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