Review for Religious - Issue 63.4 ( 2004)
Issue 63.4 of the Review for Religious, 2004.
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sluoai_rfr-399 Review for Religious - Issue 63.4 ( 2004) Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus Jesuits -- Periodicals; Monasticism and religious orders -- Periodicals. Billy ; Hensell ; Sammon Issue 63.4 of the Review for Religious, 2004. 2004 2012-05 PDF RfR.63.4.2004.pdf rfr-2000 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 End Times Devotion Consecrated Life QUARTERLY 63.4 2004 Review for Religious helps people respond and be faithful to: God’s universal call to holiness by making available to t.bem the spiritual legacies .that flow from the cbaris~ns of Catholic consecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ \Veb site: www.reviewforreligious.org Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ St. Joseph’s Provincial House 333 South Seton Avenue ° Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ®2004 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. MI copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Webmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP l~ugene Hensell OSB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Clare Boehmer ASC Steve Erspamer SM Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ QUARTERLY 63.4 2004 contents 342 end times Towards Deep Heaven: The Last Judgment and the Catholic Imagination Dennis J. Billy CSSR questions how deeply the church’s affirmation of the last judgment affects the living of our faith. 353 365 devotion The Rosary Mysteries: Joy, Light, Sorrow, and Glory in Religious Life Thomas P. Looney CSC examines the four "rosary" attitudes of heart by which we share in the joy, light, sorrow, and glory of Jesus’ life. The Faithfulness of Jesus Patricia Lipperini reflects on the central strength of Jesus, his faii:hfulness, and the need and means for disciples to imitate him in this. 372 consecrated life Worth the Gift of One’s Life, the Length of One’s Years: Letter to an Older Brother Se~in D. Sammon FMS expresses his gratitude for the presence and example of the older members of his congregation and appeals to their generosity in building the future of Marist life and mission. Review for Religious 387 The Sisters’ Survey Revisited Elizabeth McDonough OP makes a reassessment of the landmark 1967 Sisters’ Survey in terms of the adequacy of the sociological instrument and the significance it had in the lives of apostolic women religious. 402 Obedience: Listening to God in a "Just Do It" Culture Daniel G. Groody CSC ficknowledges obedience as an integral part of Christian discipleship and shows that it includes listening to the desires of the heart, the cries of the poor, the needs of the church, the call of the community, and the challenge of the gospel. 416 Novices’ Gifts and the Trouble with Angels Father Daniel J. Trapp, noting that the generation wars between formators and seminarians or novices are often seen as a liberal/conservative thing, suggests that the dynamics of idealistic and realistic love are also at play. departments 340 Prisms 421 Scripture Scope: Rethinking How We Read the Bible 427 Canonical Counsel: Religious Managing the Accounts of Others 432 Book Reviews 442 Indexes 63.4 2004 Weare fortunate in having our church liturgical year begin a month or so earlier than our civil calendar. With the beginning of a new calendar year, we are often happy to put the previous year of personal struggles and mishaps behind us. We feel like a new year is a fresh start on life. The old year is history, the past, something left behind us. With resolutions in hand, we say, "New Year, here we come!" The liturgical year, however, does not focus our eyes just on our personal happenings, whether good or bad. In every liturgical year, the past, as remembered through God’s word, continues to be made present in order that we keep our eyes fixed on the patterns of God’s dealings with us now. As we begin a liturgical year, we listen anew to God’s word challenging us to notice what direction we seem to be taking in the world in which we live. God wants to enter us into the struggle he faces thr6ughout human history--a divine strug-gle, all because of God’s gift to us of human free-dom and choice. The challenge can be .sobering, but it is not meant to be for us only accusatory or condemning. Immediately the word of God focuses us on the actualization of God’s promise to be always the God faithful to his people. And so early on in each new liturgical year, we are made present to the birth of Jesus--an event which in its seedlike planting continues to provide the flow-ering and fruitful growth for another human year. Revie~v for Religion, s Through this seedlike birth, the liturgical year catches us up into God’s perspective as shared with us by Jesus through a particular synoptic Gospel account. More than just the Gospel chapters, the whole array of biblical read-ings and psalms in the Eucharist and in the Liturgy of the Hours continues to give us new eyes to see our human world the way God sees it. Not only does the liturgical year offer us a divine per-spective, but it also shares with us a movement, a direc-tion, sometimes classically called "God’s providence." However mysterious and marvelous some happenings can be and however mysterious and dark other events appear, God keeps adapting to our human vagaries in order to bring about the reign of God that he is fashioning. Our liturgical year places before us our belief that history-- human history as well as our personal history--has pur-pose and direction. God is always seeking our help and effort in his work. Each calendar year is a new year of promise--how we will work with God. We appreciate, then, that the liturgical year, in begin-ning with the Advent season, provides us with a light as we enter the cavernous space of the new calendar year. Yes, we still might say, "New Year, here we come!" But we Christians enter into a new year with the hope and opti-mism of God’s perspective and the passion of laboring with God to uncover a little more of the kingdom in the time in which we are now living. The editors, staff, and board wish all of you, our readers, a grace- and light-filled Advent and Christmas seasons. David L. Fleming SJ Note: Beginning with this issue, we have added a new depart-mental entry called "Scripture Scope." Father Eugene Hensell OSB will be contributing a scripture essay giving us a way of viewing the readings that are a part of our various liturgical seasons. 63.4 2004 DENNIS J. BILLY Towards Deep Heaven: The Last Judgment and Catholic Imagination end times Jesus Christ will return at the end of time in order to judge the world and establish the full-ness of his kingdom.l We proclaim this message each Sunday when we say together, "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." These words from the Nicene Creed remind us that human history is not open-ended but limited, finite, and drawing to a close. Just how this final consummation will take place is not for us to say. The Gospels tell us, "As to the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor even the Son, but only the Father" (Mk 13:32).2 The Depths of Faith This lack of knowledge concerning our human destiny should have an effect on the way we think and live in the present. It bids us to Dennis J. Billy CSSR writes again from Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma, Italy. Review for Religious savor each moment as if it might be our last. It encour-ages us to take a good look at our lives and to put things in proper perspective. Conversion, we are told, is ongo-ing. We normally apply this insight to the moral dimen-sions of our faith, but we also need to recognize its significance for specific doctrinal beliefs. The impor-tance of this Gospel statement becomes even clearer when we recognize the intimate relationship between what we affirm about the nature of reality and how we act. If a gap exists between what we truly believe in our hearts and what we say with our lips, there will most likely be a similar gap between the moral principles we publicly profess as a body of believers and the actual way we lead our lives. In the context of the church’s doctrinal affirmation of the final judgment, we need to ask ourselves how deeply we believe it. Has our belief in it deepened over the years--or diminished? Do we ever think about its mean-ing? Does this belief mediate truth to us? Does it make sense to us any more? Does it inform our lives in any way? Or do we look upon it as a doctrinal holdover from a former age with little relevance for our present time, one that we deal with best by giving it merely notional assent or simply ignoring it? I would have to admit that my outward actions do not always do iustice to the implications of the Catholic doctrine of the last judgment. I say I believe it, and I do, but only halfheartedly. The teaching has little real bear-ing on the way I live my life. I cannot explain exactly why this is so. When I think about it, I am reminded of H. Richard Niebuhr’s somber description of late-19th-century Protestant liberal theology: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without iudgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.’’3 Niebuhr’s ironical observation hits home, at least for me. It touches an aspect of my ongoing predica- 63.4 2004 Billy ¯ Towards Deep Heaven A shift in our understanding of Jesus will have major ramifications for the way we understand the church and our role in it. ment of faith and, I would assume, that of many others. It reflects a hidden, subliminal message that holds great power over me and that, much to my dismay, I find myself actually backing up with my actions. I am not saying that I have been overly influenced by the Protestant liberal mindset, although most American Catholics today have been culturally influ-enced by it and the values it promotes. Niebuhr’s observation, however, has struck a chord within me about my own rendering of and accountability to the Catholic faith. It reminds me that the vari-ous aspects of that faith are interrelated. Everything in the faith is connected, including all doctrinal truths. A subtle change in emphasis in one particular teaching will bring about a corresponding shift in many others. To cite just one example, a shift in our under-standing of Jesus (such as moving from a high to a low Christology) will have major ramifications for the way we understand the church and our role in it. That, in turn, affects the way we understand the church’s rela-tionship to the world and, by extension, the world’s rela-tion to the kingdom. A shift in just one aspect of our theological outlook will have a ripple effect on the whole. A Paradigmatic Shift It is now commonplace to speak of the paradigmatic shift that took place in Catholic thought after the Second Vatican Council. The aggiornamento initiated by Pope John when calling the council spread through the church Review for Religious like wildfire. After centuries of maintaining a defensive, fortress mentality toward the world, the church encour-aged Catholics to open up to the world and engage it in dialogue. To use other phrases coined by Niebuhr, the church came out of a "Christ against culture" under-standing of its role in the world to a stance that looked to "Christ as the transformer of culture.’’4 This shift in attitude toward the world influenced the church’s own self-understanding. In their effort to keep pace with changes going on in the world and now in the church, many Catholics--clergy, religious, and laity alike--looked down upon or simply dropped many beliefs and practices that had long been an important part of their identity (for example, weekly confession, Friday abstinence, numerous private devotions). In the haste and enthusiasm of the moment, some got carried away and disregarded or at least assigned lesser signifi-cance to aspects of the faith that really should have remained as part and parcel of Catholic spirituality. With regard to the church’s teaching on the final judgment, the popular post-Vatican II shift from a high Christology (emphasizing Christ’s divinity) to a low Christology (emphasizing his humanity) brought about a similar shift regarding Christ’s action in the world. Rather than focusing on Christ’s dominion and lordship over heaven and earth, low Christology emphasized Jesus’ solidarity with and love for humanity. Jesus became more of a friend and brother than a lawgiver and judge, someone to whom we could turn in time of need rather than someone to hide from out of fear of punishment for our sins. Such a shift in emphasis was healthy and good, but only within certain limits. To call Jesus our friend and brother is certainly a welcome change from the pious adulation that some accorded him in the years shortly before the council. But along with this change came a 63.4 2004 Billy " Towards Deep Heaven misconstruing (in people’s imaginations) of Jesus’ per-son and mission. Is not calling Jesus our friend and brother just another confining stereotype? Can we hon-estly say that it expresses the fullness of his life and mes-sage? Decades after the council, the delicate balance between the divine and human elements in Christ still remains askew in the popular Catholic imagination, so much so that one has to wonder if the change in atti-tude toward Christ that came about in the aftermath of Vatican II succeeded only in replacing one deficient image of God with another. From False God to False God? Over forty years ago, J.B. Phillips, an Anglican min-ister best known for his translation of the New Testament into modern English, wrote a book called Your God Is Too Small. In it he attempts "first to expose the inadequate conceptions of God which still linger unconsciously in many minds and which prevent our catching a glimpse of the true God; and secondly to suggest ways in which we can find the real God for ourselves.’’s Phillips says that people have many false images of God that they find very hard to shake. They may think of God as a resident police-man, a demanding parent, a grand old man, a meek and mild companion, the embodiment of perfection, a heav-enly lover, a managing director, a pale Galilean, a pro-jected self-image, and assorted combinations of these and other stereotypes. He concludes that, in order to have an adequate understanding of the divine, we must recognize that God, while infinitely beyond the powers of human comprehension, planned a concrete focusing of himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus alone reveals the mys-tery of God to us. To find God in our lives, we must encounter this person and allow him to show us the true way of living. What does this mean concretely? Our faith tells us that Jesus Christ is fully human and Review for Religious fully divine. If this is so, then we should relate to him as such and do all we can to insure that he exists that way in our active imagination. To emphasize Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity (or vice versa) is merely to substitute one false image of God for another. While the church has been careful to maintain this del-icate balance in its doctrinal expressions, it has not always been successful in holding this important "coincidence of opposites" together in the popular imagination. Before Vatican II, Catholic piety and devotion tended to accentuate the divinity of Christ over his humanity. In the decades after the council, the reverse emphasis took precedence. At the dawn of the new millennium, we have been called to strike down our false images of Christ so that we can have a more adequate understanding of God’s presence in our lives. We can do so, however, only by giving both Christ’s divinity and his humanity a proper place in our hearts. Contemplating the Face of Christ In Novo millennio ineunte (6 January 2001), his apos-tolic letter on the church in the third millennium, Pope John Paul II emphasizes the importance of prayer for the future of the church, especially contemplative prayer. He bids Christians the world over to contemplate the face of Christ so that the Spirit of Christ may touch and inspire them to follow the way of love (§§16-28). When we contemplate that face, the false images we have of God gradually break up and lose their hold over us. Jesus dispels our stereotypes and reveals to us the power of the divine in the fullness of his humanity. This happens by means of a mutual, reciprocal gaze. It begins when we open our hearts to him in prayer and become still in his presence. We look into his eyes and allow him to look into ours. We peer into his soul, and he peers into ours. We get to know him, and he gets to know us. In the ..... 63.4 2004 Billy ¯ Towards Deep Heaven midst of this stillness, we experience Jesus in the depths of our hearts. We gaze upon his humanity and touch the mystery of his divinity. He, in turn, gazes upon our humanity and sees there the person each of us is des-tined to become. In the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to himself as "the light of the world" (Jn 9:5). He dispels the darkness from our hearts and enables us to see ourselves for who we really are. The church’s teaching on the last judgment must be seen through the lens of this important Scriptural saying. Christ brings to light all that is secret, all the hidden betrayals, all the subtle compromises, and all the self-deceptions that have crept into our lives over the years. When we contemplate the face of Christ, the light of his truth penetrates into the deepest recesses of our hearts. We are able to see things as they really are. Judgment, then, means bringing light into our deepest aspirations. We spend our whole lives cultivating these hopes. Once we see them clearly, we are free to respond as we wish. We may choose to walk either toward or away from Christ. He gives us the grace to choose rightly; the choice is ours. True Judgment, False Judgment With regard to the final judgment, the Catholic imagination in recent decades has been subjected to the influence of opposing extremes. Before Vatican II, our emphasis on the divinity and lordship of Christ brought the threat of judgment to the fore of Catholic spiritual-ity. When combined with false images of God as an exacting taskmaster who keeps a full account of our sins and will demand a complete reckoning at the end of time, this emphasis made us afraid of God (for fear of what he might do to us) and afraid of living our lives (for fear of making a mistake). After Vatican II, this false notion of final judgment Review for Religious was gradually replaced by an equally false and miscon-ceived perception. God, the vengeful judge, was replaced by a God who closes his eyes or looks the other way. Many Catholics (including myself) have somehow man-aged to put the church’s teaching on the final judg-ment so far to the edge of Catholic spirituality that it now has little meaning in our life. With no concrete assessment of human action on the horizon of human destiny, the ethical quality of our actions diminishes and readily veers towards moral relativism. The question fac-ing us today is how to strike both false images from pop-ular consciousness and put a balanced understanding of final judgment in its place. To my mind, one of the best explanations of the Christian doctrine of the last judgment appears in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Written almost sixty years ago, this imaginative fantasy describes in fine detail a chartered bus ride from hell to heaven. The travelers on this bus are free to make this trip at regular intervals from a dismal gray town deep in the underworld. Those making the excursion come out of small crack in a rock and suddenly find themselves in a much larger world on the outskirts of heaven. Noticing that they are in a place where they are less real than the world around them, they feel like phantoms and find it hard to walk on the grass and gravel pathways of this more dense, more solid (and more real) place and time. When they look around and talk with those who have been sent to meet them, they come to different conclusions about how to proceed. Some decide to make an even more arduous journey to God, who lives far away beyond distant mountains. Others decide to return to hell God, the vengeful judge, was replaced by a God who closes his eyes or looks the other way. 63.4 2004 Billy ¯ Towards Deep Heaven because they find it too painful to continue. Others never even got on the bus in the first place. They had isolated themselves from human contact by wandering further and further into the lonely reaches of hell. Now they were great distances from the bus stop that would have offered them a glimpse of the other world. Eventually they forget even the existence of the bus stop for heaven. A dialogue between one of the pas-sengers who took the trip and a guide sent to meet him at the outskirts of heaven goes like this: "But I don’t understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?" "It depends on the way ye’re using the words. If they leave that gray town behind, it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand." (Here he smiled at me.) "Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.’’6 Lewis achieves through narrative what the church has forgotten how to do through its doctrinal formulations-- capture the Christian imagination! He does so by writ-ing a story that collapses eternity into a space-time continuum and develops the various thought processes that lead the characters in the story to decide things the way they do. Central to his presentation is the mysteri-ous interplay between human freedom and divine grace. Those who make the journey to Deep Heaven can do so only with help from above. Those who do not make it simply refuse this help and decide to go their own way. When viewed in this light, final judgment is more a mat-ter of personal choice than of divine rejection. People are permitted to judge for themselves, to make their own Review for Religious decisions about things of ultimate value. God allows us to choose our own destiny. The doctrine of final judg-ment reminds us of the power of human choice and its capacity to reject even passionate and loving overtures of the living God. Faith-filled Imagination The next time we recite the Nicene Creed at Sunday Mass and come to the words about Christ coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, perhaps we should ask ourselves how firmly we hold that belief and what it really means to us. For too long the Catholic imagination has lost touch with the powerful truth about humanity’s final destiny. We have become lazy practi-tioners of the faith, allowing the doctrinal truths of our religion to pass readily from our lips before resounding deep in our hearts. Rather than simply settling for cur-rent thought-trends or reverting to the understanding of final judgment in vogue in previous years, we need to find better ways of imagining the truths of the Catholic faith, mysterious and difficult to comprehend as they may be, so that they can permeate our minds and hearts and guide us boldly and assuredly on our journey to Deep Heaven. Notes ’ See Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§668-682. 2 All quotations from Scripture come from The New American Bible (Washington, D.C.: Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1970). 3 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937), p. 193. 4 H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1951; reprint, Harper Torchbooks, 1956), esp. pp. 45-82, 190- 229. SJ.B. Phillips, Your Godls Too Small(New York: Macmillan, 1961, 6th printing 1967), pp. 8-9. See also pp. 15-59 and 120-124. 6 C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Macmillan, 1946), pp. 66-67. 63.4 2004 Silence Is a Mentor silence is its own mentor realizations are given in the quiet once the mind stops being on the alert the heart is free to roam all this waiting and nothing to do perspectives find new pasture once the mind lies fallow sometimes in the night another view comes, clearer than daytime musings, truer let the energy flow see where it leads aging is its own mentor the wisdom of seeing all as gift is given slowly enjoying the present moment stills the mind silence is a mentor its teachings are given in the quiet "I will lure you into the wilderness and there I will speak to your heart" (Hosea 2:14) Annice Callahan RSCJ Review for Religious THOMAS P. LOONEY The Rosary Mysteries: Joy, Light, Sorrow, and Glory in Religious Life "The gospel is quite sufficient to serve as a rule of life for religious." This insight of the Venerable Basil Moreau, founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, is a succinct reminder of the essence of religious life. As in every other form of discipleship, religious are called to live the gospel. We are called to pattern our life and mission on Jesus’ life and mission. The gospel reveals the attitudes and practices of mind and heart that enable us as religious to be faithful disciples. In his encyclical on the rosary, Rosariurn Virgin# Mariae, John Paul II speaks of the rosary as a privileged form of Christian contemplation because of its Christocentric focus. A com-pendium of the gospel, the rosary fosters four attitudes of heart with which to contemplate our religious life. It invites us to enter into the joy, light, sorrow, and glory of Jesus’ life. The pre- Thomas P. Looney CSC, an associate professor of theol-ogy, writes from King’s College; 133 North River Street; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 18711. 63.4 2004 Looney ¯ The Rosa~ Mysteries sent essay examines these themes and relates them to our call to religious life. The Call to Live in Joy The gospel narrative is charged with the summons to live in joy and to cast away fear. The parable of the tal-ents, for example, suggests that the master entrusts his disciples with life and ministry in his name precisely in order to share with them the master’s joy. In respond-ing to the master, we are to have confidence in his good-ness and to trust that the power of his call will enable good things to be done in and through us. Religious life, like every form of discipleship, is a call to experience the joy of God. The rosary’s joyful mysteries are replete with images of the joy of single-hearted availability to God’s will. They reveal the cause, celebration, and constancy of joy in Christian living. Annunciation: Grace, the Cause of ffoy. In its proclama-tion of the deepest truth of Mary’s life, the annunciation proclaims the deepest truth of our religious lives as well. Mary’s life and our lives are "full of grace." Together with Mary we have found "favor with God" and are invited to "taste and see the goodness of the Lord." It is the very gift of grace, surrounding Mary, surrounding us, that enables us to offer our lives freely and generously and to have Jesus living in us. The cause of Mary’s joy, and of ours, is grace, the enabling love and presence of God. Grace pre-cedes, surrounds, nurtures, and sustains us as daughters and sons of God. It is the deepest and defining truth of our lives. Maybe we have come to religious life precisely because in either fleeting or sustained experiences we have known the gratuitous nature of God’s love. Religious life is a call to welcome and to share the joy of such expe-riences. It is a call to live in joy. Visitation and Nativity: Celebrating Grace’s Efficacy. The gospel narratives of the visitation and the nativity Review for Religious show the effect of Mary’s fiat on her own and other peo-ple’s lives. We can reflect similarly on the effect of our own fiat on ourselves and others. Mary’s responsiveness to God’s invitation enables grace to flourish into new life. This new life becomes a cause of celebration for Mary and for others, including ourselves. Mary cele-brates the munificence of God, who "looks upon his servant in her lowliness." Elizabeth celebrates Mary’s faith that "the Lord’s word to her would be fulfilled." The shepherds celebrate the birth of a child in the midst of poverty. The angels celebrate in song proclaiming "peace on earth to those on whom God’s favor rests." We, like Mary, are offered God’s grace so that we too may bring Jesus into the lives of others. Our lives are to become celebrations of the power of God doing great things in us so that oth-ers, too, celebrate Jesus as the cause of their joy. Religious life is a call to live in joy, to celebrate God’s love. Presentation and Finding: The Continuing Presence of Grace. The gospel narratives of the presentation and finding of Jesus in the temple can remind us of our own capacity to surrender to grace. The presence of grace enfolds Mary, enabling her to entrust him to the Lord in the temple and to begin letting him be about his Father’s business. Mary holds these moments in memory, expe-riencing the constant presence of the grace to pray even now her Son’s prayer: "Not my will, but yours, be done." It is grace that enables us to be thankful for all that God has done in us, and yet to hold God’s gifts without grasp-ing, knowing that one day grace may call us to surrender them for a greater purpose. In our readiness to return The paradox of joy is that it is lost to those who try too hard to keep it. 63.4 2004 Looney * The Rosary Mysteries to the Lord all that we have received, we can witness to the constant presence of grace. Like Mary, we can risk the emptiness of new surrenders, for we joyfully trust that God’s grace will always enfold us. The joyful mysteries reveal the cause, celebration, and constancy of joy in Christian living. The paradox of joy is that it is lost to those who try too hard to keep it. The joy of the gift received is the joy of the gift given. What is received as gift must be given as gift for our joy to be complete. Awareness of our call to live in joy invites us to reflection: ¯ Have I experienced my religious life as a call to the joy of knowing deeply God’s desire to save me and set me free? ¯ Has my living the vows been a joy, an experi-ence of being lifted up again and again by the constancy of grace? ¯ Does common prayer help me celebrate God’s goodness joyfully with my brothers and sisters in community and mission? ¯ In my.ministry do I experience the joy of allow-ing the Lord to use my lowliness as a means of blessing others? The Call to Live l~y the Light The Gospels reveal for believers depths of the mys-tery of Jesus of Nazareth and thus help us know our-selves and one another in greater fullness. They call us to live by the light, and the light is Jesus, the only-begot-ten Son of God. Jesus’ words "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father" and "The Father and I are one" are clarion calls to recognize that communion is at the heart of personhood. The rosary’s mysteries of light illumine the meaning and the mystery of personhood as rela-tionship. They reveal that ordinary realities contain and Review for Religious communicate extraordinary realities, and that Christian lives are themselves parables to be broken apart and given away in compassionate service. Baptism, Wedding Feast, and Transfiguration: Relation-ship as the Ground of Existence. The baptism of the Lord, the wedding feast at Cana, and the transfiguration show Jesus’ deep identity to be his relationship with his Father and mother, and they invite us to embrace our own deep-est identity as the Father’s adopted human children. Our identity, our life’s meaning, is to reveal the God who cre-ates and sustains us as brothers and sisters of Jesus. As religious, we are not called to suspend our humanity and thereby, as we might think, anticipate the eternal king-dom. We are called to embrace our own and the world’s humanity and thereby manifest God’s embrace of it in the incarnation of his Son. Our common life, suffused with the light of revelation, shows the world that we know ourselves as beloved children in relation to one another in Christ. Religious life is a call to live by this light. Kingdom: Living without Calculation. In their vivid depiction of love, generosity, mercy, and forgiveness, the Gospels preach the mystery of God’s kingdom and show us how to preach it and live it. As the beatitudes uproot the worldly calculations of privilege, power, and pres-tige, they summon believers not to new calculations, but to a new way of life: the presence of the kingdom in the present moment. As the kingdom was already present and manifest in Jesus, so it is present when people live lives of love, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion that are not narrowly calculated. Mthough wisdom, must char-acterize religious life’s stewardship of the gifts entrusted to our care, that does not mean building storage bins; it means emptying oneself. We surrender all to the Lord, not because we have calculated the reward of such sur-render, but because grace enables us to see that surren- 63.4 2004 Looney ¯ The Rosary Mysteries is that it is lost to those who try too hard to keep it. der is its own reward. Surrender to the Giver of all good gifts is itself gift and grace; it is gift enough. Eucharist: Model of Self-Emptying Love. The Eucharist was instituted as a memorial.of Jesus’ body broken and blood shed for the salvation of the world. Jesus’ disci-ples are to lay down their own lives in service, a self-emptying made possible by Eucharistic nourishment. The Eucharist memorializes Jesus giving his life for us. The love of God embraces death so that the human race may live in communion The paradox ofjoy with God. As religious we are called to a similar compassion, the possibil-ity of which comes from Christ’s compassion for us. In tl~e F.ucharist we receive the self-emptying love and compassion of God. Religious life helps us be a community of compassion. Relationships that mutually serve the good of one another participate in the eternal relationships of self-emptying love that are the very life of the triune God. In our union with Christ we receive not only knowledge of who he is, but grace to become like him in communion with one .another. Awareness of our call to live by the light invites us to reflection: ¯ How has my life of celibate chastity deepened in me sensitivity to the communion of love that is the heart of God, the heart of the world? ¯ How has the charism and mission of my reli-gious family invited me beyond my own self-interest to a life of self-emptying love? ¯ How has life in community led me to new ways of experiencing the extraordinary goodness of God in the midst of very ordinary things? ¯ How has living the vow of poverty invited me to Review for Religious a way of relationship with God that is not based on the calculation of reward? The Call to Live through Suffering The summons to take up our cross and follow Jesus is proposed as the definition or at least the pragmatic implication of discipleship. Discipleship is a life of suf-fering, a suffering that is redemptive because, united to Christ’s suffering, it makes up for "what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the church." The sorrowful mysteries of the rosary image the depth of self-emptying love to which discipleship invites us. They reveal the suffering involved in being compassionate to others in their suffering. Agony in the Garden: Embracing Suffering. In the agony in the garden, Jesus’ struggle to accept suffering as the consequence of his faithful proclamation of the kingdom is shown by his sweat becoming like drops of blood (Lk 22:44). Those who follow in his footsteps ought not to be surprised at having a similar struggle. Fidelity to the gospel eventually requires a decision to offer one’s whole being to God, a decision that may entail agony. The God whose word is sharper than any two-edged sword also enables us to surrender to the consequences of that word’s proclamation. The proclamation of the gospel may lead to our rejection by some privileged and pow-erful people who until now have been a support to us. It is grace that makes it possible to bear such disappoint-ment willingly and even consider it a gift. Religious life is a call to live through suffering. Scourging, Crowning, and Carrying the Cross: Compassion. Carrying the cross after being scourged at the pillar and crowned with thorns, Jesus shows his pro-found compassion. He reaches out to the suffering of others, telling the women of Jerusalem: "Weep not for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children." In his 63.4 2004 Looney ¯ The Rosary Mysteries While it is crystal clear that our sins cannot save us, neither can our fidelity. suffering he weeps for them. Although his liberating message provokes deep animosity, Jesus~ refuses to aban-don the deepest truth of his own life, his oneness with the Father. He suffers for being who he is and thus embraces the deep truth of the lives of all who suffer. Jesus’ com-passion is no fleeting sen-timent, but a permanent bond of communion. Religious life is similarly a commitment to the deep truth of our own lives. We have compassion for one another in the broken humanity that we share. In religious life, in union with Christ’s suffering, we accept self-emptying as a way through suffering that becomes a way of communion, a way of new life. Religious life is a pledge to seek the face of the Crucified in the suffering of our sisters and brothers. Crucifixion: The Crucified as the Source of Life. The self-emptying love of Jesus is fully manifested in the for-giveness he offers to those who persecute him, in his pledge of paradise for his companion in crucifixion, and in the gift of Mary and the beloved disciple to each other’s care. Even though Jesus is our focus on Calvary, the other persons there call for our attention too: they are for us an important part of Calvary’s meaning. Saint and sinner, observant and nonobservant, Jew and Gentile, men and women, scribes and soldiers are there. They remind us that at some time everyone finds himself or herself at the foot of the cross, experiencing profound suffering that calls for a radical disposition of one’s life. As Mary’s life of faithful discipleship brought her at the foot of the cross, so faithful Christians will find them-selves there. Like the two thieves, all sinners will find themselves there, in need of life-giving mercy. While it Review for Religious is crystal clear that our sins cannot save us, neither can our fidelity. At the cross we all will recognize that we have nothing to offer except by uniting ourselves to the One who offers himself. Religious life proclaims that we cannot save ourselves, but that in communion with one another we are saved in Christ. The rosary’s sorrowful mysteries remind us that the call to discipleship is a call to live through suffering. In publicly professing the evangelical counsels, religious accept the inevitability of the cross in their lives and acknowledge that the strength to carry it comes not fi’om themselves, but from the One who died for us, and from a communion of compassion with others. The cross is a tree of life for us and for the world when we open our-selves to the communion of compassion it symbolizes. Out of love for the world, God sent his only Son to share the cross of human suffering and make the way of death the way of life. Awareness of our call to live through suffering invites us to reflection: ¯ How has fidelity to my vowed commitment led me to suffering and struggles that require of me. an even deeper surrender of my heart to God? ¯ Vghere or when have my sisters or brothers in community spoken God’s word to me in such a way that it has pierced my heart and challenged me to a more authentic life? ¯ How has the embrace of my own suffering enabled me to be compassionate towards others? How has it enabled me to stand with others at the foot of the cross? ¯ How has my vow of obedience called me to lis-ten to the deep, often painful truths of my own life, and to find in them a place for God’s saving grace to work? 63.4 2004 Looney s The Rosary Mysteries The Call to Live for Glory The gospel resounds with the hope for fullness of life present in peoples of every time and place. The rais-ing of Lazarus and of a widow’s only son arouse in the crowds an awe that no other deeds do, for everyone seems to harbor a desire to evade death or to conquer it and return from it. Religious life is a call to live for glory. The glorious mysteries trumpet the dawn of a new age where every tear will be wiped away and death will be no more. They reveal to us that death is swallowed up in victory, that the Spirit overcomes all division, and that the human is fully embraced by the divine. Resurrection: Overcoming Sin and Death. In their trum-peting of the love of God raising Jesus from the dead, the Gospels proclaim God’s pledge of eternal life for all who place their trust in him. The juxtaposition of the empty tomb with the appearance narratives shows us anxiety (a great emptiness that still leaves room for hope) being transfigured into bright breathtaking peace by Jesus’ return from the dead. And in Thomas’s doubt we catch a glimmer of our own overly cautious kind of hope. Thomas hopes against hope to see the death-dealing wounds of One who is unbelievably alive, whom death could not conquer. For our part, having touched the wounds of the crucified in our own and others’ suffering, we as religious add the witness of our lives to God’s gift of new life in Christ. The Lord, who goes before us into the shadow of death in order to lead us to the radiance of new life, enables us to offer our lives in witness to new life. Descent of the Holy Spirit: Overcoming .411 Division. With a view to risen and eternal life, the gift of the Spirit effects communion in the present moment. On Pentecost the people’s comprehension of the aposdes’ preaching in spite of their various languages and cultures shows the Spirit effecting the dissolution of barriers to communion. The Review. for Religious Spirit enables what the human spirit alone cannot accom-plish. In religious life the Holy Spirit forms diverse women and men into communities of faith that seek to live and express the breadth of God’s kingdom. Men and women who vary in background, disposition, talent, and sentiment live in the present moment a foretaste of the kingdom that will last forever. The Spirit makes this com-mon life and mission possible. There is glory here that human enterprise alone could not accomplish. Ascension, Assumption, Coronation: The Divine Embrace of the Human. In his return to fullness of glory at the right hand of the Father, Jesus does not discard the humanity he assumed at the incarnation. The mystery of the ascension suggests that the fullness of Jesus’ human nature, embodied spirit, is taken up into the very life of God. In the assumption and coronation of Mary, God embraces and crowns the human. These mysteries com-plement the full embrace of humanity by divinity man-ifested in Jesus’ ascension. The church’s faith regarding Mary expresses also the destiny of every human person who surrenders to communion of life with God. Religious life, like all discipleship, finds in the human the locus of revelation of the divine. The life of faith is not a shedding of the bodily, temporal nature of our lives, but its deepest embrace. Embracing God’s gift of human-ity, religious life lives its call to glory. Awareness of our call to glory invites us to reflec-tion: ¯ How does my living of the vows express my hope that God alone can satisfy every longing of the human heart? ¯ How does my living of the common life testify to God’s Spirit overcoming every form of divi-sion and building communion? ¯ How has my ministry provided me with a glimpse of the power of God to reconcile and 63.4 2004 Looney * The Rosary Mysteries redeem and to raise the dead to new life? ¯ How does my prayer anticipate in the present moment the gift of eternal life with God? Sufficient Rule: Love’s Mysteries The mysteries of the rosary provide a prayerful con-text for examining the religious life in the light of the gospel itself. These mysteries help religious, like other disciples, to live in joy, by light, through sorrow, and for glory. If we believe that the gospel is "sufficient" as a rule of life for religious, we ought to come frequently to the mysteries of joy, light, sorrow, and glory. In them we discover the outpouring of the love of God in Jesus of Nazareth, the love in which we do all our loving. Tiger Swallowtail You sunflecked denizen of day, far from your forest-dark namesake of the night, soft-sift yellow on fretted wing, in elegance you sip sustenance from flower’s heart, your tiny brain imprinted only for delight. Surely you are an artful, playful extravagance of creation, for which we thank our artful, playful God. Thomas Diehl SJ Review for Religious PATRIC!A LIPPERINI The Faithfulness of Jesus T many images of Jesus in the Scriptures include aler, prophet, teacher, and crucified one. Each of these images stems from one and the same motiva-tion in Jesus. Why did he heal and teach? Why did he live and speak as a prophet? Why did he undergo a bloody passion and death willingly? It is clear that he lived for something beyond himself, responding with faithfulness to Someone, being obedient even unto death. This faithfulness of Jesus is central to the Christology and soteriology of Paul, and it permeates the Gospels. It is the core of Jesus’ strength and the source of our life as disciples. When Paul writes about Jesus, he rarely mentions the living, healing, preaching Jesus of the Gospels. Except for a reference to Jesus’ teaching on divorce and his institution of the Eucharist, Paul’s message centers on the death and resurrection: "For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accord with the Scriptures, that he was buried in accord with the Scriptures, that he was Patricia Lipperini, mother of three, is director of ministries in her parish. Her address is 825 Stokes Avenue; Collingswood, New Jersey 08108. 63.4 2004 Lipperini ¯ The Faitbfalness of ~esus raised on the third day" (see 1 Co 7:10, 11:23-26, and 15:3-4). Paul often emphasizes the manner of Jesus’ death: "We proclaim Christ crucified" and "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Co 1:23, 2:2). Though Paul does not make specific ethical demands as coming directly from Jesus or give colorful examples from his -life, it is he who first urges imitation of Jesus: "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Co 11:1). What then are we to imitate? Though Paul often mentions the death of Jesus, he never makes a point of the physical details of Jesus’ death. He speaks of the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that "for your sake, he became poor, though he was rich" (2 Co 8:9). Indeed, there is something more critical here than death itself. In the hymn of Philippians 2, Paul praises Christ’s willing abasement, placing emphasis on Christ’s self-emptying way of living that led to his death. However, of even greater significance to Paul than Jesus’ self-emptying was his motivation. Jesus was not acting for himself; it was a response. Christ abased himself in obe-dience, in an act of utter trust and confidence in God, utter devotion to God. Thus the essential act of imitation required of believers is to adopt his Other-centered mindset: "Have among yourselves the same attitude as Christ" (Ph 2:5-8). The centrality of Christ’s motivation in Paul’s thought is even more clear when we take into account the recent debates regarding the term pistis Christou, tradi-tionally translated "faith in Christ."1 Now a substantial number of biblical scholars argue for a "subjective gen-itive" reading of the Greek phrase so that it would mean "Jesus’ own faith in and faithfulness to God or his own confident obedience to God." The traditional transla-tion renders Romans 3:22: "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe." Revised, this passage would read: "the righteousness of Review for Religious God through Jesus Christ’s faithfulness." In Galatians 2:16 the traditional translation reads: "A human being is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ." Revised, this passage would read: "A human being is justified not by the works of the law but through Jesus Christ’s faithfulness.’’2 The sub-jective- genitive transla-tions change the whole focus of activity. The focus in the traditional translations is on people’s own act of believing in Jesus. The subjective-genitive translations shift the focus to Jesus’ own activity of living faithfully because of his confidence in God. The assertion here is that it is Jesus’ faith and trust in his Father, not our faith in Jesus, that justifies us with God. But what constituted Jesus’ faithfulness? Paul’s expression of his mystical faith uses only the broadest strokes, the boldest colors: Christ died and was raised. And yet, when Paul prays that he be formed "into the pattern of his death" (Ph 3:10), he suggests that Jesus met the demands of every ordinary day with discipline and decision and that this was practice for laying down his life. What Paul only hints at, the Gospels make apparent by illustrating Jesus’ everyday faithfulness. And his faithful living of the life granted him prepared him for a faithful dying. The Gospels show us that Jesus is first and foremost a faithful Jew, someone attuned and attentive to the full-ness of his faith, celebrating and praying as a matter of course: "He went according to his custom into the syn-agogue on the sabbath day" (Lk 4:16). He has deeply What Paul only hints at, the Gospels make apparent by illustrating Jesus" everyday faithfulness. 63.4 2004 Lipperini ¯ The Faithfulness of ffesus integrated the Scriptures and quotes them easily in moments of temptation (Mt 4), in questioning by the scribes and Pharisees (Lk 20:37-40), and in explanations to his apostles (Mt 11:9-10). The crowds remark about his authoritative teaching (Mt 7:29); he adeptly connects passages of Scripture (Mk 12:30-32), and even receives praise from those who are antagonistic to him: "Teacher, you have answered well" (Lk 20:39). Jesus respects the Law (Mt 5:17), and his frustration with those who pay lip service to its demands leads him to vigorous denuncia-tions. He exhibits faithfulness to the Law’s demands: "Go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed" (Mt 8:4). Although the carefully defined Christological term "Son of God" did not exist in Jesus’ time,3 Jesus under-stands himself to be in a filial relationship with God and acts in obedience to it. At his baptism and transfiguration (Mt 3:17, MI(9:7), Jesus is the "beloved Son." This des-ignation brings validation and motivation, and he enters wholeheartedly into his mission. Jesus refers to God as "your Father in heaven" (Mt 5:45), calling forth from his listeners a similar filial response, and in prayer he addresses God as Father (Mt 6:9). In John’s Gospel, Jesus is especially cognizant of the obedient role of a son: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does his Son also does" (Jn 5:19). Jesus also appears as a brother and friend, faithful to others’ needs at great cost to his own comfort and rep-utation: "Again the crowds gathered, making it impossi-ble for them even to eat" (Mk 3:20). He is "moved with pity at the crowds" (Mt 9:36), and he heals all who come to him. Even when he seeks solitude, others demand his presence: "Everyone is looking for you" (Mk 1:37). Jesus’ care for humanity moves him beyond a constricted read-ing of the Torah. He heals on the sabbath (Lk 6:9) and Review for Religious goes beyond his cultural milieu to cure the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:24). His broad-minded table fellowship-- "Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Mr 1 l:19)--shows his ease with the many levels of society, even as it adds to his critics’ dis-ease. Jesus’ faithful attention to his Jewish faith, his expe-rience of sonship, and his dedication to the welfare of others extend his experience of God. We observe his devoted faithful listening, born of his habits of solitary prayer. As Jesus grows in wisdom through continuing prayer and new experiences, he understands the Torah and temple worship more maturely and realizes more immediately and practically his call to be a prophet (Mr 13:57). He interprets the Torah deeply (Mt 5:27). In the cleansing of the temple and denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt 23:1-27), he challenges venality and hypocrisy and spiritual shallowness. He disregards oth-ers’ expectations of him: he insists that John baptize him (Mt 4:14) and that Peter not try to deflect him from his coming passion (Mt 16:23). John’s Gospel shows Jesus leading people to fresh religious understandings: "If only you knew the gift of God and who is talking with you!" (see Jn 4:10). The habits of Jesus’ life of obedience make possible his last great moment of submission in his passion. Jesus, the faithful Jew, dies qu6ting the Scriptures that have formed him; Jesus, the faithful Son, dies calling out to the Abba he has championed; Jesus, the faithful brother, dies forgiving the people with whom he ate and drank. And, in his final act of faithfulness to the God he has heard all his life, Jesus approaches his trial and death with com-plete trust in God and in total surrender. The author of Hebrews sees faithfulness as the result of Jesus’ pattern of living: "Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered, and, all fin- 63.4 2004 Lipperini * The Faithfulness of ffesus ished, he became the source of eternal salvation" (Heb 5:8). In the circumstances afforded him by his human nature, Jesus brings to its culmination his life of faith-fully taking up his cross daily. He became faithfulness itself when he handed himself over to the incomprehen-sibility of God: "Into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46), obedient, to the end, to the love that con-sumed him. "We have seen his glory, the glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love" (Jn 1:14). The postresurrection appearances of Jesus introduce another kind of faithfulness. The early disciples experi-ence his presence, and the good news begins to include Jesus’ faithfulness to his church: "I am with you always, until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20). For Paul too, Jesus’ faithfulness is not merely an historical event, but an ongoing reality: "I live in the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself up for me" (see Ga 2:20). He not only urges imitation of the faith- . fulness of Jesus, but a clinging to it as the means for life: God justifies those who live through the faithfulness of Jesus. The early church found that their celebration of the Eucharist, their koinonia with the body and blood of Christ, gave them access to the living faithfulness of Jesus, whose presence they now experienced in a new living organism: the church, the Body of Christ. They saw church life itself as salvific. Augustine writes: "O mystery of kindness! O sign of unity! O bond of charity! Those who want to live have a place to live, have the means to live. Let them draw near.’’4 The faithfulness of Jesus was now most imparted, most apparent, within the corporate life. They sensed the need, rather than just obligation, to belong, to be faithful to each other, because in belonging, in accepting and being devoted to each other, in living within Christ’s resurrected humanity, and Review for Religious in imitating his obedient dedication to God, they found the means to be transformed into like faithfulness. Notes ~ See for instance Stanley K. Stowers, "God’s Merciful Justice in Christ’s Faithfulness," in A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983). 2 See Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1987). 3 See Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New, Testament: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001). 4 Quoted in J.M.R. Tillard, Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion, trans. Madeleine M. Beaumont (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001), p. 47. Sin Sin dulls the senses, yet makes the heart go lame in broken shoes. Finding no peace, the heart is sent, a vagabond, feet never coming home, along the roughest paths, ¯ amid the rocks temptations raise, to hearth-warm sheets, or peace, like honey in the comb. Ed Block 63.4 2004 SEAN D. SAMMON Worth the Gift of One’s Life, the Length of One’s Years: Letter to an Older Brother consecrated life Dear James, Twilight crept in almost unnoticed this evening. During the hours since, the General House has grown quiet as people here wrapped up their work and called it a day. I have come to cherish these late hours in Rome and the oppor-tunity they provide to write free of the distrac-tions that mark the working days of all of us. Tonight I am happy in particular to have the chance to write to you and all of the older broth-ers of our institute. James, I write this evening in gratitude. And I know I speak for all when I say that we can never repay you for your simple and steady wit-ness to God’s fidelity in your life and in the life of our institute during the years since Vatican Council II. Article 5 3 of our Marist Constitutions and Statutes says it well: "The perseverance of Sefin D. Sammon FMS, superior general of the Marist Brothers, writes again in epistolary form, this time to older Marist brothers. His address is Fratelli Maristi delle Scuole; C.P. 10250; 00144 Roma, Italy. Review for Religious the brother who has lived our way of life for a number of years is his best witness to the Lord’s fidelity." More than you may ever realize, your example has been a sustaining gift for me and for so many of your brothers. And so I write tonight to say thanks. But I also write for two other reasons. One is to say that, as difficult as renewal has been for some of us over the last four decades, I believe we are today where God wants us to be in that process. To sustain this point of view, however, you and I need to look at our renewal in a gospel context. In judging the fruit of our labors up to now, some of us have resembled the Israelites of old, seeking a conquering king and almost missing the Suffering Servant who has come in his stead. If we for our part, though, maintain with grace a spirit of prayer and sacrifice, and with boldness and courage take the decisions necessary, God will see us through. An older brother put it well in a conversation recently. "Sefin," he said, "for the longest time I thought there was to be no future for us. Now, in these months since we have restructured, I have come to believe that a renaissance just might be possible." I write also to make an appeal. Please join me and all of our brothers in building .the future of Marist life and mission for the 21st century. A hope-filled dream about telling poor children and young people just how much Jesus Christ loves them came into our world through a simple country priest and Marist Father. I am convinced that dream has yet to run its course. Reflections on Forty Years of Renewal As a group in our institute, you men are among the most diverse. Your ages run from the mid sixties to more than a hundred years of life. Though grouped together, you represent distinct generations. Many younger "older" brothers are in good health, remain active in ministry, 63.4 2004 Sammon * V~orth the Gift of One’s Life and hope to be so for a good many years. Older "older" brothers remember well the structures of Marist life before the Second Vatican Council. For you, words and phrases such as "singularity," "chapter of faults," and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary need neither definition nor explanation. James, regardless of what grouping you feel you are in, you have lived through a period of dizzying change and upheaval in our world, church, and way of life. Historians tell us that the likes of it have been seen but twice before in the last five hundred years: at the time of the Reformation and again during the years after the French Revolution of 1789. In the midst of all that has transpired, many of you made sacrifices that younger brothers may never fully appreciate. You struggled to make sense of what was happening when questions were plentiful and answers few, and you forged ahead with hope amidst uncertainty, doubt, and loss. Recently one of our older brothers described his experience of what hap-pened to our institute after the council as an earthquake: "That historic gathering," he said, "caused our way of life to tremble and shake. When the ground stopped moving beneath our feet and the dust settled, we were all left standing in a different place." During the years since the council, more than a few of you have witnessed heated debates about what con-stitutes Marist community life today, the proper focus for our ministry, and the special place that persons who are poor have in our apostolic effort. For some these debates have been a source of personal conversion, and you count yourselves blessed. Others, however, have found these discussions more discouraging than clarify-ing, and you find yourselves angry at the questions being raised about community, ministry, and the structure of our life of prayer. In the midst of all the talk, you won-der what ever happened to the practices that in the past Review for Religious expressed devotion to Mary, our tradition of love of work, and virtues such as regularity, perseverance, and frater-nal charity. In some provinces and districts, the losses over the last forty years have been shocking. Many of our broth-ers sought dispensations from their vows--good friends, men in positions of leadership, formators, wonderful companions in community. No mat-ter how persuasive the reasons, each departure brought its own pain and stirred up doubts and questions. Also, though no one’s fault, many left without benefit of ritual, while those of us who remained often denied ourselves an opportunity to grieve fully the loss that was ours. Asked to offer a word of judgment about the years since Vatican II, some of you might find yourselves falling back on these words like these: unsettling, uncertain, and without clear direction about where we are going. At least a few might also confess to wondering more than once if, in the midst of all our attempts to renew our-selves and our institute, we have lost our way. In saying all this, my intention is not to criticize what has hap-pened during the last four de+ades, but rather to describe as accurately as I can how these developments affected some older men in our institute. At the same time I real-ize that the experience of brothers older than I is not uniform. You do not all have the same reactions to what has happened in the last four decades. Whatever your view of the events and decisions of those years, we can all learn from your experience. You find yourselves angry at the questions being raised about community, ministry, and the structure of our life of prayer. 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ l~orth the ~iJ~ of One’s Life Putting aside all the differences that have marked the process of renewal, we can see that we have been brought to a deeper understanding of our way of life. We have learned that religious life is about more than professional excellence, as important as that might be; about more than social action, as necessary as that is; and about more than balanced living. Rather, being a religious brother is a life project built upon a relationship--and that, a passionate relationship with none other than Jesus Christ. Respect for the Past, Hope for the Future As much as I respect and value the pilgrimage that you and so many of our brothers have made over the past forty or so years, I would be presumptuous, James, to pretend that I understand your experience fully, for I was born at another moment in history. The challenges that I have had to face and my experience of our world and Marist way of life are different from yours. Entering the juniorate in 1962, for example, I came into conse-crated life just about the time religious institutes made their decision to change, and that has been my experience ever since. Change and not stability is the characteristic that I associate with religious life and with Marist life in particular. At the same time, we have a great deal in common, for I too was formed for a church and world that had ceased to exist by the time I reached maturity. Many of the understandings that I learned early in life were meant for another age, a reality different from the one I have come to know. I respect the past, but I do not miss it. The church and religious life that existed before Vatican II were meant for another time in history. Today, how-ever, both of us need to mourn their passing; we cannot return to them. To attempt to do so would be to deny God’s grace working through time and the possibility of a future. Review for Religious These were lessons I learned early in my religious life, not only from the members of the formation team, but also from the elderly brothers who made up part of my novitiate community in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. Yes, they were among my finest teachers and played a key role in shaping me as a young brother. Henry Bassus, Abelus, Peter Anthony, Louis Viateur, Josaphat, and Leo Camille--I remember each of them as if it were yester-day. We had plenty of work on the farm, and, though many referred to these brothers as retired, in my eyes they appeared to work as hard as anyone else. More importantly, they taught me and many others a number of life lessons. For example, despite warnings we received in spirituality class about the dangers of particular friend-ships, the affection and love that existed among several of these older men was evident. So, too, was their sense of humor. I still smile in amusement at the discretion they attempted to exercise each Sunday by referring to the aperitif they drank before the midday meal as "high vespers!" My good fortune continued in community, where older brothers mentored me and helped me understand just what this life of ours is all about--in both the green and dry wood. Making Sense of Change I often return to Marcellin Champagnat’s Spiritual Testament to better understand at least some aspects of what he had in mind for us. Understandably, a document like this is not meant to address every facet of our lives as his Little Brothers. It does reflect, however, some of his last thoughts about us, and I imagine that as he was dying he could not help anticipating some difficult days ahead for the fledgling institute he had founded. So I looked at his Spiritual Testament once again to find something there that could help us today. Marcellin’s love for his brothers is clear in every word, and let us 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ Worth the GiJ~ of One’s Life Diversity should not be equated with a lack of unity. assume that he gave us his best thinking to help us pre-pare for what lay ahead in 1840 and lies ahead in 2004. He focuses on seven foundational aspects of our life. In but a few pages, he offers us a blueprint for living out our way of life as Little Brothers of Mary: ¯ fully respect the virtue of obedience; ¯ do all you can to ensure that charity is maintained among you; ¯ perse-vere in the holy exercise of the presence of God; ¯ be animated by a tender and filial love of Mary; ¯ make humility and sim-plicity your characteristic virtues; ¯ be faithful to your vocation, love it and stick with it courageously; ¯ maintain a spirit of poverty and detachment. With that said, a question remains. How do you and I live out this formula in today’s post-Vatican II world, with all its complexity? We need to keep in mind these few points: We are today a world institute, one that has grown far beyond the geographical confines of Marcellin’s day. The current transition in consecrated life, the effects of Vatican II, generational differences that exist in our institute at the moment, and other fac-tors will also have a bearing on how we answer our ques-tion. Let us look more closely at these areas. First of all, let us admit that there is no single or uni-versally acceptable answer to the question just posed. After all, for a world institute that is present in seventy-seven countries, there will be a measure of diversity in living out the seven characteristics stated above and also in other aspects of our lives. Diversity, however, should not be equated with a lack of unity. Rather, in the many cultures in which we exist today, variety can be a source of richnes~ in our living out our founder’s ideas for us as Little Brothers of Mary. Review for Reli~ous A Time of Transition and Transformation Second, let us also agree that we are passing through an important time in our way of life. The losses and con-fusion, the questions and the upheaval, of the past forty years have all been part of that important time. Permit me to explain. History teaches us that religious life in the West began in the 3rd century as disciples gathered around early desert solitaries, masters of the spiritual life. Apostolic institutes like our own, however, did not come on the scene until after the Reformation, with the greatest number of these groups coming into existence during the 18th and 19th centuries. Throughout history particular images of religious life have dominated at particular times. Since the days of the early church, consecrated life has worn many dif-ferent and distinct faces. After the desert solitaries came Benedict and the age of the monasteries, and then the mendicant apostolic groups. All of these rose up in response to the needs of the day and cultivated a spiri-tuality that spoke especially well to the people of their time and place. Here we may need a word of caution. In recent years some charts illustrating changes in religious life over the centuries may have given the false impression that tran-sitions were orderly and rather predictable. But they were not. The experience of growth--human, organiza-tional, spiritual, or whatever--is always messy and at times may appear chaotic. One brother moving through a personal transition in midlife said to me: "About all I can be sure of these days is that I cannot go back to where I came from, but I am not sure at all where I am headed." If the last few years have been c6nfusing, dis-couraging, and downright difficult, that is to be expected. After all, it is the paschal mystery: we must die to be born anew. Shortly before the birth of our founder, the age of 379 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ Worth the Gift of One’s Life the service congregations got underway. It has continued until the present time, when once again a shift seems to be occurring. Birth pangs, some more painful than oth-ers, have always accompanied the emergence of new forms of consecrated life. On the eve of the French Revolution, men’s religious orders had about three hun-dred thousand members. When the Revolution and the period of secularization had run their course, fewer than seventy thousand of these remained. But new congrega-tions were beginning to arise. The upheaval underway in religious life today is more than a time of reform calling simply for a return to the spirit of the founder and his charism. Instead, the very model or paradigm on which our way of life is based appears to be shifting, and so once again we have upheaval, confusion, and unc.ertainty. Vatican II’s Influence Third, if we can admit that some decisions taken at Vatican II were a mixed blessing for our way of life, we might come to understand more fully the challenges we face during this current process of renewal. In but one example, the council fathers approved documents that raised questions in people’s minds about the framework on which centuries of religious life had been built. As a result we, along with other men and women religious, lost a strong sense of who we were and where we were going. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, illustrates this point. It defines religious brothers and sisters as laypersons in a specific canonical state. Later in the same document, however, the laity is defined as "all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the religious state." As the years have passed, ambiguity about our identity has grown. Fourth, the council’s new and long-overdue vision of church also added to the confusion. It gave prominence Review for Religious to baptismal consecration and the significance of the lay vocation. At the same time it failed to identify clearly a distinct contribution of religious life to the church. No longer was the church seen as a three-tiered society in which men and women religious occupied a special "state of perfection to be acquired" between the hierarchy and the laity. The focus became the "people of God," in which all members were called to a life of holiness. Vv’hile the loss of our prec-onciliar identity was, in the judgment of most, a positive development, the failure of council participants to lay a clear foundation for a renewed identity of consecrated life was regrettable and has contributed to years of conflict about the place and purpose of religious life in today’s church. The roots of this conflict can be found primarily in the two general lines of thought at Vatican II. One group adopted a back to basics or reform point of view. Suspicious of modernity and cautious about new theological cur-rents, they wanted to rediscover tradition and live it anew. The second group is best described as pro change. They advocated a new kind of church, one that would integrate into itself the modern world’s best insights. Their approach to change was revolutionary. They were determined to integrate the joys and hopes, and the grief and anguish, of humanity into the life of each Christian. Unfortunately, these two perspectives were never fully reconciled at Vatican II, but remained juxtaposed. The council fathers failed to arrive at an overall unified teach-ing, one they could all call their own. The Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life, Perfectae caritatis, is a good example of this. It The council’s vision failed to identify clearly a distinct contribution of religious life to the church. 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ Worth the GiJ~ of One’s Life reflects both the back-to-basics and the pro-change points of view. As Marist brothers we were encouraged to return to such foundational elements as our institute’s charism and Marcellin’s original vision. At the same time we were instructed to read the signs of the times and to act accordingly. These two approaches gave rise, in time, to confusion and conflict among brothers and, in some instances, between usand a number of diocesan priests, members of the hierar.chy, and lay men and women. Fifth, we cannot blame all the recent confusion in consecrated life solely on the bishops at Vatican II. Let us not forget that we too bear some responsibility. Our life is a way of life and not a lifestyle. The latter can be taken up and abandoned with relative ease; the former cannot. Our way of life has at its heart choices relating to God, to the community (and its mediation), to sexu-ality, to possessions, to companions, to those in need. For genuine religious living to occur, these choices need to be stable and consistent in your life and mine. That has not always been the case during the process of renewal; we need to correct this imbalance. Three or More Generations Sixth, as I mentioned in the recent circular A Revolution of the Heart, there are within our institute today at least three generations. Each is unique, and more than years often separate them from each other. Now, what can you or I do to get to know the others better and to overcome the unhelpful differences that exist among us? We can spend some time across the dividing lines, taking with us open minds and hearts, traveling light,t Limit your companions to two and your questions to three (listening well for the answers): Who are these brothers of mine? What is their attitude toward contemporary religious life? What are they asking of it and of me? Review for Religious Do not be surprised, either, about surprising differ-ences! In some places, many of the Catholic peers of our younger brothers appear to be doctrinally and histori-cally illiterate when it comes to Catholic tradition. So, too, some traditions that may seem second nature to us who are older in the institute are not so well known to our young brothers. For example, at the first meeting of the Preparatory Commission of our 20th General Chapter, when searching for a prayer that we could recite together, I was struck by the fact that the youngest mem-bers of the group could not recite the Our Father in Latin. What you will find among the other generations that make up our institute is the same love for Marcellin and his dream that you have, a desire to proclaim God’s Word to poor children and young people, a longing for com-munities where people pray, where forgiveness is a habit and reconciliation no stranger. You will also find a desire among the other generations to promote lay partner-ship, a sense of hope, faith, and a need for mentoring. Rebuilding Meaning As a group we tend to be a pragmatic lot. Perhaps that is due in part to the nature of brotherhood, but then again we are Marcellin’s sons. He was a practical man, with an expression of the gospel that some call a "prac-tical Christianity." Before Vatican II many of us shared this pragmatic approach to our religious life. The sequence unfolded as follows: Define clearly the ele-ments of our way of life; tell us what they are; let us get on with the task at hand. During the years before the council, therefore, most brothers knew the meaning of poverty, chastity, obedi-ence. They knew also what to expect from their broth-ers in community, and their obligations for prayer. But Vatican II changed all that. The meaning of vows, expec- 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ Worth the Gift of One’s Life tations about community life, the nature of prayer-- everything now appeared open to question. The entire system of meaning that hadbeen so valuable to a num-ber of brothers collapsed. Then what? They continue to go about their daily tasks as before, but now carry with them a great deal of grief. We need to find ways to talk about the losses of the last forty years and to share our feelings about this situ-ation. By so doing we can begin to rebuild meaning. But this task will not be easy, and we may be tempted to avoid it--because sharing the grief we carry will be as painful as it will be a relief. Let Us Begin Again I realize that, in some parts of our institute today, brothers have questions about the future, and not with-out good reason. They feel constrained by age, dwin-dling numbers, fewer brothers visible in ministry, nearly empty novitiates. When we are discouraged because of these realities, we do well to take a lesson from the sailor in rough seas who made a friend of the wind. Buffeted by contrary gusts, he chose a tack and set his sails. With one eye on the compass, he strained forward toward the distant shore. And he made it home. James, now is the time to look to the future. The past is the past. Let us not romanticize "the good old days." For, if truth be told, there was no Golden Age in our Marist way of life, just some good people: generous men full of hope and on fire with love for our God, brothers helping young people in need and devoted to our institute and its mission, and most especially men who dared to dream--men just like you and me. And they, too, were flawed in many of the same the ways that you and I are flawed. Sinful and full of fear at times, they were also gifted and willing to take risks. They were not much different from you and me today. Review for Religious Yes, they knew their own selfishness and sin, but were able to welcome God’s spirit into their lives. And this good God of ours helped them to do ordinary things exceptionally well and to love others with an extraordi-nary love. And so he accomplished great things through them, just as he does with you and with me. Today, then, if we find ourselves asking questions such as "Who are we? What is our heart’s desire? How can we best use our energy, talents, and resources as a group?" there is no reason to be discouraged. These are the right questions, the questions that urgently need to be answered. They are the questions that Marcellin him-self would have raised: simple, direct, unpretentious. In this letter I have shared the journey of the last forty years with you. I look forward to all that lies ahead for us together. This past year I have often wondered about what passed through the mind of Marcellin Champagnat as he walked back from that small house in La Valla that we call "the cradle" to the presbytery on the evening of 2 January 1817. He had spent the day installing his first two recruits in their new home. Jean-Marie Granjon, later Brother Jean-Marie, had been a grenadier in Napoleon’s imperial guard, and Jean-Baptiste Audras, later Brother Louis, was only fourteen. Marcellin had financed purchase of the house using his own modest savings as well as a loan from Jean-Claude Courveille, then curate at nearby Rive-de-Gier. He built two wooden bedsteads and a small dining table and spent two months repairing the house. That evening, though, all that was behind him as he walked back to the priests’ house where Father Rebod, the pastor, continued to drink. Marcellin must have been tired from his day’s labor. Just what went through his mind? He had precious little of this world’s goods, and now had taken on additional debt as well as responsibility for 63.4 2004 Sammon ¯ Worth the Gift of One’s Life two young men, both of them in need of formation and one of them additional education too. What Marcellin did have was a dream. It was God’s dream for his life, and he had captured it and made it his own. He was on fire with love for Jesus Christ and his Good News. And so he acted accordingly, with courage and daring and faith. With Mary as his confidant and God’s grace ever present, he lived his life with simplicity and passion. Today I ask the same of you, my older brothers. For a half century or more, you have been our living memory, reminding us that for everything there is a season: to be born and to die, to sow and to reap, to tear down and to build up. Now is the season to begin again. I count on your prayers, your ongoing love of our institute and its mis-sion, your passion for Jesus Christ and his Good News. May Mary, our sister in faith, and Marcellin, our brother and fellow pilgrim, be constant companions and sources of strength. All I can promise you is the need of sacrifice and hard work. In closing I ask a favor. In our institute we have about nine hundred young brothers below the age of forty. The favor I ask is that you be willing to pray, by name and each day, for one of the young broth-ers. Counting on your willingness to do so, I have writ-ten here the name and address of a young brother who belongs to the Province of Afrique Centre Est, but is at present in the U.S.A.: Patrick A FMS. I will be asking him to pray for you. Never doubt for a moment that our way of life and mission as Little Brothers of Mary has been worth the gift of your life, the length of your years. Let us today work to make Marcellin’s dream our own and to live it as he did. Yes, let us live his dream. Let us keep his promise. Blessings and affection, Se~n D. Sammon FMS Superior General Review for Religious ELIZABETH McDONOUGH The Sisters’ Survey Revisited Early in the quarter century following the close 3f Vatican Council II, a massive and influential sociological survey was conducted as part of an ongoing survey project that directly affected renewal efforts of women religious in the United States.~ Some of the nearly 140,000 women religious who responded to the 649 questions filling a 23-page booklet may still recall what was known in 1967 as "The Sisters’ Survey." This survey warrants attention in retrospect because those involved in its initiation and implementation have repeat-edly affirmed its significance for the transformation of religious life in apostolic institutes of women in the United States after the council, even claiming it "directly affected the initial organizational change" in these com-munities. 2 It also warrants attention because informa-tion published by those who crafted the survey indicates that it apparently employed somewhat uncritically-reported data derived from a relatively flawed sociolog-ical instrument previously formulated to assess a notably different segment of a very limited population sample totally unrelated to women religious. Elizabeth McDonough OP writes the Canonical Counsel column for this journal. Her address is given there. 63.4 2004 McDonougb * The Sisters’ Survey Revisited In fact, the 1967 Sisters’ Survey was based directly on a research model created by Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeNamur, whose recent doctoral research in sociol-ogy had attempted to assess readiness for change in a 259-member sample of Boston diocesan clergy in 1963.3 Among items from her doctoral studies (as published in 1965) which are significant for the Sisters’ Survey of 1967 are (1) that "justice and freedom [were] the only values mentioned" in her testing instrument, (2) that she presumed pressures to change would "not even be heard" where the "definition of the situation expressed in the commitment to the transcendent" was primary, and (3) that the dissertation results indicated no "clear evidence of the claimed relationship between the orientation groups and the functional problem" as hypothesized in her models.4 Understanding anything about the Sisters’ Survey, however, requires at least a brief explanation of the post-Vatican II survey project and the 1967 survey itself. General Background for the 1967 Sisters’ Survey Forty years ago, in the summer of 1964, when Vatican II had not yet concluded, some sixty men and women gathered in Loveland, Ohio, to study translations of already promulgated and yet-to-be-finalized conciliar documents with a view to possible future changes in the church. In early 1965 a book of essays entitled The Changing Sister was published by several women reli-gious who participated in this meeting,s These sister authors were Corita Kent IHM, Jane Marie Luecke OSB, Elena Malits CSC, Charles Borromeo (Mary Ellen) Muckenhirn CSC, Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeN, Jane Marie Richardson SL, Aloysius (Mary) Schaldenbrand ssJ, Angelica (Ann) Seng OSF, and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN. The book’s foreword explained its purpose as seeing possibilities of what it was going to mean to be an Review for Religious American sister, and the book was so popular that it had three printings in 1965 alone. In August 1965 the Board of Directors of the Conference of Major Superiors of Women (CMSW), which changed its name a few years later to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), initiated a survey project for sisters in the United States regarding readiness for changes introduced by Vatican II. The idea for the project began with Mary Luke Tobin SL, then president of the Conference and an official observer at the council. In September 1965, the sisters who had authored The Changing Sister addressed the national meeting of CMSW. Shortly thereafter, these sis-ters plus five members of the CMSW national board formed a research committee for what eventually became known as the "Sisters’ Survey" project. The project actu-ally comprised several surveys conducted over the quar-ter century from 1966 to 1991; and Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeN, who had just completed doctoral studies in sociology and who was the only sociologist on the com-mittee, became its permanent chair.6 The first stage of the project was a survey in 1966 of 437 major superiors of women’s religious congregations. Findings from this were reported to participants for use at community renewal chapters which had been man-dated ’for all religious institutes by Vatican II. The 1966 survey of superiors also supplied information for the sec-ond stage of the project which is the most well-known survey, commonly referred to as "The Sisters’ Survey." As originally planned, this was to provide a national pro-file from a random sample of 5,000 individual women religious. In February 1967 the CMSW national board decided instead to conduct a survey of the entire mem-bership of every congregation. At that time, there were over 181,000 women in apostolic religious communities in the United States; and the Sisters’ Survey booklet, 63.4 2004 McDonough ¯ The Sisters’ Survey Revisited About 88 percent (139,691 sisters) responded to the survey. dated 1 April 1967, with 649 questions, was sent to 160,000 of them. The booklet’s introductory page stated its dual intent as collecting data for systematic process-ing of "future decisions" and as providing material for "review and assessment necessary" for renewal chapters. Approximately 88 percent (actually 139,691 sisters) responded to the survey, thus furnishing immediate and near total population data for potential renewal of apos-tolic communities of women religious in the U.S.A. a mere fifteen months after the council had concluded.7 In 1992, Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN, former LCWR president and executive director from 1972 to 1978, together with Lora Ann Quifionez CDP, executive direc-tor of LCWR from 1978 to 1986, assessed the 1967 CMSW Sisters’ Survey as "catalytic far beyond what its creators dreamed" (this is said in fn. 2 also!) in effecting trends for change among sisters in the United States and for initiating substantive reorganization of the conference itself in 1970-1971. They also made clear that its content was questioned by Rome as early as 23 Api’il 1967, with "Objections... made to a goodly number of the ques-tions, the way they are stated, the fact that there is no one answer to some of them.’’s In her 1990 book, From Nuns to Sisters, Marie Augusta Neal also conceded that the 1967 Sisters’ Survey was controversial and that it con-tributed to division within CMSW. Nevertheless, she steadfastly maintained that it "survived attacks" against it because it had been "derived from the council docu-ments and [was] directly related to the renewal man-dated" by Vatican II.9 Embedded in the 649 questions of the 1967 survey were sixty items specifically designed to identify how belief influenced the social behavior of the sisters. Review for Rdig~ous Responses to these questions were reported in what Neal called "pre-Vatican II" and "post-Vatican II" belief scales. In articles published in a sociological journal in 1970 and 1971, Neal explained in some detail how these pre-and post-Vatican II belief scales extended four scales she had previously designed for her doctoral research wherein she had attempted to assess orientations of those in a religious system confronted with social change. In Neal’s 1971 article, she claimed the belief scales were important to the overall CMSW survey study and its main hypothesis that belief was a major determinant for recep-tiveness to change. By 1990 Neal characterized these pre- and post-Vatican II belief scales as having domi-nated the 1967 survey, and by then she also admitted they had become "the most controversial and the most discriminating variable, which accounted for the pace and direction of changes in structures of the religious congregations involved in the study.’’1° It is important to remember in relation to the following comments that Neal herself also claimed the pre- and post-Vatican II belief scales on the Sisters’ Survey extended the scales created for her doctoral study. Some Basics of Neal’s Doctoral Research In summary fashion, the following items from Neal’s doctoral work as published in 1965 seem significant for the CMSW survey project. In formulating her doctoral research, Neal created four scales, which she called "Neal scales," and tested them on "a 25 percent random sam-ple of priests from the Boston archdiocese.’’11 In pro-ducing these Neal scales, she hypothesized that the diocesan clergy sample would be open to change or closed to change according to their values or their inter-ests. Her study of the sample used "values" to mean "widely shared conceptions of the good," while it used "interests" to mean "desires for special advantage for the 63.4 2004 McDonougb ¯ The Sisters’ Survey Revisited self" or for related groups. In her doctoral work Neal also described value-oriented persons as "concerned with the achieving of a goal" related to "a standard of excel-lence," while she described interest-oriented persons as "primarily concerned" with goal achievement having selective "advantage to certain people." Based on these meanings of value and interest, Neal then postulated four orientations that might be exhibited by persons con-fronted with change in a religious system. She described these orientations as (1) being open to change for value reasons, (2) being open to change for interest reasons, (3) being closed to change for value reasons, and (4) being closed to change for interest reasons. Neal then created test models which she predicted would match the change orientations she had postulated. In this way, she hoped to determine if her four postulated orientations might pro-vide a sociological explanation of choices by those in religious institutions faced with pressures to change.~2 As bases for her research Neal also presupposed there were five specific pressure areas for change which she had gleaned from her own study of "reputable Catholic scholar-writers" who, according to Neal, suggested that current "institutionalized practices were not fulfilling the intended functions of the Catholic Church." She listed these pressure areas as (1) command-obedience relations, (2) social responsibility, (3) independence train-ing, (4) respect for the intellectual life, and (5) motiva-tional awareness. In addition, Neal assumed for the purpose of her research that these "areas exist[ed] within the Catholic community," that they were "dysfunctional," that they were "permitted... to thrive because of exist-ing norms within the church," but could "be a matter for treatment and reform if... perceived objectively.. ¯ without threat to the basic belief structure." In other words, her sociological study of 259 Boston clergy in 1963 presumed both a need for change and dysfunc- Review for Religious tionality. Finally, Neal identified orientation questions for the clergy survey according to her four postulated models by using a pretest which "best discriminated between known conservative and liberal" respondents.~3 Neal’s Doctoral Research and the Sisters’ Survey Some assumptions, limitations, and conclusions of NeaPs dissertation seem quite significant in relation to her affirmation of its influence on the 1967 Sisters’ Survey. For one example, at least a third of the ques-tions plus a lengthy reading-preference assessment from the clergy survey were replicated on the 1967 Sisters’ Survey. Responses to the Sisters’ Survey were catego-rized according to the same scales as those in NeaPs clergy study and were also assessed according to pre- and post-Vatican II belief scales as developed from the "Neal scales" she had created for her doctoral research. In the introduction to her pub-lished dissertation, her director states: "I think her analysis is vulnerable to criticism," pointing out that Neal’s use of the "interest" primarily as "self-interest" was not the standard and that this brought "into question the precise theoretical bearing" of some of her findings. He also "sensed" her four orientations to change over-lapped "conceptually with her dependent variables," thus contaminating the relations between them.x4 Notwith-standing the questionable theoretical import of her find-ings, the Sisters’ Survey responses of 1967 were categorized according to the same terminology and the same four orientations to change measured by the scales she had created for her dissertation. As already noted, The Sisters" Survey results were returned to the communities for use in their decision-making meetings in the fall of 1967. 63.4 2004 McDonougb ¯ The Sisters’ Survey Revisited the Sisters’ Survey results were returned to religious communities for use in their decision-making meetings in the fall of 1967. As noted earlier, another influence of Neal’s doctoral work on the Sisters’ Survey was the fact that her research was "deliberately designed" so that "justice and freedom [were] the only values specifically mentioned," so per-haps it should not be surprising then that the 1967 sur-vey was immediately criticized by a number of sisters for having a "’this-worldly’ social bias.’’Is Indeed, in her explanation of the 1967 survey, sociologist Neal admit-ted she favored bringing "the religious factor to the fore in a ’this worldly’ direction" and also dismissed as mere "religiosity" any explanations of belief and behavior which portrayed "social action in the direction of risk and involvement in social change" as "secular instead of sacred." 16 Also of interest in her diocesan-clergy findings is that Neal reported age as "strikingly related" to her four hypothesized models, because 69 percent of the priests oriented to change for reasons of value were under 46 years old. In contrast, Neal presented a lengthy but inconclusive explanation of why age was supposedly not at all significant for pre- and post-Vatican II belief scores on the Sisters’ Survey, even though her scales reported 80 percent of sisters over 60 years old as "pre-Vatican" in their beliefs and reported 40 percent of sisters under 40 years old as "post-Vatican" in their beliefs.17 In other words, while Neal assessed a response from 69 percent of a particular age-cohort on her clergy survey as "strik-ingly relating" the age of these priests to the results, she assessed a response from 80 percent of a particular age-cohort on her Sisters’ Survey as not relating the age of these sisters to the results in any significant fashion. As a significant example of the influence of Neal’s doctoral research on the 1967 survey, note that she had Reviev~ for Religious hypothesized pressures to change would "not even be heard where the definition of the situation expressed in the commitment to the transcendent still had primacy.’’~8 Of course, it might logically be expected that a "com-mitment to the transcendent" would have been rather primary among women religious in the 1960s (as well as among diocesan clergy). In view of Neal’s hypothesis, however, it is not surprising that responses to the 1967 survey’s "belief scales" (as refinements of the earlier "Neal scales") were characterized as "pre-Vatican" by notions of God as remote, static, and transcendent, as acting through established channels understood through eternal truths expressed in the stylized idioms of a hier-archical church whose members sought eternal bliss in heaven "alone with the great Alone." In contrast, post-Vatican "belief scales" were char-acterized by notions of God as humane, personable, and immanent, as acting in history through unlikely people in ever diverse ways through a servant church where believers sought structural justice and the eradication of evil while coming to know God by realizing the promised kingdom.~9 With such divergent notions of God, it is also surprising that the 1967 survey data reported by Neal showed 24 percent of the sisters who scored high in post-Vatican belief also scored high in pre-Vatican belief.2° In 1970 Neal stated that these scales represented "formulations of beliefs accepted as standard and cen-tral prior to or since the Second Vatican Council," but in 1988 she "explained that the prefixes ’pre’ and ’post’ were meant simply to convey chronological facts."21 With such documented inconsistencies--and because Neal considered these scales pivotal to examination of beliefs "as causal factors" for accepting or resisting social change--it is legitimate to ask whether these "belief scales" may actually have measured two different things unrelated to alleged pre- and post-Vatican II belief. 63.4 2004 McDonougb * The Sisters’ Survey Revisited Whatever they may have measured, it is important to recall that Neal considered them instrumental to the 1967 survey’s "central hypothesis" regarding change and that she also characterized them as "the most discrimi-nating variable, which accounted for the pace and direc-tion of changes.., in religious congregations.’’z2 Perhaps even more astounding is that, without any apparent ver-ification for the statement, in a somewhat disconcerting June 1969 "memo" to the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes regarding survey results, Neal asserted "there is in fact a proneness to fascism in the sister who prefers a pre-Vatican belief orientation" and that the reluctance of some sisters to change was "a source of scandal" giving "witness to the irrelevancy of religious life." 23 Finally, for the brief summary presented here, it is worth noting that conclusions in Neal’s doctoral research showed her test instrument might not have been making a "clear distinction" between some scores, and that her findings indicated "no clear evidence of the claimed rela-tionship between the orientation groups and the func-tional problems" as she had hypothesized. She did discover, however, that change for "interest" reasons and nonchange for "value" reasons were "never distinguish-able from each other except.., when the idea of power" motivated the interest-change sample.24 With "interest" for Neal defined as self-interest, this finding could be of import for the language of "empowerment" that has since become prevalent in the documents and discourse of women religious in most of the English-speaking world. In sum, and simply put, the scales created by Neal specifically for her 1963 Boston diocesan clergy study were not verified in her research as reliable measuring instruments, and her doctoral dissertation did not demonstrate her proposed connection between the four Review for Religious orientations she sought to measure as related to socio-logical responses to pressure for change. There is no doubt, however, that her doctoral study and her mea-surement instruments were extensively employed in the CMSW survey project and were particularly crucial to the 1967 Sisters’ Survey. Towards Tentative Conclusions Perhaps it is too obvious to mention how ironic it may be that 139,691 women religious were subjected to a massive survey based on an inadequate model for pre-dicting change among 259 Boston diocesan clergy in the early 1960s. In view of findings in the recent John Jay Report (February 2004), it is also perhaps too obvious that at that time there could hardly have been a less appropriate sample to supply a sociological test model on which 181,000 women might have sought data for "future decisions" about possible renewal of religious life. Perhaps it is also too obvious that the strictly social-justice orientation of Neal’s research may have rendered it more then slightly skewed from both theological and apostolic perspectives or that the CMSW survey may have been--in Neal’s words--"conditioned" by those who "perceive[d] the whole social system with a bias in the direction of the functional problem most congenial to their predispositions.’’25 Perhaps it is too obvious that the unreliability of Neal’s measuring instrument ren-dered her survey results decidedly less accurate than what ordinarily should have been required for their contin-ued, almost unchallenged use for nearly a quarter cen-tury. Again, it may be too obvious to note that Neal’s longevity as director of the survey project may have occurred simply because she was the only sociologist on the research committee or simply because she was pre-sumed to be an experienced, expert sociologist. And per-haps it is all too obvious that the lack of any verifiable 63.4 2004 McDonougb * Tbe Sisters’ Survey Revisited connection between belief and change as postulated by Neal in her doctoral study may be anything but irrelevant for communities of women religious whose wholehearted and well-intentioned renewal endeavors may have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by the 1967 CMSW Sisters’ Survey as then based directly on Neal’s recent doctoral work. In conclusion, a comment in Neal’s rather discon-certing 1969 "memo" to the Holy See about the 1967 survey may have presaged what transpired in some (or many) institutes of women religious during decades that followed. She stated in the memo that sisters "unaware of the thinking of the church" were "more likely to fol-low uncritically any suggested program that is proposed by authority whether the latter be legitimate, traditional, or charismatic." In retrospect, if it is at all accurate to say that a small mistake in the beginning results in a large mistake in the end, it is reasonable to suggest that the Sisters’ Survey of 1967 may well have been a far more than mildly minor mistake. As such, it warrants careful reassessment by those concerned with what did transpire in religious life for women in this country--and other areas of the English speaking world--since Vatican Council II. Notes ~ The survey project is generally explained by in Marie Augusta Neal SNDdeN, in Front Nuns to Sisters (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990): 4-6 and 56-58, with important content footnotes at p. 122 n. 10) and pp. 126-127 nn. 7-9). See Lora Ann Quifionez CDP and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 43- 50 and 148-149, with important content footnotes at pp. 176-178 nn. 14-21 and pp. 192-193 nn. 4-10. Sociological explanations of the sur-vey were presented by Neal in a two-part article in Review of Religious Research: "The relation between religious belief and structural change in religious orders: developing an effective measuring instrument," vol. 12 (1970): 2-16, and "The relation between religious belief and structural change in religious orders: some evidence," vol. 13 (1971): 153-164. An early summary of follow-up data for the 1980 survey, titled "The Sisters’ Survey’, 1980: A Report," appeared in the newslet- Review for Religious .. ter of the National Coalition of American Nuns, Probe 10, no. 5 (May-June 1981). Two books by Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1984) and From Nuns to Sisters (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990), review causes for changes in religious life since the council, highlighting her survey instrument and its influence. A revision (dated 20 February 1992) of Neal’s 1991 Report on the National Profile of the Third Sisters’ Survey (which had been conducted in 1989) was not formally published but could be obtained by writing directly to Neal at that time. 2 Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, p. 48; they also say "it proved catalytic far beyond what its creators dreamed" (pp. 43-44). And see Neal, From Nuns to Sisters, pp. 56-57. 3 Neal has made clear that her doctoral work, completed in 1963 and published in 1965 as Values and Interests in Social Change (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall), contained the research model repli-cated in the Sisters’ Survey. See the introduction, p. i, of the 1991 Report (note 1 above), and see Neai’s detailed explanations in Review of Religious Research, 1970 and 1971 (note 1 above), for precisely how the survey replicated her recently completed doctoral research. 4 For these quotations see, respectively, pp. 51, 43, and 123 in Neal’s Values and Interests. s M. Charles Borromeo Muckenhirn CSC, ed., The Changing Sister (Notre Dame: Fides Publishers, 1965). 6 The five members of the CMSW national board who became members of the research committee were Anita Caspary IHM, Thomas Aquinas (Elizabeth) Carroll RSM, Isabel Concannon CSJ, Angelita Myerscough AdPPS, and Mary Luke Tobin SL. These details are pre-sented by Neal in Front Nuns to Sisters, pp. 55-57, p. 122 n. 10, and p. 126 nn. 7-8. See also Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, pp. 43-46 and pp. 176-177 nn. 14-16. 7 Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, pp. 46-50. According to these authors, "simply completing the survey was a formative experi-ence" (p. 46) and its data was "an invaluable resource for the special chapters" mandated by Vatican II. They note: "Not only did num-berless committees pore over the national and individual profiles for evidence to bolster chapter proposals and appeal to the data in the heat of chapter debates, but the Survey was instrumental in enabling chapters to see clearly the task a community faced in living into a new image, in fact a new paradigm, of religious life" (p. 49). The original survey booklet can still be found in the archives of some religious institutes of women. s Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, p. 159 and pp. 195-196 n. 24. 9 Neal, Front Nuns to Sisters, pp. 57-58. ,0 See Neal’s dissertation, Values and Interests, and her articles in Review of Religious Research. Neal’s summary of these two orienta-tions from the latter are quoted in full on pp. 177-178 n. 21 of 399 63.4 2004 McDonougb ¯ The Sisters’ Survey Revisited Quifionez and Turner, Transformation. Neal’s From Nuns to Sisters, pp. 126-127 n. 9, contains her words about the significance of these scales and indicates that the sixty items were primarily developed by research committee member Elena Malits CSC, who had also been a contrib-utor to The Changing Sister. In Neal’s 1991 Report, she says these scales dominated the entire 1967 Sisters’ Survey. l, Neal, Report, 1991, p. i. Neal’s published dissertation, Values and Interests, p. 48, says "two hundred and fifty-nine priests or 70 per-cent of the number sampled returned completed forms." ,2 Neal, Values and Interests, pp. 9-16. Regarding her four orienta-tions, Neal states on p. 12: "The object is not to fit new concepts to a formal model but to find out if any.., provides a better solution for certain functional problems. If so, then, personalities conditioned in one of these directions might tend to perceive the whole social system with a bias in the direction of the functional problem most congenial to their predispositions." ,3 For derivation of the five categories, see Neal, Values and Interests, pp. 36-38. For her assumptions regarding their existence and the dys-functionality within the "Catholic community," see p. 43. Regarding pre-test results, see p. 48 (and note 7), where Neal states the final items were chosen because they "best discriminated between known conservative and liberal subjects." These subjects were "priests from different religious orders including Jesuits, Dominicans, and Paulists [plus] college students, parish groups, and women religious" whose "orientation to change was known" before they were chosen. She does not indicate how the "orientation to change" had been ascertained for the "conservative and liberal" pre-test subjects. 14 Neil J. Smelser, introduction to Values and Interests, p. viii. On p. ix, in commenting on "a flood of changes" in the recent decade that "worked to undermine [a] myth of the monolith" of the Catholic Church, Smelser says of Neal’s dissertation: "I view the presentation of the findings in this volume as indicative of the broad onslaught against the myth." ~s Neal, Values and lnterests, p. 51 n. 9, and From Nuns to Sisters, p. 57. ~6 Neal, Review of Religious Research (1970): 10. ,7 Neal, Values and Interests, p. 65; Review of Religious Research (1971): 159-160. is Neal, Values and Interests, p. 43. 19 Neal, Review of Religious Research (1970): 13, quoted in Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, pp. 177-178. 20 Neal, "Relation: some evidence" (1971): 157; see note 1 above. 21 Neal, "Relation: developing an instrument" (1970): 1; see note 1 above. Also see Quifionez and Turner, Transformation, p. 149 and p. 192 nn. 5-6. 22 Neal, From Nuns to Sisters, pp. 126-127 n. 9. Review for Religious z3 Major findings of the Sisters’ Survey were presented to the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in June 1969 in an unpublished "memo" written by Neal. Portions of this "memo" appear in the doctoral dissertation of Margaret Mary Modde OSF, A Canonical Study of the LCWR (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 1977), pp. 126-128. The controversial "memo" can still be found in the archives of some religious institutes of women. For comments on the influence of the Sisters’ Survey in relation to canonical changes in religious institutes since the 1960s, see Elizabeth McDonough OP, "Juridical Deconstruction of Religious Institutes," Studia Canonica 26 (1992): 307-341, especially pp. 332-337. 24 Neal, Values and Interests, p. 123: "None of the results consti-tutes clear evidence of the claimed relationship between orientation groups and the functional problems." 2f Neal, Values and Interests, p. 12. Five O’Clock Five o’clock in the afternoon My soul falls silent With the calm of the declining sun. Two huge trees hung With a million yellow pods That clattered all the day Are quiet now As if spread over With a cloth of dusty-gold. The mourning doves come home To the African tulip tree With whirring wings And a patter of leaves as they enter And disappear into their night haven. Now and then A slow gust of wind passing by Stirs the golden pods With a sound like the sea Washing a long, darkening shore. Mary Alban Bouchard CSJ, in Haiti 40! 63.4 2004 DANIEL G. GROODY Obedience: Listening to God in a "Just Do It" Culture Ionb a "just do it" culture, the whole notion of religious edience can seem absurd and anachronistic. Because of the emphasis placed on personal freedom, autonomy, self-will, and personal determination, obedience does little to enti~e the popular imagination or suggest the good life. From a marketing perspective, obedience is a hard sell, especially because the very notion of obedience seems to imply the suffocation of life rather than the promotion of it. As religious life undergoes changes, such practices as vowed obedience can strike outside observers as vestiges of a repressive religious past. As Edward Kinerk says, "everything in our culture resists obedience, because we are made to fear that any loss of control over self-fulfillment is a loss of self."1 Yet obedience is a core element of the gospel, arguably a primary dimension not only of Jesus’ life and relationship with his Father, but also of what it means to be a Christian. Although obedience has always been a core Christian virtue, it has undergone much redefinition since the Daniel G. Groody CSC is an assistant professor of theology and the director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture at the University of Notre Dame; P.O. Box 764; Notre Dame, Indiana 46656. Review for Religious Second Vatican Council. In a time when much attention is given to the abuse of power, especially among religious and the clergy, how are we to understand the gift and virtue of obedience today? What understanding of it is necessary for it to be liberating and humanizing rather than oppressive, manipulative, and destructive? In this article I explore the ways in which obedience leads one to become more authentic, more loving, and more human. Three Dimensions of Obedience Before getting into some specifics, I would like to frame a healthy notion of obedience within three dimensions that can keep obedient living from getting distorted: (1) a Christological dimension, (2) a cardiological one, and (3) a missiological one. The obedience I speak of is fundamentally Christological. The focal point of obedience is the life of Christ. The value of obedience begins and ends with how Christ lived his own relationship with his Father, and so the Christian meaning of it is in the following of Christ. Without Christ at the center, obedience readily becomes mind control and manipulation and a certain childishness. One accepts a call to obedience and chooses it as a normative value because one desires to become like Christ, to become a disciple of Christ, to conform one’s life to Christ’s life, and ultimately to become another Christ and, in the process, become a whole human being. The "cardiological" dimension of obedience implies paying attention to one’s own heart, not simply the physical organ, but the physical organ with its mystical quality.2 Though the heart is often associated simply with feeling and emotion and thus a shallow sentimentality, the heart I refer to here is the deep center of a person, the place of true knowledge and understanding, where reason and emotion are integrated. To know something is to know it in one’s heart. Cardiological.understanding is the 63.4 2004 Groody * Obedience Obedience is less about "knuckling under" than about effective listening. deepest level of self-understanding, and faithfulness means being true to this personal core where self and God meet. I believe that obedience also has a missiological dimension. Obedience is an enduring relational commitment that sends one beyond oneself on a mission that is larger than oneself. Obedience is not a mere finger exercise of acquiescence to a religious superior’s whims, a childish docility, or a premature disposition or settling of one’s identity, but a solid conviction that one is called to focus one’s energies, to give oneself in service and in sacrifice to the kingdom of God, to the building up of the church and the transformation of human society. Such obedience gets its shape from following Christ, being attentive to one’s heart, and giving this heart away on mission for the good of others. Further Meanings of Obedience It is interesting to note the great disparity between contemporary connotations of obedience and its more precise denotation. Many see religious obedience as a matter of following rules and conforming to obligations and directions from a religious superior. In point of fact, however, obedience literally means something different. It comes from a Latin word, oboedire, which means "to listen to" (from oh, to or toward, and audire, to hear). Obedience is less about "knuckling under" than about effective listening. It means cutting through the myriad noise of contemporary society so as to get in touch with the voice and life of the Spirit, with authentic freedom and integration. Obedience means attentive and faithful Review for Religious listening to various levels of our lives. In the pages that follow, I will highlight five levels: fidelity to one’s own heart, to the cries of the poor, to the call of the church, to the needs of community, and ultimately to the challenge of the gospel. One’s Heart’s Desires Listening to the desires of one’s own heart, a fundamental dimension of religious obedience, is no easy task. It requires sifting and sorting through the many emotional impulses and even conflicting feelings that arise in the course of personal reflection and discernment. But, for obedience to foster a loving life with God, such listening is essential. As noted in Gaudiura et spes (§41), "the church truly knows that only God, whom she serves, meets the deepest longings of the human heart, which is never fully satisfied by what this world has to offer." Obedience involves spiritually digging deeper and deeper into the truths of one’s life until one finds there the basic desires that govern how to live in the world. These truths are by no means self-evident, but when they are brought to light they serve as a "nonnegotiable" homing instinct that orients one’s life. Without these orienting truths, other people, various social institutions, or shallow cultural expectations readily seem to provide authoritative direction for one’s life. Such transferences may have the veneer of obedience, but they are betrayals of one’s true self to a fictive and false self that is unreal and therefore has no rightful place in God’s plan. Freedom entails being faithful, and thus obedient, to the deepest desires of one’s heart, to these orienting truths, to these intensely personal gifts from God. A number of years ago a fine article appeared under the title "Eliciting Great Desires: Their Place in the Society of Jesus," by Edward Kinerk SJ. Its thesis is that God leads us with gifts we can well call holy desires. 63.4 2004 Groody * Obedience Kinerk’s point was that, if people are going to have any lasting efficacy in the apostolate, they must get in touch with what motivates them, for these desires are the source of much of their apostolic energy. Although the desires must be channeled through discipline, prayer, and mortification, one of the early tasks of the spiritual life is to find and cultivate them. In order to distinguish holy desires from mere feelings, whimsical emotions, or even evil inclinations, Kinerk presents four overlapping presuppositions about desires, based on his own study of Ignatius Loyola. He says that all desires are real experiences, but not all desires are equally authentic. For example, the desire to forgive comes from a deeper and truer self than the desire for revenge, however "real" this "desire" may feel. Second, authentic desires are vocational; that is, they lead us to discover how we are gifted uniquely and called by God uniquely. The more we come in touch with genuine desires, the more we will find out who we are and who we want to become. Third, our most reliable desires are those that lead us to glorify God. Such desires lead us toward self-gift more than toward personal fulfillment, which is more a by-product of a faithful life than a goal in itself. Last, all authentic desires are someway public. There is a paradox here, for such desires are profoundly personal; still, holy desires will ultimately lead us out of ourselves into a greater connectedness with the human community. Holy desires tend towards building human community. It is a subject of its own to say what these holy desires are, but Kinerk mentions a few, including "a desire to help souls" and "a desire for the cross." I would add that some of these holy desires revolve around love, meaning, self-gift, freedom, and knowledge. Obedience, then, simply put, means identifying and clarifying these principles and values as we meet them in our own unique Review for Religious experiences, relationships, and longings. Paying attention to our heart’s desires helps authenticity to emerge out of our faith commitment to obedience. We have something substantial to think and say and ask about obedience in religious life only if we pay attention to our desires and how we act on them as we go through the day. Otherwise obedience degenerates into mere legalism or formalism. It is an anthropological truth that we are made by God, that we are made for God, that we long for God, and that only God can satisfy our heart’s deepest desires. Obedience, then, is about being faithful to our heart, but also making sure that this "heart" is not an idol that has little or no intention of giving itself away to God and others. The Cries of the Poor To keep our heart’s desires from becoming simply narcissistic, obedience requires serious listening to the cries of the poor. Those cries are a great corrective to selfishne City of Saint Louis (Mo.), http://www.geonames.org/4407084 http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/rfr/id/399 |