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XXIII General Chapter Documents
Retreat Day Conference
DIMENSIONS OF REDEMPTION
Seán Wales, C.Ss.R.
Introduction
Brothers, we are in retreat. Such are the peculiarities of the English
language that ‘to be in retreat’ can mean that we are running away from
something, trying to avoid a disaster or retiring from the action. I know
some confreres for whom being in retreat never quite loses a hint of
unpleasantness, of something disagreeable to be endured. Even with a very
positive attitude to being in retreat, one often has to survive a bland
conference which may only contribute an ascetical opportunity during the
retreat. Here goes.
I begin by taking a liberty with Constitution 23, adapting it to ourselves
gathered as the General chapter:
“Since we Capitulars are called to continue the presence of Christ and his
mission of redemption, we choose the person of Christ as the centre of our
lives and we strive each day of the Chapter to enter ever more intimately
into personal union with him. Thus, at the heart of the General Chapter, to
form it and sustain it, is the Redeemer himself and his Spirit of love. And
the closer our union with Christ, the stronger will become our union with
each other.”
The Church has been pondering the mystery of Christ and his mission of
redemption from the beginning and shares that central reality by drawing all
people into the mystery itself. For more that 270 years the Congregation has
maintained a special focus on abundant redemption, proclaiming and
celebrating it by our very existence. Our Redemptorist ancestors have never
tired of announcing abundant redemption, not only in terms of freedom from
sin but also in terms of what Alphonsus called the “crazy” love of God for
us all.
Down the centuries the Church has forged a vocabulary of redemption which
Redemptorists have been happy to use. The language of redemption will always
be inadequate to the mystery and we will always e only beginning to explore
the mystery and mission of redemption. However defective, we have learned to
use this vocabulary in our self-definition, in our preaching and in all the
ways in which we are a community serving humanity. We speak and celebrate
redemption as forgiveness, as recovery, as expiation, as reparation, as
atonement and so on.
In our time of retreat today I want to look at a few more words in the
language of redemption, words which suggest dimensions of redemption which
spring from contemporary experience and perhaps look forward to yet further
dimensions of redemption. May the words we use keep our eyes fixed on the
Redeemer himself and his Spirit of love.
Happy Thieves
To introduce these contemporary words for redemption I want to step aside
from the history of Christian doctrine, aside from theological dictionaries
and exegetical resources. For a few moments I propose that we make a journey
in which some aspects of a new language of redemption will be highlighted.
It’s a journey which I myself am making and perhaps some of the aspects I
want to highlight will speak to the General Chapter as well.
The first stop on this journey is the Trappist monastery at Tibhirine,
Algeria. With people all round the world I followed the drama of the seven
monks abducted from their monastery in the Atlas Mountains on March 27,
1996. The drama ended with their beheading nearly two months later. The
execution of Christians and/or foreigners by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
was not unusual. The monks had been warned. They had had their monastery
invaded on Christmas Eve three years previously. They had lost many friends
in the Christian community to the fundamentalists. But with many other
religious they chose to remain as witnesses to the Gospel. They knew the
risks and each member of the community prepared in his own way for the
possibility of a violent death. Fr. Christian de Cherge, the Superior,
prepared a Testament [1] which was opened five days after
his martyrdom.
It is this Testament which has revealed to me a dimension of redemption that
I find continues to nourish my own prayer life. Christian acknowledges that
his life ‘has not the innocence of childhood’. He knows that he is ‘an
accomplice in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world’. Yet his
life is ‘GIVEN’ to God and to Algeria. What is central for me is Fr.
Christian’s attitude to his own death: he looks forward to satisfying his
most avid curiosity ‘this is what I shall be able to do, please God: immerse
my gaze in that of the Father’.
Redemption for Christian is not only to escape the dust and sin of life but
to see as God sees. To experience redemption as contemplation is to have a
spiritual clarity about God which throws a divine light on our lives. Jesus
tells us that the one who sees him sees the Father [2] ;
in contemplation we begin to see as the Father sees. Contemplation, as
Christian de Cherge suggests, is primarily the gaze of the Father and our
redemptive prayer becomes a participation in the gaze of God. It is because
God gazes in love on us – can’t keep his eyes off us, as it were – that we
long to share that gaze. Christian gives us an example of how he hopes to
immerse his gaze in that of the Father: ‘to contemplate with him his
children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of
Christ’. This is not a speculative example of some abstract possibility. It
involves his own murderer: ‘in God’s face I see yours’ he said in advance to
the one who will strike him down. We are often concerned about seeing God in
others. Christian de Cherge reminds us that the contemplative sees others in
God.
Redemption as contemplation is the Father looking steadily at us and loving
us as did Jesus with the rich young man [3] . We have
become sensitive to the phenomenology of the ‘look’ [4] ,
to what it means to hold someone in our gaze, to scrutinize an appearance or
to see face to face. Redemption as contemplation brings us back to the
absolute priority of God in our lives. From God’s first contemplating us
arises our life-long yearning to see the face of God, ‘it is your face, oh
God, that I seek; hide not your face’ [5] .
As far back as 1980 the Sacred Congregation for Religious, in reflecting on
the rejuvenation of the consecrated life, wrote: “The contemplative
dimension is the real secret of renewal for every religious life. It vitally
renews the following of Christ because it leads to an experiential knowledge
of him.” [6] This was echoed in the last General
Chapter’s call for a “contemplative outlook on life” [7]
and has been re-enforced in all subsequent Communicanda.
In all these documents there is a strong emphasis on our personal and
community relationship with Jesus. There is no limit to the ways in which
individuals and communities can relate to Jesus but surely there will be
some recognizable spiritual profile for us in terms of the mystery of
redemption.
Even this spiritual profile will have to have blurred edges as the central
mystery of our Christian and Redemptorist vocation is itself limitless. But
to highlight redemption as contemplation is to recall us to that vocation at
a very basic level.
De Cherge gives us a glimpse of how the Father sees us:
‘With the glory of Christ’: and in our contemplation that is how we come to
see those around us;
as ‘the fruit of his passion’: we come to see ourselves and our Congregation
as the fruit of his passion and glorification;
as ‘filled with the gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to
establish communion and restore likeness’: this insight links contemplation
to mission, an essential aspect of our experience as Redemptorists.
From the horrors of the beheadings of the 7 Trappists monks on African soil
comes a call to experience redemption as contemplation and communion: the
gaze of the Father over a world redeemed and becoming ever more one.
Christian de Cherge never loses sight of his need for redemption and so even
describes himself and his murderer meeting in paradise as happy thieves. We
too are to be happy thieves, held in the gaze of God.
As a General Chapter we come before the Father praying that the Father will
see and love in us, Capitulars, what he sees and loves in Christ. As a
Chapter we open ourselves to the gaze of the Father who looks on us as a
communio fratrum, a community of the redeemed.
Restorative Redemption
The second leg of our journey takes us from the north of Africa to its
southern tip, to South Africa and to its Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. It is from the hearings of the Commission that I learned to add
to the vocabulary of redemption – an addition which might serve the General
Chapter well.
Redemption as Truth. The title ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ sounds familiar
but the Commission was not so concerned about forensic or factual truth
which is limited to what can be demonstrated; it was concerned, as is the
mystery of redemption, with a more comprehensive reality – social and
individual truth: the sort of truth that is established by human
interaction, sharing, and discussion. This is the sort of truth that brings
healing and peace.
To see redemption as truth goes way beyond a forensic examination of a
crucified body and way beyond the empirically verifiable. It is to see truth
primarily as personal. ‘I am the Truth’ [8] said Jesus
and so all who are in him are truth. The truth of the Congregation is way
beyond statistics or demonstrable good works; the truth of the Congregation
lies in the integrity of our redemptive lives. It has to do, finally, with
our being-in-Christ.
Redemption as Reconciliation. Reconciliation is also a term well known to us
and part of our religious and Redemptorist vocabulary. For us it is often
associated with the sacraments of healing and forgiveness. The experience of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has widened my understanding
of his phenomenon and has given the word reconciliation renewed currency as
a synonym for redemption. We have had many ‘sacraments’ of reconciliation in
the course of the hearings of the TRC. There were moments which galvanized
the nation when for example the parents of a young American exchange student
(Amy Biehl) [9] murdered in Gugulethu (Cape Town) came to
the TRC and not only forgave the young murderers but set up an Amy Biehl
Foundation to help township residents get a second chance in life. Amy
Biehl’s mother said “I have no hatred in my heart; all I am concerned about
is how these young men can re-enter their community and rebuild their
lives”.
This opens the door to an insight into redemption as restorative justice.
The expansion of the concept of justice from being retributive or punitive
to being restorative is by no means unique to South Africa.
[10] The New Zealand bishops have written eloquently on it
[11] and there is a restorative justice lobby in the
USA. [12] Through the TRC we have seen restorative
justice work and it adds a welcome dimension to our understanding of
redemption.
Redemption as restorative justice highlights the role of forgiveness as a
re-humanizing activity. Forgiveness restores a measure of dignity and
humanity to the perpetrator and it rescues the dignity and humanity of the
victim. Redemption as restoration reaches out to all that is askew in our
world: to broken relationships, to the fragmentation of the social order, to
the evils of political and economic injustices. It reaches even to the
disfigured features of our environment and it attempts to restore the
original beauty. In the world of the Spirit it dares to dream of recovering
original grace.
Is there any spiritual depth to applying the notion of restorative justice
to our life as a Congregation? The General Chapter is mandated to ensure
that we are faithful to our radical vocation as disciples and to our
specific form of discipleship as Redemptorists. The last General Chapter
focused on what it means to be a disciple in its concern for our basic
missionary spirituality; now perhaps we can pray, reflect, talk and decide
about our specific Redemptorist way of being: a way of being that is by
definition restorative. Where we have been perpetrators of any kind of
injustice or evil, where we have failed in integrity of life or ministry, we
need restoration. Where we ourselves have been victims of the sins of
others, we need to have our dignity and humanity restored and empowered to
show the world a better and more evangelical way of life.
Maybe we think too readily of what the Congregation has endured in terms of
sexual scandals while recognizing our need to reclaim the deepest love of
our lives. The General Chapter needs also to restore some credibility to our
gospel poverty and simplicity of life in the midst of a world awash with
un-evangelical values. Perhaps, too, redemption as restorative justice would
give us back the joy of doing the will of the Father, discerned in our
community obedience.
A restorative vision of redemption does not mean reverting to the status quo
ante. The Congregation is under the impulse of the Spirit who restores all
things in Christ [13] by making all things new. We see
this recapitulation of our life and ministry in Christ in the vitality of
our apostolic dynamism, in the rich tapestry of redemption unfolding in ever
new ways before our eyes. Truly the restorative redemption we ponder today
is abundant. We are constantly being drawn into the ‘deep things of God’
[14] .
Things new and old
Before we make the last part of our journey I would suggest a pause, a
moment to waste a bit of time looking at some travel brochures. You know how
inviting these can be even if we know we can’t possibly visit so many exotic
locations. The ‘travel brochures’ I have in mind are dimensions of
redemption of which I know next to nothing but which I sense have much to
offer.
Although reared and schooled in the Latin Rite I discovered during my
novitiate that there are confreres of other Rites. How the Maronite Rite or
the Syro-Malabar Rite understands redemption, how the whole Byzantine world
lives this central mystery, how confreres of other Rites experience copiosa
redemptio: these are questions which can only enhance the Congregation’s
wonder and extend its profile. If the age of the mono-cultural Redemptorist
is over [15] , so too is the age of theological monism.
Likewise, for me, the richness of the African religious world-view opens a
new window on the meaning of redemption. Archbishop Tutu has linked the
traditional notion of ubuntu (humanness) to reconciliation
[16] ; how many more insights into the mysteries of our faith have
African Traditional Religions to offer? The African Synod and the subsequent
Apostolic Exhortation (Ecclesia in Africa) [17] drew
attention to the profound religious sense in Africa, to the African
understanding of family in the widest sense (family of God) and to the
inclusive nature of traditional African communities. We are still only
beginning to explore the ways in which traditional healing connects to the
Christian experience. Our South African president, Thabo Mbeki, calls this
the African century; I hope the Congregation in Africa can offer something
to the beautiful mosaic of plentiful redemption.
The Americas contribute to the kaleidoscope of redemption: Latin America
with its liberation theology; North America with its black theology and all
that is going on in the Catholic Universities. The Asian Synod drew dramatic
attention to the profoundly religious roots of the great Asian religious
traditions. All these cultures are not only open to be evangelized but are
ready to evangelize us. The great blessing of being in so many continents
and cultures means that the Congregation can be in constant dialogue with
other experiences of redemption.
Our ‘travel brochures’ on dimensions of redemption are not merely
geographic. There are some which point to other kinds of continents: the
blossoming of feminist theology [18] with its insights
into bodiliness and its inclusive perception of liberation/redemption and
what that has to say about the whole person, the community, society and the
universe. Then there is the Redemptoristine angle of redemption and how
Celeste’s insights connect with our tradition; [19]
there is the post-modern suspicion of over-arching meaning and yet its
search for authenticity. Not only is redemption itself abundant but the ways
of understanding redemption are likewise abundant.
The last stop on our journey has to be in Italy on a pilgrimage to the
Alphonsian places, to Scala and Pagani in particular. Going back to our
roots is a theological imperative and indeed it is a journey with which we
are already familiar. Any return to the sources of the life of Alphonsus
reveals to us the absolute centrality for him of Jesus the Redeemer. The
mystery of redemption in the life and works of Alphonsus shows itself in his
language of love: the love God has for us in the Incarnation, the love God
has for us in the Passion of Christ, the love God has for us in the
Eucharist, the love God has for us in the Church. This language of God’s
love is echoed however faintly in our love for God in prayer, in ministry
and in celebration. This journey has been made over and over again; plenty
of words from our own Redemptorists scholars mediate the primitive meanings
of redemption in our tradition. What is missing?
Perhaps it has something to do with the less conceptual dimensions of
redemption. Perhaps we need to recover not only a multi-faceted theology of
redemption but to attend to the poetry of redemption. Maybe we need to hear
the music of redemption. Perhaps the arts have something to communicate
which mere words cannot reach. Is this not what Alphonsus was doing with his
poetry, his music and his art? How often Alphonsus’ prose gives way to
poetry as when he address the reader in his Reflections and Affections on
the Passion of Jesus Christ:
See your Redeemer on that Cross
Where his whole being breathes love
And invites you to love him:
His head is bent downwards
To give us the kiss of peace
His arms stretched outwards
To embrace us
His heart wide open
To love us.
We sense something of what redemption meant to Alphonsus in his paintings of
his crucified love, not so much as works of art but as fruits of prayer. We
hear the music of eternity in Alphonsus in his canticles.
A General Chapter cannot write poetry nor compose an oratorio. But a General
Chapter can celebrate redemption as beauty. With the Redeemer in our midst
and his Spirit of love guiding us how can we not offer something beautiful
to our confreres? This hall is full of gifted leaders who serve a highly
imaginative group of disciples throughout the world. As we ponder the
dimensions of redemption let us give some space to the role of the
imagination and to how an evangelical imagination can show our
contemporaries what Alphonsus called “the measureless intensity”
[20] of God’s love. The Chapter can bring out of its
storeroom things both new and old, things which can magnify the abundance of
redemption.
Conclusion
We are in retreat. We can only hope to ponder one or two aspects of this
rich tapestry of redemption. But any reflection is conducted within some
sort of horizon: and our horizon is truly awesome. I have singled out
redemption as contemplation, as restorative justice and as beauty. I have
done this, not because of some theological fad but because of my own
experience and my faith that these dimensions are constitutive of the
mystery without ever exhausting it. Whatever aspect we ponder, we know that
there is always more to experience, more to be uncovered for us and more to
impel us to “continue faithful on a sure and firm foundation and not to
allow ourselves to be shaken from the hope we gained when we heard the
gospel”. [21]
My prayer for the Chapter is that while it would be wonderful for the
Chapter to promote a process of reflection on the mystery of redemption, and
in particular to encourage a focus on the ultimate goal of redemption, it is
even more urgent that we actually experience redemption among ourselves in
these days, “that we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled
himself to share in our humanity”. [22]
When the Welsh poet priest, R.S. Thomas, contemplated his death after a
lifetime of searching for God he wrote:
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
Of being a little nearer,
That’s all. Eternity
Is in the understanding
That that little is more than enough.
When we come to the end of the Chapter may we too be a little surer of being
a little nearer to the fullness of redemption. However we articulate it, we
are called to realize the promise expressed in 2 Peter 1:4 of “something
very great and wonderful to come to share the divine nature”.
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[1] Testament of Father Christian de Cherge in HOW FAR TO
FOLLOW: the martyrs of Atlas. By Bernardo Olivera, OCSO. Cistercian
Publications. Kalamazoo. Michigan. USA 1997. p. 127-9. Cf. also TIBHIRINE
POUR MEMOIRE 1996 presentee par l’abbaye de la Trappe 61380 Soligny. France,
1997.
[2] John 14, 9.
[3] Mark 10, 17-22.
[4] E. Levinas: Is Ontology Fundamental? In BASIC
PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS. Indiana University Press. 1996. pp 1-10.
[5] Psalm 26.
[6] CONTEMPLATIVE DIMENSION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. SCRIS.
1980.
[7] ORIENTATIONS on the Subject of Spirituality. General
Curia C.Ss.R. Rome, 1998. p. 7.
[8] John 14,6.
[9] CHRONICLE OF THE TRUTH COMMISSION. by Pat Meiring.
Carpe diem Books. Vanderbijlpark, 1999 pp. 167-169.
[10] NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS by Desmond Tutu. Rider
Books. London, 1999. pp. 51-52.
[11] “CREATING NEW HEARTS: MOVING FROM RETRIBUTIVE TO
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE.” New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ Conference. 1995.
[12] Cf. The work of Tom Cavanagh at the Institute on the
Common Good at Regis University in Denver.
[13] Ephesians 1.10 (anakephalaioo text).
[14] 1Cor. 2,10.
[15] Communicanda 4: OF ONE HEART AND ONE MIND. General
Curia. Rome, 2002.
[16] Tutu D. op.cit. pp 34-36, 51, 127, 213. cf. also: A
HUMAN BEING DIED THAT NIGHT. Pumla Gobodo-Madilizela. Davidphilip. Cape
Town. 2003. pp. 94-95.
[17] ECCLESIA IN AFRICA. Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation, 1995.
[18] WOMEN AND REDEMPTION. R.R.Ruether, Fortress Press.
Minneapolis. 1998. Also, Graff. A. O. (ed) IN THE EMBRACE OF GOD: Feminist
approaches to theological anthropology. Orbis Books, pp. 161-172.
[19] Fr. Emilio Lage C.Ss.R. PLENTIFUL REDEMPTION in Ven.
Maria Celeste Crostarosa and in St. Alphonsus. In Viva Memoria OSSR June
2003. pp. 25-31. cf. also Witness of the Love of the Father: Crostarosa –
Saint Alphonsus. By Sabatino Majorano C.Ss.R. in TO BE A REDEMPTORIST TODAY,
1996, pp. 25-36.
[20] Reflections and Affections on the Passion of Jesus
Christ (1751). In THE PASSION AND DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST by St. Alphonsus.
Grimm Edition (Brooklyn 1927). Chapter XII, section V, pp.116-117.
[21] Matthew 13, 52.
[22] Col.1, 23.
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