Redimensioning Our Works
Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil sdb
Guwahati
Do our institutions answer to actual human needs... the needs of the Catholic Community and of the larger society, or do they mainly serve the interests we ourselves have built up?
We are Proud of Our History
We look back with pride at the history of our missions. The heroism of our pioneers, their dedication, their creativity, their ability to interpret events and adapt to situations and respond to the challenges of their era …these are still a wonder to us. Their life was an on- going adventure, and an account of their accomplishments reads like a thriller.
But years have passed. Time separates us from them and their era. Because we admire them and swear by their virtues, we at times think that we have their dedication. Because we are their descendants, we take for granted that we have acquired their greatness. This may not necessarily be true. The occasion of a meeting like this is a sacred moment for self-examination, reflection and prayer. We are invited to rediscover the deeper values in our tradition and build on the strengths we have inherited with our “missionary genes".
The birth of Churches, like the origins of Congregations, is linked to personalities who were able to create an atmosphere of Faith around them. For them that was central. Faith qualified their relationships, inspired their initiatives, and conditioned their decisions. Faith sustained them in their difficulties, supported them in their struggles and led them to success beyond their wildest dreams. Faith reigned in their campuses, added joy to their celebrations, accompanied them on their journeys, and enlivened their recreation. All important decisions—at the personal level, or at the parish or institutional levels, in chapters, councils or committees—were made in the light of Faith.
In such an atmosphere, members felt confident, juniors felt secure, older persons felt recognized and respected. It was easy to develop a common vision, since there was no one’s inflated Ego on the way, and since everyone was attentive to everyone else. Each person was prompt to accommodate to every other person’s expectations, and no one felt ignored or neglected. A powerful bond of unity linked persons together in a common endeavour. They were quick in evolving apostolic strategies and strongly determined to face any difficulty that arose. Such a team was so built as to succeed.
Pioneering Days: Good Relations, Zeal without Limits
Let us now move from such general descriptions to more familiar situations and refer to some of the experiences that we ourselves have had. Many of us present here have been associated with the beginnings of one or another of our institutions. The pioneering days were exciting. There were times of severe testing, but also moments of triumph. Our whole heart was in our work. There was not a dull moment. People readily came forward to help us because they could read the sincerity of our purpose on our faces. It was too evident. And we were equally eager to befriend the people around us and make ourselves acceptable at the new place. We knew that the future of our work depended on our relationship with them. Our neighbours were very important to us and most welcome on our premises. We often consulted them and sought their advice. We were attentive to neighbours, parents, teachers, and catechists. We respected the local leadership. We needed their support. We tried to respond to the community's expectations and kept up an on-going dialogue with people around us. We were proud to be considered part of the local set-up. Symbols representing the local culture were given prominence in our campus.
We were eager to project an image of service, and were innovative in evolving new forms of assistance in the neighbourhood just as the local community required. In those days relationship with the neighbourhood was more important to us than walls and locks and barking dogs! We were available, approachable, welcoming. We were adaptable, accommodating, and happy to compromise, ready to accept a defeat and reorganize our work. We were more eager to learn a lesson ourselves than to teach a lesson to others. We were respectful of authority, civil and ecclesiastical. People who criticized us were not as much hard cases to be handled as persons who deserved a hearing. Building up friendship around us was more important to us than imposing discipline, pressing our rights, asserting our authority. Our zeal knew no limit. We would go to the "ends of the earth” to offer pastoral assistance, to visit a Catholic family, or to bring the Lord’s message to a new person or a new community.
Sturdier Structures, Lack of Personal Touch
Let us imagine we are invited to the Silver Jubilee celebrations of one of the centres that we ourselves started at enormous sacrifice. We are amazed at the progress made. Buildings have come up, facilities have increased, and equipments are most up-to-date. VCR and VCP, Computer, Inter-Com, ... nothing is missing. The general atmosphere is technology-friendly. The number of students in the school has risen. Ministers consider it a privilege to drop in at the institution and show themselves associated with its achievements. The results are excellent. The local papers are eloquent about its performance.
But certain things make you feel uncomfortable. There are distances between persons working on the campus. There is no more that warmth and cordiality between the staff and the students, management and neighbourhood, parents and school authorities, visitors and those in charge. A personal touch is wanting. The atmosphere is not person friendly, child-friendly, or neighbourhood friendly. Catechists and teachers have become mere employees, and neighbours an on-going problem. The walls go higher and gates sturdier with each passing year. The institution has closed in upon itself, mostly concerned with defending its land, its property, its image, its rights and its privileges.
In such a situation you will not wonder why Catholic children are few in the school. The fees and uniforms are beyond their means. Children themselves do not receive attention. The poor are marginalized, the laity alienated, the catechists critical. Evangelization receives only lip service. Village-visits are rare and villagers feel uncomfortable in the mission compound. The school authorities are unapproachable. Every class has several sections, and the institution can keep adding new wings on its own, new floors and halls and walls, equipments and gadgets. But there is a terrible shortage of funds when it comes to paying the catechists, assisting a poor child with his fees or his medical bills, or constructing a village church.
But Where are We Now?
This is an imaginary story. Such a situation does not exist. But may be we would like to take occasion of this narration to ask ourselves where we stand today. Are we nearer to the first picture or to the second? Are we moving from one situation to the other? Must growth of external structures necessarily mean rigid relationship between persons? Can we, while making use of the most up-to-date equipments, make ourselves relevant to actual human needs and respond to the Catholic Community's pressing requirements ?
We must once again place Evangelization at the heart of all our works. I am not speaking just about ‘convert-making’. I am referring to that supreme and most admirable art of bringing people nearer to God. I am speaking of developing that inner skill by which you are quickly perceptive of a person’s measure of openness to the Gospel and to the person of Christ, and by which you guide him step by step, if he chooses to walk with you, to a decisive encounter with him. Of all gifts in the universe, this is the most precious gift worth praying for as a missionary, the skill of speedily perceiving a person's or a community’s openness to the Gospel and to the person of Christ.
Once you acquire this gift, you will be organizing all your energies around this central mission. You are guiding people along the very same path that you yourself walk every day. And consequently evangelization is not something that you put on for an occasion, it is a spontaneous expression of your faith. As a result, an atmosphere of Faith, of which we spoke earlier, will reign around you wherever you go. Truly, this is being a missionary. What you are is eloquent enough, what you say or do is just a completion of it!
When the real motivating force at our mission-centres is our ardent commitment to Evangelization, so many things get speedily done: our jeep is always in shape for village visits; house-visiting especially of the poorest becomes a sheer pleasure. There is just enough money to keep one more Catholic child in the hostel. We look at persons and things differently: our catechists and touring sisters are persons very important for us, and they deserve our absolute respect. While we keep in touch with the leaders in society, we naturally gravitate to the poorest and the neediest. We "leap for joy" when we can lead someone closer to Christ. A marvelous unity reigns in our missionary team, because all of us are motivated by the highest missionary ideals. Difficulties and even oppositions that naturally arise in a missionary situation we consider normal, because we are inwardly prepared to face them. Through prudent handling of complex situations, we take care to prevent ‘self-created problems’, which so often cripple our initiatives, because we are led by the noblest ideals in our life and work.
This is the type of situation I wish for all our missionary workers.
Societies have two unmistakable needs:
1. A need for sustenance (material needs)
2. A need for, recognition (psychological needs)
A question that we may ask ourselves today when we are planning to re-dimension our works is: are our institutions responding to the needs of the community around us or to our own need for sustenance and recognition?
1. Excessive eagerness to satisfy the first need drives us from project to project, one to support the other, one to rescue us from the mess we have made of the previous one, and similar gimmicks. Founders of Congregations were always happy with just sufficient means to keep going with the apostolate.
Initiatives like adding section to section in school, buying up vast properties including estates, compel us to put some of our best personnel for apostolically unrewarding work. There is no doubt that mobilization of resources is important, and that religious property is sacred; but the lives and talents of gifted religious persons are even more sacred and therefore are to be better utilized for the apostolate.
2. The need for recognition drives us to prestige-projects, which are often self-projections of our individual or collective Ego. Display, show, glamour, publicity, self-advertisement…. these and other things become very important to us when we are excessively hungry for recognition. It leads to "wild and erratic growth" in buildings and structures, and various expressions of high pretension and mental sophistication, with little apostolic fruitfulness.
Once again let us ask ourselves the question: Do our institutions answer to the actual needs of people or to the interests we ourselves have built up?
1. Sometimes we re-dimension first, and reflect on its consequences after incurring considerable expenses and exhausting ourselves with hasty changes. Then we revert to the old position. Calm reflection should have precedence over the populist wave of the moment.
2. Someone has said, when God wants to punish us, he gives us land in the wrong place. It is a thought worth thinking over.
(Talk given to a group of Religious Assembled for their Provincial Chapter)
