Peter
C. Phan
(The
Warren-Blanding Professor of Religion and Culture Department of Religion
and Religious Education The Catholic University of America)
Crossing the Borders
A spirituality for Mission in Our Times from an Asian Perspective1
One
of the most enduring images of the missionary in popular imagination
is that of someone leaving his or her country for a foreign land to
convert the heathens. Of course, today the concept of what constitutes
a heathen has changed dramatically, just as that of conversion as the
goal of mission. Even the borders which used to separate Christians
from unbelievers and followers of other faiths have become so porous
that they have ceased to be clear and helpful identity markers. Today
there is no lack of Christians and non-Christians who claim double or
triple religious belongings, and the tribes of religiously hyphenated
people, both inside and outside of Christianity, are on a steady increase.
While the concepts of paganism, conversion, and religious identity have
undergone drastic changes in recent years, one aspect has nevertheless
remained constant in the job description of the missionary, and that
is, crossing or going over borders. Not only has this act of crossing
retained its necessity, it has also become extremely complex, since
the borders between the missionary’s native country and the foreign
lands have grown both porous and multiple. In times past when borders
were mainly geographical, crossing might be hazardous and even deadly.
Voyages from Lisbon, for instance, from which missionaries under the
Portuguese padroado had to depart for distant parts of the globe took
years, and not a few missionaries perished during the journey. But at
least, the borders were visible, and one could be certain of having
crossed them. Today, by contrast, crossing geographical boundaries has
been made quick, easy and even comfortable thanks to air travel. But
new boundaries have emerged which are invisible and porous, and as a
result, one may not even be aware that there are boundaries at all and
can easily make the mistake of assuming that everything is the same
everywhere! Furthermore, borders have become so numerous and diverse
that crossing them successfully requires a good deal of skills and efforts
on the part of the missionary.
This predicament brings new challenges to Christian mission and calls
for an appropriate spirituality. Coincidentally, there has been in recent
years a strong interest among missionaries in spirituality. Summarizing
the presentations and discussions at the mission congress organized
by SEDOS in 2000, Robert Schreiter notes: “As missionaries move
into the third millennium, it is clear that the issue of spirituality
has a high priority.” This interest, he suggests, is rooted in
the new awareness that Christian mission is primarily missio Dei.
In this contribution to a border-crossing mission spirituality I first
describe the new borders that missionaries must cross today. Next, I
delineate some of the dispositions and virtues that would help missionaries
accomplish and maintain such crossing-over. Lastly, I will attempt to
ground such border-crossing spirituality theologically in the mystery
of the Incarnation itself.
New
arenas of mission and new borders
Perhaps one helpful way to discern the new borders for contemporary
mission is to begin with John Paul II’s description of the three
“situations”, each with a corresponding activity of the
church. The first situation consists of Christian communities with adequate
and solid ecclesial structures, a fervent Christian life, and a commitment
to mission. Here the church’s activity is “pastoral care”.
The second situation consists of Christian communities, both ancient
and young, in which the members have lost a living sense of faith, do
not even consider themselves Christian, and live lives contrary to the
Gospel. Here the church’s activity is “new evangelization”
or “re-evangelization”. The third situation is made of peoples,
groups, and socio-cultural contexts in which Christ and his Gospel are
not known or in which there are no Christians mature enough to proclaim
their faith to others. Here the church’s activity is “mission
ad gentes” or “missionary activity proper”.
The Pope is aware that “the boundaries between pastoral care of
the faithful, new evangelization, and specific missionary activity are
not clearly definable” and that there is a “real and growing
interdependence” among these three activities. Nevertheless, he
maintains these distinctions in order to highlight the continuing necessity
and even urgency of the mission ad gentes which has been on the wane
and whose validity and relevance have been questioned.
What is of interest to us here is not the usefulness or lack of it of
the pope’s distinction of the three situations with corresponding
church’s activities and the validity of his exclusive reservation
of the terms “missionary activity proper” and “mission
ad gentes” to the third situation. Rather it is the fact that
having re-affirmed the necessity of the mission to non-Christians John
Paul II goes on to describe the various arenas in which these non-Christians
are encountered today and in which a threefold activity of this mission
ad gentes is carried out, namely, “the work of proclaiming Christ
and his Gospel, building up the local Church, and promoting the values
of the kingdom”. The Pope specifies that these non-Christian arenas
include three distinct categories, and hence three possible kinds of
border and border-crossing, namely, “peoples, groups, and socio-cultural
contexts”.
First, “peoples” here may be taken to refer to the followers
of other religions as well as persons of no religious affiliation (atheists
and agnostics). In the recent past most of these peoples used to live
in the so-called mission territories, and John Paul II, who still upholds
the criterion of geography, regards certain parts of the world, in particular
Asia, urgently calling for the church’s mission ad gentes. Today,
however, due to frequent and extensive migrations from East to West,
a growing number of non-Christians are settling in the Christianized
West, especially in urban centers, where temples, pagodas, and mosques
dot the landscape cheek-by-jowl with churches and synagogues. Even though
the population of non-Christians in the West is still relatively small,
their active and at times vocal presence makes religious pluralism,
to which we will return below, a live and attractive option for many
Christians. As a result, religious affiliations, which used to function
as identity markers, have been blurred beyond recognition and the need
for missionaries to be able to maintain religious identities and at
the same time to negotiate conflicting religious claims has increased
dramatically.
In terms of John Paul II’s distinction of the three situations
of the church’s mission, it is increasingly a fact - uncomfortable
to many Christians - that the presence of non-Christians even in the
midst of both Christian communities with solid ecclesial structures
and vibrant faith, and in communities which have lost their ancient
Christian roots, poses serious challenges to the mission ad gentes,
much more complex and numerous, than in countries where Christians still
form a minority. To cross over to these non-Christians in the West requires
a great deal of skills and efforts on the part of the missionary, since
they are much more cognizant of the problems and even scandals in the
Catholic Church (e.g., the recent clergy sex abuse and the bishops’
misuse of funds and power) than their fellow believers in their native
countries and are therefore less likely to “convert” to
Christianity than if they had an idealistic picture of the church.
Secondly, as far as groups are concerned, John Paul II refers to “new
worlds and new social phenomena” which are said to widen immeasurably
the circle of concerns for mission ad gentes. Among groups that deserve
the special attention of missionaries, the pope singles out four categories,
namely, dwellers of megalopolises, youth, immigrants and refugees, and
the poor, each of whom requires specialized forms of ministry. Urbanization
creates big cities where a new humanity is emerging and where new models
of development are taking shape, and poses a different set of challenges
for missionaries, who used to carry out their work in isolated and underdeveloped
regions. Youth, who in many countries make up more than half of the
population, require associations, institutions, centers, and cultural
and social activities that go far beyond ordinary means of evangelization
and demand highly specialized skills not possessed by average missionaries.
Immigrants and refugees, as has been pointed out above, not only raise
the awareness of religious pluralism to an unprecedented level, but
also create fresh opportunities for cultural and religious exchanges
among them and Christian missionaries. Finally, the poor and the marginalized
demand new forms of evangelization that restore them human dignity and
freedom. Needless to say, these four groups create new and pluriform
borders, not simply geographical but also social, economic, ethnic,
and psychological, which missionaries have to be fully conscious of
and marshal requisite skills to cross over.
Thirdly, with regard to socio-cultural contexts, John Paul II mentions
“the modern equivalents of the Areopagus”, namely, the worlds
of communications and mass media, justice and peace, scientific research,
international organizations, and religious revival. Needless to say,
most if not all of these “worlds” were totally unknown to
missionaries ad gentes of just a few decades past the great majority
of whom labored in underdeveloped countries and for whom these worlds
represented the exclusive concerns of the technologically advanced West.
Even today, despite valiant efforts to adapt to a postindustrial society,
to our Age of Information with a heavy emphasis on service economy and
intellectual technology, many missionaries still find themselves incapable
of crossing over into these unfamiliar worlds, physical or virtual,
whose borders seem to extend everywhere and yet remain so elusive and
forbidding.
Still, there is no escape from these worlds if one wants to carry out
the mission ad gentes effectively, even when one retreats to the remotest
corners of the globe. This is so because of two other widespread contemporary
phenomena, namely, globalization and what has been called “post-modernity”
both of which represent the most salient features of our times. Thanks
to easy transportation and communication technologies, not only our
world has become a “global village” or better “global
city” but there is also a heightened awareness of our interconnections
and interdependencies in all areas of life. As a result of globalization
which extends the effects of modernization to all parts of the globe
and at the same time compresses both space and time, there emerges everywhere
a popular, homogenizing, deterritorialized “global culture”.
Of course, local cultures do not passively absorb globalization and
its popular culture line, hook and sinker but react to it by rejecting
it altogether, or by asserting their ethnic differences, or by returning
to their pre-modern roots. Nevertheless, the overwhelming effect of
globalization is the removal of boundaries and distinctions with a continuous
flow of information, technologies, ideas, tastes, and values throughout
the world. As a result, culture is no longer seen as a normative pattern
of living characterized by boundedness, distinctiveness, coherence,
and stability but much more as a fluid and unbounded social reality
marked by openness, variability, inconsistency, and conflict. At the
same time, because of globalization, today the symbols, ideas, rituals,
institutions, artistic representations, and religious traditions of
one culture are in constant contact and exchange with those of another
resulting in greater “shared space” than before. In other
words, while old borders have disappeared, new and numerous boundaries
are constantly being drawn but are much less visible and identifiable
than the old ones and thus make missionary crossing-over much more complicated.
The other phenomenon, more elusive but no less extensive and influential
than globalization, goes under the slippery label of post-modernity.
There have been extensive discussions of the historical parameters and
nature of post-modernity, especially with reference to modernity and
the Enlightenment, and it is not necessary to enter into such a debate
here. Suffice it to note, along with Lawrence Cahoone,that according
to some commentators, there are in contemporary social and cultural
patterns a number of features pervasive, distinctive, and important
enough to warrant the judgment that a new period of history has emerged,
markedly different from modernity, and for lack of a better term, may
be labeled postmodernity. Epistemologically, post-modernity is characterized
by a deep skepticism about our ability to know objective truth, rejection
of “universal and unchanging essences” and of fixed meanings
in human artifacts and language, incredulity toward “metanarratives”,
preference for local and particular stories, and celebration of diversity
and multiplicity. From a theological standpoint, while postmodernism’s
relativism and skepticism must be rejected, its critique of modernity
and the Enlightenment is to be taken seriously, and consequently, some
theologians have subjected fundamental concepts such as God, the self,
truth, and verification to a new scrutiny and reformulation.
From the missiological perspective, the challenges posed by post-modernity
are immense. One of the offsprings of postmodernism is religious pluralism,
according to which the diversity of religions is not merely a fact but
a normative stance which allows no particular religion to make claims
to universality and absolute validity. Needless to say, understood in
this way, religious pluralism strikes at the heart of Christology and
soteriology, and calls into question the very legitimacy of Christian
mission as understood and practiced in the past. The question is therefore
whether missionaries ad gentes can still proclaim the Christian faith
effectively and faithfully amidst the pluralistic view, widespread in
popular culture and in academia, that the Christian faith is but one
among many equally legitimate paths to God. How, in other words, can
the borders among religions that religious pluralism have erased be
rebuilt without being exclusivistic?
In sum, today the many borders missionaries ad gentes of old had to
cross have disappeared but new ones have emerged, more numerous, porous,
and even invisible, partly because of the new situations in which the
church has to carry out its mission, partly because of new economic,
social, cultural, and religious trends such as globalization, postmodernism,
and religious pluralism. New peoples, new groups, and new contexts are
addressees of evangelization. This fact was brought home by the participants
of the SEDOS 2000 congress on the future of mission who mentioned five
new contexts for mission today: globalization, religion-related violence,
secularization, the mounting strength of Islam, and ecological destruction.
Different are the borders and boundaries that missionaries now have
to cross, but still there remains the act of crossing, which is more
subtle, complex, and multiple. Is there a Christian way of living, a
frame of mind, and a set of moral dispositions and virtues, in a word,
a spirituality that facilitates and nurtures such crossing-over?
Border-crossing:
a missionary way of life
My purpose here is not to speak of missionary spirituality in general
which has been treated at length in recent times by a number of missiologists.
John Paul II himself devotes the last chapter of his encyclical Redemptoris
Missio to missionary spirituality and describes it as marked by three
basic features: complete docility to the Holy Spirit, intimate communion
with Christ the Evangelizer, and apostolic charity for the evangelized
and for the church. Emphasizing the priority of spirituality for mission
the pope says: “The renewed impulse to the mission ad gentes demands
holy missionaries. It is not enough to update pastoral techniques, organize
and coordinate ecclesial resources, or delve more deeply into the biblical
and theological foundations of faith. What is needed is the encouragement
of a new ‘ardor for holiness’ among missionaries and throughout
the Christian community, especially among those who work most closely
with missionaries”.
Assuming the three features enumerated by the pope as undisputed givens
of a missionary spirituality, I would like to single out for reflection
some attitudes and practices that appear most appropriate for missionaries
in a globalized, postmodern, and religiously plural context, with multiple
borders and unfamiliar situations. Robert Schreiter, in his assessment
of the SEDOS congress on the future of mission referred to above, suggests
that missionary spirituality in the future will have to develop along
four trajectories: spirituality of presence, kenotic spirituality, reconciliation,
and holistic anthropology. Taking my cue from the realities of Asia
and from the various statements of the Federation of the Asian Bishops’
Conferences and their institutes as well as from the Asian Synod and
John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia. I will
elaborate on how these four features form part of a missionary spirituality
envisaged as border-crossing spirituality.
Borders or boundaries seem to perform three distinct functions: as markers
for one’s individual and communal identity, as barriers to fence
out other people different from oneself, and as frontiers from which
to venture out into new horizons to expand one’s knowledge and
one’s circle of relationships. Corresponding to this triple role
of borders, a border-crossing spirituality must first of all help the
missionary respect and promote the distinctive identity and “otherness”
of those to be evangelized. On the one hand, these differences must
not erased under the pretext of a common human nature; on the other,
they should not be absolutized in an ideology of ethnocentrism and nationalism.
Such a border-crossing spirituality must also impel the missionary to
dismantle the unjust fences that powerful interest groups put up to
protect their privileges and to keep the marginalized out, denying them
even a decent human life. Finally, it must assist the missionary in
transcending differences of all kinds and opening up new frontiers in
order to build a “civilization of love” which is not merely
a confirmation of old identities but a forging of a new, common identity
in which the worst of each group are overcome and the best are combined
together to produce truly intercultural human beings, in the image of
the Triune God.
Spirituality
of Presence
To live in Asia is to constantly cross borders separating a dizzying
variety of languages, races, ethnicities, cultures, and religions. In
addition to these traditional boundaries, there are contemporary ones
created by the process of globalization such as the growing gap between
the rich and the poor, religious fundamentalism, political and military
conflicts among nations, and communal violence. In Asia, perhaps more
than anywhere else on earth, missionaries are called to be present to
these multiple realities and to be keenly aware of the borders which
are necessary for self-identity but also create many forms of exclusion.
This presence of course goes beyond physical accessibility. It demands
acceptance of pluralism not as a curse but as a blessing and an opportunity
for mutual collaboration and enrichment. Furthermore, it requires an
affective and effective solidarity with people on both sides of the
borders, especially those who are marginalized and oppressed. To achieve
affective solidarity with them, the FABC’s Institute for Social
Action recommends the method of “exposure” and “immersion”,
part of the four-stage “pastoral cycle”, namely, exposure-immersion,
social analysis, contemplation, and planning: “Exposure brought
us closer to to the stark reality of poverty, but immersion sought to
experience reality from the perspective of the poor themselves. Exposure
is like a doctor’s visit for diagnosis; immersion is like the
visit of a genuine friend entering into a dialogue-of-life”.
Thus, a spirituality of presence includes genuine friendship with those
living on the other side of the border and a dialogue-of-life with them.
Indeed, this sharing of life is part of a new way of being church in
Asia that involves a fourfold presence: “a. The dialogue of life,
where people strive to live in an open and neighborly spirit, sharing
their joys and sorrows, their human problems and preoccupations. b.
The dialogue of action, in which Christians and others collaborate for
the integral development and liberation of people. c. The dialogue of
theological exchange, where specialists seek to deepen their understanding
of their respective religious heritages, and to appreciate each other’s
spiritual values. d. The dialogue of religious experience, where persons,
rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches,
for instance, with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and ways
of searching for God or the Absolute”.
In Asia, this fourfold dialogue, by which the missionary is truly present
to the people who are evangelized, must be carried out, according to
the FABC, in three areas: with the Asians themselves, especially the
poor and the indigenous peoples (integral development and liberation),
with their religions (interreligious dialogue), and with their cultures
(inculturation).
This spirituality of presence is all the more necessary and the mission
work performed through it all the more effective in those parts of the
world, especially in Asia, where an explicit proclamation of Jesus is
forbidden and religious freedom is restricted or denied. This presence
in the form of “the silent witness of life” is perhaps not
always congenial to Western missionaries in whose training there has
been a strong emphasis on a verbal and explicit proclamation of Jesus
as the only and universal savior and for whom anything falling short
of this would be a failure in mission. Nevertheless, when this silent
witness of life, rooted in the experience of God, is accompanied by
a lifestyle characterized by “renunciation, detachment, humility,
simplicity and silence” and by “the work of justice, charity
and compassion”, it is perhaps most appropriate for Asia and forms
the core of the spirituality of presence which is mission as “contemplative
action and active contemplation”.
Since the spirituality of presence is essentially dialogue, it demands
all the virtues that make dialogue successful. For this to occur, according
to the FABC’s Institute of Interreligious Affairs, nothing less
than a “spirituality of dialogue” is required, especially
in situations of conflict and animosity: “In a situation of prejudice
brought about by fundamentalism and religious revivalism, dialogue means
an abiding and genuine search for goodness, beauty, and truth following
the beckoning of the Spirit who leads us into all truth.... In an atmosphere
of animosity brought about by the injustice and violation of human rights,
dialogue means powerlessness and vulnerability. From a position of power,
one can only negotiate about terms. From a position of weakness, one
can truly communicate his or her trust in the other. Trust is most real
when there looms the possibility of betrayal. To dialogue then means
to open one’s heart and to speak one’s mind with courage
and respect. But, as our experiences have shown, the Spirit has often
used powerlessness and vulnerability to effect mutual forgiveness and
reconciliation among individuals, families, and communities”.
This spirituality of presence from the missionary’s position of
powerlessness and vulnerability brings us to the next dimension of border-crossing
spirituality, namely, kenotic spirituality.
Kenotic
Spirituality
What is meant by kenotic spirituality is well explained by the same
Institute of Interreligious Affairs: “To risk being wounded in
the act of loving, to seek to understanding in a climate of misunderstanding
- these are no burdens to bear. Dialogue demands a deep spirituality
which enables man, as did Jesus Christ, to hang on to his faith in God’s
love, even when everything seems to fall apart. Dialogue, finally, demands
a total Christ-like self-emptying so that, led by the Spirit, we may
be more effective instruments in building God’s kingdom”.
As is well known, much of Asia is suffering from the legacy of colonialism,
widespread poverty, crushing foreign debts, lack of basic health care
and adequate educational facilities, and ecological destruction. The
missionary who comes from the First World and especially from the United
States of America, which is now the sole superpower wielding absolute
military power and enormous wealth, and the Catholic Church itself,
a powerful and rich institution both in the West and in Asia, are often
perceived by Asians as having at their disposition unlimited resources
to alleviate their pains and sufferings. Furthermore, from the religious
point of view, the Catholic Church is often presented as possessing
the fullness of truth and all the means of sanctification and as charged
with the mission of sharing these divine gifts with others. As a consequence,
the missionary is vested with unrealistic expectations, and is tempted
to think that part of his or her mission is to meet them.
It is here that kenotic spirituality will play a key role. As Antonio
M. Perna, the Filipino Superior General of the Society of the Divine
Word, echoing the voice of the FABC, puts it: “Much of Asia, as
we know, is characterized by the historical experience of colonization,
a socio-economic condition of poverty, and a religious situation where
Christianity is a minority. So, the Asian missionary cannot, or ought
not, evangelize from a position of power or superiority. He or she must
approach mission from a position of powerlessness and humility”.
This means that the Good News is not something owned by the missionary
but only given to his or her stewardship: “Thus, the Asian missionary
will not, or ought not, share the faith as if he or she owned it, dictating
thereby the terms by which it must be understood, lived and celebrated.
His or her approach to mission will be to share the faith as a gift
received from God through others, conscious of himself or herself as
merely its steward or servant and never its owner or master”.
The necessity of this kenotic spirituality is even more pressing in
the case of Asians going as missionaries to the First World, as happens
frequently these days, when the First World imports Asian priests and
religious to remedy its shortage of clergy. As Leo Kleden, an Indonesian
member of the SVD, has shrewdly observed, these missionaries cannot
expect to do what missionaries from the First World have done in Asia
in terms of health care, education, and social development. Asian missionaries,
originating mostly from their pre-modern culture and moving into the
modern and post-modern cultures of the West, come literally “empty-handed”.
But this situation need not be simply weakness but also strength, says
Kleden: “This kind of weakness can and should be the strength
of the new missionaries. Here is a golden opportunity to follow the
example of the first disciples of Jesus who were sent empty handed but
who were inspired by the Spirit of the Crucified and Risen Lord. The
empty handed approach is therefore possible if their heart is full of
faith, with the willingness to serve others as the Lord Jesus. Through
the Spirit of the Lord human weakness (in the socio-political sense)
is transformed into evangelical kenosis”.
In terms of evangelization, with kenotic spirituality missionaries cross
over borders less with the attitude of givers than of receivers. They
do not go into the mission lands with an advanced technology to modernize
the underdeveloped, with a superior culture to civilize the barbarians,
with a true religion to wipe out superstitions, with a set of revealed
truths to teach the unenlightened. As Anthony Gittins has pointed out,
they come primarily as strangers and as guests. As strangers, they will
be perceived by the hosts as “foreign”, “abnormal”,
“alien”, “odd”, “strange”. As guests,
they must depend on the generosity and kindness of the hosts, respect
and follow the rules and customs of the new environment, and may change
the ways of life of the place only if asked or allowed. Furthermore,
in many cases missionaries are not invited guests, they just invite
themselves or even force their way into the hosts’ countries.
This makes their condition of stranger and guest even more pronounced
and precarious.
In light of these two existential predicaments of the missionary, Gittins
suggests that part of the kenotic spirituality is for the missionary
to “accept our marginal and ambiguous status. We are no longer
- if we ever truly were - primary movers, but collaborators and assistants,
servants”. He goes on to say: “To allow oneself to be a
stranger is to allow oneself to be placed at the disposition of the
God who calls. To embrace the status of a stranger is to empower other
people and to dare to infuse some trust into a world where self-interest
and suspicion seem to walk unimpeded. To choose to be a stranger is,
it might be argued, to be a willing disciple of Jesus”. Kenotic
spirituality also requires that as guest the missionary learn to be
a gracious and grateful receiver, not only in matters of room and board,
but above all in the areas of culture, moral behavior, and religious
insights and practices. In this respect, perhaps the virtues that were
extolled in the past as requisites of a successful missionary such as
independence, self-reliance, risk-taking, and creativity might no longer
be appropriate, at least during the phase of incorporation into the
local community, and must be replaced by willingness to give up self-control,
vulnerability, interdependence, deference, and conformity. Of course,
as etiquette demands, the missionary as guest must also bring some gifts
of his or her own, not to “repay” the host but to “return”
the host’s graciousness. Consequently, the missionary must bear
witness to Jesus Christ and present God’s gift of faith. But gifts
are offered in gratitude and humility; they should never be imposed
on the host.
Spirituality
of Reconciliation and Harmony
It is a fact of life that borders do not serve simply to define and
affirm identity. Good fence do not always good neighbors make. It all
depends on who puts up the fence and where and what for. It may happen
that the neighbor, if he or she is the more powerful one, puts up the
fence as a barrier to keep others out, places it beyond his or her properties,
thus encroaching upon other people’ lands, or builds it up to
protect the ill-gained wealth and unjust privileges she or he is enjoying.
It is also the fact of life that not always are the guest and the host
in friendly relations with each other, and hospitality turns into hostility.
Then there arises the need for restoring harmony and peace-making.
Given the increase of violence not only among nations but also within
nations, not only in secular society but also in the church since the
end of communism in Eastern European countries in 1989, the need for
reconciliation has grown more acute. Among contemporary missiologists
Robert Schreiter has devoted a lot of attention to reconciliation. Schreiter
warns that reconciliation must not be undertaken as “a hasty peace”
by suppressing the memory of past violence, as an “alternative
to liberation,” which is a pre-condition for reconciliation, and
as a “managed process” to be conducted with technical rationality.
Rather reconciliation must be seen as part of Christian mission (2 Cor.
5:18-19) based on the Christian redeeming narrative of violence (sin),
death, cross, and blood in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Following José Comblin, Schreiter suggests that this reconciliation,
which is initiated and brought about by God, is accomplished on three
levels: “a christological level, in which Christ is the mediator
through whom God reconciles the world to God’s self; an ecclesiological
level, in which Christ reconciles Jew and Gentile; and a cosmic level,
in which Christ reconciles all the powers in heaven and on earth”.
To fulfill this ministry of reconciliation, missionaries, according
to Schreiter, must develop a “spirituality of reconciliation”.
This spirituality consists in cultivating an attitude of “listening
and waiting”, of “attention and compassion”, and of
“post-exilic existence”. By listening and waiting, one learns
to retrieve the memory of suffering and violence and to wait patiently
for God’s gift of peace and forgiveness; by attention and compassion,
one enters into solidarity with those who suffer violence; and by post-exilic
existence one begins to construct a new society with chastened optimism
and hope.
Reconciliation as restoration of harmony is also a pervasive theme in
Asian theologies as embodied in the FABC’s documents. There is
no doubt that harmony is central to Asian cultures and religions. It
is said to constitute “the intellectual and affective, religious
and artistic, personal and social soul of both persons and institutions
in Asia”. After expounding the concept of harmony as espoused
by Asian philosophies, primal religions, and religious traditions (including
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam),
the FABC’s Theological Advisory Committee concludes: “It
is clear there is an Asian approach to reality, an Asian understanding
of reality that is profoundly organic, i.e., a world-view wherein the
whole, the unity, is the sum-total of the web of relations, and interaction
of the various parts with each other”.
Thus, harmony is not simply “the absence of strife” but
lies in “acceptance of diversity and richness”. Nor is it
merely a pragmatic strategy for successful living amidst differences.
Fundamentally, it is an Asian spirituality involving all the four dimensions
of human existence: the individual self, and his or her relationships
with other human beings, the material universe, and God. This is clear
from the teachings of various Asian religious traditions. The Hindu
way is marked by a quest for a harmonious integration of the whole and
the parts at all levels: individual, social, and cosmic. The cosmos
is sustained by a harmonious order; society is held together by the
order of dharma (law); and the individual achieves harmony by observing
the cosmic order and society’s moral and religious code.
In Buddhism, harmony in the individual, which leads to liberation from
suffering, is achieved by following the so-called Eightfold Path: right
speech, action, and livelihood (morality), right effort, mindfulness
and concentration (concentration), and right understanding and thought
(wisdom). According to Zen Buddhism, harmony in the individual is the
unity of body and mind in all the person’s activities and produces
enlightenment and a deep sense of peace. Because of the unity between
body and soul, physical practices such as proper sitting position, regulating
the breath, and composing the mind are necessary conduits to spiritual
enlightenment.
Harmony in the individual leads to harmony with other human beings,
which, according to Confucius, include the family, the nation, and the
world. According to the Chinese Sage, one cannot pacify the world without
governing one’s nation well; one cannot govern one’s nation
well without ordering one’s family rightly; and one cannot order
one’s family rightly without achieving mastery over oneself. And
self-mastery is achieved by living out five relationships correctly:
between ruler and subject, between husband and wife, between parent
and child, between elder sibling and younger sibling, and between friend
and friend. Each of these five relationships implies a set of obligations
and duties, and if one fulfills them rightly, one lives in harmony with
oneself and with others.
Furthermore, because the human person is a microcosm reflecting the
macrocosm, she or he must also be in harmony with nature or the cosmos.
This harmony is particularly emphasized in Taoism. Chuang Tzu, the greatest
Taoist after Lao Tzu, declares: “The cosmos and I were born together;
all things and I are one”. In practical terms, cosmic harmony
demands that humans maintain a healthy and sustainable ecosystem, avoid
the pollution of the environment, reduce the consumption of energy resources,
and in general develop an attitude of reverence for, a contemplative
posture toward, and a sense of oneness with the Earth and non-human
creation.
Finally, harmony in oneself, harmony with one’s fellow human beings,
and harmony with the cosmos are rooted in and strengthened by harmony
with God. This harmony with the Divine is the fundamental teaching of
Islam, an Arabic term meaning ‘surrender.’ To be in harmony
with God, we must in all things submit to God’s holy will in mind,
heart, and action. We must, to use a Confucian expression, learn to
know and fulfill the mandate of Heaven.
When this view of harmony of Asian non-Christian religions is integrated
with the Christian understanding of God’s reconciliation of the
world to himself in Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, what emerges,
in the view of the Theological Advisory Commission, is a new spirituality
of harmony as a web of peaceful relationships, a new theology of harmony
as communion, and a deeper commitment to harmony as reconciliation.
The spirituality of harmony will shape human life as an unfolding of
right relationships: “Starting from consciousness of the God-given
harmony within oneself, one moves into harmonious relationship with
one’s fellow humans; then one spreads out to be in harmony with
nature and the wider universe. This unfolding and realization of right
relationship within oneself, with the neighbors and the cosmos leads
to the summit experience of harmony with God”. On the basis of
this spirituality, a theology of harmony is developed, not as conclusions
deduced from Christian texts but as a contextual reflection on the realities
of conflict in Asia, in dialogue and collaboration with followers of
other religions, and in solidarity with the victims of discrimination
and violence. In this theology of harmony, there is an emphasis on ethics
as “the ethic and aesthetic of right relationships in the original
harmony”, on Christ as “the sacrament of the new harmony”,
and on the church as “the sacrament of unity”. Finally,
this new spirituality and theology of harmony call for an active commitment
to peacemaking and reconciliation as individuals, as church, and in
collaboration with others.
For the missionaries, this spirituality of reconciliation and harmony
implies that in their border-crossing they be aware that borders as
markers can be made to function as barriers, especially by those who
have vested economic and political interests to maintain and protect.
Here the role of prophecy is indispensable. The missionaries will be
in solidarity with those who are marginalized and discriminated against
by these borders/barriers and with courage denounce the injustices committed
against them. Harmony, says the Theological Advisory Commission, “is
neither a compromising with conflictual realities, nor a complacency
about the existing order. Harmony demands a transformative attitude
and action, to bring about a change in contemporary society. This can
be provided only by a prophetic spirituality which exercises charitable
but courageous criticism of the situation”.
Another aspect of mission to which the spirituality of harmony applies
is interreligious dialogue and the religious boundaries that have often
been manipulated to pit one religious group against another. Religions,
when seen as mutually complementary, should not be barriers separating
people but must be seen as different paths leading to God. As Michael
Amaladoss has pointed out, a new approach to religions is needed, in
which all religions are seen as players and collaborators in humanity’s
movement toward God’s kingdom: “In promoting the kingdom,
then, our enemies are Satan and Mammon, not other religions”.
This spirit of complementarity and harmony is strongly insisted upon
by the Asian bishops at the Asian Synod when speaking of the Asian cultural
and religious values as forming the basis of the Asianness of the church:
“All of this indicates an innate spiritual insight and moral wisdom
in the Asian soul, and it is the core around which a growing sense of
‘being Asian’ is built. This ‘being Asian’ is
best discovered and affirmed not in confrontation and opposition, but
in the spirit of complementarity and harmony. In this framework of complementarity
and harmony, the Church can communicate the Gospel in a way which is
faithful to her own Tradition and to the Asian soul”.
Holistic
Spirituality
The last dimension of border-crossing spirituality, intimately connected
with the spirituality of harmony and reconciliation, is holistic spirituality.
Central to this spirituality is a holistic anthropology, which is already
intimated above when harmony is said to embrace four dimensions: the
self, fellow human beings, the cosmos, and God. Arguing for “a
more cosmic and holistic anthropology” María Carmelita
de Freitas suggests that it will make possible “a more integrated
and open religious life, one with wider horizons, more in harmony with
what is beautiful, simple, human, joyful, cheerful, with nature, and
with everything”. Only in this way, de Freitas believes, can the
evils of globalization with its “neo-liberal creed” of monetary
and economic stability, its “ethics of efficiency,” its
“Gospel of competition”, and its “logic of exclusion”
be counteracted.
From our reflections on harmony above it is obvious that holistic spirituality
is a central concern of not only various Asian religious traditions
but also the FABC. The Fifth Plenary Assembly in 1990 insisted that
a spirituality for the new millennium must “integrate every aspect
of Christian life: liturgy, prayer, community living, solidarity with
all and especially the poor, evangelization, catechesis, dialogue, social
commitment, etc. There has to be no dichotomy between faith and life,
or between love and action ...”.
In holistic spirituality as part of border-crossing, boundaries cease
to be barriers and become frontiers from which the missionary venture
forth with people on both sides of the borders to create new realities
out of their common assets. Among Hispanic/Latino theologians, Virgilio
P. Elizondo has developed the concept of mestizaje, that is, a blending
of two or more races, ethnicities, cultures, and religions into a “new
race”, as the early Christians were called. In this new race,
as Elizondo points out, “borders will not disappear, differences
will not fade away, but they need not divide and keep peoples apart....
Rather than seeing them as the ultimate dividing line between you and
me, between us and them, we can see borders as the privileged meeting
places where different persons and peoples will come together to form
a new and most inclusive humanity”.
The spirituality of missionary border-crossing which we have elaborated
in terms of presence, kenosis, harmony, and holistic integration is
well expressed by Anthony Bellagamba in his description of the identity
of the missionaries as “persons of the present” and “persons
of the beyond”. As “persons of the present”, missionaries
must live in contact with the realities of the people they seek to evangelize:
“The struggle of the people, their hopes and concerns, their vision
of life, their experience of death, their cosmological theories, their
methods of being community, their understanding of authority, their
use of authority, their sexual drives, and their whole system of values
are, or should be, of great interest to cross-cultural personnel”.
As “persons of the beyond”, they must go beyond their own
cultures, histories, values, mother tongues, native symbols, even their
religions, not in the sense of rejecting them, but in the sense of “emptying”
themselves of them in order to be guests and strangers among the people
they evangelize and to receive and adopt as far as possible their hosts’
cultures and ways of life.
Jesus,
the border-crosser
Border-crossing spirituality, a necessity for missionaries in a culture
with multiple and porous boundaries created by globalization, post-modernity,
and religious pluralism, is not simply a practical strategy for successful
evangelization but is a theological imperative of Christian life as
imitatio Christi. Christian evangelization in any period of history
and in any culture worthy of the name must be modeled after the way
Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom to the people of his time. There
are of course many different ways to represent Jesus’ life and
ministry. For example, it is possible to explain the significance of
Jesus by way of the various titles the New Testament and Christian Tradition
have attributed to him. Needless to say, no one title can ever exhaust
the significance of Jesus’ words and deeds and the multifaceted
method of his ministry. For our present purposes it would be useful
to explore Jesus’ life and ministry in terms of border-crossing.
In this way, the missionary spirituality that has been proposed here
will seen to be rooted in the mystery of Christ the Border-Crosser himself.
For reasons of space, I will limit our consideration to the Incarnation,
some aspects of Jesus’ ministry, and his death and resurrection.
The
Incarnation as Border-Crossing
The mystery of the Word of God made flesh in Jesus can certainly be
viewed as an act of border-crossing. Essentially, it is the culmination
of that primordial border-crossing by which the Triune God steps out
of himself and eternity and crosses into the other, namely, the world
of space and time, which God brings into existence by this very act
of crossing. In the Incarnation, the border that was crossed is not
only that which separates the eternal and the temporal, the invisible
and the visible, spirit and matter, but more specifically, the divine
and the human, with the latter’s reality of soul and body.
In this divine crossing over to the human, the border between the divine
nature and the human nature of Jesus functions as the marker constituting
the distinct identity of each. One is not transmuted into the other,
nor is confused with it; rather, the two natures are to be acknowledged
“without confusion, without change”. As the Council of Chalcedon
teaches: “The distinction between the natures was never abolished
by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures
was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one
hypostasis”.
On the other hand, the same border is no longer a barrier preventing
God and the human from joining together. Indeed, by crossing the divine-human
border, the Logos transforms the barrier into a frontier and creates
a new reality, Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity the Logos assumes and
makes it his own, so that, as the Council of Chalcedon teaches, his
two natures - divine and human - are united with each other “without
division, without separation”. In this humanity the Logos now
exists in a new way, not available to him before the Incarnation, and
this historical mode of existence, in time and space, and above all,
as we will see, in suffering and death, now belongs to God’s eternal
and trinitarian life itself.
Thus, in the Incarnation as border-crossing, the boundaries are preserved
as identity markers but at the same time they are overcome as barriers
and transformed into frontiers from which a totally new reality, a mestizaje,
emerges: the divine and human reconciled and harmonized with each other
into one single reality. Like Jesus, missionaries are constantly challenged
to cross all kinds of borders, and out of the best of each group of
people these borders divide and separate, to create a new human family
characterized by harmony and reconciliation.
Jesus’
Ministry as Dwelling at the Margins
A border-crosser at the very roots of his being, Jesus performed his
ministry of announcing and ushering in the kingdom of God always at
the places where borders meet and hence at the margins of the two worlds
separated by their borders. He was a “marginal Jew”, to
use the title of John Meier’s multi-volume work on the historical
Jesus. He crossed these borders back and forth repeatedly and freely,
be they geographical, racial, sexual, social, economic, political, cultural,
and religious. What is new about his message about the Kingdom of God,
which is good news to some and scandal to others, is that for him it
removes all borders, both natural and man-made, as barriers and is absolutely
all-inclusive. Jews and non-Jews, men and women, the old and the young,
the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the healthy and the
sick, the clean and the impure, the righteous and the sinners, and any
other imaginable categories of peoples and groups, Jesus invited them
all to enter into the house of his merciful and forgiving Father. Even
in his “preferential option for the poor” Jesus did not
abandon and exclude the rich and the powerful. These too are called
to conversion and to live a just, all-inclusive life.
Standing between the two worlds, excluding neither but embracing both,
Jesus was able to be fully inclusive of both. But this also means that
he is the marginal person par excellence. People at the center of any
society or group as a rule possess wealth, power, and influence. As
the threefold temptation shows, Jesus, the border-crosser and the dweller
at the margins, renounced precisely these three things. Because he was
at the margins, in his teaching and miracle-working, Jesus creates a
new and different center, the center constituted by the meeting of the
borders of the many and diverse worlds, often in conflict with one another,
each with its own center which relegates the “other” to
the margins. It is at this margin-center that marginal people meet one
another. In Jesus, the margin where he lived became the center of a
new society without borders and barriers, reconciling all peoples, “Jew
or Greek, slave or free, male or female” (Ga 3:28). Strangers
and guests as they are, missionaries are invited to become marginal
people, to dwell at the margins of societies with marginal(ized) people,
like Jesus, so as to be able to create with them new all-inclusive centers
of reconciliation and harmony.
Dying
“outside the city gate and outside the camp” (Heb 13:12-13)
Jesus’ violent death on the cross was a direct result of his border-crossing
and ministry at the margins which posed a serious threat to the interests
of those occupying the economic, political, and religious center. Even
the form of his death, that is, by crucifixion, indicates that Jesus
was an outcast, and he died, as the Letter to Hebrews says, “outside
the city gate and out side the camp”. Symbolically, however, hung
between heaven and earth, at the margins of both worlds, Jesus acted
as the mediator and intercessor between God and humanity.
But even in death Jesus did not remain within the boundaries of what
death means: failure, defeat, destruction. By his resurrection he crossed
the borders of death into a new life, thus bringing hope where there
was despair, victory where there was vanquishment, freedom where there
was slavery, and life where there was death. In this way, the borders
of death become frontiers to life in abundance. Like Jesus, missionaries
have to live out the dynamics of death and resurrection, or to use the
words of Philippians 2:6-11, of self-emptying and exaltation.
Samuel Escobar’s beautiful rendering of this Christological hymn,
which portrays Jesus as the border-crosser par excellence and summarizes
well the missionary border-crossing spirituality, serves as a fitting
conclusion to our reflections:
Let there be in us the same feeling and mind that was
also in Christ Jesus,
Who in order to reach us crossed the border between
heaven and earth.
He crossed the border of poverty to be born in a stable
and live without knowing where he was going to
rest his head at night.
He crossed the border of marginalization to befriend
women and embrace publicans and Samaritans.
He crossed the border of spiritual power to free those
afflicted by legions of devils.
He crossed the border of social protest to sing truths to
the Pharisees, scribes, and traffickers of the temple.
He crossed the border of the cross and death to help us
all pass over to the other side.
Risen Lord, who therefore awaits us there, at every
border that we have to cross with his Gospel.