General Chapter, 1998
Internet site by Scott Steinkerchner OP
email: steinkerchner@op.org
| G e n e r a l C h a p t e r | B o l o g n a '9 8 |
| Order of Preachers |
1.1. The World as it is
1.2. Christianity in situ
2.1. The "Other" who Precedes Us
2.2. The Gospel is for the World
2.3 At the Foundation of Mission
3.1. The Conditions of Dialogue
3.2. Dialogue: A Spiritual Attitude
3.3. The Risks of Dialogue
4.1. Time to Go Out
4.2. Where to Bring the Word?
4.3. An Astonishing Freedom
Fr. Marie-Dominique Chenu has observed how frequently people used the word novitas in the 13th century to describe their own times: "At the time, many said that novitas was tantamount to catastrophe. On the other hand, what enthusiasm, what thirst, what fervour for novelty !" The Vita of Saint Dominic, like the beginnings of the Order, was qualified as something "new". At the end of our own century, humanity has come to know such powerful changes that this novitas could just as well describe our own times in ways more profound than the superficial attraction of the New Age.
Fr. Timothy has asked the new commission "De missione ordinis" to adopt as its goal "being free for mission". The idea is to give a new dynamism to mission. We have not shied away from advancing into new theological fields. Have we been presumptuous? In any case, there is a convergence of ideas between sixteen brethren coming from different parts of the planet, from different age groups and different ministries.
They offer here incomplete thoughts open to discussion. It has taken centuries to define who Christ is; don't we need a few years to grasp what is at stake for such a new epoch? We believe that if the questions debated here are not all perfectly clear, perfect clarity is not a prerequisite for taking action. After all, the prophet Amos was no political expert. He knew that his people were suffering: that was enough to make him cry out in prophecy.
This new epoch calls for us to rethink what mission is. To do this, we need to 1) clarify its context ; 2) rethink the question of "the other", and 3) reconsider our concept of dialogue. The next step 4) will be to pinpoint the implications for an Order resolved to follow Jesus Christ in preaching the Kingdom.
1.1. The World as it is
Our Order, like the whole Church, is a servant of the Gospel. The Gospel is for the world. Let us then dare to make out what characterises the world in which the Gospel today must take its course.
1.1.1. Globalisation
A global economy and global communications have made us all interconnected. A universal time is being settled. The World Wide Web, Internet, the proliferation of satellite TV dish antennae on every rooftop in the Third World bear witness to this interconnectedness. And so does the effect of the recent fall of East and Southeast-Asian stock-markets on world markets. We have learned that a butterfly stirring the air today in New Guinea can transform storm systems next month in New York. In brief, the world is unified by this constant flow of information and stock values and yet, more than ever, it seems fragmented, splintered.
Does our Order, scattered as it is throughout the world, do anything to accompany globalisation onto paths of peace?
1.1.2. Fragmentation
Unified globally, the world still does appear to be fractured, broken up. Fr. Pierre Claverie often spoke of "fault lines". These are not only geographical-they can be in hot frontier regions-but social, cultural, religious and economic. Between North and South, Islam and the West, rich and poor countries, rich and poor in the Western countries These fault lines separate everywhere those who have power from those who don't, for masses of people don't have power.
Many brethren have chosen to be on the side of men and women deprived of power. Some do everything possible to be at the service of the deprived, to better or even change their condition. Others mean to share entirely the living conditions of those without power.
What place do these brethren have in our Provinces? Are they outcasts or are they at the centre of Dominican life ?
1.1.3. Violence
This world is also one of spreading violence, and its general diffusion means it is ever more present in our consciousness with every passing day. It is a world of bloody ethnic conflicts (Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka), nationalist wars (Bosnia, Azerbaijan), religious war (Afghanistan, India, Ireland, Algeria). It is also political violence towards weak states (Cuba, Iraq), chronic urban violence (Washington, Karachi, Lagos), gratuitous suburban violence in the West (Strasbourg, Birmingham), unchecked armed aggressions (such as these American children who kill teachers or other students in their own schools, for no reason), social violence perpetrated on the helpless (exploited children, intimidated women, expelled refugees, ghettoised minorities, rejected AIDS patients). Have we ever been so starkly confronted with the realities of difference? Are we conscious of how forcefully difference is resisted, of our inability to live with difference? Ours is a world of falling back on primary identities, of hatred of the other, of the cult of the same.
How does our preaching confront this culture of violence ?
1.1.4. Creation
But ours is also a wonderfully creative world. Cultures intermix, scientific research becomes a world-wide affair, sport, painting and sculpture, music, literature and the stage, circulate all over the world in spite of the levelling-out effects of commercialisation. Many also are the creative situations in which new forms of solidarity (the vitality of small-scale organisations), of relationships between cultures and peoples, of democratic requirements, are invented. Fault lines can also be places for the creation of a new kind of humanity.
Here too, some brethren (the same ones, perhaps?) take an active part in fields of creativity. They work, just like the rest, and with others, often coming from different backgrounds. Again, what is their place, what attention are they getting in our Provinces?
1.2. Christianity in situ
Christianity thrives in this context. But if Christianity has tied a part of its destiny to the civilisation that has unified (at least technically) our planet, it knows what ambiguities are inherent in that.
1.2.1. Minority
There is scarcely a place where Christianity does not have to live a cultural and religious pluralism, where it leads one form of life, with one form of thought, amongst other forms of life and thought. Where Christianity had been in a dominant position, it has lost that position, or at least lost its monopoly. Among Italians, Muslims are the most numerous after Catholics.
In places where Christians are a true minority, as much in relation to power as in number, the situation is sometimes considered a challenge, maybe even an opportunity. For where there is no domination over society, there are no possessions or privileges to defend. Such a situation can lead to the grace of recovering one's liberty.
Some priories or Provinces have always been in this type of situation. Others are discovering it. What repercussions does this have on our Dominican life ?
1.2.2. Conflicts
There are places where Christianity finds itself on both sides of a fault line. This inevitably makes for internal tensions: clashes between the Orthodox and Uniate Churches in Eastern Europe, various tensions within Catholic communities. Sometimes Christianity is also, and in spite of itself, in competition with other religious forces: conflicting sects in Latin America; rivalries with Muslim missionaries in sub-Saharan Africa. We ought not to forget these situations.
Do our Provinces experience these conditions of conflict, and if so, do they face up to them ?
1.2.3. Obsolescence
It has happened that even in places where Christian tradition is strong, some of what it is saying to people has become incomprehensible. Essential terms of the language of faith have lost all meaning for our fellow citizens. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his Letters from Prison, already said that words like "redemption" or "salvation" had lost their meaning and needed rebirth "in prayer and in working for justice."
The Gospel calls for new expressions. Do we Preachers really have anything new, anything different to say ? Do the words we use find rebirth in prayer, in the battle for justice and in the taking of risks ? Whatever the case, the situation should stimulate the invention of new ways of expressing the mystery of God and the human mystery.
We have been speaking of the Order as the Order of Brothers, servants of the truth and mendicants in our relation to others. Instead, shouldn't we look at ourselves as servants of others and mendicants in relation to the truth?
This turn-around invites comment. First we must clarify this new relationship to others (§2.1), understand it in the light of the Gospel (§2.2), then make a draft of mission theology (§2.3).
2.1. The "Other" who Precedes Us
When we say "other", we mean people considered in how they are different from ourselves. In this sense, each one, even our closest neighbour, is irreducibly other. The same goes for societies, cultures, religions that aren't our own. Let us keep in the back of our minds, for what follows, this double dimension of relationships between people and the relation with the social dimensions of human existence.
2.1.1. Encounter and its Ethical Stakes
Fundamentally, to be human is to be in relation with others. Full humanity is attainable only socially, in our relations with others. Likewise, the truth of God is attainable only in the encounter with others (1 Jn 4: 7-12).
What we're going towards is uniting people with ties stronger than the divisions which have fractured our humanity into nations, classes, cultures, religions. In becoming the servant of those on the fringes of society, I point to a tie which is more steadfast than the forces of social exclusion. If in my own life I destroy these forces of separation, then I am on the path to the truth to which we all aspire. In this way, as servants of others, we are mendicants of the truth, a truth that comes only in service, in view of a solidarity between all of humanity. The ethical dimension of the encounter with others is based on what ties me to them, beyond all separation. To assert these ties is to say that the rights of others precede me, with no preconditions. The rights of others call on me to share responsibility, in whatever context or way I understand our relationship.
2.1.2. Suffering and Responsibilities
The foundation of this responsibility towards others is our faith in the unconditional love of the Father for each one of us. To believe is to participate in God's love, which makes us responsible in the face of the suffering of others, even if we aren't responsible for their suffering. Jesus manifested himself as Messiah by becoming responsible for the sufferings of his people; that is, he led his life in the face of these sufferings, and his death is the consequence of this solidarity from which he did not shy away. The life he lived and that he proclaims calls all of us to such responsibility. In this sense, to believe in Jesus (cf. Jn 3 :16) is not to make a doctrinal affirmation, it is to comprehend this call to being responsible in the face of the suffering of others. Salvation, or judgement, is not measured against the enunciation of some dogmatic content but against having taken on or not taken on this responsibility for the suffering of others (Mt 25 :31).
2.1.3. Humanity in the Plural
In such terms is the question of truth raised. We cannot hold the position of a predetermined and pre-packaged truth, of which we are the possessors and that we bring to others who have nothing to do but receive it as delivered. Nor can we hold the opposite idea, that the truth just appears out of the blue.
Truth emerges in an encounter, in context. It comes in fullness out of the discovery of the other in his own truth. I must, if possible, receive from others before I can go with them towards the "whole truth" to which Jesus promised that the Paraclete would lead us (Jn 16 :13). This quest for the truth exempts no one from strenuous and sometimes painful labour.
A theological and spiritual foundation for this attitude was given with concision and force by fr. Pierre Claverie in a text published in January 1996, six months before his death:
There is no humanity except in the plural. As soon as we make claims of having the truth or of speaking in the name of all humanity, we become totalitarians, we start to exclude-in the Catholic Church, we have had this sad experience in the course of our history. No one possesses the truth. Everyone seeks it. There are surely objective truths, but they are above everyone, and we can only reach them by a long journey, and in piecing together, bit by bit, this particular truth ; in picking up from other cultures and other types of humanity, that which others too have acquired and looked for on their own journey towards the truth.
I am a believer, I believe that there is a God, but I do not claim to possess Him, neither by Jesus who reveals Him to me, nor by the dogmas of my faith. God cannot be possessed. The truth cannot be possessed, and I need others' truth. This is what I experience today with thousands of Algerians, sharing life and questions which we all ask ourselves.
2.2. The Gospel is for the World
We have learned to think that Christ's unique mediation does not necessarily imply for each of us the unique mediation of his Church. In other words, if Jesus is indeed a part of history, of our history, Christ is the recapitulation of all histories.
2.2.1. The Church and Christ
What is the Church's place then ? The Church is where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is received, recognised, confessed, celebrated, lived. That's where Christians find help, joy, strength; where they have ways of approaching the Father through the sacraments, community life and liturgy. But the Church cannot keep this treasure for herself. The Church is the servant of the Gospel and the Gospel is for the world. Haven't Christians often wanted to keep Christ for themselves ? Knowing Jesus, in whom the Word became flesh, they often believed they held the key to the only path to the Father. Churches proclaimed and defined everything one had to-and could-say about God. In so doing, they were keeping Him for themselves. But God is part of humanity's heritage, and so humanity can find Him on paths different from our own.
2.2.2. Seeds and Trees
It would seem that we find here a theological concept that goes back to Justin Martyr, the concept of "seeds of the Word" found in all of us. This theology allowed the concept of "preparation for the Gospel", the beginnings of which the eye of a believer can discern in things that are right and just without explicit reference to Jesus Christ.
The remark of a Latin American Indian woman gets this theology moving: It is not only seeds one sometimes finds elsewhere, but also flowers, fruit, trees. We do not only have to recognise what could become Christian, but also what flourishes according to possibilities-whether individual or collective-other than those which Christianity has lived.
2.2.3 Priority for those who are suffering
The life and word of Jesus do not lead us to putting different situations on the same level. Our first priority has to be those human situations in which the fraternity the Father wishes us to have, is debased. Our mission takes us to wherever people are excluded and exposed to violence and death.
We are not sent on our own authority, but on account of the misery of others: their suffering weakens our sense of the world order; it convinces us to build a new world in which fraternal love will be a reality.
2.3 At the Foundation of Mission
2.3.1 The Mission and Prophecy of Others
First of all, let us humbly note: The Order has existed for centuries; some of us have lived in it for decades; nevertheless, we always have to learn what our mission is. A recognition of our insufficiency? Certainly, and Paul was already aware of it: "Who is sufficient for these things?" (II Cor. 2,16). It is also recognising that mission cannot be defined once and for all and that, if it is the relationship between the Gospel and the world, it cannot but change when the world, and the way the world is seen, changes.
Truth is searched for together and is constructed together. The preacher does not go towards another only to proclaim the Gospel, but to recognise the Spirit at work in the one encountered. The preacher himself receives the Gospel in this encounter. To proclaim the Gospel is also to search for it and to reveal it, listening for the prophecy of others, which is expressed by what God does in them.
The Dominican mission is to receive these provocations from today's world-in its brokenness as in its capacities for creation-as a place where truth provokes the response which takes shape within us.
2.3.2 A Trinitarian Foundation
Our understanding of mission has its origin in the life of the Triune God. The Son and the Holy Spirit are sent to communicate the love of the Father to all creatures. This mission refers back to the eternal emerging (processio) of the Son from the Father, and of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. As a sharing in the divine mission, our mission has no other purpose than to lead all creation towards communion in the divine life.
In the created sphere, mission implies a change of place, a separation between he who sends and the one sent and, hence, a transformation. The mission of a divine person occurs-as Thomas Aquinas says-without separation. When Jesus sends his disciples, they must move away from him and, on their return, tell him what they have done (Lk 9,10). But when the Son is sent into the world by the Father, he remains united to him in all that he thinks, says and does. If we live in the mission of the Son, he does not send us far from himself, but lets us be in him and with him, where he is (Jn 17,24).
This mission "without separation" becomes the vocation of believers thanks to the Holy Spirit, whom the Risen Lord sends. The disciples discover this vocation in a painful way, as the reverse side of their experience of the withdrawal of Jesus in his worldly and familiar form. The Risen Lord draws away from Mary Magdalene, who looks for him at the empty tomb and wishes to hold on to him; but he sends her to his brothers as the bearer of the message of the resurrection: apostolorum apostola. When the disciples at Emmaus recognise Jesus in the breaking of the bread, he escapes from them, not to retire into an absence, but for this new presence which is mission in the Holy Spirit. They learn to recognise him in their burning hearts, in the breaking of the bread and in the Eucharist, in their conversations and their preaching to the brothers and sisters, in their communion with those who have met the Risen Lord-in short, in the community of the Church.
Thus the word of Jesus comes true: "it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16,7). Called in the Holy Spirit, we become one with Jesus Christ in his permanent mission for the salvation of all creation. Mission is repose in the movement of God, and the movement to make every creature in its suffering and solitude participate in the repose of God, manifested in the compassion of the Son and the closeness of the Spirit.
3.1. The Conditions of Dialogue
3.1.1 The Gift of Ears
A key word here is dialogue. It is appropriate here to explore its dimensions. For dialogue to be true, one must have something to say and a desire to receive something from the other. The partners, placed in a situation of equality, stand before the truth and deepen their own portion of this truth. They do not necessarily come closer to one another, but they come closer to God.
An old Irish theologian remarked: "When Pentecost day came round, the Spirit gave the Church the gift of tongues, and this is beautiful. I am not completely sure the Spirit gave her also the gift of ears".
3.1.2 Where Dialogue is Impossible
Let us be under no illusion: such a dialogue is not always possible today. A group struggling for survival (for example, the Egyptian Copts) cannot be in dialogue with those who threaten them. When fundamentalism grows (in the Philippines, for example), possibilities diminish. Sometimes, in the absence of partners, or because we have too long ignored the other, the paths seem blocked (with the traditional religions of Africa, for example). In other cases again, the Church does not seem ready (China). But everything is possible for God, even forgiveness!
3.1.3. Beyond Dialogue
there is action together, which can occur without language having preceded it. Thus an ecumenism between Catholics and Protestants is lived in numerous charitable or social activities, caring little for the complexities of the dialogue among theologians. Christians and Muslims can also meet to run an aid centre for women in difficulty in Pakistan, or to build together a mosque in the village 'Paradise' in Benin-to take two examples in which our brothers play an essential role.
Dialogue with those who are other than us is a necessity today. To close ourselves off, to remain in the enclosure of the believers with whom we share our faith, would be death for the Order as a whole and for each community.
3.2. Dialogue: A Spiritual Attitude
Rather than looking for general rules, it is appropriate to speak of a "dialogical attitude", indeed of a "dialogical spirituality", from which appropriate dialogue can emerge. Herein is indicated a fundamental attitude of the preacher, at the root of mission today. Several of its traits are given here:
-a) dialogue supposes that one puts oneself at the service of the other. It occurs in a situation in which the other can be a master for us. This turns on its head the position of those who think they possesses something which they must transmit to whoever does not have it;
-b) According to Bishop Kenneth Cragg, "our first task in approaching people, another culture, another religion, is to take off our shoes, for the place we are approaching is holy. Else we may find ourselves treading on peoples' dreams. More seriously still, we may forget that God was there before our arrival". The Gospel already tells us: "Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house!' " (Lk 10,5)
-c) where it is possible, a friendship or a feeling for another culture (or for the new forms of one's own culture) can be born from dialogue and make a foundation for it from our common humanity;
-d) reciprocity is not a condition of dialogue. If dialogue is not responded to or if it is refused, this need not dissuade one from searching for it again. If others close themselves off, one can oneself remain open and try to create a new context for the relationship, a more breathable atmosphere-unless the refusal is clearly signalled. In this case your peace "shall return to you" (Lk 10,6);
-e) it is, in any case, essential to prepare oneself to be transformed by the other, "alter-ed", that is: made other. The breaches we open in the fortifications are two-way, and we are ready to receive what comes to us from the other. It is a matter of leaving one's own place, going elsewhere, and returning to oneself transformed;
-f) herein, perhaps, is the final paradox in the attitude of the preacher today: to be completely open and, at the same time, to wish firmly to proclaim what we grasp of the truth; to put ourselves without reserve in an attitude of listening to others, while at the same time showing that we have something to say to them. To believe that we do not have the last word on God, without losing our own faith, and without losing ourselves.
Lived thus, dialogue can become a form of preaching for our time.
3.2. The Risks of Dialogue
3.3.1. Risk: A Dominican Value
Entering into the attitude thus described leads to taking risks: St. Dominic had already taken his own. Herein is a strong Dominican value-though we do not wish to claim a monopoly. There is the risk of leaving known and closed spaces, and the risk of hearing others and of entering into adventures which lead we know not where. Some of our brothers and sisters today risk their very lives. They hold out in the region of the Great Lakes, in Chiapas, in the centre of Brazil, and in other violent places. Some are at risk in places of insurmountable distress. Such places are not lacking, and those who do not find their way within the Order could be reminded of this. "If someone is bored, Pakistan is a good place to be cured of it", says fr. Chrys McVey.
3.3.2 The Risks of Love
According to fr. Herbert McCabe: "If you don't love, you're dead; if you do, you are killed". The life and death of Jesus, the life and death of our brother Pierre Claverie, witness to this. Salvation comes from love. To love is to accept being vulnerable and being wounded. A story reminds us of what is at stake. A man died and sought entry to heaven. The angel at the gate asked only one question: "Where are your wounds?" "Wounds?" he said, "I don't have any wounds." And the angel, looking at him sadly, said: "Was there nothing worth fighting for?"
Even without physical violence, living in two cultures is also a risk: but this is a requirement for dialogue as we have described it. It is a question of being fully of the culture forged by the tradition of the Church and the Order, and of being fully elsewhere. St. Dominic lived this: he stood in medio ecclesiae and also beyond its frontiers. This canon was haunted by his desire to be among the Cumans.
Our capacity to take risks will sometimes lead to incomprehension, indeed tensions in the heart of the Church itself. At the General Chapter of Rome frs. Schillebeeckx, Congar and Chenu were praised for having been faithful to the faith of the Church "despite the difficulties". What is at stake for the Dominican is, in the name of his fidelity to the mission confided by Jesus to his Church, to take new questions seriously. He must sometimes explore new theological paths and think in a Christian manner what has not yet been thought.
4.1. Time to Go Out
4.1.1. The Order and the Church
Missions of the Church are confided to us, and some of us take them on-and will continue taking them on-in an authentic Dominican spirit. We know, too, that most of our houses have constituted communities of Christians around themselves: for these communities the service of the Word has to be assured.
Nevertheless not all the tasks of the Church have to be ours. "To do what everyone else does is undominican", says fr. Edward Schillebeeckx. It is a question of doing, without presumption, what others do not do. We cannot in fact forget that we are sent to those who live outside the visible limits of the Church. The Order is ceaselessly called to move the centre of gravity of its mission and to be on guard, collectively, that it is not absorbed exclusively by Christian milieus.
4.1.2. An Order in Movement
It is therefore time to go out, to move out. To enter into a culture, to receive the prophecy of others is to leave one's home and oneself. Certainly, it is not just a question of numbers: it is not a question of calculating the number of brothers who are outside or who are inside, nor how much of each one is turned towards the outside. It is possible that a quantitative criterion could, nevertheless, be in some way pertinent.
To be a Dominican is to be in movement and not in the stability of an ordo. Or rather: we are in an order ordained to movement. Are we fixed and stable or, rather, in movement? Geographic mobility, towards other lands; social mobility, towards groups in our own worlds who are not the most accessible; intellectual mobility, because our old theologies and ecclesiologies do not sufficiently equip us in the face of new challenges. Without intellectual daring, we won't get out of this.
4.1.3. Beyond Avila
Is it not time to advance further in the direction indicated by the General Chapter of Avila? This chapter designated frontiers for the Order (which was sometimes interpreted in a static fashion: "Such a brother is, or is not, at the frontiers"; it was, however, a question of dynamism). But are we called to stand at the frontiers, or to go through them-to go beyond them? Every frontier is made to be passed, it is passage-the same word as Easter (Passover)!
4.2. Where to Bring the Word?
4.2.1. Religions and Cultures
There is much talk about inter-religious dialogue: some of our brothers are resolutely engaged in it, and this is a true mission task for today. Experience shows that this dialogue is, in the first place, a meeting between believers, before being a meeting between religions; between subjects and not between systems.
But dialogue cannot be restricted to this. It deserves to be undertaken with every person who is different from us-even if we do not share the common basis of religious belonging. From every person I can receive part of the truth of what it is to be a human being. Charles Péguy spoke of one of his friends as "an atheist overflowing with the Word of God".
This meeting with other worlds can be done outside of one's country, or among foreigners who are in one's own country, or also in the forms of culture which emerge in the heart of our own culture (Internet, youth culture, new forces in the economy, researchers, social workers, artists).
4.2.2 Breakdown and Reconciliation
It is necessary here to come back to "fault lines". In such places (geographic, social, cultural, religious) communion between people is defeated. Is not the task then to carry reconciliation in Christ to where the world is broken? The "word of reconciliation" is a strong dimension of our preaching. And when no word is possible, simply being there can, by itself, be a message. Various sources witness to the importance of simply "being there".
We can here recall the words of fr. Pierre Claverie concerning Algeria. Five weeks before his death he preached at Prouilhe:
We are there as at the bedside vigil of a friend, a sick brother, in silence, holding his hand, sponging his forehead. Because of Jesus, because it is he who suffers there, in this violence which spares no one, crucified anew in the flesh of thousands of innocent victims. As Mary his mother and St. John, we are there, at the foot of the cross where Jesus dies, abandoned by his own and jeered at by the crowd. Is it not essential for the Christian to be present in places of suffering, in places of dereliction, of abandonment? Where would the Church of Jesus Christ be, itself the Body of Christ, if it is not first of all there? I think that the Church dies in not being close enough to its Lord.
4.3. An Astonishing Freedom
The challenges which are put to us are new, but we face them with the old resources of the Order. How do we draw from them the strength to be free for our mission? We have the means: it would be a sin against the Spirit not to face the challenges.
4.3.1. Freedom for Mission
We are dedicated to the mission of the Order. This is the meaning of the vow of obedience made to the Master of the Order. It sometimes happens that we forget it. Would it not be good to remind both ourselves and our brothers of this?
St. Dominic has been described as a man of astonishing freedom. What was there in him which so amazed his contemporaries and which still startles us today? Is it not precisely this freedom which we at once admire and fear? We marvel at the audacity of our founder, but it can happen that we, in fact, take our place beside his brothers who counselled prudence in the face of his impetuosity.
To realise such freedom today implies:
-on the one hand, acquiring an interior freedom. Poverty is here a condition: if we have nothing, we have nothing to protect or to defend. Do we know the divesting which makes us free? It is also the absence of power: those who have none have nothing to protect. It is also the freedom of the itinerant brother, unburdened of every weight;
-on the other hand, remaining free with respect to institutions, especially our own. Christianity is a great creator of institutions. These can bind us. If there is no general rule here-so diverse are the situations of the Order-we can, nevertheless, ask ourselves what is promoted by the service of Christian communities: are not these sometimes a screen around our houses which do not allow us to attain other horizons?
4.3.2 Beyond the Bounds
We can have the impression that some of us are chained to certain places, institutions, contracts, fields of work. Is it not time for communities to undertake a prudent evaluation of each brother without favouring their present engagements and, if it is appropriate, to give up with generosity those engagements which, however good they may be, hinder the renewal of the apostolate in our provinces and houses?
When Abram was called to leave, he wasn't doing anything bad: he lived in his country like everyone else. But it was to elsewhere that he was called by God.
The question is thus posed to each brother and to each community: from what must we free ourselves? By what means can we make ourselves more available for mission?
4.3.3 A Final Word: Madness
"Whoever hears not the music thinks the dancers mad". When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is always created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure, who are willing to take risks. And whom others think reckless and mad.
People thought that Jesus was "out of his mind" (Mk 3,21), so far from the norm, so eccentric was his behaviour. If we have to be "fully here and fully somewhere else", in this world, perhaps we need to be a bit more abnormal, more eccentric-off centre. What are we doing now which can make others think we are "out of our minds"?
Were we living what we preach, were our lives a true service of the Gospel,
throwing us onto the roads beyond frontiers, then we might be seen as "out
of our minds", and a touch of Evangelical madness would dwell joyfully
in us.
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