Jesuits -- Periodicals

Jesuits -- Periodicals

Monasticism and religious orders -- Periodicals

Gallen

Sheets

City of Saint Louis (Mo.), http://www.geonames.org/4407084

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sus at a third. Less complicated situations or smaller groups might use a shorter time. Sometimes people ask how a group knows what issues to use for discern-ment. Usually, as any group stays together, there are any number of issues that arise and need to be settled. Communal discernment is best used on those issues which touch the common vocation. Lesser issues can be handled admin-istratively. They do not need the amount of time and effort that is required of an entire group in communal discernment. 1~36 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1981 In conclusion, in our own day we have come to realize more and more that it takes the entire community to hear the infinitely rich word of God. No one person has ears big enough to do this on his own. Most of us also accept committee meetings, team efforts, total staff participation, and second opin-ions as a normal part of life. The age of the loner or even of the enlightened amateur is waning. As our awareness of life’s richness and complexities increases, we are encouraged to look beyond our personal wisdom to a wider group of conscientious people who will be with us in our decision-making. No one wants the burden of closing a school, opening a new department, with-drawing a subsidy, initiating a new field of research completely alone. More and more we are relying on a gathering of friends, experts, or colleagues to decide corporately what is the best way to go. Most of us, too, have experienced a certain frustration with groups and meetings. Projections and power struggles, contracts and silences that we may have learned to handle and work with on a more individual, personal level, often become very complex in a group. Our current skills do not always seem to work. The group becomes a hindrance rather than a help for our endeavors. On the brighter side, most of us learn quite early that "none of us is as smart as all of us." In our labored ignorance in seeking for truth we welcome as much help as we can get. Theologically, we may have been alerted to the awesome interchange that takes place between God and humankind. The Lord has visited his creatures, and we are a part of that magnificent inter-change. Communal discernment offers us a way of participating in this mystery. At the close of the Deliberations, the author has the following remarks that might well be our goal as well as our prayer during communal discernment. By the feast of St. John, all our business was pleasantly concluded in the spirit of perfect harmony. But it was only by first engaging in prolonged vigils and prayers, with much expenditure of physical and mental energy that we resolved these problems and brought them to this happy conclusion. A Note on Small Beginnings in The Spiritual Exercises Nancy M. Malone, O.S.U. Sister Nancy has been enjoying a "spiritual sabbatical" after a period of service as director of a retreat center and a regional director of the National Institute for Campus Ministries (NICM). She is residing at the Ursuline Convent of St. Angela

265 East 162nd St.: Bronx, NY 10451. Talking about one’s Thirty Day Retreat can, I suppose, be like talking about one’s operation, and probably for the same reasons. It is all so intensely meaningful and interesting to the person who has undergone it as to be endlessly fascinating--to her. This article is not about my retreat in the sense of recounting those profound and personal things that happened to me during it. It is about several devices embedded in the text of The Spiritual Exercises which I believe contain one of Ignatius’ much-praised psychological insights. The insight is displayed in the various and canny ways that Ignatius has. us use to bring ourselves from "a distance" to "closer," or from "outside" to "inside" in respect tothe scene or person(s) we are contemplating, or, in sohae cases, from "outside" to "inside" ourselves. Underlying the devices is what might be called the "vestibule principle," the need, recognized by Ignatius, among others, that scattered and externalized human beings have to go through an "anteroom" before entering into the "Holy of Holies." Put another way

Ignatius’ insight has to do with ways of our becoming "present." I came upon this insight in the course of my Thirty Day Retreat at Loyola House in Guelph, Canada. I used the text of The Exercises itself as translated by Elder Muilan, S.J. Having been warned about Ignatius’ less than elegant style and less than contemporary theology and imagery, I nonetheless approached the text on the assumption that the man had chosen his words very carefully and for a purpose. This assumption of intentional precision paid off. 837 11311 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1981 Take, for instance, the "second prelude" (the composition of place) in all of the exemplary contemplations that Ignatius lays out in the Second and Third Weeks. On the Incarnation: "Here it will be to see the great capacity and circuit of the world, in which are so many and such different people

then likewise, in particular, the house and rooms of Our Lady in the city of Naza-reth, in the Province of Galilee." On the Nativity: "It will be here to see with the sight of the imagination the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem

consid-ering the length and the breadth .’..

likewise looking at the place or cave of the Nativity, how large, how small .... " On the Passion: "It will be here to consider the road from Bethany to Jerusalem, whether broad, whether narrow ...

likewise the place of the Supper, whether large, whether small .... "And again on the Passion: "It will be here to consider the road from Mount Sion to the Valley of Josaphat, and likewise the Garden, whether wide, whether large. . . ." (Notice, by the way, that following his own advice to directors in the "second annotation," Ignatius doesn’t paint the picture for us

he simply lays out categories for our imaginations to play with.) Wh’y all this attention to "circuits" and "roads"?. Much has been made in preached retreats I’ve attended of the difficulties that Mary and Joseph expe-rienced in the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Now if such is the point of so composing that place, it doesn’t apply to the other composition mentioned here. But I don’t think it is the point. 1 think the point is not content but process. Ignatius knew that something happens inside us when we not only imaginatively put ourselves in a place, but actually imagine ourselves getting there. We are, somehow, more there than if we had begun simply by imagining ourselves there in the first place. In the process of coming, we become present. Ignatius follows a similar process in the three points that he gives us for the contemplations of the Second and Third Weeks: "to see the persons .... " "to hear what they are talking about..., .... to look at what they are doing .... " Most people I have asked assume that Ignatius simply wants us to see, hear and understand what is going on in every scene, that it was only the exigencies of getting this down on paper that dictated his separating the three operations into "three points." If you think about it for a minute, though, he could have found an easier way of doing this, if he wanted to. But perhaps he didn’t.I Perhaps Ignatius was again bringing us "closer from a distance," this time from outer to inner space. There is a certain kind of knowledge that we acquire simply by observing people across the proverbial crowded room. It ~The separation of the three operations" is particularly marked in the contemplation on the Incarnation where one might have expected Ignatius to direct us to see, hear and look at the persons.on the face of the earth, and then the Three Divine Persons, and then our Lady. Instead, he so constructs the points that he groups the persons together under the separate operations. On the other hand, as an indication that you can’t push this thesis too far. he, for some reason not clear to me, changes to the wording of the Second Point in the contemplation on the Nativity from his usual "to hear" to "look, mark and contemplate what they are saying." ¯ Small Beginnings / 839 may be that we gaze more intently when it is only through that one sense that we receive data. It may be that there is in all of us a tendency towards a certain voyeurism, the unobserved observer looking at those who reveal themselves precisely because they don’t know that they are being observed. At any rate, when we move close enough also to hear what is being said, we are also moving closer to inner space. We learn something more and different about people than what we learn by merely watching them. It is not only the words that we listen to

it is the quality and tone of voice, inflection, and phrasing. And all of these things are revelatory of the self within

all of them deal "out that being indoors each one dwells," as Hopkins says. But it is in the third point that we arrive at the heart of the matter, as it were. Ignatius tells us to "look at what they are doing," and the way he explicates that in every case makes it clear that what he is after is not another act of imaginative seeing, but an understanding, an entering into the inten-tions, the affections--the hearts--of those we are contemplating: "the Divine Persons . . . working out the most Holy Incarnation . . .

Our Lady . . . humbling herself and giving thanks to the Divine Majesty . . ."

Our Lord being born, "that He may die on the Cross

and all this for me." We have been led, if we have followed the process, from sense knowledge to heart knowl-edge, from outer distance to inner closeness. Consider again Ignatius’ meditation on Hell, which can and does present formidable difficulties to present-day directors and retreatants. Many think it more effective to meditate on Hell by considering interior states such as alienation, despair, loneliness and hatred, rather than "great fires, wailings, howlings, smoke, sulphur, dregs, etc." Well, in the first place, I think that lgnatius is on sounder ground, theologically and anthropologically, in not passing over the part played by our body in reaping the bitter fruits of sin that it has helped to sow. And though he doesn’t psychologize our suffering too much--too soon, he does bring us inside ourselves in an astute way, and he does this through our bodies. We are directed, it is true, to see the fire, to hear the cries and blasphemies, to smell the putrid things. But when it comes to the sense of taste, we are told to taste, not rotten food or rancid drink, but ourselves: "bitter things, like tears, sadness, and the worm of conscience." In this case, we move from outer to inner through that sense which is, in a way, most inside us. Finally, there is that intriguing little device that we are counseled to use by the Third Addition. "A step or two before the place where I have to con-template or meditate, l will put myself standing for the space of an Our Father .... " So often we no more plunk ourselves into our prayer chair than we plunk ourselves also into the cave at Bethlehem, or into the heart of the Trinity. No, at the very outset of prayer, Ignatius has us bring ourselves, physically and spiritually, through a tiny vestibule, no bigger than "a step or two away" or "the space of an Our Father." Now, what does all of this have to say, apart from the fact that, in my 1141~ / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1981 experience, these devices work? Having said it all, I want to emend one of my original statements. Ignatius’ insight is profound, but it is not strictly and merely "psychological." The insight underlying all of these devices has to do not just with the workings of our psyches, but more precisely with the work-ings of body and soul on each other, more precisely, with the organic unity of the human person. On another level, presuming that I am right about what is going on in these instances, that Ignatius is directing us to follow a carefully constructed process, these reflections also say something about the value of using his text as it is. And they suggest that, when The Exercises are accommodated, some explicit attention ought to be given to constructing a process designed to achieve the same results. The Charism of Poverty Robert Faricy, S.J. Father Faricy also wrote "By His Wounds," which appeared in the issue of May, 1979, as well as other articles. He continues to teach at the Gregorian University

Piazza della Pilotta. 4

00187 Roma, Italy. Poverty can be considered as a vow, as an interior psychological state, or as a gift. Religious poverty, at the most profound level, is a charism

it is a special gift from the Lord before it can be a response to the Lord’s love--because it is precisely the gift, the charism, of poverty that empowers me to respond to the Lord’s love by living my commitment to him and to be poor for him. Poor With Jesus Poor The gospel text about the rich young man refers to the counsel of poverty and stands as the classically cited passage concerning the vow of poverty. "Jesus said to him: ’If ~,ou would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven

and come, follow me’" (Mt 19:21). This fits with Jesus~ general teaching on poverty as a Christian value: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven .... For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Mt 6:19-20). "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 19:24). "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found

he hides it, and goes off happy, and sells everything he owns and buys that field" (Mt ! 3:44). The most important words in Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man are, "Come, follow me," and they should be understood in the context of Jesus’ 841 1142 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1981 teaching on discipleship: "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Mr 16:24-25). The Christian virtue of poverty, then, consists of renouncing self, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. But there is, beyond the general call to a certain poverty, at least interior, and to the cross, a further call, a call to go further and to give more. This call Jesus addressed to the rich young man. Like all Jesus’ invitations, it calls, and it empowers to respond. The power to answer the call to a radical poverty, to a special following of Jesus on the way of the cross, is the charism of poverty. Not all Christians are called to this kind of poverty, to this radical way of being poor with Jesus poor. But some are. And the power to live out the answer to that call is the charism of poverty. As a charism, poverty enables me to serve the Lord with a special freedom. I am free to serve him in an apostolate that earns a good salary, or a small one, or that earns nothing at all. Money and material advantages do not determine my choices in serving the Lord. And so the charism of poverty "builds up the body of Christ" i:n that it frees me more for service. And, further, it relates me in a particular way to Jesus, making me his disciple in chosen radical poverty, in the poverty of the cross. When Jesus dies on Calvary, he has nothing. Not only does he die without any material possessions at all, but he dies stripped of all honor, of all dignity, of all respect. He dies, not like a common criminal, but more shamefully, like an uncommon criminal

he dies, not just rejected by his own people, but outside the framework of civilized society, on a hill outside the gate~ outside the city, cut off from human society. Subjected to extensive and horribly severe torture, both physical and psy-chological, he finally dies without composure, without a vestige ’of human dignity, feeling utterly abandoned even by God and crying out to God, "Why have you abandoned me?" The gospel accounts of Jesus’ death are strikingly laconic. The Church had no crucifixes for hundreds of years, until the shock could be assimilated

the shock of the terribleness of Jesus’ death. So too, the charism of poverty takes one beyond just material poverty freely chosen, lived out voluntarily. The charism of poverty associates one intimately with Jestis in his passion and death, crucifying one to the world and the world to him (see Ga 6:14). "1 have been crucified with Christ" (Ga 2:19). It frees me from ambition for honors, for applause, for attention from others. The charism of poverty acts as an antidote for that malady thai has beset professionally religious people since the scribes and the pharisees and before: the need for na’rcissistic feedback. ~ The charism of poverty empowers me to be poor with Jesus poor, poor materially and poor interiorly, stripped of everything, for love of Jesus who calls me. Religious poverty is not, then, some kind of stoical pragmatism, a streamlining for service. It does free me for service. But beyond that, and more The Charism of Poverty / 1143 importantly, it relates me in love to Jesus who laid down his life for me. Poverty and Liberation , One of the fruitful insights of the Latin American theology of liberation is that religious poverty frees me to become one with those who live in oppres-sive poverty

it enables me to enter into solidarity with the downtrodden, the suffering, the poor, the marginal people who, with Jesus, are "outside the city," outside respectable human society. 1 can see Jesus in them, the least of his brothers and sisters. And, united intimately in love with Jesus, I enter into a fraternal solidarity with the most oppressed, the poorest, the most marginal of his brothers and sisters. I find Jesus most clearly and distinctly in the most needy--in the retarded, in prisoners, in the .very ill--whether physically or mentally or both, in the outcasts and the severely troubled and poorest of the poor. Not that entering into solidarity with those who have nothing is my motive for living poverty. The motive is love. The motive is Jesus, who calls me in love to respond to his love for me. This loving response, made in the power of his Spirit, leads me to live out religious poverty

and it leads me to a preference for the poor. The gospel preference for the poor stands at the hea’rt of Jesus’ teaching

it runs through the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters

and it holds the thematic center of the letter of James. In his public life Jesus goes to the oppressed, eats with whores and publicans, heals the sick, raises up those who are brought low. This gospel preference for the poor is, always, an apostolic priority. To be poor with Jesus mear~s to be poor with the least of his brothers and sisters so as to participate in Jesus’ mission of redemption, a mission he always understood as applying to this life as well as to the next. "He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom to captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set free the downtrodden .... " (Lk 4:18). The charism of poverty empowers me to go to Jesus in the poor and~the needy and the oppressed, because I can give up everything for him,. because lam free to love him and’ to serve him in the downtrodden, the outcasts, the marginal people. This freedom that the charism of poverty gives me is, firsi of all and above all, an interior freedom. It takes the form of a radical and thoroughgoing dependence on God, a dependence that looks to the Lord for salvation, for liberation from present difficulties both for myself and for those whom the Lord has called me to serve. The theology of liberation has not always recognized the primacy of pov-erty of spirit, of that interior freedom that has the shape of a total dependence on the Lord. God does save his people, bring them out of bondage, i’edeem them. But this deliverance and this redemption begin, on the part of the people, with crying out to the Lord, with a desperate recourse to the only one who can truly save. The Old Testament event of the Exodus dominates Israel’s theology as a 8411 / Review for Religious, Nov.-Dec., 1981 category of salvation. God frees his people, now and always, just as he did then. Deliverance from Egyptian bondage begins, not with political commit-ment, nor with education, nor with the solidarity of the oppressed, but with the interior poverty that cries out to the Lord. The Bible’s oldest passage, directions and a prayer for the temple offering of the first fruits of the harvest, goes like this: The priest shall take the basket from your hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall make response before the Lord your God, saying, "A wandering Aramean was my father: and he went down into Egypt and sojourned the~e, few in number: and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, and laid upon us harsh bondage. "Th~n we cried out to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our afflictior~, our toil, our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders

and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me" (Dr 26:4-1 I). The New Testament event-category that is analogous to the Exodus, and is its fulfillment, is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ deliverance from the powers of darkness is his passage from death to risen life. This passage has its beginning in his crying out to the Father, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’~ (Mt 27:46). Jesus uses the opening line of Psalm Twenty-two. as a prayer to express his feeling of being abandoned by the Father, as a prayer of lamentation, an expression of profound poverty, of radical depen-dence on the Father. As a lament, Jesus’ prayer expresses not only his own feeling of being abandoned, but also--implicitly--his abandonment into the hands of the Father. Jesus’ prayer of crying out to the Lord leads directly to his death--Matthew’s words are carefully chosen, Jesus "yielded up his spirit" to the Father, and in Luke’s account Jesus cries in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands 1 commend my spirit." This abandonment into the Father’s hands is the essence of interior pov-erty. The charism of religious poverty gives me the power to surrender to God, to say "yes" to the Father with Jesus, and in and through him. Jesus’ whole life finds its summation and meaning in his death on the cross, because his death, like his life, was a surrender, a "yes" to the Father. "Jesus Christ . . . was not Yes and No

in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we say the Amen through him, to the glory of God" (2 Co i:19-20). Prayer for an Increase, of the Charism of Poverty We can pray for a new outpouring of the charism of religious poverty: Lord Jesus, I ask you for a new fullness of the charism of poverty. I ask you to reveal to me now my inordinate attachments, my holding on to things or to persons, my .~’richness" that keeps me from saying a more comp’lete Yes The Charism of Poverty to you. I surrender to you my excessive search for material comforts, and what-ever material goods I have that I do not really need to serve you. I surrender to you my excessive need for attention, for acclaim and applause, for narcissistic feedback from others

I surrender all my selfish ambitions, my search for honors, my vainglory and my pride. I surrender to you my possessiveness of those whom I love

teach me to love (mention the names of any person or persons that you tend to be attached to in a selfish or possessive way)freely, leaving others free

teach me to love with an open hand. I renounce the possessiveness in my love for others

teach me to love more and better. And l ask you now for new graces, for new power to live for you, for a new outpouring of the charism of religious poverty. Give me the interior poverty that depends on you and not on the world’s acceptance. You say to me now, "lf the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you

if you were of the world, the world would love its own

but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I spoke to you: a servant is not greater than his master" (Jn 15:18-20). Teach me, Lord, to enter by the narrow gate that leads to life (Mr 7:13-14). You are that gate, Lord

let me follow you, taking up my cross. For ybu alone, Lord, are my portion. I have no inheritance, for you are my inheritance

I want no possessions, for you are my possession (Ezk 44:28). Amen. The Forgiving What has been burned is burned, but ashes stir to unseen winds and whirlpool into life raised higher than the flames that birthed them to seed the clouds that grow the tender rains. Sister Linda Karas, RSM Mercy Consultation Center P.O. Box 370 Dallas, PA 18612 The Other Side of Humility: Its Clarity and Strength Frederick G. McLeod, S.J. Father McLeod is an associate professor of the Department of Theological Studies at St. Louis University. He resides at 3601 Lindell Blvd.

St. Louis. MO 63108. Christian tradition,] particula, rly in its Scriptures and spiritual writings, has set humility on a prominent pedestal. In fact, it extols humility as the foremost of all the moral virtues, even on a par with charity. It proclaims humility as the weapon with which to parry and fend off the deadly enemy of humanity-- pride. It also trumpets humility as the way that those who are on the last rung of life can mount to the top. Yet, it is a virtue whose meaning and importance are still widely misunderstood. If queried, few today, I suspect, would be able to state accurately what it is, and why it is so central to the Christian message and life. Current Views Humility is not a popular’virtue among our contemporaries. For some, it still evokes unease, if not profoundly negative feelings. In the past, when pride was targeted as the number-one enemy, writers and preachers exhorted us to take up the club of humility to beat down our pride. Unfortunately, in the process many also clubbed down healthy self-love--an experience that still rankles in some. ~This tradition is amply documented in the articles on Humility in the Dictionnaire de Spiritual-itb. Vll, 1136-87. and in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vll. 234-36. For a popular but some-what dated book on this subject, see Nivard Kinsella. O.C.S.O.. Unprofitable Servants (Westminster: Newman Press. 1960). 846 The Other Side of Humility / 1147 Then, too, pithy statements and striking examples from the lives of such spiritual giants as Saints Paul,2 Benedict3 and Francis of Assisi4 were hailed-- often out of context--as offering the ideal attitude that ought to govern our relationships with others. We were urged to consider ourselves as the worst of all sinners and everyone else better than ourselves. To live thus--according to this advice--is to be humble! While respecting the sincerity of the saints and reluctant to question their spiritual wisdom, many today simply confess their Confusion. They do not see how one, especially a saint of the magnitude of Paul or Benedict or Francis, can truthfully claim to be the worst of all sinners. Moreover, to affirm that all others are better than ourselves in all circumstances is patent nonsense. But what is worse, some who have tried in the past to live out such humility are still,~struggling with lingering feelings of an inferiority complex, ls this the lowliness that humility seeks to instill and achieve? in the past, too, humility was the favorite virtue extolled by authority. Though Christ’s remarks on humility seem to have been. directed mainly to those with power and authority, hu

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