Jesús Romero Trillo
Community of Sant’Egidio, Madrid
Dear friends,
I am glad to share with you these important days for your organization. I especially thank the invitation to Father Pedro Castillo who asked me to lecture on the challenges to Christian life in this time. I think it is significant that you all want to do it together, young people from all parts of the world, because I am convinced that you all need each other, above all, because communion is the way to live in the Church. And it is precisely communion what is more needed nowadays, prior to any coordination or organization. The true secret of the Gospel, of Jesus’ message, is that it teaches us how to form a family and not an organization. I think that our task, above all, is to be in tune with everybody’s heart, and not so much with everybody’s agenda.
1. Disciples of the Lord in this new century
One world has finished, what was called the “brief century” has ended, that between 1917 –end of 1st World War- and 1989 –fall of Berlin Wall. . The world that appears beyond the horizons of the year 2000 looks different from yesterday’s.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of ideologies the panorama of history changed. All the identities of the old bipolar order had to be rethought through the nineties, and had to learn how to relate with globalisation, which appeared as a new phenomenon that commands in the economic and international relations domains. Today is more difficult to orient oneself inside this complex world panorama. The dream of a stable and enduring peace, of the brotherhood that many awaited after the fall of the wall has faded away. In fact, many conflicts have erupted. Many States that were legitimate in the past on the basis of an ideology, today are confronted with ethnic, religious or national identities. The end of communism in the Eastern Europe has launched many national identities which were depressed or repressed. The nation has returned to the European and World scenario with vivacity and, sometimes, virulence. With nations, the public role of religions has been reborn and often used to legitimate identities.
After the September 11 and March 11 attacks the world looks less safe. Hatred wanders around the world. Anger is present in many places, there are dark powers, designs of violence and terrorism. And fear communicates easily, there is always a reason to be afraid. One consequence of this atmosphere of terror is that, in the end, we end up by only thinking of the present, in our own present, and of little else.
There is a lack of a thought towards the future, there are no dreams for the future. Today, under this atmosphere of insecurity, who looks towards the future?, who thinks about the future? What are the dreams of the youth for the future? Fear, egotism, insecurity, steal the future and close us all inside the present. There is a deep silence about the future. Since September 11 we live in a permanent present, afraid of what tomorrow may bring. In this way, everybody is happy to only preserve the present. This withdrawal to a small world, better known, which makes us feel safer, is a condition of individuals and countries. The big dreams of the sixties of a just and peaceful world have been replaced by personal interest, the defence of personal welfare or of a quiet life. At the same time, Western countries have decided not to intervene or worry about certain parts of the world subjected to enormous distress, such as Africa. It seems that many parts in the world have suddenly disappeared from the maps for many people.
The European Union construction in the last months has lived historic moments wth the arrival of new members from the East, however, it runs the risk of becoming a courtyard where its neighbours do not look outside their walls. I think that the EU should mean, above all, peace: peace for the Europeans who have fought among themselves for centuries, especially after the two big wars that bled Europe and devoured the Jews and other groups, such as the gypsies, during the Holocaust. Our EU means peace for the Europeans, and if the war in Europe meant the war for many twice in the 20th century, today –that is our hope- we dream that peace in Europe may become a decisive contribution to peace outside our borders
When one looks at the horizons of the contemporary world, one may run the risk to feel displaced, dominated by the enormity of the challenges and the complexity of the problems. That is the situation of the contemporary man or woman, that of being a “displaced man”, as the Bulgarian writer Tzvetan Todorov states. From this lack of orientation many attitudes sprout up: those who fall back to themselves, dominated by a feeling of impotence, those who get enclosed in their institution or social group, those who immerse themselves in consumerism and think that nothing but drinking, eating or shopping can be done, or those who abandon themselves to fundamentalisms. It is the same with us and with our groups, in spite of our Christian background, we too can be prey to this lack of orientation and stop leaning over the window of love, or letting ourselves be dragged by a feeling of impotence, or even spending our years inside the problems of our institution, and there are always problems or else we can invent them, in other words, we may self-preserve ourselves without confronting the challenges of the present world.
“Duc in altum” “Put out into deep water” (Luke 5,4) , the invitation made by John Paul II for the Third Millennium, is not a natural or simple fact. It is perhaps one of the less followed invitations in our Church. In fact, our instinct is not to put out into deep water, but to look for a safe pier in a quiet bay. Do not fool ourselves, the security or serenity we need does not come from the programmes we draw up for the future, or from the methodologies or our psychological withdrawals. Many times we exorcise the challenges of the future by writing schedules, by repeating methodologies or by closing ourselves up. However, the subject is a different one, it is a matter of the heart. Our wise schedules do not grant the serenity to look at the future. It is a matter of the heart, or if you prefer, of spirituality.
The confusion before our contemporary world causes fear, and fear is a reality to face because it accompanies our whole life and our Christian existence. We can see it in the Scriptures, from the annunciation “do not be afraid”, to the women by the tomb. And also in that invitation that ends the First Letter to the Corinthians: “Be awake to all the dangers; stay firm in the faith; be brave and be strong”. The whole Bible is traversed by this invitation of the Lord and the prophets before the dark horizon of the tomorrow. To those who were to explore the land of tomorrow, of the promise, Moses said: “be bold” (Numbers 13,20). It is a matter of the heart and not of a project. That is why the words addressed to our heart are decisive: it is the word of God given to us. And throughout the stages of our life, each of us is invited to renew the relationship and the listening with this word.
This disorientation before the wide horizon of the world sometimes generates pessimism about what we can do, and then fall back to our institutions. We then speak about ourselves , all the thoughts refer to us, i.e. to our institutions, and in the end we speak a language only understood by us, that means nothing to our friends, to our colleagues. I think that this is the greatest temptation of the Church, of religious institutes, of all realities, to suffer from the illness of self-reference. This illness makes an institution become a fictional world with its ailments, its problems, its sadness, its own things. It is a noble way to live for oneself, for one’s own institution. And obviously in any institution there are internal problems that may be discussed at great length, and if there are challenges, they are those of the institution itself. We can observe this illness in other contexts, for instance in the life of so many NGO’s that were born for humanitarian aid and whose financial resources are eventually used, in a large proportion, to make the institution survive. I think that we should face the challenges of the Gospel and of the world, with the specific charisma of each institution, but always careful not to be prisoners of the illness of self-reference. The more complex the challenges, the deeper the temptation to be enclosed in our world.
One need not be a Bible expert to realize that the Scriptures convey a message of universality. This message indicates a vision that goes beyond the restricted limits of our daily life, of our country, it tries to reach the limits of the world, as Jesus says in Mark (16,15) “Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation”. We can hear something similar in Mathew (28,19), “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. Here we come across with the nations, embedded in the universal mission of Christ.
I think that the main problem nowadays is how to live a passion for the world in our communities. And the dialogue represents a fundamental issue in this globalized world, with no borders but in which defensive frontiers appear among worlds and civilisations. This universal vision, this “ample scope”, can be the trade mark of Christian communities. Not only large communities can have this ample scope, also small communities can take up the challenges of the world, they can strengthen the links with the entire world, they can actively participate in the Church mission. Sometimes I feel there is a retreat towards local borders, as if we were witnessing a territory-bound attitude of the Church, with the risks of becoming ethnic-oriented. The local church, a community in a remote place in the world, can never be a provincial entity. In the Church we must live, wherever we are, a universal passion for those who are far away, for those who live in dire straits, in hostile situations. It is the evangelical challenge of not to love only those we know, those who love us, who greet us, who praise us… This is the challenge that the Community of Sant’Egidio tried to face from its beginning. It is a challenge that modelled our history, a history never based upon a programme that was designed at the beginning and then applied through the years, it has been –it is- an itinerary where we ask questions about the people and the history, trying to answer with the strength and the words of the Gospel, always with a personal question in our hearts: what else can I do?, because we are convinced that the Lord speaks to us personally, each of us has his/her charisma, his/her gift, to help bring the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.
The Community of Sant’Egidio is a lay community, born in 1968, in the Post- 2nd Vatican Council atmosphere, among university students. Since its origin the question the community posed itself was how to listen and communicate the Gospel. Sant’Egidio was born in a socially stirred context, where the young had great hopes of change, of authenticity. It was the moment of students’ revolts, of marxist inclinations, of the primacy of politics. Inside this atmosphere, Sant’Egidio discovered the primacy of the Gospel in all the angles of life. The fathers of the Council encouraged the young in this way “we exhort you, young people, to broaden your hearts to the limits of the world, to listen to your brothers and to put your energy, with passion, at their disposal”. In this context, Andrea Riccardi, a young student at the time and now History Professor at Rome University, founds Sant’Egidio with the belief that only new men and women can bring about a new world, and that the Gospel is the Word that can make men and women new from inside.
Our Christianity has gone through a difficult century, the most secular of all its history. It was a different century. When it started, and through its decades, many foresaw the death of Christianity, or its residual presence in an unstoppable way towards the secularisation of the heart, of the mind, and of civil society. These omens were based on its difficulties, on its sweet or violent marginalization (this depended on the countries). Christianity is not dead, although we all bear the signals of a difficult crossing. The new lay movements were mainly born in the second half of the century, partly as an answer to this new situation. The Community of Sant’Egidio, born in 68, witnessed the dream of the Western world to carry out a revolution.
For us, Sant’Egidio was as if the silence had been smashed by the word of the Lord. It was the beginning of a way along which the Word of the Lord has shed light on our footsteps.
Father Men, an orthodox priest who was murdered in 1990, in view of the historic change after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 said: “Christianity has barely started”. That same year, the Redemptoris Missio stated that the mission of the Church was at its beginnings. They look rhetorical statements in the years where we have celebrated the two-thousand anniversary of Christ’s birth. That is why it is important to understand seriously this historic moment to be aware of this new beginning.
Christianity has not died in the difficult crossing of the most secular century in history. Unamuno spoke about the “agony of Christianity” . But he did not refer to death, but to a new struggle. The situation of Christianity nowadays is that of agony, not of death but of struggle, in Saint Paul’s terms. Perhaps Christian life was never easy, but it takes up the meaning of struggle in this new time to communicate the Gospel, a sweet and hard struggle. Also the communication of the Gospel assumes this struggle in a world where there are no stable models that convey the Faith to our society, not even in the lands with old Christian traditions.
I think that we have to understand this historic moment we are living as the chance to think of a new beginning of Christianity, remembering Father Men’s words. Of course, a beginning understood with a deep meaning of Christian life in which continuity, faithfulness and tradition merge with what is new, like the sage scribe in the Gospel, who obtained old and new things from his treasure.
There is a lot to discover from the treasure of the faith. The new beginning is the assertion of the missionary dimension, that is communicative, in the whole life of the Church and of each Christian. This ability to communicate presupposes a sincere and deep Christian life, rooted in the faith, spiritually mature. It means to conceive of the whole Christian life and Church life in the missionary framework. For that purpose, we have to start from the conception of each Christian as a disciple: the spirituality and the theology of the disciple are topics to delve into because a Christian must never stop to listen and communicate. The language may change with the pass of time, as many things in life, but we must propose the way of faith to each generation, in all life stages. This task demands missionaries.
4. A compassionate look at the world
The new horizons of the contemporary world speak of a new beginning. The Gospel of Mathew (15,32) tells that, on a certain occasion, Jesus called his disciples and said: “I feel sorry for these people”. These are the words Jesus says before the people who had followed him for three days and had nothing to eat. A new beginning asks us to return to Jesus, who is by the people. The people are the crowds in our world, not only the crowds in demonstrations, but the crowds of the global world, of the images we watch on TV, of the life models and complex turmoil of the present time.
A new beginning asks us to return by the apostles, with the other disciples, with the women, before the crowds. The expression of the compassion Jesus feels in Mathew (9,36) has always moved the Community of Sant’Egidio: “and when he saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed an dejected, like sheep without a shepherd”. This passage was one of the first we reflected upon. This time leads us next to Jesus and his compassion for the crowd, a compassion which is much deeper than our feelings of responsibility, than our commitments, than our projects, than our sense of duty, than our organisation.
The scenario that Jesus and his disciples saw is different from ours, but we can also perceive the harassment and dejection in today’s crowds, like sheep without a shepherd. The world has lost the shepherd of history because of this individualistic culture, and has lost all referents at the same time. But the world also lost its shepherds with the fall of big utopias and intense messianic ideas that had become the guides in the lives and activities of many people. On the whole, the hopes of many had been reduced to ideology and politics. Now this hope is finished with the end of ideology and politics. The world has lost its shepherd in the long and winding roads of psychology, in the law of trying to live day by day with the maxim of loving oneself, believing this was the best guardian for our existence. The world has lost its shepherd.
It is precisely in Mathew (14, 15) , in the first miracle of the loaves, when the disciples show their modesty and the feelings of their limits. They say to him: “This is a lonely place, and the time has slipped by; so send the people away, and the can go to the villages to buy themselves some food”. The disciples are convinced that they cannot take the responsibility of that crowd, and then Jesus insists, and they declare their poverty and impotence: “All we have with us is five loaves and two fish”. And despite the prior experience, the disciples in the second miracle of the loaves, react in the same way: “Where could we get enough bread in this deserted place to feed such a crowd?”. The first time had not been enough. This second time Jesus had told his disciples “I feel sorry for these people”
From the very beginning, in the core of every beginning, it is manifest the disparity between the immense duty and the strength of the disciples. It is a situation that sometimes Christians have underestimated with their proud feeling of omnipotence. But that disparity is evident, clear in all times and situations. That is also the situation of Christians today. The Lord feels a deep sorrow, deeper than the activities of the Church. We must go back to it. The starting point is not ourselves, our projects, our institutions, the starting point, the source of hope, is the sorrow of the Lord before the crowds.
The poor
The concrete solidarity towards the poor is an essential component that all members in Sant’Egidio live, and I am very glad to speak to part of Saint Vincent of Paul’s family, who constitutes a chapter in the history of men and women who placed the poor at the centre of their lives. The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10, 25-37) is a beautiful icon of the encounter with the poor. It is significant, also, its closeness to the episode of Martha and Mary, which evokes the deep link between prayer and service to the poor, the two sides of the coin in the life of a Christian. As the parable suggests, the most important element in this encounter is the personal and concrete dimension. The encounter with the poor is not another activity for us, another scheduled task in a day’s timetable, but a personal encounter which moves our hearts and invites us to feel compassion and mercy. In the light of the parable, one can understand the value of some gestures which, despite its simplicity, hide a great treasure of wisdom and evangelical mercy.
Throughout these years the poor have become in Sant’Egidio our brothers and sisters, they consider themselves part of our family, our friends, our relatives. This is evident in the services provided by the Community, as well in the personal care given by its members. I will not speak about the works for the poor organised by Sant’Egidio, which are the foundations of the life and activity of its members, but I will say that through them the poor receive the Gospel. The love for the poor shows, that is what we believe, the universality of our love. We feel that it is the image of the Gospel where Jesus and his disciples were surrounded by the crowd, by the needy, the poor and the lepers. That image is alive again in our lives. To be a sanctuary of the Gospel also demands to be a sanctuary of charity.
John Paul II told us: “your small community of the beginning did not set itself any limit except the limit of charity”. In these years, these limits have enlarged. They reach European cities where the elderly or the AIDS-patient do not die alone, but accompanied by a friend who holds his hand. They reach our homes for the elderly, in the struggle against solitude and abandonment that is so perverse in our cities. The limits reach African prisons, refugee camps in Kosovo, our hospital in Guinea Bisssau. Each member of Sant’Egidio, apart from his family, has at least one poor who is also a member of his family, of the family of God. We are not specialists in one or another job, but we are sure that without the poor our Christian life would not be universal.
The Peace
With the mass media, many of the distant poverties are nearby. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho that travelled the good Samaritan is the whole world today. The sight of the distant poverties questioned us and became another challenge for our charity.
The Christians, suffice it to think of the Popes in the 20th century, are always more sensitive to the war as the manifestation of evil in history. The war makes rich countries poor and for the poor, is the mother of all poverty. IN 1989, at the end of the cold war, we dreamt that a new era of peace would start to put an end to many conflicts. It was not like this. IN the decade between 1990 and 2000, five million people were killed and 6 millions were injured due to the war. The war still poisons the life of many peoples. Today, we calculate that there are 32 open wars and 5 in stand-by.
There is also this reality of diffuse war in the war where, with the help of so many weapons, of terrible weapons, many can go for war or use violence to prevail over the others, or simply to live. It is the dark menace of terrorism, of many terrorisms, that has the world on the rack. Nowadays it is very easy to use violence for everything. The diffuse war is the reality of our time.
Apart from the open wars, and the use of violence, we can add what the former director general of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, calls “the violence of economy”. Ghandi said: “poverty is the worst violence against the poor”. I do not want to mention that string of figures that, anyway, should be remembered often. The future is more and more marked by poverty. The prospects speak about an increase to 90% of people born in poor countries in 25 years. Some regions in the world, like sub-Saharan Africa, cannot control poverty anymore. From this “violence of economy” stem the journeys of hope, represented by the migration movement from the South to Europe or the States to reach the welfare states, but they are also the origin of the growing polarisation between the rich and the poor, and of the fragility of many political systems, because poverty and democracy do not get along well.
And then there is the drama of AIDS, that burns so many hopes of future, and makes people die while alive. We must confront ourselves with the 36 millions of sick people, of which around 26 are in Africa, and 6 in South East Asia, 1.4 in South America, etc… 70% of the infected are in Africa. In Mozambique, where we run an ambitious project also present in other 9 countries, the life expectancy that was under 40, as it was in 1992 during the war is now 32. It is an absolute squandering of human lives and hopes. But today, it is possible not to die of aids. It is only a matter of buying the medicines and manage the treatment. We need to make the effort that will save many lives and will give hope to many countries. I am glad to say that more than 1,000 HIV negative babies have been born from HIV positive mothers.
Today we are in a situation where everything can be seen and known from a great distance, although the media selects and some wars are in the foreground and others in the background. However, with this immense information flow, and in the contact with the conflicts, often the Christians develop a feeling of impotence. What can we do with our weak forces? How to tackle these big and distant problems? Above all, I think that Christian communities are contexts where one cannot resign himself to accepting the war as something inevitable. We do not resign ourselves to accepting that war is an inescapable companion of the life of many peoples, or a recurrent need in international relations.
We live a time in which many can make war, like mafias, guerrillas and ethnic groups of all kinds, but is it not the time in which many can work for peace? The history of friendship with Mozambique has revealed to us the force of peace that exists in Christianity. Mozambique, the last country to declare independence in Africa in 1975, started a civil war that lasted for 16 years, with 1 million people killed, 3 millions of displaced refugees. From the beginning, Sant’Egidio lived a special kind of solidarity with the country, by sending humanitarian aid. Little by little we became aware that the war was the mother of the poverty in the country and we began to work for peace. So, by implementing Pope John XXIII’s wisdom of searching what is in common and leaving aside what is not we managed to put an end to that forgotten African war and give birth to a peace that was signed on 4th October 1992, Saint Francis day. This experience has made us be aware that believers can contribute to peace much more than what they think sometimes. After this, we have continued working for peace in different ways, especially in Africa, where diffuse wars have become endemic in many regions. We should not forget that working for peace is possible, especially to prevent the growth of conflicts on the ground.
From the invocation to peace, to the education for peace, to the work for reconciliation, there is a struggle against war that has to be fought at all levels. “War is satanic” , used to say a medieval Pope of 11th century, Nicholas I. It is a devil that rips the life of peoples, as the devil did with to young epileptic whom the disciples could not heal. In fact, Jesus said, such devils can only be expelled through prayer and fast. I think we must be grateful because the Church is a witness of peace. Sant’Egidio organizes every 1st January a rally for peace in solidarity with the Pope’s message. Those rallies, in their fragility, represent prophecies of peace in our contemporary world where all countries at war are remembered. This prophecy has to be lived everywhere we are.
Inter-religious dialogue
Conflicts increase and always look for ideological justifications. We have witnessed the end of Marxism, the erosion of utopias, instruments also use to struggle. Now religion is presented as an ideology to fight. We saw it in the Balkans, we see it in the Muslim world. In 1996 Huntington published his essay on the clash of civilizations that told what many wanted to hear. According to this author, the world is articulated in different civilizations: China, Japan, Hindu, Islam, West, South American, and Slavonic-Orthodox, each of these has a religious referent. It is a picture that has caused much discussion, but many waited for it, and it is not by chance that its translation into Arabic has been widely sold and accepted.
The 11-S and 11-March attacks seem to have confirmed Huntington’s thesis: there is a clash between Muslim and Christian worlds. The clash of civilizations is anavoidable and we have to prepare for it. The Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, in her book The rage and the pride, which has sold very well, said while showing her atheistic condition, that the westerners have to defend Christianity against aggressive Islam, brought by immigrants, and that they have to prepare for the clash with the Muslim world. She sees in the faces of the Muslim immigrants in Europe the Islamic expansion that wants to destroy the Christian and Western identity of the North: “with my lay attitude, with my atheism, I have been kneaded with a Catholic culture that makes my expression… Although I never forgave the wrongs imposed upon me for centuries (the inquisition to start with), although I do not agree with the priests and do not know what to do with prayers, I love the bell tolls”. The tendency, then, is to identify Christianity with the West and oppose it to Islam.
The logic of the clash of civilizations between the Christian West and Islam cannot be ours. In fact, more than a clash of civilizations we encounter a process in which all identities, national, religious, cultural or ethnic, are being restructured in view of globalization. This generates contraposition, clashes and conflicts. Paradoxically, globalisation does not lead to a cosmopolitan stage, it rather generates identity reactions that use religions too. Here is the story of many fundamentalisms, among which Islam’s, which is not the only one.
Our religious communities, our movements have a universal dimension: they embrace peoples of different languages and nationalities, that express the universal and catholic meaning of the Church. They are a signal we have to value, and that overcomes nationalism and ethnic identities. They express a civilization of conviviality among different people with the roots of faith. Let’s pay attention to the situations in which, with the excuse of defending culture, certain elements of nationalism or ethnicity creep in our groups.
I think that lay movements and religious congregations, in a world signalled by conflicts of civilisations, of identities and wars, with new frontiers and misunderstandings, are a symbol of unity. Our future, in this global world, is to achieve a true civilization of conviviality, free from the dangerous virus of ethnic cleansing or of building homogeneous societies with equals, closed to what is different. What other alternatives do we have? In our communities, spread all over the world, Sant’Egidio tries to live a special worldliness, with interest for what is far away. We want to show the testimony that one can live globalisation as an opening to the others, with a diffuse sense of responsibility. To have communities, brothers and sisters in so many parts of the world must lead to feel those parts, especially the most suffering, as members of one family, of our family. On the whole, it is a call to develop a more universal feeling through the information and the solidarity towards our brothers and sisters who live in more difficult situations.
In this sense, Christianity goes beyond the West, although many of its roots are here. Our religious worlds are called to live the challenge of a different globalisation, that of faith and love. Our communities that embrace people from the North and the South, from East and West, show how one can and must live together, with the world in one’s heart. We live in our smallness the civilisation of conviviality. Our communities give an answer to the question that Europe poses about immigration, which also applies to Africa and Russia: how can we live together? We need to find the words and behaviours to show how to live at a world level, beyond all borders. The news from our communities wake up our hearts. To know how our brothers and sisters live thousand of km. away. That is why Sant’Egidio has one website for all the communities, where news from all over the world arrives. It is an important gesture to live the unity in the diversity, the closeness of the hearts despite the physical distance.
The weak force of the Gospel
The prayer
The first task of the Community of Sant’Egidio, anywhere in the world, is the personal and common prayer. It is to live the centrality of the Word of God in life. To listen to this Word is to listen the old invitation by the Lord to become his disciples, addressed at all generations. It is the invitation to convert our hearts and to stop living for oneself, and to start, with freedom, to be instruments of a greater love, especially for the poor. To listen to the Gospel is the premise to love the world, to its men and women. To draw their best feelings from them. To listen and live the Word of God as the most important thing in life means to accept not to follow oneself, but to follow Jesus. The passage of the Gospel with Martha and Maria illustrates the need of this primacy of the word of God in life. To listen to the Word enables us to change and asks us to do it, to be different from the way we are. It is to listen to a Word that invites to live a greater love in life. The prayer is an act of solidarity, a moment to embrace the whole world, the needs of men and women, especially those we cannot touch with our hands.
The word of God grows in our life, it gives life to and enlarges our heart in a world where one lives with no heart. A bishop of Rome, Gregory the Great, said in his comments to Ezekiel: “the divine oracles grow with whom he reads them, in fact, one understands them deeper the more profound attention he devotes to them”. The word of God has new things to say in the different stages of life. Before the complexities of tomorrow’s challenges, we are called to take root in the word of God and to renew our prayer.
However, our personal prayer is born and placed within the common prayer. In our world people pray very little, and not well, together. I can think of many masses, reduced to continuous explanations, where the presence of God is not celebrated. I can think of many sermons, of which Carlo Bo, an Italian writer said: “the Sunday sermon, a torture for the believer”. Our communities have a simple strength: to be two or three gathered in the name of the Lord. Before a complex world, we have to make our communities places of prayer where to find orientation for one’s life, but also to offer orientation to many men and women around us. The word of the Lord answers to fear and lack of orientation: “there is no need for you to be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified”.(Mathew 28,5)
One of the experiences that characterise the Community of Sant’Egidio is the open prayer in town for everyone. To pray together widens our hearts and, at the same time, help many to pray and live. For us, the liturgy and the prayer are the true heart of the Community, open to all in search of God.
May our communities show the countenance and the heart of the prayer! Any small community can help people pray, if we can welcome others and, I would say, attract them. Father Tavrion, who spent many years in clandestine life in Russia, an then in a Soviet Gulag, and had the joy to finish his life amid monks, said “if we don’t show the beauty, people will not come with us”. It is the beauty of the prayer, our religious and lay communities can live beautiful common prayers, and have attractive places to pray. But, for this, we need to break with our habits, too many differences between actives and contemplatives, lay people and congregations. All this makes us forget that we all need to pray to live the future as Christians, it distracts our attention from the fact that the Church today has to offer places to pray in the hearts of our cities, and has to offer a beautiful and eloquent liturgy. The liturgy and the prayer are an immense source of love, that enable us to have a Christian identity, but also a courage in life.
The main way to live this mission is to be liturgical and praying communities. The fear, the feeling of impotence, and anguish, find in the liturgy and in the word of the Lord the serene harbour of the mission, to go beyond. To free ourselves from this pessimism that dominates our environments and many people. The pessimism to be just a few, oldish, inadequate, and prisoners of our history. We can always find reasons to justify pessimism, but this is a reality that captures us.
The communication of the Gospel
The mission is the most authentic way the Church can be in the contemporary world. But it is not easy when our institutions are over-protective and absorb our energy with their problems, and they do not let us go outside. That is why the problem for Christians is to lead a communicative life, in contact with the others, on the street, and, above all, never forgetting to communicate the Gospel.
The mission is to communicate a good news to someone else. But are our communities able to communicate something? What can I give you? It is the question Peter and Juan posed to the man outside the Temple. The communication of the Gospel helps the man to walk with freedom. The communication of the Gospel to the lame man, in the atmosphere of the first Pentecost, shows how the apostles answer with what they have to the beggar: “I have neither silver or gold, but I will give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk!”. It is the name of Jesus, when communicated, what enables him to walk. This man starts walking again and praises God. It is the name of Jesus what disciples have to communicate.
Besides, that communication is personal, Peter and John “looked straight at him”. Then takes him by the hand and stands up. He touches him and holds him. And he starts to walk, while his mouth praises the Lord. One cannot overview how the communication of the Gospel happens between man and man, in that unavoidable personal relationship of the mission: from heart to heart, from eye to eye, from hand to hand. It is not a text, a message, a proclamation. We can use all kind of instruments, but nothing can substitute the meeting of two men around the name of the Lord. The history of the communication of the Gospel is the history of the meetings of men and women. It is the history of a community that feels the mission, but also the experience of men and women who personally choose, with their lives to tread the path of the mission, to spend their lives for the Gospel. It is the history of concrete witnesses in life.
It was thought that the 20th Century would have destroyed religion, and that the 21st would have reduced religion to a residual state. In a world where everything is market, also religions have entered the market sphere. Why do I say this in relation to the communication of the Gospel? I think we are all aware that in the worlds with more difficulty (from Russia to Africa or Latin America, but also in the case of immigrants) sects are offering their proposal, an attractive one, and propose a Christianity (if that word can be used), void of any social awareness, individualistic but communitarian, leading to a further fragmentation of the Christian world and the Church. I think we must reflect upon in depth. Perhaps this fact may stimulate us to have a wider and deeper sense of the mission, perhaps it may push us to realise that this challenge asks the Church to adopt more familiar manners, less institutionalised, less difficult and less codified.
Nevertheless, the 20th Century was also, in its complexity, the most missionary century in history. It is not by chance that the century we finished was the century of martyrdom, of many Christians, men and women, religious and lay people, who amid violence and brutality preferred to save humankind before their lives. There is a heritage in these new martyrs of the 20th Century that has to be read and accepted. This heritage shows us the vocation of the Christians at the Third Millennium. It shows us that specific strength that Christians have manifested in times of difficulty.
Under the violence of communist persecution, either Soviet, European or Asian, under the violence of Nazism, under the persecution of other religions, the communication of the Gospel by missionaries, during the crisis of independent Africa, stricken by laicism, for exercising charity or justice, stricken by mafias and terrorism, with physical violence, for being witnesses of Christ many believers died. Martin Luther King said in 1960 “amid the dangers I have felt inner peace and I have known resources of strength that only God can grant”. The testimony of the new martyrs is revealing, not only of the pressure of evil in history, its pressure on the believers, but also of the deep force of Christians, of weak men and women who resisted until the end with a human behaviour, who did not abandon their flock, their poor and their faith, as an exchange for their lives. Also, the proposal they made to Christ on the cross was, ironically enough: “Then save yourself!. If you are God’s son, come down from the cross!” (Mathew 27,40)
This is why the Community of Sant’Egidio, with the Pope’s consent, has devoted the Basilica of Saint Bartholomew in Rome, as a memorial church for the new Martyrs of the 20th century, and Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, a bishop from Sant’Egidio, is the postulator of the beatification process of Mons. Romero. This is, for all of us, sunk in our weaknesses, the memory of the force of faith, humble force, that we have and are responsible for before the Lord and the future of the world, lay men and religious people together before the challenges of the Third Millennium.
A culture of love
That is why –and I think about religious and lay people- culture is important. The Lord, in his command, asks to love God with all the heart, with all the mind and with all the strength. Have we ever reflected that he also refers to the mind? The culture, I want to say, is not a set of answers, but the cultivation of one’s mind, to make it sensitive and attentive to the complexity of the contemporary world. The culture speaks about the others, about the world; it brings far problems near to us, it makes us be familiar with the complexity of this time and its problematic language, closer to things and people. Sometimes it is not enough to be present and observe, but one needs to understand the depth of what we see: the culture offers to use the depth of such things. The ignorance of the Scriptures –say the Fathers- is the ignorance of Christ, but the ignorance of culture –if I may say- is ignorance of the men. This does not mean to be academics, but to have more interest, read books, discuss upon the problems which are not directly related to us in our daily life. In a complex world the culture helps us have our feet on the ground. And then information (I refer to newspapers and debates) draws us near to that world which is not under our eyes. It may sound ridiculous, but I think that the Bible must be in one hand and the newspaper in the other, as the protestant theologian Karl Barth used to say.
The challenges of the contemporary world have to do with complexity. We should not defend ourselves behind the barrier of simplification, but we should not be afraid either of the simplicity of the Gospel. To be simple, evangelically simple, does not mean to simplify. The simplicity of the gospel has to dwell in sensitive men and women, enriched by the depth of culture, by the amicability that stems from human contact. This is why, although we are simple and weak, we should not be afraid to face difficult and complex challenges.
The most secularised century in history, the 20th, knew the depth of faith that stems from the memory of the new martyrs. It is a heritage that transmits something essential: the weak force of faith. The heritage of the 20th Century is not only that of the end of Christianity, the end of parish culture, in sum, of the end of a Christian world. It is not what remains after a long wearing process and many stages of tiredness. It is not the heritage of a noble but decayed family, that bestows an old palace as a museum of its past, a property to keep and a memory to cultivate with an archaeological flavour. John XXIII said that the Church is not a museum. It is the heritage of a force that has encouraged many Christians, it is the heritage of the culture of love, that is also our culture, the culture that we have to cultivate in these times we live in.
Questions:
What new beginning you need to implement in your institution and in your life?