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Tuesdays Reflection

And so the VMM missionaries say Yes to Christ, and Yes to our mission

of transformation. We say Yes to the Christian Community of which we

are part, and we offer to the Church our service, our commitment and

the vision and the vigor that we bring.

Spirit and Lifestyle

With so many dreadful events occurring around us, I have been

"scrutinizing the signs of the times and interpreting them in light

of the gospel." Henri Nouwen in his book Life Signs suggests to

replace the dominant metaphor of the house of fear by the metaphor of

the house of love. Nouwen observes how fear drives us, controls us,

and blocks our capacity to imagine a new future.

"We are often seduced by the fearful questions the world presents to

us. Without fully realizing it, we become anxious, nervous, worrying

people caught in the questions of survival ... Once these fearful

survival questions become the guiding questions of our lives, we tend

to dismiss words spoken from the house of love as unrealistic,

romantic, sentimental, pious, or just useless. When love is offered

as an alternative to fear we say: 'Yes, yes that sounds beautiful,

but...'. The 'but' reveals how much we live in the grip of the world,

the world which calls Christians naive and raises 'realistic'

questions. When we raise these 'realistic' questions we echo a

cynical spirit which says 'Words about peace, forgiveness,

reconciliation and new life are wonderful but the real issues cannot

be ignored. They require that we do not allow others to play games

with us, that we retaliate when we are offended, that we are always

ready for war.... Once we accept these questions as our own, once we

are convinced that we must find answers to them, we become more and

more settled in the house of fear.... Fearful questions never lead to

love-filled answers.... Fear engenders fear. Fear never gives birth

to love."