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 Superior General's concluding words at the intercapitular meeting
Brother Álvaro Rodríguez Echeverría
Superior General
Rome, May 22, 2004
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Dear Brothers,
We have arrived at the last session of our Intercapitular Meeting and with you I give thanks to God for these two weeks which we have lived fraternally, and during which we have reflected on and shared experiences and projects about our prior commitment to serve the poor and after them to serve all young people by means of Christian education.
I believe that it has been a favourable time of grace which will enable all of us to put the Chapter propositions into practice during the coming three years with new strength and enthusiasm. We have likewise reflected on other important priorities such as Association with laypeople, restructuring, renewal of our community life and so on, as also very practical points such as our Assembly of the year 2006. With Mary we too can sing today our Magnificat.
I am not going to make reference to the topics dealt with because during these weeks we have been able to study and enter deeply into them. I am going to centre on another priority which seems to me to be essential also and on which I am convinced our future is going to depend in great measure. I am referring to the quality of our religious life. I believe that the three words suitable to describe it are: passion, radicalness and meaningfulness.
The document for the next Congress on the Religious Life to take place in November, organised by the two Unions (men and women) of Superiors General, has for title With a Passion for Christ and a Passion for Humanity. It is a synthesis of what our life is called upon to be. We have to recover the "first love" about which Hosea speaks to us, and to return to the essential motivation, to the founding experience of the absolute of God in our lives such as we express it in our formula of consecration to the Trinity: "to procure your glory as far as I shall be able and as you will require of me" - the expression of our passionate love for the Lord, the unique reason which justifies our being Brother - the glory of God which translates into passion for humanity - passion which makes us look outwards beyond ourselves, our egoism and our personal interests in order to centre us on God and on the building up of the Kingdom.
We possess a marvellous spirituality centred on the person of Jesus, Word incarnate, and nourished by his Word, a spirituality capable of unifying faith and life. To be a leader at the level of District, Sub District or Delegation means keeping alive the impassioned fire which made us set out, and spreading it among our Brothers. We have to avoid becoming mere functionaries or administrators; we have to avoid the bureaucratisation of our mission.
Brother Robert Comte in the leaflet on Lasallian Identity distributed during the Assembly speaks to us about this danger of becoming a functionary and he invites us to examine ourselves periodically based on the dynamism of our beginnings. Of course we must not neglect this dimension of function but we have to be conscious that without a profound spiritual life, centred on Christ and on the Gospel, our mission will reduce itself to social work, useful but incapable of giving full meaning to our lives. We must not forget that Religious by definition have to be "more a shout of the absolute of God than a function; a presence of the incarnate Word more than a task."
We can ask ourselves to what point our religious life is an impassioned experience of God and, to what point is our life above all a following of Jesus in his dedication to the Father and to his brothers. We can likewise ask whether our own spiritual life/prayer life is an exercise to be completed or a vital necessity.
In the last years we have made an extraordinary effort to return to our founding origins. However I am not sure that we have made the same effort to return to the Gospel, to a Gospel without glosses as Saint Francis liked to say. I am concerned about the superficiality and lack of passion by which I often live, and we often live, our relationship with God.
We have to be evangelically meaningful and not just professionally efficient. We have to be an ecological supply of spirituality. We have to be sacraments of the necessity and the possibility of living relationships that are deeply rooted in the love of Christ. If we do not live our religious lives with radicalness, our life loses meaning. Is it not symptomatic that in our last Chapters and in this very Assembly we have included the link to spirituality and to our consecration to God in the topic of Community which it would rather be proper to deal with more explicitly?
We cannot overlook either the temptations which lie in wait for us today. I refer above all to:
 Secularism against which the Founder warned us in his last recommendations. Many times our language when we speak of God is more timid than that of many laypeople who live their faith with conviction. Occasionally young people with vocations who come to us seeking spirituality and meaning do not find in us a response or assistance. Nevertheless Paul VI defined the Religious as a professional of God and the Rule tells us that the distinctive character of the Brothers' community is to be a community of faith where the experience of God is shared. (48)
Consumerism. This is another problem which has invaded our communities. We have everything. We could ask ourselves what our lives mean for laypeople when they have to work hard and struggle to get the basics while we ourselves have so many opportunities. Consumerism is a permanent temptation and in practice we live by it. We need to force ourselves towards a simpler life. Let us limit ourselves in our tastes, in the thirst to need so much. What can be had sometimes should not turn into the habitual and we should not forget the call that the Rule makes to us to live as persons of ordinary means (32). Religious life is called upon to offer another model of society and not to copy the style of society in which we are living.
Individualism surrounds us all in a world in which the person is the centre of gravity. It is linked to another current problem namely relativism, the tendency to create for ourselves a subjective made-to-measure religion. I think that the best antidote is the Founder's spirituality: balanced, human, integrated, Christ-centred and which places great value on discovering God in reality, in fraternity, in gratuity and sincerity.
The impact of new technology. This poses big challenges for us at the level of formation both initial and continuing. We have to undertake formation and to do so making use of new means. It is not just the danger of pornography but that of the time lost and which at retirement age can be a pretext for not seeking new apostolic engagements adapted to such an age. It is likewise important to have in place clear standards for the use of cell-phones, laptops, etc. These matters need to be studied, there are no ready answers, but reflection is required. One criterion would be to see things through the prism of mission. Is this necessary in view of the work and of the apostolate in which we are engaged? Is it just for personal affairs? We frequently criticise groups that are fundamentalist and closed. No doubt they put forward a spirituality that is almost always questionable but which leads to creating convictions, while we ourselves, what have we to offer? Only facile answers? Paradoxically young people today are seeking to be challenged by offers that are radical and demanding.
Brothers, we should not forget as St Paul tells us that the Lord acts through weak and sinful instruments. We should not be fearful in facing up to our inconsistencies and weaknesses. Lasallian convictions about a God always near who guides our lives and in whose work we are engaged should keep our hopes alive. Moreover there are other motives for making this grow.
A first motive is to note in our statistics the clear tendency of recent years for the number of Brothers making first vows and final vows to exceed the number of Brothers in temporary vows or the number of Brothers with final vows respectively leaving us. The ratio is 93/37 for the first group and 43/29 for the second (Statistics for 31st December 2003). This indicates greater perseverance, due no doubt to the grace of God and to the better quality of our formation programmes.
I would like secondly to share with you two lovely experiences that I had in my recent pastoral visits. The first was in Papua New Guinea while visiting Holy Trinity Teachers' College in Mount Hagen. At the conclusion of an assembly three young students came up to me and said spontaneously: "The Brothers are different." I asked them: "Why do you say that?" and they answered: "Because the Brothers are always available, they always have time for us." I acknowledged to them that I felt very proud to be a Brother.
The second was more recently in Turkey. There was a meeting with more than two hundred students of the St Joseph's College Kadikoy in Istanbul with a chance to ask questions. Our students are Muslims except for five or six Christians and the educational system is totally secular. We have a small community of three Brothers and just one of these works in the school. One youngster said to me: "I think that being like you is a good thing. Could you describe how you became a Brother?" My conclusion is that to be a Brother is worth the effort and that we ought to do all in our power to bring it about that after us new generations can continue our mission. Living our vocation with authenticity seems to me to be the indispensable condition.
On 21st May 1996 seven Trappist monks were assassinated in Algeria. The Bishop of Oran, Most Rev. Pierre Claverie, O.P., just forty days before being assassinated himself, wrote:
From the beginning of the Algerian drama they often asked me: What are you people doing there? Why do you stay? We are there because of the crucified Messiah. For nothing more and no-one else. We have no interests to safeguard nor influences to preserve. Nor are we motivated by any masochistic perversion or suicide. We hold no power. We remain in Algeria as at the bedside of a friend, reaching out a hand in friendship to him, soothing his brow. Because of Jesus, since He is the one who is suffering in this violence which pardons no-one, newly crucified in the flesh of innocent thousands. Like Mary, like John, we stand here at the foot of the cross on which Jesus is dying, abandoned by his own, ridiculed by the people.
Is it not perhaps essential for a Christian to be there, in the places of suffering, of abandon? Where could the Church of Jesus Christ be except there above all? Though it may appear paradoxical, the strength, the vitality, the hope, the fruitfulness of the Church come from there. In no other place and in no other way. All the rest is just smoke in your eyes, a worldly illusion. The Church deceives itself and the world when it presents itself as a power in the midst of other powers, as an organisation even humanitarian or as a spectacular evangelical movement. It can shine, but it cannot burn with the love of God, "strong as death" (Sg 8, 6). In effect, it is a question of love, before everything else love, only love. A passion for which Jesus has given us the taste and marked out the way: "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15, 13). |
Brothers we too are here because of our crucified Messiah. We must not pretend to be a power or a powerful or prestigious organisation. We do not have interests to safeguard nor influences to preserve. for us it is a question likewise of love and only love, of a passion which like that of Jesus should induce us to give our life for the children and young people whom the Lord as confided to us. It is a question of uniting mysticism and mission and creating living spaces in abundance. I conclude with two questions:
1. How can we insure that, what in our beginnings was a new and meaningful gospel experience, can still maintain its relevance?
2. Are we convinced that, what is more important than administering a past, is looking ahead in spite of everything and turning towards the future? |
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