8/5/2008
Mission
We see, therefore, that mission
is not a one-way process,
and the monopoly of one church or religion.
But it is a cyclical process,
going from one church
to another church
in continuous, mutual sharing.
This is the dynamic of mission.
It is never static,
it is ever moving,
ever growing and
ever calling forth
the gifts and life in the other.
We recognize
the fire and dynamic power
of the Holy Spirit in mission
which cannot be contained by,
or monopolized within,
any human institution,
but which is at work
wherever God wills.
Spirit and Lifestyle
If you think you read this recently, you're right. During the week, I
reread this passage many times and marveled at its strong message. It
informed my reading of a passage by Louis-Marie Parent, a priest
whose long mission has focused on the mission of the lay person:
"The church will be up-to-date, it will live with the times, it will
respond to the needs of the world inasmuch as lay people and priests
collaborate to keep the mystical Body of Christ healthy. In the
social environment, lay people have to permeate the Christian spirit
everywhere. They have to influence the mentality, the customs, the
laws and the structures of the human community.
"There has to be the greatest union possible between Christ and the
lay person. What unites us to Christ, is our baptism. Baptism enables
us to live as God lives, to be apostles like him and for him.
" The church is a gathering of baptised people who witness Christ,
who accept his doctrine, his principle, his life and his example and
who choose to help each other by loving one another. Together, we
make up the church. We will be able to save the world with the church
and by the church when we become conscious of the role that God
expects of each one of us. No one will be able to resist the church
one they discover its true face: Love."
Louis-Marie Parent wrote this in 1966, inspired by the same renewal
of the church that moved Edwina to found VMM. For over four decades,
Parent has proposed five attitudes of life to live and witness the
charity of Christ:
Presence of God: to be attentive to the presence of God in the
present moment.
Absence of destructive criticism: to cultivate a spirit of love for
every person.
Absence of useless complaint: To welcome events in a positive way.
Being of service: To show concern for others.
Peacemaker: To strive to build peace in all circumstances.
Cecily
8/12/2008
Passion
VMM missionaries are
followers of Jesus,
engaged fully in sharing the Good News of the
Gospel
Spirit and Lifestyle
"Your passion is born from the discovery of Christ's beauty, of his
unique way of loving, of encountering people, of healing life, of
bringing joy and comfort. This is the beauty that our lives wish to
sing so that your presence in the world may be a sign of your being
in Christ.
"You come from different countries and the cultural, political and
religious situations in which you live are different. In all these
situations, seek Truth and the human revelation of God in life.
"Announce the beauty of God and of his creation. As you follow into
the footsteps of Christ, remain obedient to love, be gentle and
merciful men and women, capable of traveling on the roads of the
world simply by doing good. May the Beatitudes that contradict human
logic be at the centre of your lives. May you be seeds of holiness,
sown into the open ground of history."
This is taken from a speech by Pope Benedict XVI at the World
Conference of Secular (Lay) Institutes, February 2007.
Cecily
8/19/2008
The Presence of Truth
During Spring Break in 1987 I visited a friend who was spending a
year in Chile. It was a moving experience. I still have the
newspapers from that week which coincided with the Pope's visit. The
authorities tried to prevent contact between the victims of
oppression and the Pope. Nevertheless, Carmen Gloria Quintana met the
Pope and her photo and story appeared on TV and in the newspaper.
This week, while reading Dispatches from the Global Village by Derek
Evans (ISBN 978-1-551455-53-2), I was moved by a chapter entitled
Truth. For 15 years Evans worked with the UN Commission on Human
Rights. Each year he spent a month at the commission's session at the
UN headquarters in Geneva. He described the hall as "a pit of
constant clamour and mayhem as the real work of 'diplomacy' was
carried out . . . a festival of hard-core bargaining, high-pressure
lobbying, gun-point negotiating, outright arm-twisting, and unholy
horse-trading . . . sound and fury, posture and pretence . . . the
embarrassment of truth concealed and confused by too much busyness."
All this changed on one special day:
"In the years of my experience at the Palais-des-Nations, the great
hall fell silent, utterly silent, only once. It felt as if something
was terribly wrong. In fact, the entire Commission was held by the
crystalline power of a grotesquely disfigured 18-year-old woman
seated at the edge of the room. When her turn came to speak, the
wrenching sound was like the whole of humanity struggling against all
the obstacles in the world; it was as if she was creating human
speech for the first time. It was a moment of truth, of testimony,
when the words and the body speaking them became one.
"A small group of us had conspired to secretly bring this woman,
Carmen Gloria Quintana, to the Commission to tell her story. She had
somehow, miraculously, survived the unimaginable. We had helped her
escape her own country, had brought her to Canada for months of
surgery and the nightmare of rehabilitation, and this was her one
remaining wish - to tell the world what had happened to her, to her
boyfriend, and to the rest of the teenagers in her village in Chile.
"Our name was called on the speakers list, the red light flashed on,
and Carmen began to speak, rasping out the words. Slowly, the room
gradually hushed, as precisely, scientifically, she described the
plain, cruel facts of her experience. How General Pinochet's soldiers
attacked her poverty-stricken neighbourhood and seized her and her
friends. How the soldiers beat them and killed them. How the soldiers
threw their bodies onto the rubbish heap, and poured gasoline from
five gallon cans over their bodies. How they set fire to them,
intending to burn into ash all evidence of the terror, to erase the
memory of their lives and suffering as if it were nothing more than a
passing whiff of smoke lost in the bright sky of a sunny morning.
"As she spoke, the simple mystery of her scars was revealed. From the
contorted mouth of a disfigured young woman pulled from the silence
of a smouldering pit after the soldiers had gone. The words emerged
pure and beautiful and powerful and true. And this revelation
compelled silence.
"Some say "the truth shall set you free." At that moment, it did not
feel much like liberation for anyone in the great marble hall. In our
postmodern relativistic world, some say there is, in fact, no such
thing as objective truth, only different perspectives. I know that
this, at least, is not the case. For in the moment and power of
Carmen's testimony before the Commission, everyone knew they were
witnessing the raw presence of truth. Perhaps you know you are in the
presence of truth when the only possible response is to be silent."
Cecily
8/26/2008
Save my Soul
We praise and bless God
Who calls us to live and to be
in the world,
and to share this mission
of love and peace
with all men and women
of every color, race and belief.
With this passage, we come to the end once more to our shared reading
of and reflection on Edwina Gateley's Spirit and Lifestyle, we
started on December 13, 2007, 32 reflections ago. Each re-reading
Spirit and Lifestyle brings new insights and confirms its unchanging
relevance.
I was reminded of this on Saturday as I waited for the train to take
me to the south side of Edmonton for seven more hours of "fringing,"
as we call the act of attending some of the hundreds of the stage
performances during the 10-day Fringe Festival. Having just missed a
train, I sat down, stuffed my unneeded jacket into my bag and opened
the newspaper. A young Asian woman came and sat at the other end of
the bench. After a minute or two, she asked: "Can I ask you a
question?" A thought went through my mind: "She's not Jehovah Witness
nor Mormon - I wonder how she wants to save my soul"?
In carefully chosen words she asked how she could find the City
Centre shopping mall when she got off at Churchill Square - an easy
question to answer. I asked her where she was from - China. What
part? Quindao. I told her I had visited China in 1989 and that I had
spent several days in Quindao. Then I told her one of my friends had
spent 10 years in China teaching English and that he had taught at
the Maritime College in Quindao, and then in Inner Mongolia and in
other places. "Inner Mongolia? That's a very dry place, very dusty."
Yes, I remembered Gabe's photos. She commented that it would be very
hard, very hard, for a foreigner to spend so much time in China. He'd
have to be very strong, very committed. Yes, I agreed. It took
someone very special. Yes, Gabe is very special.
I forgot to ask my new friend her name. I'll see her again. She's
living in a walkup apartment near the station and starting classes in
business/economics at the University of Alberta on September 3. The
train was full. We didn't sit together but she turned around twice to
wave at me as she got off and got on the escalator at Churchill
Square. And I wondered how she wanted to save my soul! She did!
Gabe Hurrish, Central American Coordinator based in San Salvador when
Dawn Williams and I arrived to begin our two years with VMM in
Chahal, Guatemala, in 1996, is indeed very special. Shortly he will
head to Rome for the next stage of his "mission of love and peace
with all men and women of every color, race and belief."
Please make sure you read the August issue of Bridges. Moving stories
from future, present and former VMs. And we have a date and place for
the next Assembly: St. Benedict's Abbey Retreat Center, Benet Lake.
WI, June 12-14, 2009. Please put it on your calendar - "a time of
reunion, renewal and thanksgiving."
Cecily
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