By Fr. David Centner, OCD
Fr. David, a frequent contributor to “Carmelite Digest,” is a Discalced Carmelite friar. Currently stationed in Washington, DC, he is on the editorial staff of “Spiritual Life,” the magazine published by his province. He also preaches retreats and days of recollection, weaves, and bakes sourdough bread.
Some years back, there was a group of novices for the Missionaries of Charity that was having problems getting along. One of them, an American with some experience in behavioral sciences, asked Mother Teresa to give them a class on conflict resolution. She replied that she would be delighted to do so. Mother Teresa met with the novices promptly one morning. She said to them, “Sisters, if you’re not prepared to love your sisters as they are, pack you bags and go home. We don’t want you.” End of conference. It pulled the sisters up short. It pulled me up short when I heard about it. For, of course, the bottom line must be a determination to love unconditionally. When Mother Teresa insisted that her novices must love each other as they are, she was alluding to the New Commandment that lies at the heart of the Gospel: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). Bl. Teresa of Calcutta’s interest did not lie in teaching her sisters some new coping skill. She wasn’t really interested in conflict management. She wanted to evangelize them and lead them to communion.
Here is another anecdote that may shed light on our theme. In the summer of 1989, a group of Carmelite missionaries and formators was meeting in Nairobi to lay the foundations for what would become the inter-provincial formation program for English-speaking Carmelite friars in Africa. One of the speakers for their conference was Fr. Augustine Karekezi, SJ, a Rwandan Jesuit and rector of Hekima College in Nairobi. The topic of his lecture was “Inculturation of the Gospel.” He told his listeners that inculturation did not consist in borrowing some aspect of popular culture and then “baptizing” it or adapting it to Christian use. Rather, he said inculturation of the Gospel means evangelizing human relationships. The reality is that where two or three are gathered in the Lord’s name, he is in their midst, pouring on his Spirit and transforming their lives and attitudes. As a consequence, the Spirit enables Christians to hold to what is good in their cultures and to express their relationship to Christ through their daily choices.
Ultimately, inculturation means that people make of their relationships an expression of Christ’s New Commandment. The failure to do so, as happened so tragically in Rwanda, in the Balkans, and in many of our own cities leads to destruction of all that holds people together in community. Contrariwise, those who live the commandment can build up communion where previously there was division.
These preliminary reflections should help us to see clearly that a spirituality of communion must center on the Gospel message: “Love one another as I have loved you.” So in our reflections, we will try to tease out some of the implications of this for us.
A Spirituality of Communion
We are talking about spirituality. Many people understand different things by that word. One approach would be to consider spirituality the practical life and choices of Christians insofar as they are moved by the Spirit. But, as Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, points out in his book The Holy Longing, even atheists have a spirituality. In his view, our spirituality is our restless quest for whatever it is that gives our lives meaning or fulfillment. Or, to use his words more exactly, “Spirituality is about what we do with the fire inside of us, about how we channel our eros” [Eros here is used in the original Greek sense of the term as the drive for unity–what John of the Cross calls fuerza del amor]. Yet, these two descriptions are not mutually exclusive. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God. So ultimately a viable spirituality must focus on how the Holy Spirit guides and strengthens us to make practical choices that lead us to union with God.
A Spirituality of Communion
We keep using this word “communion.” What do we mean by it? We need to go back to the same Gospel passages as the ones in which we receive the New Commandment. Jesus not only commands us to love one another as he has loved us, but he prays that we may be one as he and the Father are one and that we may be one in them (Jn 17:11). How are Jesus and the Father one? John’s Gospel stammers some of the ways for us. Later theology picked up many of these clues and worked them into a theological vision of the life of the Trinity. We owe an enormous debt to St. Augustine in particular. But we should not imagine that even our highest thoughts about the communion of Father and Son are more than a shadow of the reality.
We could easily spend an hour reviewing the theology of the Trinity and of the Incarnation [St. John of the Cross does it for us on his “Romances on the Incarnation”]. But I am going to have to presume that you recall the basic elements of the Church’s theological development of these topics. The key term we need to pay attention to is relation. It is relation that constitutes personhood in the Trinity. Now relation in the Trinity doesn’t simply mean that these three Persons feel nice about each other—as we might speak of someone having a good relationship. It means that the Father begets the Son by speaking his Word who receives everything from the Father and gives everything back in a love which is a Person, the Holy Spirit [Theology speaks of the spiration of the Holy Spirit]. For each Person of the Trinity, it is a total outpouring and receiving back of one substance. If we are to be one as they are One, something similar must happen. Modern thought, however, runs into trouble with this. We tend to define person in terms of individuation. The rugged individualist is held up for us as a fully realized person. In reality, he or she is more likely to be a misfit, a loner, and perhaps even alienated. Depth psychology recognizes this problem. C.J. Jung saw the fully individualized person as one who stands completely in relation to others. The separation from the other exists in order to make relation possible. Theologically, that makes sense if we are made in the image of God. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to achieve. We all know what sin has done to us. It destroyed a basic unity that ought to exist in us as individuals belonging to a common species who depend on one another for our complete fulfillment. Only through the redemptive work of Christ can this full realization of personhood come about. In him, the Word of God, joined hypostatically to human nature, assumed all of fallen creation and restored through his sacrificial offering of himself to the Father the unity that was lost when Adam brought sin into the world. Now his fullness fills the whole universe. Communion in human beings will have to include both a dimension that reflects God’s dynamic inner life and also a dimension that shares in the work of reconciliation brought about in the Blood of Christ: We are called upon not simply to love one another as the Father loves the Son but as Jesus has loved us.
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