|
Samuel
Rayan, S.J. We are listening to the murmur of three streams: spirituality, mission and Asia. We watch their flow and their confluence, and wish to respond to their mystery as best we can. We proceed in four steps: the first three will comment on the three components of our concern -spirituality, mission and the Asian context; the fourth step will try to bring the three together. A. Spirituality 1. The word is problematic, even dangerous. It seems to exclude material realities, and activities connected with them. It is suggestive of the immaterial, the non-bodily, the non-social, the a-historical, the interior, the other-worldly. It smacks of the dualism and docetism which bedevilled certain religious traditions, even Christian, ones, in the past. These used to advocate contempt of, and flight from, the world - from the world of matter, of the senses, of bodily needs, of the temporal and of the impermanent. Dictionaries note that "spirituality" defines spiritual as distinct from physical or material. Even A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Wakefield, Gordon S., ed., A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, London: S.C.N., 1983) tells us that the word is used to describe "attitudes, benefits, practices which animate people's lives and help them to reach out towards supernatural realities". Monica Furlong, however, laments the presence at the heart of Christianity of a 'split between sensuality and spirituality' (Furlong, Monica, 'Spirituality for Survival' in The Weight of Glory, edited by Hardy, D.W and Sedgwig, P. H., 1991, p. 245). In 15-16th century England 'spirituality' stood, curiously enough, for the clergy as a distinct order of society, and even for ecclesiastical property and clergy revenue! The affluent have generally tended to equate spirituality and religion with the supernatural, and to make them cohabit comfortably with the practice of oppression, exploitation, slave trade, racism, imperial conquests, colonial repression and plunder, sexism, class divisions, market mechanisms, profiteering and limitless greed and war. This transmundane spirituality promises individual salvation, and sees no contradiction between the cross of Christ and the altar of Mammon. 2. A less spurious understanding of spirituality identifies it almost exclusively with explicit religion - with piety, devotion, prayer, dogmas, rites, cults and the organisation of these, or with matters pertaining to the individual soul and its salvation as distinct from matters that concern the body or the human community. Thus to pray, to meditate, to confess would be spiritual exercises, but not to act in Hamlet or to sink a tube-well for a thirsty village. The Bible or The Imitation of Christ or the congregation's Holy Rule would constitute spiritual reading, but not The Brothers Karamazov or Travels of Marco Polo or Grimm's Fairy Tales. Spirituality tended to be defined in opposition to the political, the economic, the social, the active, the external. It was closely associated with asceticism and with monasteries, monks and nuns. Or it was thought of as something available in ashrams, retreat houses or diploma courses. The result was that for many good people, for youth in particular, spirituality smelt too much of the cloister and the sacristy, or of incense and candles; it appeared to them as something abstract, something of a kill-joy, negating full-blooded life and whole-hearted involvement in the business of building a beautiful world. The mischief was due probably to misunderstanding of a Pauline phrase. Paul speaks at times of the 'carnal' man. By carnal Paul meant not the body as against the soul, but the whole human reality as sinful, disobedient to God, corruptible. But in a neo-plantonic context it was mistaken to mean the body. And the 'spiritual' in Paul refers to the Holy Spirit; this too was misread as meaning human interiority. Even so some cognates of the spiritual are welcome. A 'spirited conversation' finds favour with everyone. It may be added that today spirituality is regaining respectability and becoming popular. It is something people seek, even travelling abroad, cloyed as they are with the shallowness of materialist affluence (Hardy, D.W. and Sedgwig, P.H., eds., The Weight of Glory, 1991, p. 198). 3. Nevertheless, some suggestion of dualism still clings to the word 'spirituality'. The word has become ambiguous and somewhat confusing. Hence we have been looking for other expressions not so much to replace spirituality altogether as to help bring out its real intent and meaning. Thus one speaks of the Godward life, or of living before God, or walking with God and with fellow creatures; or of personal union with God, or of God-consciousness. For some spirituality has to do with the ordering of our life, with the form we give to it and the fixing of priorities. Others have described it as a primordial experience of being rooted and related, as a radical sensitivity; or as that which gives meaning to human life; or as freeing oneself in order to free others; or as the love of the beautiful (philokalia); or as desert experience patterned on the Exodus or on Hosea 2. For Maria Teresa Porcile spirituality is "a kind of homesickness for God, for silence, beauty, prayer, liturgy, chant, theology, which becomes worship... and a way of watching the world that is being transformed into compassion and hymn, an anticipation of Jerusalem" (Porcile, Maria Teresa, in the Ecumenical Review, January 1986, p. 35). A. Schmeman clarifies that Christian spirituality is not simply for interior life or the inward person. It is as much for the body as for the soul, as much for society as for the individual. It consists in implementing the two commandments of loving God and neighbour, the neighbour including nature (Schmemann, A., Of Water and the Spirit, 1976, p. 107). W. Pannenberg presents spirituality as a progressive realisation of the Gospel of transformative affirmation of the human person and human history by God's love (Pannenberg, W., Christian Spirituality, 1983, p. 108f). Prophet Micah, if asked, would reply that spirituality consists in acting justly, loving tenderly and walking humbly with the God of us all (cf. Mi 6:8). Or, in Jesus' phrase, to be spiritual is 'to think the things of God', to think as God thinks and live accordingly (cf. Mt 16:23). 4. For some spirituality is essentially relational. It is a relationship between disciple and master between the devotee and her/his personal God. "A relationship of intimacy", says J. H. Kroeger, "is at the heart of biblical spirituality" (Kroeger, James H., in Verbum SVD , 31/3, 1990, p. 259; Living Mission 1994, p. 21; cf. Ex 19:4-6; Lv 26:12). He describes spirituality as a "human-divine drive operative in our lives", and speaks of it in terms of growth processes and evolution towards maturity. Spirituality has to do with expanding horizons of spiritual awareness or God-consciousness or faith-life" (cf. Kroeger, 1994, p. 22). Mary Grey, quoting Martin Buber, notes that "the fundamental category of existence is relationality"; that is "a mutuality, a dynamism, a responsiveness expressed in a myriad of different ways" (Grey, Mary, Redeeming the Dream. Feminism, Redemption and Christian Tradition, London, SPCK, 1989, p. 84). With Thomas Merton spirituality's accent falls on transformation of conscience from a self-centred state to an other-centred condition; "one's self is no longer one's own centre; it is now centred on God" (cf. Kroeger, 1994, p. 23). Elizabeth S. Fiorenza is strong on relationality. "The focal point", she writes, "of early Christian self-understanding was not a holy book, or a cultic rite, not mystic experiences and magic invocations but a set of relationships: the experience of God's presence among one another and through one another...". Consequently Christian spirituality came to mean "eating together, sharing together, drinking together, talking with each other, receiving each other, experiencing God's presence through each other, and, in doing so, proclaiming the Gospel as God's alternative vision for everyone, especially for those who are poor, outcast and battered" (Fiorenza, Elizabeth S., In Memory of Her, A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, New York: Crossroads, 1983, p. 345). 5. Others apparently overlook relationality, and place spirituality in the very structure and dynamism of the Human: in human freedom and creativity and the ability to transcend self. Thus we are told that all human beings are spiritual, whether believers or not. All "have an area where they are free for transcendence with new possibilities at the centre of their being where they can make a total response with will, intellect and feelings" (cf. Hardy and Sedgwig, p. 198). Michael C. Reilly sees the human being as spiritual because this being is an embodied spirit with reflexive consciousness, critical thought and creative self-expression. "Spirituality is the interior life of the human knower-doer. The inner life makes it possible for one to express oneself in symbols of culture, to think, meditate, wonder, plan, project, achieve, critique, innovate and self-sacrifice" (Reilly, Michael C., Spirituality for Mission, Manila, 1976, p. 22). Spirituality therefore is the basic, practical, existential attitude of human beings which is the consequence and expression of the way in which they understand their existence and the meaning of reality. It is the way they act or react throughout life according to ultimate objectives which flow from their world view. "Christian spirituality" is the way one lives according to one's vision of faith in the Creator God who assumed the world and its history to God-self in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and raised ... in the Spirit" (cf. Reilly, p. 24). For M. M. Thomas "human spirituality is the way in which one, in the freedom of self-transcendence, seeks a structure of ultimate meaning and sacredness within which one can fulfil or realise oneself in and through one's involvement in the bodily, the material and the social realities and relations of one's life on earth" (Thomas, M.M., 'Salvation Today. A Personal Statement', in Salvation Today, edited by Arne Sovik. Minn. 1973 , p. 95). 6. That brings us to the core of the question. Spirituality is life in the Spirit, living by the Breath of God. By Spirit the Bible means most of the time not the human soul but the Holy Spirit of God. Spiritual is what the Holy Spirit creates, initiates, inspires, gives, guides, sustains, blesses, approves, animates, accepts and rejoices over. All creation then is radically spiritual: the earth and the sky, birds and beasts, women and men are all spiritual from their foundations and in their essential openness to the Spirit's influence. This perception is vital for all authentic and holistic understanding of spirituality which would avoid all dualist and docetist pitfalls. This view provides a necessary horizon for all further interpretation and application of spirituality. But it has its limitations too. It spells out the Spirit's role and activity rather than the part we, humans, are to play in the history of our life in the Spirit. It needs to be supplemented; or, rather, this rich description of spirituality spoken from the side of the Spirit needs now to be told from our side. 7. That may be done by stating that to be spiritual is to be open to reality and responding to it relevantly and as adequately as possible. From the perspective of human praxis, life in the Spirit is defined in terms of openness and responsiveness to reality. Reality is to be understood inclusively: it embraces everything from sand and grass, through singing birds and tigers 'burning bright in the forests of the night'; through the solar systems and the furthest constellations in an expanding universe, through the complex and structured universe within each molecule, to the world of thought and grief and love and brokenness in the depths of human hearts, to the hunger and misery and tears of women and men, to the experience of forgiveness, and on to the Ultimate Mystery of life and love we call God, Brahman, Allah. To be spiritual is to be open to these realities, to all of them, to any of them, and to all further possibilities, rejecting none, shutting out nothing. Openness means listening to the other, to the depth and the silence of things and events, refusing to close the door to possibilities however unfamiliar, unpalatable, challenging and disturbing. Openness means being ready for the surprise of history and of the cosmos. Materialism is a prejudiced option for narrowness while fairy tales affirm that nothing given within our experience exhausts the possibilities of the real. To be open is to let reality come in all its beauty, ugliness, wonder, terror ; let it come, invade our life, touch us in depth, affect us, awaken us, gladden us, wound us, and move us to joy, to song, to sorrow, to tears, to anger, to action. To relevant action, action that responds to reality and its actual condition, affirming, fostering, negating, resisting, subverting, transforming as the case may require. 'Response-ability' will address not only reality's present but its past as well and its future; it will speak to the personal no less than to the structural. To be spiritual is to be open and responsive to the reality of the earth, of history, of life, of people, of the Spirit. 8. The parable of the Samaritan (cf. Lk 10:29-37) could illustrate the point. Two men of religion, two cult persons, a priest and a Levite, came along, saw the traveller lying on the roadside, stripped, robbed, beaten, bleeding to death; they saw and passed by. Then came along a non-Jew, a non-believer, a Samaritan, someone the cult persons despised. He too saw what the priest had seen, and he responded in a way the priest had not. Moved with compassion he went up to the dying man, bandaged his wounds, lifted him on to his own mount, took him to the nearest inn and arranged for him to be looked after unto health and wholeness at the Samaritan's own expense. That was openness, showing his ability to respond; that was neighbourly love, and authentic faith and true religion and spiritual worship. It was a more relevant response than the priest's even if we imagine that the priest was perhaps hastening to the temple to pray for the bandits' victim. The priest was not open: he did not respond. What the Samaritan did was. And Jesus said to the learned Jews, "Go then and do the same" (cf. Lk 10:37), follow the Samaritan, take a lesson in religion from him. One could multiply illustrations of authentic spirituality from the Bible, but they are also illustrations of spirituality for mission. So we shall postpone telling the stories till a word has been said about mission. B. Mission 9. The "Go and do the same" of the Samaritan story is a mission word; and the spirituality which the story depicts in terms of broken humanity, of religion's indifference, of Gentile sensitivity and wine, oil, money, humanity, responsibility and love, portrays faithfully the authentic face of a spirituality of mission. Traditionally Mt 28:18-20 has been honoured and obeyed as the Lord's great missionary mandate. But debates and hesitations described in the Acts prove that the Matthean passage is not a word of Jesus inaugurating a world mission; it is a word of the early Church setting forth the happy conclusion of early Christian controversies. The fact is that Jesus confined his ministry and that of his disciples to the house of Israel and its lost sheep (Mt 10:5-6; Mk 7:26-27; Acts 10:11). But we are not left without direct mission words from Jesus. 'Go and do the same' of the Samaritan story is one such word. Another, absolutely central and decisive, is Jesus' love commandment: I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you (cf. Jn 13:34). This mission word of Jesus sums up all his teachings and synthesises the meaning of his life and death. To love is the ministry and mission of the disciples; it is to be the distinctive mark of the Church: "It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognise you as my disciples" (Jn 13:35). The commandment is then repeated with a dynamic Trinitarian structure: there is the Father, there is Jesus, and their shared Love reaching out to draw us in: "I have loved you just as the Father has loved me... This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you... My commandment to you is to love one another" (Jn 15:9, 12, 17). And the love is to be made real in concrete relevant service to, and acceptance of responsibility for, one another: "If I have washed your feet, you also must wash one another's feet" (Jn 13:14; Mk 10:41-45). But that 'one another' should not harden into a closed circle: the disciples are not to become a ghetto. We are commissioned to break out of circles and let our love and service spread far and wide to transform the world. The mission word is, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:44) Disclose a new way of life, a new style of relationship, a new set of values, a new economic practice, and take the world by surprise. To one who hits you on the right cheek, offer the other as well; to one who takes you to law to get your tunic, give your cloak as well; and if anyone requires you to go one mile, go two miles with him (cf. Mt 5:39-42). That gratuitous mile, after walking the one forced on you by fear or agreed upon by you for money, will be the surprise mile, the Gospel mile, and the meaning and manner of the mission of grace. For if we love only those who love us or are loveable what is there in our behaviour that is exceptional and surprising? Anyone could do that independently of the Gospel mission and the wondrous news about Jesus. Follow therefore the Father's ways. His justice-love does the surprising thing in giving to everyone sun and rain, earth and food; in giving not what we deserve, but what we need in order to exist and become great. These words describe the mission and its method, and bear a mission spirituality. 10. Akin to this is the command in Mt 5:23-24 about interrupting cult to give priority to the Gospel task of community-building, peace-making and reconciling, and laying the foundations of a new, beautiful world (cf. Mt 5:8; 2 Cor 5:17-19). Similarly the blessing pronounced on those who hunger and thirst for justice (Mt 5:6) and struggle on the side of the victims of iniquitous economic, political and social systems, carries a missionary mandate. All the beatitudes are in fact mission words indicating with whom the bearers of the Gospel are to stand, what values and goals they are to pursue, to what visions and dreams they are to win the people over, what life style they ought to adopt, and what price they may have to pay for discipleship. The point is made clear in the mission mandate which concludes this section: You are salt for the earth to preserve it from decay and give it new flavour and vigour; You are light to the world, sent to shine in people's sight, so that seeing your good works and your surpriseful way of life people may burst into praise of the Father (cf. Mt 5:13-16). Matthew is a missionary Gospel with a global perspective beginning from the genealogy (ch. 1), through the Magi story (ch. 2), and the story of the Light breaking into the shadows of Gentile existence (4:12-17), through Jesus' self-identification with the deprived (8:20; 25:31-46), and the cosmic phenomena which mark Jesus' death (27:51-54) on to the world mission at the end (28:18-20). The Sermon on the Mount is a formal charter of the mission. We wish to call attention to two more points in this charter. The first is the Our Father (6:9-13). This prayer says that the mission's goal is the Father's glory when encounter with God's reality will be experienced as meaningful, life-giving and liberating. It says that the mission is at the service of God's Reign. The values and dynamics of that Reign, which is older and larger than the Church, will shape and guide the mission. At the heart of the prayer stands not just the Reign of God, but the Reign and the Earth - the Reign as it comes to the Earth touching and transforming it, and the Earth as the place where the Reign is realised through the doing of God's will, the implementation of God's designs. The second part of the prayer spells out some specifics of the Reign, some concrete ways of doing God's will. The prayer calls for a radical revamping of our systems of social fragmentation and social gaps. It demands the fashioning of fellowship in which everybody's right to daily bread, daily rice, daily share in resources required to live with dignity and to participate creatively in history's processes will be met and honoured. As a prayer, the Our Father is an act of commitment to a programme of action to remake the world. The second point we wish to touch upon in the mission charter is found in Mt 7:21-23. It re-emphasises the doing of God's will, stressed already in the Our Father. It warns us against misunderstanding the mission as an exercise in religious rhetoric. Mission seeks to discover and unite people committed to God's designs for the earth, to win more people for God's cause, to urge and aid people to practice what would change our hearts and our world into something beautifully human. It will not do then merely to get people to say or sign Creeds while the basic structures of the heart and of society continue unaltered and unchallenged. The language of proclamation and preaching found in Matthew and Mark begins to change in Luke and is replaced in John with martyrion, bearing witness to the Gospel with life, even with death, and not merely with words. The change in terminology is significant. Significant too is Jesus' reference to baptism. Discipleship consists in our participation in the Baptism which Jesus receives. And Jesus' baptism consists in his unconditional commitment to the cause of the Reign of God even if that should cost him his life (Mk 10:38-39; Lk 12:49-50). We are warned not to reduce Baptism to a water rite, and not to overlook the few or the many baptised into the paschal mystery who live and serve outside the institutional Churches. 11. The Fourth Gospel too is a mission Gospel. The mission theme is implied in the announcement of the coming into the world of the Word-Light that enlightens everyone (Jn 1:9). It is present in the work of the Baptiser and the role played by Andrew and Philip in the same opening chapter. It underlies the language of witnessing which occurs throughout the work. It becomes explicit in Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman and in the apostolate she undertakes. It is Jesus' life-giving and liberating mission that chapters 5 to 11 present. Jesus describes himself so often as the One the Father has sent. Chapter 17, described at times as a priestly prayer, is in fact a mission prayer. As the Sent One, Jesus can say and do only what the Sender has commanded him to. And this is the mission of Jesus: to convince the world that God so loved it as to give his only Son for its healing and wholeness. We have seen how the Son extends to us the love he himself receives from the Father, and how he would have us extend it to the world. The commission comes to a climax in the conc1uding chapter of John when the Risen Christ breathes on his disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit, as the Father has sent me, I send you" (Jn 20:20-23). The Father is the ultimate Sender. The mission is God's. God sends the Son and the Spirit, and through the Son in the Spirit God sends forth creation. The overall mission of the created universe is to be a translation, in the language of matter and motion and energy and beauty, of the eternal Word of God. Its mission is to be a revelation, a manifestation and proclamation of God's face and mind, of God's beauty and wisdom, of God's power and wonder, and of God's inmost reality as love (Rom 1:19-20; Wis l3:1-9). Creation's mission is to bear witness to God, that God is present and God cares (Acts 14:15-17). A psalmist had realised that the heavens do declare the glory of God and proclaim his handiwork, that day declares of it to day, and night to night hands on the knowledge (Ps 19:1-4). In this overall mission of creation, each particular reality has a share. Each is on a mission to the rest. Every creature has something special, some gift, some experience, some promise or challenge or good news for its fellow creatures. God's varied gifts are so distributed that creatures need not only God but each other within an intricate web of cosmic interdependence, of give and receive, of mission and ministry. This is so because creation has its roots in the Trinitarian Mission within the Divine. 12. All this is true not only of God's creation but of human cultures as well. No culture, no race, no language, no age or system can exhaustively realise all human possibilities and all of life's promises. The perceptions and achievements of each age, race and culture have their limitations and differences. They are meant to complement, supplement, each other, to seek and meet each other across time and space, and thus progressively to come to understand and achieve the Human. Every culture has something to learn from other cultures, and something to offer to them as well. Does not the same hold also for religions? God speaks to every group and age, and communicates with them in a variety of sounds and symbols. Divine gifts and graces are not concentrated and heaped up in any one place or time or in a single human group or spiritual experience or religious tradition. None of these exhausts the truth of God, nor the truth of the relationship God builds with us, nor the truth of the human predicament, nor of the human heart, nor of the dreams God has lodged in it. Every religious tradition is partial and imperfect, and has a share in distorting God's message and disfiguring God's face, and wrecking God's work in history. God speaks to each through the rest. God places in many hands and hearts gifts needed by and meant for all. God sends each to its neighbour to learn its own name. For no religion is meant to be an island, separate and self-sufficient. All the religious and spiritual traditions need each other's word of revelation, reassurance, challenge, correction, promise and assistance. The achievements of each tradition, its symbols, saints, scriptures, art and insights belong to all to the extent they are life-promoting and liberating. They must be respectfully sought, offered, received, assimilated, integrated and lived for the benefit of the human family and its earth-home. That is mission. Without love faith would be dead; and dogmas, laws, authority claims and submissions could only be hurtful. Love is the point of the mission, the meaning of the Church, and the core of being human, being Christian. And Christian mission must be located and lived within these larger horizons of the interdependence and mutuality of missioning and good newsing among the religions, the cultures and the various spheres and phenomena in creation. Inter- and intra- cosmic, cultural and religious dialogue is the context and method of mission today. Spirituality for mission would consist in openness to the missionary dimensions of creatures, cultures and religions and in 'response-able' dialogue with concrete given realities. C. THE ASIAN CONTEXT 13. Asia is people. The continent carries over 60 per cent of the human race , that is, nearly two thirds of world population though it is only 15 per cent of the planet's land surface. Asians comprise a variety of races and ethnic groups, many families of languages and a multiplicity of cultures. Organisationally too the continent exhibits a bewildering pluralism. Politically you will find on the continent parliamentary democracies with or without kings; and dynastic kingly rule; and one party Governments; and military regimes and one-man rule verging on dictatorship. Economically, the feudal landlord system continues in many regions; millions therefore are tenants or landless agricultural workers; this system is used by liberal capitalism and market economy which in recent years have been tightening their grip over the continent; imbalances and disparities are on the increase among the Asian countries and within each nation. Centrally planned economies too exist, and there are remnants of indigenous egalitarian traditions, as well as small hesitant movements for authentic, participative socialism. Politically and economically conflict situations abound both internationally and intra-nationally as between India and Pakistan, the two Koreas, Iraq and Kuwait, as in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, North-East India, Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kampuchea etc. Socially there are several Asias: the super rich, the rich and the middle class, the poor and the destitute. This class division is compounded by casteism or its kin racism, strong in South Asia, but not unknown in the East. 14. There are however some seven factors on the Asian scene which should command the attention of Christian mission and which have some bearing on the question of spirituality of mission on the continent. a) Asia is religion. It is the birth place and home of nearly all the scripture religions of the world. Judaism, Christianity and Islam originated in West Asia; Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism came to birth in South Asia; Confucianism, Taoism and Shintoism belong with East Asia. There are also the primal religions of indigenous peoples, with traditions not yet imprisoned in written texts. Note that people with sacred scriptures rarely change religious affiliation. Note also that Christians of all denominations add up to about 2 per cent of Asia's population; about half of them are in one country, the Philippines. The most noteworthy fact is that Asians in general have an all-embracing sense of the transcendent and of the depth and mystery of things. b) Vast masses of the people are economically poor. Now if we recall the biblical truth that the poor are God's first concern, then we must recognise with Aloysius Pieris that the majority of God's poor are outside the Christian Churches. c) Among the major historical causes of Asian poverty are: i)
age-long exploitation by feudal and royal rulers; d) All Asian lands except Japan and partly Thailand, are ex-colonies. Their economy shaped by colonial powers and made subservient to imperial interests, continue, even after apparent political independence, to be controlled and used by the West's powerful institutions like the WB, the IMF and the WTO which intervene and dictate directly or through the MNCs and colonially educated local élite and through the media invading from the skies. Hong Kong alone has more than 1,000 U.S. companies with an investment of about $ 13 billion and employing 250,000 workers; and about 40,000 U.S. nationals live in Hong Kong (The Hindu, 5 May 1997, quoting Hong Kong's Economic Journal). e) Note the permanent presence of the U.S. military in Japan and Korea for some half a century now, and more recently in the Gulf countries, and the 'Voice of America' in Sri Lanka. Asia remembers with disquiet the U.S. conquest and colonisation of the Philippines, the dropping of nuclear bombs on two Asian cities, and the invasion of Vietnam and its gratuitous destruction. f) Most Asian Churches have been colonially planted, and wear a foreign face. Attempts at inculturation and indigenisation of the Church, made by missionaries with a vision, have been officially scuttled as in the case of the Chinese rites, the Malabar rites and of Upadhyay's moves. Our Churches have been West Asian or West European in liturgy, art, law, and for a good part of their history, in leadership. g) More positively, there are movements, small but widespread and significant, all over Asia, both in society and in the Churches, which are carefully critiquing the existing systems, exploring alternatives in economics and politics, experimenting in authentic self-rule and socialism to replace capitalism's pseudo-democracies and their endemic corruption. They take lessons in equality and co-operation from the history of indigenous peoples, and mobilise to challenge the dehumanising culture of consumerism, technocracy and State power. And they work to shape free and responsible, culturally integrated local churches and theologies, and to foster the new awakening of women, youth and lay people. D. A SPIRITUALITY OF MISSION IN AN ASIAN CONTEXT 15. In our praxis-definition, spirituality consists in being open and responsive to reality. A spirituality of mission in an Asian context calls for openness and responsiveness to the message and mystery of Jesus and to the reality of Asia. It would consist in contemplating Asia with eyes that have looked on the crucified and raised Jesus; it would consist in traversing in spirit and affection the length and breadth of the continent, visiting her peoples and her cultures; it would consist in taking Asia to our heart, and letting her rivers flow through us, her winds blow in the halls of our minds, her perfumes of lotus and Joss sticks waft in our spirits, and her mountains and trees rise within us like the earth's prayer heaving to the everlasting Mystery of Life and Love. Mission spirituality begins with loving Asia, carrying her in our heart, cherishing her features, nursing her wounds, and believing in her future. i) Christ's sent ones will in the first place be with the Asian people, close to their reality, irrespective of colour, culture and creed, loving them for themselves, for what they are and what they can become; knowing that the lowliest and the least among them is a person in the likeness of God, and is far more precious than abstract truths, rituals, laws, taboos, and authority claims. For spirituality refers to that dimension of the human which the Bible points to when it speaks of the person as made in God's image; as called by God and engaged in conversation; and as questioned by God and challenged and made capable of an answer; as commissioned by God to till the earth and keep it, and to name things and name each other, to liberate the enslaved, to let justice flow like a river, and to go on imagining and creating the new and the beautiful; as capable especially of dreams and visions, and of loving deeply even to the giving of one's life for friends. The people are spiritual in their struggles for daily rice, in their devotion to their children, in their love for one another, in their simple prayers, their trust in God, and the responsibility they assume for new generations of people. Responding to people with respect and warmth of affection is both evangelising activity and mission spirituality. ii) Our missioning faith educates us to be responsive to the fact that God has never left these or any other people without evidence concerning God's own Self - that God is present and that God cares, 'sending them rain from heaven and seasons of fruitfulness', and 'filling them with food and their hearts with merriment' (Acts 14:17-18). To be responsive also to the fact that God has always been speaking to the people and disclosing God's heart in the symbolic language of creation (Rom 1:19-20); as well as to the truth of the divine law engraved in people's hearts (Rom 2:15). iii) The missioner's openness will look upon Asian peoples' history as sacred, as salvation history, as included in and encompassed by God's universal saving design. God is the liberator and leader not only of Israel but of the Philistines and the Aramaeans as well (Am 9:7); God is the God of Job, the Edomite; God is a God who anoints Cyrus the Persian Messiah to shepherd Israel (Is 45:1-7). iv) The mission may not be understood in terms of bringing God or of giving Christ to Asia. The mission will rather be a humble attempt to sense God's presence among the people and to discern what God has been doing here down the ages, and continues to do; the graces and charisms with which God has enriched each nation; the saints God has raised, the faith God has sustained, the justice God has promoted; the social transformations God has led, making for greater freedom, fuller life and finer fellowship. The mission is here to discern this and give thanks. This Eucharist is a major part and task of the mission. v) The mission will learn to accept the sacred scriptures of all the religions as God's Word, spoken to God's family in Asia, gifts meant for the whole of God's human family everywhere. Asian Christians' collection of sacred writings will be much larger than that of their fellow Christians in Europe, just as today in the West the Catholic Bible is a little larger than the Protestant Bible. But finally all of us will, hopefully, come to know the gift of God and drink the living water from all the fountains of the Saviour (cf. Jn 4:10). Rejection of Asia's sacred heritage and official ban on their use in Christian liturgy argue closed attitudes and lack of sensitivity which contradict biblical traditions and exclude spirituality. vi) The Risen Christ who goes ahead of the Apostles to Galilee (Mk 16:7), has by centuries preceded the missionary into Asia. In the first place, he is Asian by birth. Secondly he who identifies with the hungry and the homeless (Mt 25:31-46), is surely there where the destitute masses of Asia struggle to survive. Discover the Christ of Asia and stand by him to work with him for the liberation of the poor. vii) The affluent world claims to have the Christ. A Christ with or without the cross? Asia surely has the cross, and the likelihood is that the Crucified One is on it. Ours to stand beneath Asia's cross in the company of Jesus' mother. Ours to touch, with Thomas, the wounds of the people and come to recognise 'my Lord and my God' (cf. Jn 20:24-28). Mission spirituality takes the form of solidarity with the poor of Asia, and participation in their movements and struggle for food, freedom, dignity and community. viii) Mission in Asia will weep with Jesus over the death of Asia's children from starvation and deprivation caused by the development policies of the greedy and the powerful. Missioners will gather into the chalice of their heart the tears of Asia's poor, and hold it up for God to see and bless and transform into a cup of abundant life. ix) Meanwhile we shal1 miss no opportunity to name the Name of him who opted to be poor with the poor, to be homeless, to be a rejected stone, and the suffering Servant of all. Name the Holy One who is present and gives meaning and value to people's wounds and sighs, who plants the seeds of the resurrection in the heart of our death. We name him with humility; we present him as our love and our treasure, and not as a hammer with which to threaten people and smash skulls. We present Jesus in his kenosis and his love and in the solidarity of the Resurrection, as a friend of the people and a giver of freedom, and not as a religious Julius Ceasar out to conquer, destroy and dominate. x) While academic criticism (historical, redactional, etc.) of scriptures and theologies will have their place in Asia, the real criticism will come from the poor of Asia. The technical expertise of scholars will be needed and appreciated. But the vital (or fatal, as the case may be) criticism comes from the situation of poverty and oppression, of militarism and occupation by foreign armies and their multinationals; real criticism will come from the situation of subtle and not so subtle domination and exploitation of our lands, resources and peoples by those who through four to five centuries of plunder have amassed enough of wealth and weapons by which to control life globally. Mission spirituality will know what critical voices to heed and what to set aside. xi) It is the poetry of the people, their intuition into the conditions of life and love, the insights of women, the wisdom and genius of the creators of Asia's languages that will bring the best criticism to the fore. Their critical work is an essential ingredient of mission. xii) Mission spirituality in Asia will be glad to pray with the people, the villagers, the workers, the women, the peasants, the illiterate - in the medium of their words, songs and symbols, their bhajans and kirtans, and especially their silences which echo, and convey us into, that Eternal Silence from which the Word, the Vac, the Sabdabrahman, is born. xiii) Mission spirituality will be more concerned with presenting the Gospel embodied in life-witness rather than in verbal proclamation. It knows that people pay greater attention to witnesses than to teachers. It will seek to overcome what Kosuke Koyama has diagnosed the Churches to be suffering from: namely, a teacher complex, a heated pre-occupation with culturally correct terminology rather than with divinely right living, loving and relating. Being and doing in their dialectical interplay will matter far more than talking. xiv) Here let us hold up four New Testament symbols which embody the reality and the mystery both of mission and of spirituality. The symbols are light, salt, yeast and fragrance (cf. Mt 5:13-16; 13:33; cf. 2 Cor 2:14-16). Mission consists in the light the missioning community spreads by the newness and beauty of its life; and in the salt-quality the community has in order to keep the world from rotting in the mire of violence and vulgarity. Believers are called to be a powerful leaven capable of transforming hearts and structures, and make the earth become fine bread for the feast of God, the feast of people. We are the fragrance of Christ. That is our mission and mission spiritua1ity. Through us and through all believers God "is spreading everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of himself". Gandhi is reported to have said to a group of Christian missionaries: "You talk too much. Look at the rose. It too has a gospel to spread. It does it silently, but effectively, and people come to it with joy. Imitate the rose". xv) The mission will celebrate with and for the people. Their openness and responsibility will keep faith with the memory of Jesus as far as the central significance of the 1iturgy is concerned. But the historical flesh of the celebration will come from the missioner's and the community's ability to respond to the local culture with its poetry, music and myths, its lamps, flowers and fruits, its dances and salutations, and its companionship, eating bread and rice together. xvi) Mission spirituality places us on the side of justice. Efforts to let justice flow like a river is far more vital, spiritual, divine than temple liturgies and solemn ritual performances (cf. Am 5:23-24). Educating ourselves and the people in a growing experience of grace and in a sense of the gratuitousness of life, earth, culture and friendships will be the spiritual path that leads to commitment to justice issues in the home, the village, the city, in international trade, in the cancellation of debts, in voluntary disarmament and in joyful sharing. The spirituality of mission is essentially a spirituality of abounding grace. The mission urges us to stand in all our weakness before God on the side of the poor and place our resources at their disposal in the battle against evil in ourselves, in the environment, in the world. Bishop Paulose Mar Paulose observes that "underneath this commitment of the people for justice, there is a new human yearning for God, or for that which the symbolic word 'God' stands for. I call it spirituality. Every human life seems to need and want spiritual integrity, the ability to know and worship that which is ultimately real and which creates and recreates us in its own image. This cultural hunger, even at this moment, is calling us ... to new frontiers, new shapes and forms, as we seek to respond to the human quest for justice" (in Info, Manila). Encounter with the poor of God and with Jesus in the poor in their total life and death experience is the basic Christian mysticism, and the spirituality of the people who live in symbiosis with the mystery of life. xvii) Mission spirituality is interior to our common quest, our common question, "Master, where do you live"? Jesus responds with a 'Come and see', and he takes us to where the victims of our great systems struggle to survive: the slums, the Dalit villages, the abused women and children, the starving people. That is where Jesus lives. We are spiritual if we opt to stay with him there in the heart of misery and squalor, ready to act in order to change things into something human. xviii) Mission spirituality resembles the intense awareness and concern of women about any shortage of wine, bread, rice, joy, life and honour in Church and society (cf. Jn 2:3-10). It is like their determined stand close to the Crucified in defiance of palace and temple; close to the wounded, battered, broken body of humanity in measureless compassion and love. Mission spirituality is like the women returning from the tomb with words of hope and a story of life and a dance of joy, though sombre men fail to understand or appreciate it (cf. Jn 20). Spirituality is where women are discovering the Saviour of the world right in the midst of their daily chores, and turn apostles themselves and bring people to the Well, to the Spring of life, to the mystical Waters (cf. Jn 4). Spirituality is like women weeping over the death of their loved ones and discovering a weeping compassionate God standing close to their tearful lives and bidding death surrender its prey (cf. Jn 11). xix) The spiritua1ity of Mary, Mother of Jesus, reveals the heart of mission spirituality in Asia. From the beginning Mary is associated with the kenosis of God's Son, and with the Saviour's smallness, poverty and social insignificance. She is actively concerned about the possible embarrassment of a poor family which could not afford enough wine even for a wedding feast, the only celebration in the life of the poor. When her son is arrested, mocked, stripped, tortured, disowned, humiliated and reduced to nothing, Mary stands close to his cross, supportive of his options, appreciative of his way of life and participative in his destiny. Her Magnificat depicts dramatic contrasts between the proud, the rich, the mighty and the enthroned on the one hand and the lowly, the poor, the hungry on the other. She has herself experienced the stark contrast between her defenceless Baby and Herod the killer king; between the Wise Men and the same Herod; between her lowly family and the distant Cćsar who issues edicts to facilitate the collection of more taxes; between her crucified Son and the power of palace and temple. Mary's Magnificat, that 'song of high revolt', leaves us in no doubt as to whose side she takes and what kind of a subversive God she celebrates. xx) Monica Furlong reminds us that "any spirituality worth its salt is going to be profoundly taken up with ecological concern". This concern may be dictated by fear of the planet's doom. But actually we ought to be gripped by "a powerful sense of grief". Furlong believes that "we may need to recognise a process of mourning going on within us for so much that is lost and destroyed - for people dying of starvation, for the death of creatures, forests, oceans, for the heart-breaking loss of what is innocent, beautiful, helpless" (cf. Furlong, pp. 243-44). To care not for the heart but for money and to be preoccupied with power, success, consumer goods and speed is to be unspiritual. The contrary, to be spiritual, is costly. It is costly to go counter to capitalist pre-suppositions, to the pull of the market, and to be an oddity like the early Christians. But our fears and defences can dissolve when we perceive ourse1ves as ecosystems and keep the parts working in harmony with one another, to maintain a delicate equilibrium with other ecosystems. "Our spirituality, our growth, our prayer, began with a loving and gentle care of ourselves and a loving and gentle care for the other; - be this a sick person, a hungry child, or the sick and dying earth (cf. Furlong, p. 244). It is part of mission spirituality to foster in all the ability to, wonder like children, to be touched in depth, to see the mystery of nature, of simple realities like flowers, birds, human faces or love (cf. Wijngaard John, Inheriting the Master's Cloak. Creative Biblical Spirituality, Bangalore, 1986, p. 134). A richly suggestive line from Tagore may sum up the ecospirituality we are hinting at here: "Silence, my soul; these trees are prayers". 16. Mission is the Sphere of the Spirit. a) Mission is the extension in space and time of the Incarnation of God's Word. It is, like the incarnation, the work of the Spirit (Lk 1:15, 35, 41, 67, 80; 2:25-27; Acts 1:2, 5, 8; 2:1-4, 14-24, 38). Those who engage in it are co-workers of the Spirit. This they can be only to the extent they live in the Spirit, are open and responsive to the Spirit's presence and freedom and creations in the heart of people, of the earth and of human history. The Holy Spirit is the principal Agent of Mission (cf. Acts 13:1-3; Redemptoris Missio, John Paul II, 1991, nn. 21, 30; Evangelii Nuntiandi, Paul VI, 1974, n. 75). That is why She is present at the public commissioning of Jesus on the Jordan (Lk 3:21-22; Jn 1:32-34). She takes charge of the life of Jesus, leading him to the desert and back to Galilee (Lk 4:1, 14). Jesus, as he begins his ministry is aware of the Spirit's anointing of him, which was empowering and urging him to dedicate himself to a liberative mission (Lk 4:18-19). Amid the trials of his ministry, it is in the Spirit, whom the Father gave him without reserve, that Jesus finds comfort; it is in the Spirit that he thrills for joy (Lk 10:21; Jn 3:34). All the apostles and disciples are anointed and enabled by the Spirit- Breath of Jesus (Jn 20:21-22), and baptised with the fire that Jesus came to cast on the earth (Lk 3:16; 12:49-50; Acts 2:3). The Spirit and the missioner are team-mates; they share the work of witnessing (Jn 15:26-27; Acts 1:8). Hence the necessity on the part of the missioner to be aware of and united with the Spirit and to appropriate Her perspective (cf. Kroeger, 1994, p. 35). b) The Spirit's activity overflows the bounds of the Christian community. The Spirit fills the whole earth and all history. She is new-creatively present in the lives of followers of other faiths as well as in secular movements and struggles for justice, freedom and unity, and for the creation of the beautiful, whether physical or social (cf. Gaudium et Spes nn. 22, 26; Redemptoris Missio, nn. 28-32; Dominum et Vivificantem, John Paul II, 1986, nn. 53-54). Not only the Church but humankind is endowed with a variety of Spirit-gifts (1 Cor 12:4-11). Both the Church and the human community are charismatic in structure. It is essential to mission spirituality to discern, respect, foster, and evoke these gifts and treasures since they are given to enable people to meet the demands of God's Reign in an unfolding history, and to handle experiences of sorrow and joy and disappointment and death in ways that can serve life and hope (cf. Redemptoris Missio, nn. 61-76; cf. Kroeger, 1994, pp. 48, 52). c) It is in the context of this universal action of the Spirit operative in the world, affecting individuals, society, history, peoples, cultures and religions, that "inter-religious dialogue becomes an important key to discover the Spirit's befriending presence", and to collaborate with Her in the project of transforming the world (Dialogue and Proclamation, Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, 1991, nn. 21, 26, 35 etc.). As Joseph Comblin points out, the Spirit is known in the concrete activity of building a new world. That defines spirituality of mission for all contexts. The Spirit does not turn us on ourselves, does not direct us inwards. "The experience of the Spirit launches men and women out into the world ... to tackle superhuman tasks". "The Spirit does not set us apart from the world and its demands". The Spirit makes people "more dynamic and more involved in active love for their neighbour. And ... it is this concern that, according to the Bible, has to be taken as the sign of authenticity" (Comblin, Joseph Holy Spirit and Liberation, New York, Orbis Books, pp. 4-8). d) The Spirit does not separate, divide or compartmentalise. She permeates all aspects of life and all spheres of reality, and brings about wholeness and harmony though often dialectically through conflict and pain, through the dynamics of the Cross. She unites God and creation and leads us to experience God in creation and creation in God. We experience God as "acting on us and on the world at the same time, relating us to the world and the world to us, not in some vague cosmic contact, but in a specific and limited course of action". There is no gap between experience of acting and experience of the Spirit, nor between action and prayer, nor between practice and celebration of the practice, nor between individual person and community (cf. Comblin p. 31). This integration marks the missioner's life in the Spirit. e) In Asian experience the Spirit is more important than the texts created by Spirit-inspired people. The Spirit inspires not only "religious" texts but also secular ones like poems, plays, laws, philosophies and all searching questions about meaning, values, relationships and ultimate concerns. The Spirit criticises all texts and our interpretations of them. She challenges our creations, subverts our establishments and calls us to fresh insights and new dreams and unsuspected depths and surpriseful praxis. f) Asian spirituality rejoices in the guidance of the Spirit who "leads us to the complete truth". It rejoices in the Anointing which we receive from the Lord and which teaches us everything inwardly and effectively (Jn 16:13; 1 Jn 2:27). Everyone who loves brothers and sisters knows God for God is love; and no one who fails to love has any knowledge of God. That defines both the content of mission and the pulse of mission spirituality. The loving heart bears witness to the truth, to the reality of God, and to the shape God wants the world to have. The knowledge of Yahweh and hesed go together (Hos 2:21-22). Since the law of the Spirit is planted within us and the new covenant is written on our hearts, we shall be God's own, and "there will be no further need for anyone to teach neighbour". No, we shall all know God from the least to the greatest, and bear witness to one another and celebrate together (cf. Jn 14:26;15:26-27; 16:13; 1 Jn 2:27; Jer 31:31-34; Mt 23:8). g) Kroeger cites Patriarch Athenagoras as "giving expression to the special role of the Holy Spirit in salvation and mission in most felicitous terms"; "Without
the Holy Spirit -
But in the Holy Spirit - 17. Spirituality then is a large and complex reality which includes all the modes and modalities of living the life of the Kingdom restored through Jesus Christ. It includes an inner dynamism which impels that life, and the values which orient it, and the life-style in which the values are concretely expressed. This global configuration has been traditionally called the following of Jesus (Driver, Juan, in Encuentros y Dialogo, No. 7, 1989, p. 14). "Mission spirituality" concludes Kroeger, "is, at its foundations a Spirit-inspired Trinitarian experience. Reflection and prayer allow the Spirit to transform and anoint one for mission and for experiencing a sending forth by the Spirit's power. The Spirit- filled person becomes absorbed in the loving plan of salvation (mysterion) that God has for all people" (cf. Kroeger, Signposts, p. 15). It is a spirituality rooted in the experience of the God of grace and of the grace that is Asia. It is expressed in the following of Jesus on the Asian road, and lived in the power of the Holy Spirit who has for centuries been active in Asia's history. It draws nourishment from the community of Christ which includes the peoples of Asia. It becomes embodied in all quests for fuller humanity and finer fellowship. A Spirituality of mission is the appropriate response we give to the facts of the Gospel and to the facts of Asia, made possible by the Holy Spirit. It is life rendered by the Holy Spirit into an Asian pilgrimage. References DM = Dialogue and Mission. Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, 1984.
|