Stuart
C Bate OMI
Address to the All Africa Conference of the Christian Brothers
Johannesburg March 2003
1.
Our Mission is part of the Mission of the Church
The
Church is not an end in itself. It only exists for its mission, which is to
preach the gospel of Jesus Christ by word and deed and to establish
communities of faith. The
Church is a People of God on the way to the Kingdom. As one church it is a
body with many parts. It is a community of communities and a unity in
diversity, of gifts for the “building up of the body” (Rom. 12; 1Cor. 12).
The Church does not exist as some universal essence. Its reality is in the
people who comprise it and so the ordinary and normative way
being the church is the local church which is not a piece of the Church
or a part of the church but “the fullness of the Church in a place” (Bate
1995:238). As Evangelii
Nuntiandi puts it, “This universal church is in practice incarnate in
the particular churches” (EN62).
Religious
Institutes (Orders and Congregations) are formed around the crystallization of
a specific charism which is the Holy Spirit’s gift to the church for the
building up of the body of Christ. Sometimes these charisms may be quite local
reflecting a local church’s response to contextual and cultural issues. Most,
however, are gifts for areas larger than a local church and reflect specific
ministries required for the building up of the body. Education and Healing are
two of the most common of these. (Show chart). When it comes to mission and
ministry we should never neglect the central role of the Holy Spirit.
2.
The Holy Spirit Inspires Vocation and Ministry in the Church
In
our modern society with its emphasis on the individual, a personal
spirituality and a concern with personal salvation, it is sometimes easy to
forget the central communal dimension of the spiritual life.
It
is the same Holy Spirit who calls Individuals, Families, Societies, Religious
Institutes and Lay people in the Church. The Holy Spirit is the common
reference point for all since the Holy Spirit is the “Soul of Church” (EN
75) and the “principal
agent of the Church’s mission” (RM21).
God, through the sending of his Spirit, calls both the individual and the community to mission. The mission of the Church as well as the mission and ministry of each individual Christian is sourced in God’s mission.
This
implies a basic coherence between the call of the individual and the call of
the community within which the individual is called to exercise ministry.
Recognising the fact of this coherence and seeking for it in our communities
is central to our apostolic religious life. Now, within this call is the
promise of those spiritual gifts required to fulfill our mission and to do our
ministry, for we do not do God’s work merely through our own human effort. These
spiritual gifts are always given to the community for its mission.
Unfortunately we do not always access them often because they may challenge
conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, it is important for you, as the
Congregation of Christian Brothers, to acknowledge that you are called by God
to a specific kind of mission, and you are given the gifts necessary to do
that mission. Individuals
within your society will manifest some of these same spiritual gifts and this
is a sign of the vocation of that particular person to your institute.
What
I have been saying is expressed in your constitution no 1 where you
identify your calling and mission as:
“religious
in consecrated brotherhood for the evangelisation of youth
within
the mission of the Church”.
Your
founder, Edmund Rice, chose to give his life for the spiritual and material
development of poor young men. Your congregation follows this charism in
receiving gifts like concern and commitment to the poor, evangelising in
bringing good news, instructing people in the Catholic faith, providing young
men with tools to ensure a better life for themselves, living and working as a
community, establishing schools, serving the local Church and so forth.
When
our ministry as a congregation reflects our vocation as a congregation then
our ministry is blessed by the Holy Spirit in the outpouring of spiritual
gifts for our work. God multiplies our efforts in good fruits. When we do
other things, this is not true and such ministries may eventually flounder or
consume disproportionate resources for little benefit.
So
the real secret to mission, ministry, religious life and vocation is the
ability to discern the presence in the Holy Spirit in what we do. This is a
necessary, though often underemphasized, task. The starting point is always
with ourselves. We begin by a discernment of call through an examination of
our own gifts. When we do that we begin to discover how the Holy Spirit is
acting in our lives for the building up of the body. And through these same
gifts we are increasingly able to recognise that community or institute which
is given these same gifts. In this way we identify or affirm our calling as a
vocation within that community, congregation, local Church or whatever it may
be.
All
those called by God to service have to go through this process. It is an
essential step. And this is particularly true for leaders. If the leader has
never done it for himself and recognised how his giftedness fits into the
giftedness of the congregation then how will he ever lead those who are placed
under his care? Such a person will probably be a manager and not a leader.
However managing is not enough, for managing is a human event. Leadership
requires the inspiration and passion that comes from God in his Spirit for the
Spirit multiplies our own human efforts to create something beautiful for God.
He is the principal agent of the Churches mission and not
us. “What sets leaders apart is a capacity to command respect, to inspire
passion, to balance competing interests to achieve a unity of purpose. Above
all, to make people feel good about what they are doing”.
(Financial Mail 7 March 2003 commenting on the lack of leadership in
South African Cricket)
To
the extent that a religious congregation is aware of how it is gifted by the
Spirit, and how these gifts work, then that community will know and do its
mission with passion. For in knowing, through experience, its giftedness, it
will be able to recognise the gifts of others in the community. Leaders within
such a community have the ability to recognise the presence of God in the
lives of those they are called to lead as well as in those who wish to enter
and discern their own vocation.
But
what are these gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit? Can we identify them?
Firstly we should recognise that there is no exhaustive list. We cannot limit
the gifts of God. The letters of St Paul provide three lists and all three are
different indicating that even they are not exhaustive. In fact there are as
many gifts of the Spirit as are needed to build up the body. For indeed this
is their purpose. Not to divide, surprise and confuse but to unite and build
up.
1Cor.
12, 12 speaks of gifts of speaking, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracle
working, prophecy, discerning spirits, tongues and interpretation of tongues.
Rom. 12 speaks of gifts of prophecy, practical service, teaching,
administration, and giving money. And Eph. 4 speaks of gifts to be apostles,
prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. So there are many gifts. But
there are also many people who claim to have Spiritual gifts. Can we always be
sure? Religious giftedness may be nothing more than neurotic and indeed
psychotic behaviour. The Church teaches us to be wise in discerning the
presence of the Holy Spirit in a human context and provides some guides for
discernment which leaders need to know.
3.
Discerning the Presence of the Spirit
In
all cases the gifts of the Spirit are given for service to the community. The
scriptures teach us that they are not given to individuals for their own
private purposes but for building up the body (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12, Eph 4). This
provides us with two major criteria for the discernment of gifts and spirits
within our communities:
1.
Are they being used in the service of the people?
2.
Are they being used to build up the one body maintaining unity and
harmony since as Paul in the same chapter of Ephesians reminds us: there is
one body, one spirit...one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father
of all.
The
ability to discern the presence of the Spirit in our lives is an essential
part of leadership. It is akin to the ability to read the signposts on our
spiritual journey. For the essence of the Church’s identity is that it is
the people of God on journey. This is a journey which is guided by the Holy
Spirit, soul of the Church and principal agent of the Mission. If we are not
to lose our way we must be in touch with the Spirit as Jesus was in his life.
Now
there are signposts on the journey that we all take to God’s Kingdom. We
have to see the signposts, which requires the gift of sight, and to interpret
them, which requires the gift of wisdom and/ or the gift of interpretation of
tongues, in order to not go astray or get swept away on the journey. The
signposts are seen and interpreted through the process we call discernment
and it is here that we need the Spirit. For it is the Spirit who helps us
discern.
Discernment
should occur on many levels and in a number of ways. Discernment is centred in
relationship so we have to use the many levels of relationship open to us.
Prayer is essential to this process for it is how we open ourselves to the
voice of God. But the Spirit comes to us in a multiplicity of relationships
where discernment happens: the individual with a spiritual director; the
Community with its Superior; through recourse to the teaching of the Church
which is the record of “Those who have gone before us marked with the sign
of faith” (EP1); though community
discernment exercises; through personal discernment exercises, in retreats and
in many other ways.
The
starting point for discernment is human experience. This is very important. It
is also an affirmation of faith since it demonstrates our belief that God is
involved in our lives. Our faith also says that he is active right now
whatever is happening and that he desires to manifest his will to us. God
comes to us through our everyday life rather than through mystical
revelations. Discernment is the ability to find him in these everyday events.
These events relate the good news of our lives.
Mystical
theophanies may well occur in our lives at significant moments to help affirm
us and the choices we make. Such was the case for Jesus in the descent of the
Holy Spirit at Jordan and the transfiguration. But
God’s normal presence to us is far more mundane and it is in the ordinary
that discernment becomes more necessary. Such discernment of the mundane
requires three steps: Becoming
conscious of experience; accepting that experience; and through the
experience, opening up to God’s presence in it.
Two
scripture texts help us in this work. The first, in 1 Cor. 12,11, reminds us
that we should expect many different experiences of the presence of the Spirit
in our lives when we read:
“At
work in all of these events is one and the same spirit
distributing
gifts at will to each individual”.
The
second, however, in 1 Jn 4 cautions us to prudence when we read:
not
every spirit is to be trusted but test the spirits
to
see that they are from God...
any
spirit which acknowledges Jesus Christ come in human nature is from God
and
every spirit which does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.
Discernment
is not an easy gift to use for it is also an aptitude, acquired through
experience. This aptitude allows us to recognise the movements that come from
God in order to embrace them and to recognise the movements that come from
counter spirit in order to reject them. My experience teaches me that the gift
of discernment is under-utilised in the Church today and one of the major
reasons why communities have lost their way. The principal reason for this is
cultural. Western culture is secular and scientific and most religious
institutes have assimilated this culture and become too modern and too secular
in their approach to decision making.
An
aptitude is a habitual attitude. This means we have to build it up. It is a
kind of Christian 6th sense acquired through experience. It is not
a theory so it can’t be developed just by reading books. Rather it is an
experience built up through life by recognising the movements in our life. We
don’t directly recognise
the Spirit for the Spirit is not of flesh and blood and emotion but speaks
directly to the soul. What we have to do is to become accustomed to the
effects of the Spirit’s presence in our personal and communal experiences.
This is the sifting that we do through the movements
that come from our interior impulses.
Discernment
is a SENSE given in Baptism. It
is a kind of Christian instinct. And like all senses if it is not refined by
use it will get atrophied. Discernment also applies to the community at local,
diocesan, national and international levels. Indeed the presence of God has to
be discerned in ALL human experience using this sense. Since all reality is
affected by presence of God.
There
are two basic criteria which help us is verifying our discernments. On the
theological level: all movements from God will affirm
the basic Gospel message the Kerygma; and be consistent with the lives
of the saints (cf. 1 Jn 4,1-4). On
the pastoral level one always judges an authentic prophecy (cf Jer. 28,8-9;
Deut. 18:21-22) the same way one judges whether an attractive tree is full of
health or sickness: by the fruits (Mt
7,17; Rom. 8,9). Such fruit will include a deepening love for God, others and
even ones enemies (Gal 5,22-23; 1 Cor. 13; James 3,17-18).
The
cultivation of the gift and aptitude of spiritual discernment is the most
important task of leadership in the Church. For you then it is a central
aspect of your current calling.
In
this final section of my presentation I want to suggest some important areas
for mission and ministry in Africa where I believe the Spirit is calling us as
church. This will be necessarily schematic given the constraints of time but I
hope it will be an affirmation of the necessity of your Institute and its
charism.
4.
Mission and Ministry in Africa today: some important signs
The
importance of Institutions in building African local Church
One
of the principal signs of the nature of the African Church at the moment is
that it is moving from being a mission Church to becoming a local Church. A
mission church tends to have certain conformity to the ethos and vision of the
sending community (which was usually European) whereas a local church is more
rooted within its own local culture. It is essential then that missionaries be
aware of the priority of this process and that they take care to set up
missionary activities which are empower this process rather than blocking it.
In Ecclesia in Africa (11) Pope John Paul II remarks:
All
those privileged to be present at the celebration of the Special Assembly for
Africa rejoiced to see how African Catholics are assuming ever greater
responsibility in their local Churches and are seeking a deeper understanding
of what it means to be both Catholic and African. The celebration of the
Special Assembly showed to the whole world that the local Churches of Africa
hold a rightful place in the communion of the Church, that they are entitled
to preserve and to develop "their own traditions…
The
process of becoming a local Church is a complex one. There is a very important
text in the Vatican Document on the Mission, Ad Gentes, which provides
us with a description of this process.
The
work of planting the Church in a given human community reaches a certain goal
when the congregation of the faithful already rooted in social life and
somewhat conformed to the local culture, enjoys a certain firmness and
stability. That is to say, it is already equipped with its own supply (perhaps
still insufficient) of local priests, Religious, and lay people, and is
endowed with those institutions and ministries which are necessary for leading
and expanding the life of the people of God under the guidance of their own
autochthonous bishop.
I
want to emphasis the phrase “endowed
with these institutions and ministries which are necessary for leading and
expanding the life of the people of God” because I think that it is here
that a congregation like yours can play an important role. The establishing of
institutions like schools, hospitals, clinics, teaching institutions,
catechetical centers and the like is essential for the rooting of the Church
in a local context. The growth and stability of the Catholic Church on this
continent has certainly being strengthened by the quality of its institutions.
They are particularly important today because they bring good news to the
reality of social disorganization, marginalisation and a lack of resources
that we spoke about earlier. I would consider the establishment of viable
institutions of social upliftment within the African continent to be a major
task of mission right now.
This
call is particularly important today given the events in the Church since
Vatican II. So called renewal, in the Church and in religious life, has meant
that mission linked to institutions is no longer seen as relevant to the
demands of the day. This, in my opinion, reveals an astonishing blindness
about our society and some questionable practices of spiritual discernment
which have led us to where we are today. It is interesting that the decline in
religious vocations has almost paralleled the move out of educational and
healing institutions of those congregations who were specifically founded
through the crystallisation of these two gifts of the Spirit: the gift of
healing and the gift of educating. Yet they are gifts that are sorely need
throughout our continent. It is encouraging to see that you are attempting to
establish more institutions of education for the poor in the African context.
I am convinced that the more you do this, the more the Spirit will multiply
your work.
Development
through education
We
are all aware that in Africa today one of the greatest challenges facing us is
the development of the continents human resources. J E Kent in a study on
Edmund Rice (Kent, J.E. 'The
Educational Ideas of Edmund Rice, Founder of the Presentation and Christian
Brothers', M.Ed., U.C.C., 1988. )
says “Rice aimed to educate the poor and give them social
mobility...to give the children of the poor vocational skills that would
enable them to break out of the cycle of poverty. (p. 72) The early Brothers
never set out in systematic form any philosophy of education. (p. 77)
The faith in education as a means of inculcating moral conduct sprang from an
optimistic view of the effects of education that characterised the times” It
seems quite clear that the mission of human development through developing
human resources in education of youth is a vital aspect of your own missionary
spirituality. The marginalisation
of Africa and the depletion of its resources indicate that the development of
the continent’s human resources is a major priority today. It should be
clear that the provision of effective education and training, which will
produce people with skills and a value-based commitment to society, is a
critical necessity now. The renaissance and reconstruction of the continent
demands that education occur within an ethos which promotes society based on
values of respect, cooperation and the common good. The Church can play an
important role in the reconstruction of society by producing leaders and
skilled people who are also imbued with a workable value system which will
promote human development in Africa. Our own experience should teach us that
such people cannot emerge without a rooting in the experience of the
Transcendental that faith in God brings. I find debates around priorities
between a focus on religious or human development to be confusing. They are
based on a dualism between body and soul that comes from Western culture.
African cultures do not recognise such a dualism. The spiritual is part of
what it means to be a human being and is a necessary part of becoming a full
human being with life to the full. We cannot educate without a faith basis to
what we do for that is not human education but skills training for the market
place. That’s not what motivated Edmund Rice and its not what should
motivate us.
And
finally I come to youth. Here too we face an urgent challenge. This ministry
is becoming a pressing priority. The youth of our continent are faced with
tremendous challenges. They live in societies of great stress. Some live in
situations of low intensity war. Others find themselves in violent, chaotic
and confused countries in transition. Others live in a world of turmoil and
war victims of battles on the ground between rival groups and militias. Some
experience racial conflict, others ethnic conflict, yet others religious
conflict.
The
Catholic Church used to have a powerful influence amongst youth in this
continent. In South Africa for example, by 1953 the Catholic Church controlled
15% of all black schools, by far the most visible Catholic presence in society
at the time. Besides this, during the 1960s and 70s a number of Catholic youth
movements emerged which provided leadership training for young people. CLG,
Chiro, YCW and YCS were movements which focussed on Christian youth activism
and leadership training. The YCW, which I know best, earned the praise of then
President Mandela, who in an address to them in 1995, said:
It
is common knowledge that the YCW has made a significant contribution to
building the organs of civil society in South Africa...The YCW’s approach
has always been to acknowledge and challenge injustice, and then to build the
capacity of the oppressed to act in a constructive way that will bring an end
to injustice and create a better world for all of us.
Today
the Catholic Church has a much smaller influence amongst young people. It is
the area of ministry in which the church has reduced its involvement more than
any other. Yet it is the most important area for the future of the church.
What I am saying here is that if the Church is not involved with young people
in a meaningful way then the future for us will be quite bleak. Many young
people find the attractions of African Independent Churches and Pentecostals
much more appealing than what we Catholics have to offer. In December I was in
Ghana at a WCC meeting. There I learned that 25% of the population now belong
to these kinds of Churches. From a focussed effort in schools in particular,
but also in youth movements, our involvement as church with youth is now
increasingly only on the parish level. Parish youth groups, however, are
unlikely to be very effective. Youth work requires vision, structure and
resources to be effective. It is impossible for individual parishes to do this
work. What the schools provided was an ethos within which people grew up. They
imbibed, if you will, a Catholic culture. This is the area in which you work
and that is why it is so important that you recognise the tremendous
importance of your ministry. I would consider a greater regional and national
effort on the development of youth ministries to be one of the most urgent and
pressing needs for evangelisation today. More priests and religious must be
available to specialise in this work, but they must also be inserted into
structures which can train them to do it well.
You
are committed to the evangelisation of youth and so you know better than I do
that this is not easy work and yet it is very rewarding. We said before that Evangelisation
means bringing good news to people and that there are two essential components
of this process: It must be GOOD and it must be NEW. These are surprisingly
obvious things yet it is equally surprising how often our ministry falls down
here. Classroom stuff and teacher tell stuff is not new and rarely good from
the perspective of youth since they spend all day in the classroom. What is
good and new are things like relationships: a new girlfriend boyfriend; music
dance parties and so on new ideas and solutions to problems like ugliness,
unpopularity, poor self confidence, self image and so forth. What is also good
and new are things like new leaders, gurus, politicians and other charismatic
public figures. This happens in different ways in different cultures and we
need to plug into it.
If
you can’t bring Good News to young people you’ll lose them. Pope John Paul
sees this and that’s why his meetings with youth are like 3-day pop
concerts. Pentecostals see this and that’s why they use music forms which
speak to youth and healing services which gather large crowds of them and
resemble a concert or a stage show. Latin America Catholic Churches are now
responding to the Evangelical challenge by also organizing large youth
gatherings which speak to youth and bring them something new and something
which they perceive as good. Good news must always be the criteria which
should inform our work with
youth.
The
goal of adolescence is maturity and all that helps them achieve that goal will
be perceived as good news. Youth programs have to focus on training for
leadership and autonomy if they are to be successful. Adults should not run
them because that will be perceived as back to school. They have to be in
charge of the programme. This means that you can’t run youth programs well
without committed youth leaders
Nevertheless
adults do have an important role with youth. This is the role of mentoring.
The mentor is someone respected by the young person. He is someone whom the
youth can easily relate to. He is someone who creates a non-threatening space,
which is not the same as the normal adult role in the young persons life. He
is someone who will listen and offer advice when it’s sought. The mentor is
animator who provides a sacred space where the young person can gradually
become himself and meet up with the presence of the spirit of God who affirms
the goodness of his creation, who comforts, guides, advocates and even
convinces about sin. In this way the mentor brings life to the one who puts
his trust in him.
Mentors
are often idealized by the young people who come to them. They often see the
mentor's lifestyle and value system as one to which they aspire. This is good
when the mentor helps the young person to meet himself as he really is and not
just the ideal form. In this way young people can grow in the values they
aspire to. It is bad when the mentor takes the idealization seriously. For
it’s not really true. The mentor relationship is a power relationship. This
is good when it empowers the person. It is bad when the power is misused on
either side. Mentors are really very rare and the promotion of mentoring
skills is probably an urgent need in the Church today.
5.
Conclusion
I
have tried to show that in ministry we are never alone. What we do we do with
God who sends us Spirit to be with us constantly, guiding us on the Journey.
We are never alone, for what we do is part of the mission of the Church and
our journey is taken together with all the people of God moving towards the
promised land. We are never alone for we are called to mission in a community.
In your case it is the community of a Religious congregation which has
received a specific gift of the Holy Spirit for the building up of the body of
Christ. This is the charism of Blessed Edmund Rice which inspires you to the
evangelisation of youth.
I
have emphasised that discernment of the presence of the Spirit of God in our
lives is one of the principal aptitudes that all Christians must develop lest
they lose their way. I have also said that this gift is of prime importance
for leadership which you are called to exercise in your congregation but which
indeed every brother is called to exercise in his ministry. I have noted that
the use of this aptitude has declined as a result of the negative effects of
the assimilation of modern western culture into ecclesial practice. I have
given some indications of the bare necessities of spiritual discernment.
Finally
I have used that gift myself in presenting what I consider to be three
principal ministries you are called to in Africa today. These are the
establishing of viable institutions to counter social disorganisation, the
development of human resources in the continent based on integral human
formation which includes spiritual, personal, cultural and social aspects,
aAnd the evangelisation of youth which is an affirmation of the critical need
in this particular continent for a congregation like yours. May God inspire
and bless your efforts transforming the five loaves and two fishes that you
are into a feast for the multitudes