Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)

Issue 49.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1990.

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spellingShingle	Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
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title	Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
title_short	Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
title_full	Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
title_fullStr	Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
title_full_unstemmed	Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)
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description	Issue 49.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1990.
publisher	Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center
publishDate	1990
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spelling	sluoai_rfr-311 Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990) Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Jesuits -- Periodicals; Monasticism and religious orders -- Periodicals. Billy Issue 49.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1990. 1990-11 2012-05 PDF RfR.49.6.1990.pdf rfr-1990 BX2400 .R4 Copyright U.S. Central and Southern Province, Society of Jesus. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute individual articles for personal, classroom, or workshop use. Please credit Review for Religious and reference the volume, issue, and page number and cite Saint Louis University Libraries as the host of the digital collection. Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center text eng Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Liberation and thel~iturgical Year How to Read St. John of the Cross Lasting Friends Volume 49 Number 6 November/December 1990 REVIEW I:oa REL~GIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Mis-souri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Blvd., Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United States $15.00 for one year; $28.00 for two years. Other countries: US $20.00 for one year; if airmail, US $35.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGOUS; P,O. BOX 6070: Duluth, MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. ©1990 REVIEW yon RELIGIO~S. David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors David J. Hassel, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Advisory Board Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. November/December 1990 Volume 49 Number 6 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Eliza-beth McDonough, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue; P.O. Box 29260; Washington, D.C. 20017. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW roR RELIGIOUS; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available oft cassette recordings as a service for the visu-ally Impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS... As we come to the end of another calendar year, we also find our-selves bridging the end and beginning of our Christian liturgical year. November is like a summary or review month--a past looking towards a future. It always begins with the two days commemorating all the saints and then all the faithful departed; it closes with a Sunday celebration of the eschatological feast of Christ the King. With Advent and with the Christmas season, we listen and we look--listening anew to the words of biblical prophets and looking upon the Word become flesh. Perhaps we better describe it as a future looking to the present. The divine call of hope coming through the prophets and being enfleshed in Jesus touches the human heart. It rouses the deepest of hu-man desires--to experience oneself as free in a world which is free and to experience peace within oneself and peace without. Most of the arti-cles in this issue involve a looking back and a looking ahead. At the same time, they also touch the present--with our experience of peace in its vari-ous forms, and with our experience of freedom. The articles by Kennington, Rich, van Breemen, and Kerr take up various implications of what has been identified as liberation theology. The origins of liberation theology are found in the so-called Third World countries, particularly in theological writers of South America. More broadly used in the Church, this theology has become a studied way of understanding, articulating, and living out our Christian faith so that we may affect situations and policies which tend to breed injustice and un-freedom. Liberation theology can sometimes seem to condone or even advocate some kind of violence. But no theology can merit the name Christian which is not permeated with a peace which only God can give. Liberation ~theology, especially when viewed in its spirituality, is most of all a theology of the kind of peace sung about by the angels on that first Christmas night. Perhaps one or other of these articles will be a kind of Bethlehem star for us, leading us to a place of greater freedom and peace, either within ourselves or without. Of special interest to a number of our readers are certain upcoming anniversaries. With the feast of St. John of the Cross celebrated in De-cember, there begins the 400th anniversary of the death of this great mys-tic, 1591-1991. Steven Payne, O.C.D., editbr of the Carmelite journal 1101 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Spiritual Life, provides us with some contemporary approaches to John’s spiritual doctrine. Thomas Moore, O.C.D.S., tries to provide us with some basic directions to enter more profitably into the rich teaching of John. In celebration of another anniversary, our January/February 1991 is-sue will be unique in its focused selection of Ignatian spirituality arti-cles and book reviews. The year 1991 marks the 50th volume of REVIEW FOR RELiGiOUS, and the first issue of this volume will honor the Ignatian spirituality tradition, which is celebrating the combined anniversaries of 450 years since the founding of the Society of Jesus and 500 years since the birth of St. Ignatius Loyola. As we close out the first half century of this publication with this is-sue, the staff of REVtEW FOR RELmtOUS wishes all of our readers a Christ-mastide full of the blessings of peace and of freedom. David L. Fleming, S.J. Bethlehem Star: Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries Paddy Kennington Paddy Kennington is presently teaching literacy education in shelters for homeless people in Raleigh, North Carolina. With her master’s degree in counseling and psy-chology and a graduate certificate in spiritual direction from Washington Theologi-cal Union, she also serves as an area formation director for the Third Order, Society of St. Francis, Episcopal Church. Her address is 2404-1C Bradford Dr.; Wilson, North Carolina 27893. Spiritual direction training and spiritual directors can become part of the praxis of social ministries. If the goals and purposes of social ministries are restricted to serving food, providing shelter, and legislative advo-cacy, worthy as those activities are, then God’s wider plan of transform-ing grace and unity may never happen. The learning accumulated in spiri-tual direction training and experience can be part of the organization and spirituality of a social ministryin the Church. A graced life is not a pri-vate life. We are meant to become "breach menders and restorers of ru-ined houses" (Is 58: 12). One way to rethink thb relationship betWeen spiritual direction and social ministry as spirituality in action is to ’draw parallels between the two in the context of the concrete experiences of volunteers and street persons in a soup kitchen. This seems to me to be one method to dem-onstrate the thesis that spiritual direction has a role in social ministry. The Center for Spirituality and Justice in New York City has investigated the necessity to include an awareness of social consciousness as part of the spiritual direction relationship, t The reciprocity between spiritual di-rection skills and principles and social action is equally important in the daily hands-on ministries of shelters, clothing banks, and soup kitchens. 803 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Two stories of volunteers and street people illustrate the need to include spiritual direction with social action. The Soup Kitchen Antonio In early 1983, four of us from the Social Apostolate soup kitchen in Savannah, Georgia, organized an emergency winter night shelter. The next year, we added an evening soup kitchen and health care. Eventu-ally, I became the first director. 1 met many men and women like Anto-nio who appeared one fall evening in our soup line. He was wearing an over-sized woman’s coat. Antonio’s suitcase had remained on the bus that left him while he was looking for food. What funds Antonio had in his pockets had vanished quickly into slippery street fingers. After visiting the health-care clinic in our building, we discovered Antonio was thoroughly infested with lice. We also realized he had a men-tal disability and with his friendly, innocent manner, was not able to cope with the violence of street life. Antonio arrived in town in time for the opening of our winter shelter. Luckily, we were able to get him off the street each night. After a few days, the local Catholic Worker became Antonio’s tem-porary home. He was an outgoing person and tried to fit in with our com-munity at the soup kitchen and with the Catholic Worker family. Anto-nio wanted to work and contribute to his keep. But his attempts at typ-ing for us and for the health-care nurses were disastrous. One of the nurses convinced him to write to his family in New Jersey. We began to get frantic phone calls from them, and were able to persuade his fa-ther not to get on the first plane to rescue Antonio. One winter evening as the volunteers were converting the hall from soup kitchen to night shelter, Antonio and I sat next to the front door while we waited to take the names of that night’s guests. He turned to me and with his eyes averted as usual, asked, "Paddy, what’s this place really all about?" I thought a moment and then said, "It’s like a bus station, Antonio. People get off the bus, out of the streets, for a little while. They stay with us until they get back on the bus and move on." He turned that over in his mind and said, "Yeah, that’s right. That’s what I did. I’m staying here and then I’ll move on, too." Antonio did leave eventually but not before he had struggled with his reasons for suddenly running away from his home in New Jersey. I think he struck out on his own because he wanted to know if he could take care of himself. Antonio’s parents were overly protective and his Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / 805 brother pushed him hard to excel beyond his handicap. On the other hand, his disability did not keep Antonio from searching, questioning, and striving for what he believed to be his freedom. His questions and sense of independence may have taken a different expression from yours or mine. But the restless heart of St. Augustine was the same for Anto-nio as it is for all of us. In the spring while the azaleas and dogwoods were blooming, Anto-nio returned to his home and family. In the last letter we received from him, he told us about the computer course he was taking. One afternoon the following fall, a care-package of used jeans and winter shirts from Antonio arrived at the shelter. He had not forgotten those still on the bus. St. Teresa discovered after experiencing the prayer of union, that the Lord had been waiting many years for her "yes" to the Creator’s gift of spiritual treasures and blessings.2 In his desire to d~cide the course of his own life, Antonio had said yes and gone out to find the courage to make his dream of freedom and independence come true. Bonnie I am always amazed at the intensity of emotion sometimes shown by volunteers toward the poor and street people. Initially, most soup kitchen volunteers are hesitant and even afraid. Few are prepared for the reality of human degradation, begging, and manipulation one is exposed to as part of the daily routine of providing minimal food to hundreds of hungry men, women, and children. Some turn away in tears or disgust; others are drawn to their fellow human beings through compassion, like moths to a flame. But sooner or later if they don’t walk away, the inevi-table questions will arise. How can they live like this? Why doesn’t the city do something? Where will they sleep tonight? They are all so sad; doesn’t this get to you after awhile? Bonnie was a kind, loving woman from one of the many church groups that volunteer on a regular basis one evening each month. I had noticed Bonnie on her firsf day of volunteering while she was serving sandwiches. During her next few evenings in the serving line, she was withdrawn and reluctant to interact with the guests, as though she would rather be in the kitchen. Bonnie avoided any friendly contact except to plop a sandwich on a waiting plate. I had hoped for an opportunity to speak to Bonnie privately during the cleanup routine. "Well, how was it in the serving line tonight, Bon-nie?" I asked as dishes and pots were being scrubbed. She looked down at her feet and said anxiously, "Seeing all those men eating here really bothers me. My husband and I work hard for what Review for Religious, November-December 1990 we have. Why can’t they get a job? Why am I expected to take care of them with my hard-earned tax money?" Clearly, Bonnie was torn emotionally between the teachings of Je-sus on love and charity she had heard all her life, and her present feel-ings of indignation, anger, and disgust. And the ~onflict inside showed on her face. This was not a time for reminders that we are to pray for God’s forgiveness and strive for empathy for others. At that moment, what Bonnie needed was understanding and peace. I knew she could not yet be aware that coming to resolution about her feelings and attitude to-ward the soup kitchen guests meant that she herself would become the broken bread offered by Christ on the cross. Bonnie was too full of bit-terness and frustration. "I’d like you to meet one of our guests sometime, Bonnie," I said to her gently. "He’s quite a character. And I hope you’ll give us and yourself a second chance before you make up your mind about soup kitch-ens and street people." "I don’t think I’ll be back," Bonnie said. ’I just can’t stand seeing all those lazy men ripping us all off, when they could be working and taking care of themselves." Her face was lined with anger and she pushed the broom even harder on the dining hall floor. I shared a few words of comfort but I did not push her to commit to another volunteer shift. Bonnie needed time to sort out her feelings. About two months later, I saw Bonnie walk in the front door with her church group. She still had a look of hostility and reluctance. I was afraid that if she could not get beyond her anger, she might lash out at one of the guests, or cause them to react to her in a negative way. "I’m glad you came back, Bonnie," I said. "Maybe you’d rather work in the kitchen instead of the soup line today." "No," Bonnie replied grimly. "I’m going to try the serving line one more time." "Maybe you’ll get to meet Jim later," I suggested. "We’ll see," she said. I was busy that suppertime and didn’t get back to Bonnie until the end of the serving. I had Jim by the hand when we approached her. "Jim, I want you to meet Bonnie,’" I introduced them. Jim smiled a semi-toothless grin and shoved his hand toward Bonnie for a friendly shake. She shook his hand. I wondered what it took from her to give that little inch. "Jim is a regular here, Bonnie. He’s been with us a long time," I explained. "Jim is one of the first guests we were able to help get off Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / il07 the streets. Now he helps out with cleanup and carrying in heavy food boxes." I backed out of the conversation as Jim was bending Bonnie’s ear about his latest fishing exploits. Later Bonnie found me in the laundry room. "Jim’s a real charac-ter and I realize why you brought him over to me," she said. "I haven’t changed my mind about the rest of the men. But I do see that there may be more to the soup kitchen and the guests than I’ve been willing to admit," Bonnie confided. "I guess I need some time here to figure it all out." "All of us had to begin somewhere, Bonnie," I replied. "Maybe a place to start is thinking of the guests, volunteers, even the food--the whole soup kitchen--as sharing God’s love. I would be glad to listen any-time you want to talk through your frustrations," I said encouragingly. We exchanged a hug. Bonnie gave me a big grin when she left with her friends. As a shelter and soup kitchen director, I found I needed to be teacher, counselor, community organizer, and peacemaker. But there was also a greater need than crisis intervention and social work referral for housing and health care. In the context of providing meals and shel-ter in a church social ministry, people were drawn closer together. They were forced to interact, ask questions, and struggle with conflicting emo-tions and injustices. I saw the need for a guide who had been exposed to the tradition and teachings of spiritual directipn. One who has lived enough of his or her own spiritual journey to be able to recognize oth-ers’ struggles and to offer spiritual leadership beyond cooking, cleaning, and begging would be a good job description. Spiritual Development and Social Ministry Antonio, Bonnie, and many others in the soup kitchen have shown me that there is a lot more to hands-on church social ministries than giv-ing out sandwiches, collecting clothes, and providing shelter. I had scarcely been at St. Luke’s soup kitchen (Atlanta, Georgia) two months before I realized that volunteers’ needs were as critical as those of street people. Having worked with a large number of soup kitchen participants in the last eleven years, ! have seen that they often progress through spiri-tual growth stages. These stages generally correspond to the spiritual de-velopment outlined in the writings of such spiritual masters as St.-Ter-esa of Avila, St. Ignatius, St. Augustine, Thomas Greene, and Bernard Lonergan to name a few. 1. Awakening:3 Soup kitchen volunteers and guests are spiritual seek-ers in much the same way as directees are in spiritual direction. The soup Review for Religious, November-December 1990 kitchen director must establish an atmosphere which nurtures the possi-bility that all participants might be seeking spiritual growth along with advocacy, washing dirty dishes, and consuming numerous cups of sugar-filled coffee. Often the food sought and given is as much spiritual as physi-cal. The social ministry as a community needs to encourage the devel-opment of relationships as brothers and sisters rather than helpers and de-pendents. The Holy Spirit prods us all and no less so in the serving line of a soup kitchen. One of the most frequent comments from new soup kitchen volun-teers is one of surprise. They cannot wait to tell me, "I never knew it would be like this." The new volunteers sometime become so enthusi-astic they want to solve all the social ills and problems at one time. In their hurry to do something, they fail to let the totality of the soup kitchen experience filter into their inner depths. The impact of the similarity be-tween their own lives, hopes, and desires and those of the street people may elude them. Street people would seem to come to a soup kitchen because they need to eat, get out of the rain, or read the newspaper for a job. All of these reasons are usually true. But many also come from spiritual and psychological hunger. They need to be affirmed as human beings. They want friendship and to know that someone cares about them in the midst of their loneliness and alienation. And like everyone else, they have dif-ficulty in asking for what they want. Anger, manipulation, begging, pro-crastination, and even lethargy can mask a more basic plea for the love and compassion that cannot be found on the hostile streets. Casting volunteers and guests as mutual seekers of God’s love helps to lessen the artificial line between dependent and provider. However, raising the awareness of both that each has gifts to offer the other may carry some risk. Life in’the streets dictates survival at all costs and is a set of learned behaviors. This might mean guests are immersed in the violence of poverty and substance abuse. Emotional problems, poor so-cialization skills, and mental illness are magnified by the stress of not knowing where the next meal or bed for the night will be found. Volunteers may come to a soup kitchen to play out an unhealthy need to dominate. They may see themselves as rescuer or savior. Volunteers can even burden already embtionally drained street people with their own consuming need for acceptance and love masked by acts of charity. These are reasons enough for soup kitchen managers and volunteers to have some training in lay qgunseling and spiritual direction. Meager funds for supplies and staffing and lack of housing, jobs, and Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries services may force participants into a negative emotional drain and the constant crisis of problem-solving. The stereotypes of despair and dis-ease of social distance can be lifted from guests and volunteers. Despite a naive or discouraging beginning, guests and volunteers can progress beyond the initial stage of being locked into a give-and-take, us-versus-them, relationship. The community’s life depends on its ability to jug-gle logistical and physical demands with emotional, psychological ones. An awakening to the spiritual life of the soup kitchen for both volunteers and guests is enabled by the continual return to the wellspring of hope, the Holy Spirit. 2. A Hard Look: After the introductory experience, the volunteer usu-ally begins to ask, why? Why are so many people living on the street? Why are the mentally ill and sick not hospitalized? Why am I expected to take care of the lazy? And then, why am I going home to comfort when these people have so little? Why does not somebody do something? This may create conflicted feelings for those who see themselves as car-ing, religious people. The good intentions of even the most dedicated vol-unteer can fade into frustration and resentment. But in spite of these dif-ficulties, questioning becomes the seed of opportunity to widen one’s ho-rizons and allow a graced transformation. If questions arise and expectations are challenged for volunteers, they are doubly so for guests. Even the most dejected and apathetic of the poor hold their dignity and self-worth as a jewel more valuable than food or shelter. A bowl of soup or a sandwich firmly thrust back to a surprised volunteer will attest to a guest’s rejection of real or imagined insensitivity. While many long-term street residents have given up ques-tioning injustices or reasons for their meager living, just as many will talk for as long as anyone will listen to a recollection of past slights, in-dignities, or woes. We all need to tell our stories. And once in awhile, some thought-provoking wisdom and insights can be the reward of the patiently attentive volunteer. The volunteer’s emotional struggle with the realities of soup kitchen and street people can be everything from threatening to enlightening. Con-fronted with painful feelings, the need for empathy with guests, respon-sibility, and sometimes guilt, some soup kitchen volunteers turn away. They seek other ways to express an option for the poor. Others find ex-cuses to reject the homeless. They blame the victim. Barriers may be erected; barriers of power disguised as benevolent decision-making and anger as righteous indignation. Still other volunteers begin to realize the humanity and humility they share with all peopl+ as children of God. The Review for Religious, November-December 1990 same compassion that emerges from questioning and consciousness-raising impels these volunteers to seek a deeper understanding and ex-perience of the wounded Christ-of-the-streets. 3. Judging--the Bottom Line: Volunteers who persevere join the regu-lars in the social ministry community. They adopt a favorite job or rou-tine of doing the various daily tasks. They come to accept the dilemma of soup kitchens and street life as having no comfortable answers nor neat solutions. Success becomes enough soup or sandwiches for a day’s meal, finding eyeglasses for a guest who needs them for work, or locat-ing temporary housing for a young family with children. Old hands be-come well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of particular guests. Friend-ships develop. New, bewildered guests are shepherded through the soup kitchen routine which has over time become the bricks-and-mortar of daily operation. Success in social change is also expected. Volunteers point with pride to street people who attain middle-class goals: jobs, apartments, sobriety, and normalcy. Experienced volunteers begin to draw parallels with some of Jesus’ teachings and parables: the Good Shepherd, those who are last will be first, and workers paid equally for differing times of service. More enthusiastic volunteers may take on the task of main-taining the organization with fund-raising and building renovation proj-ects. The disparity between the homeless people who remain jobless, clothed in rags, and in need of food and shelter and coworkers and fam-ily who enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle is less a focus than getting the job done. Many of the poor who have lived on and off the streets are way ahead of new volunteers in a spirituality of detachment and interior search-ing. Destitute and lacking the basic necessities of food and shelter, they. are forced to fall back on inner resources. Some street survivors exhibit an inner depth of understanding and resilient wisdom of Jesus as Libera-tor. They reflect an unshakable faith and contemplative spirituality. I sometimes wish I could be as in touch with my dark side as they seem to be. However just as often, incredible stress, fear of violence, and physi-cal and mental deprivation block the development of these means to over-come depression and despair. The rhythm of daily life of the soup kitchen community rises and falls with the extreme heat of summer, winter cold, Friday paydays, and surplus holiday charity. Volunteers and guests come and go. When guests do not meet expectations of a middle-class work-ethic or a period of sobriety or mental stability ends, volunteers may become discouraged Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries and leave to find greener pastures and better shepherds. But the very rest-lessness that seems to hinder an inner, spiritual examination is also an invitation to challenge preconceived ideas of what is success in a social ministry. The soup kitchen and night shelter offer daily opportunities to let go of cultural or popular false standards of guests’ worthiness. 4. Light from Darkness: Volunteers who get beyond the questioning stage and embrace the compunction that follows a realization of their so-cial and inner blindness witness to an enlightened conversion. Their pri-orities change. They begin to view themselves, their families and friends, churches and institutions, and most of all, the guests, with changed hearts and minds. Ragged clothes, disagreeable behaviors, and unwashed bodies fade from importance. Guests are no longer bums and derelicts but James, Mary, and Charlie. "I’ve been given so much more than I could ever give" is the comment most often heard. This social conversion is possible because participants have experi-enced nurturing community with other volunteers and guests. They have shared in the applied collective wisdom of spiritual guides and masters conveyed by effective social ministry managers and leaders. The soup kitchen manager/spiritual director must focus on community building that encourages everyone processing through the four steps of spiritual growth. After facing the disheartening reality of streetlife poverty and violence, volunteers and guests come to realize through the attentive di-rection of experienced ministry leaders that their only meaningful re-sponse must be one of being as well as doing. Social ministry teachers can model a definition of being that elimi-nates the artificial yardsticks that manipulate and shape people’s lives in ways our Creator never intended. Being comes to mean accepting the brother or sister, volunteer or guest, who chooses self-defeat or an un-sympathetic and often critical, closed mind. And most of all, being means seeking the Psalmist’s humble and contrite heart in the midst of rejection and the temptation to put distance between self and other. A simple illustration is the end piece from a loaf of bread. Uniniti-ated volunteers might toss the heel into the trash without a second thought. Seasoned veterans however, make use of every scrap by turn-ing the heel outward. They remember lean days of not enough bread for the many sandwiches needed. They have seen men, women, and even children go hungry. Not only are they grateful for our daily bread but they appreciate their own helplessness in the face of grinding poverty and suffering. These volunteers have come to see God face-to-face in the eyes of the poor. Every gift of Creation has become precious to them. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 This is only one of many daily lessons the soup kitchen community can teach and the conscientious director can encourage. Success in the soup kitchen is God’s gift to define and to give. Bib-lical personhood and scriptural freedom empower a realization of our need to be vulnerable to each other. We bring all we are, past and pres-ent, to the soup kitchen serving line. Through our relationships, our hearts are stirred to question and search our inner selves and to reach out to our neighbors as to God.4 After finally co.ming to understand and em-l~ race Jesus’ meaning of Go.spel poverty, the point of conversion for the social ministry activist becomes the same as the contemplative/directee: the unitive experience. Antonio and Bonnie taught me through their searching and struggle that social ministry can be as much a place of spiritual seeking and guid-ance as my experience of spiritual direction. I saw that people in soup kitchens and shelters were asking for what spiritual direction had to of-fer. God’s love for us and desire to be with us through the gift of Son and Spirit is the eternal constant. Our task as both spiritual directors and spiritual guides in social ministries is to be willing to struggle for con-tinued openness and vulnerability to that gift brought to us by guests and volunteers. Soup Kitchen Managers and Spiritual Directors The previous illustrations invite practical ways to integrate action and contemplation, the personal and the social, in soup kitchens and spiri-tual direction. The work of both soup kitchen manager and spiritual di-rector is a good example of the interconnection of spirituality and spiri-tual direction with social ministry. Volunteers and street people usually do not ask for spiritual direction from soup kitchen managers. And di-rectees do not often associate social ministry with their prayer life un-less encouraged to do so by their spiritual directors. But hunger of the heart and searching for God’s love and guidance pervade both environ- I am suggesting that soup kitchen managers and spiritual directors must examine the opposite side of their area of expertise to lead to a more balanced ministry and to be more open to God’s promise for justice and mercy. However, social ministry managers need not become spiritual di-rectors nor directors, soup kitchen managers. The interactions between a soup kitchen manager, volunteers, and street persons are not the same as those in spiritual direction or intervention. The methods of social min-istry organization and management, schools of spirituality (Ignatian, Fran-ciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian), socio-political thought, and even life Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries goals for directees, volunteers, and street people may vary widely. But these two activities have more similar than dissimilar aspects. Identifying the importance of spiritual direction and social action as part of an integrated whole in both ministries is the concern of effective managers and directors. The issue is the recognition of the reciprocal con-nection between the two ministries. The question is not whether the soup kitchen responds first to physical or spiritual needs. Nor is it whether con-templative prayer or an awareness of social consciousness predominate in spiritual direction. There are several points where spiritual direction and social mifiistry coincide: A. Holy Spirit: Our ministries and our lives must flow from Holy Scripture and the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The guidance of the Holy Spirit must always be foremost in our own paths and our involvement in the journeys of others. Discernment of that guidance is discovered in community with others in both individual spiritual direction and in so-cial activities such as soup kitchens. We need to support and nourish each other in our experience of and search for God’s gift of love. B. Purpose and Goals: Any spiritual director will admit that before a working relationship can be established with a directee, a determina-tion of what the directee desires from direction must be explored. The goals and purpose of direction must flow from the life, prayer, and ex-periences of the directee. A soup kitchen is no different. On the surface, the purpose may seem to be distribution of food, social work, a sympa-thetic ear, and hopefully, the strength to go on another day. But the mo-tivations of the volunteers, manager, and street people in the soup kitchen community must be considered as important and basic as pro-viding soup, sandwiches, and even friendship. Unconscious messages about worthiness, authority, manipulation, and social statements can creep into the daily life of any hands-on social ministry or spiritual direction relationship. We must be clear in what we are about as helping people and .as concerned, activist communities to-ward those who seek direction or bread. The consequences can be the perpetuation of the suffering and oppression of the poor, a hindrance of the spiritual unfolding and growth of direct.ees, and a floundering for guid-ance by volunteers and workers. The ministry can become part of an on-going or potential problem instead of an instrument of God’s peace. Openness to seeing God in my neighbor is fostered by encouraging healthy interaction between guests and volunteers. Joint meetings of both provide insights for planning, alleviate misunderstandings, and build com-munity among participants. Goals clarification and the scriptural basis Review for Religious, November-December 1990 or theme of the soup kitchen needs to be discussed and reiterated through training sessions with volunteers and in meetings with volunteers and guests. Quarterly soup kitchen orientations can offer the opportunity to learn communication and listening skills, positive ways to vent anger and frustration, and sharing feelings of sadness and pain. Attention to detail can encourage the mandates of the Gospel good news, peace and justice for the people of God. Trained volunteers who mingle ’;vith guests during mealtimes can facilitate a calm release of the pain, rejection, and dehumanization of street life. Colorful banners do-nated by supporting churches or made in guest/volunteer sessions help to illustrate and affirm the soup kitchen’s scriptural themes, such as the Good Shepherd, Matthew 25, and the Bread of Life. Seasonal celebra-tions, monthly birthday recognition, and encouraging on-site social ser-vices help to foster a family-oriented environment. We must live what we believe especially when becoming open to an awareness of the real-ity of the peace and justice of Jesus. C. Street People and Directees: People who live on the streets in ab-ject poverty are God’s children in crisis. The wounded, hungry bodies that line up each day for food are also wounded spirits who directly or indirectly seek the fellowship that feeds the heart. All participants in the social ministry community, volunteers, staff, and street people, need to be aware of and be sensitive to the friendship needs as well as physical needs of the other members. The requirement goes both ways amongst volunteers and guests. Soup kitchen managers can no more ignore the Gospel good news of empowerment for the poor than can a spiritual di-rector become heavy-handed with advice and admonitions for the di-rectee. This sensitivity is necessary if everyone is going to move beyond lim-iting their efforts to subsistence needs and toward the mandate of Jesus, friendship, peace, and justice. Tho.ugh the goal of personal and commu-nal empowerment of poor people may seem distant and unobtainable, it is our Bethlehem star. If we do not keep in our awareness and striving the justice promised by God and echoed by Mary in her song, the Mag-nificat, our ministry, faith, and words will become St. Paul’s metaphor, the clanging cymbal. The guidance and leadership for discernment to-warc~ this justice most often falls to the manager and spiritual director. Likewise, with directees, the spiritual director has a responsibility to dispel the myth of our tradition that the experience of God and the love of Christ can be a personal, private affair.5 The totality of a graced, trans-formed life is not for the benefit of the directee. St. Teresa of Avila re- Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries / ~1"15 minded us that we are meant to be the eyes, hands, and feet of Jesus in the world today. The Center for Spirituality and Justice has demonstrated a social-consciousness aspect to spiritual direction that must be part of the journey of director and directee if there is to be true discernment of .God’s will~6 D. Volunteers: Church social ministries can be an extension of Je-sus’ example to share ourselves and the fruits of the earth, food, shelter, and resources, with those in need. A deeper responsibility and outgrowth of the working of God’s grace in everyone’s life is stretching out a physi-cal and spiritual hand in friendship and unity. But for many middle-class volunteers who have never experienced the poverty, degradation, and suffering of those who live on the streets, a first-time exposure can be unnerving and challenging to their comfortable lives. Street people are not the only soup kitchen participants who experi-ence emotional crisis. Seeing firsthand the suffering and dehumanization of street life, many volunteers are distraught when they connect their rela-tively comfortable lives with the misery of homeless people. When food, clothing, an offer to listen, or a smile is refused with unkind words, vol-unteers may feel confused, rejected or angry. A misunderstanding be-tween guest and volunteer can result in "yes" instead of "no" as the answer to an inappropriate query. Just as street people bring their emotional baggage in the front door, volunteers can unload psychological traumas, too. Unresolved sexual needs, psychotic disorders, substance abuse, and authoritarian domi-nance can cause serious problems in the soup kitchen, community. Even though volunteers’ emotional issues can’t be compared to the sufferings of street people, a soup kitchen manager having some training in lay coun-seling and spiritual direction is helpful for the emotional and spiritual di-lemmas faced by volunteers and guests. For the social ministry manager just as for the spiritual director, their own spiritual direction and a peer group providing support, wisdom, and guidance needs to be part of the organization of the ministry. E. Leadership: Managers and Directors: The relationship between a soup kitchen manager and volunteer or street person is not identical to that of a spiritual director and a directee’. However, the responsibilities of the manager and director in regard to the spiritual foundations of their work with others and their own spiritual journey are so similar that com-parisons can be made. If a soup kitchen 6r..any social ministry is not to become a sterile institution, the guidelines or working plan of operation must be thoughtfully and prayerfully discussed and discerned over time. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 "What is God’s will for me" in spiritual direction is parallel to and comparable with "What is God’s will for us, volunteers and street peo-ple," in a soup kitchen. The spiritual director and the direction relation-ship provide the backdrop against which the directee wrestles with his or her issues in listening to a loving God. Likewise, the basic rules and logistics of feeding hundreds of people daily must be wrestled with so that dignity and the love we show each other are not compromised using the excuse ofjoblessness, smelly clothes, or efficacy in operation. While including the poor and powerless in decision-making roles can be threat-ening, it is the fulfillment of Jesus’ Good News.. The soup kitchen manager and the spiritual director are responsible not for the success of the kitchen, the progress of the directee, or even determining what connotes that success or progress. One who seeks to lead must be a follower; a manager or director must create an environ- " ment whereby volunteers, street people, and directees seek their own spiri-tual journey with support and guidance for discernment of God’s will for them. The outward emphasis may differ from soup kitchen to spiritual direction but for the director and the manager, the spiritual task is the same. Conclusion There is value in drawing parallels in principle and practicality be-tween contemplative spirituality, spiritual direction and social conscious-ness, and the theological and spiritual organization of social ministries. Flexibility and imagination are necessary to compare the leadership and organizational abilities of a soup kitchen manager with the skills and train-ing of a spiritual director. We can show that the experiences of the vol-unteers and street people can follow a pattern of spiritual development. And directees and their spiritual directors can explore the social as well as personal experience of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In the face of violence, learned dependency, ignorance, and biased prejudices, hearts and minds as yet unawakened are waiting for the power of God’s transforming grace: Spiritual direction and social min-istry are not two journeys originating from disparate starting points. Each of these spiritual paths flows from the other and back to nourish those who find themselves to be both contemplative and activist. Spiritual Direction in Social Action Ministries NOTES i D. Bernsweiger, D. McCarty, and L. Rhodes, Eds. Spirituality, Ministry, and Field Education: Theological Field Education, Key Resources, Vol. V. (San Francisco: Assn. for Theological Field Education, 1986), p. 52. Research by the Center for Spiri-tuality and Justice, Bronx, New York, on spiritual direction and social conscious-ness. "Social consciousness" as based on Peter Henriot’s, (S.J.) thesis that the re-ality of the human person must take into account the individual, interpersonal, and public dimensions of human existence (p. 5 I). A person is simultaneously engaged in intense intrapersonal activity and consciousness, ongoing interpersonal relation-ships, and living out her or his life within a set of established and defined structures and institutions in the societal area (p. 52). 2 St. Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa ofAvila: Vol. One, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C. : ICS Pubs., 1976), p. 125. 3 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology. (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 8- 20. The four stages of enlightenment for soup kitchen participants is based on Lon-ergan’s transcendental method. ’~ Karl Rahner, "Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God." Theological Reflections, Vol. VI. (New York: Seabury Press, 1971), p. 232, p. 239. 5 lbid, pp. 242-244, 246. 6 Bernsweiger, McCarty, and Rhodes, pp. 53-54. Morning Office Here in my house of silence I stand beside you, Zachary. The song you cannot sing Trembles on your lips;. My song Pours in wordless rivers From quiet eyes. We stand together Lonely, waiting to sing Our canticle. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. St. Scholastica Priory 7430 North Ridge Chicago, Illinois 60645 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality Linda Rich, C.D.P. Sister Linda Rich, C. D. P., is a graduate of the Institute of Pastoral Studies at" Loyola University of Chicago. She currently works as part of the administrative team of NET-WORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, D.C. Her address is 806 Rhode Island Avenue, NE; Washington, D.C. 20018. In the past one hundred years, and more vocally in recent years, part of the Christian community is specifically addressing social problems through systemic and structural analysis and applying Christian value prin-ciples to these problems (for example poverty, war). In the North Ameri-can and European culture, theologians, bishops, and the Vatican are do-ing this analysis and reflection by developing social ethics and a large written corpus of Catholic social teaching. In other cultures, Christians are interested in finding ways to make the Gospel real through experiencing liberation from injustice. This in-dicates that the developing social ethics need a lived reality, an experi-enced spirituality if we, as a whole community of the People of Go~l, are to respond to this recovered Gospel of social justice. That void is now being filled in and fleshed out. The writers and think-ers in the fields of spirituality and social justice are beginning to coa-lesce, to meet on mutual ground. Liberation theologians are now writ-ing about the spirituality of liberation: for example, Spirituality of Libera-tion: Toward Political Holiness, Jon Sobrino, Orbis Books, 1988, and The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation, Segundo Galilea, Harper & Row, 1988. North American spirituality writers are now speak-ing of how spirituality is intimately linked with social transformation: for example, Social Re~,elation: Profound Challenge for Christian Spiritu- 818 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality ality, James E. Hug, S.J. and Rose Marie Scherschel, Center of Con-cern, 1987, and Spirituality and Liberation, Robert McAfee Brown, West-minster Press, 1988. Grass-roots movements within the Christian community are also bring-ing spirituality and justice together. The Catholic Worker movement con-cretely lives out social spirituality as envisaged by Dorothy Day and Pe-ter Maurin more than fifty years ago. They feed the hungry and welcome the homeless, while at the same time challenge the social structures that create this reality. As such, they speak against the national budget pri-orities for weapons instead of a priority for food and housing, for exam-ple. They are joined with others in the peace movement, the feminist/ women’s movement, and the racial and economic equality movements, which all have collectives of people who are motivated and sustained in this activity by the Christian call to discipleship and by other spiritual values and beliefs. While these manifestations of justice spirituality are all happening within the Christian community, the message of the social justice dimen-sions of spirituality have not yet been carried into the mainstream, how-ever. A new theology and practice of spirituality needs to be unfolded, articulated, and fostered in the Christian community-at-large. A new un-derstanding of how spirituality is, and needs to be, vitally connected with justice will then begin to emerge for the average Catholic in the pew. Donal Dorr comments: "Perhaps the most effective way in which the Church can influence human behavior is by promoting a particular kind of spirituality." ~ Personal and Social Transformation Spirituality and social justice are closely related, both being trans-formative processes. Spirituality, as I am using it here, is our process of personal transformation. Through spiritual practices (meditation, prayer, liturgical ritual) and through the living out of the fruits of these in our lives, we become better persons, more loving, more congruent with the values we profess. We grow and mature as persons and become psychologically and spiritually integrated. Justice is the process of bringing social groups into right relation-ships with each other. It is the transformation of legal or violent enforce-ment of the domination of one group of people over another (men over women, rich over poor, one race over another). Justice transforms domi-nant/ submissive relationships into partnerships.2 Oppressive violence is transformed into peace and freedom when justice is present. Both justice and spirituality are journeys into freedom, moving from 820/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 being bound to a more free state. There is movement from being en-slaved by forces outside our control to having choices about our lives. This movement happens (and power is shifted) by our being able and will-ing to take up the struggle for freedom and undergo the suffering re-quired. "There is no transformation of person or society without suf-fering, and the suffering which brings about such change is truly re-demptive.’ ,3 And so, it is very important to discern and determine which particular path leads to greater life through death and which path leads to dead ends, defeat, and a conquered death. Each choice, whether stay-ing with things as they are or choosing for change, has its own risks and consequences. These must be carefully considered. And as in any authen-tic journey, there are risks and perils along the way. Courage, persever-ance, and support from others are required for both the personal and so-cial transformative journeys. We can see some parallels between justice and spirituality. There is also an integrity present that is often missed. Both are needed in con-junction with each other to have true justice and true spirituality. This is so because either of these in isolation from the other is destructive. Historical examples include the way the Church sometimes has pro-moted an escapist spirituality which accepted injustice for other operat-ing benefits by the political powers that be. On the other hand, in socie-ties that have repressed spirituality and religion, great violence has been done in the name of social equality. This also plays itself out within the Christian community where division is created, with splits of "devout" and "activist" factions who distrust each other. Experience shows that spirituality and social justice are a graced dynamic, and split off from each other render both ineffective, irrelevant, and destructive. When these two are integrated, however, the world and the Chris-tian community are graced with life-giving energies. There are many ex-amples in our North American experience. Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization, uses a threefold approach of prayer, study, and action, com-bining the elements of spirituality and activism. They are in the forefront of efforts to promote a vow of nonviolence, a wonderful way of rooting a committed life of peace within a rich spiritual tradition. The commu-nity of Sojourners (Washington, DC), as part of the Christian evangeli-cal tradition, ministers through their monthly publication, neighborhood organizations, justice resources, and organizing national days of prayer and nonviolent resistance. NETWORK is a national Catholic social jus-tice lobby that attempts to influence the formation of public policy in the interest of the poor and powerless. It lobbies members of Congress to Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality enact laws providing access to economic resources, fairness in national funding, and justice in global relationships, Another facet of the relationship of personal and social transforma-tion is that these two are not necessarily simultaneous or synonymous; one does not automatically follow the other. A liberation scholar states it this way: Social change by itself does not create a new person, in the same way that transforming persons do not automatically induce a new social or-der. The creation of a new person and a new social order takes place within a dialectical interaction.4 So we can see that a conscious link needs to be made between our spiri-tual growth as transforming persons and our justice work of transform-ing society, or that link will not be made. Some people who invest time and money in the human potential move-ment for personal psychological and spiritual growth make the social con-nections beyond themselves, and some do not. Those who fail to con-nect their personal growth to a wider social vision will probably become shortsighted, turned in on themselves (stunted), and "whistling in the dark while the world goes to hell in a hand basket." Likewise, some so-cial activists who spend tremendous amounts of personal time and en-ergy organizing campaigns for justice do so from the fruits of their spiri-tual growth, and some do not. Those who fail to connect to a spiritual source will probably fall victim to burnout, cynicism, and self-righteous-ness. It is essential, I think, to recognize the inherent integrity of spiritu-ality and social justice within a "both/and" holistic framework. Too often they have been split apart, to the detriment of both. This dichot-omy needs to be healed and is being healed in the coming age. Conversion and Social Liberations In my experience, the education and consciousness-raising of justice work begins to effect a real transformation process in individuals, and in groups of people. This journey of transformation and liberation is one of conversion, a qualitative change, a living of life in new ways. Con-version (whether religious, intellectual, individual, or social), involves a three-part process of !) dying to the old, 2) an in-between period, and 3) a new orientation. Initially we feel confusion and conflict, we experience a resultant in-ability to continue living as we have been, and we know the need to find ~199 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 new ways of living. Once this process is entered into, things will never be quite the same again. (You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.) We find that we may creep slowly or may suddenly leap into a different frame of reference. We are brought into a whole new level of relating-- with a social consciousness~to God, to ourselves, and to others. Albert Nolan describes our growth into social consciousness in four stages.6 (He addresses this to the specific problem of poverty, though the principles can be applied in regard to other oppressed groups of people as well, it seems to me.) The first stage is characterized by our compas-sion, brought about by exposure through experience or information re-garding the sufferings of the poor. This compassion is generally ex-pressed in two kinds of action: relief work (distributing food and alms-giving), and simplification of lifestyle (voluntary poverty). The second stage is entered when we acknowledge the structural prob-lems as social in.justice. Things are the way they are because social struc-tures are set up to serve the interests of some people over others. Anger and guilt may arise when we become aware that poverty is largely a re-sult of oppression. Now our charity of the first stage is joined by justice in the second; both are necessary. In the third stage, we join humility with service to the poor. We need the poor for our liberation, also, and often we are unaware of the gifts they are and have for us. It is this humility (owning our own poverty) that tempers our "doing for the poor" into befriending them. At the same time, one hazard here is to put the poor/working class on a pedes-tal, to idealize them into something they are not. This can lead to disil-lusionment, disappointment, and burnout when we discover the illusion of our own making. The fourth and last stage is one of.real solidarity. This is the experi-ence of recognizing the faults and weaknesses of the poor as well as of ourselves, and at the same time, knowing that we can be on the same side against oppression. Now we experience the struggle of liberation to-gether. The second major aspect is that social consciousness is an essential part of conversion, not the results of it. Socioeconomic life is not a corollary to our relationship with God. It is not simply the arena in which conversion and love of God flow out into love of neighbor--if God so leads us. Social concern and work for jus-tice are not just the outgrowths of Christian conversion. Prayerful involve-ment in socioeconomic life and reflection on it are prerequisites to know-ing and relating intimately with God, not the results of it.7 Living Our Liberation Through Justice and Spirituality/ This concept is rife with implications for the i~ntegration of social con-sciousness into our spiritual life. If we discern God’s revelation to us ex-clusively in our interior movements (within ourselves), then "we receive only a partial, distorted image of God. We are ignoring part of the reve-lation of God. We run the danger of fostering, . . a selfless, dedicated and energetic service of the status quo with aH its unjust institutions."8 Our spirituality, without the social revelation component, will most likely, though unwittingly, serve the continuance of injustice. A third connection between conversion and the transformative pro-cess of justice is the image of liberation for the spiritual process. Rather than relying exclusively on the traditional image of union and intimacy with God for spiritual growth,9 we may well include "conversion as lib-eration" as a complementary image. For truly all conversion is a liber-ating experience from our false selves and an enlivening and freeing ex-perience of our true selves. As the image of spiritual union speaks to the part in each of us that seeks attachment, belonging, and inclusion, the image of liberation speaks to the part in each of us that seeks freedom and autonomy. For people who are victims of others and/or society, for people who feel enslaved interiorly by addictions or by life circumstances, this lib-eration process imaged and named as such can be a tremendous motiva-tion and empowerment for change in personal and spiritual development and for social activism. Paul proclaims: "The world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Rm 8:21). Implications A great challenge lies before us. World crises every day remind us of how fragile and precarious our planet and our common situation is as human beings. We can deny and numb ourselves to this reality. We can let it in and live in despair and be crushed by it. Or we can forge new ways of living, "ministering to the breakthrough" (as named by Pat and Gerald Mische of Global Education Associates) of a surviving and just world. Members of religious congregations can be in the forefront of this breakthrough, on the prophetic cutting edge a’s it were. We have a pub-lic role in the Christian community and many congregations are interna-tional. More than one congregation now has Non-Governmental Organ-izational (NGO) status at the United Nations. These and other innovative ways to minister to the breakthrough can be communally explored and implemented. Though each congregation faces the lack of personnel and 8241 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 finances in a different way, we can continue to be supportive of those people and organizations that integrate faith and justice. The integration of spirituality and justice is a key component of min-istering to the breakthrough. It requires a change in thinking as well as in acting, in theory as well as in praxis. Only the combined strength of the theory and practice of spirituality and justice will carry us through into the future. NOTES ~ Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Vatican Social Teaching (Ma-ryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983), p. 59. 2 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 198-203. This shift is elaborated on in depth here. 3 Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J., Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in the Church (Mah-weh, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 83. ’~ lsmael Garcia, Justice in Latin American Theology of Liberation (Atlanta, Geor-gia: John Knox Press, 1987), p. 80. 5 See Osiek, Beyond Anger, p. 44-63, for an insightful development of conversion and transformation in a liberation context. 6 Albert Nolan, O.P., "Spiritual Growth and the Option for the Poor," Church (Bal-timore, MD: National Pastoral Life Center, 1985), Spring issue. 7 James E. Hug, S.J., and Rose Marie Scherschel, Social Revelation: Profound Chal-lenge for Christian Spirituality, (Washington, D.C. : Center of Concern, 1987), pp. 22-23. 8 Ibid, p. 23. 9 In Francis Kelly Nemeck, O.M.I. and Maria Theresa Coombs, The Spiritual Jour-ney: Critical Thresholds and Stages of Adult Spiritual Genesis (Wilmington, Dela-ware: Michael Glazier, 1987), union and intimacy image is used throughout. Spirituality of Liberation Peter G. van Breemen, S.J. Father Peter G. van Breemen, S.J., author of well-known books such as As Bread That Is Broken and Called By Name, has most recently been serving as Jesuit tertian director in Berlin. His address is Peter-Faber-Kolleg; Postfach 220018; Am Schwemmborn 3a; D-1000 Berlin (Kladow); West Germany. Much is being said and written nowadays about Theology of Liberation. The deliberate alteration to Spirituality of Liberation suggests a shift to-wards a less controversial and a more meditative approach. Spirituality The word spirituality stems from spirit. In the Old Testament it re-fers to the ruach as the divine source of human life, and in the New Tes-tament to the active presence of the Holy Spirit in our everyday personal and communal life, where it renders our faith concrete in our actions and behavior. The word spirituality also intimates that life has come to a cer-tain harmony and synthesis: what could remain a fairly objective and sometimes even abstract doctrine has become a source of life and inspi-ration; it has become integrated and operative. Spirituality is lived in the community and becomes fruitful within it, since the Spirit ’is given pri-marily to the community, and to the individual only in the community. So much about the first word of our title. Liberation The word liberation has generally more political overtones than the related word redemption. When Gustavo Gutti6rrez coined the expres-sion "Theology of Liberation" and used it as the title of his book (Lima, 1972), and when a number of his Latin American colleagues took over this expression, they wanted to make redemption more down-to-earth 826/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 and more relevant for the struggle for life. There should be no real doubt that the theologians of liberation want to articulate the Christian faith-- drawn from Scripture, received from Jesus Christ, and handed on through the Catholic Church---even though the Instruction of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "On Certain Aspects of the ’Theology of Liberation,’ " published in 1984, had a number of criti-cal remarks and even though one of its leading theologians (Leonardo Boff) was silenced for a year. In fact, that very Instruction plus another one of March 22, 1986 basically approve and praise the Theology of Lib-eration. It is not surprising that the rapid development of the Theology of Lib-eration in the last two decades has led to a variety of meanings of the word liberation. What unites, however, all the different schools of lib-eration theology is that--in various ways--they are all inspired by and support a movement, a dynamic, in which the poor and the underprivi-leged draw strength from their faith to fight for their dignity and against unfair exploitation. The heart of the Theology of Liberation is to be found in this movement; it is lived before it is articulated. Undoubtedly this theology (and this movement) began in Latin America, but it is equally certain that they are to be found in other parts of the world as well, like the Philippines, South Africa (Kairos document), India (State-ment of the Indian Theological Association), and other countries. What these countries have in common is obviously their great need for libera-tion, but also that Christianity is fairly recent there. Quite often, with a touch of humor, the Church in these countries is compared with a young woman, hardly twenty years old, in which comparison the Church in Europe is portrayed as an elderly lady. Along with their youth, these Churches also stress their vigor and their hope. It is a little touchy, though not unfair and not disrespectful, when they describe the climate in the European churches as winter and in theirs as spring. Let me just conclude from these remarks that a spirituality of liberation and the di-vine virtue of hc~pe go together. Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) was the first Pope tostress the place of indigenous churches. In 1926 he consecrated in St. Peter’s in Rome six Chinese bishops, the first non-white bishops since the early Church. That is less than seventy-five years ago! Whereas all the Fathers of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) were natives of Europe or North America, the Second Vatican Council gave a completely different picture. Thus it is not surprising that Vatican II speaks highly of the variety of local churches with "their own discipline, their own liturgical usage, and their Spirituality of Liberation own theological and spiritual heritage" (Lumen Gentium 23). "The Chair of Peter, it is said, protects legitimate differences, while at the same time it sees that such differences do not hinder unity, but rather con-tribute to it" (LG 13). Though not without friction and pain, this shift of the center of gravity from the Western world towards other continents goes on speedily. The prognostic indicates that in the year 2000 thirty percent of the world’s Catholics will live in Europe and North America, and seventy percent in the southern hemisphere (that is, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania). We live on the eve of a new equilibrium of the Church. One sign of this is that non-western schools of theological reflection arise. They form a challenge and offer a chance. They can en-rich the people of God immensely. Covenant In a spirituality of liberation, the covenant plays a vital role-- indeed, the covenant is the very origin of our liberation. This may sound rather paradoxical, since covenant denotes a bond that binds us, which looks like the exact opposite of liberation that sets us free. Yet, Sacred Scripture is basically the long story of human liberation, precisely be-cause it is the history of the Covenant of God with his people--first with the Jewish people in the Old Testament and later in the New Testament with all God’s people. From the bond of this covenant true freedom springs. This brings home to us the important truth that freedom in the Bible is not unbound, arbitrary, individualistic or irresponsible. Freedom does not mean that one can do what one likes; on the contrary, truly free per-sons are not governed by likes and dislikes, but act according to their inner convictions and conscience--in short, their true self. Freedom im-plies honesty and courage, transparency and authenticity, maturity and responsibility. Sometimes God is called the deepest Ground of our being. Even though the expression may be rather recent, the idea is not new at all. The classic phrase of St. Augustine "God is closer to me than I am to myself" says basically the same thing. If God is the deepest Ground of our being, then it is only in union with him that we can be our true selves and act freely. God is not constraining, but it is only in and through him that we come to life and freedom. Modern psychology confirms this view. It is only in a basic trust in another person (normally the mother) that the child reaches self-confidence. It is only in the security which the mother gives to the child that the latter finds the courage and even the ability to reach out. The 828/Review for Religious, November-December 1990 greater the confidence in its parents, the more open the child will be. What we can observe very clearly in children reveals a characteristic which remains through the whole of life. A person who is secure in the love of someone else can afford to go out into the ever widening space of life and to respond to the world’s ever growing challenges. True freedom is the fruit of true love which one has experienced and/ or is still experiencing. I shall not dwell on the sad and often tragic as-pects of the counterpart of these psychological data, but rather state that for me these psychological insights point to God as the ultimate fulfill-ment of our basic need. Of course, I am aware that I make a jump from the level of psychological experiences to the level of faith. I am not try-ing to prove anything, only to suggest and to hint. It is in the covenant that God gives his chosen people the security we are talking about. "I shall be your God and you shall be my peo-ple" is God’s summary of the covenant. God binds himself to his peo-ple; he is their support and guarantee. In doing so, he invites the people to bind themselves to him in faithful obedience. When the people accept this invitation, the bond of the covenant is the basis of their freedom. At an early stage of the Jewish history this mighty care of God as the origin of their freedom is exemplified in the exodus from the slavery in Egypt. In fact, one can say that the Exodus is the beginning of the Jews as a nation; up until that moment they were no more than a gang of slaves, who were exploited in unbearably hard forced labor (Ex 2:23). It is in the miraculous event of their liberation from Egypt and their pas-sage through the Sea of Reeds that they become a people. God reveals himself as their God, their liberator, the origin of their national identity. From generation to generation they keep celebrating the marvel of their liberation as the outstanding evidence of the covenant. It is in the context of this liberation from slavery that God reveals his name: Yahweh. Volumes have been written about the meaning of these four Hebrew letters, yet the scholarly research of centuries remains inconclusive. Is it a sign of God’s transcendence or of his sense of hu-mor (or of both) that his name remains mysterious in its being revealed? So much seems certain that the name Yahweh is existentially a boundlessly affirming word and intellectually just as boundlessly com-prehensive (that is, not to be grasped). He is there, absolutely reliable and absolutely incomprehensible. In their exodus the Jewish people have experienced their God, whom they gradually discover to be the God of all nations and of all creation. In their exodus they have learned that God hears the cry of the poor and takes their side. We meet here the begin- Spirituality of Liberation ning of a strand that runs through the whole of Scripture, stressing God’s care for the poor and the needy, the orphan and the widow. Eventually this will lead to some sort of identification of God with the weak and the little, for example, Psalm 91:15 and Matthew 25:40, 45. In their exodus it was also brought home to them that Yahweh works through people: God. has no hands but ours; compare Exodus 3:8 with 3: 10. In their history with Yahweh they discover that he is "always greater." That is indeed a very pertinent characteristic of God. No mat-ter how great we think of him, he is always greater. No matter how much we have experienced of him, he remains always greater. That keeps us always on the move in our relation with God. The chief expression for human life in Hebrew means: to wander, to travel, to hike. The early Christians called themselves "the people of the way." Thus the exodus is a basic distinction of true religion, not an exodus once and for all, but ever so often repeated. And so freedom is not only the fruit of our exo-dus, but also its prerequisite, Liberty is both gift and demand. That is to say how much our faith is a religion of liberation. In apostolic reli-gious life unconditional pliability with respect to the will of God which can never be predicted and never be fixed takes shape in a continually adaptable apostolic availability. Paschal Mystery So far the name of Jesus has not been mentioned. It is in him that God became incarnate; it is in him that liberation receives hands and feet, a body and a voice and a face. His name, in Hebrew Yehoshua, means "Yahweh saves." Jesus embodies the saving God. He embodies this sav-ing God in a concrete, historically, sociologically, and politically well-defined situation. The incarnation of the eternal Son of God implies the taking-up of a human life with all the specific conditions of a particular society in a particular time. Perhaps the most striking feature of Jesus’ dealing with the people of his time and country is how free he is as a person and how free he renders others (Lk 4:!8). This freedom is not simulated, but has deep roots. He is free, because at the same time he is one with the Father. What we found as the true source of freedom of the Jewish people, namely the covenant with Yahweh, we find infinitely more in Jesus of Nazareth. He was bound with Yahweh in his very person: "one in be-ing with the Father" (see Jn 10:30). Accordingly, he always did what pleased the Father and called the will of the Father the food on which he lived (Jn 4:34). That made him a free man and enabled him to free others. Review for Religious, November-December 1990 The miracles he works are presented by the Evangelists, especially by John, as "signs," which point out who Jesus is and what God stands for. Though accepted gratefully and often enthusiastically by many con-temporaries, the signs are rejected by the political and religious leaders. They decide to kill Jesus. The prospect of his suffering and death meets with a profound inner resistance, which in Gethsemane brought a terri-ble distress over him; yet he is free enough to say yes to his passion and crucifixion (Jn 10: 17). Jesus dies on the cross as a consequence of his mission. But God stood by his Son, in and beyond his death. God raised him to new life, a life over which death has no more power. We call this the paschal mystery, in analogy to the passover-event of the Old Testa-ment. The liberating event of the Old Testament was the exodus from Egypt; in the New Testament it is the death and the resurrection of Je-sus. The paschal liturgy from its earliest origins considered the crossing of the Sea of Reeds as a prefiguration of Jesus’ passing through death to the risen life, so much so that among the many Old Testament read-ings of our Easter Vigil Exodus 15 is the only one which is obligatory. Here we touch the heart of the saving and liberating mission of Je-sus. In the various forms of our creeds we confess about Jesus: his in-carnation, and then omitting every other event of his life, his passion, death, and resurrection. No miracle, no sermon, no teaching, no contact with any person, no feature of his personality, not one event of his hid-den or public life is mentioned. In every creed one jumps from the birth of Jesus straight to the paschal mystery, which constitutes the core of our faith in Jesus. The paschal mystery is like a tunnel, that obviously has two ends which are connected and thus make the one tunnel. So death and resur-rection are two sides of one mystery. It is of the essence of the gift of faith that one can see the one side of the mystery in unity with the other: the passion in the light of the resurrection--the risen Lord with the wounds of his crucifixion. It is precisely the unity of these two events, crucifixion and resurrection, that makes us free. Jesus is savior and lib-erator because he is at the same time the suffering servant of Yahweh and the glorified Lord. The tunnel leads into the realm of freedom, like the passage through the Sea of Reeds led the Jewish people into the prom-ised land. The Gospels are written from this certainty. They narrate the events of Jesus’ life, but in the light of the resurrection. It is this per-spective that we call inspiration (see Jn 8:28; 12:32). It reveals to us not only the redemptive and liberating thrust of Jesus’ life, but it also takes us up into that same dynamic. It is the mystery of the grain of wheat Spir!tuality of Liberation / which yields fruit only by dying in the ground (Jn 12:24). It is the call of Jesus, not to hold on to one’s life, but to lose it for the sake of the kingdom (Mk 8:35). Fulfillment These words are not meant to glorify human misery nor are they to be used as a cheap consolation to those who suffer. Rather we ourselves in the first place are to take them to heart, if we want to follow Jesus and to be apostolically fruitful. Every human person strives for fulfill-ment. This is perfectly in line with God’s purpose, for example, John 15:8. But there is a way of striving after self-fulfillment and self-unfolding which is not in line with God’s intention. As soon as one for-gets or denies that true Christian fulfillment goes through renouncing one-self and taking up one’s cross (Mk 8:34) and dying like a grain of wheat, one is moving on the wrong track. Then my own physical well-being, my settling into a comfortable lifestyle, my need to be appreciated by those with whom I live and deal, bonds of friendship, my desire to make the most of my talents, success in my work, and so forth begin to play too great a role and stifle my religious and apostolic life. Since this topic is not only very vital indeed, but also very delicate, let me stress that the values mentioned are positive and good. However, as Christians we believe that we truly obtain these values when we do not hold on to them, but are willing to lose them for the sake of Jesus and the kingdom. This brings about the attitude of freedom, in the evangelical sense of the word. An essential aspect of Jesus’ freedom was his readiness to accept suf-fering and to lay down his life (Jn 10:17), even though he agonized when the actual passion began. Similarly, a disciple of Jesus cannot follow his or her master without this freedom to give up precious personal human values (Lk 14:33). The Bible gives us many examples of negative experiences which eventually turn out to be quite positive. It is the lesson which Jesus in a remedial class brought home to the disciples of Emmaus (Lk 24:26). It is the lesson which Moses was taught in Exodus 33:18-23. It is the les-son that the evil is far worse than we admit, but that the good is also much greater than we dare to hope and even can bear. It is the lesson which all of us have learned in life: what at the actual moment was felt like a great loss, often revealed itself in hindsight as a real grace. The biblical message, confirmed by our own life experience, may help us to become more free in regard to our own life and more free in our apos-tolic service. 839 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 It is, of course, a platitude to say that only those who are themselves liberated can help to liberate others. But this platitude is also a little sim-plistic. It seems more nuanced to say that as the Father wants us to be creative with him, likewise the Son wants us to be redemptive with him and wants to continue his work of liberation in and through us (Gaudium et spes 34 and 67). In this way we point out more clearly that our own liberation is a lifelong process and that it is only God who can work true freedom in ourselves and in others. We have to complete th’is statement by saying that God can work this true freedom only through us. So it is our mission to help the people experience the liberating God. In his encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), Pope Paul VI stressed that evangel-ization proclaims and tries to realize liberation. This evangelization and this liberation aim at the whole person, .as the same Pope wrote already in an earlier encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967). Respect I suppose this renders respect a key concept in our service of libera-tion: a great respect and regard for the dignity of each human being, that is to say, of ourselves and of others. Respect is the heart of love, and in many ways the word respect is more meaningful than the word love (which, alas, is sometimes used so vaguely and glibly). Respect means to acknowledge the worth of others as other, that is, to relate to them not as we want them to be, not as we think they should be, not as they fit into our plans, but as they are. It also means to discover in these real people their defects, and to accept them. There is a wise and dense say-ing of C.G. Jung: "One can only change what one, has accepted." What we reject or condemn or repress goes beyond our reach; we cannot do anything with it nor for it anymore. I am convinced that the lack of respect does a tremendous harm in our communities, in our apostolate, in our Church, and in our world. If we could come to a basic attitude of respect for each human being, the world would become a so much better place to live in and the Gospel-message would become so much more real and convincing. This respect should not be an aloof, detached, disembodied attitude. If it is, it contradicts itself. Clodovis Boff expresses the opinion that Euro-pean culture tends to screen itself from the "two-edged sword of the Word" (Heb 4:12) with a highly developed, but spiritualistic, exegeti-cal, and sociological sophistication. "Europeans only?" one might ask. As our respect for each other has to be integral, so has the liberation we work for. We cannot restrict it either to the spiritual or the political realm. Spirituality of Liberation / 833 The Poor The word integral can also be understood as including all men and women, though the word universal might be more appropriate in this case. With that meaning in mind, integral or universal liberation requires a special concern for the poor and the weak. This is certainly in line with a trend that runs through the whole of Scripture. God shows a preferen-tial love for the poor, which leads to a certain identification with the poor-est, as mentioned above. The cry of the poor is heard by God, yes, even the curse of the poor (Si 4:5; Ex 22:22). As for the New Testament, the cry of Jesus on the cross is sometimes said to continue in the cry of the poor. That cry comes from the seventy percent who are underprivileged and undernourished--the majority of whom can hardly survive, let alone live in dignity. The Bible demands our solidarity with them. They are the present-day locus where we meet Christ. It is in them that Jesus is to be found. We may need a conversion of heart and a radical change of our lifestyle in order to live up to this demand of the time. There is a use of the word freedom which is meant to deny just that. Nuclear weapons are claimed to protect freedom, which, in fact, means only "our" freedom, and that, in turn, stands really for our power and affluence. These self-interests, however, are maintained at the expense of other people’s lives, and their "protection," therefore, runs counter to the actual demands of the Gospel. Integral or universal liberation requires that the poor are not the only ones liberated, and that liberation is not understood only economically. There may be certain biases sometimes, which do harm to the integrity or wholeness of liberation. It shows the greatness of a theologian like Leonardo Boff, that for example, in his volume Jesus Christ the Libera-tor he writes some pertinent pages precisely to denounce such a bias. Structural Sin Recently another aspect of integral liberation has come to the fore, namely, liberation from "social sin" or "structural evil." Of course, Christians have always known of sins in the social sphere, and also of the social aspect of every sin. It is new, however, to call social struc-tures themselves sinful. It has taken some controversy to clarify that the word "sin" in this expression is used in analogy with the personal sin we had known hitherto. Both good and bad actions can embody and per-petuate themselves in structures, which are accordingly good or bad, and, once established, are the source of further good or evil. So certain structures are called sinful, while they originate from and in turn lead to personal sin. They definitely restrict our freedom and often they ten- Review for Religious, November-December 1990 der us unfree to a considerable extent. The individual is in those cases often both cause and victim. Those who create these structures or main-tain them or profit from them or even in complicity tolerate them are guilty. This social sin is part of the mystery of iniquity that cries for libera-tion towards the Lord of history and brings out the human race’s need of redemption. It is by no means easy to admit this sin for oneself, to free oneself from its entanglement, and to work for liberation of others on this level--far more difficult usually than in the sphere of personal sin. One can be certain that attempts towards changing these structures will bring ’with them many personal inconveniences, hardships, threats, loss of friends and relations, in certain countries imprisonment, torture, and even death, as many have found out, especially in the last decades. When I interpreted freedom as a readiness to accept suffering, I had these kinds of situations in mind. A person who is not free to suffer cannot think of working for liberation from structural sin. Vulnerability is a genu-ine assurance that we are in touch with reality, truth, and love, not self-interest. Here, more than anywhere else, it is important to realize that God is the chief agent in overcoming evil, and that we are cooperators with him, instruments in his hand, branches of the vine. Without this con-viction coming from faith, the challenge would overwhelm us. A Church which is too much concerned about itself, its own image, and its own problems cannot tackle this task, just as an individual who is too egocentric cannot engage in it. The Church has to proclaim the Lord Jesus, above all in his paschal mystery of death and resurrection, and not proclaim itself. Liberation in its many aspects requires the over-coming of all self-centeredness, both in the individual and in the Church. The more the Church is focused on the person of Jesus and not on itself, the more the Church will be able to discover what men and women of other religions and other visions are doing for liberation, and to cooper-ate with them. It seems to be a special task of the religious to help the Church to focus on our Lord and Savior and thereby to be open to all people of good will who pledge themselves to liberation. Obviously, we can only help the Church in this by doing it ourselves and by being loyal to our Church. Dangers Much praise has been sung to the spirituality of liberation in this ar-ticle, and rightly so. Some dangers must be mentioned also. Not to cool down our commitment, but to safeguard it. I do not want to elaborate on these dangers, yet it seems unfair to me to pass them by completely. SpiritualiO, of Liberation / ~135 So let me just give the headings as I found them in an article ("Como Fazer Teologia da Libertac~o," published by: Vozes, Petr6polis, Bra-zil 1986) written jointly by Clodovis and Leonardo Boff: - a neglect of the mystical roots - a rampage of the political aspects - a stifling of the faith through too much discussion - a tendency towards exclusiveness and absolutism - an exaggerated emphasis on the discontinuity with the tradition and an underestimating of the continuity - a negligence of a serious dialogue and discussion with other spirituali-ties -a lack of care to make the theology of liberation understandable and pal-atable to the authority in the Church, which delays the conversion of the Church to the poor. After having rushed through these dangers, let me close with a quota-tion from the encyclical of Pope John Paul Redemptoris Mater and with a word of hope. Mary "Drawing from Mary’s heart, from the depth of her faith expressed in the words of the Magnificat, the Church renews ever more effectively in herself the awareness that the truth about God who saves, the truth about God who is the source of every girl, cannot be separated from the manifestation of his love of preference for the poor and the humble, that love, which, celebrated in the Magnificat, is later expressed in the words and works of Jesus. The Church is thus aware--and at the present time this awareness is particularly vivid--not only that these two elements of the message contained in the Magnificat cannot be separated, but also that there is a duty to safeguard carefully the importance of ’the poor’ and of ’the option in favor of the poor’ in the word of the living God. These are matters and questions intimately connected with the Christian meaning of freedom and liberation. ’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. It is to her as Mother and Model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission’ " (Nr.37). Hope It is common among the theologians.of liberation to stress the hope Review for Religious, November-December 1990 that is manifest in their movement. To work and to struggle for libera-tion for any length of time is impossible without authentic hope. This hope is not identical with optimism. Optimism emphasizes the positive aspects and draws attention away from the negative, tends to underesti- ¯ mate the latter, and even to repress them. It may be a pleasant attitude, but it is often not quite realistic. Hope, on the contrary, faces the difficulties and the pain, yet does not lose heart. Hope is more than an impulse. Hope makes us faithful and persevering. Hope discloses a great strength, which is beyond us. Hope is able to sail its own course with every wind, even with head wind. Charles P6guy portrays hope as a little girl between her two big sisters who hold her by the hand. It looks as if the two big ones lead the little one, but the opposite is true. It is hope that keeps faith and love alive, young, and vital. The basic communities and the other groups that embody the libera-tion movement are centers of hope. This hope is not an acquired, but an infused virtue--that means beyond us and yet in us as a divine gift, as a fruit of the paschal mystery. "Through him (Christ) you have confi-dence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith is hope in God" (1 P 1:21). Compline Salvation danced In the dark Of Mary’s womb, Was paid with blood On a black hill, Then rose for all From death’s dead tomb. So I must trust Your grace unseen Till from life’s grave I, too, am freed. Kathleen T. Choi 1706Waianuenue Avenue Hilo, Hawaii 96720 Liberation and the Liturgical Year ¯ Susan Anderson Kerr, Ph.D. Susan Anderson Kerr is an Oblate of St. Louis Priory in Petersham, Massachusetts. Her address is 4209 Avenue F; Austin, Texas 78751. When we observe the culture around us and see the emptin~s_.s of living apari ~?o~m ]he liturgical year, we see that the liturgical ~ar is hot some pious preoccupation of people with a taste for the archaic. It is a ques-tion of survival, of urgent importance for an age hungry for liberation, and respectful of those who survive. It is a question of freedom, of vast relevance for our culture which reveres freedom, struggles with addic-tions, and seeks personal liberation from materialism, sexism, racism, and a host of enslaving isms. In an age of decline and disintegration such as ours, many people turn to the inner life to exert the yearning for goodness and truth and beauty which in another era would have had a greater possibility for ex-ternal expression in politics or art or education. The pain of the loss of knowing how to do things--how to accomplish civic reforms, how to com-bat drugs and violence, how to overcome the hedonism and cynicism of our time---can send people on a spiritual quest. So we have an outpour-ing of books on the inner life--Jungian psychology, individual prayer techniques, popularizations of the great works of Catholic spirituality. But if we attend only to our individual spiritual growth while neglect-ing liturgical spirituality, we try to walk to the heavenly Jerusalem on one leg. The Lord does not intend for us to so hobble. Part of the reason we neglect the liturgy is that it effects our healing so circuitously, circling like the rings around the trunk of the tree. We want results now; we are on fire with intentions. Romano Guardini once observed that liturgy is much more like a forest where one wanders than a gymnasium where with fixed purpose one exercises certain muscles. 837 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 Another reason we slight the liturgy is that those great masters of the spiri-tual life--St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola--who are such help to us wrote at a time of liturgical decadence when desiccated liturgies were an obstacle to spiritual growth. When we try to walk on both legs, liturgical as well as individual prayer, other saints will help us, saints who wrote when liturgy and spiri-tuality were not at cross purposes, saints in the monastic tradition, like St. Benedict and St. Gertrude. The Vatican documents of the renewal of the liturgy are also useful in correcting our understanding of the value of liturgy. Personal prayer is a logical place to begin as one searches for encoun-ter with God, but to linger there is to remain a spiritual adolescent. To relate the liturgical year to the individual’s private life of prayer is to ad-dress a practical question: why pay attention to the liturgical year? If I am learning centering prayer, or the Jesus prayer, or my Enneagram num-ber, or how to relate to my anima or animus, why do I need the liturgi-cal year? Is this not a formal structure which has nothing at all to do with the rich spontaneity and diversity of my inner life? "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free," the Church sings each morning. And so God has. The liturgical year invites us into liberation in three areas: freedom from chronos and cyclical time, freedom from nature, and freedom from the tyranny of our unconscious. First, the liturgical year helps shape our understanding of the mean-ing of time. It removes us from the pagan sense of time as repetition, nature’s cycle endlessly repeating itself, and from the atheist’s concep-tion of time as pure chronos. It introduces a.God-ward momentum and shaping of time, an upwardly moving spiral. Empty repetition and end-less succession are replaced by repetition at higher levels on the spiral, by kairos punctuating chronos, or chronos building to and being shaped by kairos. Like a lovely shell, the liturgical year has been extruded cen-tury after long century as the Church needed more space in which to dwell. The liturgical year gives us a common memory. This happens on sev-eral levels: on the cosmic level, as Pierre Teiihard de Chardin describes, the Church evolves towards the omega point; on the historic level as the Church organizes time before and after our Lord’s death; on the personal level as our individual existence takes its place in this great spiral flow-ing towards God. Intimately linked with our common memory of the liturgical year is Liberation and the Liturgical Year the common authority which establishes it. The Church has to maintain the central focus on the life of Christ, balancing between a proliferation of feast days which would result in a loss of shape to the Church year, and the impulse to celebration which led one desert father to exult "Life is an eternal festival." Second, the liturgical year frees us from romantic identification with nature. But what does the liturgical year express about our relationship to nature? Partly organized around the sun, partly around the moon, the liturgical year demonstrates as Odo Casel remarks, the maxim "Grace builds on nature." The week evolved from divisions of the lunar cycle, for the Hebrew festal calendar, like the first calendar cycles of most primi-tive religions, was lunar. The Jewish lunar months were divided by sab-batical weeks; the Mosaic sabbath is based on 7 as a perfect number, ex-pressing completion and fullness. The Easter celebration evolved from the Jewish liturgical cycle which had gradually replaced nature rituals with festivals commemorating Israel’s history of salvation. Unlike the polytheistic peoples around them who made the powers of nature divine, the Jewish people came to see nature as a tool and im-age of the spiritual. The feast of Pesach had nomadic roots, for it is cele-brated at the first full moon after the vernal equinox when a young male lamb is sacrificed, roasted, and eaten. But its central focus is the reen-actment of the deliverance of Israelfrom the hands of Egypt. When Je-sus transformed this feast by identifying himself with the sacrificial lamb, he lifted it from its local origin and universalized it into the feast of the salvation of all human beings of every time. But Easter does not thereby shed its lunar and historical associations. Thus the cyclic observance of the vernal equinox is lifted first into the hope of renewal in human history recalled in the Passover festival, and then universalized in the.final eschatological hope of Easter. We see a similarl appropriation of ~natureir~ the use of the sun in the liturgical year. Jesus, as the light of the world, was identified with the sun. His birth is celebrated at the winter solstice, transforming and uni-versalizing the pagan festival of the sol invictus. His conception is thus celebrated nine months earlier near the vernal equinox, March 25. Since according to Luke 1:26, John the Baptist was conceived six months be-’ fore Jesus, his conception is observed at the autumnal equinox, and his birth, by extension, at the summer solstice June 24. Thus the two equi-noxes and the two solstices are brought into the Christian year and trans-formed from cyclic rituals to feasts of the birth of life and light into this world’s darkness. ~140 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 John the Baptist’s feasts are also associated with the sun’s activity; in the fourth century they were seen as cosmic confirmation of John’s own words "He must increase; but I must decrease" (Jn 3:30). The prayer of the Divine Office is also organized around the sun; the two most important hours occur when the sun rises and when it sets. Here the beginning and ending of the day are bound up with the life of the Lord: the sun’s rising is an image of his rising from the dead; vespers, when the sun sets, the beginning of a new day, is eucharistic in charac-ter, full of thanksgiving for the light that has been. The Church uses nature as the basis for sacred time, but does not re-main encased within natural rhythms. The liturgical year steers the Chris-tian away from romantic identification with nature, from new age senti-mentality about its saving power, as well as from Gnostic fear of the ca-pacity of creation to convey divine purposes. Like an enormous tree nour-ished with roots deep in our personal and collective unconscious, it also teaches respect for natural processes, for slow growth, for rhythms be-yond human control. Finally, the liturgical year unfetters our freedom from the tyranny of our unconscious. When Moses stood before the burning bush aiad saw that this was holy ground, he entered a new place to live. That place is prayer; it is man’s response to God’s holiness and comes into existence only in communion with God. We can compare this to the common ground that exists between two friends; when I get to know someone, drawn by mutual interests or complementary personalities, a territory of shared experience grows between us. As the holy ground between man and the divine extends in time, so is born the inner liturgical year. "Moses, Moses, take off your shoes, for the place on which you stand is holy ground" (Ex 3:5). Liturgy must be interior as well as exterior for it to be whole. The structures of worship which ancient Israel built in response to Moses’ ex-perience of the transcendence of God--first the altar of sacrifice, later a mobile tabernacle, and the Sabbath--were images of inner freedom, of the oblation of self to Yahweh, to Being. The early Church absorbed the Jewish sabbath into a festival of the Lord’s day, Sunday, a day to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of the Incarnation which was implicit in the assent to crea-tion celebrated on the sabbath. The Documents of Vatican II remind us "The Lord’s Day is the original feast day, and it should be proposed to the faithful and taught to them so that it may become in fact a day of joy and of freedom from work" (Vol. I p. 29). Liberation and the Liturgical Year In Sunday is the seed of all later festivals. We encounter Sunday first in the gospels, for this is the day of the Resurrection, the day the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene. Also in Scripture we find the first repeti-tion of Sunday, for it was one week later after his Resurrection that the Lord appeared to Thomas and the company assembled in the upper room and breathed his peace on them. Thus, in the book of Acts, the early Church observes Sunday as a day to celebrate the Resurrection; not a day of rest, not a continuation of the Jewish sabbath, but a new day, an eighth day, of completion, and a first day of rejoicing in creation. To celebrate Sunday witnesses to our busy and harried society of the freedom and goodness of the Christian vision of life. A reform of Sun-day can only come from within the individual life; the era of puritanical prohibitions has done its job of proposing to us what a day of rest would look like, and now it is up to us to practice an asceticism of time so that shopping, banking, errands, and office work can be laid aside for one day. A day to affirm the goodness of creation means a day for play, for friends, for music, for nature. This is a gift from God. Accepting it wit-nesses to the eternal festival latent behind the celebration of this special day. The Christian who observes Sunday as a day of joy and freedom from work learns the interconnectedness of time, for such a Sunday be-gins the night before. As the Jews began to observe a holy day with the vigil of the preceding night, so the Christian liturgical year interweaves all time around this structure of the week, each festival held in place by the surrounding times. Liturgical memory looks backwards and forwards as it draws strength for the present. Sunday looks back to divine assent to creation, and forward to the heavenly rest we anticipate. Celebrating Sunday nourishes our freedom to set aside work and worry and simply be. Liturgical memory forms the whole memory. People who can set aside their personal agenda and enter into the communal celebration, or who make the communal agenda their personal concern, are the ones who then can place their individual psychological problems in a wide con-text. They are not locked into the present, because they are formed to see it held in a web between past and future, nor are they confined to their own personal viewpoint however fully it might be absorbing them. In other words, the liturgy is a school of detachment, a word which in English sounds cold and lonely. I am told the German equivalent, abgeschiedenheit, would be translated as "serene freedom of the spirit filled with utter trust in God." That is the result of a memory formed 849 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 by the liturgy. But it is accomplished not directly and didactically, but symbolically and by example. Thus the liturgy teaches us that every feast must be preceded by a period of preparation: no Sunday without week-days, no Christmas without Advent, no Easter without Lent, and plenty of ordinary time to allow the mysteries of Christ to be absorbed and di-gested. Here is delayed gratification made visible. But this is more than just training in patience for high points. St. Cath-erine of Siena once said "All the way to heaven is heaven." That is what the liturgy says tool Advent and Lent, ordinary time, all the small roots of morning and evening prayer absorb water for the tree’s growth which is celebrated at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. In the liturgical year, the Church has given us not only a survival strat-egy, but a place to grow as well. Aidan Kavanaugh wrote "Liberators accomplish only half their task then they liberate. The other half of their labor is to provide a normal place, a free place, on which the liberated may land." That normal, free place, that place out of the reach of the forces of the enemy, of the trendy, the selfish, the trivial, is the liturgi-cal year. Morning Praise At my window the willow filigrees the gold of dawn and hangs it on my wall; trembling fronds lose themselves in the sudden glow that,starset and sunrise trace upon the morning. I, too, in this hour am lost in grace-gold shower that spills upon the desert of my heart. Sister Elizabeth deSales Dee, S.S.J. St. Joseph Convent 7300 Torresdale Avenue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19136 The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told Patricia McCarthy, C.N.D. Sister Patricia McCarthy, a member of the Congregation of Notre Dame, has worked with the poor in the field of education, particularly with homeless and abused chil-dren, where the ministry of nonviolence is a daily challenge. Her address is Congre-gation of Notre Dame; 41 Cole Street; East Providence, Rhode Island 02914. Among the international travel ads which I faithfully read, I have noticed recently a new type of tour being offered. It is possible to visit northern Europe on a special story-telling trip. Imagine going from thatched roof cottages to desolate moors and dangerous harbors, and all the time lis-tening. The accents would change with the landscapes, and both would change the stories. Just listen and hear the true nature of the countries and its people come out in ways more real than through the products at the duty-free shops in the airports. Then I began to wonder. Will we be able to t~il stories that will en-thrall and inspire? Do we live passionately enough to be sources of hope and interest for future generations? Will others tell and retell with drama and humor the stories of our lives? Thomas Hardy said: "A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every man and woman." I continue to wonder. What stories in our generation will justify their retelling? Could it be that when the story of peace is told, religious men and women will be talked about? When storytellers explain poverty, celi-bacy, and obedience, will they tell the tales of people so in love with God and with their’brothers and sisters that they wrapped this love in freely 843 Review for Religious, November-December 1990 chosen vows? When the listeners ask what gave these religious such passion and why were they so free to love, will the storyteller have to risk entering into mystery? Will the story become one with the story and mystery of Jesus? There is no reasonable explanation for a God who loved so passion-ately that he came and lived among us. He taught us and healed us and blessed us. Finally, he gave himself on the cross for our redemption. Will the story of religious life make sense only within this context of aban-donment? Is not religious life the lived expression of Jesus’ surrender to God for love of us? Gandhi said that Jesus Christ’s offering of himself on the cross for the redemption of the world was the only perfect act of nonviolence the world has ever seen. Since the very nature of religious life is to be inti-mately united with Jesus, the vows can be considered in light of his su-preme act of peacemaking. The vows can be seen as living realities that transform people into peacemakers for our fragile world. We search high and low for ways of being peace in the midst of hostility and violence. Perhaps if we go deeply into the vows we will see not only the founda-tion of religious life but the foundation of peacemaking as well. Freedom In Poverty We begin in poverty. Scripture has always put God in the midst of the poor. In the Old Testament, Yahweh compassionately watched over the anawim. To the childless, children were given; to the homeless, a chosen land; to the hungry, manna in the desert; to the lost, visions and dreams to follow. When the fullness of time came, a wretched stable was the birthplace of the Son of God. His first experience of life was as a refugee in a foreign land. And his first teaching began, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We choose poverty because Jesus did. Poverty and want are evils when people are denied the necessary elements of survival. It makes no sense to embrace a vow of poverty. The vows do not make sense, they make love. We risk letting go of material security as a source of com-fort and happiness so that Christ can be our only fulfillment. What does this have to do with peace? Everything. If Christ is our wealth, we have nothing on this earth to defend, including our own lives. Lack of desire to defend one’s possessions or life would make war improbable and unnecessary. Wars are usually started for economic rea-sons. Either an aggressor is greedy for the acquisition of land or eco-nomic control, or an oppressed people revolt against the denial of their The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told / 845 right to a decent standard of life. The slogans of freedom cover the at-tempts ~to maintain or increase power. During Texas’ war for indepen-dence, a young soldier wrote home to his family: "If we win, we’ll all be rich. If we lose, we will have died for freedom." Greed-induced vio-lence leaves millions of shattered and broken lives in its wake. Bring into this picture an army of people vowing poverty. It would remind one of the pages from a pre-primer book where the child has to pick out what is wrong with the picture. What does not fit in with every-thing else? A vow of poverty is countercultural when greed is the ear-mark of the culture. Why would someone with nothing to defend go to war for the purpose of defense? Of course, war is merely the outward extreme expression of the daily violence abiding in the human heart. It is, therefore, from the heart that the message of peace must come, not from a treaty or constitution. It is also within the heart that the vow of poverty must be embraced and shaped. If we can say that as individuals we own nothing, then whatever we use or manage is done in the spirit of stewardship. And then if some-one asks for our coat, we do not fight; we give the scarf and hat as well. If people are hungry and we have food, we share what we have with them. A vow of poverty should lead us to the reality that all we possess is gift. Because we know personally the Giver of all gifts, our poverty seeks expression through trust in God and willingness to share with the children of God. Fidelity to the vow is not marked by having nothing, but by desiring nothing and by a willingness to share freely whatever we have. Conscious today that too many of our brothers and sisters are starv-ing, we should be willing to live a poverty more radical than anything that has been seen for decades. The world needs our example and our leadership in order to break the cycle of a few using for themselves alone the natural resources intended for all. Strong statements about sharing the fruits of the earth are necessary in a world so consumed by the ac-quisition of wealth. We distort and falsify Christ’s plea to us not to worry about what we are to eat or wear when we stockpile the necessities of life. We can do that and have what we think we need day after day, but we miss out on even knowing how beautifully we would have been dressed and cared for, as the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. It is a small step from stockpiling consumer goods to stockpiling arms. Emptying our hands does not automatically produce a disarmed Review for Religious, November-December 1990 heart, but clutching hands certainly will prevent us from having one. We need the practice of trusting God for our daily bread so that when the time comes to trust in God for our very lives, the surrender and faith will be there. Our times are crying for people with disarmed and trusting hearts. Our times are crying for those of us who have vowed poverty to embrace it radically. Our times are crying for us to live out daily the reality that our only need is God. This is what a life of poverty calls us to. This is the truth of a vow of poverty. Gandhi used to live "experi-ments in truth." It was his way of learning. By this he meant an unin-terrupted progression from insight to action to insight, and so forth. He would get an idea, try it out in practice, refine his first idea because of the action, then go to another action, and so on. Poverty is a lifetime ex-periment in truth. We feel inspired to trust God a little and release our hold on something. This leads to more trust and the release of something else, and so on. It’s lifetime because we will never run out of things to let go of! The wonder of our God is that we never miss the small insignificant tokens we have parted with. We are showered with the very life of God and have no needs outside of this. We learn to yearn for God alone, not merely the gifts of God. Even when God seems absent from us, we have no desire to seek consolation from any other source. Perhaps, then, we receive our dearest treasure, a poor heart, totally dependent upon God for everything. Only then, when we have nothing left to defend, will we have been formed into peacemakers after the model of Jesus. In our communion with each other and with those who came before us, we see that the peacemakers who stand out in any century were peo-ple of great poverty. Francis, the poor man of Assisi; Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu ascetic; Thomas Merton, the trappist; Dorothy Day, the bow-ery dweller. They are not remembered because they were deprived, they are remembered because they had so much to give. Passion ,in Celibacy If a generous heart is the sign of vowed poverty, then a passionate heart is the sign of vowed celibacy. The vow of celibacy is at the core of the consecrated life, just as surrender to the passionate love of Christ is at the core of peacemaking. We cannot expect people to give up their arms of defense against other people and to be vulnerable to human ha-tred, unless we have first taught them to let go of their defenses against God and to be vulnerable to infinite love. The vulnerability of passion-ate love embodies an act of complete trust in God, of counting on God The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told to never abandon us or leave us unprotected. Celibacy calls us to this surrender of our very bodies to the love of God. By this vow, we witness in flesh to the power of God to fulfill us and protect us. This same passionate surrender is required of all peace-makers. They need not be celibate, but they do need to enflesh the pri-macy of the power and love of God. It is this primacy of God which is the clear witness of the vow of celibacy. It is the same primacy of the love and power of God to which Christ surrendered. Peace is not within our grasp without the act of redemption of Christ on Calvary. No matter how selfless or sacrificing we might be, the ability to take on and endure violence in order to heal it is the work of God. We share in this work, we are the hands and feet of Christ to-day, but he is the source and fountain of all life, of all power, and of all power to endure violence without retaliation. The clearest and most visible example of this power of God taking flesh is Mary, the virgin Mother of God. Mary trusted so completely in the power of God that she surrendered in faith to bear the Son of God in her womb. Within her body Mary carried Jesus Christ who was con-ceived by the Holy Spirit. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Lk i:35). "The fact that she conceived without human means is the sign that she conceived by the power of God. And in this she is a sign to us of our own radical de-pendence on God and on our union with him in grace in order to bear fruit or to do anything that is divinely life-giving on earth "(David Knight, Mary in an Adult Church Memphis: His Way Communications, 1988, pp. 22,23). We see in Mary the cost and the fruit of faith-filled trust in God. We see in Mary a woman confident of God"s continual care and boundless love. We see in Mary a woman whose heart was turned into a furnace of love by the Holy Spirit. We can expect the same care and mercy from God, we can expect to receive the same fire of love from the Holy Spirit. Belief in this fact alone should put us in the front lines of peacemaking. If God is the power of our lives, we do not put our trust in other earthly powers. We have vowed celibacy, consecrated our bodies to virginity. This is a visible em-bodiment of receptivity and of openness to God’s working with us and through us. It is a physical expression of total surrender to the loved one; it is the abandonment of all defenses and reserves in the presence of the beloved. It is a matter of the heart. Gandhi taught that nonviolence, also, was a matter of the heart, not 848 / Review for Religious, November-December 1990 to be arrived at by an appeal to the brain: that it was a matter of passion not of policy. Celibacy is not an intellectual thing but a passionate physi-cal stance. A life vowed to celibacy, within which we surrender in love the essence of our being, forms a heart capable of understanding and em-bracing nonviolence. A heart can be formed in many ways. Some of the ascetical prac-tices that used to accompany a study of the vows can be seen now as fash-ioning hearts for peacemaking. Fasting--one of the oldest practices in religious tradition---can be undertaken as a concrete expression of the pri-macy of God in our life. It is far more an act of worship than an act of discipline, To live the reality that God is the power of our lives, at times we freely abandon or fast from food or other material things. When the needs of our bodies call out, we turn ourselves over to God in whose pres-ence we abide. It is not the abstaining from food which is holy, but the turning of our attention and desires to God. Prayer becomes the love language of the celibate. When we love someone, there is no end to the variety of ways in which we say it. All the different prayer styles and prayer methods are merely different ways of giving and receiving love. Celibacy is about our bodies, and when we use these bodies to kneel in prayer we give expression to the reality of the vow. Just the act of kneeling is in itself a commitment of our body, a sign of intimate surrender to God. Such signs are important to us and to God. We are human and we yearn to give human expression to our desires; and God is pleased to see us using the gift of our bodies in worship. As important as these signs of surrender are, we go beyond them, we move from sign to reality when we participate in the Eucharistic celebration of Calvary. Union with Christ in the Mass is the commitment of our body to receive his Body. We share in Christ’s moment of intimate surrender to his God. We offer ourselves with Christ to be transformed more and more into his Body. In this union we find the fulfillment of our celibacy. Out of this union, we are sent in service to our brothers and sisters. And this can be the passionate physical expression of love that physical penances were to some of the saints. Physical forms of penance are not outdated; they have j.ust changed style to adjust to the times. One (~f the saints stood in ice water up to his neck one winter’s night, doing pen-ance for a friend who was considering sinful choices. Standing in the cold at the water’s edge for hours in protest at a nuclear submarine base can be our modern day version of the same experience. Patiently endur-ing the irascible tempers and dispositions in a shelter for the homeless The Vowed Life as a Peace Story to Be Told or a soupline can be the discipline of the senses in this age. The ideal of self-sacrificing love can be applied to living within the noise and dan-ger of inner cities in order to be with today’s anawim. Especially for those overcommitted and overworked religious who give beyond their limits, the ascetism most expressive of a loving re-sponse to God might be to fast from work one day a week. Work is any-thing that we think has to be done. Let it all go for a day. Keep holy the Lord’s day. If we believe God is our source of power, let our bodies and minds and energies show it by giving the time to being, not doing. It is possible .this practice could be far more productive than ceaseless days of activity. Surely, a day of rest with God is a practical act of trust, one that might lead us to become even more practical and venture into the constant trust required for a vow of obedience. Stewardship of Self in Obedience Having emptied our hands through poverty and surrendered our hearts in celibacy, we receive from God through obedience the assurance that all is done in accord with the divine plan. Every peacemaker must be obedient, but religious have the value of a vow. This vow does not just mean doing what someone else tells you to do. Doing what some-one else tells you is simple; it may not be easy, but it is simple and un-complicated. That is not what the vow of obedience calls us to. Obedience calls us to listen to God’s designs for us, to listen to God’s desires for us. Obe-dience calls us to stewardship of the gift of God that is ourselves. If we value the goods and fruits of our fragile earth so much that we h01d them in stewardship, how much more should we value ourselves and hold our-selves in stewardship. We are a gift of God, to be treasured and used ac-cording to the plan of God. Obedience encourages us to take seriously this call to stewardship of self. The first step of the obedient peacemaker is to listen to this call. It will be unique to each person. No one else can listen to it for us. Per-haps the most common sin of disobedience today is not the failure to do what is asked by lawful authority, but the failure to do what, over and above this, is asked by God. Probably few of us consciously, explicitly deny God. But do we consistently hear God’s requests and calls? When we are consumed by plans and activities of our own, are we willing to change and to let God move us in another direction? If we have vowed celibacy and said that God is the source of power in our lives, are we able to live that out by listening for .the delicate, unobtrusive voice of God day after day and abandoning all our ideas and hopes to the ideas Review for Religious, November-December 1990 and hopes of God? How do we hear God? We open ourselves to being vulnerable and receptive to all the known and unknown ways God speaks: our own in-stincts and desires, needs of others, realities of life over which we have no control, requests from our communities, and decisions by those who minister through authority. It would be easier if we were the only judge of what is the desire of God. We have been created for community with God’s people, and in community we hear and discern the will of God. We pray in our rooms and in our churches and in our workplaces. We seek the face of God, alone and with others. Obedience is not a private vow, it is a communal one. In the base communities of Latin America, private prayer and com-munal reflection on the word of God precede any action for justice. Peo-ple do not act on their own instincts alone; plans for action are submit-ted to the reflection and discussion of the community. There is always a person or group to whom every individual is accountable. This is a cru-cial factor in these communities, a factor which is most difficult for groups in North America who have tried to model the base community style. The same principle of responsible accountability was applied by Gandhi in his struggle for freedom in India and by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his struggle for freedom from racism in America. In their actions for nonviolent resistance, both men taught their people to begin with prayer and fasting. Individuals were prepared step-by-step for the action that had been decided upon. Not everyone was permitted to participate if the leaders thought they were not ready. Obedience to the plan was crucial. Today when civil disobedience is done correctly, all those partici-pating should have another person or group to whom they are responsi-ble. If that person or group tells an individual to discontinue the action, that person is expected to obey. If we are serious about the work of jus-tice then we had better be serious about obedience. Civil disobedience for individuals with vows of obedience is a won-derful opportunity to exercise the vow. Civil disobedience must always be an expression of personal commitment, not just of association with a just cause. For a religious to accept the call to steffardship of self so seriously that there may be a time when the law of God takes precedence over the law of society, a process of discernment should be a prerequi-site to the action. Prayer, study, and discussion should operate on three levels: personal, local, and provincial. Discernment on all three levels The Vowed L City of Saint Louis (Mo.), http://www.geonames.org/4407084 http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/rfr/id/311

Review for Religious - Issue 49.6 (November/December 1990)

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