed on the basis of personal experience and impressions about the levels of maturity and self-actualization among religious, about their attitudes toward authority, and about their opinions on specific issues such as birth control, celibacy, divorce, and liturgical practices. The surveys of priests indicated that widespread disagreement exists among various segments of the Catholic clergy on such issues and that deeply polarized attitudes seem rooted in profound ideologi-cal differences. In the absence of hard data leading to actual percentages of religious who hold certain views, one can nevertheless reflect on the divergence experienced firsthand in contacts with religious communities these days. Pluralism of approach, outlook, and conviction characterize religious at all levels of the same community at times, and comparison of one community with others easily substantiates this impression of diversity, which has re-placed the former uniformity. Pluralism reaches into all levels of community life, encompassing not only particular questions such as order of day, con-crete regulations on government, poverty, and style of dress, but also more fundamental aspects of the institute's l!fe, such as its purpose and nature in the larger Church, its basic ideals and values, and its charismatic qualities for today's world. Members thus find themselves split deeply at official chapters and in less formal gatherings on the most fundamental meanings of their religious life and on many more superficial issues. Coupled with this pluralism has arisen a sense of alienation, an outright bitterness about 241 242 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 the frustrating experience of division, or an aimless confusion. Polarization of groups may be discerned not infrequently. The vitality of individual religious and of entire communities has suffered immeasurably as a conse-quence. This extensive pluralism and the resulting polarization constitute a rich and inviting ground for thorough exploration by specialists in various fields. At times in recent years, some religious have tended to look upon their problems as mainly theological in nature, but further reflection casts grave doubt on the accuracy of this claim. In particular, the psychological and social factors of given attitudinal differences and divisions often feed into the situation more than do the theological and philosophical viewpoints espoused. This may be seen clearly in many contemporary divisions which have emerged between young and old, or between liberals and conservatives. Such divergences often manifest features closely resembling matters dis-cussed in development psychology or sociology in general. This article will concentrate principally on the more theoretical and intellectual roots of today's pluralism which underlie the theological, psychological, and sociological differences. In a sense, it will address the issue of the basic framework within which various groups of religious operate. It will not offer a litany of the specific differences which separate religious, nor will it provide a "medicine chest" of remedies. Our more limited purpose is simply to reflect on the different levels and .origins of pluralism in the ways of thinking and acting among relig!pus and to inquire into some possible means of coping with its sometimes unhappy results. The Death of Old Theory In an address to a committee of American bishops in which he inter-preted the results of the sociological survey of priests, Andrew Greeley claimed that "we have not yet discovered that our fundamental problem is the collapse of old theory combined with the non-appearance of new theory." In his usage, theory means those goals, values, models, and basic assumptions that allow the given human grouping to interpret and order phenomena, to justify its own existence, to explain its purposes to outsiders and new members, to underwrite its standard procedures and methodologies, and to motivate its members toward its goals. Though Greeley's comments regarding such theory concern priests alone, his approach has direct bear-ing on the question of the emergence of pluralism in all areas of American Church life, including religious communities. According to Greeley, the old theoretical structure began to crumble in the United States about ten years ago, and it has now disappeared, never to be restored. This rigid and unconscious theory emerged as a mixture of post-Tridentine garrison Catholicism and American immigrant Catholicism. It laid stress on loyalty to the Church, certainty and immutability of an-swers, strict discipline and unquestioning obedience, a comprehensive Pluralism and Polarization Catholic community, suspicion of the world beyond the Church, avoidance of re-examination of fundamental principles, and clearly defined models of behavior. The reasons substantiating .this theory were largely extrinsic and suasive, not decisive, for they were justified by one's loyalty to the teachings and structures of the Church and not by their intrinsic rationality. When various elements of this theoretical structure were thrown into doubt, the entire theoretical structure collapsed without warning. Since all rules, however minor, were viewed as immutable and unquestioned, change in even a few rules such as "meat on Friday" exposed the shaky foundations of the whole structure. The very suddenness of the change had excluded any opportunity to rethink the grounds of past assumptions and when these assumptions fell into disrepute, confusion resulted. Greeley believes that there exists virtually no theoretical perspective to replace the old theory, for the fads and fashions, clich6s and slogans of recent years lack sound and solid scholarship. His remedies for this situation center on the indis-pensability of scholarship in all areas of Church life. Scholars must get to work on building a new theory; and all levels of the Christian community must manifest openness, respect, and understanding for the results of their scholarship. One might justifiably criticize various elements of Greeley's presenta-tion, which sometimes verges more on polemical journalism than on ob-jective analysis. Sweeping generalizations about the old theory's "avoidance of re-examination of fundamental principles," and about the former lack of rational foundations do not ring completely accurate. One may well disagree with the actual cogency of the intrinsic reasons advanced for many past approaches, but it strikes one as gross exaggeration to deny their very existence, as Greeley seems to do. Consequences ot the Loss o~ the "Old Theory" His overall analysis seems true enough, however, and its application to the current situation which exists in many religious communities also seems clear. In a peculiar fashion and perhaps more strongly than in the priesthood, many religious institutes had embodied the chief marks of the "old theory" which Greeley describes. Disappearance of these characteristics or questionings about their presentday relevance have split many a com-munity or left it adrift aimlessly. The basic goals, values, and assumptions of past approaches to religious life constitute the kind of "old theory" which has undergone increasing challenge. Debates about such funda-mentals have obviously far more import than does disagreement about more superficial features in religious communities. How often does one not hear religious, usually older in age, wondering about the seeming decrease in loyalty to the community and its traditions among some members, the ever-changing views of the young, the lack of discipline and compliance with authority which has grown, the intrusion ~/44 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 of what seems a worldly spirit, the lessening in time devoted to formal prayer, an overstress on personal fulfillment, an endless questioning of basic goals, values, and principles, and the advancement of vague and im-precise models of religious conduct? It takes little effort to draw the sharp contrast between these tendencies and the "old theory" formerly in effect. Another group of members, on the other hand, may criticize the present situation and urge change from precisely an opposite vantage point: Why has the community not updated more its apostolate, life style, government, and spirituality? Why do institutional requirements outweigh personal needs? Such conflicting comments and complaints signal at the least that the members of the religious community have failed to agree on some essential aspects of their life together. Onguing Crisis If one were to accept Greeley's views, then a religious community which lacks agreement on a theory in this deep sense of goals, values, and basic assumptions must of necessity expect ongoing crisis, for it lacks the founda-tions needed by any human organization. Without such organizational ele-ments agreed to substantially by the members, the religious community will lack the tools to provide a rationale for its existence, thereby undercutting its ability to attract new candidates and to motivate its present members. The conflicting expectations of its members, furthermore, would in all likeli-hood lead to frustration and anger, which may become repressed and then manifested only in hidden agendas. The real issues which separate may appear rarely in open discussion; a superficial facade of friendly toleration may mask underlying divisions. Instead of religious' testing one another's assumptions in healthy confrontation and seeking to incorporate whatever seems of value, defensive listening may begin whereby one person listens caret~ully in order to gather information, or better ammunition, to contra-dict. In extreme cases, open hostility or full withdrawal into silence may eventuate. Such problems parallel closely communications difficulties de-scribed extensively in marriage counseling literature. In such an atmosphere, not only deterioration of the human relationships involved, but also de-terioration of the persons themselves must set in eventually. Need for Substantial Agreement This sobering prospect lends a special urgency to the continuing task of striving to clarify and reach substantial agreement on the fundamentals of each religious community. If the members differ broadly on the very purpose and values of the community, how can they realistically expect one another to pursue vigorously and in unison some common goals? The various issues which polarize groups may, in fact, be symptoms of the deeper pathology in the religious community: a lack of common goals, values, and assump-tions essential to the life of the organism. For example, when large numbers Pluralism and Polarization / 245 of religious in a teaching community favor direct social work for the poor, the issue of the apostolic purpose of the institute should be addressed courageously. Similarly, communities which experience sharp and immense diversity among the members on their inner identity as contemplatives or apostolically oriented religious should discuss the matter openly, rather than avoiding the problem or simply drifting indecisively into a new identity through the sheer force of circumstances. When religious of the same community differ enormously on such a basic point of their common life as that of the character of the institute, they have little reason to hope for harmonious concord on lesser ideals and values. The more that significant pluralism enters these foundational areas of goals, values,, and basic assumptions regarding the community itself, the more the members should expect a sense of aimlessness, disunity, and confusion, it would seem. Unless some shared meanings emerge at these deep levels of their life together, religious must prepare for the inevitable results which flow from vague and overly general goals and values. Un-fortunately, dialogue may at times neglect these basic levels of religious life and concentrate on the more superficial, day-to-day aspects or happenings. Such failure may even carry over into official discussions at chapter and the like where extreme defensiveness or closed-mindedness can prevent needed exchange of opinions among the members. In a positive way, therefore, it seems incumbent on religious, especially those in higher authority, to raise these issues when disagreement exists below the surface and to foster free airing of views in the hope of clarifying goals and values. This seems a healthier solution than pretending outwardly that the members amicably share the same opinions. Some meeting of minds may follow more readily in this unhampered atmosphere, despite the anxieties created by confronta-tion. The Roots of Change Greeley's analysis of the contemporary situation in the Church and in the American priesthood is professedly that of a sociologist. When he speaks of the disappearance or collapse of the old theory, therefore, he refers hardly at all to the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the old theory, which he discusses more in empirical terms. Appreciation of these more theoretical dimensions may assist us in gaining additional insight into the roots of pluralism and in evaluating proposed means of coping with it. We shall direct our attention to two matters in particular: the emergence of pluralism in ecclesiology today, and the shift from a classicist to an his-torically conscious worldview. Pluralism in Ecdesiology Though Greeley mentions the death of post-Tridentine garrison Cathol-icism, he does not explore the highly juridical theology of the Church which 246 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 had justified these tightly knit patterns of behavior. This ecclesiology often found direct application to the models of authority and the corresponding structures employed in religious communities. The overcentralization, lack of sufficient subsidiarity, and overly juridical conception of authority found in the Church at large and in diocesan structures existed in religious com~ munities as well and rested its common roots in this understanding of the Church. This former approach to a theology of the Church had the added implication of overstressing the divine element of the holy Church, in too great contrast at times with the so-called profane world. In failing to give enough weight to positive elements outside the Church and to see God present there among men, "this understanding lent a basis to a spirituality tinged with suspicion of the world, "merely natural" or human values, and human institutions. God's self-communication seems relegated more readily to the more narrowly institutional context of the Church and open dialogue with the world appears foreign or dangerous in this conception. Religious communities which operated within this conceptual framework more natur-ally took on reservations about contacts with the world and the need to separate oneself from its perverting influences gained favor. By way of contrast, many contemporary writings which view the Church as servant and healer of the total human society understand her as essentially related to the world; and they take a far more accepting view of human values and institutions: the Church "goes forward together with humanity and experiences the same earthly lot which the world does. She serves as a leaven and as a kind of soul for human society as it is to be renewed in Christ and transformed into God's family" (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, no. 40). The more that individual religious communities as a whole have taken on this more openly secular approach, which views the world and human values more favorably, the more they customarily take a somewhat negative view of factors which are viewed as separating the religious from the world or from human customs. Resulting Disagreements Inevitable disagreements must exist in religious communities and throughout the entire Church so long as disagreement exists on such funda-mental approaches to a theology of the Church. Pluralism among religious in this basic theological area sometimes underlies the members' differing convictions on contact with or separation from other people, openness or closedness to human standards and patterns of conduct, and general in-volvement with or disassociation from ordinary human events. Disputes about religious garb, about freedom to come and go, about visiting with laity or entering into friendship with them, and about attendance at or participa-tion in recreational or sports activities sometimes stem from more profound differences about the way in .which religious are conceived of in their rela-tionship to "the world." An implicit ecclesiology often seems at work in the Pluralism and Polarization / 247 way people think about such concrete matters. Similarly, disagreements in ecclesiology are bound to influence one's notions of Church authority. These disagreements become manifest frequently in the comments or criticisms by religious that they find their community's authority too centralized in the person of the provincial authorities or the local superior; or that col-legial bodies such as consultations of the local house are given mere lip service by the local superior; or that decisions which can be reached by themselves individually or at the local level are reserved to higher authority. Once again, these issues seem symptomatic of the more profound ideological differences in ecclesiology which separate Catholics today. Though such disagreements seem inevitable in today's climate of plural-ism, the destructive manner of coping with them found so often need not exist. More comments will be made on this topic later in this article, but some reflections seem pertinent even at this stage. Disagreement can at times be a constructive and enriching force in human relationships, within toler-able limits and depending on how people react. Deep differences should be faced squarely in a climate of open communication, if some valid hope remains of fostering closer harmony and unity in community. To bury di-vergences o~r to treat only the symptoms or external manifestations of pluralism and the resulting polarization insures an eventual destruction of interpersonal sharings promotive of personal growth. It would be more worthwhile to plunge tactfully into the more basic levels of disagreements, which in this case touch on the very nature of the Church and of ecclesiasti-cal authority. One's assumptions, spoken and outspoken, should be brought to light in mutual respect and openness. A willingness to temper one's views, to grant honesty and good will to the other party, and to speak about issues, not personalities, seems a minimum condition in such dialogue. In this deeper context where lie the roots of more shallow differences, mere pragmatic techniques for bettering the current situation will prove in-sufficient. Though the American passion for such practical programs may obscure one's vision, religious communities must accept the need of dealing with these more profound, theoretical dimensions of these issues. If reli-gious communities are to adopt even more moderate thrusts of contemporary theologies of the Church and of ecclesiastical authority, for example, they should at least acquaint all members with a more positive view of the world beyond the Church. Leaders in each community must also embody the con-viction that authority means service, not naked power disguised under new forms; that collegial functioning flows from Christian coresponsibility as members of the community; that love, trust, and friendship must be present in any effective Church leader and perhaps even more in a leader within a religious community. This kind of new theory, if it be that in contrast to some past distorted notions, surpasses mechanical techniques of improving government and the community's stance vis-?a-vis the rest of mankind. To expect that religious superiors familiar with another approach to authority 248 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 can automatically learn and adopt this new theory and behavior seems rather unrealistic. Practice based on such theory would go a long way in alleviating some tensions which exist among those who doggedly hold to outmoded con-ceptions of the Church and of authority, and those who stridently favor newness uncritically, perhaps urging the abandonment of most structures and of practically any interpretation of authority. Once more, unless some attempt is made to deal with issues below their surface and to strive for some limited agreement in fundamentals, religious communities cannot rightfully expect polarization to lessen, let alone disappear. A Changed Worldview Beyond Greeley's empirical analysis and the implications of the ecclesi-ological factors described above, we can explore still further to the deeper roots of today's pluralism in religious communities. Catholic authors in recent years have noted a significant shift in the basic worldview whereby we do philosophy and theology these days, and whereby we approach prac-tical solutions to questions in Church life. By worldview, these authors mean the fundamental framework whereby one interprets and orders reality and thus arrives at more detailed convictions. Bernard Lonergan in dogmatic theology, Charles Curran in moral theology, John Courtney Murray in matters pertaining to religious freedom, and Avery Dulles in ecclesiology have all referred to a contemporary change from a classicist worldview to an historically conscious worldview, which they all see as having immense ramifications in their areas of concern. Greek philosophy and Christian thought represented by thinkers ranging from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to nearly all Catholic theologians until quite recently employed an approach which emphasized man's ability to grasp the essence of reality through his reasoning faculty. This so-called "classicist worldview" left little room for change, variation, or uncertitude. Since reason can easily enough penetrate to the essence of reality, im-mutability, certitude, timelessness, and absoluteness characterized such varied matters as moral principles, images of the Church, Church laws, and inherited patterns of conduct. In moral issues, for example, this thought pattern leaves little room for variability and relativity because of cultural diversity, historical development, or concrete circumstances. A variety of universal, negative norms, "Thou shalt nots," became part and parcel of the moral theology built on this worldview. In ecclesiology, this approach favored descriptive notes which emphasized similar qualities of unchange-ableness, universality, absoluteness, and certainty. The canon law elaborated in former times also mirrored this conception of reality. Modern influences of personalism, phenomenology, and existentialism and the scientific spirit of modern times bore in on Catholic philosophers and theologians in recent decades and turned the tide against this classicist Pluralism and Polarization / 249 worldview for many an author and, seemingly, for our entire Western cul-ture. The historically conscious worldview embodied in many Catholic writ-ings today views man and his world as evolving and historical, rather than as static and unchanging. Progress, development, and growth are seen as marking man and his world, and these qualities should carry into all philosophical, theological, and practical understandings of Christian life. A stress on the human person in his subjectivity and concreteness, on this man or men, rather than simply on "man," characterizes the contemporary in-quiry. The individual's feelings and non-rational states understandably receive more attention in this approach. Since concreteness, change, and diversity are such prominent features, tentativeness and openness to excep-tion replace the past tendency to formulate a host of absolute understand-ings. Pluralism and Worldviews Results of this shift in worldviews can be seen clearly in recent debates in the field of Christian moral theology. The uniqueness and unrepeatability of the individual person and his myriad moral situations have eroded for some authors the very possibility of articulating general moral norms with an absolute force, the "Thou shalt nots" so familiar in past presentations of Catholic morality. Rather than centering their treatment of a question like divorce, contraception, or pre-marital relations on the essence of marriage and human sexuality, for instance, authors writing in this vein will tend to discuss the empirical consequences and concrete circumstances of divorce, contraception, and pre-marital relations in order to arrive at their moral reflections on the proposed conduct. Nearly all authors show some reliance these days on this historically conscious view of man, though most have combined this with some continuing reliance on man's essential structures. This eclecticism does, however, lead inevitably to a spectrum of theological opinions, instead of the one "Catholic opinion" found in moral writings in use even into the past decade. A main result of this shift in worldviews and the accompanying eclecti-cism, consequently, has been the emergence of pluralism in many areas of Catholic thinking and living. One answer no longer exists for many issues in theology, philosophy, and Church life. Catholics' opinions run the spectrum from the essentialism inherited from past approaches through all shades of combinations to the other pole, new approaches heavily conditioned by existentialism, process thought, and consequ.entialism. Many common em-phases can, of course, be discerned in contemporary writings: a stress on the human person in his freedom, dignity, and personal fulfillment; the possibility of more room for change in previously accepted theological opinions, in social customs and law, and in Church structures; a thrust toward service in the world, rather than an emphasis on the dangers of con-tamination from the world; and an understanding of the Church more in 250 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/2 terms of the persons involved than in terms of institutions. These common emphases do not, however, lead to one new theory; they lead instead to new theories, new theologies, new understandings of the Church and ecclesiastical laws, customs, and structures. In a real sense, a new theory has developed which permits and even fosters a plurality of theories, of theologies, and of understandings. Pluralism constitutes a key-note of such "new theory." Disappointment may well await those who urge and expect some new univocal theory in the sense of an all-comprehensive and wholly coherent system of goals, values, and models of appropriate behavior and assumptions for the Church at large. Such a theory seems un-likely to appear on the horizon in the foreseeable future, if at all. What seems far more plausible and realistic to expect is an acceptance of pluralism in theology, philosophy, Church structures, and social customs and laws. Worldviews and Polarization This contrast between the classicist and historically conscious worldviews has influenced greatly the polarization so evident in religious communities today. At the roots of the various groupings whose labels have become pop-ularized-- liberal vs. conservative, old vs. young, secular-minded vs. cultic --often lies this more fundamental difference in the very approach to reality which religious and other Catholics now have. Inevitably, religious working within the historically conscious worldview will be more prone to accept or even to foster change in structures, in theological understandings, in the manner of doing Christian service to the world, in the proper exercise of authority in their community, and in traditional laws and customs. Since their entire outlook on reality promotes change and development in the name of human and Christian progress, and diversity and tentativeness in all formulations, which must of necessity be time-conditioned, they will urge these qualities in all aspects of religious life. Bedause their worldview con-centrates more on the human person in his concreteness and uniqueness, they will react strongly against whatever structures, institutions, and under-standings hinder the individual's fulfillment. A deeper interpersonal sharing at a different level of friendship than found in traditional approaches to religious life will leave these religious unsatisfied with forms of life which they find impersonal, institutionalized, and shallow. De~ires for small group-living frequently result from their reaction to such weaknesses, which they discern in large religious houses. Such issues as those of optional celibacy for secular priests, the ordination to priestly ministry of women, freedom of life style for priests and religious in such matters as dress, residence, and occupation, remarriage or readmis-sion to the sacraments of the divorced, and collegial living without a local authority in the person of a superior flow more naturally from a person whose fundamental outlook remains open to newness and progress in the sense described and whose value system places great emphasis on the indi- Pluralism and Polarization / :251 vidual person's development. Often enough, the individual religious will not have clearly articulated the theoretical foundations of his basic worldview or framework for thinking and judging; he simply finds himself doing it rather consistently without much reflection. No more than for many a person operating within the classicist worldview, his basic presuppositions and unarticulated theory rarely enter formally into discussion. Unless other members of religious communities come to appreciate this basic contrast in worldviews, they will find it most difficult to understand the rationale for many present-day movements and for viewpoints like those described previously. They will greet each new issue in the community with dismay, wondering why large numbers of their own community fail to see things their way. "Where have they gone wrong?" may be their continuing puzzled query. They will not grasp that an entirely different framework, the historically conscious worldview, has its own inner logic, as compelling for its adherents as their own classicist approach. One need not, of course, actually agree with the historically conscious worldview in its main lines or certainly in its applications. Unless one has some minimal understanding ot~ its overall thrust, however, one seems doomed to confusion, so far-reaching has been its influence and acceptance. Rancor and anger leading to hardened opposition of polarized camps may eventually set in. This seems already to have occurred in numerous instances in religious communities and rela-tions have become strained or, in some cases, non-existent. The Danger of Worsening The pluralism of opinions has threatened and disturbed many religious precisely because it has unsettled the foundations of their entire worldview and the conclusions which flow from it. The wonder, at times is that more polarization fails to exist, given the chasms in viewpoints. A hankering after the former uniformity in outlook and the accompanying security may under-standably have crept into one's (onsciousness in this charged atmosphere. Condemnation of unexamined new approaches as untenable or foofish may prove the only sustainable defense for the threatened and vulnerable person trained in another way in a different era. Conversely, religious who operate within the historically conscious Worldview may retreat into an unsubstan-tiated dogmatism in reaction to this rejection which they sense in their fellow religious. The wounded feelings they experience may lead some into frustrated withdrawal, whose sequel will be loneliness and depression. In overreaction, others may lash out negatively against traditional values and customs, denying in the process the continuity with the past which will insure the future. This unhealthy and mutally destructive atmosphere will breed a polarization far removed from the ideals of Christian community. Unless some steps toward amelioration of this situation can be under-taken, the current crisis in some religious communities seems likely to con-tinue and to deepen. An already bad situation may worsen. In particular, 252 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume 32, 1973/2 the strong, balanced, and idealistic candidates needed so badly in religious communities will not be attracted to a divided and polarized group who seem unable to live the unity their very notion implies. A deep and urgent crisis exists; yet the tone of given communities sometimes manifests business as usual in an atmosphere of unrealistic hope for a better future. Doomsday prophets are usually proved wrong and their message hardly accords with Christian hope. Yet Christian hope has always avoided the twin shoals of despair and presumption. Both undue pessimism and unwarranted optimism remain excluded. Coping With Pluralism and Polarization What suggestions can be offered for coping with pluralism and its fre-quent companion, polarization? At the outset, it would be profitable to recall that any such discussion should proceed within the prayerful recol-lection of Jesus' prayer "that they may all be one, even as you Father in me and I in you; that they may all be one in us." Religious communities' unity must fit within this larger context of the unity among men and the unity of the Church, as prayed for by Jesus. Constant prayer for faithfulness to the gospel ideal of loving union with all one's neighbors should mark every Christian. I-Iow much more so in those situations when religious experience disunity, discord, and polarization? Prayer for one another, reflection on those features which the religious share in common, and a positive desire for loving union should receive more emphasis than often seems the case. Besides these most fundamental suggestions, several more come to mind. First, it would seem helpful as a starting point to realize and expect that pluralism will be unavoidable in the years ahead in most areas of Church life and theology. Pluralism will not simply go away overnight, if at all. The fundamental differences in outlooks among Catholic moral theologians, for example, in such basic matters as the existence of absolute norms, the epistemology of theological ethics, the use of Sacred Scripture, the binding force of the Church's teachings on moral matters, the importance of esti-mating consequences and employing empirical data, all point to long-reaching splintering into various camps of moral theologians for the fore-seeable future. Logically, authors who disagree on such basic items must disagree also in matters pertaining to medical ethics, sexual ethics, social issues, or any other concrete moral question. Similarly, the different worldviews employed by religious who live under the same roof or in the same province dictate perforce some degree of continued divergence on matters pertaining to their religious lives. Keeping these facts in mind, expectation of pluralism in a realistic way may cut away some of the unnecessary emotional defenses which hinder rational analysis of the new premises and conclusions. In this unhampered atmosphere, de-fensiveness will diminish, hopefully, and reasoned consideration and genuine dialogue, in the sense of a candid exchange of views, may follow the more Pluralism and Polarization / 25

Issue 61.5 of the Review for Religious, 2002. ; Challenge and Response Life and Death Theory and Reality Time and Eternity SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 5 Revie~ forReligious belps p~ople respo~ anit b~ fi~itbful to God's universal call to bbliness . ~, Oy omaki~tff available to,~tbem tbe sp!ritual legacies that flow from tbi cbarismsof 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: review@slu.edu ¯ \Veb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP Mouut St. Mary's Seminary; Emmitsburg, MaD, land 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, ~\tN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2002 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 distrihu-tiott, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. view for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Fopp~ Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp James and Joan Felling Adrian Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest Eo Larkin OCarm Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 5 contents 454 challenge and response Fire and Flame, Purification and Vocation Donna Markham OP spells out the healthy interpersonal life necessary for the women and men accepted into ministry. 462 Lessons from a Time of Distress Joel Rippinger OSB reflects as a male, a monastic, and an ordained religious on the sexual-abuse scandal in the church in order to discern the voice of the Spirit and the signs of the times in the events we have experienced. life and death 472 Choose Life: Reflections Ten Years after Five Deaths Regina Siegfried ASC celebrates the tenth anniversary of the murder of five Adorers of the Blood of Christ by noting 1) that Liberia is still in the grip of a life-and-death struggle, 2) that the paschal-mystery chari.sm of the ASCs is in clearer focus, and 3) that ASC mission in Liberia continues on. 481 Made Perfect through Suffering Marie Beha OSC reflects on the meaning of suffering seen in the light of the September triad of feasts--the Exaltation of the Cross, the feast of the Sorrowful Mother, and the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. Review for Religious 494 hsory Right Relationships in Consecrated Life Dennis J. Billy CSSR applies the clear and extensive teaching on the spirituality of communion, what it means to live in right relationships with others, to the community life of reli-gious congregations. 511 Contemporary Theologies of the Vows Ellen M. Leonard CSJ compares and contrasts central ideas about religious life from contemporary writers Barbara Fiand, Diarmuid O'Murchu and Sandra Schneiders. 522 Discouragement Viewed through Mark's Gospel Eugene Hensell OSB enters us into an imaginative reading of Mark's Gospel in order to help contemporary religious communities to move away from our preoccupation with quantity and focus on the quality of our discipleship. 535 Time as Gift Carolyn Humphreys OCDS reviews how we might make time, God's gift to us, our gift back to God. 541 Heaven: The Day the Drilling Stopped Sister Mary Stephen Brueggeman PHJC reviews her changing ideas of heaven which bring her closer to the truth of our life forever with God. flep r n en s 452 Prisms 546 Canonical Counsel: Automatic Dismissal 552 Book Reviews September-October 2002 prisms L the United States the first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack upon the New York World Trade Center towers and the Washington DC Pentagon headquarters rouses many reflections about the changes in daily life that this vivid sad event brought about. With the subsequent anthrax scare, mail service was delayed and has never fully recovered because of precautionary restrictions on packages and letters. Any major public event-- sporting, political, musical, and even religious--now includes the aspect of a heightened security. Even more evidently, the rigorous security screening that has been imposed upon all air travelers has caused a reduction in the number of passengers, no matter how hard the major airlines have tried to entice them back. Review for Religious, too, has been affected by the September 11 events. Let me share with you how I have experienced this effect. In my fourteen years as editor, I have generally had a large number of manuscripts--unsolicited--flowing across my desk. I estimate that among them I have chosen one third for publication. But last October to January, it was as if the river had run dry. The flow of manuscripts became a trickle, and there was little improvement until the recent summer months. Why such a dramatic and universal change, including even our writers from other parts of the world? Let me offer an interpretation of this phe- Revie'~ for Religious nomenon. There is a classic book about mystical prayer, by an anonymous author, titled The Cloud of Unknowing. I do not want to talk about mystical prayer, but I would like to describe our human status after September 11 as entering a cloud of unknowing. The events of that day raised up life-and-death questions, yes, but more than that. An urge to examine human relationships, religious motivations, social inequalities, and the secularizing of world cultures came to the fore. In addition to these huge issues came the church scandal of sex-abuse by priests and the mishandling of these cases by bishops. Questions abounded, but not many ways of making an ade-quate response. In this tumultuous milieu, talking of pieties and priestly service and religious-life problems seemed unimportant or even petty. Important issues had arisen, and dealing with them seemed far more necessary than writing about them. I was reminded of St. Paul's words "we are perplexed, but not in despair." I believe that we all were caught in a kind of cloud of not knowing what to think or say. We were perplexed, but our mood was not one of despair. True, article submissions show something of a rebound in recent months. But I am under no illusions. Just as we live with the continuing effects of this day, so I believe that we will continue to find that our thoughts are being stirred in new ways, our affect is being shaped, and our choices are being challenged. We still remain perplexed. September 11 is more than a tragic event in one nation's history. The year just past has seen dyings in many aspects of civil and church life. We have entered a new era of examina-tion of our humanity in relation to one another and to God. The September I 1 event challenges the secular domination of any one culture and demands that social inequities within coun-tries and between countrie~ be dealt with in new ways. With St. Paul, we too can say that we are always carrying about in our body the dying of Jesus, the confusion that sin is and brings. But we live--and our authors are continuing to write--so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body. Our hope finds expression in this prayer: "On each of our dyings, shed your light and your love." David L. Fleming SJ September-October 2002 DONNA MARKHAM challenge and response Fire and Flame, Purification and Vocation What can be said about vocations in the midst of the " fire storm in which we find ourselves these days? How do we encourage idealistic, good-hearted, and generous young women and men to throw their lot in with us in the midst of such sinfulness and pain? Over the course of my Dominican life, when I have been particularly grief-stricken or have found myself afraid or angry or unable to think clearly about a given crisis, I have called upon my Dominican "ancestor" Catherine of Siena to intercede for me, to beg the Spirit to help me. In that spirit I summon up this prayer, written by a contemporary Dominican woman, Patricia F. Walter, to set the scene for these reflections: Fire of Exodus, Flame of Pentecost, time and again you have beckoned us into the desert and propelled us from the upper room. Melt our resistance, dispel the frost of fear. Enkindle our longing, warm our compassion, and transform us in your fiery Spirit. Donna Markham OP, executive director of Southdown, presented these reflections (here somewhat edited and abridged) as a talk at the Serra International Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on 30June 2002. Her address is Southdown; 1335 St. John's Sideroad East; RR #2, Aurora, Ontario; Canada L4G 3G8. Review for Religious Living Flame of Love, burn deep within us. Give us the strength to endure the heat and set our hearts afire. Catherine herself lived in and preached to a church in crisis. She was somewhat of a scandal in her day. She was a woman who others felt did not know her place, a woman who went into prisons, a woman who traveled with men, a woman seeming "not too tightly wrapped" as she spoke with God in strange ways, a bold woman who dared confront the pope. Nonetheless, we see in her the fusion of wisdom and love that led her to the marginalized and suffering poor, and also to the suffering within herself. God does not call perfect people to discipleship. As Catherine faced the suffering deep within the church and the suffering deep within herself, the dark side of life and of her own personality became apparent to her, and she faced it. She was not afraid to respond to God's call. "Vghen we are whom we are called to be, we will set the world ablaze," she wrote. It was in that conviction that she extended her love unreservedly to those she met along the way. Her compassion and mercy touched the imprisoned, the terminally ill, the intellectually misled, those condemned to die, and social pariahs of all sorts. Her loving determination to be true to whom God called her to be emboldened her. She found the courage to take on some of the most painful situations of her day. Catherine shows us that, even when everything is stripped away (our status, our security, our comfort), if we are whom God has called us to be, unreservedly extending ourselves to suffering people of every kind, we will fill our world with the fire of Pentecost. This is the Christian vocation. It is to this that we dare to call our young people, to be dedicated women and men of Jesus' gospel-- persons who, true to their personal call, bring healing and mercy into this broken world. God does not call perfect people to discipleship. Our Contemporary Context These days we Catholics are experiencing how suffering calls us to purification and forgiveness, how it beckons us to September-October 2002 Markham * Fire and Flame, Purification and Vocation transformation. God's Spirit nudges us in our shock and sadness to open our innermost selves ever more humbly to the Pentecostal fire of conversion. We do so in the assurance that a loving and faithful God promised to be with us in the cloud by day and, in the darkness of the night, to be with us as a pillar of fire. So it was for every stage of the Israelites' journey (Ex 40:38), and so it is for this suffering church, brought low and humbled in desert days. We count on God to be with us now, to lead us forward and to call us to purification and transformation. The community of faith needs leaders who are as generous and dedicated as they are unafraid. We count on strong lay leadership, and we count too on those who are willing to give themselves to the service of the gospel as chaste, celibate religious and clergy. Our humbled and sinful church--led by God throughout salvation history and infused with God's spirit-- calls forward those who will lead. We dare to do so knowing full well that this is an extraordinarily complex time, a time of shattered trust, the disillusion of broken shards. At the dawn of this postmodern era, when we face crises in our world and in our church, we more than e~er need leaders who will counter narcissistic individualism and alienated self-reliance. We need leaders who will witness to and proclaim the healing power of a compassionate and merciful God. We cannot settle for mediocrity. Among us are spirit-filled women and men. Members of our families, they are old, young, and in between. We need to believe in the church's power to be an influence toward good; we need to pray for God to call them, and we ourselves need to call them. Rampant skepticism, pervasive questioning, and the deconstruction of authority typify this emerging postmodern era. We can neither turn back history nor simply reapply modern solutions (that worked well several decades ago) to postmodern crises. Walking along humbly and perhaps quite anonymously in these fragmented times are those who will inspire us and help us make sense of what appears chaotic and meaningless. My sense is that the only way we can survive on this planet is by countering postmodern deconstruction with gospel-focused reconstruction. The leaders of the postmodern faith community must be courageous souls willing to pose serious and soul-searching questions. Will we proclaim with our actions and our Review for Religious words the centrality of relationship with God, with the communion of saints? How will we commit to sharing faith across the community of believers, with Christians and with other persons of faith as well? Will we act as agents of healing and reconciliation in our broken world? Will we develop new ways of standing amid the tension of our differences, becoming parmers rather than adversaries in the midst of some inevitable conflict? Clearly, perhaps more than ever, we need clergy, religious, and lay leaders who will help us notice the good that we hold in common and will move us to deepened generosity, justice, compassion, and forgiveness. VCho are these people who will minister among us, this humbled people of God whom we call church? Those who can be instruments of healing and hope; those who will venture into areas of the world, or of the intellect and the soul, where others cannot or will not go; those who will walk into areas of human experience that desperately need the gospel to be proclaimed-- women and men courageous enough to let themselves feel the Spirit's fire, become deeply converted, and thereby lead others to conversion. Aptitude for Priesthood and Religious Life This is no time to settle for less-than-healthy p~ople in our seminaries and formation houses. We do not ask for perfect people, but we ask for fundamentally healthy people. A balanced and healthy spiritual life--people at home before God, with a personal relationship to God--is the basis of a vocation. Without sometimes finding Jesus in the contemplative silence of prayer, and also in activity with and among the worshiping community, ministerial life becomes hollow rhetoric and wooden routine. Similarly, as people's relationship with God must be strong, so must their relationships with others be mature, rich, and fulfilling. We all have memories of relational disasters that have punctuated the history of ministry in the church. Frightened, socially uncomfortable, hostile, and aloof religious and clergy have been professed or ordained, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes as a conscious way of filling slots. At this time we must not repeat such arrangements. Rather, we must count on psychologically stable men and women who can handle the Septentber-October 2002 Markham ¯ Fire and Flame, Purification and Vocation demands of working in a church and world that are in a period of upheaval. The capacity to endure the stresses of this time, remain faithful to the gospel, and proclaim the countercultural message of Jesus' compassion and care is predicated upon mature psychological development. Relationship with God, relationship with others, and relationship with oneself constitute the basic health of ministers of the gospel. The mature human being is able to connect with others, can sometimes separate from others without becoming despondent, and can be interdependent, reliant on others. Without his intimate relationship with God, Moses could not have risked the harshness of the desert, the Israelites' long exile, without a clear home, without even the comfort of a clear destination. All the while, however, the pillar of fire was there. And it is still with us. When we are grounded in relationship with God--even when we are'not certain of the terrain we walk upon, even when we seem lost, even when we are tempted by mirages or seduced by the securities of the past--we dare to continue on. A strong reliance on God enables healthy ministers to rely also on companions in the difficult search for a true and loving response to the signs of these times of ours. Those who cannot relate, who do not have close or sustained friendships, or who are exploitive or manipulative in their interactions with others do not belong in the priesthood or religious life. Nor do stiff, distant, rigid, detached persons who are dismissive or controlling of others. Living with a damaged ability to connect with others in healthy ways, such persons are highly vulnerable to exploitive sexual behavior. As the ability to connect with others and with God is important, so is the ability to take leave, to separate from others. In the spiritual life there are times when God seems silent or distant. Spiritually healthy persons are attuned to the God of silence, the God shrouded in the cloud. Emotionally healthy individuals can tolerate separation. They do not function out of an insatiable neediness for continued nurturance and affirmation. Clingy, demanding, possessive people do not exercise ministry well. Their pastoral style is indecisive, hesitant, and largely ineffective. Good pastoral ministry includes the capacity to be interdependent. Priests and religious must be able to find God in Review for Religious the community of believers, even as they are stretched and challenged within that community. Stand-alone "talking heads" who believe their mission is to infuse knowledge and faith into subordinates manifest the worst of postmodern narcissism. Puffed-up arrogance issues from deep insecurity and gnawing inadequacy. Because they are preoccupied with themselves, their pastoral style is likely to be experienced as secretive and mystifying. The women and men accepted into ministry today must be secure in their personal identity and confident in God's incredibly persistent accompaniment, even in the nighttimes of their experience. They must be deeply aware that the mission of Jesus transcends their own self-focus. We might well ask ourselves what must occur in our admission and formation processes to ensure that those who will be ordained or professed are persons of this kind. As is evident from these comments, a healthy interpersonal life is the place to begin. In her classic book, The Birth of the Living God, psychoanalyst Anna Maria Rizzuto comments exquisitely on the important connection between people's relationship with God and their ability to form relationships with others. People's relational life--including their ability to depend on, separate from, and collaborate with others--is mirrored in their God quest and thus is the touchstone for their spiritual life as well as their ministerial life. This is evident in Moses' life in the desert, in the lives of the disciples' gathered and inspirited in Pentecost's upper room, and in the life of Catherine of Siena bringing the gospel's truth to so many. Implications for Formation When, from their personal experience of candidates, admissions board members have made positive evaluations, those judgments should be confirmed by psychological evaluations. Far from being enemies of the faith journey, the social and behavioral sciences can give candidates valuable insight and assist their continued growth, along with confirming that they have the psychic strength to handle ministry in a restive church. The Thomistic adage that "grace builds on nature" seems apt. That is, we cannot take severely damaged persons into our seminaries September-October 2002 Markham ¯ Fire and Flame, Purification and Vocation and religious communities with the expectation that somehow, if they pray enough, they will be able to take the stress of ministry today with a modicum of effectiveness. That would be unfair to both the individual and the people of God. Psychological evaluation is helpful in screening out those who have personality disorders or cognitive deficits that would interfere with trustworthy and effective ministry. After admission to a seminary or a religious congregation, discernment continues. That two-way process of determining if there is a fit between the individual's gifts and the charism of priesthood or a particular religious institute should be diligently undertaken by the candidate and the formation directors. If either party has any doubt, the process should be terminated. Serious errors are made when either the individual or the formators decide to continue the process in spite of serious concerns. The candidate who says he or she must simply pray harder in order to be happy and at peace in the life, or the formator who says "Let's give him one more chance" or "Let's send her to psychotherapy," is setting the stage for unhappiness or, worse, for future ministerial dysfunction. The discernment process must take place in prayer and serious dialogue. Wonderfully dedicated persons may not be called to a life of chaste celibate ministry. Doubts on either side necessitate making the difficult decision to terminate the process. In light of the demands of these times, other things too seem imperative in fostering healthy vocations in seminaries and houses of formation. Along with necessary courses of study, serious spiritual direction by trained directors is probably more important today than it ever has been. The general quest for meaning in our culture, people's longing for connection to the Sacred, and pervasive skepticism affect all of us and inevitably affect the spiritual life of candidates for priesthood and religious life. Assisting candidates to have a contemplative personal relationship with God and to be comfortable seeking harmony with God's spirit active in our world is surely a crucial undertaking of the formation process. Candidates today must experience a radical call to ministry. They must have a strong altruistic desire to extend themselves to others, especially those in critical need. Central to formation, and I would say crucial today, is some form of immersion among Review for Religious the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the suffering, the angry. The world cries out for compassion and healing. People yearn for the love that can cast out the terror that lurks in corners of rage and despair. Without burning desires to put lives wholeheartedly at the service of Jesus' mission, without willingness to feel uncomfortable or inadequate, ministry in the postmodern marketplace is likely to be sadly ineffective. Critical and Creative Fire It is my growing sense that we are not engaging in formation in ways that meet the needs of persons preparing to minister in this time. I wonder if we are not still imposing modern solutions on postmodern realities. In a world disconnected, divided, and fragmented, heightened attention to community-building seems crucially needed. With our seminaries and houses of formation still separated from the culture, I wonder if we are missing something terribly significant as we prepare people to be healing agents in that culture. Regarding formation, critical and creative thought is needed. Varied apostolic opportun-ities, cooperation across gender lines, and intelligent immersion in the crises of these times must be balanced by solid theological knowledge and spiritual experience and commitment. We search for ways to promote vocations, and we strive to have minds and hearts ever more ready for the fire of God's Spirit. We believe that our faith life is precious, that healing can and will happen, that there is more life than death, no matter how cold or dark things may seem. Like Catherine, we too pray that our resistance may be melted, that the frost of our fear may be dispelled, and that, warming us by burning away impurities in us, God will give us a fierce fervor that can set hearts of the next generation on fir!! In a world disconnected, divided, and fragmented, heightened attention to community-building seems crucially needed. Septentber-October 2002 JOEL RIPPINGER Lessons from a Time of Distress Inf the citizens of the United States developed an entirely ew way of looking at things in the months after 11 September 2001, members of the Roman Catholic Church in North America underwent a similar transformation in the first six months of 2002. The numbing succession of stories on cler-ical sexual abuse, episcopal cover-ups, and lay outrage over the betrayal of trust by church authorities have constituted a seismic shock, whose tremors continue within the Catholic Church in the United States. The reaction of laity and religious alike has been accelerated and imensified by the extensive media cover-age of these matters. In describing American Catholic reaction to the sexual-abuse scandal, one can say that it is equal parts outrage, sad-ness, and alienation. One of the notable and positive consequences of these events is that church authorities have given greater heed to the voices of Catholic lay people. Opinions of the laity are now received with a seriousness and sympathy that until recently were hard to detect. This development is all to the good. At the same time, the ordained in the church and those in positions of authority have been chastened and humbled more than many would have thought possible, an eventuality that few think would ever have been self-initiated. All that being said, a perspective on recent events that has not received much attention is that of religious in the church. Joel Rippinger OSB writes from Marmion Abbey; Butterfield Road; Aurora, Illinois 60504. Review for Religious More particularly, I can speak from the position of a male, a monastic, and an ordained religious. Perhaps more uniquely, I can speak as an historian whose perspective sees all that has occurred as an unprecedented watershed in the church's his-tory. From this perspective my hope is that my reflection may enable fellow religious to discern the voice of the Spirit and the signs of the times in the events we have experienced. Before attempting an objective historical judgment of this crisis in Catholicism, an inventory of personal emotions seems appropriate. The images that come to mind are of being caught in a storm at sea without a rudder or being thrown into one plot twist after another like a character in an action film. For any man who spent all of his adult years as a religious (and then also as ordained), never before these events was there a need to cope with a feeling of collective shame. If at one time vowed celibates sometimes felt that they were being distortedly per-ceived as asexual persons or just marginalized singles, now they felt that people were perceiving them as among the sexually perverse. The sense of accomplishment that for many years had accompanied their apostolic labors was now undercut by reve-lations that the very people being served had been betrayed by ministers themselves. People have long been aware, of course, that religious have in their communities a support system that diocesan priests and numerous lay ministers often do not have. I agonize over the plight of the growing number of new DPs, not displaced persons but displaced priests, men who have been removed from their assignments as a result of allegations but who lack access to the same network of healing that religious communities have and who, hounded by the press, seem to have become nonpersons like people struck from party lists in totalitarian states. For the increasing number of religious engaged in the ministry of spir-itual direction, the size of the crisis is soon evident. Lawyers and public-relations personnel for dioceses find themselves in a war zone as they face a hostile press and wounded families of vic-tims of sexual abuse. Catholic social services confront the dispir-iting discovery that their funds have been siphoned away for payments to victims of sexual abuse. Ranks of good priests find their public profile diminished and their spiritual strength sapped as they go about their ministry with the self-conscious- Septeml~er-October 2002 Rippinger ¯ Lessons from a Time of Distress ness that comes from ,facing misplaced suspicion at every turn. It is arresting to consider that among the few safe places of hos-pitality and confraternity for these persons to seek restoration in are religious houses. The Lens of History When one looks at the present crisis historically, a number of seminal issues come to the surface. The first is that nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment, so powerful in various periods of American history, has reappeared. That sentiment was clearly seen in the way that the secular press seized on the issue of sex-ual abuse. The New Yorker and National Review, the Boston Globe and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, odd bedfellows on other topics, joined in their insistence on full disclosure and even in their misunderstandings of Catholic teaching. The confusion of the vow of consecrated celibacy of religious and the promise of celibacy taken by diocesan priests was only one of many errors regarding the Catholic Church that appeared in the press. Fact checkers could be unconcerned that some simple down-to-earth accuracy escaped their investigative radar scanning. The print media, however, paled in comparison with the television indus-try. The traditional networks and the cable news leaders were both drawn to the story. Whether it was the American cardi-nals meeting in Rome or the American bishops meeting in Dallas, the confluence of church symbolism, sexuality, and inept or corrupt authority drew coverage that smacked of tabloid jour-nalism. (One had to strain to find any voice given to superiors of religious houses or congregations. With a few notable excep-tions, both local and national networks ignored that realm of Catholic vowed life.) In all this, one wonders what direction the film industry, already given to frequent caricatures of Catholic priests and religious, might take in future screenplays involving the church. Compared with earlier periods of anti-Catholicism in American history, however, contemporary treatment is less offensive. When one thinks of the fictionalized treatment of women's religious life in The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk in the period prior to the Civil War, even the present-day embel-lished broadsides are slight in comparison. As much as the polit- Review for Religious ical cartoons that burst into the attention of the American pub-lic in 2002 seemed to lack all respect for the institutional church, they do not approach the Thomas Nast cartoons of the 19th century or the caricatures of Al Smith when he ran for president in 1928. An element of the current crisis that is a significant change in popular perception of the Catholic Church in the United States is an anticlerical slant. The American hierarchy, which until recent years had been heralded for its leadership regarding respect for life and in forming public policy on social-justice issues, was now the target of not only mavens of the media but also many ordinary Catholics. On the intertwined matters of sex and money and power, people scrutinized the conduct of the church's ordained authority figures. For those called to witness to the evangeli-cal counsels of consecrated celibacy, poverty, and obedience, there was little chance to miss the irony. While the United States for years resisted the per-vasive anticlericalism of European nations such as France, Italy, and Spain, it is increasingly evident that the status of the ordained in North America has been reduced markedly. Although this reduced status has not been felt with the same forcefulness among religious men and women, the high percentage of ordained members among the former and people's proclivity to think of both groups together sug-gest that the status of religious in Catholic eyes will be not be as high as it was up to the council. Beyond any doubt, there is a growing resentment toward the clerical culture of recent years. Whether directed towards closeted decision making by bishops or towards an air of unassailable authority among local priests, resentment is real and not restricted to feminists or to lay men and women with liberal agendas. Establishing the extent of this resentment by opinion polls would not seem as pressing a need as dealing with discernible causes of such resentment. It is hard to gauge just how powerful the media were in generating adverse public opinion against the Catholic Church Nativist and anti- Catholic sentiment, so powerful in various periods of American history, has reappeared. September-October 2002 Rippinger ¯ Lessons from a Time of Distress Scandalous behavior on the part of the clergy and religious, and also closeted policy making on the part of bishops, have been recurrent themes of American Catholic history. in the face of so much questionable behavior. Today's media have no real historical antecedent. The media treatments of Watergate and Humanae vitae provide matter for suggestive comparison but not for accurate assessment. In the public eye, the hierarchy and its representativesappear to have suffered an erosion of credibility that is without parallel. Insofar as this will have an effect on the church's image as a whole, it is bound to undermine the perception that ordinary Catholics and others have of members of religious congregations. Another historical perspective worth noting is that scandalous behav-ior on the part of the clergy and reli-gious, and also closeted policy making on the part of bishops, have been recur-rent themes of American Catholic his-tory, not merely developments of recent years. One strains to see such histori-cal awareness present in assessments of today's situation. Before the screening mechanisms of today, communities of men and women religious often took in individuals whose pasts were at best questionable. When sexual promiscuity or the misuse of alcohol occurred, typically it would take place outside the cloister and.involve the clergy in their pastoral assignments. When such misconduct became known publicly, the tolerance of the faithful was amazing, especially when the perpetrators would be reassigned to other parishes or missions. Therapeutic interventions and the reporting of specifically criminal actions to civil authorities were absent as procedural options until recent decades. Even many years after these events, historians found themselves frustrated by the selective purging of pertinent correspondence or data in community and diocesan archives. The upshot was that the press did not have access to records in the manner that exists today. In addition, there was an understanding that journalists would not cross a line in regard to investigating Catholic Church institutions. The culture that produced Hollywood's idealized images of priests and religious Review for Religious portrayed by Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Loretta Young, Gregory Peck, and Ingrid Bergrnan did not deem it appropriate to uncover the darker side of that image. New Aspects of the Present Crisis One striking irony in the unfolding of recent events in the sexual-abuse scandal is the supporting cast that came into the public eye. The pray, pay, and obey lay people of the preconciliar era had now acquired positions of power and influence within the church. So, although the persons accused of criminal or immoral behavior were almost exclusively male and ordained, the church voices being heard were largely lay and even female. Women religious serving as chancellors (coordinating the func-tioning of diocesan offices) were asked to speak for the church. Lawyers, whether representing victims or perpetrators, pro-fessed their Catholicism and often a background of Catholic education. Catholic education, in fact, has had a role in the overall picture of the current sexual-abuse crisis. The primary apostolic work of many religious communi-ties, religious education has proved to be the very venue in which much sexual abuse took place. The large-scale lawsuits instituted against orders in Canada and the United States (to say nothing of Ireland and Australia) for systematic victimization of students signaled how vulnerable these institutions had become. The moral scandal in all of this seems to have been more the sin of omission by persons in authority who failed to intervene than the sexual crimes themselves. Some critics took note of the lack not only of moral integrity among administra-tors of Catholic schools, but also of a professional stance and adequate structures to deal with such criminal behavior. In both cases, administrators of religious schools were forced to admit to a complicity in allowing perpetrators of abuses to continue in their work. This situation pointed to a real deficiency in religious for-mation as well. Just as the sexual-abuse scandals in the United States in the last half of the 20th century indicated the flawed formation provided for many priests in seminaries, so too the formation programs of religious communities do not appear to have prepared people well for celibate commitment. Celibacy September-October 2002 Rippinger * Lessons from a Time of Distress and sexuality in formation programs were usually treated only in a general and allusive way that was felt to be circumspect, seldom with a candid and detailed explanation of realistic areas of struggle. An even sadder irony is that considerable numbers of vocations to the religious life were themselves sexually abused. Fear of divulging any information about such abuse only made the climate of conflicted feelings and shame more pronounced. Maintaining that secret and carrying the hurt of their past exacted a price that religious orders are only beginning to real-ize. As important as the vow of consecrated celibacy was for the identity and witness of all religious, it did not "keep up" with the culture. The sexually saturated American culture since the 1960s sent people to religious houses with sexual experience and atri-tudes that were considerably removed from, if not at cross pur-poses with, the ascetical tools they were expected to acquire in their spiritual life. For many generations, candidates came to religious com-munities at an early age and led lives sheltered from the wider world. In recent decades, more mature (that is, older) candi-dates with more education and more independent and sophis-ticated career experience made for an entirely different set of expectations. As much as Generation Xers and the millennium generation were recognized as requiring a new manner of for-marion, especially for developing the skills required by a celibate commitment and for developing a deeper understanding of their sexual identity, formation programs that provided this were the exception rather than the rule. Sadly, too, the emerging need in the last decades of the 20th century to assist older religious who had awakened to their sexuality as a more complex reality than they had previously realized was typically overlooked or ignored by religious communities. In recent years there has been tension and conflict between the discipline of psychology and the more traditional skills of the spiritual life such as fasting, mortification, and a deepening prayer life. Too frequently the matter appeared as an either/or proposition. Either one bought into the therapeutic model and relied upon the work and recommendations of trained clini-cians to deal with misbehavior, or one thought that only an ascetically proficient religious could be trusted to give effective witness. In truth, both the discipline of psychology and the tra- R~vie~ for Religious ditional methods of acquiring gospel holiness were needed as partners, not opponents. Religious superiors, many of whom had trained therapists in their communities, began to see the need to model such a partnership. Another facet of religious life that has been accentuated by the distressing events affecting the larger church has been, for want of a better term, a sense of entitlement. Part of the judg-ment rendered on the American ~riesthood by contemporary observers is that ordained men have generally been encouraged to see themselves as special, people having a status that put them on a pedestal. The connection of this attitude with nar-cissistic behavior and a feeling of deserved entitlement is not hard to make. The same holds true for the attitudes of exclu-sivity and domination that were attached to the role of the ordained. Insofar as religious communities, consciously or unconsciously, adopt such attitudes, they play into the hands of those who want to write them off as irrelevant to the modern world. One of the commonly employed descriptions of religious life in the last forty years of renewal has been its prophetic role. The term implies a forceful, unsparing, and honest stance in the face of evil or oppression. The fact that the veil on much of the evil behavior in the Catholic Church had to be lifted by persons and institutions outside it says much about consecrated life's complicity. For many years, communities and congrega-tions expended much energy and resources on the small minor-ity of the "troubled." It became standard operating procedure to deal with such matters in the closed circle of community. The reasons for this seemed evident. First of all, only the superiors would have all the facts to make the decision. And there was the need to respect both promised confidentiality and the good name of the institution. Somehow this learned behavior was able to compromise any impassioned effort to deal with the issues underlying these cases of moral failing and misbehavior. How much of the moti-vation behind this was because of religious obedience and humil-ity and how much of it was indifference and a desperate desire to preserve an image is hard to say. But the fact remains that few voices of prominence from the ranks of religious (one thinks of the Dominican Father Thomas Doyle, whose recommendations September-October 2002 Rippinger ¯ Lessons from a Time of Distress on sexual abuse to the American bishops in 1985 were largely filed away) were willing to play David against the Goliath of the church hierarchy. In some respects, many church authorities, when confronted with the revelation in early 2001 of sexual abuse of religious women in Africa by church figures, were other instances of not wanting to hear the prophetic voice. The history of religious life tends to teach that the minis-terial needs of each generation change, and so religious com-munities have to adapt to those needs. The church today would do well to prepare a good number of compassionate and com-petent men and women religious to minister to the victims of sexual abuse. The great capacity of religious in previous eras to form new ministries and institutions to deal with changing pas-toral needs will be tested again in this case. The professional training needed to provide such personnel should be a part of ordinary programs of formation. If seminaries throughout the United States are now committed to detailed screening and comprehensive instruction in the area of sexuality and celibate skills, religious communities should do no less. Historians can also be of assistance in future years. When one reads the available popular or scholarly histories of reli-gious congregations and communities in the United States (and they are many), one searches largely in vain for any serious or systematic discussion of sexual misbehavior, or of substance abuse and severe emotional problems. Part of the reason for this, as alluded to earlier, is that much of the record of such activity has been expunged from archives and other records. But there is no evading the truth that such scandals have had an influence on the character and development of many commu-nities and congregations. A beginning needs to be made towards having discreet, honest, and sensitive histories written on such matters so that the problem of silence and averted eyes no longer prevails. In the history of the modern church and modern conse-crated life, real transformation and spiritual progress have almost always been initiated by outside events. The Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution's destruction of reli-gious houses had positive effects within the Catholic Church. Reformed congregations and new houses of religious emerged to confront the new challenges of the time. Review for Religious The situation today, in the church and in North American relig!ous life, has similarities with those earlier historical moments. As much as the current crisis contains elements that are entirely new (for example, the mass media that shape much of public opinion and the "age of litigation" that surrounds the church in the United States), there nonetheless is much to learn from both the distant and the immediate past. New voices must be heeded, and a new genera-tion of leaders will be needed to change church and com-munity structures that have failed. To accomplish that daunting challenge, they must preserve the best of tradition and listen more carefully than their predecessors to the lessons of the past and the voice of the faithful around them. New approaches to ministry will be proposed, and they will enlist the ranks of religious women and men to The church today would do well to prepare a good number of compassionate and competent men and women religious to minister to the victims of sexual abuse. redirect their commitment and their resources. A new paradigm of formation in religious life must more realistically and pro-foundly prepare people to live a celibate commitment. Such a paradigm will blend the distinctive charism of tradition with the revised understanding of how religious life at the dawn of the new millennium has been changed unalterably by yet another tectonic shift in the geography of consecrated life. The proto-cols of the past (whether they be called secrecy, damage control, or protecting the institutional image at the expense of individ-uals) have been found wanting. It is incumbent upon the present and future generations of religious to effect a conversion wor-thy of their vowed commitment. September-October 2002 life and death REGINA SIEGFRIED Choose Life: Reflections Ten Years after Five Deaths Ten years ago five Adorers of ~he Blood of Christ were murdered in Liberia, where the congregation had had missionaries for twenty-two years. It seemed then that the deaths ended what the sisters had worked hard to build. God, though, told us long ago: "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live" (Dr 30:19). Now, ten years later, some of the picture does not look nearly as bleak as it did in 1992. Three things are more obvious now than they were when the five Adorers were killed on 20 and 23 October 1992. One is that Liberia is still in the grip of a life-and-death struggle; another is that the paschal-mystery charism of the ASCs is in clearer focus for many members. The third is that the ASC mission in Liberia has not ended with the deaths of the five missionaries. Commemorating the tenth anniversary and celebrating the lives of the five murdered ASCs, this article focuses not on their deaths Regina Siegfried ASC last wrote for us in our May-June 2002 issue. Her address is Department of Theological Studies; Saint Louis University; P.O. Box 56907; St. Louis, Missouri 63156. Revi~'w for Religious but on the situation in Liberia and on the valiant spirits of people there who continue their legacy. The community's mission in Liberia began in 1970 in the coastal village of Grand Cess, in the Cape Palmas diocese. By 1984 the Adorers had eleven sisters ministering in Gardnersville (a suburb of the capital city, Monrovia), in Kle, and in Grand Cess. In 1989 civil war broke out, with Charles Taylor leading the rebel forces. Allegedly, rebel soldiers shot Joel Kolmer ASC and Barbara Ann Muttra ASC on a Tuesday, while they were on a short automobile journey away from their Gardnersville convent, and three days later other rebels came to their convent and shot Kathleen McGuire, Agnes Mueller, and Shirley Kolmer. My community has had ten years to assimilate those stark facts, to grieve intensely, to remember lovingly, and now to celebrate gratefully those lives generously poured out. Liberia Ten Years Later To keep these five deaths in perspective, it is necessary to realize that, since 1989, 200,000 Liberians have died; 800,000 more are refugees in neighboring countries and elsewhere. More than 1 million Liberians are internally dis-placed within the country. All of the country's infras-tructure lies in ruins and the economy has collapsed. However, leaders of the seven warring factions in Liberia are engaged in a lucrative underground econ-omy. In June 1996, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Ambassador William Twaddle testified before Congress that the National Patriotic Front of Liberia alone may have made $75 million a year from the sales of Liberia's timber, iron ore, rub-ber, gold, and diamonds.' The murder of Liberian President Samuel Doe in 1990 brought intense civil war. The seven Adorers then in Liberia fled the country. By March 1991 Sisters Shirley Kolmer and Joel Kolmer returned and were followed in August by Sisters Barbara Ann and Agnes and by newcomer Sister Kathleen. The sisters worked with youth to help them refocus their lives after fighting at too young an age. September-October 2002 After the sisters' deaths in 1992, fighting .continued to devastate the country. In September 1996 Ruth Sando Perry headed the Liberian New Transitional Government. During that same year armed conflict once again erupted in Monrovia, but by August the warring factions signed the Abuja II Peace Accord. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf opposed Charles Taylor, leader of one of the factions; he defeated her for the presidency in May 1997. On 14 March 2001, testifying before the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Senator Russ Feingold unequivocally labeled him a war criminal: "We have all read the appalling accounts of atrocities committed in the region. I believe that some of the responsibility for these terrible abuses rests upon Charles Taylor's shoulders. In fact, I believe that Liberian President Charles Taylor is a war criminal." Jeffrey Bartholet's in-depth article and analysis of Taylor in the 14 May 2001 issue of Newsweek argues that Taylor is "a dictator adrift . He maintains the faCade of democracy, while ensuring that no one threatens his power" (p. 31). In May 2002 the International Herald Tribune reported that fighting had once again broken out in Monrovia. Taylor's government troops attempted to quell a rebel offensive. Adding to Taylor's self-serving indifference to the plight of the people of Liberia are other grim conditions that compound the misery: child soldiers, illegal diamond trade, crumbling and destroyed country-wide infrastructures, and deforestation of a once breathtakingly beautiful and fertile land. Boys orphaned by the war joined factions that offered promises of booty, power, and the glamour of guns. Girls became the mistresses and servants of older soldiers, with rape and resulting pregnancies fo~ girls too young to be mothers. Some children were forced to kill as part of an initiation rite and to ensure their complicity and loyalty to a faction? With the theoretical peace of August 1996, many of the child soldiers were disarmed. But taking guns from children does not mean they are educated, prepared with skills, or rehabilitated for society. Often with no parents, no home, and no school to return to, these child soldiers were well on the way to becoming today's lost young adults. In assessing the plight of the child soldiers, Stephen G. Price, of the office of justice and peace for the Society of African Missions, has written: Revie~a for geligio~,s Rehabilitation requires some kind of reconciliation in the larger Liberian society, where the atrocities of war experience can be faced in some way, and a means of living with the memory of them is achieved. It also involves responsible persons hearing young fighters tell their own stories of personal involvement. The grief, terror, and guilt will be a huge emotional burden, and a bomb waiting to explode again, if it is not expressed.3 Although the war may be technically over in Liberia, the fighting and refugees have spilled into neighboring Sierra Leone. That country's Revolutionary United Front smuggles diamonds through Liberia, where Charles Taylor reportedly takes a cut of the pro~fit.4 The African Faith and JustiCe Network newsletter of March 2001 reports that nongovernment organizations and the United Nations have succeeded in getting the diamond industry to commit itself "to rapidly developing a Certification of Origin system that would allow global markets to exclude diamonds originating in civil-war situations. However, the industry has moved slowly to implement this commitment, prompting more active calls for UN or government action" (p. 5). The same newsletter says that fighting over diamonds has closed so many clinics and pharmacies that people are unable to get appropriate drugs or treatment for common, easily treatable illnesses. Child soldiers, illegal diamond smuggling, and ordinary Liberians without ordinary social services and a working infrastructure--all are signs of death, destruction, and general mayhem. But only on one level. Liberians continue to choose life; the forces for life outnumber the seemingly grim, death-dealing, and nearly hopeless situations they face every day. Their natural tendency toward optimism and a God-centered hope sustain them. Nongovernment organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, the Society of African Missions (SMA fathers), other missionaries, But taking guns from children does not mean they are educated, prepared with skills, or rehabilitated for society. September-October 2002 Siegf!'ied ¯ Choose Life the Africa Faith and Justice Network, Senator Feingold's testimony, the clean diamond act, and programs such as Development, Education, and Leadership Teams in Action (DELTA) and Development Education Network-Liberia (DEN-L) are slowly, surely, and quiedy restoring life to this country. Located in Gbarnga, Bong County, and committed to training lay leaders to "promote grassroots participation in sustainable development and good governance,''5 DEN-L trains workers, community leaders, and unionists to analyze local and national situations and to network, advocate, and work for a Liberia where life is sustainable. DEN-L is but one example of an organization staffed by fearless committed people who envision a country where peace and reconciliation bring new life. The ASC spirit lives on in lay associates who still gather to pray, to remember, to celebrate. Lay people now staff the Catechetical Village Leadership Training Center in Kle, Bomi County, begun by Antoinette Cusimano AS in 1986. The sisters' house in Gardnersville is a clinic. Five Liberian brothers staff Sister Shirley Kolmer School in Barnersville. Sister Kathleen McGuire School is a newly built structure in Cooperfarm, a village near Monrovia. The work of Sister Barbara Ann in healthcare is continued in Tubmanburg and Kle and many surrounding villages by a nurse trained by Barbara Ann and her staff. Another aide trained by Barbara Ann works in the clinic in Kle; the clinic had been the sisters' home. Since it is the custom of the Liberians to name their children after some persons important to them, some Liberian girls now answer to the names of sisters who served in Liberia, including the slain sisters. Despite it all, perhaps because of it all, the spirit nurtured by the five ASCs and other ASC missionaries lives in the people who carry on their legacy without their presence. The missionaries have risen in the people. ASCs Ten Years Later The sisters have risen in the people of Liberia. How do their spirits live in the congregation of Adorers of the Blood of Christ? The answer to that question impels us to focus on the charism, our legacy from Maria de Mattias, founder of the Adorers. The Review for Religious Constitution of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ is quite clear about the charism: Our charism as Adorers of the Blood of Christ is deeply rooted in the death-resurrection mystery of Jesus. Ours is a paschal identity, signed in the blood of the Lamb. As a congregation we are to bear witness in hope and joy to the living presence in our world today of Christ's redeeming love, which gives meaning to human suffering and can render it powerfully liberating and life-giving. (§22) Shaped by and immersed in this basic mystery of Christianity, the Adorers expect this "paschal identity" to permeate their corporate and personal lives. Baptized into the life and death of Jesus, vowed to God as sisters in a congregation whose constitution encourages its members to be "ever more credible witnesses of God's tender love, of which the blood of Jesus is vibrant sign and unending covenant pledge" (§3), the paschal-mystery charism of the Adorers found stark reality in the lives and deaths of the sisters in Liberia. These five credible witnesses lived and died the charism. Charisms of communities are wild, fiery, free, hard to control by law and institutionalization. If this is true of eharisms in general, it is certainly true for the Precious Blood charism, which pulses with the life of the paschal mystery, urging contemplation, speech, and action, impelling us to mission.6 The Precious Blood charism is rooted in historical times that were rife with political and social unrest. Injustice for the poor of society was so common that it was not given much consideration except for the countercultural founder who was on fire with the gospel message of God's reign. Fire and passion for the mission, the urgency to be with the marginalized of society, pushed our founder and our pioneer members to take risks that appeared foolish to the complacent. These are the same qualities that urged five Adorers to return to Liberia in the face of evidence that pointed to staying home, staying safe. Such vision demanded conversion on the part of Maria de Mattias and of the five killed in Liberia. It calls for the same in us. Joe Nassal CPpS writes in a similar vein when he says: To be a disciple of the Precious Blood today is. to stand with those of Matthew 25: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the ill and im- September-October 2002 Siegfried ¯ Cboose Life Our sisters died because of what they believed in-- God's love for all people, especially the poor and suffering. prisoned. This implies that, when we stand with those who are at the margin of our society, we are no longer in the center ourselves. We allow those with whom Jesus identifies to pull us out of our cozy and comfortable cocoons into the real world where pain and suffering is ever present.7 Ten years ago grief was too raw, tears and disbelief too close, for comfort. But ten years have given the Adorers time and space to contemplate the mystery of those terrible days in late 1992. Life has indeed gone on. We know the slain sisters would expect us to get on with the mission. But, for many Adorers, "getting on with the mission" meant and means soul-searching, questioning, pondering the paschal mystery in a new light. Contemplation of Jesus' life with a focus on the paschal mystery means reflection on the reality of blood poured out for the sake of others. The fact and the symbol of Jesus' shedding of blood calls Christians, especially congregations dedicated to the Precious Blood, to consider the totality of a life gift, the meaning of giving all even to the point of death. From a pragmatic view, both Jesus and the sisters killed in Liberia were in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet they stood up to the wielders of power and the forces of destruction. The disciples of Jesus, like the Adorers, needed to theologize about the meaning of seemingly meaningless deaths. Marcia Kruse, a U.S. Adorer,s reflects that: "Actions and events become signs or symbols of a deeper meaning. Our sisters died because of what they believed in--God's love for all people, especially the poor and suffering. Their lives and deaths are symbols, examples of total giving, and that total giving is what we are called to." Wherese Wetta, another Adorer from the United States, writes: "Five of our Adorers had given their very lives because of their solidarity with the Liberian people. The sisters knew that Review for Religious the Liberian people were brothers and sisters to us, redeemed by the Blood of Christ and sacred in God's eyes." Mini Vadakumchery, an Adorer from India, communicates in the same vein: "They offered themselves as a living sacrifice and answered the cry of the poor. Today I . . . am ready to risk and challenge my life in any situation." Violence, political and social unrest, and neglect of the weakest in society are streams that run through the time of Jesus, through the 19th-century founding of our congregation, and through today's world--the living and dying in the present-day neglected country of Liberia being a prime example. But another stream of compassion, standing with, and advocacy mingles with those deeply stained waters. Whenever people throw in their lot with the disenfranchised of society, with those who need our presence as much as we need theirs, then the saving power of Jesus finds a home, and everyone finds a home. The stream of life weakens the stream of death. This is the cycle of paschal-mystery theology--life ultimately means resurrection. The wood of the cross had its effect on bitter desert water, as Moses experienced typologically at Marah: "He cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet" (Ex 15:25). This is part of paschal-mystery theology. Jesus came that people may have life and have it to the full; this means going beyond the bitter and the sad, beyond death, to resurrection, that joy beyond joys. Matija Pavic, one of the Adorers in Croatia who lived amid ¯ the war and destruction in that country, writes in a similar vein: Since their martyrdom I can say we feel greater closeness among us, at the level of the province and of the congregation as well, as if their martyrdom itself strengthened and drew us together, waking us up to the seriousness of our life commitment at the same time. We experienced the truth of the word that we are called to witness to Christ even to shedding of our own blood. We were overwhelmed by feelings of worry, compassion, and prayer; it was as if th¢:ir suffering spilled over into us. At the same time we were sure that their blood was not shed in vain. We know that it will be a new seed for the kingdom of God here on earth.9 September-October 2002 Sieg?Cried * Cboose Life The congregation continues to choose life. Many of us are ministering in the same areas that we were ten years ago, but the awareness, the consciousness, is deeper than before the events in Liberia. As a United States province we offer more assistance to victims of violence, are more attentive to women and children and to work with refugees. Today the charism has taken on a new dimension of reconciliation. We want to be reconcilers in our torn world, living the life, death, and peace of Jesus where we are and seeking out areas where reconciliation is needed. Life is precious; we cherish each other and try not to take one another for granted. If we are to become our charism in our society, we must respond to the call that the charism voices in our hearts. The paschal mystery invites us to life through death. It is our legacy to insure that the spirit of the sisters killed in Liberia lives in us as vibrantly as it does in the people of Liberia, whose lives they touched graciously, joyously, and effectively. Notes ~ Ezekiel Pajibo, "Liberia: A Brief Overview," Africa Faith and Justice Network, March 1977. 2 Stephen G. Price, "Child Soldiers in the Liberian War," SMA Office of Justice and Peace, March 1997. 3 Price, "Child Soldiers." 4 Washington Post, 17 April 2000. s Taken from "Information about the Development Education Network Liberia." 6 Some of the ideas on paschal-mystery charism are taken from my article "The Missionary Heart," Review for Religious 54, no. 6 (November-December, 1995): 913-917. 7 Joe Nassal CPPS, Passionate Pilgrims: A Sojourn of Precious Blood Spirituality (Carthagena, Ohio: Messenger Press, 1993), p. 17. 8 Adorers worldwide were invited to submit reflections on the effect the sisters' deaths had on them. Some of their comments are included in this article. 9 Translated by Viktorijika Tomic ASC. Review for Religious MARIE BEHA Made Perfect through Suffering ISn the days immediately after the terrorist attack of 11 eptember 2001, the liturgy celebrated--yes, "celebrated"-- a familiar cycle of feasts: on 14 September the Exaltation of the Cross, the next day the feast of the Sorrowful Mother, and two days later the commemoration of the Stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. This triad has always touched my heart, but I never really understood the reason. Last year the cycle's themes grew in clarity as, in the light of the September tragedy, the why of suf-fering demanded deeper answers. So many innocent people had died, so many others suffered multiple losses, and so many of us, perhaps all of us, had our lives, our attitudes, changed. As has been said over and over, "nothing will ever be the same." Amid all this, what was the liturgy asking us to celebrate? How did these past events touch the present of our suffering? What did it all mean? Exaltation of the Cross The very titling of the feast holds paradox. If familiarity were not dimming the challenge, we would all be aghast every time a cross is exalted to a place of honor in a church or home, every time it is raised up in blessing. Unfortunately, we take Maria Beha OSC, frequent contributor to our pages, lives at the Monastery of St. Clare; 1916 North Pleasantburg Drive; Greenville, South Carolina 29609. Septe'mber- October 2002 Beha * Made Perfect through Suffering this linking of cross and glory for granted. After all, it is the cross of Jesus that we are lifting up. Familiar religious senti-ment blunts the starkness of the reality. But what about our own suffering? Could that be lifted up? This was my question. As I explored the readings for this feast, they only height-ened the cross's mystery, inviting us in the entrance antiphon to "Glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" and stressing in the preface that God has "decreed" that we should be "saved by the wood of the cross." As I pondered the paradox of these too familiar phrases, still others came to mind. "It was fitting that God . . . in bringing many children to glory should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb 2:10). And, equally mysterious, "he learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb 5:8). Suffering redeems. That is what the phrases proclaimed, what I had always heard and said. But was it what I believed, what I had experienced? To raise the question in the first person singular was to realize just how much ambiguity remained in my act of faith. Certainly I believed that the suffering of Jesus was redemptive; that was unquestioned bedrock. But what about human suffering, other people's as well as my own? Specifically how did the tragedy of 11 September hold potential for redemp-tion? And how about the bone-wrenching pain of my friend so seriously injured in a near-fatal auto wreck? And the grief of a single mother whose three small children died when flames swept through their trailer home? The examples easily became an almost endless litany.of human misery and grief. I began to feel myself slipping down into a vortex of tragedy that could only paralyze. I hurried back to Jesus and the exaltation of his cross. From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus revealed God's compassion for human suffering. Just the sight of the grieving widow at Naim was enough to call forth a life-giving response. Jesus took the dead man by the hand and "gave him back to his mother" (Lk 7:11-17). No one had asked Jesus to do anything. It was as though the mother's suffering compelled him to act. And how many times throughout the Gospels Jesus responds to pain in the same way, healing lepers, the blind, the deaf, the lame. As Mark says, "wherever he put in an appearance, in vil-lages, in towns, or at crossroads, they laid the sick in the mar-ketplaces and begged him to let them touch just the tassel of Review for Religious his cloak. All who touched him got well" (Mk 6:56). Others ~possessed by demons, many of whom we would today consider emotionally ill, also called forth Jesus' compassion. He drove out the demons, freeing those who had been in their grip. In word and deed Jesus tells us that God is on the side, not of suffering, but of new life, freedom, health, healing. In other words, suffering is not to be gloried in but rather to be worked against. In the end time of a "new heaven and a new earth [God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more" (Rv 21:1, 3-4). This is where we are going, but the life and death of Jesus amply testify that suffer-ing is integral to our ever arriv-ing at that kingdom of glory. While working against suffering in the life of others, Jesus also accepted it in his own. He real-ized early on that responding to God's call would bring suffer-ing, not only to himself but also to those whom he loved. From the beginning of his ministry, he warned his disciples of his coming passion and rebuked Peter sharply for refusing to accept this reality: "Get behind me, Satan" (Mt 16:23). Even the everyday of Jesus' life was punctuated with the hardships of an exhausting ministry, complicated by a lack of understanding on the part of those closest to him and subject to harassment by the religious leaders. Mark's Gospel (6:6) says he was "amazed" at their "hardness of heart." How it all must have hurt him! His own family thought him "out of his mind" (Mk 3:21) and came to take him away. His closest friends, the likes of James and John, were more concerned about their sta-res in the kingdom (Mk 10:35-40) than in what Jesus was trying to teach them. On the last night of his life, his disciples' lack of understanding would degenerate into a cowardice that left him alone at the end. If suffering was present throughout Jesus' life, his death and dying were terrible: an innocent man condemned to the most shameful of deaths, done in by the jealousy of religious leaders Jesus tells us that God is on the side, not of suffering, but of new life, freedom, health, healing. September-October 2002 Beba ¯ Made Perfect through Suffering For suffering to be redemptive we must not seek it out, exaggerate it, or add to it. whose legalistic observance covered over the corruption of dead men's bones. Betrayed by one of his own, deserted by all but a handful of his alleged followers and supporters, tortured and mocked by his executioners, yet "he did not open his mouth" (Is 53:7). Even in the agony of death by crucifixion, his words were full of love for his mother, for the one disciple who remained faithful, and for the dying thief. To his Father his final plea was one of concern for others, "Forgive them, they know not what they are doing," accompanied by his own complete sub-mission, "Into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:34, 46). Jesus' death summed up his lifelong attitude of accepting the suffering that came to him in accord with his prior choice. "Not my will but yours be done" (Lk 22:42) summarized who he was and what he was about. As a conse-quence of this first love, Jesus responded to the suffering in his life in such a way that it became redemptive. That is what we cele-brate on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and what we must experience in our own salvation history if we are ever to embrace the mystery of suffering. Have we ever, perhaps only in retrospect, seen something painfully difficult become redeem-ing grace? I know that for me a debilitating illness that con-fined me to total bed rest for six months when I was a cocky twenty-two-year-old was grace beyond compare. During those endless days of being unable to do anything, I had time to think long thoughts, to sift through my life values and lay aside some of the driving ambition that might very well have detoured my whole religious life. I began to learn how fragile my control of events and how life's meaning had to go deeper. I am sure you can add your own experiences of the redemp-tive value of suffering: the family that finds unity and union in caring for a sick child, the marriage that is strengthened by cop-ing with serious financial difficulties, the struggle to get an edu-cation that makes learning a lifelong priority. The list goes on and maybe needs to--showing us over and over how our faith can grow stronger through the redemptive power of suffering. Revie~v for Religious But at some point the very examples we recall also reveal that suffering is a two-edged sword. Its redemptive potential is not automatic. We all know people whom suffering has shrunk into self-absorption, and we know whiners and complainers who specialize in self-pity. Many of us do not have to look any fur-ther than our own hearts to recognize how destructive suffering can be. It can occasion a crisis, with people choosing a path of lifelong bitterness, defeat, despair. Redemptive suffering moves in the opposite direction, open-ing us to others and to God. It shrinks our pain, putting it in perspective, not the stoic perspective that "well, things could be much worse," but faith's perspective that suffering is not the end, that God brings healing, health, joy, resurrection. For suffering to be redemptive we must not seek it out, exaggerate it, or add to it. Ours is not to be the self-centered pain that protests with injured innocence, "Why me?" Nor should we try to find some husk of self-satisfaction by compar-ing our burden of pain with someone else's. Each person's suf-fering is unique, if for no other reason than that this present difficulty is piled on a unique miscellany of memories and past experiences. Trustful acceptance of suffering keeps us moving in the direction of redemption and healing. Our suffering takes on true meaning when it is caught up in the passion of Jesus. In our suffering we are being invited to "complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Col 1:24). Already in baptism we are immersed in the dying and rising of Jesus. What began in his redemptive act continues as we accept the cross into our own life. Each time a choice of ours says no to sin and yes to new life in Christ, we live out the possibilities of our baptism. Each time we offer God the daily bread of our ordinary lives, we present to him a living sacrifice of praise. The Eucharistic transubstan-tiation changes not only ourselves but our world. We must focus, not on our own immediate experience of pain, but on Jesus, "fixing our eyes on the head of our faith . . . who suffered the cross" (Heb 12:1). I can recall vividly a woman who suffered ten long years from multiple sclerosis, experiencing all of its terrible dimin-ishments till at the end she was completely immobilized, unable to so much as move herself in bed. When asked, foolishly September-October 2002 Beha ¯ Made Perfea through Suffering enough, "How are you today?" her invariable response was, "Just the way God wants me to be. And how are you?" I think hers was a highly personal, well-lived translation of Jesus' own faithful response "Not my will but yours be done." She did not choose suffering, but when it came she accepted it and so dis-covered grace and peace despite the pain. Compassion's Power Suffering comes not only in our own flesh but also in the pain that others must bear and we with them. In some ways this suffering-with-another is more difficult than simply bearing our own pain, since pain deepens when all we can do is stand by helplessly. We can neither prevent another's journey toward death nor live the journey for them. We cannot force anyone to choose health and healing. Demanding that someone get coun-seling is not therapeutic; hiding the cigarettes only adds decep-tion to the mix; neither leads to conversion. Yet just "being with" another seems too little. How often I have heard parents express their wish that they could wrestle with cancer themselves rather than stand by helplessly while their child endures the awful rounds of surgery, chemo, and radiation. And how much pain is added to the suffering of a dying husband or wife, leaving behind a. spouse whose loneliness they know will never be healed. People suffer the added burden of helplessness when their friends lose their job, their health, or their home. "I don't know what to say, what to do!" we exclaim, with truth. But, hopefully, we do not use such inability to solve another's problem as a pretext for noninvolvement. Perhaps this is one of the uncon-scious reasons we seal our hearts against caring too much; instinc-tively we know it will cost us. True love is willing to risk the personal suffering that accompanies compassion. If love exposes us to greater suffering, it is also true that suffering with another can open our hearts for greater love. Children who have lost their parents in a tragic accident pull at our heartstrings. Accompanying someone facing a terminal ill-ness can give us an impetus to sort through and rearrange our own values. The terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001 stirred an unprecedented outpouring of generosity, people giving because they just had to. Strangers worked together as part- Review for Religious ners. People who lived next door became neighbors. People dis-covered strength they did not know they had when others' needs called it forth. Helping someone even in ordinary circumstances can cre-ate a close bond. Just taking a few moments to greet a new-comer can open the door to a lasting relationship. Taking the first step toward reconciliation may result in a friendship cemented now in the experi-ence of mutual forgiveness. It almost seems that some expe-rience of shared suffering, of difficulty overcome, is neces-sary if relationships are to mature into true intimacy. Exposing our vulnerability, allowing another to be with us in our pain, not only presup-poses trust but enlivens it as well. We come to know each Pain and suffering offer not only opportunity for growth, but also possibility of destruction or division. other in deeper, more personal ways. Our love has been tried and is more secure because it has passed the test. Love "suffers with," and "suffering with" can deepen love-- but not always. Once again, pain and suffering offer not only opportunity for growth, but also possibility of destruction or division. The sickness of a child may lead to parental quarrels and divorce. Friendships falter and fail in the face of difficult times and circumstances. How many siblings find themselves locked into bitter quarrels after the death of a parent? And, on a larger scale, a national tragedy can initiate a cycle of blame and mutual suspicion, of escalating violence and threats of revenge. Suffering is always a two-edged sword. It reveals hearts. That is what we celebrate on the feast of our Sorrowful Mother. Mary's love for her Son exposed her to tremendous suffering, and that suffering deepened and revealed her love. "A sword will pierce your own soul" (Lk 2:35) was a promise consequent on her accepting her unique vocation. A call from God, any call from God, implies going beyond one's present comfort level. So Mary's "Be it with me according to your word" (Lk 1:38) meant that her life would never be the same. She was being asked to transcend her power to understand, control, even September-October 2002 Beba * Made Perfect through Suffering explain. Inevitably others would be uncomprehending, some-times judgmental, even condemning. There was nothing she could say or do to make it easier for those who loved her, or for those who did not. Her only option in the face of this suf-fering was to trust that the God who called was faithful. That faith would be tried when her own Son remained behind in the temple without a word of explanation to her or Joseph. "Why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety." Their mother-son relationship was secure enough to survive his counterques-tion, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" (Lk 2:48-49)~ Out of this suffering must have come some deeper level of trust and understanding. Still later their tested relationship would grow into Cana's fuller confidence, "Do whatever he tells you" (Jn 2:5), and all through Calvary's final hours. There their love faced its ultimate test of mutual surrender. Mary gave her Son back to the Father; Jesus gave his mother to another "son." Mary's "Be it done according to your word" .was consummated in Jesus' "Into your hands I commend my spirit." But that cry of ultimate shared suffering was not the end. Out of it came new and eternal life, pain transformed into last-ing joy. We have no recorded appearance of the risen Jesus to his mother. Maybe it occurred but was too private, too personal, to be recorded. Maybe Jesus and Mary knew each other so well that there was no need for such confirmation. What we do know with faith's assurance is that now they are united beyond suf-fering in love's joy. Compassion breaks hearts open, leaving them vulnerable to more pain but also to more love. It did so for Mary; it can do the same for us if we are willing to risk a love that suffers because of caring for another. Such love is very different from the passivity of self-centered suffering that we bring on our-selves and which has almost no value. Worrying over all the "maybes" of our fears for self or others is common enough, but it accomplishes nothing. While acknowledging that we .are wor-riers, we also need to move proactively toward more produc-tive thinking. Similarly the murmuring and muttering that runs its compulsive tape through our minds needs closure, not the self-defeating stance that allows the pain to go on because "that Review for Religious is just the way things are." Ill health, our own or other peo-ple's, is not allowed to serve as a semilegitimate excuse for imposing unnecessarily on the goodwill of others or withdraw-ing from the concerns of the wider community. Similarly, true compassion does not permit people to become victims of the tragedies that have befallen them. Contrast self-indulgent forms of suffering with true compas-sion, where an individual goes beyond ego's narrow, rigid bound-aries to reach out to others in their pain. Such self-sacrifice is life-size, opening us to love's demands, risking involvement beyond our capacity to control the cost; it is redemptive. Such was the passion of Jesus; such was Mary's compassionate love. Christocentric Suffering Fruitful suffering is incarnational. It both accepts and works against the here-and-now pain that comes into our own lives and the lives of others with whom we risk love's involvement. This kind of suffering makes a real difference in us, in our very selves. It did so in particularly dramatic ways in the life of Francis of Assisi, and this is what we celebrate on 17 September when we remember his reception of the stigmata, having his body marked with the wounds of Jesus. What happened to Francis is what must happen in some way in our own lives. Sharing in the pas-sion of Jesus is meant to mark us, to make us different. The process begins when we look long and lovingly at Jesus and see how unlike him we are. This is the sinful self that needs conversion, and such radical repentance is bound to be costly. Changing old patterns of behavior which we recognize as self-defeating, but which still offer the comfort of familiarity, exposes us to the awkwardness of the new and untried. Letting go of habits, even habits that have been helpful in the past but no longer contribute to our growth, seems as risky as a child's first steps without support. All of these changes, not only from bad to good but also from good to better, initiate a cycle of falling, failing, struggling, starting, over. It is the cross of repentance that encourages true growth. The pain of conversion, both initial and ongoing, is made more bearable as long as we feel we are in control. Determining what we are going to change, the timing, when and how much, September-October 2002 Beha ¯ Made Perfect through Suffering There comes a time when all our activity is fixed on only one point, that of obedience and surrender. means that the very self is never much threatened. And yet it is this self, which has a mind of its own, a will of its own, that must die. Growth into Christ implies obedience. Suffering that is redemptive, then, is both active and passive. These two elements are related not as contradictories, as though some pain were active and some passive, but rather as the con-cave and convex of the same reality. Living as a Christian requires asceticism. We must make a choice, take a stand, do something. Even when pain comes into our life unbidden, we are actively responsible for the attitude we take toward it. And yet suffering is not to be chosen for its own sake; it must, as we have seen, be worked against. Still there comes a time when all our activity is fixed on only one point, that of obedience and surrender. In the end we are asked to give back to God all that God has first given us: our activities, our gifts, our relationships, our very lives. But this is not where we begin. First we give thanks to the "one who has given us everything needed for life" (i P 1:3) by using whatever we have received in the service of others. And we continue to do that as long as we can, accepting the suffering that is implicit in generous service: fatigue, the disci-pline of constancy, the boredom of daily routine. We continue to give despite the discouragement of failure, of plans that go wrong, and perhaps of the ingratitude of those whom we are trying to serve. In simply doing what is ours to do, we come to know the purification of active suffering. We learn that saying yes to others includes a no to ourselves. Francis knew this only too well. His decision to follow Christ more closely cost him dearly. He lost his relationship with his family (especially his father) and with friends, gave up his dream of glory through knighthood. Kissing the leper at the beginning of his conversion meant going beyond the comfort-able generosity of tossing someone a coin. His call to preach the gospel included all the hardship of an itinerant lifestyle. Embracing Lady Poverty meant going without the security of Review for Religious possessions. Even the great number of followers who were attracted by his example brought its own suffering, complicat-ing with the onerous responsibility of administration the simple life he desired. In addition to these sufferings, Francis also deliberately practiced a demanding asceticism. In fact, he afflicted his body so severely that he ruined his health, a mistake he came to rec-ognize and regret. At the end of his life he owed Brother Body an apology and said so. But Francis's initial mistake does not mean that freely chosen asceticism is of no value. On the con-trary, the small suffering implied in such self-imposed disci-pline incarnates our desire for God and makes room in our hearts for deeper union. This was Francis's experience and that of so many of the saints. It can also be ours, if we embrace the active asceticism of emptying ourselves of some perfectly good and legitimate things in order to make room for God. Fasting is the classic example of such discipline. Food is necessary for our survival and is one of our everyday pleasures as well. Our enjoyment of food is healthy. Unfortunately, many and even most of us overeat or undereat, and that is unhealthy. We indulge ourselves, passing up the vegetables and taking a second desert. We abuse food and ourselves in the process. I sometimes suspect that a piece of fruit as the symbol of the first temptation is especially apt, since eating remains a problematic area for many people. And so fasting retains its importance as a spiritual discipline. Setting some limits on what, when, and how much we eat can give some realism to our need to die to that demanding self of ours which expects ready gratification. A reasonable fast not only does not endanger our health, it p~obably promotes itq while also letting us share in some small way in the hunger of the multitudes in our world who lack enough food to live on. What we save by cutting back on snack food, or on expensive kinds of meat, can be given away? as an immediate fruit of our fasting. On a more profound level, some experience of hunger can stir in our hearts a greater hunger for God. This is what Francis knew when he incorporated fasting into his way of life. Because his fasting was both a consequence and an expression of love, it finally came to be strict without being rigid. His severe fasts during six forty-day Lents left him //0'1 Septentber-October 2002 Beba ¯ Made Perfect tbrougb Suffering with an empty stomach but a heart full of love for creation, for his brothers and sisters, and above all for God. At the end Francis became free enough to enjoy good food, the sweetmeats his friend LadyJacoba brought him, and to exhort his brothers to rub the very walls with meat on Christmas. His fasting along with occasional feasting came to incorporate the worship of enjoyment, gratitude, and praise. Yet as time went on Francis's suffering was less and less a matter of his own decision and choosing. It became more pas-sive, something done to him where his only activity was the choice of response. Illness, aggravated by the imprudent asceti-cism of his early days and by the crude medical practices of the time, wearied both his body and his spirit. His stomach gave him almost constant pain. His eyes failed, and this man who had so rejoiced in the beauty of creation became almost blind. Even more of a heartbreak, some friars who had at first embraced his gospel way of life came to find it too much for them. They rejected Francis, demanding that he turn over the governance of the order to another. He lived out his final years in submission and obedience. Suffering abounded in his last years, and to this was added the pain of the stigmata. The wounds in his body were real; they bled profusely enough to require bandaging. The nail marks in his feet made every step difficult, and in the end he had to consent to ride on a donkey. His hands became more and more useless, and he hid them in the ample sleeves of his tunic. How did Francis respond to all of this suffering? When his eyes were cauterized, he prayed Brother Fire to be gentle with him. When his body was too worn to go any further, he returned to San Damiano, the place of his beginnings. There Clare and her sisters tried to care for him, and there in the midst of des-olation of body and spirit he composed his glorious Canticle of the Creatures: "Praise, my Lord, for Sister Moon and Brother Sun. for Sister Water and Brother Fire. for fair and every kind of weather." Yes, praise for every kind of weather and every gift of nature and grace, for the good times and the days of pain. Praise. And gratitude, because it is all gift. This is what the stigmata celebrates: not just the fact that Francis's body was marked by the cross, but that his whole life was. He embraced suffering, accepted what came to him, while Review for Religious working against it in his ministry of healing and serving oth-ers. His heart was filled with compassion for all God's creation, his own friars, the lepers, all in need. And at the end his lifelong desire to be like Christ left him marked with the wounds of the passion. What happened in his life must happen in ours, if not in such dramatic ways, at least with equal reality. Suffering will mark us as Christ's own. We will be signed with the sign of the cross. This is what I think we celebrate in the triad of feasts that mark mid September: the Exaltation of the Cross, the Sorrows of Mary, and the Stigmata of St. Francis. Each feast hints at suffering's true meaning. First of all, it is redemptive, intended to lead us into greater freedom and love. If this is to happen, we need to accept the suffering that inevitably comes into our lives, but also to move with all our strength in the direction of health and healing. And we need to do this regarding not only our own pain but the pain of others too. Compassion, standing with others in their pain, will open us to more suffering. But there is where we will want to be if we love enough. Still, it will be costly. Life will bring us suffering that we somehow choose, but also some that we do not choose but must learn to accept. This suffering will mark us with the wounds of the passion. What our little cycle of September feasts celebrates, then, is this: that in our lives suffering is redemptive both as gift and as given. This is what it was for Francis, for Mary, for Jesus. It is what the suffering that comes into all our lives is meant to be for us. Starshine Starshine is sometimes all the light we need to get our bearings. a heavenly.reminder of light beyond measure, that will not yield to the nightclouds haunting the horizon of our heart. Diana SeagoOSB September-October 2002 DENNIS j. BILLY Right Relationships in Consecrated Life theory and reality Right relationships reminds me of Anne Quirk's children's novel, Dancing with Great-Aunt Cornelia, a story about a dysfunctional New York family and a thirteen-year-old girl's discovery that her eccentric, incredibly tall, and extremely rich great-aunt is really her grandmother. Near the end of the story, the family finally comes to terms with its denial, insensitivity, anger, and odd way of relating. The reconciliation takes place at a dance party hosted by Great-Aunt Cornelia in her enormous Manhattan town house just off Fifth Avenue. Although tensions run high at first, eventually the entire family let down their guard and end up dancing with one another--and quite enjoying it. As Connie, the young narrator, puts it: "I'm sure I danced with my father, with Bendey, with my mother, and with Eleanor, too. For a while I guess we were all dancing together, in a sort of tango with seven people and a large dog. Maybe it was actually more of a tangle than a tango.''~ Dennis J. Billy CSSR, a frequent contributor to our pages, may till 25 January 2003 be reached at Mount St. Alphonsus Retreat Center; P.O. Box 219; Esopus, New York 12429. 1~eview for l~etigio~ Festivity and Dance To my mind, living in right relationship with others is much akin to taking part in a festive dance. What matters is not whether we know how to dance, but whether we are willing to participate and, if need be, even play the part of the fool. Many of us, unfortunately, have failed to recognize this important fact of life. Quirk's funny and eccentric story with its festive (and quite unexpected) ending reminds us of our human penchant for being continuously "out of step" with each other and refusing to take part in the celebration of.life. It pokes fun at our pet peeves and silly vanities that get in the way of our capacity to love. It puts a mirror before us and encourages us to take a good look at ourselves and at those around us. We may see that our attempts at getting along with one another are often "more of a tangle than a tango." But we may notice, as well, our deep desire to get it right, to be "in sync" with the people in our lives, despite the differences, the awkward diffidences, that keep us apart. Our desire to participate in this great dance of life comes from deep in the human heart, evincing the divine love within us. The Christian God is the God of the living. The life of the Trinity affirms the sacred character of festivity and dance. Celebration, for this God, flows from love and is closely allied to it. In his book The Third Peacock, Robert Farrar Capon breaks through our traditional stereotypes of God and involves the Father, Son, and Spirit in a heavenly bash of ongoing creation: And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, "Wonderful! Just what I had in mind! 7by! 7by! 7by!" And all God the Son and God the Holy Ghost could think of was to say the same thing. "Tbv! %v! Toy.t" So they shouted together "Tbv meod!" and they laughed and laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for beings to be, and bow clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine in unitate Spiritus Sancti, and they all threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.2 September-October 2002 Billy ¯ Right Relationships in Consecrated Life Our yearning for reveling, celebration, and dance, the desire to be at one with ourselves and to live in communion with those around us derives from something within us that is, at the same time, far beyond us. According to our Catholic belief, it is rooted in the ground of all reality, in the intimate life of love of a God who simultaneously is both one and many. The Christian God exists in and for communio: for unity in diversity and vice versa. Our desire for communion and right relationship stems from our being created in the image and likeness of this mysterious, personal, yet transcendent ground of love. Even though we are fallen, dysfunctional, bent out of shape (however one wishes to term it), the imprint of divinity grows within and manifests itself in our deepest longings. We yearn for communion with one another ultimately because of God's yearning for communion with us. We are miserably out of step with one another, yet haunted by the deeply rooted hope that things can and will get better, not through our own doing, but because of the God who made us, loves us, and holds us in being. A Spirituality of Communion Recent church documents highlight how important it is for believers to nurture a "spirituality of communion" in their lives. In Novo millennio ineunte (2001), his apostolic letter on the new millennium, John Paul II puts it this way: A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart's contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us. A spirituality of communion also means an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, and therefore as "those who are a part of me." This makes us able to share their joys and sufferings, to sense their desires and attend to their needs, to offer them deep and genuine friendship. A spirituality of communion implies also the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly, but also as a "gift for Review for Religious me." A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to "make room" for our brothers and sisters, bearing "each other's burdens" (Ga 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust, and jealousy. (§43) It would be difficult to come up with a more comprehensive vision of living in right relationship with others. The pope invites us to contemplate the mystery of the Trinity within our hearts and to discern its presence in those around us. He asks us to be aware of the presence of others, to minister to their needs, and to reach out to them in a spirit of friendship. Doing so means making room for others in our lives and allowing them to make room for us. It means living in communion with them on every level of our human makeup: the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual. The pope's words describe a vision of "right relationship" that few would fault or disavow. Most of us have no problem accepting his vision of communion or right relationship. Our trouble is putting it into practice. I am reminded of Walter Principe's distinction about the different levels of spirituality: the experiential, the doctrinal, and the analytical? We accept the teaching on the "spirituality of communion" and can easily accept it as a vision that we should look to and strive to implement in our lives. We can even study, analyze, and criticize it for the purpose of making it a more coherent body of teaching. On the experiential level, however, many of us have difficulty taking the steps to make this teaching on communion and right relationships an integral part of our lives. We experience a gap between what we envision and who we really are. That gap may be small or large. The size of it determines how much dysfunction we experience in our personal, family, and community lives. The pope invites us to contemplate the mystery of the Trinity within our hearts and to discern its presence in those around us. 497 . September-O,'tober 2002 Billy ¯ Right Relationships in Consecrated Life To my mind, the key question is not whether the gap between vision and experience exists, but whether we recognize it and are taking steps to make it smaller and smaller. We need to recognize the gap, accept it as something that will never fully go away (at least in this life), and take appropriate steps to narrow it. This task is not a one-time challenge, but must be taken up again with each new day. The Vision of Vita Consecrata My suspicion is that religious have a particularly difficult time coming to terms with the discrepancy between the vision of the life to which they have been called and their actual experience of it. I say this because the church places so much hope in consecrated persons' being "true experts" at achieving communion that the gap between vision and lived reality is bound to be quite large. This vision is presented quite clearly in Vita consecrata (1996), John Paul II's postsynodal apostolic exhortation on the consecrated life. As the following excerpt demonstrates, consecrated persons must live up to enormous expectations: A great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the church as communion, so strongly proposed by the Second Vatican Council. Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to pradtice the spirituality of communion as "witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design.". The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking, and acting which enables the church to grow in depth and extension. The life of communion, in fact, "becomes a sign for all the world and a compelling force that leads people to faith in Christ . In this way communion leads to mission, and itself becomes mission"; indeed, "communion begets communion: in essence it is a communion that is missionary." (~46) A little later the document makes it clear that an important aspect of this "spiri~ality of communion" is "an allegiance of Review for Relig4ous mind and heart to the magisterium of the bishops, an allegiance which must be lived honestly and clearly testified to before the people of God by all consecrated persons, especially those involved in theological research, teaching, publishing, catechesis, and the use of the means of social communication." To be sure, "because consecrated persons have a special place in the church, their attitude in this regard is of immense importance for the whole people of God." The document points to the testimonies of founders and foundresses, who demonstrated "a constant and lively sense of the church." To further its claim, it cites the loyal devotion, to the church of such great saints as Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and the Little Flower. Such examples of full ecclesial communion need to be constantly recalled if consecrated persons "are to resist the particularly strong centrifugal and disruptive forces at work today" (§46). Speaking, thinking, and acting with the magisterium are thus considered in the light of a vital role given to consecrated persons in the church universal in accord with the venerable tradition of great saints and founders and foundresses and with a view to the church's missionary nature. These ever expanding contexts give an added richness to the concept of the spirituality of communion and should not be overlooked. Only by taking them into account can consecrated persons understand their important role in the post-Vatican II era and "be nourished from the wellspring of a sound and deep spirituality" (§93). Another key text on the spirituality of communion comes later in the same document when institutes of the consecrated life are given the specific task of spreading this spirituality of communion: The church entrusts to communities of consecrated life the particular task of spreading the spirituality of communion, first of all in their internal life and then in the ecclesial community, and even beyond its boundaries, by opening or continuing a dialogue in charity, especially where today's world is torn apart by ethnic hatred or senseless violence. Placed as they are within the wbrld's different societies (societies frequently marked by conflicting passions and interests, seeking unity but uncertain about the ways Septentber-October 2002 Billy * Right Relationships in Consecrated Life to attain it), communities of consecrated life--where persons of different ages, languages, and cultures meet as brothers and sisters--are signs that dialogue is always possible and that communion can bring differences into harmony. (§51) This paragraph affirms the pope's hope "that all will grow in the understanding and spirituality of communion" (§50). It also supports his earlier statement about the obligation of fraternity as a form of witness to the Trinity: "By constantly promoting fraternal love also in the form of the common life, the consecrated life has shown that sharing in the Trinitarian communion can change human relationships and create a new type of solidarity" (§41), one which does everything "in communion and d!alogne" (§74) and which favors "that 'dialogue of life' which embodies a basic model of mission and of the proclamation of Christ's gospel" (§102). Notice the threefold range of this special task entrusted to consecrated persons. They are to spread the spirituality of communion first within themselves, second within the ecclesial communion, and third beyond its boundaries. Motivated by their deep personal love for Christ (see §84), they reach out in dialogue that "is the new name of charity, especially charity within the church" (§74). --YO0 Implications for Consecrated Life I would like to take a. deeper look at just what this "particular task of spreading the spirituality of communion" (§51) might mean for members of institutes of consecrated life. The threefold framework of internal life, ecclesial communion, and beyond will be particularly helpful in this regard. Internal Life. In the first place, institutes of consecrated life are called to put their own houses in order and live in harmony: "In an age characterized by the globalization of problems and the return .of the idols of nationalism, international institutes especially are called to uphold and to bear witness to the sense of communion between peoples, races, and cultures" (§51). They do so first and foremost by living out their common charism in communion with each other, even though they represent various age groups, nationalities, cultural backgrounds, and theological perspectives. The attempt of such communities to dialogue Review for Religious among themselves and to bring unity out of the diversity of their experience is an effective sign of that community of heart and mind to which all are called. This communion in the institute's internal life should exist on all levels of its communal makeup-- local, provincial, and general--and should foster cooperation between these levels, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity. A natural outgrowth of this internal application of the spirituality of communion is cooperation among the different institutes themselves (see §52). Bound by the common call to the evangelical counsels, these institutes, both old and new, should regard one another with profound respect and strive to work together in their efforts to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world. Relationships among such institutes should not be marred by jealousy, indifference, or suspicion. The document recalls St. Bernard's words about the various religious orders: I admire them all. I belong to one of them by observance, but to all of them by charity. We all need one another: the spiritual good which I do not own and possess, I receive from others . In this exile the church is still on pilgrimage and is, in a certain sense, plural: she is a single plurality and a plural unity. All our diversities, which make manifest the richness of God's gifts, will continue to exist in the one house of the Father, which has many rooms. Now there is a division of graces; then there will be distinctions of glory. Unity, both here and there, consists in one and the same charity. (§52) In this spirit the document encourages coordinating bodies such as the conferences of major superiors and the conferences of secular institutes to work in harmony with each other as well as with the episcopal conference of each country. They are also encouraged "to maintain frequent and regular contacts with the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, as a sign of their communion with the Holy See" (§53). The point of all this is that the spirituality of communion, once it is lived within the life of an institute of consecrated life itself, should naturally overflow into similar relations beyond its boundaries. Ecclesial Communion. For this reason, the pope also encourages mutual relationships of respect and collaboration Septentber-October 2002 Billy ¯ Rigbt Relationships in Consecrated Life between institutes of consecrated life and every level of ecclesial communion: with other states of life within the church (the laity, the clergy) and also with brothers and sisters of the various Christian confessions. All of this should be done out of respect for the common dignity shared by all the faithful (§31), but in such a way that "the identity of the institute in its internal life is not harmed" (§56). In this context, cooperation with the laity receives special mention. The document notes that "many institutes have come to the conclusion that their charism can be shared with the laity" (§54). This sharing takes many forms, from sharing their spirituality to various kinds of pastoral collaboration. As a result, "the participation of the laity often brings unexpected and rich insights into certain aspects of the charism, leading to a more spiritual interpretation of it and helping to draw from it directions for new activities in the apostolate" (§55). Emphasizing the equal dignity of both men and women before God (§57), the document specifically deals with the role of consecrated women. It describes them as "signs of God's tender love towards the human race" (§57) and points out that "women's new self-awareness also helps men to reconsider their way of looking at things, the way they understand themselves, where they place themselves in history and how they interpret it, and the way they organize social, political, economic, religious, and ecclesial life" (§57). Ecumenical dialogue is yet another level of ecclesial communion to which institutes of consecrated life must give due attention. Lectio divina, common prayer, dialogue in friendship, cordial hospitality, and common undertakings of service and witness are among thq many forms of ecumenical dialogue. The work of Christianity is not just the work of these institutes that were specifically founded for this purpose or because of a later calling (§57). The pope makes it quite clear that "no institute of consecrated life should feel itself dispensed from working for this cause" (§101). Special emphasis is given to the monastic tradition in the Eastern Catholic Churches for the help they can give in promoting unity with the Orthodox churches and given also to monasteries of contemplative life, to whom the pope entrusts "the spiritual ecumenism of prayer, conversion of heart, and charity" (§101). Review for Religious Beyond. The spirituality of communion moves consecrated persons beyond the bounds of the Christian communion of faith into dialogue with other faiths and cultures: "Because 'interreligious dialogue is a part of the church's evangelizing mission,' institutes of consecrated life cannot exempt themselves from involvement also in this field, each in accordance with its own charism and following the directives of ecclesiastical authority" (§102). They do this primarily through "the testimony of a life of poverty, humility, and chastity, imbued with fraternal love for all" i§I02). Dedicated to that "dialogue of life" which finds its mission in the proclamation of the Good News, they "promote appropriate forms of dialogue, marked by cordial friendship and mutual sincerity, with monastic communities of other religions" (§102). Other areas for cooperation include concern for human life and efforts to promote the dignity of women (§102). All such efforts, moreover, require proper formation, study, and research, together with deep faith and personal and spiritual maturity (§102). Finally, the "spirituality of communion" asks institutes of consecrated life to place themselves at the service of all humanity. Their service to the world involves "a life of self-giving love" (§75). Indeed, "the fact that consecrated persons fix their gaze on the Lord's countenance does not diminish their commitment on behalf Of humanity; on. the contrary, it strengthens this commitment, enabling it to have an impact on history, in order to free history from all that disfigures it" (§75). This means, first and foremost, offering "the witness of a life given totally to God and to their brothers and sisters, in imitation of the Savior, who out of love for humanity made himself a servant" (§76). It also means living .a life of genuine inculturation, one that "requires attitudes similar to those of the Lord when he became man and walked among us in love and meekness" (§79). In their attempt to serve as "a gospel leaven The "spirituality of communion" asks institutes of consecrated life to place themselves at the service of all humanity. September-October 2002 Billy ¯ Right Relationships in Consecrated Life within a culture, purifying and perfecting it" (§80), they follow the church in its preferential option for those "in situations of greater weakness" (§82). This includes "the poor, in varied states of affliction., those on the margins of society, the elderly, the sick, the young, any and all who are considered and treated as 'the least'" (§82). Some of the concrete ways in which they meet the needs of the poor include the care of the sick, their presence in the world of education, their presence in the field of social communications, and the evangelization of culture (see §§83 and 96-99). Their life of evangelical poverty, moreover, "is a value in itself," which, "accompanied by a preferential love for the poor," is expressed "especially by sharing the conditions of life of the most neglected" (§90). To be sure, "there are many communities which live and work among the poor and the marginalized; they embrace their conditions of life and share in their sufferings, problems, and perils" (§90). To summarize: The spirituality of communion is kindled by God in the institute of consecrated life and is meant to have a ripple effect on the entire life of the church. Arising within the institute, where members of various ages, cultures, and educational backgrounds live together in a spirit of fraternal love, it reaches out to other institutes, to other states of life within the church, to other Christian denominations, to other religions, and to all of humanity. It does so in a spirit of dialogue and service to give witness to the personal presence of Christ in the world and to the power of the Trinity to transform human relationships. Its mission is to build relationships of solidarity wherever human beings congregate and to be a sign of the intimate life with God to which all are called. The Gap between Vision and Experience The above presen.tation shows that the Catholic Church has a clear and extensive teaching on the spirituality of communion, what it means to live in right relationship with others. While this teaching has concrete implications for communities of consecrated life, the problem we are facing, as I suggested earlier, has to do with narrowing the gap between the teaching we profess and our actual lived experience. We need to take a good, hard look at these urgent practical concerns. Review for Religious One way of doing so is to adapt the psychological language of action, voluntary disposition (or habims), and attitude to the experience and needs of consecrated life today. According to this understanding of human behavior, an action involves a single deliberate object and intention, while a voluntary disposition (as opposed to an unwanted involuntary habit) refers to an active pattern of behavior acquired through the continuous repetition of actions. An attitude, in turn, is an active disposition voluntarily acquired through the repetition of options, those value choices that define a person's life project. An action, in other words, is singular and concrete; a voluntary disposition, a deep-rooted deliberate pattern of behavior; an attitude, a deeply ingrained option for a particular set of values.4 Ideally, there exists a strong continuity be-tween a person's actions, voluntary dispositions, and attitudes. In real life, however, this continuity can manifest varying degrees of strength and is often even disrupted. The same could be said of the actions, voluntary dispositions, and attitudes of a family, group, or religious community. When applied to communities of consecrated life in the light of the church's teaching on the spirituality of communion and the gap between vision and lived experience, it is of paramount importance that we find a way of helping to shape people's attitudes. To do so, we must recognize that there is a circular relationship between actions, voluntary dispositions, and the formation of attitudes. That is to say, attitudes give rise to various actions and voluntary dispositions and are at the same time shaped by them. To overlook these important relationships is to risk forming consecrated persons whose actions run contrary to, or at best are inconsistent with, the values they truly hold and which define their life's project. This circular relationship between actions, voluntary dispositions, and attitudes means that religious communities Ideally, there exists a strong continuity between a person's actions, voluntary dispositions, and attitudes. September- October 2002 Billy ¯ Right Relationships in Consecrated Life must develop complex strategies for narrowing the gap between vision and lived experience. Such a strategy must involve an ongoing interplay between teachings, structures, practices, and critical reflection that enables individuals and the community to test and verify the vision that defines them so that it can be authentically nuanced (and perhaps redefined) to express what they truly are called to. From there, the community needs to develop structures and practices that will reinforce in daily life the values expressed by this defining vision. For the desired attitudes to truly take hold, these structures and practices need.to be firm yet flexible, taking into account the three principles of church teaching about right relationships: the dignity of the human person, the common good, and the virtue of solidarity. In today's world, communities of consecrated life cannot be effective instruments of the spirituality of communion if they do not make great efforts to inculcate these principles in the lives of their members. To do otherwise would increase the gap between vision and lived experience rather than narrowing it. Narrowing the Gap In his popular bestseller Maybe (Maybe Not), Robert Fulghum offers some important insights into what he calls the public, private, and secret lives of everyday life: Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected, even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.s Although Fulghum is writing about American society in general, his insight has, to my mind, special significance for our topic. If, in their attempts to narrow the gap between vision and lived reality, communities of consecrated life do not give due consideration to the attitudes behind the various dispositions and actions that they ask of their members, a dangerous rupture can take place between the public face they present to the outside Review for Religious world, the private life lived within the community, and a secret life known only to a few, hidden from other members, and institutionally suppressed and even denied. When this occurs, the dysfunction within a community can reach great intensity and cause great misery for both the members and those they claim to serve. A religious institution, I am suggesting, has not only a public and a private life, but also a secret life. For members to live in fight relationship with others, all three of these lives need to be acknowledged, understood, and dealt with in mature and responsible ways. Otherwise the gap between vision and lived experience will increase rather than diminish, and the community will be based on an illusion, living in a house of mirrors, where appearances deceive. A community of consecrated life, in other words, needs to get in touch with its shadow side, the darker part of the community's life, which influences decisions even though the community may be only peripherally aware of them. Only by acknowledging this dark side, taming it, and then befriending it will a community ever come to understand itself and be able to channel its vast resources in creative and constructive ways. I do not intend to go into specifics about what all of this means for the evangelical counsels or life in community. The church's teaching on these constituent elements of the consecrated life is clear and has been adequately developed elsewhere. What I will say, however, is that, when examining the spirituality of their particular institutes, communities need to look at the various gaps that exist

Issue 52.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1993. ; . Contempora~ Living ¯ VOLUME 52 ~ NUMBER5 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 V~Tashington, 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 Ra\TES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plusmailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1993 Review for Religious review fr°e[ ig oi us Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Sefin Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1993' * VOLUME 52 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents 646 feature Charisms and Religious Life Elizabeth McDonough OP underscores the importance of understanding charism and living it out in religious life. 66O living heritages Vincent de Paul's Charism in Today's Church Gerard H. Luttenberger CM presents Vincent de Paul's vision of the service of the poor and the search for God in a gospel context. 684 A Franciscan Discernment Experience--Part Two Joan Mueller OSF relates how one Franciscan woman witnessed to the discernment of God's will. 691 Ritual Leave-Taking Edward Foley OFMCap proposes the need and a way of response for a ritual reincorporation of retiring religious leaders. living with challenge 702 Christians and Their Passions James D. Whitehead and Eyelyn Eaton Whitehead encourage a befriending of our passions in order to live a full Christian life. 712 The Reality, Fact, and Fantasy of Incest Suzanne Zuercher OSB encourages spiritual directors to deal with the reality of incest issues even when a large measure of fantasy could be involved. 71.9 Dying--and See, We Are Alive Michael FitzPatrick OFM enters us into his experience of living with advanced prostate cancer. 642 Review for Religious 731 735 741 living sacramentally If Grain Could Talk Virginia Marie OCD presents an imaginative approach to our being grains of wheat. At the Heart of the Eucharist Joseph Allen Tetlow SJ suggests in parable form some focuses for Eucharist which receive less liturgical attention. Beyond Seven Sacraments Elizabeth Normanly SDSH reflects on the sacred reality that lies just under the surface of everyday experience. living consecrated life 745 Religious Vocations: New Signs of the Times Albert DiIanni SM focuses on the values important to young peo-ple as they consider a religious-life vocation. 764 Multiculturalism in Religious Life TodaY Catherine M. Harmer MMS explores how cultural and social minorities might be better integrated in religious congregations. 773 Religious Life---Mystery or Mistake? Annette M. Pelletier IHM draws attention to a link between the mystery of the human fascination with th~ Holy and the embodi-ment of that attraction in consecrated life. departments 644 Prisms 780 Canonical Counsel: Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents on Consecrated Life 787 Book Reviews S~pteraber-October 199~ 643 prisms Deadlines are a part of human living. There are deadlines for renewing driver's licenses. There are deadlines for research reports and for term papers in school. There are deadlines in the printing schedules of journals like this one. November 1, 1993, is the deadline for responses to the exploratory questions raised in the "lineamenta" called "Consecrated Life in the Church and the World"--the document intended to encourage reflec-tion and to solicit information and suggestions for use in the ninth ordinary general session of the Synod of Bishops. Although the Vatican Synod Secretariat has set a clear deadline for the responses it has invited, men and women religious have no deadline on the responsibility to con-tinue the study, reflection, and dialogue among themselves and with their local church people, clergy, and bishop so that we take advantage of this specially graced time for the whole t].ody of Christ. Of major importance in this ongoing discussion is the appreciation for the mystery of the church in its complexity of laity, clergy, and religious and in its hierarchical and charismatic elements. One hopes that a number of the bishops participating in the synod are conversant with the three-volume Council Daybook of Vatican II, which shows that the 1960s church included widely varying theologies of consecrated life. Where religious life fits within the church, God's people, was not a quickly or easily resolved question for the bishops as they formulated the council documents. Neither were there easily-agreed-upon theological understandings of the evangelical counsels and the elements of the life called reli-gious through the ages. Since few bishops who were in the debates and discussions leading to the Vatican II decrees 644 Review for Religious. remain active, there is no easy way to make use of those debates and discussions in efforts to move beyond the limitations and com-promises of the then-new Vatican II thinking. But we should not simply lament that the bishops who will participate in the synod have limited experience and acquaintance with these specialized topics; we should become aware that our own continuing familiarity with the documents and decrees of Vatican II and subsequent documents may be, at best, spotty or even nonexistent. We need to take to heart the sentiment expressed by T. S. Eliot in "Burnt Norton": What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. How can we make present to ourselves and for our times the richness of the Spirit's gift of consecrated life--to us religious and to the church? As I announced in the January-February issue of this year, Review for Religious for its own contribution to our synod preparation features an article in each issue which suggests a significant theological approach for this age of ours. We hope that all these articles provide material for further personal reflec-tion and community discussion. In addition, Elizabeth McDonough OP in our regular Canonical Counsel department recalls for us a number of the recent ecclesial documents that are relevant to informed dialogue on the topic of consecrated life. We may need to face the question, for example, whether charisms, even corporate ohes, can be timebound. Might whole religious groups, because their charism is incarnated, have a tem-porary lifetime? Should we spell out chastity, poverty, and obe-dience as vows essential to religious life when as vows they have not specifically marked the consecration of a number of religious groups? We might ponder whether evangelical counsels in their nonspecificity say more about what marks religious life. Since both lay persons and the clergy share in religious life, is the lev-eling quality of this identity in the church vital for internal reli-gious- life administration? Any number of questions can and should be raised and seen in the light of tradition and new theological understanding. Whatever the results of the October 1994 synod, our own ongoing preparations as religious and as church promise, beyond any wintery deadline, a springtime of redeeming grace. D~ivid L. Fleming sJ September-October 1993 645 feature ELIZABETH MCDONOUGH Charisms and Religious Life Before Vatican Cou_ncil II, charism was certainly not a fre-quent topic of conversation in Catholic circles, and dis-cussion of the charisma of religious life was relatively nonexistent. Nor does any conciliar document actually employ the word charism in reference to religious life as such, even though various discussions of council partici-pant~ specifically included charism as central to conse-crated life in the church. To be sure, Vatican II documents clearly recognize the charismatic nature of the diversity of gifts of religious life, just as they clearly affirm the pat-rimony or heritage of institutes--that is, their own proper character and functions--as important for the good of the whole church (Perfectae Caritatis, §1 and §8). The council also stressed the need for faithful retention of the spirit and aims of each founder and foundress, as well as for fidelity to each institute's sound traditions (Perfectae Caritatis, §2b). Charisms: Postconciliar Development Pope Paul VI was the first to use the word charisms officially in relation to religious life--in his 1971 apostolic exhortation on the renewal and adaptation of religious institutes after the council (Evange/ica Testificatio, §11). This and other documents during Paul VI's papacy referred Elizabeth McDonough OPis well known to our readers since she serves as the canon law editor. Her address can be found on the inside front cover. 646 Review for Religious to charism as providing a constancy of orientation while allowing for internal growth and change (Evangelica Testificatio, §12). Charism was also presented as the experience of the Spirit by founders and foundresses which was then transmitted to their fol-lowers for continual development in harmony with their role in the ¯ church (Mutuae Relationes, §1 i). In addition, during this time a direct connection was affirmed between the obligation of superi-ors to protect their institute's specific charism and the right of the institute, to maintain an appropriate autonomy'of life and gov-ernment (Mutuae Relationes, § 13). Subsequentl~ the word charism appeared among the norms concerning consecrated life during various stages of the revision process of the Code of Canon Law. In the final version of the Code promulgated in 1983, however, these references were replaced by conciliar terms and phrases mentioning the spiritual patrimony or nature or character or sound traditions of an insti-tute (see, for example, cc. 577, 578, and 631). Some writers sug-gest that the nub of difficulties for religious in the church today is the distifiction, or even the supposed contradiction, between the hierarchical and the charismatic.1 Nevertheless, Pope John Paul II, in a letter directed to the bishops of the United States in 1983, exhorted them to encourage and assist: religious in living faith-fully according to their charism. Shortly thereafter he issued an apostolic exhortation addressed to religious in which he viewed charisms as gifts approved by the church for the good of the church and of the world and as fortifying and fostering religious com-munities in both their life and their apostolic service (Redemption# Donum, §15). More recently the 1990 Vatican Directives on Formation in Religious Institutes reemphasized the importance of their particular charisms to the life and development of the vari-ous religious communities (Potissimum Institutioni, § 16). While it is quite clear that the Second Vatican Council treated consecrated lifeforms more as dynamic, living i'ealities than as static entities defined by legislation, it is also clear that Vatican II attempted to articulate certain theological understandings and practical boundaries within which the various gifts of consecrated life should continue to exist and function. These conciliar positions treated consecrated life as an integral part of the life and holiness of the church itself and saw certain evangelical counsels as peren-nially significant in all historical manifestations of consecrated lifeforms (Lumen Gentium, §44). More than a quarter century of September-October 1993 647 McDonougb ¯ Charisms and Religious Life discussion on the charism or charisms of religious life, however, has still left the notion theoretically elusive and practically debated. The question still arises: What, if anything, can be reasonably articulated and plausibly understood with regard to a charism of religious life? Charisms: Meaning and Expression Any genuine charism of religious life is a pure gift of God for the good of the church. Accordingly, a religious-life charism can generally be described as a window on the gospel, a framed vision of people following Jesus that attracts others to do so in a similar way. They encounter in the charism of great religious founders and foundresses--the Benedictine charism, the Dominican charism, the Franciscan charism, the Mercy charism, the Daughters of Charity charism, and so forth--a phenomenon both intellec-tually and affectively compelling. Indeed, both history and our own background witness to the fact that people often respond to genuine religious charisms at great personal cost and by over-coming a variety of formidable obstacles. Moreover, charisms attract people to engage in an overall task together rather than only or primarily as free agents in independent endeavors. A charism of religious life can be recognized as a lived and living reality. It is a ~eed planted in fertile ground that takes root and grows and multiplies abundantly. It becomes a strong plant that can be transplanted to other climates, other cultures, and other eras. A genuine charism of religious life can also transcend ethnic differences, social and economic classes, and the several generations alive at a giyen time. It enables people .to say, "Yes, we who have such diverse origins and experiences can live together constructively in a consciously Christian manner." A genuine charism of religious life can transcend economic theories, politi-cal preferences, and personal prejudices. Indeed, a genuine charism of religious life has the potential to transform people's lives no matter who or where they are. Charisms are expressed in an entire way of life, a compre-hensive culture, not merely in various norms and particular prac-tices. They are deeply rooted in healthy spirituality. They exhibit sound and supple structures. Genuine charisms have customary practices that are formative of the chosen lifestyle. They also make valuable, constructive ecclesial contributions; for charisms of reli- 648 Review for Religious. gious life do not exist--indeed, cannot exist--merely for their own sake or merely for the sake of those who embrace them. As an indication of this, note that, according to a recent three-year soci-ological study in the United States, membership in a particular community primarily for affiliative belonging rather than for "the mis-sion of the church and the extension of the charism" needs to be addressed by religious institutes if they hope to survive.2 Another significant element of genuine religious charisms is that they live only in people, not in documents. The charisms are gifts to people, and they captivate and transform the recipients. However enamored many religious may be with popular refounding, reweaving, and re-creat-ing trends, there is actually no future for any institute that did not begin with--or has not been successfully grafted onto--a genuine religious-life charism. No amount of well-disposed and concerted effort can create a charism of reli-gious life. Whatever sociological or anthropological sleight of hand well-intentioned people might employ, it simply cannot be done. Historically speaking, in the United States a good number of religious communities (especially of women) seem to have been founded to perform a particular spiritual or corporal work of mercy at times when there were tremendous practical needs and when American bishops actively sought a willing and capable, if not always large, work force. Some groups that were eventually rec-ognized as religious institutes responded to these needs with valiant efforts and heroic virtue. Some others, however, may have begun and responded somewhat superficially, without the deep rooting of a genuine religious-life charism. For a number of them, the Vatican II mandate to return to the gospel and to the spirit of the founder or foundress resulted in their being confronted with salvaging an historically borrowed and circumstantially time-bound way of life that was not founded in a genuine charism and, consequently, was not well sustained by a deep and relevant spirituality. For others, A religious-life charism can generally be described as a window on the gospel, a framed vision of people, following Jesus that attracts others to do so in a similar way. September-October 1993 649 McDonougb * Cbarisms and Religious Lift the conciliar mandate resulted in their being confronted with prac-tices that seemed to have little or no connection with the original charism of their founder or foundress. For still others, the conciliar mandate to return to the original charism seems to have resulted more in selective borrowing of rhetoric to justify desired alter-ations than in a clearer awareness of the original heritage with a view to embracing its authentic beauty and, often, its concomi-tant demands. In regard to the latter, for example, after the council a num-ber of institutes of women claiming Dominican roots readily opted for contemporary participation in the order's preaching heritage, but just as readily deemphasized the order's original heritage of common life, liturgical prayer, and assiduous study of sacred truth. Similarly, after the council, followers of the Mercy charism quickly and rightly reemphasized Catherine McAuley's concern for women, but simultaneously transformed her notion of Mercy communi-ties as separate institutes in the various dioceses into one of uni-fied national organizations espousing global causes--a quantum leap from the "amalgamation" that produced the Mercy Union in the United States in the early 20th century. Or again, at least some postconciliar followers of Francis promptly translated his incar-national theology into a diffuse ecospirituality while managing not to do anything very concrete and practical for Francis's Lady Poverty. Thus, at least in some instances, the Vatican II mandate that religious return to the roots of their charism seems to have stirred up speculation about what a founder or foundress would do if he or she were now alive, with actions sometimes resulting that were contrary to, or at best not very inclusive of, what the founder or foundress consciously espoused and actually did. Charisms: Basic Presumptions Regarding charism, there are certain rather obvious theoret-ical presumptions--and certain practical assessments directly related to them--which might strike some readers as simplistic, but which warrant articulation. The presumptions are threefold. First, either a religious community has a charism or it does not. If a community does not have a charism, it is not going to survive. Second, if a community has a charism, the members understand it or they do not. If a community has a charism but the members do not understand it, the community is not going to survive. Third, 650 Review for Religious ¯ . if a community has a charism and understands it, the members can either strive to live it or they can decline to do so. If a com-munity has a charism and more or less understands it but the mem-bers decline to live it, then that community is not going to survive. More pointedly: if any community lands on the negative side of any of the above disjunctive assertions, then it probably does not merit survival. But note again: this assessment is not directly concerned with the foibles and failures of human endeavors; it is concerned with the importance of the charisms of consecrated life as such. Precisely because charisms are gifts of the Spirit to and for the church, they are too precio~as to be left indefinitely in the trust of people who are heedless of a charism's inherent value or unmindful of their personal responsibility to embrace and live its practical consequences. If members of a community cannot articulate clearly its fun-damental spirituality, if they are functionally unaware of its sound traditions, if they cannot realistically recall or do not meaning-fully practice its formative customs, if they cannot understand its internal workings in keeping with who they are as religious, then the community probably does not have a charism. Although the full meaning of a charism can never be completely specified, any charism has at least some identifiable characteristics and some external lineaments for practical recognition. If members of a com- .munity 'have not a clue what these might be, then--more likely than not--the community simply does not have a charism. And, as disconcerting as the statement may be for the adherents of some contemporary trends, it bears noting again that no one can actu-ally refound or reweave or re-create a charism of religious life. In fact, in contrast to the pelagianism of prevailing literature in this regard, I would suggest that---rather than refounding or reweav-ing or re-creating a charism--if anything, people receive it and respond to it. All that having been said, what then does a charism actually do to the receiver, to you and me and the many other plain human beings who receive it? Expressed in the subjective way that each religious probably has experienced it at some time or another, a vocation to live within a certain religious charism is an over-whelming sense that something quite beyond clear description has dropped into one's life (or into one's hands or into one's heart or into one's head) and evoked a spontaneous personal response such as "Oh, my God, if I take this seriously, it could transform me September-October 1993 651 McDonougb ¯ Cbarisms and Religious Life drastically for the rest of my life." However differently one who has experienced the call to live a religious-life charism might express it, or in whatever circumstances one might have experienced it, this dropped-into-your-lif~ gift--stirs awareness and promises transformation both drastic and continuous. In fact, if received and responded to, radical transformation is precisely what a charism has the potential of accomplishing as a person becomes publicly, consciously, perpetually committed to following Jesus more closely in this fashion and with these people and for this pur-pose- whether after the manner of Benedict or Francis or Dominic or Angela Merici or Ignatius Loyola or Louise de Marillac or Catherine McAuley or other such leaders. Although charisms live only in people, not in writings, nev-ertheless rules, constitutions, and other fundamental documents of a religious institute are important because they schematically and historiographically suggest a lifeform and purpose about which the church confidently says to individuals, "If you follow this form of gospel life, you will not be led astray from your true end." That is the assurance given to religious in recognized lifeforms through the ecclesial approval of specific charisms. The documents of any religious institute, however, are at most merely the best possible articulation of the lived understanding of the institute's charism through its generations of existence. Documents can do no more than suggest the cumulative richness of the lived experience and self-understanding of a community with a charism, for only peo-ple actually embody it. In fact, it can be hypothesized that, if all the documents of a community with a genuine charism were destroyed but its members were to survive, others would still be able to grasp the full import of the charism through the living members. In contrast, if all the members of a religious institute that has a gen-uine charism were to cease to exist but the documents were to survive, others would not be able to grasp the import of the charism or would be able to understand it only superficially. More point-edly: charisms exist, not in dead letters, but in living persons who themselves are formed and informed by the original charism both lived and written down. Charisms: Living Example As an example of a charism being lived, I would suggest' St. Dominic, with his passionate concern for the Truth--not in the 652 Review for Religious abstract, but in the person of Jesus, the Word of God--and with his unmitigated compassion for people, all of whom God loves in his beloved Son. That is to say, perhaps people cannot truly be Dominicans if they claim passionate concern for the truth while disdaining people, especially people who disagree with them--which at times seems a Dominican penchant. Those who embrace the Dominican charism in any age may have no other option--if they wish to continue in existence--but to ardently desire, dili-gently pursue, and freely share the Truth who is Jesus. Moreover, this desire and pursuit and sharing must be accomplished in the manner of Dominic amid the great collective wit-ness of his followers through the cen-turies. This witness includes fearless, respectful encounter with the people in the areas where the gospel needs to be preached. Such evangelization is fun- Radical transformation is precisely what a charism has the potential of accomplishing as a person becomes publicly, consciously, perpetually committed to following Jesus. damental to Dominican apostolic life: compassionately meeting people where they are and being for them channels of God's truth. On one occasion Dominic, on a journey to assist a local bishop in arranging a courtly marriage, met an innkeeper who was "wretchedly deluded" by the then prevalent Albigensian heresy. Dominic was moved to pity--not anger or disdain, but pity--and fervendy began to exhort the innkeeper, zealously discoursing with him through the night with such compelling wisdom that he was moved by God's grace to embrace the faith. There we have, per-haps, a Dominican paradigm for confronting the wretched delu-sion and incredible confusion of any era. As Dominicans we are obliged to be moved to pity, to plead emotionally, and to exhort fervendy--not merely with abstract propositions--so that the grace of God can be operative in others' lives. As Dominicans we must both believe and embody the truths we speak---so that the way we handle the attractiveness of truth is itself attractive. Dominicans must speak, not merely with their own wisdom or their own spirit, but with God's. Note, too, the circumstances of Dominic's encounter with the innkeeper. His sojourn at the inn occurred during his travel for the September-October 1993 653 McDonougb ¯ Cbarisms and Religious Life purpose of helping to arrange a wedding, a wedding that, for rea-sons quite beyond the control of the bishop and himself, did not come to pass. There may be a further message here for Dominicans, namely, that we should be willing to be surprised by, to respond to, and to work hard at tasks God sets for us by sud-denly rearranging the apostolic endeavors we ourselves had planned. Indeed, the specifically Dominican way of evangeliza-tion today might well involve pity, exhortation, and argumentation in the face of delusion, with an eye to people's eventual conversion in graced ways that are not of our doing and are not even the out-come of the kind of apostolic project we have dreamed of crafting. Let us return now to the matter of religious-life charisms as such. In this age in which people are incredibly confused about numerous personal, communal, national, and global problems; in the midst of great diversity of religious belief; after the break-down and fragmentation of many traditions; in the context of eco-nomic upheaval~ and political disagreement--in all this the living witness of any genuine religious-life charism matters. It announces uniquely, with specific and recognizable characteristics, that "fol-lowing Jesus" still has meaning precisely as a commitment to some-thing beyond whatever pragmatic tasks each religious is involved with here and now. This is not to suggest that the charism of a religious institute flourishes wherever any isolated member may be doing with dedication something worthwhile. Rather, the causal-ity is just the reverse: transcendent awareness and inner conviction and commitment manifest themselves to others only through the lived and living reality of the total charism, which is a grace received and, as such, not an energetic project of one's creative imagination. Charisms: Basic Sources What qualifies and practices, then, can religious look for in the experience and response of a founder or foundress to enable them to live their religious charism constructively today? The sugges-tions derived from basic sources include firm spiritual founda-tions; sound intellectual knowledge; tested advancement in virtue (perhaps reflective of the terribly old-fashioned notion that habits of doing good are significant); getting along honestly and chari-tably with others; responding to the graces presented in one's par-ticular calling; and constant reliance on God in all endeavors. The 654 Review for Religious way of life religious embrace is supposed to provide spirituality, customs of prayer, practical living arrangements, and opportuni-ties for ecclesial service. These things, these qualities, these prac-tices are desperately needed today as always for the sake of ecclesial service. God did not dabble with becoming human in Christ Jesus, nor did the recipients of founding charisms dabble with the gifts entrusted to them. Religious today who have embraced any charism of religious life in the likeness of great, sainted founders and foundresses simply cannot allow themselves the luxury of dabbling with the gift. If there is a certain urgency about what religious are about in the church and in the modern or postmodern world, there is also the possibility that religious can betray this urgency and bury their charisms just as, in the gospel parable, some buried the talents given them. If religious do this, the charisms will be given to others, for they are sim-ply too important to the vitality of the church for God to allow them tb be wasted. We religious can betray "and bury our charisms in intellectual arrogance. We can betray and bury our charisms in the comfortable patterns of recent and not so recent complacency. We can betray and bury our charisms in rampant individualism. We can betray and bury our charisms in personal or communal refusal to engage others in honest relationship. We can betray and bury our charisms by perpetuating a politically advantageous or per-sonally comfortable status quo. We can betray and bury our charisms by fashionable tinkering with fundamentals. We can betray and bury our charisms in person.al preferences and unre-flective compromise. We can betray and bury our charisms to the detriment of the transcendent realities to which we have been called and for which these gifts have been entrusted to us. And perhaps we not only can do these things, but actually have done them, for a variety of worthwhile or not so worthwhile reasons. Regarding the charisms of religious life, it is difficult to over- Religious today who have embraced any charism of religious life in the likeness of great, sainted founders and foundresses simply cannot allow themselves the luxury of dabbling with the gift. September-October 1993 655 McDonough * Charisms and Religious Life estimate the importance of initial and ongoing formation. Human beings as they are, religious are always beginners in something, but initial formation is especially crucial. Introducing people to a religious institute's specific charism, it makes or breaks the char-acter of that cqmmunity. Formation provides spiritual founda-tions; it imparts intellectual knowledge; it encourages progress in virtue; it provides opportunity for enhancing relational abilities; it implants or improves specific skills for ministry; it conveys the importance of humble reliance on God; it fosters a willingness to have everything disrupted for the sake of the Truth who is Jesus. Sound initial and ongoing formation is indispensable to the char-acter of the institute as such and, of course, indispensable for each member as well. All members should become increasingly imbued with the founder's or foundress's initial gospel insight. Formation in consecrated life requires a certain comprehensive submission to the heritage of a particular community precisely so that one can grow into it. In other words, it involves a conscious and practical surrender to the community's time-tested and effi-cacious ways of bringing the novice into its specific charism. It involves a lifelong endeavor to live according to this charism, and one's initiation into this life must necessarily include assiduous study of the charism's roots while experiencing its lived reality. And, if anything is clear from the gospel and from the great sainted founders and foundresses of religious institutes, it is that ministry requires prayer, a continuing relationship with the person of Jesus. This cannot be feigned, and it is the source of one's Christian identity within a religious community's own charism. As a matter of course, initial and ongoing formation provide encounters with our countless limitations. Our supposed matu-rity is challenged, as are our all-too-easily-acquired attitudes of superiority and complacency. Initial and continuing formation does this for us within our common life, which is relentlessly con-frontational. To be sure, confrontation is not common life's pri-mary purpose, but--as many religious have noticed--it has that characteristic nevertheless. Formation and confrontation remind us of our responsibility, our response-ability, regarding the charis-matic gift we have received. Common life continually reminds us of the smallness in each of us that has not the ability or the humil-ity- or the willingness to be bothered--to address some particu-lar smallness in oneself or in another. The old-fashion~d term for this is pusillanimity, the opposite of magnanimity, greatheartedness. 656 Review for Religious Charisms: Ongoing Personal Response How we live together and why we live together--indeed, if we live together at all these days--is not insignificant for reli-gious. We can respond to these questions in three basic ways: com-pliance, identification, and internalization. Compliance is an ¯ appropriate response to things with which one agrees, or acquiesces in because they are not worth contesting (daily schedules, maga-zine subscriptions). Identification is an appropriate response to things which connect us in some external way with a province or a congregation (attire, social customs). Internalization is an appro-priate response of making the elements of a particular charism one's own (one's understanding of the vows and one's practical ways of living them). Practical experience tells all of us religious that initial and also later experiences of fervor in religious life readily wane. What happens? Perhaps, at some time during the years, little by little, without our noticing it, we replace various appropriate responses of compliance, identification, and internalization with inappro-priate ones. In short, we get them mixed up. Some religious seem to prefer being identified more by their external attire (conve-niently donned and doffed) than by their interior spirituality (dif-ficult to acquire, but then probably difficult to conceal). Some religious seem to prefer being judged more by compliance to a schedule (objectively measurable) than by unselfish concern for those among whom they minister (difficult to assess). Probably all of us get these responses mixed up sometimes, some more, some less. And, unless I am quite mistaken, with rare exceptions we all learn eventually how to compromise, how to work the system for some personal advantage. Later on we may just forget our ear-lier enthusiasm for the life because we have become quite weary of it. We may find ourselves living our religious life from plateau to comfortable plateau, staying on each one as long as possible. Why? Perhaps--in wretched delusion, if you will--we some-how think we can "arrive" at being a religious in the context of the charism we have embraced. We settle into a place, consciously or unconsciously, and then no longer let the charism bother us in our complacent niche. For some, the "arrival" may have been when they once received the habit. For others, arrival meant first or perpetual profession or acquiring a particular academic degree or community responsibility. For still others, arrival may occur when they are recognized as professionally successful or feel personally September-October 1993 657 McDonougb ¯ Cbarisms and Religious Life renewed. In clerical communities the reception of orders might signify arrival for some. Whatever the point of one's arrival might be, we are inclined then to think, "Aha, now I have arrived. Now I do not have to hold the precious gift of the charism in my heart and say, every day, 'Dear God, if I ~ake this seriously, it can trans-form me drastically for the rest of my life, beginning today.' I do not have to do that anymore because I have arrived." Perhaps most religious at one time or another are tempted to think that they have, indeed, reached some acceptable point of arrival along the way of life they once set off on. The problem with such an "arrival" i~ that now we prefer to see the charism as inadequate ratheF than ourselves, for it asks us to do something that our complacency finds distasteful. Indeed, once we feel we have arrived, we fall prey to the temptation of having recourse to our charism merely as a storehouse of rhetoric to justify our doing what we have already comfortably settled upon doing, not what God might ask of us on the breath of our charism. It is at our own point of "arrival" that we religious need oth-ers to jolt us, jolt us out of our complacency. If we are lucky, they will. This is one of the reasons why we need common life, with its prayer, formative customs, and each other. We need every gener-ational cohort, every race, every national heritage, every ethnic grouping, every province, every viable local community. We espe-cially need ongoing encounter with each and all of those who have genuinely committed themselves to the practical manifestations of the charism and are willing to be captured and recaptured by it while striving faithfully to live it. Together we need to prevent our religious-life charism from being indiscriminately assimilated into the dominant trends of any culture, even as we strive to bring it to bear creatively on the problems of every culture. While we religious must admit that each of us pronounces vows in the first person singular and will one day answer to God for our living of them in the first person singular, any religious should also be able to say that he or she does not have to engage in this lifelong com-mitment alone. While each religious alone can become the person he or she is called to be, no religious is called to do this in rugged isolation. In short and in sum, any religious community either has a charism or does not; the members either understand it or they do not; and they either strive to live it or they do not. The future of religious life belongs neither to those who fondly reminisce about 658 Review for Religious yesteryear nor to those who self-prophetically dream about the next millennium. It belongs, rather, to those who here and now, simply and conscientiously, together live their response to the charism that captured them, to the God who has promised to transform them into the likeness of Christ. Notes ~ David J. Nygren and Miriam D. Ukeritis, "The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary," Review for Religious 52 (1993): 13. 2 Ibid, 48. A Stop on Tour The occupants of the tour bus have all Been boning up on the saints: they circulate Little Lives snippeted for easy reference, easily Codified with the cathedral cities we visit. And here, in another cathedral square, obedient to the drone of tour guide, with pigeons overhead We ring the barrier where another stake Claimed its saint. Not Joan the toast Of the Dauphin in his cups, but like Joan The toast of the fire when it hiccups explosively, Fracturing the elemen.ts of wood, fracturing hers. Did she choose what to wear to be burned? Undressed quick enough by the faggots" fingers, She is scandalously handled in her nakedness By their probing thumbs, raped by fire. The fierce wounds she screams to, destroy The nerve endings, uncover bone. You would Have thought the cry of the burning to be i~tenser; The whine of flames is higher. Not yet char Underfoot, sainted, shrined, a Little Life Snippeted, her smoke ascends. Dizzily, then as now, The pigeons circle the cathedral spires. Picking Our cobbled way, we move onward with the tour. Nancy G. Westerfield September-October 1993 6$9 GERARD H. LUTTENBERGER Vincent de Paul's Charism in Today's Church living heritages St. Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) is well known as "Father of the Poor" and "Light of the Clergy," more by the for-mer title than by the latter. He founded a men's and also a women's community: the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity. Both communities are, by constitution, oriented toward ministering to the poor. It is this ministry that, at least in contemporary thinking, ori-ents the spiritualities of their members. Priests of the Mission are "to follow Christ, evangelizing the poor.''1 Daughters of Charity are "given to God for the service of the poor.''2 All members of each community are to live simply, like the poor, and to consider the poor as their "lords and masters.''3 The call to dedicated and active concern for the poor rings clearly in contemporary church teaching and cur-rent spiritual theology. The church at Medellfn under-scored the fact that "action for justice is constitutive of the gospel." It speaks of Jesus' preferential option for the poor. The fourth chapter of Luke clearly speaks of Jesus being anointed in order to proclaim good news to the poor. And the Acts of the Apostles (see, for example, 2:42-47) indicates that the early church continued with like con-cerns. Gerard H. Luttenberger CM teaches at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Huntington, New York. His address is The Vincentian Community; 104 Anstice Street; Oyster Bay, New York 11771. 660 Review for Religious It is clear, however, that neither continued proclamation of the call for justice nor individual concrete effort directed toward the corporal and spiritual betterment of the poor is sufficient to mobilize and sustain the church in this endeavor. Deafness afflicts some; disappointment, discouragement, and burnout debilitate others; the lessening of spiritual energy and vision constitutes a threat to all who labor for justice. In the face of today's challenges for greater justice, the church needs a spirituality that shares the dynamic vision of Christ and promotes with active love the human and Christian betterment of all. The church needs a deepened communion with God in the labor of love, a labor that is ener-getic yet peaceful. This article deals with the service of the poor and the search for God in a Christian and gospel context. More specifically, it deals with the ways Vincent de Paul lived these gospel mandates by drawing on a more original and deeper life, which he had ifi Christ and in God. Christlike vision and life were gifts which God and God's Word, Jesus, gave him in the flow of his prayer, dis-cernment, and active ministry. This vision served to inspire mis-sionaries then and serves to inspire apostles in the church today. This essay, then, presents Vincent de Paul as a model for, and a challenge to, all who aspire to minister to the poor in the con-temporary church. At the same time it provides a critical analysis of the spirituality that motivated and sustained his energetic labor. The method will be rather direct and simple. Vincent's own words (letters, conferences, the Common Rule of the Congregation of the Mission) will be used, along with the record of his interaction with others (his own directors, persons he served, priests he worked with) and an account of the events of his life and decisions he made. Spiritual Adolescence: Vincent's Teachers Vincent de Paul, like us all, was a child 0f his time. He under-stood God and the ways of holiness in the light of the spirituality of "the French School.''4 This spirituality was characterized by a quest for a deepened mysticism, a dedication to searching out and aligning oneself with the will of God, an emphasis upon faith in contrast with reason, and in some circles a renewal in apostolic service.~ Vincent de Paul was touched by these movements, par-ticularly through Benedict of.Canfield, Francis de Sales, Pierre de B~rulle, and Andr~ Duval. September-October 1993 661 Luttenberger * V~ncent de Paul's Cbarism Today Benedict of Canfield (1562-1619), an English Capuchin who took refuge in France after his conversion from Puritanism, had a decided effect upon his God-seeking contemporaries through his much-read work Rbgle de perfection riduite au seul point de la volonti divine.6 Its theme, that Christian perfection is achieved as one becomes, in the words of Henri Bremond, "almost wholly absorbed into God and his absolute will,''7 and its directives regarding the ways of uniting oneself to that will (emptying oneself in active obe-dience to God's law.and in self-denial) provided a starting point for the reflections of many spiritual-minded persons, among whom was Pierre de B~rulle. It was in the company and through the guidance of B~rulle that Vincent himself absorbed Canfield's doctrine. Francis de Sales (1657-1622), the well-known bishop of Geneva, became acquainted with Vincent when the former vis-ited Paris in 1618-1619. De Sales came to respect Vincent so much that he entrusted to him the direction of a group of Visitation nuns, a community he himself had established. Francis de Sales's spiritual way focused on God's will, which he experienced deeply as love, salvific love.8 The will of God is sav-ing love for de Sales. This clear and warm thought affected one's understanding of God and of God's relationship to humankind. Fear of God necessarily gave way to utter confidence in God's saving love. This saving love became the final rubric for Vincent's understanding of the mystery of God, the person of Jesus, and the relationship of both God and Jesus to the world. Pierre de B~rulle (1575-1629), a highly spiritual man as well as a statesman and diplomat, served Vincent as a spiritual counselor during Vincent's early life and ministry.9 For B~rulle, God's will was perfectly expressed in the incarnation of Jesus. Btrulle was struck deeply by the richness of God's life and will as revealed in Jesus. Contemplation of the mysteries of Jesus' life, as well as of the very being and person of the incarnate Son of God, was for him a clear way of losing oneself and of being drawn into communion with God and God's will. Christians, therefore, would achieve holiness by binding themselves to God in and through Jesus, by reliving his "conditions" or mysteries. (B~rulle was powerfully influenced by having made the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and by the teaching of Teresa of Avila, which had reached France by way of the Spanish Carmelites.) The self-abandonment of searching for and subjecting oneself to the will of God, therefore, became more concrete and more explicitly Christian in Btrulle than it had been 662 Review for Religious in Canfield; but the will of God remained central for understanding the life of Jesus, the way of Christian holiness, and the mystery of God.10 Leaving the contribution of Andrd Duval for later, we might sum up the influences of Vincent's teachers in this fashion: 1. It is God, in God's salvific will, who guides us and all his-tory to God's Self as its end. In adhering to God's will and allowing God to work God's saving love among us, we will attain holiness and happiness. We will know the joy of being perfectly one with God, who is our only master (Canfield). 2. In seeking to align ourselves with God's salvific will, we are invited to perfect ourselves in love (de Sales). (Vincent ulti-mately developed this line of thought into a spirituality of action, stating that this love is not to be merely an affective love; rather, it is to be an effective love.'1) 3. God has sent the Son, who shows us the way to the Father, all the while revealing to us the Father's love. Jesus came "to act and to teach," to be himself one who lives in perfect union with the divine will and one who teaches us how to do the same (B~rulle). These three sets of ideas were important in Vincent's spiri-tual and ministerial development. They contributed to his quest to meet God in an active life of service. A brief sketch of that life and ministry will offer insight into the ways in which Vincent used and also developed these resources; it will illustrate how central and effective these perspectives were in the development of a person united to God in active ministry. Young Adulthood: God's Will and the Discovery of Grace Born in a small village of France in 1581, Vincent de Paul was ordained in 1599 at eighteen years of age.~2 Though the Council of Trent'had stipulated twenty-four ~s the minimum age for ordi-nation, Vincent's early ordination was not singular in late-16th-century France. Priesthood provided a comfortable career for young men of his time, and he was not an exception to such aspi-rations. He hoped for a benefice out of which he would be able to provide for his family's needs. Apparently he had little success until, through the influence of Bdrulle, his spiritual director, he obtained a position at the parish of Clichy in 1611, when he was thirty years old. He found the people poor but docile, alive in faith, and eager for God's word. It September-October 1993 663 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Cbaris~n Today was a significant moment of conversion for him; he realized that his ambition for a "good benefice," for a life of comfort, had been a block to his happiness and his ministry. He came to know that he could be happy laboring for poor and simple people. I was a country vicar [he later recalled]. I had people who were so good and obedient in doing whatever I asked them that, when I told them they ought to go to confession the first Sunday of the month, they never failed. They came and confessed, and I saw from day to day the good they did their souls. This gave me such consolation, and I was so pleased about it, that I used to say to myself: "My God! How happy you are to have such good people! I don't think the pope is as happy as a vicar with people of such good heart." 13 Vincent's stay in Clichy, however, was short-lived; in 1613 Bdrulle advised him to surrender the parish to an administrator and take up the task of being tutor for the family of Philippe de Gondi, a wealthy count. Vincent was obedient to his spiritual director; such obedience had become his way of life. It flowed from the spiritual doctrine that he had been absorbing from B~rulle and several other serious priests who gathered frequently to dis-cuss spirituality and the. plight of France. Vincent's tasks at the Gondi household included, not only teaching the children, but ministering to the poor who lived and worked on the Gondi estates. He learned firsthand the religious plight of these people. One problem concerned confession. Many peasants feared confessing their sins to local priests who knew them well. The problem was compounded by the fact that some priests were so ignorant that they did not even know the words of absolution.'4 Hence, people would allow years to pass without seeking to be unburdened of their sins. Vincent soon began coun-seling a general confession as a remedy. In 1617 Mme. de Gondi, during a sojourn at her ancestral castle at Folleville, visited a sick man at Gannes, a few miles dis-tant. She recommended that he make a general confession to Vincent. The sick man was so relieved after confessing that he told her that he would have been damned had he not had this spir-itual opportunity. Mme. de Gondi was so distressed that she urged Vincent to preach on confession the following day. The result was that his words stirred the entire parish of Folleville to repentance and he had to call in the Jesuits from Amiens to help him hear the people's confessions and to catechize them.'S 664 Review for Religious What does this brief sketch tell us of Vincent's spirituality? It serves to I~ring into relief the major dynamics out of which his more mature spirituality and his effectiveness in ministry devel-oped. Attentiveness and responsiveness to God's will in all its man-ifestations appear to have been paramount for him, and fidelity to his spiritual director helped him develop these dispositions and align himself with God. This spiritual pattern filled him with life, energy, and zeal for the spir-itual growth of others. It enabled him to "move with God" in ministry. And it led him to a deepened sense of the spiritual, a sense of God's presence, power, and graciousness greater than he seems to have expected. For what exhilarated Vincent in Clichy was the effectiveness and power of God's sav-ing love among his parishioners. What uplifted him on the Gondi estates was his perception of God working con-version among persons whom others thought to be too insignifi-cant and too resistant to God's love for their ministerial concern. One could say he was filled with an awareness that God was truly alive in a little country village and among the forgotten people of a vast country estate. A second dynamic, deeply characteristic of Vincent's way, also emerges from this sketch: his spirit was inclined toward action. He moved quickly when he was convinced that God had made known the divine will. He responded without hesitation when he realized people needed the ministry of a confessor; he sought help when the number of penitents was too great for one person. He was a man of action. These two dynamisms emerged in definite circumstances. If we are to understand Vincent, it is of singular importance to note that his early experiences of God in union with his active min-istry took place among the poor, the most neglected. Focused upon everyday needs that drew most of their energy and atten-tion, they stood as a challenge to any priest hoping to bring them God's word and love. Already aware, at least in principle, of the limitlessness and inclusivity of God's love, Vincent became con- He was filled with an awareness that God was truly alive in a little country village and among the forgoften people of a vast country estate. Septentber-October 1993 665 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today vinced ,that priests must be willing to endure these people's inat-tentiveness and resistance and must rely heavily upon God, and only then should try actively to mediate God's care. Such an approach to ministry proved fruitful, not only for the poor, but also for him. A word needs be said about the unity of these two dynamisms. While fidelity to the divine will remained central for Vincent, he seems to have begun to experience the union of two distinct aspects of that.divine will: (1) The will of God that he wished to be one with and obedient to was at the same time (2) a will alive and active, leading others to accept God's love. In surrendering him-self to ministry foi" the poor, Vincent immediately found himself deeply one with and a mediator of that will. The two dynamisms of his spirituality were in fact truly one. Middle Years: Mysticism in Action In the early days of his ministry, Vincent, under God's inspi-ration, drew the outlines of a way to God and a way of serving others. We will trace three ways in which that outline developed in subsequent years as his spirituality gradually deepened, broad-ened, and became fine tuned. 1. The Founding of the Congregation of the Mission Shortly after the.powerful experience at Folleville, Vincent left the Gondi household at B~rulle's suggestion and obtained a parish in Ch~tillon-les-Dombes, far from Paris in the southeast of France. Very upset, Mme. de Gondi sent Vincent letters from many persons of rank, including her husband's brother Henri de ¯ Gondi, who was bishop of Paris, and B~rulle himself. The latter did not ask Vincent to return; he did, however, describe the lady's dis-tress and asked him to consider returning. In December 1617, after consulting with B~rulle, Vincent came to an agreement with the lady that he would remain as chaplain to her household until her death. He preached missions throughout her lands and at times called upon the assistance of other priests. This did not end Mme. de Gondi's worries, however. What would happen after her death? She persuaded her chaplain to seek the services of a religious community which might commit some members to this work, in perpetuum. No community would agree. So she, together with her husband and Jean Francois de Gondi, ~trchbishop of Paris (who had succeeded his brother Henri), urged 666 Review for Religious Vincent himself to select several priests to labor with him in this task. For their labors they would receive 45,000 francs and a place to live (the Coll~ge des Bons-Enfants, which the archbishop him-self provided). On 17 April 1625 Vincent signed a contract pledg-ing to establish within a year a community of six priests to preach these much needed missions, six priests who, going from village to village at the expense of their common purse, would devote themselves purely and entire.ly to the salvation of poor people, to preach, to instruct, to exhort, and to catechize these poor country folk and to incline them to make a good general confession of their whole past life, and without taking recompense in any manner what-ever, in order to distribute freely the gifts they have so lib-erally received from the hand of God?6 The expansion of Vincent's apostolic labor to include a con-gregation of collaborators reveals the development of the dynamic that had governed his earlier life. Responsiveness to God's will was still his focus as he carefully came to the decision to accede to Mme. de Gondi's request. But of special value at this point are the elements of the discernment process that led him to this deci-sion. First among these elements must stand his awareness of need, the need of the spiritually neglected people of the Gondi estates. Further, the concurrence of the Gondis' own sense of urgency and the negative responses of the other religious orders led Vincent to entertain the possibility that God wished him to respond to this need. But he was also cautious. Although he had strong desires to respond affirmatively, his conviction was that God would not be found in strong, ardent movements. He expressed that conviction sometime later (1642) in ~ letter to Bernard Codoing, a priest of the congregation: The spirit of God proceeds directly and always humbly. Remember that you and I are subject to a thousand outbursts of nature, and recall what I told you about finding myself, in the early stages of the project of the Mission, with it con-stantly on my mind. That made me wonder whether the affair sprang from nature or from the evil spirit, and I purposely made a retreat in Soisson so that God might be pleased to remove from my mind the pleasure and eagerness I was expe-riencing in this matter. God was pleased to answer my prayer in such a manner that, by his mercy, he took them both away September-October 1993 667 Luttenberger ¯ V~ncent de Paul~s Charism Today and allowed me to be in the opposite dispositions. I think that, if God is granting some blessing to the Mission and I am less a subject of scandal to it, I attribute it after God to this fact. I wish to remain in this practice of neither concluding nor undertaking anything while I am caught up in these ardent hopes at the prospect of great benefits?7 One of the criteria, therefore, which Vincent employed to dis-cern the will of God and to arrive at firm decisions in life and minist~ was the experience of a spirit of inner peace in the face of proposed undertakings. And prayer, even periods of lengthy prayer and retreat, became the avenue by which he arrived at (or was given) such dispositions (and, with them, knowledge of God's will). Finally, before making his commitment to the Mission, Vincent sought counsel, this time not from B~rulle (from whom he had separated himself)~ but from another priest and professor at the Sorbonne, Andr~ Duval. The counsel he received is reported sim-ply and directly by Duval's biographer: On hearing him speak of the spiritual necessities, in partic-ular of the need for religious instruction in the rural parishes, of the hunger for the word of God in the people, of the ben-efit produced by these instructions, and of the blessing which they would receive, the venerable Andr~ pronounced these words: "The servant knowing the will of God and doing nothing will be flogged greatly." These words were scarce.ly uttered than Vincent de Paul felt himself interiorly moved and drawn by grace, and con-sidered them as an order from the divine will, which, having made known to him the needs of the poor, called him to go throughout t.he country. It was necessary to announce the Word of God, to preach, to catechize, to hear confessions, to administer the sacrament of penance, to allay discords, and, in a general way, to offer to the people living in the coun-tryside all kinds of spiritual services, without being a burden to anyone, without inconveniencing either the people or the priests, but rather bringing them help, and that with their assent and with the permission and the mandate of the bish-ops. As a result, he decided to give himself effectually to this work . It was only with this last element, the approbation of another person whom he judged objective and wise, that Vincent felt assured that he had attained God's will through prayer and dis-cernment. The way was complex; the outcome was sure. Vincent's fidelity to this process produced two profound effects 668 Review for Religious upon his spirituality. First, his experience of ministry, and partic-ularly his ministry in behalf of the poor, became filled with the experience of God. He knew God's presence in his resolves and in his actions; he found God alive in the persons whom he served. His labor of discernment and his responsiveness in service constituted his way of coming into, and living in, union with the God who was drawing all into communion through Christ. For Vincent, ministry itself became the expression of what might well be called a "mysticism in action." Second, this process drew Vincent close to Christ. Though Vincent left us no explicit record from before 1625 of his move-ments toward and with the Lord, his words written shortly after this time indicate the prominence of the life and example of Christ in his discernment and ministry. It was through Christ that he learned total reliance upon God's will. And it was in Christ that he found himself alive to God and alive for others.19 In this latter vein he wrote to one of his first priest confreres, Antoine Portail, urging him to humility as.he gave a series of missions: Keep in mind that we live in Jesus Christ through the death of Jesus Christ and that we must die in Jesus Christ through the life of Jesus Christ, and that our life must be hidden in Jesus Christ and full of Jesus Christ, and in order to die as Jesus Christ we must live as Jesus Christ. Now, once these foundations have been laid, let us surrender to contempt, to shame, to ignominy, and let us disclaim the honors people pay to us, the good reputation and the applause they give us, and let us do nothing that has not that end in view.2° For Vincent it was in Christ that faithfulness to God and self-less love of others found their unity. Discernment of God's will and responsiveness in service were framed by devotion to Christ and the mysteries of his life. Vincent was drawn, not simply to mysticism in action, but rather to a Christian mysticism in action-- to an experience of God through and in Christ. in an active life of faithfulness and service. 2. Commitment to Ministering to the Clergy Active and programmatic labor for the spiritual well-being of the clergy soon followed as a focal concern of the saint. It had become clear to him that much of the spiritual impoverishment of the people of the country had its roots in the impoverishment of the clergy. He had discussed this much earlier (before going to Clichy) with people who had grouped together out of concern for September-October 1993 669 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today the spiritual renewal of France, among whom were B~rulle and Fathers Jacques Olier (founder of the Sulpicians) and Adrien Bourdoise (founder of a community, the priests of Saint-Nicolas-du- Chardonnet). Later Mme. de Gondi spoke with him about it. And finally he experienced its effects firsthand at Folleville and Ch~tillon.2t It was through the instrumentality of bishops that Vincent actually began ministering to the clergy. In July 162 8 Augustine Potiers, bishop of Beauvais, got the idea that a retreat for ordinands that would include instruction on the duties of their state in life might be helpful. He asked Vincent to draw up a program for the retreat and to conduct it for his candidates that very September in Beauvais. Vincent responded and the effort met with success. In February 1631, Jean Francois de Gondi, the same arch-bishop of Paris who in 1625 had sponsored Vincent's establishing a small community of priests to conduct missions for the poor people of the Gondi estates, decreed that all his ordinands would have to make a two-week retreat before their ordination. He asked Father Bourdoise to conduct the exercises, but the priest refused. He then asked Vincent to conduct them. He too objected, stat-ing that the goal of his community was to preach country mis-sions. The archbishop finally obtained the services of a doctor from the Sorbonne, but the next year, after uniting the Priory of Saint-Lazare with the congregation, he imposed upon Vincent's community the obligation of conducting these retreats. In 1639 he required all ordinands residing in Paris (not only those belong-ing to his diocese) to make these exercises. Soon, at the recom-mendation of Bishop Potiers, other dioceses adjacent to Paris began sending their candidates to these retreats, the success of which was quite pleasing to Vincent. One can notice some interesting modifications in Vincent's approach at this time to discerning God's will. He saw the needs of the clergy and connected them with the distress of the poor people. He also saw that others who might respond to these needs had refused, a fact that would raise the question whether God wished Vincent himself to meet these needs. Finally, he was being invited by ecclesiastical authority (which he respected in discern-ing God's will) to respond to these needs by a means which, early on in Beauvais, had proven effective. Yet he resisted. Why? It is possible to argue that he himself was not yet free enough from human and even selfish limits to hand himself over to God's 670 Review for Religious will in all things. It is possible that his love for the poor and the missions crowded out other possibilities for responding to God's will. But neither of these possibilities seems to have been the case. What seems to have been holding Vincent back was his fidelity to the contract he had made with Mme. de Gondi in 1625. By it the community was bound to conduct missions for the country people, a time-consuming task. Ministering to the clergy would usurp some of the time that Vincent had already pledged (by contract and therefore in justice) to these mis-sions. That had appeared to him then as God's will and he had bound himself and the community to that for life. The fact that he could care for the spiritual needs of the people even more effectively by securing for them good priests did not seem, at least in the first instance, to stir him. It took the command of the arch-bishop to move him and his community into ministry for the clergy. Only this command offered him suf-ficient certitude that he was standing before God's will in taking up this new endeavor. Later on, however, he viewed this ministry as clearly being given by God. Development in his thought and convictions fol-lowed upon the expansion of the ministry itself. After the success of the retreats, he recognized the need for offering ongoing sup-port to the newly ordained. Thus, in 1633 he developed the pro-gram known as the Tuesday Conferences, a weekly meeting of diocesan clergy with a member of the community for prayer and reflection. And in 1636 he opened the doors of the Coll~ge des Bons-Enfants to young men who felt called to the priesthood. (This first house was for children, a minor seminary; in 1642, however, Vincent focused more on older candidates, supplying a program for major seminarians, an approach to formation which he had come to judge would be in the long run more effective.)22 The change in Vincent's view seems to have come, in part at least, by the reflections he had with his friend Father Bourdoise in the early 1630s. The latter had stated, "To give a mission is like giving a poor starving man a meal, but to set up a seminary is to aim at feeding him all his life.''z3 Vincent himself saw work for 'To give a mission is like giving a poor starving man a meal, but to set up a seminary is to aim at feeding him all his life.' September-October 1993 671 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today the clergy and the establishment of seminaries as a necessary com-plement of the congregation's work on the missions. Later Vincent regarded work for the clergy as equal to the con-gregation's call to evangelize the poor;24 he counseled his priests never to refuse to minister to the clergy on the pretext of giving missions to the poor;2s and, in the Common Rules of the institute, he listed formation of the clergy as one of the three purposes of the community.26 His retrospective understanding of his and the con-gregation's involvement in this ministry led him to tell his confreres: So, in the beginning, the company focused its energies only on itself and on the poor. At certain times of the year, it with-drew into its own houses, and at others it went forth to instruct the poor country people. God permitted nothing else to happen among us. But in the fullness of time he called us to contribute toward the formation of good priests, to give good pastors to parishes, and to teach them what they should know and doff7 Vincent's taking on the formation of the clergy as a God-given calling to him and the congregation offers a further insight into his spirituality: his way to God and way of ministering, always wed-ded to one another, were marked by a readiness to expand as well as by a fidelity to original intuitions and callings. There always remained possibilities for further invitations from the Lord; there was always the need for ongoing discernment. Having appreci-ated God's saving love as absolutely inclusive, Vincent was also compelled to include all suitable and necessary means of fostering the advance of that love. For him this was the only way of allow-ing the richness of God's wisdom and love to reach deeply into him and to reach others adequately through him. Having earlier experienced God in ministering to the poor, he came to experience that same God in greater depth and in more far-reaching ways as he entered ministry to and formation of the clergy. 3. Collaboration with Women: The Daughters of Charity Vincent was not a foreigner to the gifts of women in ministry. Early on, in 1617, while at Ch~tillon-les-Dombes, he became con-cerned about a family whose children and servants had fallen ill. For some reason the family found itself without even basic needs. In a sermon Vincent recommended the family to his congrega-tion and found his people more than ready to respond. As a mat-ter of fact, he discovered that a number of well-to-do women were eager to extend their charity to the needy. He provided them with 672 Review for Religious some guidelines, and the group became known as the Confraternity of Charity and served as a model for many similar groups that he established in villages where he gave missions. Soon, however, he discovered that peasant girls assisted these needy persons, especially in menial tasks, better than the well-to-do women did. They nursed the sick poor, instructed youngsters, and cared for orphans, refugees, the aged--in a word, the most abandoned. They too needed guidance, however, so that they would persevere in their ministry. The question soon posed itself: Where would he find capable mentors and guides for these devoted women? Toward the end of 1624 or early in 1625, a woman named Louise de Marillac sought spiritual direction from Vincent. She was a woman qf tender conscience, deep faith, and generous spirit. She lived a disciplined life of prayer while providing care for her sickly husband and difficult son. Before her marriage she had entertained thoughts of entering the convent, but had been dis-suaded by her spiritual director, who judged that she could not withstand the rigor of religious life. Vincent's early impressions of Louise were of her as an earnest, but dependent and scrupulous, woman. She often found herself troubled if he were not available to her for guidance. Concerns about the state of her soul, worries about her family, and recurring desires to enter a religious community after her husband's death (21 December 1625) were making her anxious and fretful. In her Vincent saw a person in need of judicious spiritual care, but also one quite gifted by God. Vincent's relationship with Louise and his advice to her are marked with the same spiritual convictions that we have noted in his own approach to God and to ministry: He counseled that she wait for God and not anticipate God's designs. But, more signif-icantly, it is in his letters to her that we read, for the first time, of his manner of relating to Christ and of how he saw the spiritual dynamics he lived by exemplified in Christ's life. He guided her to seek to live in Christ, encouraging her to model her life by the example and attitudes of Christ, in all moments and turns of events. For example, when, on the day after her husband's death, she con-fided to Vincent that she wished to serve God more freely, he told her not to make plans for the future until she had spent much time in prayer and reflection. He held her from what he regarded as premature commitments with the following counsel: September-October 1993 673 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today Always ho~ior the inactivity and the unknown condition of the Son of God. That is your center and what he asks of you for the present and for the future, forever. If His Divine Majesty does not let you know, in a way that cafinot be mistaken, that he wants something else of you, do not think about or let your mind become engrossed in that other matter. Leave it to me; I shall think about it enough for both of us.28 Given the fact that Louise was persistent, Vincent often found himself reiterating such counsei. On another occasion he wrote: Oh! what great hidden treasures there are in holy providence and how marvelously our Lord is honored bythose who fol-low it and do not try to go ahead of it. I recently heard one of the great men of the kingdom say that he had learned this truth through his own experience. He had never undertaken anything on his own except four things. Instead of their work-ing out well for him, they had turned out to his detriment. Is it not true that you wish, as is quite reasonable, that your servant not undertake anything without you and your order? And if that is reasonable from one man to another, how much more so from the Creator to the creature!29 Nevertheless, Vincent saw the need of helpers, active women helpers, who would visit the Confraternities of Charity in various villages to sustain them spiritually in their efforts. And Louise felt herself strongly moved in prayer toward direct service of the poor. On 6 May 1629 Vincent sent her to the Confraternity of Charity serving in Montmirail, recognizing, among other things, that the contemplative life would be fraught with dangers for her, while a life of active service best responded to the gifts God was giving her. His conviction that this decision was of God shines through his let-ter to her before her departure: I am sending you the letters and the report that you need for your journey. Go, therefore, Mademoiselle, go in the name of our Lord. I pray that his divine goodness may acc9mpany you, be your consolation along the way,., your strength in your toil, and, finally, that he may bring you back in perfect health and filled with good works.3° The journey of Vincent and Louise, however, was still to be made, with remarkable benefit for the church. Vincent had real-ized much earlier that a community of women who would sup-port one another in common faith, common life, and common dedication to the service of the most neglected would have advan- 674 Review for Religious tages like those of a community of priests. Perseverance in full-time Christian ministry suffered many threats without such support. Louise, too, desired community, her initial desires for religious life never having died. But once again Vincent moved with great caution, even slowness, in counseling and pursuing this develop-ment. His delay came partly from his awareness that the only way for women to live community life in his day involved being cloistered. For women to live an active community life in service of the poor would be regarded (particularly by the Holy See) as a radical inno-vation. Vincent necessarily had some fear that cloister would be imposed upon the women who would seek approval for the reli-gious community which he and Louise desired. The greater reason for his delay, however, was his desire to be assured that the plan to live their aspirations in community orig-inated in God. Resisting the urgency which Louise felt, he coun-seled: You belong to our Lord and his holy mother. Cling to them and to the state in which they have placed you until they make it clear that they wish something else of you.3~ And later he wrote to her: I beg you once and for all not to give it a thought until our Lord makes it evident that he wishes it, and at present he is giving indications to the contrary. We want a number of good things with a desire that seems to be of God, and yet it is not always from him . You are trying to become the ser-vant of those poor young women, and God wants you to be his own, and perhaps of more people than you would be in that way. And even if you were only his, is it not enough for God that your heart is honoring the tranquillity of our Lord's? Then it will be fit and ready to serve him. The king-dom of God is peace in the Holy Spirit; he will reign in you if your heart is at peace. So, be at peace, Mademoiselle, and you will honor in a sovereign way the God of peace and love.32 After all the hesitation, the searching and prayer, Vincent finally became assured that the movement toward ~ommunity was of God. He wrote to Louise in August or September around the year 1633: I think your good angel did what you told me . Four or five days ago, he communicated with mine concerning the char-ity of your young women. It is true; he has prompted me to Septentber-October 1993 675 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today recall it often, and I gave that good work serious thought. We shall talk about it, God willing, on Friday or Saturday, if you do not write to me sooner.33 And shortly thereafter, on 29 November 1633, the company of the Daughters of Charity was established. These developments clearly underscore Vincent's consistency in the way he understood God, understood himself and others, and attempted to respond to God. Resting in, seeking light from, and moving with God's spirit--moving in harmony with the man-ifest will of God--remained the way of Vincent and provided him with the energy he so clearly reveals in his labor for the kingdom of God. And finding inspiration and support in Jesus and in his way of life not only guided Vincent's development, but also was a con-tinued theme in his counseling of others. These developments, moreover, reveal in Vincent a humility and truth by which he recognized that the designs of God are far greater than one person or even one congregation can fathom or implement. Hence, he was unafraid to take up a multiplicity of works and to collaborate with a variety of persons in order to bring his inspiration into reality.34 In his journey with Louise de Marillac, one sees particularly his recognition that the gifts of women are needed for the building of God's kingdom.3s Only by blending his work and that of the congregation with the work and talents of his feminine counterparts would God's overflowing love spread through the world.36 The fostering of God's active, saving will among all persons demands many works, many talents, and many persons of varied gifts. Sharing of the gifts and collaboration in the vision would be the rule. The movements of God and God's will, clearly and prayerfully discerned, would be the energy. And the life of the church, the inclusion of the poor within its company, fully alive in God's Spirit, and the spiritual vitality of the church's ministers and servants would be the fruit. Final Years: Mature Reflections and Legacy Though Vincent's life and ministry' continued for nearly two and a half decades beyond the establishment of the Congregation of the Mission, beyond the first involvements in ministry to the clergy, and beyond the early solidification of the women's com-munity, the Daughters of Charity, the basic lines of his spiritual-ity had, with these events, already been drawn. During his final 676 Review for Religious years, he was able to articulate his vision with precision and clar-ity, providing disciples living then and others yet to come with the lines of a way to God and a life in Jesus that had proven ben-eficial for himself. Prayerful discernment of and fidelity to the will of God remained in first place in Vincent's final years as they had been throughout his life. Speaking to his "little company," he reminded them: The. most perfect man will be the one whose will is most conformed to that of God. Perfection consists in so uniting our will to God's that his and ours are, strictly speaking, but one and the same will and nonwill; and he who most excels on this point will be the most perfect.37 And a short time later he told his congregation: We know that our works are worthless if they are not living and animated by God's will. This is the advice of the gospel, which causes us to do everything for the sake of pleasing him. We must greatly praise his Infinite Majesty for the grace he has given to the company of undertaking this all-holy and ever sanctifying practice [of the will of God]. Yes, from the beginning we have all desired to enter into this way of the perfect, which is to honor our Lord in all our works.3s Given this experience and these convictions, he summed up his mind and counsel for all future generations in the Common Rule of the Congregation of the Mission: A sure way for a Christian to grow rapidly in holiness is a conscientious effort to carry out God's will in all circum-stances and at all times . It is in this way that we can imi-tate Christ, the Lord . He tells us this himself: "I always do what pleases the Father.''39 Harmony with God's will wa~ still, in Vincent's mind, of pri-mary import. Holiness and fruitfulness in ministry depended upon it. Ministry, evangelization, and .service of the needy were of spe-cial significance to him precisely because they fostered that will. The teaching of Benedict of Canfield was, to the end, in evidence in his explicit spiritual understanding. Second, Vincent left all a legacy of action, particularly active and effective concern for the poor. In an oft-quoted counsel to his priests, he exhorted them and us: Love God, my brothers, let us love God, but let it be with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brow. For very September-October 1993 677 Luttenberger ¯ I~ncent de Paul's Charism Today often such acts of love of God, of complaisance, of kindness, and other similar affections and interior experiences of a lov-ing heart, although very good and very desirable, are never-theless very suspect when a person is not led to the practice of effective love. "In that," says our Lord, "my Father is glo-rified because you give account of much fruit." And this is why we must be very careful, for there are very many who, having a well-composed exterior and an interior filled with great love of God, stop there; and when it comes to action and they find themselves in occasions of doing something, they stop short. They flatter themselves with their inflamed imaginations; they are contented with some pleasant con-ve'rsations which they have with God in prayer; they even speak like angels; but, apart from that, when it is a question of working for God, of suffering, of mortifying oneself, of instructing the poor, of searching out the wandering flock, of loving one who lacks something, of receiving kindly illness or some other misfortune, alas! there is no longer anyone there, courage deserts them. No, no, let us not delude ourselves: Our whole task consists in working.4° In this strong conviction, one sees the long-standing influ-ence of Francis de Sales. Responsiveness to God's will, for Vincent, did not mean abstract contemplation. It meant listening to God in order to serve God's designs for the good of humankind, espe-cially the most deprived. Finally, however, it was the life, words, and example of Jesus that formed the context of Vincent's action as well as his search for God's will. It was the way of Jesus, and living in Jesus' Spirit, that offered Vincent the ideal and the power to unify this responsive-ness to God and this outpouring of ministerial love in a life filled with God. Only toward the end of his life do we find developed reflection on the powerful way living in the Spirit of Jesus had fashioned the spirituality of the saint. In a conference he exhorted his confreres: We must put on the Spirit of Jesus Christ. O Savior! O Gentlemen! There you have a grand undertaking, to put on the spirit of Jesus Christ! This means that in order to become perfect and to assist people effectively, to be of good use to ecclesiastics, we must labor to imitate the perfection of Jesus Christ and strive to attain it. It also means that of ourselves we can do nothing. We must be filled and animated by this spirit of Jesus Christ!41 And that there be no doubt regarding his understanding of this undertaking, he continued: 678 Review for Religious What is this spirit of our Lord? It is a spirit of perfect char-ity, filled with a marvelous esteem for the Divinity and with an infinite desire to honor him worthily. It is a knowledge of the greatness of his Father, which admires and extols it unceasingly. He has so high an esteem of it that he paid him homage with everything that was within his sacred person and which came forth from it; he attributed everything to him; he was unwilling to say that his teaching was his own teaching, but referred it to his Father: "My teaching is not mine, but that of the Father who sent me.". And his love, what was it? . . . Could there be any greater witness of love than by dying out of love in the way that he died? . . . His humiliations were but love, his work but love, his sufferings but love, his prayers but love, and all his interior and exterior operations were but reiterated acts of love . There you have a description of our Lord's spirit, with which we must be clothed; it is, in a word, having always a great esteem and a great love for God.42 Hence, the mature Vincent placed the following of Jesus as the fundamental goal of the congregation and as the basic theme running through the Common Rule of the institute. Sacred Scripture tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ, sent into the world to save mankind, began to do and to teach. He did the first when he perfectly reduced to practice every kind of virtue; and the .second when he preached the gospel to the poor and gave his Apostles and disciples the knowledge nee-essary for guiding people . Therefore, the end of the con-gregations is: (1) to strive for one's own perfection by exerting every effort to practice the virtues which the sovereign Master has been pleased to teach us both by word and example . 43 The counsel of Pierre de BSrulle, the constant call to live one's life immersed in the mysteries, of Christ, was woven throughout Vincent's life and permeated his teachings and counsel. He left no ambiguity for his followers about the basic ways of under-standing God and living in God's presence. Christ was that way of understanding; Christ was the way of life. The rule of Benedict of Canfield, the spiritual insights of Francis de Sales, and the spiritual doctrine of B~rulle had been lived and distilled so as to provide a guide and a source of inspi-ration to Vincent and to all who would make the journey of seek-ing and responding to the divine will that Vincent knew to be actively pursuing and transforming all persons, especially the poor. This he believed was the revelation of God in Jesus, and it was September-October 1993 679 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today the privilege of the Christian to walk with Jesus in experiencing and mediating that same salvific love. As a res~ult, Vincent described himself and his mission as one with the Lucan Jesus: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; to proclaim good news to the poor, he has sent me.''44 His life's task, and the charism he has left us, was and is one of discerning that Spirit in prayer and community so as to mediate it effectively as servants of God's kingdom, especially among the poor. His prayer and discernment, his life and min-istry, were deeply characterized by patience and caution, on the one hand, and by selflessness and courage, on the other. Both sets of virtues were necessary to lead Vincent to be confident that he knew God and God's will in his decisions and in his labors. Both were needful for him to experience God--Christ--and God's unfolding salvific initiative in his own day. In being faithful to these gifts, he found himself faithful to God's will, to walking in Christ, and to mediating God's love, particularly to the poor. In being faithful to these gifts Vincent's own way of making the spiritual journey--he became a true mystic, living out what is rightly called a mysticism in action. And in showing us these gifts and this journey, Vincent de Paul also shows us a charism, a gift of the Spirit, which seeks expression in the church of today. Notes ~ Constitutions and Statutes of the Congregation of the Mission, 1984, article I. 2 Constitutions and Statutes of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, 1983, article 2:1. 3 Conferences to the Daughters of Charity, 14 June 1643 and 11 November 1657; Extract of a Conference to the Congregation of the Mission, January 1657, St. Vincent de Paul. Correspondance. Entretiens. Documents (hereafter SVDP), ed. Pierre Coste (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1920- 1925), 9:119, 10:332, 11:393. The first three volumes of this compila-tion have been translated into English by a team of sisters and priests, members of the Daughters of Charity and of the Congregation of the Mission. This English translation (hereafter ET) bears the title Saint Vincent de Paul. Correspondence, Conferences, Documents (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1985-). 4 For a recent analysis of this spirituality, see the introduction by William M. Thompson to Bdrulle and the French Schook Selected Writings, ed. William M. Thompson, trans. Lowell M. Glendon SS (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 32-76. See also Michael Buckley, "Seventeenth Century French Spirituality: Three Figures," in Christian Spirituality, III: 680 Review for Religious Post-Reformation and Modern, ed. Louis Dupr~ and Don E. Saliers (New York: Crossroad, 1989), pp. 28-32. s Buckley, pp. 28-32. 6 On this work and its influence, see Bucldey, pp. 29-30, and Luigi Mezzadri CM and Luigi Nuovo CM, "The Directors of St. Vincent," ed. and trans. John W. Carven CM, Vincentian Heritage 6 (1985): 173-175. 7 A Literary History of Religious Thought in France, trans. K.L. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 2:219. s Buckley, pp. 32-41. 9 For the influence of Pierre de Bdrulle upon Vincent de Paul, see Bremond, 3:193-222. ,0 Buckley, pp. 42-53; Mezzadri, pp. 177-178. ~ See below, note 40. ~2 The historical material is taken from Pierre Coste, The Life and Works of Saint Vincent de Paul (hereafter LW), 3 vols., trans. Joseph Leonard CM (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1952). ,3 Conference on the Practice of Asking Permission, 27 July 1653, SVDP, 9:646. 14 Mme. de Gondi told Vincent (whom she had enlisted as her spirio tual director), that when she was young she herself had had such a painful experience. ~s Conference on the Observance of the Rules, 17 May 1658, SVDP, 12:8; Extract of a Conference on the Mission Preached at Folleville in 1617, ibid, 11:4. _ ~6 Contract of the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission, 17 April 1625, SVDP, 13:198. 17 De Paul to Codoing, 1 April 1642, SVDP, 2:246-247 (ET, 2:278). ~s Cited in Mezzadri, p. 176. ~9 See the letters of Vincent written during the years 1626 to 1633 to Louise de Marillac, cited in section three below. 2o Letter dated 1 May 1635, SVDP, 1:295 (ET, 1:276). In a similar, but less lyrical, manner, he counseled Jean Barreau, a brother of the con-gregation who, for some reason.unknown to u~,.had been imprisoned: "It is with great sorrow that I learned of your present state, which is a sub-ject of affliction for the whole company, but of great merit for you before God, since you suffer even though innocent . Our Lord, having descended from heaven to earth for the redemption of men, was also imprisoned by them. How blessed are you, Monsieur, to be treated the same way! . . . The more our actions and our sufferings resemble those of Jesus in this life, the more they are pleasing to God." Letter to Jean Barreau, 16 September 1650, SVDP, 4:81. 2~ A parishioner of Chfitillon recounted that Vincent's predecessors in that parish had kept women of ill repute and had frequented bars and gambling houses (Report of Charles Demion on the Sojourn of Saint Vincent at Ch~tillon-les-Domb.es, SVDP, 13:50). September-October 1993 681 Luttenberger ¯ Vincent de Paul's Charism Today 22 Letter to Bernard Codoing, in Rome, 13 May 1644, SVDP, 2:459 (ET, 2:505-506). See also SVDP, 2:152-154, 188 (ET, 2:171-173,214). 23 Citation taken from Coste, LVV, 1:259. 24 Letter to Louis Rivet, priest of the congregation, missioned in Saintes, 19 December 1655, SVDP, 5:489. 2s In a letter to a priest of the Mission, Luc Plunket, missioned at Saint-Meen, Vincent cautioned: "Do you not know, Monsieur, that we are equally obliged to form good ecclesiastics as to instruct the country peo-ple? And that a priest of the Mission who will work at one but not the other is only half a missioner, because he is sent to do both?" 21 May 1659, SVDP, 7:561. See also the conference of 6 December 1658, SVDP, 12:85. 26 1:3. Vincent composed these written regulations for the congrega-tion only after some thirty years had passed since the company had been established. 27 Conference gi~)en on 6 December 1658, SVDP, 12:84. 28 SVDP, 1:62 (ET, 1:54). See also LV¢', 1:204. 29 SVDP, 1:68-69 (ET, 1:60). See also LW, 1:204. 3o SVDP, 1:73 (ET, 1:64-65). See also Lgr, 1:207. 31 SVDP 1:79 (ET, 1:71). See also L/4z, 1:227. 32 SVDP 1:113 (ET, 1:111). See also LI.V, 1:227-228. 33 SVDP, 1:218 (ET, 1:216). See also LW, 1:230. 34 Though the works detailed thus far are the most well known of Vincent's endeavors, his energy and docility to the invitations of God led him to undertake and sponsor many others. These included labor in for-eign missions, aid to provinces devastated by war and famine, retreats for the laity, care of orphans and of the aged, participation in the coun-cil charged with the appointment of bishops, and the defense of the church against Jansenism. 3s Toward the end of his life, Vincent continued to affirm the impor-tance of collaboration with women in ministry. In a conference con-cerning the goals of the congreg~ition, he counseled his priests and brothers: "Was not he [the Son of God] pleased that women should be among his companions? Yes. Did he not direct them to perfection and to the assistance of the poor? Yes. If then our Lord has done this, he who did so much for our instruction, are we not persuaded that we are doing well in imitating him in this? . . . You know that even then [in the Apostolic era] there were deaconesses who did wonders in the church of God, . . . and thus God was served equally by both sexes; and shall we think that it does not belong to the Congregation of the Mission to procure that our Lord be honored and served by both?" Conference, 6 December 1658, SVDP, 12:86-87. 36 Though Vincent's labor for the establishment of the Daughters of Charity has been the principal focus of this section, he also entered into collaboration with other groups of women in various works of ministry in 682 Review for Religious the church, including the Visitation nuns and the Ladies of Charity of the H6tel Dieu, to mention a few. 37 SVDP, 11:318. 38 Conference on Conformity to the Will of God, 7 March 1659, SVDP, 12:154. 39 Common Rule of the Congregation of the Mission, 2:3. 40 Extract of a conference concerning the love of God, undated, SVDP, 11:40-41. 41 Conference on the Members and the Works of the Congregation, 13 December 1658, SVDP, 12:107-108. 42 Ibid, 108-109. 43 Common Rule, 1:1. ~ Luke 4:18. See SV'DP, 12:3-5, 79-81, 84-87, which are among many places where St. Vincent cited this gospel text. The Next Day The next day he sought her out. How to comfort a criminal's mother? He sensed her pain. Why did the temple priests want him killed? Had he really raised that man to life? She saw him scratching at the splinters in his hands, took them tenderly in hers and worked them free. The silences between their words grew longer. Here was home, yet time to leave. She touched a budding leaf. Thank you, Simon--her voice a whisper in his ear. Please come again. You've questions in your eyes that need to know. Yes, come tomorrow. Louise Finn CND September-October 1993 683 JOAN MUELLER A Franciscan Discernment ExperiencemPart Two MdY assignment was to teach graduate courses in spiritual irection during the coming school year and also in the following summer. In these courses I wanted to offer students an opportunity to explore discernment within the context of various charisms. Hoping to find reading material that might guide the study of discernment in the Franciscan tradition, I searched through various periodicals.~ In the 1984 volume of Review for Religious, I found "A Model of Discernment: The Experience of a Franciscan.''2 In the article Margaret Halaska OSF describes the process of discernment she used in making the transition out of community leadership and into a new form of ministry. The process involved personal prayer along with discussion and pondering with thirty people who knew her well. From these thirty, ten came to an evening of reflection that helped her refine her understanding of call. The result was not an outline of future ministry goals, but rather the next step, a year's renewal that would give her space to reflect on the path the Lord was choosing for her. The haunting leitmotif in her article is "personal poverty": "One of the elements of Franciscan discernment is the recognition of one's personal poverty and the' awareness that individuals are Part One of this article, by Margaret Halaska OSF, appeared in Review for Religious in 1984. Joan Mueller OSF teaches in the Christian Spirituality Program at Creighton University and is assistant professor of systematic theology at St. Francis Seminary; 3257 South Lake Drive; St. Francis, Wisconsin 53235. 684 Review for Religious inserted into a total world--one that is larger than oneself.''3 And again, "Recognition of personal poverty is one Franciscan princi-ple necessary for discernment. For me, this was very acute''4 (empha-sis mine). I cannot remember reading anything previous to this that res-onated so deeply within me that I needed to meet the author. While reading the articles, I felt as though I were listening to my own heart. When I looked at the author's profile, I found that Margaret belonged to the community whose motherhouse was across the street from where I worked. It was a strange and won-derful coincidence. One of my friends belonging to this community came the fol-lowing Saturday for supper. I told her of my excitement at read-ing the work of one of her sisters and begged her to provide me with an introduction. My friend started to cry. She told me that Margaret had been in administration with her, that they had been best friends, and that not long after her year of discernment she was found to have a brain tumor. It was evident that my friend was still grieving deeply. I assumed Margaret was dead and felt terrible disappointment. I asked when she had died, only to learn that she was still alive. She was in a nursing home in the city. I found her on the psy-chiatric floor of the nursing home sitting on the side of her bed. Her neck seemed paralyzed, so I sat on the floor to enable her to see me. I immediately told her my excitement about her article. We had a wonderful conversation. I promised to come back---and kept going to see her three, four, five times a week for the next year. Our visits were in some sense mundane. I would come from work and help her eat supper. Then I would help her wash up, brush her teeth, and go to bed. The mundane took a lot of time. Meals were usually a two-hour project. Helping her to brush her own teeth could take over a half hour. After Margaret was in bed, we would pray together. She would struggle to formulate a few words of prayer and then would be content to rest in God. One evening as she was preparing for bed, a eucharistic minister came in with Communion for both Margaret and me. Margaret wanted some time to pray, so we postponed getting her into bed. After receiving Communion we sat next to each other for a half hour in silence. I then opened my eyes and said, "Margaret, are you sleeping?" She said, "No, are you?" I said, "No." After another half hour of silence, we had the same September-October 1993 685 Mueller ¯ A Franciscan Discernment Experience conversation. After another half hour I said, "Margaret, you need to go to bed." Margaret's prayer was so simple. She tried to pray for every-one by name, but found that the world was too big. God gave her a solution to this dilemma: Mary. Margaret understood that it was Mary's role to stand before Jesus and tell him everything that Margaret needed--for the world and for herself. Prayer for Margaret was simply watching Mary and Jesus in this exchange. As her illness progressed, her voice became weaker. We communi-cated more and more through our eyes and through everyday tasks. I learned that feeding and washing hands were ways of listening to her heart. Her heart became more and more transparent. Once, when coming home after an evening with friends, I was reflecting upon my day. In contemplating the evening's interac-tion, I recognized that my contribution to the conversation was pri-marily about Margaret. I saw myself mirrored in the newly converted Francis, who went about the town of Assisi claiming that he had fallen in love with a most beautiful lady, Lady Poverty.s I also realized that, as with Francis, my excitement about this strange Lady was a mystery to my friends. This did not daunt my enthusiasm. I began to contemplate what was drawing me to Margaret's bedside day after day. It Was her poverty. The next day I simply told her, "I feel as though I have found Lady Poverty." She smiled. My experience was confirmed. Margaret's brain did not measure time very well. At first I thought this was a deficiency. As I listened, however, and got more in touch with her world, I realized that this sense of eternity was part of her beauty. With Margaret there was no past, present, or future. Rather, everything was a relationship. If we parted with a disagreement, what needed to be pondered and prayed about after-wards was the still-present feeling that all was not well between us, not who said what yesterday. What was important was the sister-hood between us. St. Clare would have agreed with this way of using time.6 Margaret talked to her food. The doctor gave her psychiatric medication for this habit. As she let me listen more and more to her heart, however, I too learned how to talk to my food. Margaret had been interested in the relationship between Native American spirituality and Franciscan spirituality. She learned from Native Americans how to listen to the movement of the Spirit in all of cre-ation. She saw all creation as enspirited. I invited a sympathetic 686 Review for Religious . nurse to see the mystery. Eventually Margaret was taken off the medication. As her sickness progressed and I helped feed her, we both understood the Spirit of the food. Margaret taught me how to see. For her, colors portrayed the deepest mysteries of life. She often expressed her heart simply in terms of color. Most of her last days were either purple (symbol-izing sorrow tinged with joy) or orange (joy tinged with sorrow). There were also four black days. The black days started on Christmas day. Margaret did not respond. Her eyes were a blank stare. I thought she was dying. Four days later one of the nurses pulled me aside to tell me that Margaret's condition was probably caused by depression, not by something directly physical. The nurse wanted me to try something. I went back into the room, closed the door, took Margaret's arm--the only extremity that was still working--and started to exercise it. I started growling and talking about how unfair life was. Her eyes made immediate contact. Life did seem unfair. She was only sixty years old. She was talented and bril-liant. She was so full of energy for the mis-sion. She was dying. The next day Margaret was radiant. She told me that she understood what the black days were about. She whispered, "They were about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." She said this over and over as if she was contemplating the mystery. I understood that she had been purified in the darkness for Trinitarian communion. I rejoiced and I wept. During the last days Margaret loved to be with those of us who loved her. She did not want to go back to the hospital. God asked of her even this wish. She died in the emergency room. I remembered the story of how Clare and her sisters wept at the death of Francis. Now I understand their tears.7 After Margaret's death a sister in her community gave me a copy of the manuscripts of her poems and essays. In one she recounts that during her year of renewal she had a dream in which she came upon a farmhouse. At the door was Lady Poverty. She Most of her last days were either purple (symbolizing sorrow tinged with joy) or orange (joy tinged with sorrow). September-October 1993 687 Mueller ¯ A Franciscan Discernment Experience realized in her dream that she truly loved and desired this Lady. At the same time another image, a beggar woman with crippled feet, hounded her prayer. She knew that God was inviting her to become this beggar woman; she resisted, hoping the beggar woman would go away. Finally in faith she said yes to the mystery. 688 Margaret's Story and Franciscan Discernment The discernment process that Margaret recounted in her arti-cle began in dialogue with others, in prayer, and in truthful assess-ment of her own gifts and the call of her heart. The discernment ended with an invitation to "live in a wigwam." This meant that Margaret was to spend her sabbatical time as a pilgrim exploring her call to personal poverty, to Native American spirituality, and to her love of the Franciscan charism. Practically, this translated into "a month's experience in a Franciscan Life Institute; extended time in Assisi; and ~xtended time on an Indian reservation.''8 This year of renewal was only the first fruit of Margaret's dis-cernment process. Her call was to personal poverty. None of those she discerned with were to take her into the depths of this mystery. Rather, she was introduced to the beggar woman with crooked feet. During her sickness Margaret became this beggar woman, dependent upon the thoughtfulness or thoughtlessness of others. As her illness progressed, she became crippled like the beggar woman of her prayer. Her legs and feet contracted so badly that they could not be straightened even after she died. Margaret's yes, her responsive determination to continually discern the will of God in her life, did not lead as she expected to a new form of ministry. Though this was a deep disappointment for her, heryes led her to surrenderat deeper and deeper levels every-thing of her heart that was not purely love. As I write, I expect to return to Creighton University for the summer and to teach discernment again. My students and I will explore the richness.gf discernment in the Catholic spiritual tra-dition and then concentrate on St. Ignatius of Loyola's Rules for Discernment. Without these I would not have been able to enter into Margaret's mystery. I have, however, learned from her that, after following the rules and the processes, one must simply sur-render to the Mystery. And so the Franciscan will not be surprised to find poverty the guide here. As Ignatius suggests in his third way of humility, surrendering Review for Religious to the mystery of the will of God invites one to choose poverty.9 This choice implies powerlessness, disrespect, abuse, joy, and free-dom. I took Ignatius on faith before I met Margaret. Now I have seen with my own eyes. As Margaret embraced the mystery of becoming the beggar woman, she became more and more grate-ful. She saw everything as an undeserved gift of God. Two squirrels playing outside gave her great delight. For her, all creation was a means by which she could praise God with gratitude and simple joy. It was Lady Poverty who brought her this grace.~° The mystery of discernment, the mystery of surrendering to the will of God, is both frightening and awesome. It is indeed "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb 10:31). Yet, as I watched Margaret suffer day after day, I saw that the glory of her spirit far surpassed her suffering. I learned through her that God cannot be.outdone in generosity. Margaret radically said yes to the will of God in her life. She understood discernment. After her careful searching for the will of God both in prayer and in dialogue with others, God invited her to become the beggar woman. In this invitation into personal poverty, Margaret discovered the will of God. Perhaps our discernment theory has emphasized active dis-cernment and not adequately explored the mystery of passive dis-cernment, something that cannot be easily categorized. One can watch it happening in another with grateful awe--and then be unable to exp!ain it to those who do not have the experience. The Franciscan tradition teaches, not by theologizing the mystery, but by telling stories about people who lived the mystery of saying yes radically to the will of God. In this tradition I offer the witness of Margaret for edification and imitation. One afternoon I asked: "Margaret, what does poverty mean to you?" She replied, "Poverty is a celebration!" I said, "Margaret, get real. For you poverty means this brain tumor. It means that you are living in a psych ward. It means that many of your friends do not understand you and have abandoned you." She looked on me with love and responded, "No, Joan, you are wrong. All that is hurt, but poverty is a celebration." " Margaret became this beggar woman, dependent upon the thoughtfulness or thoughtlessness of others. September-October 1993 689 Mueller ¯ A Franciscan Discernment Experience Notes ~ See, for example, Anthony M. Carrozzo OFM, "Francis of Assisi at the Crossroads: Elements of a Franciscan Process of Discernment," Review for Religious (July-August 1982)~ 551-556, and Evaristo Acosta Maestre OFMCap, "El Discernimiento de Espfritus y su Aplicaci6n segfin San Francisco de Asfs," Laurentianum 25 (1984): 415-448. 2 Margaret Halaska, "A Model of Discernment: The Experience of a Franciscan," Review for Religious (March-April 1984): 259-263. 3 Ibid, 260. 4 Ibid, 261. s "Legend of the Three Companions [3:7]," in St. Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, ed. Marion Habig (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), pp. 869-897. St. Clare, too, speaks of how she and her sisters bound themselves to Lady Poverty. See "The Testament [37]," in Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis Armstrong, OFMCap (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), p. 57. 6 Clare advocated that her sisters understand themselves as exchang-ing the things of time for the things of eternity. See "The First Letter to Blessed Agnes [30]," in Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, p. 37. One's mind will be transformed in the mirror of eternity. See "The Third Letter to Blessed Agnes [12-13]" in Clare ofAssisi, p. 44. 7 See "I Celano [116-17]," in St. Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, pp. 330-332. 8 Margaret Halaska, "A Model of Discernment," p. 263. 9 Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, § 167. 10 Gratitude, joy, and praise of God are fruits of poverty chosen or accepted. See "Sacrum Commercium [58]," in Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources, p. 1590. 690 Review for Religious EDWARD FOLEY Ritual Leave-Taking Almost fifteen years ago the liturgical commission of my province developed a very effective--even moving--ritual for installing the new provincial leadership at our triennial assem-bly. With slight modifications this basic ritual is resurrected every three years as we hand over direction of the province to a recently elected provincial, vicar provincial, and three councilors. Like presidential inaugurations, such rituals of beginning often gener-ate a sense of optimism and trust among the participants and pro-vide strong affirmation for those assuming office. Our rituals for taking leave of elected representatives, be they civil or religious, are usually much less effective--if they exist at all.1 Outgoing United States presidents do stage various farewell events which allow the departing commander-in-chief to offer a valedictory address and mark his closing days in the White House. The real departure ceremony for retiring U.S. presidents, however, is the inau-guration of their successor. This poignant ritual requires the retiring president to be seen and not heard--ironically marking his own tran-sition to private citizenship by serving as the most honored of wit-nesses to his successor's elevation to constitutional powers. The understated poignancy of such presidential leave-taking almost appears rich when compared with the dearth of rituals to mark the transition of leadership in so many of our religious com-munities. In few other arenas of ecclesiastical life do we ritually cel-ebrate transitions in leadership so rarely as in religious life. Retiring pastors and bishops are usually feted with multiple cele- Edward Foley OFMCap is agsociate professor of liturgy and music at the Catholic Theological Union. His address is 5401 South Cornell Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60615 o5698. S~ptember-October 1993 691 Foley ¯ Ritual Leave-Taking brations marking their contributions to a local church and artic-ulating the gratitude of at least some of the people of God. Those who die in office are afforded the even more elaborate ritual leave-taking provided by the Order of Christian Funerals. Religious lead-ers who leave office at the commencement of a chapter or with the election of their successors, however, are often simply suc-ceeded or replaced. Seldom are they ritually honored or, more importantly, reincorporated into the community. The absence of such ritual leave-taking is more than a lapse in ritual etiquette. It is a lamentable, even detrimental, omission. The discernment of new leadership is often a moment of hope and goodwill within a religious community. This is especially true if, as in my own province, this process occurs within a gathering of all the members, all of them direct constituents. The psycho-logical lift of a fresh beginning, the affirmation by a large portion of the electorate, and the guiding promise of the Holy Spirit all contribute to a sense of optimism or relief which ordinarily allows the newly elected to be installed with an authentic sense of festivity. Given the very real, sometimes devastating problems facing major superiors today, however, such goodwill is often difficult to maintain. The financial (rises, all-consuming personnel problems, and special pressures arising from the incidents of public scandal that increasingly plague many religious communities contribute to an almost inevitable estrangement between religious leaders and the communities that called them to office. The strain that arises from the realignment of ministry priorities, fulfilling per-sonnel requests, and addressing issues of personal discipline takes an enormous toll on our leaders. Ironically, leadership that can begin with an affirming elec-tion often devolves into a position of devaluation. Those who pre-viously epitomized the center of the community are often marginalized or even shunned. Affirmation is increasingly replaced by criticism. An ordinary consequence of this process is burnout and alienation. Thus, our leaders are frequently absolved of their office with extended sabbaticals or with attenuated processes of return that sometimes take years. It is lamentable that communities like my own do not possess an adequate ritual vocabulary for marking the transition from lead-ership. This ritual lacuna prevents us from corporately acknowl-edging both the joy and the pain, the gratitude and the regret, associated with the ministry of leadership in contemporary reli- 692 Review for Religious gious life. Furthermore, our inability to ritualize such moments might even be viewed as a corporate sin of omission: rather than seizing a critical moment to welcome retiring leaders back into the heart of the community, our lack of action may actually allow or even encourage them to assume a life at the margins. The stress here on corporate ritual rather than individual ges-ture is quite intentional. While the kindness and support of vari-ous individuals in a religious community is essential if retiring religious leaders are to be effectively reincorporated into their communities, personal gestures of support from even a large number of individuals are insufficient. A religious community is more than an aggregate of individuals, and the call to leadership, while voiced by individuals, is ultimately from the whole body. Our leaders are responsible to and for all the members. Just as the beginning of leadership requires corporate affirma-tion, so should leave-taking be marked with a corporate response. The power of ritual should not be underestimated in these transitions. It is an ancient teaching of the church--and a recent maxim in some social sciences-- that rituals both express and create reality, or belief. It is not simply the election but especially the inauguration that creates a president; and it is not so much the electoral defeat as much as the inauguration of a suc-cessor that creates an ex-president. Similarly, it is not only the discernment but also the installation, consecration, or other order-ing ritual that in a real sense establishes one as a leader in our religious communities. Our current lack of rituals de facto cre-ates ex-leaders. The development of appropriate rituals of transi-tion could instead reincorporate these retiring ministers and, in the process, affirm, forgive, and welcome them. Ritually choreographing such an event is difficult. Varieties of personalities, corporate fatigue or even hostility toward the retiring leadership, and a minefield of unexpressed feelings on both sides complicate matters. No two leaders and no two transi-tions in leadership, even within the same community, are identi-cal. Consequently, it is necessary to develop a ritual pattern that is Just as the beginning of leadership requires corporate affirmation, so should leave-taking be marked with a corporate response. Septe~nber-October 199~ 693 Foley ¯ Ritual Leave-Taking open to adaptation as the occasion demands. On the other hand, developing a ritual pattern is important. Such a pattern, evoked year after year, discernment after discernment, announces that rit-uals of reincorporation are not simply designed for leaders that we happen to like or feel sorry for. Rather, they are. designed for the welfare of the community and the health of the church. The following is proposed as a model for ritualizing the rein-corporation of retiring religious leaders into the community that called them to office. It presumes significant adaptation in the light of concrete circumstances and needs. The context for the outline and commentary that follow is the opening liturgy at the triennial gathering of my own province, during which a new provincial, vicar provincial, and council are to be elected. The Ritual Context The ritual context for this model is Vespers. While other prayer patterns of the church might also provide an appropriate context for the reincorporation of retiring superiors, Vespers is particularly suited to this end for many reasons. First of all, unlike Eucharist, Vespers does not require any ordained clergy. Consequently, it is one of the official liturgies of the church that can be enacted by any group of women or men, lay or ordained, without recourse to presbyters, who may or may not be present within thee community. Second, while Vespers has certain minis-terial requirements and presumptions, the leadership can easily be cast in a more communitarian and less hierarchical fashion--as befits the worship 6f a religious community. In my own province, for example, instead of relying upon a former provincial, senior friar, or ordained brother to preside, it could be possible to call upon the youngest professed member of the province to assume this ministry. Thus the ministry models the moment: recalling that leadership is not a presumption of power, but an act of service and minority. Apart from the ministerial structure of Vespers, the traditional images and themes of evening prayer recommend its usage for this ritual reincorporation. For example, Vespers traditionally occurs at dusk, with the setting of the sun. Thus it is an ending rit-ual and provides an appropriate context for acknowledging the end of one's service in leadership. On the other hand, Vespers does more than announce the end of the day; it also anticipates the 694 Review for Religious presence of Christ through the night, a presence ultimately revealed at dawn. The images of hope and expectation, as well as the metaphoric parallel of the dawning of new leadership in a community, are obvious. Evening Prayer has a strong sense of thanksgiving, well epit-omized in the opening thanksgiving for the light and in the Magnificat. This thematic could easily be exploited to give thanks to God for calling people to leadership and for expressing grati-t- ude to those who have heard the call and answered with a willing heart. Yet, while there is a natural inclination toward thanksgiving at Vespers, the thematic elas-ticity provided by the various psalms, prayers, and readings allows for more than unabashed gratitude. The call to forgive-ness, the promise of eternal life, sacrifi-cial images, words of rededication--these and many other prayer instincts have a natural resonance in Eve.ning Prayer. Finally, Vespers lends itself to the rit-ual reincorporation of the retiring lead-ers of our communities because--at least in the West--it has a relatively simple yet flexible structure. Thus Evening Player can ritually tolerate the inclusion of a modest amount of other ritual activity--like gestures of reincor-poration-- without overwhelming or being overwhelmed by them. More specifically, Vespers is capable of allowing the inclusion of rituals like the renewal of vows, the sign of peace, and other acts of reconciliation and blessing and yet still clearly be Vespers. The central adaptation that I would propose for this ritual in my own province would be the additio