THE ASCETICISM OF OUR CHARISM:

Continuing our previous reflection, let us consider the second part of Don Bosco’s motto, “… coetera tolle”, which, as the Rector Major says in his letter convoking the GC26, is a summary of Salesian “asceticism, as expressed in the ‘dream of the ten diamonds’.”(AGC 394, p. 7) A little later, he explains: “ ‘Coetera tolle’ motivates the consecrated Salesian to keep away from the ‘liberal model’ of consecrated life depicted in the letter, ‘You are my God. My happiness lies in you alone’.” (AGC 394, 34-35; the letter referred to is in AGC 283)

1.CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM: EXPRESSION AND CONSEQUENCE OF LOVE

Let us try to take a broader view by starting out from some “human” considerations. They will help us to understand that asceticism is necessary not only for consecrated persons or for Christians alone, but for every human being to the extent to which he desires true happiness.

In the first quote he makes in his Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, mentions Friedrich Nietzsche, whose criticism of a certain type of asceticism bordering on the masochistic, is widely known: “They (the believers, above all the priests) gave the name of God to what opposed and afflicted them: indeed, there was much heroism in their adoration!”¹ No doubt, we need to be humble and sincere in acknowledging the elements of truth to be found in these criticisms (which much of the time were very few). Oftentimes, the model or ideal of Christian perfection was not really Christian, but drew on other sources, and even on the concept of a human being that had nothing to do with the Gospel. In the loving plan of a God who wants the good of his sons and daughters, it is not possible to separate the objective aspect (“perfection”) from the subjective aspect (“happiness”). We have to admit that in the not too distant past, the insistence on perfection without happiness led - like the swing of a pendulum - to the present situation, especially that of postmodern youth culture. Nowadays there is a quest – even obsessive at times - for happiness (or rather, for immediate pleasure), but without any objective reference-points (“perfection”).

When we spoke of love as the basis of the ‘da mihi animas’, we said that, just as it alone can give rise to an authentic Christian (and Salesian) spirituality, so too it alone is the source of an authentic asceticism. What’s more: there is no asceticism so radical as the one flowing from authentic love. That is why it is possible to assert that love is the fountainhead of Christian spirituality and asceticism. Or to use evangelical terms: we can only have “life” and bear much fruit, if, like the grain of wheat, we accept to fall into the earth and “die”. And all this, not because it is something “imposed” from the outside or “a price to be paid”, but because it flows from the very essence of love.

On the other hand, it is only when love flourishes and is genuinely manifested that the person attains his full self-realization because of the total integration of two aspects, the objective and the subjective: only in loving and in being loved does the human being find, at one and the same time, his fullness and his happiness.

2. THE TWO SIDES OF LOVE

Francisco Luis Bernárdez is from Argentina. He has written a beautiful poem in which he says that “falling in love” (which is the title of his poem)

is ignoring the difference between joy and pain.

St. Thomas had said the same thing earlier in a memorable statement: Ex amore procedit et gaudium et tristitia (S.Th. IIa IIae, q. 28, a.1): “From love proceed joy and sadness.”

Writing along the same lines, Moltmann says: “A man can suffer because he can love, and he suffers always to the extent to which he loves. If he were to succeed in suffocating every movement of love, he would also succeed in extinguishing every suffering and he would become apathetic (…) Therefore, a man who experiences helplessness, a man who suffers because he loves, a man who can die, is a much richer being than an all-powerful God who is incapable of suffering and love”.² This is not an absolutely new idea nor a lack of respect for God. We find the same idea in Richard of St. Victor, and expressed still more audaciously: “If God were to prefer to selfishly reserve to himself alone the abundance of his riches, when he could, if he wanted to, share it with others (…), he would be right to hide himself from the angels and from everyone, and feel ashamed to be seen and recognized, because of his grave lack of benevolence”.³

The fact is that we are never more vulnerable than when we love.… If – drawing on the “law of the grain of wheat” - love can be described as “a fullness and happiness ensuing from the total gift of oneself”, we see at once why it is not possible to separate spirituality from asceticism in every genuine experience of love. To put it concretely in “Salesian language”: da mihi animas and coetera tolle are the two inseparable sides of the mantle worn by the personage in the dream of the ten diamonds…

We find the same duality of love in another beautiful text belonging to our Salesian tradition: Don Bosco’s dream of the bower of roses. Those who follow Don Bosco, fascinated by the possibility of walking on roses, soon discover that there are sharp thorns, and therefore feel cheated. The fact is that they forgot that there are no roses without thorns, that there is no love without suffering, or better, without vulnerability…

At least twice in the second chapter of our Constitutions which bear on the identity of the Salesian, we come across this way of looking at asceticism as something intimately bound up with the experience of love. In article 14, under the heading, “Predilection for the young”, we read: “This love is an expression of pastoral charity and gives meaning to our whole life. For their welfare we give generously of our time, talents and health: ‘For you I study, for you I work, for you I live, for you I am ready even to give my life’.” And, a little later, recalling the “second motto of the Congregation”, work and temperance, our Rule of Life says: “(The Salesian) accepts the daily demands and renunciations of the apostolic life. He is ready to suffer cold and heat, hunger and thirst, weariness and disdain whenever God’s glory and the salvation of souls require it” (C 18).

3.THE “GOD WHO IS LOVE”: A POOR GOD

Just as in the previous reflection we established the basis for our passion in the “da mihi animas”, so here too we have to go deeper and discover the basis for our evangelical and consecrated poverty, for our most radical asceticism in the God we believe in, viz. the God who is Love.

We have normally sought this basis in the life of Jesus, for, as our Constitutions say, quoting our Father Don Bosco: “We are aware of the generosity of our Lord Jesus Christ: though he was rich he made himself poor so that through his poverty we might become rich. We are called to a life closely modelled on the Gospel. We choose to follow ‘the Saviour who was born in poverty, lived deprived of everything and died stripped on the cross’ ” (C 72).

Whether the example of the Son of God made man is a norm or not is something we do not wish to discuss here. But we wish to affirm the central theological concept, viz. that in the Man, Jesus of Nazareth, God has revealed himself in a definitive (= eschatological) way.

Without attempting to expand upon this last assertion, we limit ourselves to recalling the words of Vita Consecrata concerning the Trinitarian basis of the evangelical counsels: “The deepest meaning of the evangelical counsels is revealed when they are viewed in relation to the Holy Trinity, the source of holiness” (VC 21). Because Jesus Christ is the One who reveals God, he makes it possible for us to arrive at this Trinitarian basis. (I would not like to miss this opportunity to point out that, in my opinion, we have here one of the new and most important theological and spiritual insights of the Magisterium on consecrated life; unfortunately, it has hardly been developed).

Let me offer you on this point a personal reflection which I have very much at heart. In the Synoptic Gospels – take, for example, Lk 21, 1-4 – we come across the moving example of a poor widow who, putting in two small coins, gave, according to Jesus, more than all the others: “all of them contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” I had always understood this text as a powerful moral teaching, motivating us to have full confidence in God, until one day I asked myself: Could not this Word of the Lord be also a remarkable theo-logical parable? Is the God of Jesus Christ like one of those rich people who “contributed much” but out of their abundance, or is he not rather like the poor widow who gave everything for our sake, all that was dearest to him, his only Son?

Understood in this way, the Incarnation as a kenosis is an action involving the Trinity; but, still more: it is a supreme manifestation of the Trinitarian God.

But then, a question immediately arises: Does not God “change” by becoming man? Does not the Incarnation assail God’s radical immutability?

Without entering into theological disquisitions - which is not our concern - the first thing we should do is ask ourselves the deeper question of what immutability means - a concept that is more philosophical than theological. In any case, I would think that the positive content of this concept is taken and brought to completion – in personalistic terms - in fidelity, which is a typical characteristic of love, especially when we speak of God.

Calling to mind the interpretation of the Gospel parable mentioned above, let us allow Hans Urs von Balthasar to speak to us through this exceptional text:

“What is at stake here, at least in the background, is an absolutely decisive transformation of the way we look at God: from his being ‘absolute power’ in the first place to his being absolute ‘Love’. His sovereignty is not manifested in his holding on to what belongs to him, but in his letting it go. His sovereignty is to be found on a plane distinct from what we call ‘power’ and ‘weakness’. What God empties himself of in the incarnation is ontologically possible because God empties himself eternally in his tripersonal giving (…) Concepts like ‘poverty’ and ‘riches’ become ambivalent. This does not mean that God’s essence in itself is (univocally) ‘kenotic’, as though the same concept could embrace the kenosis as well as the divine basis that makes it possible. What I want to say is that - as Hillary attempted to point out in his own way – God’s power is such that it can become a locus in himself for a self-emptying like that of the incarnation and the cross, and that it can take this self-emptying to the furthest extent”.⁴

Only a God like this is worthy, not only of our gratitude and appreciation, but also and above all, of our total and unconditional love which leads us too to a radical “emptying” of ourselves in order to be completely filled with his Love and become in this way its bearers to the young.

Later on, we shall reflect on the Incarnation of the Son of God as a definitive manifestation of God’s love, and also on the God who is Love. It is within this “positive” context that we shall attempt to integrate the aspect of self-emptying, viz. the kenosis of the Son of God made Man.

4.LOVE AND POVERTY IN SALESIAN LIFE

Before presenting the last two of the Chapter themes in his letter convoking the GC26, the Rector Major states: “For Don Bosco the second part of the motto, ‘coetera tolle’, means detachment from whatever can keep us away from God and from the young. For us at the present day this becomes concrete in evangelical poverty, and in deliberately choosing to work for youngsters who are ‘poor, abandoned and in danger’, by being sensitive to the new forms of poverty and working on the new frontiers where they are in most need” (AGC 394, p. 41). Here again, by taking apostolic love as our point of departure, after the image of the God of Jesus Christ, we shall be able to give it concrete form in an authentic poverty.

In his solid but extraordinarily vibrant analysis of human life, Eberhard Jüngel expresses the relationship between love and poverty in this way:

“When a person who loves another wants to possess that person whom he loves – and in this way, and only in this way – wants to possess himself, he transforms the nature of ‘possessing’. In effect, the person whom he loves is desired by him as one to whom he can give himself, and who in turn will give himself to the one who loves him. This interchange of reciprocal giving means… that the one who loves wants to possess himself by being possessed by the other. And it means at the same time, that he wants to possess the other whom he loves as one who in turn wants to be possessed. In love there is no possessing if there is no giving in the first place. The one who loves will possess himself from now onwards because he does not belong to himself any more. He wants to be loved, and precisely by the other person whom he wants to possess. But, to possess the other person he must give himself, and that means, he must cease holding on to himself. This is the crucial point in understanding love.”⁵

To put it another way: a poverty that does not stem from love is not a poverty to be desired nor does it give us a resemblance to God. The self-empyting of the Son of God (kenosis) is, in reality, an expression of his love drawing him to resemble us: amor, aut similes invenit, aut similes facit. Our “insertion” among the poor and marginalized, which leads us to share their life, is, in reality, a resemblance of the Incarnation.

In this regard, we can also recall the words of St. Augustine in his commentary on the first letter of John:

“Whence begins charity, brothers? Pay a little attention. You have heard how to arrive at perfection. The Lord in the Gospel has set before us the goal of perfection and the way to attain it: No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. He, therefore, showed his perfection in the Gospel, and there too he recommended it to us. But you ask and say to yourselves: When will it be possible for us to have this charity? Do not despair too soon of yourselves: the charity in you is just born, not yet perfect; nourish it, so that it may not become weak. But you will say to me: how shall I know the degree of my love? We have heard how charity can be brought to perfection; let us now hear whence it begins. John continues and says: How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister^* in need and yet refuses help? Here you see whence charity takes its rise. If you are still not yet disposed to die for your brother, be at least disposed to give some of your goods to your brother (…) If you cannot give to your brother from what you have in excess, how can you give him your life?”⁶

5.POVERTY AS AN ASPECT OF SALESIAN CONSECRATED LIFE

After the text quoted at the beginning of our meditation, the Rector Major continues in concrete terms: “Consecrated life in future years will be realized in its concentration on the radical following of the obedient, poor and chaste Christ. If all three of the evangelical counsels speak to us of our total offering of ourselves to God and dedication to the young, it is poverty that leads us to give ourselves without reserve or hesitation even to our last breath, as did Don Bosco. The practice of the evangelical counsels lets us give free rein to the utmost limits of our availability” (AGC 394, p. 41).

In my opinion, we Salesians have to find in the theology of the consecrated life, behind the obvious diversity of the evangelical counsels, a harmonious and articulated unity centred on love, which gives them meaning and leads them to the fullness of holiness. Seen this way, poverty must not be seen as a “part” or a section of our life, but as a transversal aspect cutting across the whole of our life, and particularly the evangelical counsels. I would even go so far as to say, with a little play on words, that the poverty involved in chastity and obedience is more radical than that required by the vow of poverty itself.

In the Exhortation, Vita Consecrata, we read: “All those reborn in Christ are called to live out, with the strength which is the Spirit’s gift, the chastity appropriate to their state of life, obedience to God and to the Church, and a reasonable detachment from material possessions: for all are called to holiness, which consists in the perfection of love” (VC 30).

Analyzing this fundamental text, we find three statements closely linked with each other:

• every Christian is called to holiness;

• holiness consists in the perfection of love or charity;

• therefore, every Christian is called to live the “evangelical counsels”, according to his state of life.

Here again we come across a completely new theological and spiritual insight concerning the meaning of the evangelical counsels (though it is to be found, in a way, in Lumen Gentium). What is being said here is that the one and only Christian perfection, which is that of love, essentially requires the practice of the “evangelical counsels”. The way in which they are mentioned shows that it is not required of all the baptized to “profess the vows”; hence we need a better formulation to avoid making the mistake of looking upon “normal” Christians as “second-tier members”, or broadening the concept of “consecrated life” in such a way that it includes everyone. We must not overlook the fact that every Christian is a consecrated person because of Baptism.

Now, if these evangelical “values” (which are not “optional”) are to apply to every Christian, they must have the greatest possible latitude and not limit themselves to this or that marginal aspect of human and Christian existence (which would be the case, for example, if chastity were understood solely in terms of sexuality, and obedience solely in terms of a command issued by a legitimate superior “by virtue of the vow”).

They must touch upon the fundamental aspects of the human being before God:

• in relation to “things”: poverty;

• in relation to persons: chastity;

• in relation to oneself: obedience.

We must remember the first and most important “commandment”, the first “word of life”, which Jesus pointed out to the doctor of the law: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk 12, 29-31 and parallels). In the light of this “commandment”, we can understand the threefold idolatry which threatens the very foundation of our Christian (and religious) life, viz. absolutizing material things and adoring “money as a god”; finding in a person (or persons) the ultimate and definitive meaning of our life, and setting aside the primacy given to God; and finally - the most serious and radical temptation of all - putting ourselves in God’s place. Or what is even worse: instead of serving God, making use of God to serve our purposes.

Seen in a positive light, the striving for Christian holiness must consist in growing day by day in genuine love: we put God at the centre of our life as the ultimate and definitive recipient of our love; only in and because of him we love our neighbour (“chastity”), we use the goods of this world in fraternal solidarity (“poverty”), and so we find our full realization in Christ (“obedience”). In this way, and as a service to our brothers and sisters, our consecrated life becomes a humble example and a “spiritual therapy” (VC 87ff.): we renounce the exercise of certain values, not in order to induce other Christians to renounce them too, but in order to relativize them. This is our irreplaceable service, and that is why it is possible to speak of the “objective excellence of consecrated life” (cf. Letter of the Rector Major, “I say to the Lord: ‘You are my God. My happiness lies in you alone’,” AGC 382, p. 15ff., quoting VC 18 and 32).

To be still more explicit: for a Christian, the “centrality of God”, together with the radical renunciation it entails, is translated into the following and imitation of Jesus Christ: “Whoever wants to come after me but does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (…) None³³ of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Lk 14, 26-27. 33). When our Constitutions speak of Salesian life as a formative experience, they invite the Salesian not only to accept the “spirituality” derived from living the values of his vocation but also “the ascetical demands [that vocation] makes on him” (C 98).

This brings us to a very interesting theme which I shall only enunciate for the time being, viz. the meaning of renunciation, and the formation to renunciation. It is a theme of great relevance today, especially (but not only) in the area of initial formation.

On this point, I would like to present another text drawn from the Rector Major’s conference to the Superiors General:

In the short Gospel parable of the merchant with the previous pearl (Mt. 13, 45-46), we find some basic elements that allow us to describe the “phenomenology of renunciation”:

a) Precious pearls are renounced (“the merchant went and sold what he had”) not because they are false: they are authentic after all, and up till then made up the merchant’s wealth. Applying it to our reality, it is certainly not an appropriate method to try to diminish the value of what has to be renounced, to try to make it something easy to do. Deep down, renouncing “bad things” does not make for the most profound and complete human renunciation. How many times have we heard the request, as a resistance to what has to be renounced: “What is bad about what I am doing?” And one who says this is right: only that s/he has to understand that it is precisely then that the opportunity presents itself to take up renunciation in its most authentic sense.

b) Authentic pearls are renounced sorrowfully and at the same time cheerfully, because “the” ultimate pearl has been found, the one that has fulfilled the merchant’s vision and heart: and he understands that he cannot buy it unless he sells the others. If our consecrated life, centred on the following and the imitation of the Lord Jesus, is not fascinating, the renunciation it requires becomes unjust and dehumanizing… As Potissimum Institutioni puts it so splendidly: “Only this love of a nuptial character implying all of a person’s affectivity, will allow us to motivate and sustain the renunciation and the crosses that the one who desires to ‘lose his life’ for Christ and his Gospel necessarily finds along the way (cf. Mk 8,35)” (n.9).

c) The joy of possessing the “precious pearl” never eliminates the fear that maybe it is not authentic: Where it turns out to be false, my decision will have been mistaken, and I will have ruined my life. This “risk” in Christian life, and even more so in consecrated life, is a direct consequence of faith: only in faith does our life have meaning: If what we believe in does not have truth, “we are more unfortunate than any person”, to paraphrase St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 15,19). The day when, in whatever aspect of consecrated life, we can say: “my life is fully satisfying, even if what I believe in is not true”, our Institute becomes an… NGO, with the further problem of demanding certain unacceptable requirements from its members…

I conclude with the practical considerations concerning poverty offered by the Rector Major in his letter: “We Salesians bear witness to poverty by tireless work and temperance, but also by the essentials of an austere and simple life, by sharing and solidarity, and by the responsible use of resources. Our poverty calls us to carry out an institutional reorganization of our work in a way that will avoid the risk of seeming to be in the educational business rather than being apostles through education. Anyone who has chosen to follow Jesus has also chosen to make his own Christ’s style of life, to shun riches, to live the beatitude of poverty and of simplicity of heart, and to be on easy familiar terms with the poor” (AGC 294, 41-42).

In the end, it is a matter of taking the Jesus’ beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit”, seriously and living it conscientiously so as to share, already now itself, in the Kingdom of heaven…