Spiritual Ecumenism and It's interplay among Modern Religions and Beliefs

SPIRITUAL ECUMENISM

Someone somewhere should be asking himself or herself whatever this whole spiritual ecumenism is all about? But as one questions, is also as one opens his or her mind to learn and live in the sense of personal discipline that is consistent and coherent in a personal belief in what one conceives God to be. Ecumenism is simply that way of approach where we put our belief in contact with other religious beliefs who may not necessarily be in line with our way of living but that sense of creating an open means of dialogue not in our terms and conditions but in an open-minded way, respecting each other's views and expressions for in differences do we find our being. Spiritual ecumenism is about rediscovering the brotherhood among Christians. Today we can dare to say that dialogue has somehow faltered in situations and moods and in some ways, we are even now talking of religious crisis and tensions 

Today spiritual ecumenism and dialogue have to create a turning point in the spiritual realm. This calls each committed Christian to enter into dialogue with ancient oriental and orthodox churches, that talk that has to be based on Petrine ministry. The debate is all about the consequences of reformation which have to be reevaluated and confronted, for nothing is impossible that we cannot address as a family, for a family that prays together, stays together. It's all centred on the question of apostolic succession in the episcopate.

According to our catholic understanding, both are constitutive for full church communion and therefore, Eucharistic fellowship depends on the solution of these questions. It’s not easy and probably long. In the start of ecumenical movements, it was driven by a special movement, by spiritual ecumenism, which is the power behind the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity” started mainly by the Abbe Paul Couturier, the grand apostle and power of spiritual ecumenism.

Church unity cannot be achieved by human endeavour alone; the unity of the church is the work and gift of God's Holy Spirit. Only a renewed Pentecost, a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit, can bestow on us the unity of all disciples of Christ for which Jesus prayed on the eve of his death on the cross: "That all may be one" (John 17:21). Ecumenical work, therefore, is a spiritual task and can be nothing other participation in the high priestly prayer of Jesus. Spiritual ecumenism is at the heart of ecumenism. This will build itself on prayer, especially common ecumenical prayer, for the unity of Christians, for personal conversion and individual renewal, for repentance and the striving for personal sanctification (Unitatis Reintegratio, nn.5-8, There-in, UR).

The question of truth interacted with many non-theological factors, and different experiences, which lead to mutual alienation and consequently to misunderstanding and different doctrinal positions as well. Eastern and Western Christianity didn't break apart at a certain point in history, there was a long process of much alienation. Even today, we meet our orthodox brothers and sisters despite our extensive common heritage, our almost full communication in the same faith, as Paul VI observed, we still sense a deep historical continued difference in culture and mentality, which sometimes creates serious difficulties for dialogue. 

The orient churches are sceptical about the conceptual theology which has developed in the west since medieval scholasticism, particularity in modern times. For them, it is the doxological and apophatic theology and its underlying liturgical and mystical experience which are important.

The churches of reformation are not so much concerned with the doctrine of justification as with the extensional significance of the message of justification. Our present intellectual milieu which on the one hand is influenced by post-modern relation and scepticism and on the influenced by also longs for spiritual experience and spiritual alternative to our modern and post-modern lifestyle, which many feel to be empty and void. After the breakdown of, and disillusionment. 

Modern ideologies and utopias, there is a distrust of any doctrinal position, yet at the same time a search for a spiritual experience, vague and residual as it often maybe. In this context, we will only be able to make progress in our missionary endeavour if we return to the spiritual roots of Christianity in general and of ecumenism in particular and search for a renewed ecumenical spirituality.

Ecumenical spirituality has its dangers and traps. Spirituality is a much used and ambiguous concept, which has become a mere slogan or merely an emotional sense as an escape from and a substitute for, an objective confession of faith. There are lots of temptations which have emerged with tendencies of seeking a spirituality apart from objective faith of the churches, sooner or later becomes empty and void, it can’t help the churches to overcome their differences and it becomes ecumenically useless. Spirituality is a word borrowed from French Catholicism. Translated, it means 'piety'. But this doesn't cover the whole meaning of the term. The dictionary of Christian spirituality defines spirituality as the attitudes, faith convictions and practices which determine the life of men and women that helps them to arrive at the perceptive reality. This has to be understood as the spirit-effected way that Christians conduct themselves before God. This will include faith, the exercise of piety and conduct of life, it signifies a lifestyle guided by the spirit.  This has to be grounded on development of the Christian existence under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, this is the base to start.

Spirituality has to be understood in two components: that from above which is beyond the human reach, this is the working of God's spirit, the other from below that is represented by human conditions and circumstances of the Christian existence. This emergence the tensions between unity and diversity. Spirituality has to be understood as a proper understanding of tensions and conflicts between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the world, as it is understood from the biblical perspective. 

In the 16^th Century, Luther could no longer reconcile his spiritual experience, centred on the experience of justification, in faith and grace that he expressed itself in the piety of indulgences and the whole system of priestly sacramental and institutional meditation of grace as it developed in the late middle ages. This means that different spiritualties have a high probability of division, where the doctrines divide but spirituality unites. 

This shows that we do not stand from that which divides us but with what we have in common. This starts with a common Christian experience. These experiences help us to understand our differences better. Therefore spiritual empathy is needed. Spiritual spirituality is about listening and opening through different forms of piety, it means readiness to rethink and convert, but also to bear the otherness of the other, which requires tolerance, patience, respect and not least goodwill and love which doesn't boast but rejoice in the truth(1 Cor 13:4-6).

Economical dialogue only succeeds where all this works to some extent, to succeed, trust is built and friendship established. Where this is not possible, everybody is sufficiently intelligent to find objections to opposing arguments, such dialogues will never conclude. We have to leave it to the lord whether they will ultimately, lead to heaven or hell. But when there is friendship and common spiritual ground, the situation changes.

Ecumenical spirituality, however, is not a magic formula which will easily solve ecumenical questions and present ecumenical crisis. Spiritualties, which are faith incarnate in the world and culture, so carry the danger of syncretism. Spiritualties can also be appropriated for political reasons and aims, giving the Christian ideologically pseudo-spiritual character. Every spirituality must be questioned about the spirit behind it, whether it is the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the world. 

Spirituality demands the discernment of spirits. This spirituality is not an exclusively emotional affair devoid of the question of truth, rather, it helps, enables, and even composes us to seek the truth. It doesn't mean a painless escape from theology. Spirituality demands theological reflection and theological discernment.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

Discernment has come to us with a bang hence, today, it sounds a sort of slogan in religious circles because it is being used in almost every retreat, conference and religious catholic gatherings. But what needs to be understood from the time go, is that this comes to as a retreat manual of St. Ignatius of Loyola, that is being re-read from the ecumenical point of view. There is a wind breeze creating a breath for better respiration and a sign of new life. The Spirit is a vital principle of human life, the place that holds a person’s intellectual perceptions and attitudes of a will. Therefore, this can be understood in the spiritual realm as the Spirit of God that is creative, a life force in all things, that which works in full reality of what we today can call creation. Therefore, we can say that the Spirit of the lord is indeed that which fills the whole world, and that which holds all things together (Wisdom 1:7, 7:22-8:11). This will drive us to start everything from a divine perspective. Hence, this Spirit can't be hidden behind the church walls or withdrawn to its innermost self. Wherever true-life appears, God's Spirit is at work.

John Paul II in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio. He states:

The Spirit, therefore, is the very source of man's existential and religious questioning, a questioning which is occasioned not only by contingent situations but by the very structure of His being… The Spirit's presence and activity affect not only individuals but also society and history, people's, culture and religions. The Spirit is at the origin of the noble ideals and undertakings which benefit humanity on its journey through the history

Ecumenism is not an end in itself, ecumenical spirituality too must look beyond itself. Jesus prayed that all may be one so that the world may believe (John 17:21). Bearing common witness to the world and more convincingly in the Christian witness in the world following the underlying principle derived from the late Middle Ages in the thoughts of Ignatius of Loyola where God can be found in all things.

CHRISTOLOGICAL BASIS

In the Bible, the Spirit is not only God's creative power but also God's power over history. It speaks through the prophets and is promised as a messianic spirit (Is. 11:12; 42:1). It's the power of the new creation which turns the desert into paradise and creation which turns the desert into paradise and create a place of justice and righteousness (Is 42:15)…Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts" (Zech 4:6). The spirit rests upon him so that he can preach good news to the poor and proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and liberty for those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18). His resurrection happens in the power of the spirit (Rom 1:3) and the power of the spirit (2 Cor 3:17). No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3).

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only son, who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him known” (John 1:18). The new start from Christ. Discipleship of Jesus shows itself in modesty and humility, and in what Paul calls the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22).

Jesus is present through word and sacrament. Renewal of our baptismal vows and liturgical commemoration of baptism is, therefore, a basic element of ecumenical spirituality. Baptism is oriented towards Eucharistic sharing. In the one Eucharistic bread, we become one ecclesial body (1 Cor 10:17). It's, therefore, a deep pain for all who are engaged in the ecumenical movement that normally they cannot share the Lord’s Table. This suffering of so many Christians must be a further impulse for all who are responsible for promoting Christian unity.

The Eucharist is a mystery of faith, where we reach consensus only by an exchange of faith lived out in a deep Eucharistic spirituality. An ecumenical spirituality of prayer, centring on the week of prayer for Christian unity celebrated in January or the week before Pentecost. Like Jesus himself, an ecumenical spirituality lives by prayer and, like Jesus on the cross, suffers and endures in prayer the experience of being forsaken by the Spirit and by God. (Mk 15:34), the experience of our ecumenical difficulties and disappointments, our ecumenical desert experience.

THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

The Spirit is given for general good, the different gifts of the Spirit, therefore, have to serve each other (1 Cor 12:4-30). The spirit is given to all beliefs and the church as a whole. The church as a whole is the temple of the spirit (1 Cor 3:16-17, 17; 2 Cor 2:16; Eph 2:21), built up by all the faithful as a living stone (1 Pt. 2:5). The spirit doesn't work in opposition, but in togetherness and the working for each other. The highest government of the spirit is love, without which all other charisms are worth nothing. "Love is not jealousy and doesn’t boast, is not arrogant or rude…It bears all things and endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4-7). Where there is a church there is also the spirit of God, where is the spirit of God, there is also the church and all grace. 

Thus the Spirit is the principle of the life of the church, the spirit's function in the church can be compared with the function of the soul in the human body (LG n.7). Ecumenical spirituality, therefore, is ecclesial, the community spirit, that lives by the witness and celebration of the liturgy. Ecumenical spirituality is cultivated in ecumenical groups and gatherings. These groups should not separate themselves from a community of the church, from which it bleeds. Its critical conscience of the church, reminding her not to withdraw into confessional self-sufficiency, but rather undertake courageously all possible and responsible steps to promote Christian unity through and “exchange of gifts” taking and using the riches of other traditions and thus seeking greater ecumenical unity in order to achieve the whole concrete fullness of catholicity.

Ecumenical spirituality is about an examination of conscience in the existing reality of the Church, always thinking ahead prophetically. It calls for working patiently and persistently to find consensus. We need to always attempt to keep the unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3). John Paul II described such spirituality of communion as the recognition of the other in his or her otherness. The spirituality of communion means to know how to make room for our brothers and sisters, bearing each other’s burden” (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish distrust and jealousy. 

There should be no illusions unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become a mechanism without a seal, “masks” of communion rather than its means of expression and growth (Novo Millennio ineunte, n.43). Without the spirituality of communion, institutional communion becomes a mere machine without a soul. One God in three persons, existing in an intimate exchange of life.

ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE

Ecumenical spirituality is an anchored revelation that comes through Jesus Christ once and for all. (Heb 9:25). No human concept, no dogma can fathom these riches. All our knowledge is partial (1 Cor 13:9); the dogmas of the Church are true because they point with absolute certainty beyond themselves to the Church as true with absolute certainty beyond themselves to the unfathomable mystery of God. Thus the church is the people of God, on the way in that faithful assurance and absolute certainty that these are being held in the truth, yet nevertheless recognizing that truth which has been revealed once for all. The Second Vatican Council states “Through the centuries the Church has constantly been striving for the fullness of divine truth” (DV.8). 

Thus the Church is the people of God, on the way, in the faithful assurance and absolute certainty that they are being held in the truth, recognizing that they are also on the way, being led over more deeply into the truth which has been revealed once and for all. The Church must always strive for the fullness of divine truth. (John 16:13). One way is through spiritual experience that includes ecumenical spiritual experience. Ecumenical dialogue is not only an exchange of ideas but an exchange of spiritual gifts and spiritual experiences (UU n.28). Every Christian can do this, in his or her place and manner, for everyone is an expert in his or her way, someone who has had an experience and wants to pass it on. “When you meet, each of you contributes” (1 Cor 14:26).

Ecumenical dialogue doesn't mean abandoning one's own identity in favour of ecumenical "hotch-potch". It's a profound misunderstanding to see it as fostering doctrinal relativism. Ecumenical dialogue doesn't aim at spiritual impoverishment but mutual spiritual enrichment. We discover the truth of the other as our truth. The spirit leads us into the whole truth, he heals the wounds of our divisions and endows us with full catholicity. We have all by now learnt a lot from the experiences of our protestant brothers and sisters about the significance of the Word of God, about Holy Scripture and its exegesis, in turn, they are leaning from our sacramental reality of signs and from our way of celebrating the liturgy.

In our relationship with the oriental churches, we can learn from their spiritual wealth and their respect for the mysterious, in a relationship we can share our pastoral experience and our lived experiences, in dealing with the modern world. In the words of Pope John Paul II which have practically become a slogan nowadays, the church can learn again to breathe with both lungs.

Ecumenical dialogue doesn’t aim at converting others to our side. Naturally, individual conversions cannot be excluded, one has to treat them with great respect for the underlying decisions of conscience. 

It is not a question of conversion to another church but a conversion of all to the full truth of Jesus Christ. These are no ecumenism without conversion and church renewal (UR, n.7), a continuing and never-ending process. We are all being called to conversion that will lead us to the examination of conscience and cannot be separated from personal conversion and the desire for church reform (UUS, n.16); 24; 83). Eph 4:13, we become one, we become one in Jesus Christ. He is our unity, overcoming our historical divisions. Dialogue should always lead us to reconciliation. Reconciliation doesn't mean abolishing the different positions of the partner, nor does it take over the partners or absorb him. Reconciliation recognizes the partner in his or her otherness. Becoming one in love in that identity of the other is not abolished or absorbed but rather confirmed and fulfilled. This unity is grounded on the love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The archetype of the church unity is like an icon of the trinity (LG, n. 4, UR n. 3).

We are called upon to remove misunderstandings and divisive difference and reconcile them again through reintegration them in the whole of the Gospel. We are to recognize the different forms and formulas, the same truth, the truth that is so rich that it cannot be fully expressed in one formula but only with complementary formulae, which we need to reach a theological agreement.

Unity can only be understood and accepted as a spiritual experience, an experience that, naturally, cannot be the only individual but must have ecclesial character. An act of trust in the other, with different formulae, images, symbols, and concepts, means and believes the same mystery of faith that we retain in our tradition. The consensus is always declared by a spiritual judgment of the church. It never drops form the sky. It has to be prepared by many at different levels of the life of the truth. The unity of God prepares the unity of Christians. It's not us to set deadlines, the spirit alone determines the time. For that during the second Vatican II, Pope John XXIII spoke about such as a new Pentecost. Ecumenism needs magnanimity and hope, as far as what we do rightly God’s spirit will one day give us this renewed Pentecost.

© Nyamunga Joseph Baptist'19

Books consulted

Kasper, W., That They May be One, the Call to Unity Today, Burns & Oates 2004.

 

 

 

Post-Modern African Catholicity, the Two Thirds Perspective

Sometimes we tend to live as if we don't have any theology or simply not interested in theology altogether. The people of God seem to be disillusioned and a bit mesmerized by what is happening in the Catholic Church as a whole and disgusted by their local ordinaries and people of the cloth at the local level. This if not so is a glim picture in most African countries. The situation seems to be out of hand from pedophiles crime, corruption, scandals, syncretism, murders, mismanagement, poor leadership and lack of direction. These are challenges we in the two-thirds of the world are being confronted with. Maybe let's call it third world countries, maybe that is a more easy term our mind is accustomed to.

The pastors seem to be contented to remain in the parishes waiting for the sheep rather than going out to look for the one lost ones, the 99 sheep look worth enough that why bother to go out to look for that other one which on its own volition decided to leave the group to look for another route. How many times do we too find ourselves in this state in our day to the Christian life? This is the kind of picture many people of God have of the Church, a church self-sufficient, autonomous and self-actualized, no need to go out because it's already out there, the brand is clear, no big deal.

For many years we can remember, we have all depended on the priests, and bishops for all sorts of solution, because of we have grown thinking that they are the ones whom God listens more than us, that in itself shows that we have lived in that sin without confessing for a long time sin of overdependence or call it parasitic attitude: economically, spiritually, family, counsel management. It is now dawning on us that we need to reclaim our rightful place and our called upon obligations as Christians baptized and sent out. The bishops and priests have to allow professionalism to take place and proper leadership and management skills applied in church management.

The church is not for the world and needs to be out of the world. The church is in the world and has to not only use modern tools of the world but the same tools but a different form of approach, this world which is globalized, fluid and politically perfumed. The church seems to be lost in the busy commercial business centers and completely her voice choked with the world demands and pressures. Today it's easy to get a stressed priest than a happy and contented priest, why? The priests are also struggling to make ends meet, the priest has business entrepreneurs, their own investments, dress in ties instead of white collars, they are dressed in style, drive posh cars and also swing themselves with modern smartphones and life is cool…The churches are abandoned, how can you know when a priest has abandoned his church post, look at the confession boxes, full of dust, dark, mosquito breeding places, altar clothes dirty, chalices which have never seen Brasso cream, etc., but he drivers a new car for that matter.

This kind of status quo needs a complete overhaul, rebranding, renewal, remembering African values and religious heritage. This has to find itself in the core of African theology and philosophy, where harmony has to be rediscovered within its diversity. The African church has been seduced into socio-economic and political imperatives of development and her challenges overwhelmingly mishandled by her pastors, the priests, and bishops. Politicians are calling shots with a lot of big sums of money, where bishops are rewarded with cars by the government of the day and we all know that politicians don't give everything for free, selling the pulpit/ambo to the crooked politicians. Every year episcopal conferences issue pastoral letters to the nation but these letters seem written for others not for themselves to follow but their sheep.

The local ordinaries should believe in what they write to their Christians, they can’t be in our eyes as special people who do nothing except command and wait for offertory in their residences. The bishops have to fold their sleeves and get into the vineyard to work, weed, and harvest and carry the yields to the church. Paul says a bishop who doesn’t pastor his sheep should not eat. For many years most dioceses and Catholic Church has been managed by missionaries from abroad, but with time, now we have African local sons of the soil. But these African bishops should be Africans.

John Paul II on his first trip to Africa he said: In Africa, there is certainly maturity, a youthful maturity, a joyful maturity, a strong maturity, and the maturity of being themselves, of finding themselves in the church as in their church, not in the church imported from elsewhere. This is their church, the church lived in an authentic, African way.

This is itself shows that African bishops need space, freedom and creatively already in 1969, Paul VI speaking in Kampala had proclaimed Africa’s right to create her Christianity. In the expression of a single faith, pluralism is legitimate, even desirable, in this sense you may and you must have an African Christianity.

This we see it being built up or emphasized by John Paul II in 1980 when he said Not only is Christianity important to Africa, but Christ himself, in his body is African. Sometimes we tend to enter into a western ideological attitude of thinking that the mission, the African church has to be built by the missionaries. The people should be helped to be self-reliance to face the economic-financial challenges, enough is going on around that needs to be tapped. Missionaries can only be guests who come from abroad and who are welcomed among them, can at the best be of some assistance, at worst, you can be an obstacle unless they help the people the missionaries work to no end but demission.

African theology has to train pastoral agents who are all surrounded and self-reliant without having the temptation of falling into the comfort of the sacristy and only waiting for benefactors for doing many projects with little to do with spiritual renewal of their people they serve. Most of the dioceses fall into the temptations of ready-made consumers good parachuted from abroad. Our formation institutions have to rediscover traditional values and reclaim the reflection of being truly Christian, truly Africans to continue growing in cultural heritage. The seminarians are to be helped to cultivate culture and hard work to build the African church, for they are the force of the church for tomorrow. There should be an awareness of what evangelization is all about. In the past the seminarians would be sent to ask the people and then bring back the report, they had the opportunity to talk to the people and question them on various items and issues because the people of God were the protagonist, today it remains the work of library and in the comforts of theological rooms and debates about what may bedeviling the people of God, theology is done for the people of God rather than doing theology together with the people of God.

Today the people of God should be helped not to depend on priests nor missionaries but they should reorganize their christian community in such a way that portrays a true church that is alive and well. The right place to start this renewal is in the area of liturgy as it brings together the greatest number of ways of expressing faith. In this, we need to rediscover the power of bodily expression, especially in terms of gestures and rhythms, and rhythmic movement that can even become a dance. Artistic creations bring outlines, shapes, symbols, and colors that have special meaning for a particular community beats of drums, tonalities, that are in time with the soul. The composers of these chants are not always priests or religious but often laypeople.

The homilies during mass should bring back the climate of dialogue as a means of community participation in the thought of the preacher. These thoughts are tested and verified by the community. The assembly expresses their reactions spontaneously and truly in dialogue. The preacher receives direct feedback on his thoughts through these reactions, and he will know whether he has been understood, and whether there agreement or not. In the end the community sings the credo, this truly reflects a consensus and expression of shared faith, and together they stand in the light of the word of God. Direct contact with a word of God is what they ask for, right there where the spirit breathes. This requires effort of interpretation. Pope Paul VI got it right away when he landed on the African soil:

"You remain sincerely African even in your interpretation of Christian life, you will be able to formulate Catholicism in terms that are absolutely appropriate to your culture, and you will be able to bring to the catholic church the precious and original contributions as sons and daughters of Africa, which is particularly in need at this hour of its history”. Africans have to start a creative theology that seeks new ways to express their faith in the liturgy. In any celebration, there are moments of welcome and exchange of greetings. In the church, we need to think very well, where we can offer a sign of peace in the Church, especially when we live in a church where reconciliation is at the centre of the people's lives. To many, it would be right and fitting after the penitential rite, and not after the Lord’s Prayer. This doesn’t mean we want to change the liturgy, but try it out because we have catholic groups who do it like the new catechumenates. As Pope Francis says, let’s not through the Holy Spirit out of the hall during the Pan Amazonian Synod. Sometimes we have to confront certain realities and contexts that we confront every day of our lives on the road to holiness. We become reconciled and we enter into the communal celebration with hearts pure and fresh.

But from the trend of things in the Catholic Church, some of these changes need to be discussed by the heads of the church, and yet the people who live the reality do not see the need for it once it is brought back with a European tool kit. This is what the Pan Amazonian synod is struggling within these days of October at the Vatican to respond to the needs of the regions. With the scarcity of priests, that means there are few celebrations of the Eucharist…the laypeople have to invent a way of evangelization in this scarcity. From the look of things, nobody is so taken up by the issue of whether theologically and politically.

In the African context, the family is the true structure of understanding the African church, without this in mind we may be doing evangelization in futility. It's not enough to just theorize about development, but it's also essential that we have a good foundation of what we are theorizing. The emergence of small Christian communities is reliable bases from which to promote a holistic approach to development that will last. These small communities should provide:

a)      A setting which the organic functions of traditional solidarity can expand a sense of responsibility can be awakened, especially among the laity; a spirit of relationship and sharing. This is a typically African culture that has to be fostered and deepened.

b)      We need to build up an African spirit of evangelization, a new inspiration for a new culture, not only for Christians but for non-Christians as well.

c)      We as Africans have to be mature to have our self-criticism. It's easy to criticize others, but self-criticism is another ball game altogether. In any Christian community, it's inescapable as it is that of the family. We are being faced with modern trends where we are picking up on traditional values and rediscovering self-criticism in a group setting. We need to be responsible and committed to our call to make sure that African catholicity is fully alive as a church. This calls for a change of attitude in our thinking and to reflect instead of expecting the priests to provide ready-made answers. Today the people of God have to know that they are responsible for their church even to the point of expressing appropriate opinions, and this gives them a desire for information and formation (cf. the millennial generation epoch).

d)     Our ancestors like John S. Mbiti and the rest who have gone before us in faith to the creator, whose writings and courage, remolded and rehabilitated the bleeding African dignity, cultural and religious heritage that slavery and western colonialism we are a celebration is what we have to own in the name of ATR and to study it like any other religion on the globe, not a religion of spirits, mixed with witchcraft which even they tell us is something good, the western world are good at bullying Africans more so when they don’t understand what an African mind is up to. We now need to speak out, shout out and they have to listen. Mbiti and his colleagues taught us to see our African religions and cultural heritage as valid ingredients for theologizing and authentic inculturation of the gospel in Africa, form the context of African, and its perspectives.

Ancestors are mediators of life, of blessings and of virtues, all of which have their sources in God. They are also models for taking responsibility for life. This acceptance of responsibility concerning life brings us back to life and at the same time transmitting the same life to others. This is our moral obligation as Africans to state our case and presentation without fear of anything or anyone or power. African ancestors are models of saints of the family, saints of the clan. This has to be fully understood or reduced to a biological level alone. It's just enough to make Jesus vibrant, entirely cared for, and secure. Yes, Jesus is our Ancestor. He is no stranger since he admitted and understood as an ancestor. He belongs to us and we to him, he is our own. We have to think of Jesus as a person-oriented towards a living person, on a spiritual level. Because what is involved here is a personal relationship with the living Christ-ancestor, older brother, a liberator. This is understood at the levels of celebrations, ceremonies and rituals, religions, because in an African family the stages are punctuated by dowries and births, depending on the region and population concerned. It is as widely practiced as had been an original thought.

Polygamy form is the result of social tolerance. It attempts to resolve certain problems raised by the experience of the first complete marital contract which is, in fact, monogamous. A dowry is usually paid in the initial phase, not by the betrothed alone, but by his family with or without his contribution. There has been an evolution in it but the structure has not changed. There has incorrect to continue imaging that polygamy is the original and most common means of marriage in Africa. That form is monogamy, beyond all possible doubt. One can state today as a definite fact that sociological proof has conquered the cultural truth about these forms of marriage. A theological reflection can now lead us with some certainty to valid pastoral guidelines.

Today we do not want anybody to translate African realities in their own eyes but have to allow Africans to tell their stories as they are also open to the international global perspective. As they say until the lions learn how to write its story, the hunter will always write the victory story. Sometimes Africans write stories, experiences but they have simply brushed aside, or no publishing house is interested to publish them, hostility is emitted right from the presentation by the people we call book reviewers because they do not just understand what it is all about and it looks they will never understand.

We need to spread the word, shed light on the cultural, spiritual, moral, social and scientific complexity of our African traditions. Why? All expressions of evil the counterpoint of life, have been lumped together and label it witchcraft. This is a pejorative label and one that is inappropriate. This has led to the marginalization of the essential values which have been consistently ignored, misunderstood, and despised. This is a great challenge to theology. This challenge has to lead us towards a new consciousness and new demands for a theology of Christ, whereby it has also to give us the impetus to boldly set ourselves to work. The African educative systems must initiate and inculcate moral and traditional values, which should not only be academic but those values written in the hearts, stories narrated as a way of cultural formation.

There should be room created for something new and truly lived. The big question is. Is the west in the state of listening and accepting similar cultural kenosis in collaborating with African Traditional religion and philosophy? The pastoral aspects signify the necessity for faith to express itself within an adequate discernment to that of apostles in Jerusalem and Vatican II, reading the signs of the time. The light of the Holy Spirit leads us to discover the problem, the strength of the Spirit will lead us to find the solution.

© Nyamunga Joeseph Nyamunga'19

THE AMAZON SYNOD, "Do Not Throw the Holy Spirit Out of the Hall..."

The Amazon Synod, the Role Women in the Evangelization: As Seen and Lived by An African Missionary, Context of Bolivia

By. Nyamunga J.B (MA PastoralTheol CUEA/ Lic. Missiologia, PUU Roma)

The Latin American woman and above all a Bolivian woman in that matter is today rejecting the place assigned to her by men, of being passive, inferior, emotional, irrational, and sinner par excellence, she has discovered the new face of her identity, becoming increasingly visible and speaking up in society and the church. She feels this is the right moment for her new historical moment, a time fecund with proper new fighting frontiers out of poverty. Like Mary Magdalene, the Bolivian woman is rightly reading into the Bible to bear witness to the resurrection and deny the final triumph of death over life. They are becoming witnesses to life in despair and defeat, proclaiming the opening up new roads of hope, looking at a great Bolivian fighter, defender, and liberator called Bartolina Sisa as the model of their struggles.(Cf. the confederation of Women Bartolina Sisa Foundation -Bolivia) 

Bartolina Sisa was an indigenous woman who mobilized her people more so the indigenous women to wage war against the yoke which the Spaniards had placed on them, together with her husband Tupac Katari, today most rural indigenous women confederation in Bolivia take up her name as a true model of emancipation and liberation, to them, she was a martyr, brutally killed. She was born on 25 August 1750, in the province called Loayza department of La Paz (Political capital of Bolivia, while the constitutional capital is in the department called Sucre).

The spirit was towards forming small groups where women and men toiled side by side and witnessed even up to their martyrdom. This was all towards the women desire for freedom, combating the colonizers in Latin America. This was taking place in the whole of las Americas…seeking change, which later came to be hijacked by the military regimes from the 1960s in many Latin American countries. 

In Brazil for example in 1964 the military government closed down all institutions of civil society or put an army general in charge of them. The only institution that was not under the military was the church, which became a privileged space where people could still meet to discuss their problems. It was during this time that the faith came to be understood as having social implications. This is the time we can say was the strongest in the Brazilian church. This meant that students and priests became involved in social problems, and some went to live in urban slums or poor rural communities. Living closer to the poor, they came to understand that religious salvation was to be obtained through their commitment to the here and now of the suffering "other". (Cf. Sobrino 1984:96-103).

The bible study groups began to appear, reflecting on the word of God and comparing it with their own lives. The members gradually discovered ways to aid themselves on their journey along the road of faith towards the building of God’s Reign. These Bible study groups were also the germinating seeds of the basic ecclesiastical commitment (CEBs) a new way of being for the church on our continent. It was precisely the CEBs that women began to exercise a new and important role by assuming leadership positions, stimulating and promoting many services such as works of charity, teaching catechism, organizing liturgy, spreading the word of God. The predominantly male face of the church began to change. This will remind you that generally that Latin America women are more religious men. They experience God in their day-to-today lives and their hope for a better future they march on and are still marching on.

Thus the church in Latin America a continent which is so rich and yet so exploited and so full of misery has always made the preferential choice towards the poor. It is usually the women who suffer most from violence and exploitation. Hence the clamour of women emerges from within the cry of the oppressed, imploring the heavens for a place, for space. The difficult task of building the Reign of God involves the concrete struggles of women, all kinds of persons marginalized from society. These grass-roots movements began in the community centres of the churches. The organizational form that became the most important was the Mother's clubs who always hold their weekly meetings of women in the church hall to learn how to sew and to join scraps of cloths together to male clothes and quilts, where they also reflect on the word of God. They work together and begin to trust in each other and see their lives form common perspective, just like any other normal women chamas- Swahili for women clubs, merry go around, or micro-finance organization, a strong bond of solidarity arises among them.

From the communitarian experiences, women discover the strengths of being united and organized and begin participating in people's movements. They begin to struggle for a better life for all, in this manner following Jesus Christ who came to bring "life and life plentiful" (John 10:10). They are always prepared to open themselves up to more to the world, they feel the crushing weight of male chauvinism. Going to church and community meetings is one thing, but getting involved in social movements is another. After all the home is a proper place for women, the men claim. Thus the women have to struggle not only against their husbands at home but also against other men at the union hall, in associations, and at political meetings. These struggles are usually undertaken together with others for better living conditions. The first demands are always about better health conditions, then schools, for better transportation, and for a place where they can plant and live in short, for the basic elements necessary to be able to live a proper human existence.

Their struggles have always led to victories. Many have been taken prisoner, tortured, killed. But female resistance is a hidden force which they have. Their lives, which have been marked by oppression and marginalization, have given them fibre, and the will to struggle, anchored in faith and hope. The strength emerges especially at moments of crisis, such as widowhood (Ruth, Gen.38) or war (Judith). So they continue courageously the struggle to build a better world for their children and grandchildren. 

Movements of women from among the working classes of Brazil continue or emerge today. They are sustained by faith and by the churches and make their presence felt particularly concerning social questions. The situation arising from the shortage of priests, these women become involved with the people in a way that contributes enormously to their unity and organization. They call reflective groups together, they pray and moved by their faith in God and their confidence in life and love. They have not given up amidst the difficulties that unveil in their struggles. They are fully engaged in coordination, inspiration, catechism, liturgy, Bible study groups, helping the needy, and so forth.

The participation of women in society leads them to express their very lives in the struggle for better living conditions for all. In the communities, the women draw from the Bible and find that they too have citizenship in the church due to the rights conferred upon them by the sacrament of baptism. This was clearly stated during the participation of women at the Sixth Inter-ecclesial Meeting of the Basic Ecclesial Communities) (Cf. REV (Brazilian Ecclesiastical Review). Through these experiences, they discover that their space in the church as beloved daughters of God. In the CEBs they are no longer just a passive presence, but discover new ecclesiological values and bring up new questions for theology.

Most of these CEBs are outskirts where even the means of transport is a hell of an experience that if you have no fibre for a mission you give up before reaching, this is the reality we are dealing with in the Amazon Synod. Majority of women who live in these poor areas, most of them are responsible for parishes, assuming the functions previously reserved to the clergy. These new practices besides questioning the mode of their consecration bring them closer to the people. Such living experience involves them closer to the challenges: marriage, abortion, sexual relationships, violence against women, motherhood, educating and raising children, the drama of the unwed mother, and so forth. All these lead to religious women to a discovery of herself as a woman. 

They are now rereading the Bible as a history of a people linked to the poor by religious tradition and from whom they can learn faith in day-to-day life. There is a discovery of the image of God committed to the liberation of the oppressed, of a more approachable Jesus who chose his friends and followers from among those on the fringes of society, and new image of Mary, closer to the problem of women, not as a passive and subordinate woman but as active and participating and having prophetic dimension. (Cf. Mary Mother of Jesus, 1981).

The women catechists are the ones who are responsible for most systematic initiation into the Christian faith, mainly of children and adolescents. Eighty per cent of these are dedicated to catechism are women. The evangelical strength of the catechists is tremendous, not in the sense of memorizing, but in developing an impressive dimension of creativity. This is Latin America is a revolutionary task that the church cannot afford to ignore. They are open to an effective and shared manner to the problem of their people. They are capable not just militant activity in the people's struggle for justice, by the valuing of life, by the importance of sharing goods in short, by an alternative to our consumerist society.

As a result of these diverse pastoral activities, a woman whether as a religious amid the people, or as a catechism teacher, or as a layperson engages in the movement or religious activity begins to feel the need to reflect on her faith. Reality raises so many questions for the Christian faith. And in the trying to respond to these challenges, the woman begins to study theology to have improved pastoral participation, taking the example of Martha of Bethany as an inspiring figure for women. According to the gospels she managed to combine domestic chores (Luke 10:38, John 12:2) with religious commitment and also theological reflection. Luke and John present her as a deaconess, a technical term used to designate service to the community. Jesus makes his supreme revelation to Martha. "I am the resurrection and life". He explains precisely what kind of messiah he is. And he asks, "Do you believe this?” Martha responds with a magnificent declaration of faith: Yes Lord you are the Christ, the son of God who is to come. Until now theology has been the exclusive sphere of men. Today women are perceiving their way of creating theology where the elements of daily life are intimately mixed with talk of God. 

A woman who knows intimately the fragility of life, the need to shelter and protect it, has also an original point of view regarding the creator of life, that the same God who through the Bible, speaks to us of the fullness of life, that same God who, through the Bible, speaks to us of the fullness of human beings. This is because of a woman's way of being, thinking, and living has never learned how to be compartmentalized. This tells you more than women who do theology in academic centres tend to be always in contact with their fellow sisters from poor classes. A woman's theological thought and deeds are always in solidarity with the situation of others and are the fruit of her compassion and identification with them. As she theologizes the life experienced by all God's daughters and sons are always towards the integral dignity. (Cf. Maria Clara Binger, 1986:19).

The Amazon synod as Pope Francis says "let us not kick the Holy Spirit out of the Hall" for Pope John XXIII set the stage by his revolutionary statement "let's open the windows to feel the breath of the Holy Spirit". One may ask himself or herself what these two have in common. They are completely centred on the Holy Spirit and they want the Holy Spirit to cause some bit of movement, now that the Holy Spirit is here with us whether you closed the window, or throw Him out, something will have turned around the whole ambient, that those who want to throw it out, might be the ones catapulted to speak with the power of the same to change the reality before their eyes.

The world of today is not only witnessing the phenomenon of women voices coming out of oppression but a shaped and focused vision, not what their brothers, husbands or the Church want for them but what they, themselves are making, the voices of faith to be heard by the modern world. They are saying Here we are here also to be counted. They have decided to take their destiny into their hands and for this, they will have to fight through the dominant masculine world with their given God gifted ways and nurture. They are moving away from oppression, the complainer, the forgotten, the little-remembered, women today are starting to be heard, they are making their presence felt, taking on more and more jobs and functions, carrying out tasks of responsibility and explaining in a new discourse their new ways of being and doing.

Bibliography References

Sobrino J., The The manifestation of the God of Life in Jesus of Nazareth,(Sao Paulo: Paulinas 1984),96-103.

CAVALACANTI, T., “On the Participation of Women at the Sixth Inter-ecclesiastical Meeting of the Basic Ecclesial Communities”, in REV (Brazilian Ecclesiastical Review).

Gebara, Y., “Women Make Theology”, in REB 46 (Petropolis: Vozes, 1986).

Binger, C.M., “And Woman Broke Her Silence”, in Perspectiva Teologica 46 (September/December 1986.

THE SPIRITUALITY OF CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE

The Spirituality of conflict and violence is an idea introduced to us by a great Benedictine Monk called Thomas Cullinan OSB. He offers practical hints on how one can get involved in the building of the community in obedience and humility, but this once done well will always create conflicts at the end of the day, you either become a matter for the sake of the Reign of God by dying severally or simply become nice and go unnoticed as a missioner. H states “to participate in life, we ought to be humble and obedient before a given reality, and this reality is that of being witness to the truth”. 

That means that we have to be artisans in God’s world, artisans whose primary and only task is a loving and total response to truth. We are called to look at the example of Christ who came to the world to bear witness to the truth. (John 18:37). This truth is the present reality of the peoples, present lives, what is happening to them, among them. The question we have to confront is what does the divine love affair called “Reign of God” look like? Sometimes we seem to divide the truth according to the arrogant life we live, the western understanding of independence or individualistic attitude which has come of age to the approach of freedom. It’s this freedom that keeps the self-intact and demands the right to choose as one likes. The self-concerned, not self-forgetfulness. It seeks to be free from reality and relations. It doesn’t receive freedom and peace as a bonus and a gift.

If we are to reread and reexamine our actions to that of the Gospel it will come clear that if our primary call is to a loving response to truth, born out of the original obedience and humility, then we cannot avoid conflict. It’s an inherent part of living for truth, its conflict unsought bur freely accepted. The gospel is not about mere private virtues and individual spirituality. It’s about living in the public forum in the light and truth of God’s love affair with people, it’s to understand why Jesus passed through non-comprehension, conflict in our own times. Most of the world evils in this society is being perpetrated by high-minded people who seek themselves as virtues (clever devils). The virtuous are those who are good at crashing others in the religious community and in the church, whether they know it or not. Jesus was always in favor of the naughty and be in collision with the well-behaved. The question one may ask is why?

In the Gospel of John 9, we come across a community that was primitive to assume that sickness or affliction should be linked with personal or family guilt. This is what we modern people of God have fallen into and we find that we are not sick ourselves but fickle. Fickle means changing frequently, especially as regards one’s loyalties or affections. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind? Some Pharisees said, “we are not blind surely!?” To these questions, Jesus answers: Neither he nor his parents sinned. Blind?

 If you were, you would not be guilty but since you say “we see” your guilt remains”. This man born blind has the vigour to go head-on with those in authority, his challenge could be as saying, to the government minister of defence: why are you so fascinated by the peace movement? Are you going to join it? The man’s parents cannot disown him, he is their son, and yet not wanting to be counted among the subversives. Jesus was not in conflict with the Law, the Torah as such, it was a confrontation with the treatment of the Law as an ideology.

The word “ideology” has a long-time historical unfolding of many years. Not in its neutral sense of the sets of ideas which any culture or class which has to interpret the world, but pejorative sense, referring to a set of ideas, theories, and principles which have ceased to be relative tool for understanding reality and have become an absolute, a machine, into which reality is fitted. Today we have been enticed with the western individualist consumerism, Islamic fundamentalism. This has turned into violent forms in Latin America, parts of Africa, Philippines, South Korea, and Hong Kong, etc. If the church has to confront this reality it will have to admit that it will be conflict and what we are doing today, we tend to be nice and hard in picture.

Thomas Cullinan delves into ideological characteristics:

High minded: These the ideological mentality is long-cherished thinking, what in the west they call individualism, Marxism, the Law, each is at the root of bad or careless thinking, but careful thinking in real matters of values. Very plausible, mentally attractive, even addictive.

Limited Criteria: the criteria of economic reduce what is perceived as truth, to a limited realm, leading to totalitarianism, even in the names of democracy and freedom.

Simplifying criteria: Simplifying the ambiguities, varieties, contradictions, and mystery of human reality.

Righteous: A great sense of righteousness and freeing the self from the sense of own guilt.

In Jesus’s time, it was impossible for many people especially associates in Galilee to keep the Law. These were, therefore, “accused and outside the Law” and in some way guilty. The voices are heard in our ears when undertone hatred and blames start flying around, for example in times of overseas and donation packages: “If those people “over there” chose to work and better themselves, they would do so than depending on us”.

Guilt misfit: these brand themselves as being in the bondage of fate, the bondage of sin developing a language that is pervasive. Jesus liberated the blind man not only from being called “sinner through and through from birth”.

No oppositions: “who is not for is against us” A strong ideology, having to set the scene as a simple confrontation between two diversities has no place for the third parties. Everyone is either Loyal or the Enemy, or a dupe of the terrorist’s a regime based on “natural security”.

Ideology legitimizes extreme nationalism in a high minded way so that it is obvious that it is better that one man even tens of thousands should die for the sake of the people. Anyone who is not one hundred percent for us, then he is one hundred percent in the camp of the enemy. No room to create alternative forms this can be seen in central America an example in time, some countries in the horn of Africa, ideologies are self-justifying and once you hear them say “we told you” that is a pure statement of a junta a regime that has literally killed the opposition, bought them and now they are singing their songs as what befell Nicolò Machiavelli with the Medici in Florence. “Had Nicolò Machiavelli, who until now had never bowed down before money or power, been broken at last? Does his prince show his readiness to change his political colors and abandon his once fearless style of addressing great men, in the hope that Medici might shed their suspicion and restore him to the fold of Florentine politics?” (Erica Benner, Be Like the Fox: 246 (2017).

Perversion of language: Because those in authority want to justify their stay, they are ready to pervert language to its own ends. The conviction of being right is a stumbling block to seeking truth and perceiving what taking place is really. The use of language is manipulative in communicating the truth. This affects even the mainstream churches, at what point of saying, in the name of Christianity, that we can only be peacemakers from a position of power? Is that not the ultimate denial of the truth?

Jesus lived for liberation and hope where we as the church should stand today. It’s along these lines, not along moralistic lines, that we should see Jesus as being counted among the sinners, and that we should understand the Lamb of God who takes away sin. It should be good news that divides the hearts of many, the good news that should confront much that is accepted uncritically, Good news that would divide us even from our own brethren. Jesus did not come to bring peace at any price. The art of being vagabonds, displaced persons, fools. Can we do it? And then not be right ourselves.

How do we cope? What can we do? We need to get organized and put ourselves in order, try harder to save ourselves. Jesus talks of the reign of God is near at hand, among us, yet to be but already here. He told the people that he could or couldn’t, enter it, but never said they were in it. It demands preparation and predisposition that gift-receiving demands the social justice required by the year of the Lord’s favor, and yet it was never merited. Like all love affairs, God’s Reign was enigmatic, better talked of in stories and celebration than in books and theses. It was recognized only those who know it by experience. You could know it but not know about it. It was recognized only by those knew it by experience. You could know it but not know about it. It’s the love of God in people’s lives, his antecedent Reign, which urges us. It’s not building something on his behalf. He is not this spectator God, wanting for us to do great things in his name.

Once we are all truly alight, then we can’t but be effective, being true to our calling, a candle burning truly. If you are, you will give light, whether, or how, or when, or to as a great patron of God, but will become transferred signs pointing beyond works, they will praise your Father in Heaven. Vincent Donovan in his book entitled Christianity Rediscovered gives an account of Maasai in Tanzania. A Maasai elder speaking says for Fr. Donovan “ a person who really believes is like a lion going after its prey” it’s nose and eyes give the speed to catch the prey, all the power of its body is involved in the terrible death lead and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down, the lion envelops it in its arms (front legs) puts it to itself, and makes it part of itself. This is how the lion kills. This is the way a person believes. This is what faith is. When you are afraid of the bend, having friends to go around the bend with is precious or even guidance from those who have already gone around.

Communion is based on a living conversation with the poor, the forgotten, the voiceless, the wounded, and then disposed of. So we carry in ourselves, wherever we are, deep suffering, we bear wounds of love which never heal, the wounds of the risen Lord. A Christian is not merely a striver for liberation yet to come, but the bearer of a liberation of which the down payment, the pledge, has already been made. It’s an enigmatic co-existence of suffering and joy which makes our lives, especially in the community a living sign, from being a patron of God’s reign we are called to be instruments of the Reign, called to freely, as it were normally. 

A conversion always involves death. This side of the grave, constant dying, only that new and freedom may be released in us, a community of faith. Freedom from fear makes us invincible “you can’t kill me for I have died already”. The way to contemplation is obscurity to obscure that it is no longer even dramatic. There is nothing left in it that can be grasped and cherished as heroic or even unusual. And so…there is a supreme value in the ordinary routine of work and poverty and hardship and monotony that characterizes the lives of the poor and uninteresting and forgotten people in the world. We are not relaying artisans in God’s world, are we! We are God’s work of art (Ephesians). All the time we think we are the lion, in the end, the lion is God.

 Book consulted:

Cullinan, T., “A Spirituality for Conflict and Violence”, in SEDOS, Trends in Mission, toward the 3^rd Millennium, (eds,) William Jenkinson – Helene O’Sullivan, Orbis Book, New York 1993, 239-43.

Benner, C., Be like the Fox, Machiavelli’s Lifelong Quest for Freedom, Penguin Books (UK)  2017.

Donavan, V., Christianity Rediscovery, Maryknoll, Orbis Book, 1978.

Blessings, Temptations, Idolatry... The Poverty of the Heart...

Life is a blessing that we need to embrace, it will come with its temptations, it will be sometimes threatened, but all the goodness that comes with it: physically, intellectually find themselves in one goodness that of God the Father. This has the following consequences when we can put it in terms of personal relationship and encounter. All the conflicts, use of goods, intellectual capacity builds itself in the view of what we can pick from the scripture and who Jesus is to each one of us. Sometimes Jesus looks at us and invites us but we think it is impossible to do that what he is calling us to do. "Jesus looked at them and said, "With men, it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God" (Cf. Mk 10:27). We need to get to the whole integral perspective of what we are looking for in our lives today, all whatever we are looking for is related to God the Father, that self-abandonment, to start walking with Him in the sense that every day one has to ask the question of who am I? constant evaluation and reviewing of life as a subject, identity, with whom do I live within my life? The plurality of beauty, walking through the garden of flowers, mountainous places, a place of solace.

TEMPTATION

The stress of life, this can only be understood in the form that is relational between the individual with God and the fellow brothers. Sometimes we enter into ingratitude of life, lack of inner sense of origin but into idolatry, the poverty that surrounds us, the injustice we confront every day. But the poverty that Jesus is talking about is that of hope, not that of misery. In that he who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest also in much (Cf. Lk 16:10). If we are poor Jesus will have interest in us, because we are able to say Jesus is Lord: It's the poverty of the heart, living positively, with limits but accepting my limits, sobriety of life, simplicity of life, to encounter the other, the spirituality id that of openness to God, relationship back to God not to be desperate. You realize that you are alone, needy and suffering looking forward to healing. (1 Kings 17:1-16). The story of Elijah with the poor widow who had to cook the remaining food and with her son left to die, but God intervenes… (Drought, the widow), then (Luke 4), the strategic plan of God. We have God for grace but we have no guarantee, God does his work in a very interesting way, God lies even to those who are poor, who can’t give anything, yet they still find something to share like the story of Naaman the commander. We are called to live a life but with a different form of approach, a new diverse way, and form.

IDOLATRY

In life, we have many people who mask themselves leading to a limitation of self-development. This kind of thinking and living leads to some formed ideologies and scandals. This read in (Gen 3:5, Exodus 24). We are called upon to talk responsibility, not being opportunists, for it eliminates simplicity for leads too much occupation where we struggle with the inner heart's desires and uncontrolled passions. The idols will always present themselves but the true image of God can't be eliminated in us, for that is the reasons for the search of God in our lives. The encounter has to spiritual, for the gospel is not something there to be read but it's a person who so happens to be Jesus. The Jesus who calls us to follow Him, daily in the discovery (Psalm 115).

Moses discovers that the Israelites have made the idol (Exodus 32). Sometimes life comes with its ups and down, about above all we need to find the joy of listening, create a prayer of intercession among the people, for God moves, in the tent of meeting with people, united, dynamic living relationship. The face of God is that which walks, which has to be followed on the road of life. This is the spiritual tensions that St. Ignatius of Loyola talks about, spirituality as a path towards God.

(Exodus 3, Gen. 28). The real spiritual struggle of looking and experiencing this God, A God who can't reveal Himself amidst the struggles of life. Jacob wants to know His name, but in the struggles, he gets transformed but He never reveals His name. Sometimes we feel there is too much light in our lives, his presence looks very far. (Exodus 16:1ff) the people of Israel have sinned and needs to be forgiven, they are slaves are freed to get their real identity, the basic needs lack, the temptation of nostalgia, the water, and bread tested to the extreme. The gift of bread, water the portion of everyday with its limit of the day, making use of the little we have, to use it well as a gift, not to collect and accumulate, trusting in the providence of God and living in His confinement, not to occupy everything, but trusting in the divine providence.

The word, the prophetic approach of preaching, because sometimes the idolatry eludes the presumption, no space for the others (Isaiah 5). Jesus loves the poor when he says blessed are the poor, the benefits of poverty in man. No fear of loving a poor life, for it is full of sobriety, the challenge of comparing ourselves with others produces jealousy. (Psalm 39) talks about self-weakness; how envy enters into our lives. We are called upon to accept our daily limits in life…The courage to open one's eyes to the breath of God and brotherhood. The spiritual tension is those moments where God looks upon us as that which we love the Lord to remove his face from us. The example of Abel. Envy paralyzes creativity, when you want to compare the self with others, you are as you are. (Psalm 72) a psalm of hope, exultation, and discovering the breath of God in the other as brothers without which remains the breath, more breathing.

Knowing the grace of God is becoming poor to be rich in his poverty (Cf. 2Cor 8:9), although he was in the form of God, he accepted to die, die on the cross. (Cf. Phil 2:11). The sensibility of being rich but poor, living God to operate in us, creating a space in yourself to receive, create something new, the human condition, dependent on God, nearing things, proximity, without superiority, down to earth, the relational touch with the Father. Losing yourself to get all…having contact directly with the life of the other. (Matt 15:21-28, Mk 24:7) The great conviction with Jesus, the woman transforms Jesus in the way of looking at issues, she insists and turns the tables around. The truth of things, open hospitality.

Sometimes this can hit us in matters of inheritance debates in families (Cf. Luke 12:13-20, Luke 16:19-31) closing the self in self-possession, finding a way of sharing to get fresh air. The episode of Abraham and the rich man allows us not to wait for the world to break then help the person near us with our presence, but we need to multiple this hope even when the hope seems to be elusive.

This will have to lead us to tenderness, compassion (Cf. Mk 1:14, 6:21) walking on water, and (Mk 8:27) multiplication of bread. (Mk 13:28, 4:12, 25, 14:27.28). We need to flourish the tenderness, the sensibility that entails in each one of us, self-disposition of the self, the problem and difficulty with others, something moving inside me, the intensity of the relationship. Sometimes he who betrays us is someone near us but eating today is the tenderness of life and attention in a particular way of living a relationship.

 

© Nyamunga J.B’19

HOW RELEVANT IS RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Today, many missionary congregations run the risk of rendering themselves as ordinary people working to fill up the spaces left by the old. Those who enter religious life today seem to replacement of the dearth of manpower in the Northern sphere. There is a complete confusion of religious orders. The paradigm seems to change. It is no longer North to South flow, but South to North, South to South, East to south, there is no dominancy and superiority complex that was established by the missionaries of two centuries ago, who packaged the gospel in a military and colonial ransacks, going out there to bring light to those possessed by the devil and living in darkness.

The intention of going out was to bring the good news but with hidden intentions of looking for raw materials for their industries, labor, and systematically and systemically grounded to constantly provide. The missionaries then dared to tell the indigenous to close their eyes, and when they opened their eyes they fund that their land was surrounded by the white men with guns pointing at them, and land occupied and turning the natives into slaves of the missionaries and business commodity of export in a new name of slave trading with stock markets in Portugal, Spain under the tutelage of the holy men of the holy see of Rome under the then popes and princes of the church. These are some of the challenges we have to face today as we address these stimulating, provocative reflection and food for thought.

Religious life today live in a typical global village, what we have to commonly call Globalization, a revolution of ideology, technology, communication and evangelization. The religious congregations have to be in sync with this reality, lest they become irrelevant and close shop. Living today in the world seems like living in the village, where people of diverse nations and culture extend literally themselves to the others and creating an ambient of a common home. Globalization today can be compared like a double edged sword for the religious. On one has, its comes with virtues for those who are sober and focused not to get lost in the market places, it tears borders, unites and divided humanity, eliminates poverty and secures world peace, because it’s now east to know what is happening where.

Today the religious community have to create paradigm shifts as far as ecological crisis is concerned, the amazon is burning, the lungs of humanity, that now has to have a radical shift in the way of having a religious identity today. Will the religious remain in their chapels praying or they get to work by being contemplatives in actions. All creation is groaning to produce a more united and fraternal world (Cf. Rom 8:18-23). The relentless pursuit of profit and disregard of moral and ethical considerations create artificial needs and promotes consumer’s mentality, reinforcing a secular lifestyle and this the religious life has not been spared.

Immigration today is the in-thing on the global for a discussions, you ignore it and it comes knocking at your door. People from different cultures not only are in much closer contact today, but also are oftentimes forced to live alongside each other. Many of our cities are inhabited by groups of people of widely diverse cultural origins and religious affiliation. We have become centers of multiculturality and supermarkets of plural beliefs and divergent values, we have people who walk into church, look at how beautiful they look, take photos, and move out, believers without belonging, poverty migrating from rural to urban areas, stretching resources, and amenities, creating slums, crime of all kinds from robbery to terrorism.

We are being confronted with the challenge of secularization where the religious are slowly turning to the world as a point of reference for the explanation of the mysteries of life and for the search for is fulfilment. Extreme forms of secularization makes the world the exclusive, and reject any transcendent, point of reference, the words of Pope Benedict XVI, the “tyranny of relativism”. Secularization manifests itself more powerfully as a lifestyle than as a doctrine, a lifestyle that shows little interest in our openness to, if at all, the transcendent and relies more heavily, often exclusively, on the world as the source of human fulfilment.

The effect of this in the decline of vocations which are becoming scarce in the Western Europe and North America, and the few that there still are tend to join the newer and more conservative religious congregation. This comes along with the lack of vitality and creativity and fear of taking risks and assuming new initiatives. Stagnation sets in and there is great uncertainty about the continued relevance of our life and mission.

This makes many think of a perception that the religious life is no longer a meaningful life-option, with a reluctance or unwillingness of the youth today to make a lifelong commitment. Today’s youth no longer see the religious life as a relevant option through which they can channel their idealism and generosity.

It looks as if the religious belong to the past; the future belongs to the new lay movements, the lay movements have replaced the religious as the special forces in the church, for the lay movements over the religious congregations especially those religious congregations which, in the mind of these sectors of the church, have overemphasized the reforms of Vatican II and have consequently opened up too much to the modern world.

Sometimes we domesticate the religious life by considering the religious as simply a workforce or employees of the hierarchical Church. This empties consecrated life to specific character as a charismatic gift and prophetic voice in the church. This undermines the relevance when we lose the specific identity which can no longer play its specific role in the church and in the world.

Today we need a post-religious life. The church is no longer the church of the West with its American spheres of influence and its export to Asia and Africa. The church has become a polycentric Church. Europe is no longer its exclusive center. Other centers are emerging: Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. One expression of this fact is the formation of the regional or continental conferences of bishops, even if their role in the church is not yet fully recognized or accepted. It is no longer possible to simply give directives from the center and that it is necessary to take into account the concrete situation of the local Churches.

There is also a demographical change or what we commonly call population shift from the north to the south of the world. The church has shifted from the global North to the global south (Latin America, Africa and Asia) with multicultural membership and multidirectional mission. The dominant culture of the congregation, which was usually European culture, where the mother province in Europe was largely transported and copied in the mission provinces in America, Asia, Africa, Oceania.

Theology is now having new terms or let put it this way that is now being contextualized and now speaking of inculturation and building up of the local Church in the world. There are many modalities as there are cultures. Even in religious congregations the charism of the founder could find the different expressions among the various cultures of different people. This comes to be seen as religious congregations are no longer composed of members from different nationalities all learning congregation’s way of life shaped by dominant culture, but members from different nationalities sharing the richness of their cultural diversity. Gradually the religious co congregation becomes nit just the home of one culture but the place for the interaction of various cultures.

This means that order and harmony in religious orders are threatened when they become truly multicultural. When multiculturality replaces mono-culturality as the substructure of religious congregations, uniformity and order, and in a certain sense, religious orders become what we can say religious disorders for certain.

A multicultural membership raises the question of the differing understandings of elements of the religious life, like prayer, community, use of money and the vows. The questions start to rise: what does voluntary poverty mean when one has been forced to live in poverty all his/her life? What does poverty mean when one has more money or comfort in the religious community than his or her family in the village? What does obedience mean to someone who belongs to a culture where one never decides on his or her own? What does obedience mean to someone who belongs to a culture where one is expected to always obey one’s elders?

Today Europe is no longer the sole supermarket of vocations or missionaries. This has entered into what we call in missiology reverse mission, now those who gave missionaries can no longer do so, but have to come to terms of receiving missionaries from the foreign lands where they were to come in and do the same thing they went out to do.  South to North, south to south mission in contrast to the past where mission was largely a north to south reality. The missionaries claimed to bring the gospel to the lands and lived among the natives. The claimed to bring the gospel of Jesus, but unconsciously also carried along what was viewed as a superior culture, buttressed by advanced scientific knowledge and developed technology. It was difficult to distinguish between missionary’s activity and colonial rule.

The world church is no longer neatly divided into the missionary church here and the mission churches there, but a fusion of religion and spiritualties. Mission has become multi-directional, a movement from all directions and to all direction. Hence, this creates disorder in religious missionary orders. The question we need to confront ourselves with is: Are we not just replacing European missionary personnel with Asian or African missionaries, while the way of doing mission remains basically the same?

We need to network amang religious congreagations in the Church and in the world. We need to become international in membership, not because there is now dearth of vocation in the North, but being open to diversity of the kingdom of God. We need to witness that the kingdom is a kingdom of love that includes absolutely everyone and, at the same time, is open to the particularity of every person and people. It is possible for people of different cultures and nations to live in communion and solidarity, in peace and harmony.

The religious congregations can play a prophetic role in fragmented world and be a source of hope for world often torn by cultural, ethnic and racial conflicts, violence and wars. To promote international or intercultural religious communities is based not just on the scarcity of vocations in some parts of the world, but on the fact that the heart of the religious vocation is the call to witness to God’s kingdom and be a prophetic voice in human society and a source of hope for the world.

The ideal of course not internationality or mere presence in the congregation or community of members from different nationalities or cultures. Nor is it merely multiculturality where the ability of members from different nationalities or cultures to simply co-exist side by side each other. The ideal, rather, is true interculturality, that is, the congregation or community which allows the different cultures of community members to interact with each other and thereby mutually enrich the individual members and community as a whole.

This will be characterized by three things: The recognition of other cultures, allowing the minority cultures to be visible in the community, respect for cultural difference, that is to say avoiding any attempt to level off cultural differences by subsuming the minority cultures into the dominant cultures, and then the promotion of healthy interaction between cultures in seeking to create a climate where each culture allows itself to be transformed or enriched by the other.

The genuine intercultural community is one where members from different cultures truly feel they belong. This kind of community doesn’t happen by chance, or by simply putting together under the same roof people of different nations or cultures. Rather, a true intercultural community needs to be consciously created, intentionally promoted, carefully cared for, and intensively nurtured. It requires some basic personal attitudes, certain community structures, and particular spirituality.

Consequently, members need a specific program of formation, both initial and ongoing, which prepares them to live effectively and meaningfully in intercultural community. Indeed, it is essential that members are convinced that interculturality is an ideal to be sought after and value to be promoted. The other is intecongregational collaboration that brings aparticular richness to the local church with a different style of presence of the diversity of charisms of religious congregations. This presents to the local church with proper coordinated ensemble of diverse charisms.

This should not just be a strategy of mission, but about MISSIO DEI, God’s mission first and foremost, and that our call to mission is but to share in God’s mission. This calls for proper collaboration with all others who are similarly called by God. Whereby we come to realize that mission is larger than what each individual or each congregation can do. It is even larger than what all congregation together can do. Collaboration is real stuff of mission. We collaborate not because mission is God’s in the first place and the primary agent of mission is God’s Spirit.

This mission has to involve the educated, highly motivated and actively involved laity in church running. The laity have increased today because there is a scarcity of priests, both in the north and in the south. This has led to the expansion of lay ministry in the church many lay people have begun to occupy ministerial and administrative positions which were once also exclusively held by priests. It’s an apostolate in its own right, based on baptism rather than derived from the temporal order. Hence the emergence of the so called new lay movements, where lay people take upon themselves to evangelize culture and transform society.

Religious congregations have always had groups of lay people associated with them: the third order, tertiaries, associates, affiliates. People who are attracted by the charism or religious congregations and who wish to share in their spirituality and collaborate with their mission. This raises the question of a lay expression of the charism of the Founder which goes beyond the confines of a religious institute or even of religious consecration. Another form of religious collaboration is partnership with autonomous or independent lay movements, religious congregations properly collaborating with or supporting the mission of the laity.

Partnership with the laity also reminds religious that religious consecration is not an escape from the world but entails involvement with the world, and that religious consecration needs to be lived in the context of the daily life situations of people: family, children, school, neighborhood, workplace, etc. It reminds them that their vocation of witnessing to God’s Kingdom includes a call to transform and renew the world in the light of the Gospel, and that this vocation and mission is to be lived in the midst of the joys and hopes and griefs and anxieties of real women and men in an often broken and fragmented world.

Realizing that transforming the world involves one to become concrete, practical and effective, it will entail getting enmeshed in the socio-political-economic realities of human society. It is here that partnership with the laity becomes crucial.

© Don Joseph Baptist Nyamunga, fsa