ROOTED IN THE GOSPEL

Jack Finnegan SDB

Witnesses to the Radical Approach of the Gospel as Mystics, Prophets and Servants: The 27^th Salesian General Chapter (Rome, 22 February – 12 April 2014)

Introduction

The recent Salesian General Chapter at our headquarters outside Rome, our twenty-seventh, lasted seven weeks. Why did it last so long? We are an international congregation of more than 15,000 members, presently working in some 132 countries, who sent 204 representatives to the chapter to discuss the spiritual, educative and pastoral challenges confronting us today, to identify the core elements of a programme for the next six years, and to elect a new leadership team to put that programme into action. But when you bring together such a large number from so many cultures, places and languages (Africa, Asia, India, the Americas, Oceania, Europe…) time is needed to build an international community and for people to get to know and understand each other.

We operated in three official languages: English, Spanish, Italian, while live translation in German, French, and Portuguese was also available. It was a wonderful experience of a global reality and offered an amazing vision of what happens when a vibrant charism finds expression in so many creative ways on a world level. I have no difficulty in suggesting that the rich variety of cultural and linguistic expressions, especially in the liturgy and in a range of formal and informal encounters, events and daytrips, helped make the chapter experience challenging, enlightening and profound.

The theme chosen for GC27 focused attention on the quality of Salesian witness to the radical call of the gospel and its impact on the quality of personal and communal lives. Our founder, Don Bosco, loved mottos and his own radical programme of pastoral educative work is something we Salesians find powerfully present in two of his favourites: work and temperance, and Give me souls, take away the rest. These two sayings took on a life of their own in a variety of contemporary ways at the chapter. They kept our minds focused on the many real challenges posed by a desire to help each confrere and every community to live lives rooted in the gospel. GC27 had as its main aim a radical, gospel-based renewal of Salesian charismatic identity rooted in and oriented by an ever deepening awareness of Don Bosco’s foundational project: a vast programme for the next six years indeed. This choice unfolds around four pivotal questions:

• What does it mean to live in the ‘grace of unity’¹ and joy of our Salesian vocation as God’s gift and a personal life project?

• What does it mean to embrace a radical spiritual experience of Christ so as to live fully as a genuine seeker of God?

• What does the rebuilding of fraternity in vibrant communities of life and action actually mean and require?

• What does it mean to give ourselves generously to the mission, walking with the young to bring hope to a fragmented world?

The Opening Pilgrimage

Since we Salesians are preparing for the bicentenary of our founder’s birth next year (2015) GC27 began with a pilgrimage to the places of his − and our congregational – birth: Turin and the rolling hills of the Becchi in Piedmont where he spent his early years and at nine years of age unforgettably dreamed his vocational vision. These are places of great historical and spiritual significance for the whole Salesian family. For those of us who had gathered first in Rome the pilgrimage meant a very early start (5.00 am) for the ten-hour bus trip to Turin and our mother-house in the now developed area of Valdocco, which in Don Bosco’s time had been a rundown place of ill-repute.

The visit to the tiny family home − a lean-to shed bought by Don Bosco’s father before his untimely death and later converted by the family into a tiny two-up two-down shelter – as well as to the other places of foundation and first beginnings in Turin, had an evocative and contemplative impact on our appreciation of the theme of the chapter: “Witnesses to the radical approach of the Gospel.” Lean-to sheds play a role in our origins.

The first property Don Bosco was able to buy to begin his work with street kids was also a lean-to on the side of a squalid inn where he himself lodged for a time with his mother! GC27 closed on 12^th April last, itself a date of Salesian interest: the anniversary of the day Don Bosco was able to organise his own place and so put his work with the young on a firm footing: 12^th April 1846, which coincidentally was Easter Day. A joyful paschal tone has blessed our spirituality and our approach to young people ever since.

Becoming Radical Again

The return to origins that is part of Vatican II’s vision for religious life today takes on a different feel when religious allow themselves to stand in and be touched by the places of radical faith and poverty where their founding charisms first took fire and blossomed: holy ground, burning bush spaces, iconic places of radical transformative challenge. Such places echo with vibrant invitations to become radical again and again! The problem is that many religious men and women today appear to have become deaf to the songs and rhythms of radical lives, lives of honest solidarity with people and a planet in need. There is in the world a scarcity of practical compassion. The problem is that the call to radical living runs counter to and contests the closed defensiveness, the desire for impossible safety and rigid certainty that so many religious in the West seem to seek today.

During the chapter I found myself returning reflectively to a little parable that has become all too common in Ireland.² Consider a group of religious who dedicate themselves to care of the earth, who recycle everything, are thoughtful in their use of natural resources, who pray and meditate but then fearfully lock themselves away from people who are perceived as intruders and trespassers, or as dodgy and threatening. Even if some of those excluded are on the make, many are honest people simply looking for help. What does radical gospel living suggest in such circumstances? Are we to embrace the ways of self-interest and fear or the ways of enlightened compassion? How willing are we to embrace the practical consequences of hospitality and compassion? How alert are we to the gospel significance of the people at the gate?

In fact, what do prophetic communities look like: cold fortresses or warm oases? Does care of the earth not include all living beings? Where is the radicality of the gospel in such stories? What has happened to the potential for prophetic lives of true service of the other and the different, and even the dangerous? What happens when religious communities mimic the trappings(!) of bourgeois gated communities concerned more for their own protection than the needs of those outside the gates? What happens to religious life when self-interest fuelled by postmodern individualism trumps the gospel? What happens to those who are excluded? How aware are we of the unity and interconnectedness of all things in God’s vast Mystery of love?

The need for radical gospel answers to such questions became patently obvious during GC27. While our chapter theme was fascinating to work with, responding to it will prove very challenging for everyone in the congregation and indeed in the wider Salesian Family. Implicit in the method chosen to explore the chapter theme is a clear congregation-wide call to conversion, a call for discernment using the method identified by the Latin American Bishops Conference at Aparecida in May 2007,³ and the presentation of an alignment − in the words of the chapter a radical gospel way − to orient and inspire leadership at every level over the next six years.

Too many religious live fragmented, dualistic and self-referential lives out of touch with the openly mystical, prophetic and service rhythms of founding charisms pulsing with the living fire of the Gospel fuelled by radical unitive experiences. Too many offer poor witness to the transforming touch of personal encounters with the living Christ. On the one hand mention was made during the chapter of the challenge of functional atheism among religious, the practical forgetting and ignoring of the God to whom our lives are ostensibly committed. On the other, bourgeois lives dancing to and mimicking the rhythms of middleclass existences are unacceptable if religious life is to survive in the West. The active contemplation underpinning authentic solidarity with the poorest and most in need demands a radicality of thought, commitment and action that is often missing. Spirituality must come first; the rest flows from this living spring.

Contemporary religious need to rediscover that the heart of both active contemplation and engaged mysticism is always grounded in the loving realisation and simple embrace of divine compassion. Chasms are crossed not erected. Barriers are removed not strengthened. To think otherwise is to miss the whole point of the paschal mystery: in Christ all barriers come down! Neither engaged mysticism nor active contemplation are found in the satisfaction of low level psychological needs such as safety and security. Self-transcendence has a pivotal role to play in all of this. Radical living and the desire for security are poor neighbours. 

How easy it is to forget that our God is a vast Dynamic Mystery in which life is always emerging. Responding to a vast Mystery of Love radical living embraces and serves life in all its forms. That is why the parable of Dives and Lazarus has become increasingly emblematic of the challenge facing religious who live in the postmodern and postsecular societies of the Western world confronted by the many new forms of need and poverty that touch such societies. Isolation and alienation are typical of such societies. That is why the defensive attitudes that fester as states of separation from other living beings and the hurting world of nature have no role to play in building compassionate servant spiritualities.

What we learnt on our pilgrimage was that in prophetic response to our God who is everywhere we need to emerge like butterflies – regardless of age or condition – from our safe, self-referential cocoons and our attachments to individual comfort and safety. The true contemplative intuitively understands that everything – including intrusion − is in God, in God’s vast Dynamic Mystery, especially the things in ordinary life that challenge, threaten and disturb egocentric lives. There lies the way to transformation. If our search for God is moving to God’s rhythms, if it is responsive to God’s subtle aroma in the world, then we will realise a pure and simple awareness: everything is one in God, including the disturbing people and issues we would rather leave outside the gate. We live in the grace of unity.

Some Personal Reflections

On our return to Rome and before we began our retreat preached by one of our Spanish confreres, Juan José Bartolomé, a delightful scripture scholar who shared a radical vision of the living word, we spent a couple of days studying our outgoing Rector Major’s Report⁴ on the State of the Congregation, a long document that took us on a veritable world tour of issues, challenges, difficulties and joys. Then we launched into four weeks of intensive group and assembly work on the theme of the chapter before a week of elections and a week of concluding votes on a variety of themes and administrative issues.

How can we plan for the years ahead if we do not comprehend and accept the areas of light and the areas of shadow in the life of a congregation? I would make the same point about a province or a community. How can we plan if we are defensively out of touch with stark reality and the grinding life of multitudes? How can we serve a spacious God with narrow or insular visions? As our newly elected general, Don Ángel Fernández Artime, put it, in studying this report we were reminded that all of us together are the congregation: we give it life or we diminish it through our personal and communal lacks and failures.

What is the spiritual point of attending to one side of a dualism or spectrum and ignoring the other? Why should we imagine that God’s compassion manifests only in one side of life and not the other? There is joy and gladness in life; there is also grief, tragedy and sorrow. There is success and failure. There is the peaceful. But there is also the disturbing and the dangerous.⁵ The truly engaged contemplative finds God in them all and, letting go of habitual judgmental expectations, chooses the more challenging path of compassion. We do this to the extent that we grasp the meaning of a text from Hebrews 12:2: fix your eyes on Jesus or in the words of Francis de Sales, Vive Jesus! Let Jesus Live! Only by gazing contemplatively and lovingly on Jesus and reflecting on his living word is it possible to live a radical gospel-based life in God’s grace, a life touched by the fire of passion. With Don Bosco we are invited to become tongues of fire for the world. That is what happens when we truly begin to listen to the radical whispers of Spirit. In the radical imagery of the Dominican moral philosopher Antonin Sertillanges, the gospel is not best understood as a lantern attached to a pole. Fire is the true metaphor. To be radical is to be set on fire!

The English radical comes from the Latin radix meaning root. The term was probably applied to biblical studies for the first time by Rudolf Bultmann back in 1921. Since then the term has come to characterise the fundamental nature of Jesus’ message, especially the ways it contrasts with or stands outside mainstream social and political thinking and culturally sanctioned behaviour. The point is that gospel radicalism is not an optional extra for disciples of Jesus but their norm of life (Mark 8:34-38; Matthew 16:24-26; Luke 9:23-26). Are we ready to go beyond self-interest, to live beyond or outside what is held to be normal in a postmodern, postsecular, globalized world? Are we ready to walk the ways of self-transcending compassion?

And those very questions bring us to the heart of gospel radicalism: our personal and communal motives for living as disciples: if we still see ourselves as such. Why are we in the West still religious in a culture that is highly suspicious of religion and religious? Are we still in touch with the radical roots of discipleship? Or have we embraced compromise and deferral, those wilting fruits of fragility, fear and uncertainty? Are we content to be lanterns because we are afraid of the fire? The grace of unity consistently challenges us to rediscover a world undivided by the range of naïve, fixed, or rigid assumptions and illusions that blind us to more comprehensive visions, especially those visions that transcend the duality of self and other rampant in postmodern visions of life.

Radical gospel living involves a process of continuing personal and pastoral conversion to the ways of the generous and spacious heart, of critical self-identification with the person and message of Jesus rather than mainstream bourgeois thinking that cares neither for the earth nor for those who are different or in need, that turns a blind eye to the ideological powers that deny men, women and children the basics of human dignity and need: food, shelter, sanitation, education, health-care, justice. As well as revealing the vibrancy of courage and generosity, radical choice always unveils the spiritual creativity and audacity burning at the deep heart’s core: the vibrant compassion and creativity that fuel effective witness to the primacy of God lived in radical solidarity with earth and neighbour.

Mystic− Prophet−Servant

Don Bartolomé was clear that the renewal of religious life passes through the centrality of the Living Word. So does the trajectory of every mystic of the Spirit. Don Bosco understood that the roots and destination of religious life are unitive, a coming into a profoundly personal relationship with God in the very same Jesus who chose to root his whole life in God whose Spirit is with us. Oneness is foundational and it always demands radical choice and response. Such radical choice and response constantly defines and redefines the Christian mystic−prophet−servant realistically and experientially. There is nothing easy here. Before Jesus began his public ministry his choice was fiercely tested when he was driven into what I have come to term the ‘wilderness of self’ (Mark 1:9-13; Matthew 4:1-17; Luke 4:1-13).

Wrestling with the recurring temptation to choose self over God is part and parcel of the unitive journey: union is tested by the cyclical return to the self and the impulses and demands of the self as we struggle to come to terms with the puzzling oneness of individuality and community. That is what Jesus’ own temptations teach us. We become one with Jesus as we encounter the transformative potential of the desert of self, that dry pathless place of choice and Spirit-led test. There we discover as individuals and as communities the manipulative wiles of our own egos. What we do in that life-sapping desert of manipulation is up to us. Union with God always bears fruit in open witness to God, in open service of the other and creation, rather than the demands of the ego-self.

The enigmatic and uncomfortable story in Mark 3:31-34 shows the prophetic move from old ways to new, from old understandings to new, from old relationships to new: a move that is painful and difficult and often met with misunderstanding and incomprehension. Prophets are easily misjudged and marginalised. Note the reactions of Jesus’ family of origin and then ask how far that is from what happens in religious communities when self-centred visions are confronted by radical prophetic wisdom grounded in the living word, when individualistic dreams are confronted by the grace of unity.

In Mark’s story Jesus’ own family of origin remain outside, at a distance. They want him to follow them. They don’t come into his house. They want him to come to theirs. Mary doesn’t want to lose him again: a testing time for her, a time when she had to say her yes to God yet again. The lesson for us is that God is not to be put in second place to our own preoccupations. The same is true of community preoccupations especially when they are governed by self-referential concerns or group interests. Mystics, prophets and servants transcend such limiting forces. They dance to different music. They transcend the ways of self and, like Jesus, make ready to wash the feet of the other (John 13:1-17). That is why radical service implies God’s passion for people and creation.

To be mystic, prophet, servant: what does that mean? In Salesian terms it means responding creatively in the grace of unity to a single dynamism of transforming love. It paints a picture of lives touched by interweaving blessings coming to flower in the Spirit-watered holy ground of unitive experience. It rejects the forces that would quench the bright flames of faith-filled visions reaching out to creation and humanity. To be mystic, prophet, servant pictures a life drawn into a transforming dance with a passionate God who reaches out to the poverty of the world and all living beings trapped in poverty’s devastating, exploitive, and grinding web; including the new forms of poverty that have begun to emerge in the world around us, spiritual poverty and a poverty of engaged faith. To be mystic, prophet, servant means living with your heart in your hand as Don Bosco did. The grace of unity always demands generosity, compassion, a heart on fire.

For example the mystic, touched by the fire of the Spirit, holds the key to the inner world of personal and communal transformation in ways that invite and support the prophet. The prophet is touched by a transpersonal vision, a Spirit-formed vision, a vision that flows from a future hidden in God, a future of justice and freedom liberated from the coils of darkness that enslave so many and imperil creation itself. Just as the prophet sees things from God’s point of view the servant acts as the eyes and hands of God: heart in hand the servant’s witness is simultaneously contagious and practical, an active expression of God’s unconditional compassion. It reveals the true self as the image of God who is Living Love, comes to centre stage. In the grace of unity the mystic, the prophet and the servant become the aroma of Christ in the world. The defensive reactions, excuses and justifications of self-referred visions fall away.

The result is a growing capacity to live from the heart, to live wisely yet passionately, to be alive to the creative concerns of Spirit, and to put aside the distorting ambitions of grandeur and power. At such moments the door to paradox opens. The enlightened mystic−prophet−servant grasps that the last is first⁶ and so the dualistic mind is liberated from the woeful, disturbing, and often brutal and vindictive imaginings of resentful ego. Becoming profoundly of God the mystic, prophet, servant becomes profoundly human. He or she responds from the depths of the human heart, from a fully realized humanity informed by the vision in Philippians 4:8: keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don’t ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise. Such is the unitive path, the way of compassion and solidarity, the fruit of the grace of unity.

The Chapter Process

Most of the work of the chapter was done in commissions reporting to the general assembly where others had opportunities to comment on the work done or raise new issues. Four commissions were tasked with the theme of the chapter and one was tasked with juridical issues. Three of the theme commissions operated in Italian and the fourth with some fifty members drawn from all over the world operated in English, though its reports all had to be translated into Italian for general consumption. The juridical commission presented 19 changes to the Salesian Constitutions and General Regulations to facilitate changed administrative and organisational circumstances.

Later a redaction commission was organized to bring the work of the theme commissions together in a single document. One of the first issues to arise at commission level concerned how to define mystic and mysticism, but after a healthy debate it was decided that it was not the task of the chapter to offer definitions of something as complex as the mystical life. The final document from the chapter offers instead a series of experiential descriptors of the mystic−prophet−servant life from a Salesian perspective, the first of which is the primacy of God in a Trinitarian vision, a restating of the unitive heart of our spirituality. Passion for union with God is the fulcrum of every genuine Salesian life.

Other descriptors flesh out a key phrase found in the second article of our constitutions: our call is to be signs and bearers of God’s love for the young. They include a vision of a loving God accompanying humanity, a commitment to profound humanization, an insightful relationship with the word of God, liturgical and Eucharistic sensibility, fidelity, and a spirituality of communion and holiness of life. These descriptors in turn fuel a commitment to pastoral charity, prayer and meditation, lectio divina, reflective practices, continuing formation, a sensibility to human rights and genuine care of the earth, attention to the cry of the poor, and commitment to a culture of honest encounter and dialogue. There is nothing retiring about engaged mysticism.

A set of summarizing phrases was also chosen to act as unifiers to the different sections of the chapter document, which was deliberately kept quite short (75 concise paragraphs presently in 15 A4 pages). I offer my own translation of these phrases: With Don Bosco in dialogue with the Lord; We journey together moved by the Spirit; Experiencing fraternal communities in the style of Valdocco; Open to planning and teamwork; We go out to the margins of society; Becoming prophetic signs of service to the young. These phrases are clearly intended to orient restructuring and renewal work in the congregation over the next six years in response to local conditions. But they are also intended to orient personal and communal journeys.

Several key elements of Salesian spirituality are also present in these phrases: continuity with the original pastoral educative work with young migrants from the countryside begun by Don Bosco at Valdocco, Turin, at the beginning of the industrial revolution; the primacy of God in Don Bosco’s life and mission; the centrality of community life to our understanding of mission; the very real postmodern challenge of fragmented individualism, especially in the West; and Don Bosco’s core preferential option to work with and serve the poorest and most in need. Work with street kids and in the shanty towns that spring up on the margins of many cities, work with young migrants, work with young prisoners, and work with boy soldiers in some war torn regions are typical of this choice. So too are work related schemes in places where unemployment among the young is rife.

A Week of Elections

The week set aside for electing the new world level leadership team was superbly facilitated by the well-known Spanish Claretian theologian and expert in religious life, Padre José Cristo Rey Garcìa Paredes, CMF, who spoke at the 2011 CORI Conference in Dublin. We shared breakfast on several mornings and among other things discussed the problem of politics at religious elections. Ours tend to be linguistic rather than national, but nationality also plays a part. I remember one scintillating comment from Padre Cristo Rey: “Sometimes passports prove more important than charisms!” But we are human beings and the Holy Spirit knows our penchant for politics. Unfortunately it is all too easy to ignore discernment and favour instead “one of ours”!

I am happy to say that Padre Cristo Rey’s approach and wisdom and the discerning cooperation of the chapter members kept politics at bay. Each one acted with consideration, care and serenity. The use of the various chapter commissions and regions to nominate candidates among and outside their members followed by two straw votes allowed a clear consensus to emerge. For the very first time in our history we elected a successor to Don Bosco who had never served on the General Council. His election represented a move in the assembly to elect someone new and free from preconceived ideas.

Don Ángel Fernández Artime, Don Bosco’s tenth successor, was elected to everyone’s delight. A younger man, he had served as provincial in Spain and was later asked to be Provincial in Argentina when three provinces there were amalgamated. He navigated a tricky mandate quietly and to the delight of all concerned. Even though his reputation had preceded him he was taken quite aback when his name emerged but peacefully accepted nomination and election. If early signs are anything to go on we picked the right man.

The Vicar General was then elected, a man of sound experience at General Council level who would offer the new Rector Major loyal and considered support. There followed the election of councillors in charge of sectors and then the election of regional councillors. Two of these were elected from outside the chapter members themselves. One of them, an Indian, was elected councillor for formation and the other, a Pole, was elected regional for Northern and Western Europe. Another piece of history was the election of the first African Salesian to the General Council as regional for Africa. We wish him well in his new assignment.

The Papal Audience

On Monday 31^st March we journeyed to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Francis who took time to greet and share a few words with each one of us personally. In his address, the Holy Father told us that the Holy Spirit would assist us in understanding the expectations and challenges of our time, especially those of the young. A Salesian past-pupil, Pope Francis reminded us never to forget Don Bosco’s Preventive System and its foundations in reasonableness, kindness, respect and friendship for all. He underscored the life of exclusion many young people face today, the vast reality of unemployment, and the many forms of addiction which stem from an absence of love. The Pope reminded us that serving marginalised youth requires courage, maturity and much prayer. Pope Francis also drew our attention to the way in which the humanising power of the Gospel is demonstrated by community, especially in the gospel values of welcome, respect, mutual care and understanding, kindness, forgiveness and joy.

Conclusion

The last days of the chapter were spent voting through all the juridical changes we had made and voting on each paragraph of the final document. We also prepared a Final Message to the confreres from the chapter members. We described the chapter as an event of grace because the Lord had indeed worked miracles for us (Psalm 126:3). We remembered countries experiencing conflict and tragic times. Syria, Venezuela, the Central African Republic, Ukraine and Sudan were very much in our prayers. We expressed our gratitude for the outstanding and fruitful ministry of Fr Pascual Chávez Villanueva, the outgoing General. We described the election of Don Ángel Fernández Artime as Rector Major and tenth Successor of Don Bosco as a gift of Providence for us all and for the entire Salesian Family.

We reminded each other that GC27 had decided to go against the flow. It had decided to embrace a unitive vision of hope in a better world. We dreamed of a world where we could cry against the works of selfishness and self-referenced lives. We dreamed with Don Bosco a dream of lives capable of questioning and confronting the culture and social reality in which we live, a dream of joy in the gospel and passion for the life-giving ways of a loving God. We dreamed of setting out into the deep (Luke 5:4), sharing with the young the way to abundant life (John 10:10). We imagined burning bushes and trees of life.

We committed ourselves to discovering the frontiers, the peripheries, the existential deserts where most abandoned young people are to be found. And we embraced with Pope Francis the challenge of pastoral conversion to mercy and tenderness as we seek other vistas, other points of view to help us envision reality liberated from our own narrow perceptions. The challenge facing all of us now is to offer new, more radical, more alert, more compassionate horizons to our lives and structures. The chapter is ended. Let the work begin in the grace of unity!