At the outset I would like to thank the organizing committee for inviting me to address this Assembly.  I accepted with a certain reluctance, since I am not only a member of the Male Religious Life, but I have never been a "General”, nor even a “Colonel” – I am much more an ordinary foot soldier!  So I address you in all simplicity as a brother on our common journey, from the background of 40 years of Religious Life as a Divine Word Missionary, 35 of which I have spent in Brazil.  I thank you for your welcome on this occasion of great importance, not only for the Religious Life throughout the world, but for the Church, and therefore, the Kingdom.

To Weave Is To Create New Patterns Using Old And New Threads

The very title of the Conference gives us some pointers for our reflection.  Firstly, the term “Challenged” – because challenges do not arise from a vacuum, but from concrete situations.  What is it that challenges us as religious today?  It seems to me that there is a two-fold origin – one flowing from the very nature of Consecrated Religious Life and another springing from the concrete situation of great masses of humanity, suffering and excluded from a decent life by the dominant economic model of our globalized neoliberal society.  Just as Javé felt “challenged” millennia ago by the cry of his people in Egypt, today Religious Life, understood as the radical following of the project of this God, incarnate in the Divine Word, is challenged by the deafening cry of millions or even billions of suffering human beings.   From this nature of the Religious Life the other challenges arise – how to be faithful to our real identity, which does not in the first place lie in our vows or our works, but in our manner of being Christians.  In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, we passed through years of reforms, but it remains clear to any attentive observer that the reforming impulse has now exhausted itself, that the real crisis continues and that it is more necessary than ever to clarify the identity and meaning of Religious Life.

Another key phrase in the title is “to weave”.  The act of weaving implies creating something new from different threads, which become intertwined to form a new cloth.  Thus we must identify some essential elements if we really wish to weave a new technicolour cloth, a spirituality which will do justice to the complexity of the challenges of modern life, and will generate hope and life for all.  We may well discover that many elements of the new spirituality may not, in fact, be so new, but rather extremely old, but neglected or even abandoned throughout the centuries.  The fact that we seek a spirituality that “generates”, implies that it cannot be something preconceived and with all the answers, but rather that we wish to enter into the dynamics of our God, who continues to create, as he chided in the words of the Prophet Deutero-Isaiah, “behold I am creating a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”(Is 43, 19).   As Paul put it: the whole of creation groans in birth pangs until now” (Rm 8,22) – and our spirituality experiences these birth pangs.  Also, the search for a spirituality which generates hope and life places us in harmony with Jesus, who, in the words of the Fourth Gospel, defined his mission as that of ensuring that “all may have life and life in abundance”(Jn 10,10).  Perhaps it has never been more necessary to have such spirituality, as we face the passivity and hopelessness of so many people, and even nations, faced with the grinding oppression of the neoliberal steamroller.  Passivity and impotence are sentiments which we often come across today – even in large segments of Church and Religious Life.  This challenges us to let our hearts burn and our eyes be opened again, as happened to the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

The Word of God – Always New

To me it is clear that the backbone of any renewed spirituality, whether we call it new or not, will be the Word of God.  For years now the Church has insisted that we base our spirituality on this foundation.  The monumental Document Dei Verbum (monumental, not because of its length but because of its importance) demanded that the Word of God become again the soul of all the Church’s theology and preaching, and that the Bible once more be returned to the hands of the laity.  More than forty years have passed but it remains clear how much still has to be done in this area, not only in respect of the laity, but of Religious.  Although it would be difficult to exaggerate the efforts made by various instances of the Religious Life worldwide to promote many different types of programmes so that this might occur (such as the seven-year programme “Your Word is Life” of the Conference of Religious of Brazil, or “On the Road to Emmaus” of CLAR), the results, at least quantitatively speaking have been few, especially in male religious life.  In September 2005, in a Conference Centre near here, the special assembly of the Catholic Biblical Federation, called to commemorate 40 years of Dei Verbum, studied the theme “The Place of the Word of God in the Life of the Church” and asked the Holy Father to choose “The Word of God” as the theme for the next Synod of Bishops – an appeal which received the backing of some important Episcopal Conferences, and was accepted by Pope Benedict XVI.  In the context of this Assembly, it may be worthwhile to reflect on the concept that underlies the term “Word”.

Our primary reference point is the Word of God, with special emphasis on his Word communicated to us through Sacred Scripture.  In the Old Testament, the Word of God was not an object of abstract speculation, as was true of other philosophical currents, such   as the “Logos” of the Alexandrine philosophers.  It was above all an experience!  God speaks directly to men and women, to his people as such, and to all humanity.

            The Word of God is communication, self-expression and salvific happening: “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return without watering the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my Word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish its mission and achieve what I sent it to do. (Is 55,10-11).

            So we can affirm that the Word of God may be considered under two aspects, distinct but inseparable - it reveals and acts.  It reveals who is the true God, by means of his action.  The God of the Hebrews is not as the God of the philosophers, distant, immutable, object of cold and objective analysis, but a God who reveals himself in human history, in the acts of his creating, liberating and congregating Word.  This is clear in the text which we may consider the key to all Scripture, because the rest of the Bible is the playing out in history of the consequences of this passage: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians” (Ex 3, 7-8).

The Word Which “Pitches His Tent Among Us”    

            This “coming down” of the Biblical God has its high point in the Incarnation, as we read in the Prologue to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,... and the Word was made flesh and pitched his tent among us”  (Jn 1, 1.14).  The project of God for humanity becomes reality when the Word became flesh, and “pitched his tent among us”.  The Greek word used in Jn 1,14, “eskênôsen”, is derived from the term “skêne”, which signifies a tent.  In the vision of the Fourth Gospel, with echoes of the Exodus event, the Divine Word, “pitched his tent among us” - and did not “build his Temple!”  A Temple is fixed, a tent is mobile, or in other words, wherever the people are, the Divine Word of God is there among them, incarnate in the person and project of Jesus of Nazareth.  In him and through him the Word acts, bringing about salvation here on earth.  We can affirm that the mystery of the Word has as its centre the person of Jesus, inseparable from his mission and project

            Here we have one of the essential threads for the weaving of our new spirituality – the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his project for humanity.  But we should ask ourselves – from where did Jesus get this vision, what was his inspiration, his motivation?  We must take very seriously the fact of the Incarnation, the scandal of the Divine Word being made man, and pitching his tent among the poor of Galilee two millennia ago.  For him, as for us, it was a challenge to discover the will of the Father and to weave a programme of life consistent with this will.  Also the discovery by Jesus of his mission and identity was not something automatic, nor is it for religious today.  Hebrews emphasises clearly the process that Jesus underwent when it declares “Although he was Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered”(Hb 5,8)

            Within this process, the Word of God expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures played a leading role.  For thirty years, Jesus nourished his spirituality and his faith at the same founts as the suffering people of the interior of Palestine – the spirituality of the “Anawim”, the “Poor of Yahweh”, with special emphasis on the preaching of Deutero and Trito Isaiah, Deutero Zachariah and Zephaniah. It was in the dialogue between the Word of God expressed in the Scriptures by these prophetic voices and the reality of the poor and suffering oppressed people, that Jesus clarified for himself his identity and mission and put them into practice.

            Luke expressed the self-understanding of Jesus in the text about his visit to the synagogue of Nazareth, where he was brought up, in other words, where he discovered and grew in his faith, when during the service he chose a text of Trito-Isaiah and identified his mission with that of the Servant of Yahweh (Lk 4, 18-19).  The rest of the Gospel is the living out of this understanding of the mission of the Divine and Incarnate Word, whose mission is now continued in the community of his disciples, impelled by the Spirit, placing their charismas and gifts at the service of the Kingdom.  Continuing the dialogue between the Word of God in the Bible and the reality of the people, the disciples of Jesus discover their mission, of continuing that of he who became flesh so that “all might have life and life in abundance” (Jn 10,10).

 

From Miriam to Religious Today:  The Prophetic Word Must Not Be Silenced

 

              A special instrument in this network of disciples is Consecrated Religious Life, generated by the Word, and invited to deepen the experience of the Word in multiple ways, according to the charisma of each entity, rooted in the intuition of the founding generations.

            Throughout the history of the People of God, the Word not only generated and congregated, but also animated and sustained.  Although it was only a tiny and unimportant people on the world stage, “you worm Jacob!” in the words of Deutero-Isaiah (Is 41, 14), the Word sustained its utopia and ideal, never allowing the project of God to be wiped from the memory of Israel, in spite of the efforts of the dominant elite, which often used religion to mask their oppressive projects.  As the monarchy, with its injustices and oppression, expanded, the Word echoed in frank opposition, through the men and women that God called as prophets in the midst of his people.  At the opportune moments, the Word of God kept alive the people’s resistance through the preaching and example of such diverse figures as the judge Deborah, the intellectual Isaiah, the poet Hosea, and the herdsman Amos. Announcing the project of God and denouncing all that opposed it, defenders of the weak and opponents of the powerful, persecuted and oppressed, they were men and women of the Word.  What characterized them most was their vehemence.  They were full of passion.  They convinced others because they themselves were convinced of their message.  They were a reflection of a society in crisis.  They were imbued with the Holy Spirit and were expression of his Word.

Different from other critics of society, the prophets defined themselves by their relationship with God, as the prophets of the Religious life must do today.   Their Word grew from the Word of God.  At the root of their identity and mission there lay a great experience of God, as we can see in texts such as Am 7, 10-15; Hos 1-3; Jr 1, 4-10; Is 6, 1-13; Ez 6, 1-3.11; Is 40, 1-11 etc.  Without this profound experience of God, their prophetism would have easily become mere ideology or demagogy – and today the Religious Life has to be based on a real experience of God, in the following of Jesus, in whom the prophetic tradition reached its apogee.  A spirituality of the Religious Life that was not a living and renewed expression of prophetism, inherent in our baptismal vocation, would be inconceivable.  In fact the birth of the Religious Life in the Church was in itself an expression of prophecy.  The prophets always spoke, in Word and act, whenever they saw the danger of God’s project for humanity being suffocated.  It is in this sense that we can also understand the beginning of Religious Life in the Church.

            The early Church, in the days of persecution, in spite of its difficulties, was a vibrant and fervent one.  To be a Christian was to risk being considered a subversive and to face martyrdom.  But after the Edict of Milan in 312, the Church left the Catacombs and being a Christian was more than acceptable.  The number of Christians grew but the Church “lost its first love” (Ap 2, 4).  Radicalism in the living of the faith, once shown by martyrdom, became obscured.  The Church needed a new witness to the radical following of Jesus, a witness that would be a strong prophetic voice for the Church itself as well as for the world.  In this context there emerged a new phenomenon in Church life – the beginnings of Consecrated life, starting with the Desert Fathers.  They tried to recuperate the radical dimension of our faith witness, in a Church almost co-opted by the dominant society.  This first stirring of Religious life understood itself as a challenge to a Church which had lost its way, which paid little attention to its prophetic role and to the following of the concrete options of Jesus and which was well integrated into the dominant society, which oppressed and excluded the masses.

            In this way we can also understand our founders and foundresses. They discovered and reacted to a lacuna in Church life and witness.  They were sensitive to the appeals of God and of the people, forgotten, suffocated or silenced by the Institution.  Francis and Clare of Assisi heard the cry of the poor in a Church dominated by, and in great part allied to, the rich; Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac were sensitive to the cry of the excluded of the streets of Paris; my own founder Arnold Janssen and the men and women of his founding group were scandalized by the fact that there was not a single missionary institute for the German speaking Church, and so on.  They did not always intend to found a Congregation, this often being a second step, but in word and act they were the continuation of the activity of the Word of God, often neglected by institutional instances of the Church, more concerned with the maintaining of the structures than with the appeals of the Spirit.  These women and men, instruments of the Word, were not always welcome in the Church, because the Word of God, proclaimed by whom it may, and by whom God chooses, is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”(Hb 4, 12s) 

            Through the various foundations of Consecrated Religious Life the Word is incarnated in praxis, through the charismas given by the Spirit to the Church and the World, for the continuing of the Missio Dei, the project of Jesus Christ.  Here we must always remember – what is really important is the charisma and not the Congregation.  The Word is eternal, but its institutional expression in a given Order or Congregation or Work is not necessary so.  We need permanent discernment to verify if our praxis is still in harmony with the necessities of the people and the Church in new situations, and consistent with our charisma.  Our basic commitment is not with our institutional survival, but with our prophetic mission.

 

Discipleship Lived Out In A New Reality Through Our Charismas

 

            Thus we can identify some more threads to be woven into the cloth of our new spirituality – the discipleship of Jesus; the reading of reality from the standpoint of the poor and marginalized, with “ hearing”, “seeing”, “knowing” and “coming down” as God does in order to help the people be free in all senses; and our charismas, gifts of the Spirit to the Church and the World, using our founding generations, who were prophetic voices for the Church and the world of their time.  Each of these elements needs a constant updating and deepening, so that Religious Life may really be an expression of discipleship of Divine Word Incarnate and not merely a relic of times past, living on remembered glories, chained to archaic structures and devotional forms, which no longer speak to modern people.

There is no more urgent question facing us today in the realm of our spirituality than that of our discipleship of Jesus, lived out in mission.   This implies a true passion for the person and project of the Saviour, not in a sentimental way, typical of so much devotionalism of the past, but through a strong experience of the person and project of  Jesus of Nazareth.   The dialogue between Jesus and his first followers in the Fourth Gospel is helpful in this respect (Jn 1, 37-39).  Realizing that Andrew and an anonymous disciple were following him, he asked them “What do you seek”?  This is the fundamental question for every religious and every Congregation – what really are we seeking?  They replied “Master, where are you staying?” – they did not wish to know his address but how was his lifestyle, his life project and values.  Instead of giving a theoretical answer, Jesus replied “come and see”, that is, it is not possible to have a deep experience of Jesus only through studies and theories – this can only be achieved through the practice of discipleship in intimacy with the Master.  It is of the utmost urgency that we rediscover the Jesus of the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth and not the caricature of him so often propagated by fundamentalist groups, often with economic interests.  Although the Bible says that God created man and woman in his image and likeness, in fact very often it is we who create God in our image and likeness.  Something similar happens with Jesus – frequently we create an image of Jesus that has little or nothing to do with the real Jesus of Nazareth – either we stick with a sentimental image of devotions with very little or no biblical foundation, or a “light” version of Jesus, so beloved by the Mass Media, a Jesus who does not disturb us, or question our options and our society, but on the contrary serves as a painkiller for our consciences, diverting our attention from the Kingdom and from the poor to a Jesus who is at the service of our desires and whims, strongly marked by the  seeking of immediate personal gratification.  The Cross is left aside!        

This should not really surprise us – it was the great problem of the disciples from the very beginning.  Mark’s Gospel, the oldest, has as its centre Mk 8, 27-35, the text referring to the incident on the road from Caesarea Philippi.  After asking an innocuous question, “who do men say I am?”, innocuous because it does not commit the person who answers,  Jesus asks the essential question for every disciple in all ages : “who do you say that I am?”   In the text, it seems that Peter was correct when he answered “You are the Christ”.  But the ensuing dialogue demonstrates that he only got the theory right – not the practice, as for him it was inconceivable that the Messiah should suffer – a very post-modern view in our world, where all is permitted except sacrifice!  This incapacity of Peter to understand the real Jesus and the challenges of being his disciple, earned him one of the strongest rebukes in the Bible: “Get behind me Satan, for you are not on the side of God, but of men”.  In the text Jesus immediately makes clear the consequences of following him, and not a caricature of him: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Mk 8,34).

There are no more urgent questions to be answered as we try to renew our spirituality than these:  “Who is Jesus for me, at this time in my life?” and “What does it mean today to be his disciple, in Consecrated Religious life?”

            In reality, the answer will be given less in speech than by our hands and, feet!  It is in the daily praxis of our mission that we demonstrate the answers.  The mission is the practical consequence of our spirituality of discipleship and again the Gospel does not leave us in any doubt, but defines clearly the mission of Jesus, and therefore, ours.  Perhaps the most paradigmatic of texts in this respect is the Lukan account of the visit of Jesus to the synagogue of Nazareth, when he returned to his cultural, social and religious roots to launch his mission programme, and chose to read the text of Is 61, 1-3 (which Luke takes the liberty of altering, omitting references that could have a nationalistic interpretation): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”. (Lk 4, 18-19)”.

            A spirituality based on the following of Jesus will necessarily lead to evangelising action, which will integrate the elements of Jesus mission in the text above.  We are all anointed by the Spirit, so we are all other Christs.  Thus it is essential that we engage in a true process of discernment on both the personal and community levels to clarify what it means today to “announce the Good News to the Poor”, “to proclaim release to the captives”, “to recover the sight of the blind” " to set at liberty those who are oppressed” “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”.  There is no doubt that within this universal mission of the Church, Religious Life ought to be in the vanguard. Our spirituality must cause us to have the poor as the first recipients of our preaching and apostolic endeavours – and let us not forget that the term Luke chooses to use for the poor is “ptochois”, which practically signifies “indigents”.  In a world which has globalized poverty and exclusion, even in the so-called “first world” the spirituality of discipleship challenges us to answer very concrete questions – in reality, are the poor the first concern of our mission?  Or have we absorbed the hegemonic ideology, disseminated by the Mass Media, to such a degree, and almost by osmosis, that we take on the values of our consumer and hedonistic society?  Our spirituality must free us from the chains of egoism, consumerism, from the idols of Power, of Possessing, of Pleasure, which with a certain facility penetrate our lives and activities, diluting the radical living out of the Gospel message and our prophetic witness. It must help us firstly to recover our vision – it is noteworthy that the blind cured by Jesus in the Synoptics were not blind from birth, as in Jn 9, but blind people who had lost their sight.  The same phenomenon can often be found in Religious Life – we can lose the original vision of the founding generation, becoming satisfied with efficiency in our works, which may at times make us simply another cog in the efficient working of our neoliberal society, and at its service.  So that we may not become “blind leading the blind”, our spirituality must make its own the appeal of the blind Bartimeus, “Lord, that I may see again” (Mk 10, 51).  We must see with the eyes of Jesus, who interpreted the reality of his world with criteria arising from his experience of the Biblical God and his analysis of the painful reality of his people, whose suffering was often justified by an ideology disguised as theology, by the dominant religious and political elite.  There can be no spirituality without concrete consequences and this text of Luke provides us with a tool that we can use to evaluate the authenticity of our spirituality, by analysing the elements of our missionary activity.

 

Religious Life – An Instrument of The Kingdom

 

            Reflecting on this question of our spirituality, we must remember that the Religious Life, like the Church itself, is not an end in itself but an instrument of the Kingdom, that Kingdom which is in our midst, which we all experience as, paradoxically, “already here, and at the same time not yet!”  Religious Life is a gift of God – to the Church and to the World, in favour of the Kingdom.  Thus a new spirituality will lead us to a fruitful and dialectic dialogue with these two realities.

            The Institutional Church, in many areas seems to have gone backwards in recent years.  As a result, many people experience a real crisis of faith and of belonging.  In many places the scourge of clericalism has blossomed, especially among younger clergy, including religious, - and clericalism is very different from the great gift of the ordained ministry of presbyter. Very often in the lives of religious presbyters, the religious aspect  almost disappears, submerged in the occupations of the priestly ministry.  Here female religious have an important role to play, witnessing to the essential lay nature of religious life and resisting attempts to integrate it as a mere extension of hierarchical institution. The continued exclusion of women from the decision-making instances of Church life continues to be a great problem and acquires scandalous proportions at times.  There has also been a significant loss of credibility, especially in certain countries, due to recent sexual scandals especially among the clergy. An extremely negative element in recent years has been the proliferation of movements, groups and initiatives of Catholic revivalism, which ostensibly opt for a Christian faith of an individualist, intimistic, fundamentalist, devotional, alienated and triumphal type.  At least in Latin America, after some decades of intense prophetic evangelising activity, which cost not a few lives and much suffering, but which brought a flowering of Ecclesial and Religious Life, times have changed.  New winds have swept across the Continent and obviously over the Church and Religious Life.  With few exceptions, we do not run the risk of bloody martyrdom any more.  But the Empire continues to dominate and oppress.  In reality the vast majority are ground under by its economic and military power.  The most important decisions are taken in the financial centres of the world, without reference to the real needs of the people, and put into practice by politicians, very often corrupt, who are in tune with the principles of economic neoliberalism.  Entire peoples are sacrificed to the demands of profit, exiled from their lands and dispersed, with their family, cultural and religious roots destroyed, and all in the name of “progress”, “development” or “modernity”.  In this situation, it is no wonder there is so much depression, lack of enthusiasm, unbelief and scepticism in large sectors of the population, of civil society, and of the Churches.  More than ever it is urgent to develop a vibrant, fervent and prophetic Religious Life, a channel for the voice of God, which will resist the temptation of being co-opted by the consumer and materialistic society and which will rediscover the radical meaning of its existence, clearly on the side of the poor and marginalized. 

            Religious Life, like the Church itself, faces the question of how to be in the world without being of the world (cf Jn 17, 16).  For centuries, the Church – and therefore, the Religious Life – saw the world more as a place of evil, of danger, of the devil, rather than that of meeting with God. This vision was categorically rejected by the Vatican Council, in documents such as Gaudium et Spes.  Far from being the                                         dominion of evil, the world is the stage for the salvific activity of God, and therefore, of Religious: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (Jn 17,18).  In place of “fuga mundi” we are invited to insert ourselves into the world as “salt of the earth, light of the nations, leaven in the flour”.  The world becomes the scenario for our evangelising activity, our prophetic witness.  We are invited to discover the “seeds of the Word” in the world, in cultures, in religions.

 

For the World and In the World but not Of the World

 

We do not always succeed in “being in the world but not being of it”.  After an initial enthusiasm many communities and individuals become aligned with modern world, accepting the vision and the values of the dominant society.  Frequently we become indistinguishable from the world that surrounds us, we do not challenge it, but we allow it to assimilate us.  Our prophetic voice and our evangelical witness become weaker and we cease to be the disturbing, questioning and liberating presence of Jesus and his Word in a society of oppression and exclusion.  It would be neither possible nor desirable that we be untouched by the process of post-modernity, which, ambivalent like all human processes, brings many positive things in its wake. But how often do we accept it without any critical analysis, and not always in its positive aspects.  Subjectivity can easily become individualism, liberty can become ethical anarchy, respect for material goods, pure consumerism.  The world does not usually persecute us, as it persecuted the early followers of Jesus, because we do not present any threat to it!  On the contrary, how often do we divert our eyes from the misery that surrounds us, creating a religion that is sentimental and intimistic, with no commitment to the transformation of society, and is often nourished by a fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures?  We allow Jesus and his Gospel to be kidnapped in favour of alienation and of the status quo, and we become servants of a world that is even more idolatrous than that of the first century, because it sacralizes profit, preaches the good news of competition, excludes the majority of God’s daughters and sons and applauds greed and accumulation.  Any religion that accepts this situation without denouncing it is idolatrous, even though it may invoke the name of Jesus and promote cults in Christian Churches!

Like the first Christians, we must be in the world – but going against the flow, not because we are sectarian, but because we have another vision, born of the Word of God – that of Jesus, of the Kingdom, of fraternity, solidarity, justice and inclusion, a vision that is more than clear in the New Testament.  When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we commit ourselves to reject racism, machismo, sexism, clericalism, xenophobia and any other ideology that divides us!  We are challenged to seek a true prophetic dialogue with society, cultures and religious traditions, always seeking to build the Kingdom of God.  We must be vigilant so that anti-kingdom values, disguised as positive ones, do not divert us from our true identity and mission.  Seeking a “new spirituality” in a world strongly influenced by post-modern thinking, it is not so rare to find God being substituted by a vague “cosmic force”, grace by energy, salvation by immediate gratification, with very little place, if any, for a community vision, for a self-giving life. In this vision, Jesus of Nazareth, the persecuted prophet, is substituted by a “Christ” without a Cross, with no project for humanity, with no concrete options for the poor and oppressed. On the other hand we can often come across Religious taking refuge in emotional manifestations of a neo-Pentecostal type, with a dualistic, or even maniqueistic, vocabulary, and a tendency to demonise everything that pertains to the material world.  At times sentimental explosions are favoured over the quiet meditation in Lectio Divina, of the Word of God, - a practice which demands concrete actions in favour of the poor.  We have all come across the abandoning of religious life at the first crisis, without any struggle, without any discernible effort at discernment, apparently confirming the post-modern doctrine that permanent commitment is no longer possible!.   We should be careful not to demonise everything that’s post-modern, of the New Age, or of other traditions.  But let us be vigilant in our discernment so that we do not run the risk of losing our own identity, in our anxiety to dialogue with post-modern cultures.  Hebrews gives us a pointer so that we do not lose our way: “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, with our eyes always fixed on Jesus” (Hb 12,1)

In a society that values what is superficial and immediate, where almost everything is disposable, and where “having” is more important than “being”, it is important to be vigilant.  The Post-Synodal Document “Vita Consacrata” warns us: “of each one is demanded not so much success, but the commitment to fidelity.  What must at all costs be avoided is the true defeat of Consecrated Life, which does not consist in numerical decline, but in the diminishing of spiritual adherence to the Lord and to its own vocation and mission”(VC 63).

 

Rooted In The Past, Vibrant In The Present, Enthusiastic about the Future

 

The presbyter John indicates a hint for renewal when he wrote to one of his vacillating communities; “Remember what you have received and heard!  Keep that!” (Ap 3,3)  This invitation can serve as a pointer for Religious Life, in its search to be really alive.  In order to be faithful, we need to permanently rethink or reinvent our identity, going back to our roots, to the reason for our existence.  We need the courage to frequently walk in the dark, with confidence in the presence of God – a difficult experience and one that can only be undertaken on having a deep experience of God.  The alternative is to place ourselves at the service of the dominant society – and thereby guarantee our finances, our works, and probably our numbers, while running the risk of becoming a Religious Life “having the name of being alive, while in reality being dead” (Ap 3,1).  This is a real risk, because the world will always applaud a Church and a Religious Life that does not challenge it, but serve its interests.  A Religious life which unmasks what is hidden, which gives voice to the appeals of the oppressed, will never interest the actual system, which is based exactly on the exploitation of millions.  A Consecrated Life that is prophetic will never be looked on benevolently by an oppressive power – be it civil, military or religious!

In this context the Word of God rings out as it did in a time of crisis two thousand six hundred years ago: “There is hope for your future” (Jr 31,17) proclaimed the prophet Jeremiah to his people.  This hope has a firm basis – the only foundation for a new world, the fact that God exists and acts. Not the God that justifies and legitimises oppression, as proclaimed by a right-wing fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures, but the true God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, the God who looks upon the world and  sees the affliction of his people, hears their cry, knows their sufferings, and comes down to free them. (cf Ex 3,7-10).

For many religious and communities, in spite of reams of documents from General and Provincial Chapters, the Word of God continues to occupy a peripheral role in their lives and spirituality.  This is worrying, because it signifies that a significant part of Religious Life dispenses with one of its constituent elements – the Word of God.  Thus it becomes easy to understand the reason for such a prevalence of substitutes – hyper-emotional celebrations, a frenetic seeking for miracles, the personality cult of certain leaders of movements, external trappings such as medieval military type dress, more redolent of a bloody and oppressive Christendom than of the carpenter of Nazareth, norms and more norms – while the most important thing, the Word of God, is sidelined.  We must believe that God through his Word and Spirit animates and guides the life of his people.  Religious Life is based on listening to the Word and responding to it.  The Council demanded that all the Church’s preaching, in fact all Christian religion - a fortiori the Religious Life – must be nourished and directed by Sacred Scripture (DV 21.) 

This implies a change of mentality, making the Bible “the soul of Sacred theology” (DV 24) and, by extension, the soul of all evangelising activity, so that the understanding and praying of the Scriptures within Tradition becomes the moving force of each evangelising agent and animates all formative and pastoral activities (cf. Catechism the Catholic Church, no 113).  A metaphor may help us understand better:  The Bible is not another branch in the tree of the Church, another element in the practices of Religious life, but the sap that permeates the trunk and all branches of the tree!  This means we must seek to pass form “the animation of biblical formation”, understood as one more in the range of our activities in initial and permanent formation, to “the Biblical animation of Religious Life”.  The living Word of God, which goes beyond the printed biblical page, must become the source and model for all ecclesial activity.  In this process of having our lives animated by the Word of God, acts the same Spirit which inspired the sacred authors and animated the first disciples in their proclamation of Jesus, crucified and resurrected, he who is the essential key to all the Bible and to all human history.    The biblical animation of Religious life does not mean increasing the number of courses, meetings and studies about the Bible in our communities, though it very well may demand this also.  It means making the Word the transversal axis of our lives and activities, leading to a real encounter with the Living Jesus, to an “authentic process of conversion, communion and solidarity” (Ecclesia in America 3,8), by the reading and understanding of the biblical message as the Word of God, the true support and source of vigour of the Church and the Consecrated Life, authentic rule of life, and unending source of spirituality and evangelisation (DV 21).

It is obvious that Religious life today is going through a crisis – because humanity itself is in crisis.  Crises are always painful, but when faced up to with serenity, they can be overcome and are even necessary for our maturity.  To face them it is necessary to have firmness and some fixed coordinates.  Once more we can listen to the voice of the prophet Jeremiah: “set up milestones for yourselves, make yourselves guideposts; consider well the highway, the road by which you travelled” (Jr 31,21).

The great guidepost on our way is the Word of God, the Word which reveals the fidelity of a God who never abandoned his people.  As the last words to be written in the Old Testament put it: “In everything, O Lord, you have exalted and glorified your people; you have never neglected to help them at all times and in all places” (Wis 19, 22).  “There is hope for your future”, but this hope must be nourished by a constant prayerful reading of the Bible, done from the standpoint of the God who liberates, who became incarnate in Jesus, who brought salvation for all.  This spiritual nourishment, taken in community, is indispensable so that we can create a new society, step by step.  Let us take seriously the words of the angel of the Lord to Elijah, the exhausted and depressed prophet “arise and eat, else the journey will be too long for your” (I Kg 19,7).

Nourished by the Word and the Sacrament, and taking seriously what was proclaimed by the Dei Verbum, that “the Church always venerated the divine Scriptures just as it does the Body of the Lord” (DV 21), let us proclaim in prophetic words and action to the world, the Church and Religious Life itself that “there is hope for your future”.  But in order to persevere in our evangelical options for the poor and excluded, it is absolutely necessary that our lives be rooted in a deep spirituality, based on the Word of God, and nourished by regular Lectio Divina, done individually and in community.  It is not sufficient that we make a profound analysis of the actual world scenario (although this is indispensable), nor that we feel an ethical indignation because of the suffering of millions (also essential) – nothing can take the place of the true foundation of our options, which must be faith options based on our faith in the God of Jesus Christ, the God of the Exodus.  This implies the unconditional taking up of the Cross and the nourishing of our faith through the Word of God, “a lamp for our feet and a light for our path” (Ps 119,105), always in a contextualized reading from the standpoint of the suffering of our society.  In a society of religious syncretism which offers so many apparently viable alternatives in the spiritual sphere, let us listen attentively to the warning of Paul when he insists, faced with the danger of the Corinthian elite substituting living faith in Jesus with Greek philosophy, that “there can be no other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ” (I Cor 3, 11) – Jesus, the Word made flesh, whose project guides and challenges us through the pages of Scripture, so that we become in reality instruments of the Kingdom, in discipleship of mission, weaving together a spirituality which generates hope and life for all, so that “all may have life and life in abundance!”