|
FINAL 10/10/08
CMSWR PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
In his address on the opening
of the Pauline Year, Pope Benedict rephrased the words of Saint Paul
which are the theme for this year’s National Assembly: “Only in Christ
and in his Gospel can humanity find a response to its deepest
expectations.” The Holy Father went on to speak of the bewilderment of
man today, enticed “by a certain hedonistic and relativistic culture
which casts doubt even on the existence of the truth.” He urged all
Christians to seek to come to full unity in order to offer the
people of the third millennium an “ever more luminous witness of Christ,
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “To come to full unity” – this is
the mission given to us.
Saint Paul wrote to the
Colossians, “Set your minds on things that are above,” and to the
Philippians, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ
Jesus.” He says to us today, “Put on the mind of Christ.” What is this
“mind of Christ”? Surely, the mind of Christ is revealed in the
Gospels, but it is not sufficient to choose certain parts of the Gospels
that appeal to us and think we know the mind of Christ. As we read in
the letter to the Hebrews, “Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
forever.” The mind of Christ is the mind of the Church. Called
together in the ecclesial unity of one Body, we are all one mind, one
will, one single communion in Christ. Saint Paul again urges the
Philippians, “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same
love, being in full accord and of one mind.” The question we need to
ask ourselves today is: Can we come to unity if we are not of one mind?
Our Holy Father
speaking at the Eucharistic celebration culminating the World Youth Day
celebrations in Sydney admonishes youth of all ages that … “this power,
the grace of the Spirit, is not something we can merit or achieve, but
only receive as pure gift. God’s love can only unleash its power when
it is allowed to change us from within. We have to let it break through
the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind
conformity to the spirit of this age …” When we substitute the detailed
mechanisms of technology for the profound reflections of the human mind
enlivened by the truth of another, we sacrifice communion relentlessly
drawing us to unity for communication and efficiency establishing our
individual “point of view.”
Dialogue has become
a priority for our age, as Pope John Paul II said in Ut unum sint
precisely because technology threatens to overtake us extinguishing the
small flame of desire we have to overcome our existential isolation and
work to draw near to one another in the truth of Christ. The word
“dialogue” is from the Greek word “dia” or “across,” plus “legein”
or “speak.” So, a “dialogue” is a conversation; it is speaking with
another or others. It is not superficially speaking; not simply an
exchange of ideas.
The origin of
dialogue is in the mind of God Himself. Revelation can be looked upon
as a dialogue. The whole history of man’s salvation is a dialogue. In
the Incarnation, the sacred dialogue between God and man, which was
broken off at the time of Adam, was not only restored but made new. In
the “dialogue of salvation,” God has taken the initiative. He first
loved us, and gave His only-begotten Son for our salvation. Dialogue,
therefore, does not occur merely on a horizontal level. In the words of
Ut unum sint, dialogue has primarily “a vertical thrust, directed
towards the One who, as the Redeemer of the world and the Lord of
history, is himself our Reconciliation.”
In the Christ
event, we have the most intensive and unique dialogue between God and
man. The unity between Jesus and His Father is a dialogical one, as
especially the Gospel of John shows: “The Father and I are one” (John
10:30). Christ revealed that God Himself is relational. Moreover,
Christ invited us into this dialogical relationship with His Father.
When the Lord Jesus, on the night before His Passion, prayed to the
Father, “that all may be one…as we are one” (John 17:21-22), He opened
up vistas previously closed to human reason. By these words, Christ
implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons and
the unity of all men in truth and charity.
Because of faith
in Christ, we know we are one Body. We do not exist for ourselves
alone. As the Second Vatican Council affirmed, man, “the only creature
on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except
through a sincere gift of himself” (GS 24). Therefore, dialogue is
indispensable for the self-realization of each person. Dialogue is
indispensable for our growth in self-awareness and self-consciousness,
leading to greater self-knowledge. Dialogue not only springs from
prayer, but it always leads to prayer. Dialogue is indispensable to the
life of prayer.
In his weekly audience on
October 1st of this year, our Holy Father stated that the
relationship between Saints Peter and Paul helped the two apostles to
learn that only sincere dialogue, open to the truth of Christ, can guide
the path of the Church. This is what our Holy Father says: “In
reality, the concerns troubling Paul on the one hand, and Peter and
Barnabas on the other, were different”, he explained. For Peter and
Barnabas “the separation from pagans was a way to protect and to avoid
scandalizing believers from Jewish backgrounds, while for Paul it risked
causing a misunderstanding of the universal salvation in Christ offered
to both pagans and Jews”.
Benedict XVI pointed out the
fact that around the mid 50s, Paul himself “had to face a similar
situation, and he called on the strong not to eat unclean food so as not
to alienate or scandalize the weak. … The incident of Antioch, then,
was a lesson both for Peter and for Paul. Only sincere dialogue, open
to the truth of the Gospel, could guide the path of the Church”.
Cardinal Rode, in a speech given at Stonehill College on the occasion of
a symposium on Religious life, stated, “If rupture and confusion are
what characterize the recent difficulties in religious life, then the
way forward has to be a greater seeking of continuity and
clarity” (p.15).
The Vatican Council’s
Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae)
establishes the ground rules: “…people explain to one another the truth
they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to
assist one another in the quest for truth” (DH 3). Pope Paul VI called
this “a kind of thought transfusion…an invitation to the exercise and
development of the highest spiritual and mental powers a man possesses”
(ES 81).
In dialogue, it is
important to listen not only to what the other person says, but, perhaps
more importantly, to what he has in his heart to say. Dialogue calls
for humble receptivity to the other. It thrives on friendship.
Dialogue is communication in a comprehensive way. It prepares the way
for the discovery of a more inclusive truth. Then comes the challenge
for each one, for, as truth is discovered, we are obliged to adhere to
it. We are obliged to change. As Pope John Paul II tells us in Ut
unum sint, we must even be prepared to have “our particular truth
proven wrong through sincere dialogue.
In this way, dialogue serves
as “an examination of consciousness,” for, as Pope John Paul II
constantly affirmed, we can know ourselves only in relation to another.
We are not speaking about what used to be called a “revelation of
conscience,” not about revealing moral good or evil acts; but, rather,
as we speak and give of our very being to another, the other person
reflects back to us the truth of his experience. In this way, we become
more aware of our own limitations, of our inability to love as we
desire.
A document
recently published by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated
Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, The Service of Authority and
Obedience, states that persons in authority promote fraternal life
through the service of listening and dialogue (SAO 20). Formation must
become a “dialogue of conversion” or, in the words of Pope Paul VI, “an
authentic “dialogue of salvation.’” We tend to cling to our limitations
as though they were our very selves, for we fear that they are. The
Service of Authority and Obedience recognizes that, in an atmosphere
favorable to dialogue, each person will be able “to have his or her true
identity recognized and to improve his or her own relational abilities”
(SAO 20b). Cardinal Rode, in the speech at Stonehill, referred to
earlier, (pp.18-19), reminded religious that “Spirituality is centered
not on a vague religious feeling of being right with God and neighbor
and having nice experiences in prayer. Its essence is continual
conversion, nourished on the sacraments, and the fulfillment of God’s
plan for one’s life.” Truth is an objective reality and never just what
I can see or understand.
Our, that is, the
Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, stated goal is to
establish an effective collaboration among those major superiors who
desire it. And so, we face two challenges; one to define and realize
what it is to “effectively collaborate” and secondly to awaken and
sustain a desire in one another to be about this work on behalf surely
of our individual congregations, but of equal and perhaps surpassing
importance on behalf of religious life today and into the future in
service to the coming of God’s Kingdom and the accomplishing of His will
on earth as it is in heaven. What is the source and anchor of this
desire? The mind of Christ. Who reflects the mind of Christ to us
today? The teaching magisterium of the Church. This is our faith and
faith is the realm in which we live as religious. (PAUSE - SHIFT)
At this juncture,
I would like to take a pause that refreshes and speak to you
about our Board of Directors and most especially our Executive
Committee. These women religious are outstanding collaborators and have
given themselves selflessly to the task of representing each of you in
the work that the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious is so
privileged to be about.
We, as Board, have
often reflected that if each major superior of our membership had the
opportunity to serve on the Board and come to know one another in this
common effort, we would experience “effective collaboration” all at
once. However, we know that this will develop over time. At this time,
I can tell you that I know myself privileged to share governing
obligation with these women, and I know myself enriched by their truth
and their fidelity. May God increase in us the desire that our hearts
and our minds be enlarged by collaboration.
Now let me share
with you the work of the Council on your behalf in recent months. When
the Board of Directors visited Rome earlier this year, our visit
providentially coincided with the visit of the Executive Committee of
both the Leadership Conference and the Conference of Major Superiors of
Men. As a consequence, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated
Life and Societies of Apostolic Life invited our Executive Committee to
meet together with the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference
with the officials of the Congregation.
Clearly we must
here perhaps more than anywhere else galvanize our efforts to put on the
mind of Christ and be transformed by a sincere effort to dialogue
longing that as Pope Paul VI defines dialogue, we might truly know “the
internal drive of charity which seeks expression in the external gift of
charity”. We have in this invitation to an effective dialogue between
our two Conferences a privileged arena in which to grow hungry for the
truth of Christ, which always beckons to unity. As Pope Paul the VI
continues, dialogue is “an appeal of love, an exchange of gifts”
involving the human subject in one’s entirety.
Once again we have
the exhortation of the Church “you must try”. On October 8th,
we had our first meeting following our meeting in Rome. I can say that
each of us present was sincere and willing in undertaking this task. We
have to establish a basis for dialogue upon those truths about which we
agree. We had what in Cardinal Kasper’s words might be described as a
“dialogue of nature”. We shared the circumstances of how we each know
ourselves called to religious life and how we understand our vocation
today and into the future. We cannot agree that we each represent an
emerging ecclesiology, because we do not believe that either
conference’s role is to define or redefine an ecclesiology, which
encompasses religious life and defines its place in the one Church
founded by Jesus Christ, inherited by His successors, and unfolded in
time by the magisterium. Our role is not to define the Church, but to
be defined by the Church. Then our task is to take the defining
elements of our lives and live them with faithfulness infused with
creativity and vitality born of love. We also believe that as we are
told in Sacred Scriptures, prophecy is never born of man’s willing—it
and, therefore, prophecy is not a role we can simply ascribe to
ourselves. In all of this, we know we are privileged participants in
building the Body of Christ. Our shared longing is for what St.
Augustine reflects upon “where the unity given by the Spirit reigns,
there can be only one stone, but it is the one stone made out of many.
How is the one made out of the many? By their bearing with one another
in love.” (Exposition on Psalm 95, verse 2)
How frequently we
have made reference to the invitation extended to religious to be
“experts in communion” born of our efforts to live our life in common
within each of our communities and the fruit of which is realized in our
apostolic missions. This work, i.e. communion, is paramount and
reflects the particular genius of the II Vatican Council in its inspired
inception, its work, and its concluding. Only our human frailty has
narrowed its vision and its purpose. We must long for an ever-greater,
more enlarging truth about ourselves and our communities about this
Council. We must long to be reconciled in Christ for the sake of His
Body the Church.
I cannot encourage
you enough to work for unity in truth whenever you find yourselves.
Heeding the admonition of Pope Paul VI, we must be aware that “… the
desire to come together as brothers (Sisters) must not lead to a
watering down or whittling away of truth” (ES88), but on the contrary,
may the desire grow in us to know the mind of Christ through revelation
and tradition and the unfolding teaching about religious life in
continuity by the magisterium. May we be enlivened to share truth in
love, because truth is always liberating and enlarging if shared
according to the mind of Christ.
And speaking of
the mind of Christ, I will conclude with this reflection from our Holy
Father on the Our Father: “The word “our” is really rather demanding.
It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our “I”. It
requires, then, that we strip ourselves of what is merely our own, of
what divides. It requires that we assist the others – that we open our
ears and our heart to them. When we say the word “our”, we say yes to
the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather His new family.
(Jesus of Nazareth 141)
|
