Thwarted vocations

Because our life is spatial and temporal, Christ could only exist once in human flesh. However, He did not come to save only the people of his time and country but also all humanity. He also came for all who existed before Him, this is why the Scripture says that He descended into hell after His resurrection. He even came for all those who will come after Him of which He himself spoke about in the episode of his apparition to the ten and Thomas when He stated that happy are those who believe and yet have not seen. Those who will live after Christ are also mentioned in the priestly prayer when Jesus asks for all to believe in the witness of the apostles.

Christ, who is the salvation of all people at all times and in all places, had to find some way so that this salvation was in fact extended to all times and places.

The Church is Christ in all times and all places
…I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Mt. 28:20)

The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is the way in which Christ arranged to pass his message and deeds through time and space. He himself has said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…” (Jn. 14:12). God is not limited by the coordinates of time and space; Christ is God but, as long as He was living in the flesh among men, He was also restricted by these coordinates.

Christ is the way, the truth and the life for men of all times and places. The Church is all of us, but within the Church, there are charisms which require a special calling because they need special consecrations. Priests and religious are at the service of the Mission and the universal fraternity because they have consecrated their entire lives to this service, and as the Spaniards like to say, they’ve put all the meat on the grill.

Presumably Christ continues to call, perhaps more so now than ever before, for shepherds as the flock increases and for fishers of men as the harvest is even more plentiful (Mt. 9:32-28). If Christ continues to call, then why is it that today there are increasingly fewer missionaries, people who are willing to leave their countries and their families to take the Gospel to other latitudes and longitudes? If Christ continues to call, why is it that the clergy is getting increasingly more elderly, and there are priests with 3 or 4 or even 5 or more parishes to look after?

As in the parable of the sower, the problem is not in the seed nor in the sower who is Christ. The problem lies in the different soils on which this seed falls. Christ continues to call but the response to this calling is each time more like that of the rich young man’s…

Bad examples
One of the reasons for the shortage of vocations is the bad examples that some of us priests and religious give to the world. It is precisely the scandal involving little ones to which the Gospel speaks about; each one of us can either be a sidewalk stone, which makes a path easier or a stumbling stone, which causes people to fall. In Greek, the word scandal even means stumbling stone.

It is a fact that due to the scandal of pedophilia many people have left the Church; but they who left were the “little ones” of the Gospel, those of little faith or of a faith that needed to grow to become mature. In a basket of apples, it is inevitable that there will be some rotten ones. This has already happened in the early days of the Church with the group of 12 apostles whom Jesus chose; one of them, Judas Iscariot, was a traitor.

Those who left Christ’s Church, because of the scandal of some priests, show that their faith was not in Christ but rather in the priest in question.  They threw away the baby with the bath water; they threw away faith in Christ and Christ Himself because of the bad example of one Christian.

The Holy Order is a sacrament, the priest represents Christ and acts in the name of Christ, but he is not Christ. Just as there are good actors and bad actors, there are priests who represent Christ well and those who represent Him poorly. A priest is an icon of Christ, and our faith is in Him who he represents and not in the priest himself.

Self-referential youths
Don’t ask what your country can do for you but rather what you can do for your country. John F. Kennedy

A 17-year old young woman said to me in school, “Instead of believing in God I believe in myself, therefore I am my own god”. Like her, many young people today do not have any ideals, and being self-referential, their lives revolve only around themselves. The world has much to offer and the young people look at the world not as a plentiful harvest where the labourers are few but rather as a large buffet filled with beautiful and pleasant things that they do not want to miss out on. For them to obtain these goods is to gain life and to renounce them or be deprived of them is to lose life. Thinking in this way, they cannot understand when Christ said, “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (Jn. 12:25)

Majority of saints in the Catholic Church were from wealthy, noble and prominent families. They had everything that these mislaid young people of today so desire, and yet they left everything behind and considered all that as rubbish so they may gain Christ (Phil. 3:7-10). Just like St. Paul, these handsome and noble young people not only renounced money but also found in Christ an even greater treasure like the merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value put all others aside (Matt. 13:45-46). It is a pity that today’s young people have never encountered Christ.

For them, they find it very difficult to accept that their lives are not about themselves; that their life is a relative value and what gives it meaning is what they do or do not do with it. Beethoven without his music would have been a Mr. Nobody; the same could have been said about Picasso without his paintings; the individual talents are geared above all to the common good and only after to the good of the individual. We do not live to be happy but rather we live to be useful to the society, and in so doing we become happy; if not, then we are useless even to ourselves.

The fact that we are social beings can be proven by what happens when we share our sadness with a friend, we become less sad. Similarly, we become happier when we share our happiness with others. The social well-being harmonizes itself to the well-being of the individual and vice versa; no one is happy surrounded by misfortune, nor is one happy at the expense of others, but only if one contributes to their happiness.

Happiness is the secondary effect of our altruism, the principal effect being the well-being of others. No one takes a medicine for its secondary effect but rather for its principal effect; all our action has a feedback, a return, a boomerang effect; that is, what goes around comes around.

Jesus said of himself, “I came to the world to serve and not to be served”. It is true that nobody would say, at least in public, that we came into this world to be served. However if we put our hypocrisy aside and are honest with ourselves, we will see that it is not to serve that we seek but rather to gain power, to be served by those beneath us, and this is why we are so unhappy.

The true path to greatness is in fact by serving. The great people in our lives were the ones who served us and not those who made use of us or dominated us. The great people in the history of mankind were also those who served and not those who made use of others like Hitler, Stalin and so many other dictators…

The devils of God the patronizing parents
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ (Mk. 8:31-33)

God is calling each one of us all the time. Nevertheless only a few young people say ‘yes’ to Him, and after winning the battles against self-reference and the beckoning of the consumer society, they still have to win over those who are the closest to them, their parents. Some parents, who are guided more by maternal instinct than by a true fatherly and motherly love, are opposed to God like Peter was to Jesus. Since they object the plans of God, then in the same manner that Jesus called Peter, these patronizing parents also ought to be called Satan or the Devil, which means the adversary.

There are countless stories of parents who had opposed their children and “fought tooth and nail” to prevent them from following the life to which God has called them. A father stopped talking to his daughter for 30 years for having rejected marriage in favor of becoming a missionary. Other parents, when they were unable to dissuade their children completely from God’s calling, resorted to influencing them in their choice of vocation from missionary to diocesan priesthood instead so that they could still keep them under their wings.

A priest whose father being a doctor forced his son to follow a career in medicine, upon finishing the medical program out of love and respect for his father, on the day of his graduation he handed his degree to his father saying, “Here is what you wanted from me, now I’m going to do what God wants of me…”.

I myself will always be grateful to my mother because she neither actively nor passively tried to divert me from my path. I still remember the day when upon hearing my father trying to convince me not to return to Ethiopia after my first three years there, she reprimanded him in a strong voice saying, “Be quiet man, for God can condemn you”. It is true that God does not condemn but neither would I want to be in the place of these parents on the day they stand before Him and try to explain their devilish position, opponents of His design with respect to their children.

Advice to the parents
Many mothers and fathers never completely cut off the umbilical cord, they love with a possessive and patronizing love that creates dependence and impotence, never leaving their children and always wanting to have a voice and to play a part in their lives, even when their children are married.

A good education is one that seeks to instill freedom, autonomy and independence in the learners. A good educator has as an objective to be no longer needed. Contrary to this, many parents always want to feel that they are essential in the lives of their children, eventually pushing them away in so doing.

Advice to the children
The opposition of those dearest to us is not something that Jesus had not already contemplated:

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…’ (Matt. 10:34-37)

To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ (Lk. 9:59-62)

As in the past, Christ continues to call. The young people however, invaded by the ego of their parents and overshadowed by the creatures -- the world of today that seems to have so much to offer them -- turn their backs on the Creator and the only Lord of all.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Obedience is due to God alone

We must obey God rather than any human authority. (Acts 5:29)

Throughout the course of this year’s reflection on Consecrated Life, I've always been careful to refer to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience not only as virtues for monks, friars, priests and nuns, but also as human values that are relevant to all who want to live their lives according to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To put it simply, we could say that the vow of poverty defines and guides us in our relation with material things, the vow of chastity in our relation with people, and the vow of obedience in our relation with God. It is true that they all have implications with these three realities but it is also true that for each vow one of the three predominates.

With respect to the vow of obedience quoted in the passage above, the apostles refused to obey the Sanhedrin which was the highest authority of the people of Israel, composed of the High Priests, the Scribes, the Pharisees and the Elders, a total of 71 members. They justified this civil disobedience with their understanding that they ought to, above all, obey God not men.

Our place in the world
But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. (Mt. 6:33-34)

It is obedience that awakens us from the self-serving individual dreams of greatness and gives us the conviction that, as citizens of this world, we are here not for ourselves as our lives are not about us. Obedience recognizes and appreciates, at the same time, the rights and the obligations that all individuals have of belonging, participating and possessing a place in the history of humanity.

It is true that each one of us is an autonomous, independent and free living human being, and yet our individuality cannot be explained on its own; I would not have existed without the prior existence and coexistence of my father and mother. We are at the same time free and interdependent beings because we are all part of a family, of a community, of a country, of humanity.

The opportunity was given to a student to observe bacteria under the microscope. He could in fact see how a generation of this microscopic living organisms arose, grew, reproduced and died, leaving its place to the next generation. He saw, as he had never seen before, life being transmitted from one generation to the next. Understanding the lesson underlying this observation, that the value of his own life depended on how it occupied the space in the broader context of the common good, he said, "I pledge not be a weak link in life".

This story suggests that humanity is also a succession of generations interconnected like in a relay race. After finding our place in the world so that our life is productive and not necessarily reproductive, we ought to make it a contribution to the progress of humanity; we need to pledge to leave this world a better place than we found it. In this context, Obedience is therefore my participation and contribution to the building of a better world, the Kingdom of God.

No one finds self-fulfillment outside the community or against the community; in other words, there is no self-realization that is not a contribution to the community. We only feel good about ourselves when others feel good about us. It is only by appreciating others that we appreciate ourselves, and it is by recognizing the rights of others that we recognize ours. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, each one of our small steps or successes is a leap for mankind.

In order for this to occur, as suggested by Jesus in the passage above, we need to first seek the Kingdom of God and His Justice; that is, with an attitude of obedience to God, we must resist all temptations to satisfy our own needs for it is only in so doing that happiness and self-fulfillment will be at our reach. Indeed the passage even suggests that we need not worry about these needs because in the process of seeking the Kingdom of God, that is, fulfilling the task which God has called us to, our needs will be naturally fulfilled.

As baptized Christians, we are all part of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church; as such, we are called to act in the here and now of the human history, the work of salvation which Christ started 2000 years ago. Since Christ could not live twice in a physical body, and since his salvation is for all humanity and not only for his contemporaries, all Christians, of each time and place, are called to be Christ's mouth, eyes, ears, arms and legs. From this perspective, the obedience of each and every Christian resembles the active compliance of each and all individual members as it happens in a physical body, to attain harmony and the greater good of the entire body.

The thirst for power
Pilate therefore said to him, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." (Jn. 19:10-11)

Unlike all other nations, the people of Israel never really wanted to have a king. Their only King was God, who time and time again raised a leader to guide and govern them according to His statutes and decrees. Throughout the history of humanity, all who had power attributed it in some way to God as its source or that they were exercising it on behalf of God, the only and one true Almighty. The association and identification of God with power led some Roman emperors to even proclaim themselves as gods.

Francisco Franco, caudilho de España por la gracia de Dios (Francisco Franco, the leader of Spain by the grace of God)–Thus was minted on the Spanish coins during the period of fascism in Spain. Recognizing that he himself did not have the right to occupy the position he claimed, because he was neither the elected president of the republic nor the son of a monarch, Franco resorted to this deception which, in its own way, affirms the fact that real power comes from God, and is delegated temporarily to this or that leader.

The acknowledgement that all authority comes from God and that He is above all powers, is exactly what St. Thomas More meant to say when one day while in prayer he was interrupted several times by a messenger of King Henry VIII who demanded to see him right away. With a calm that was characteristic of him, the saint said to the messenger, “Go and tell his majesty that at the moment I am busy with someone greater than him, the King of the Universe.”

Dura lex sed lex – The law is hard but it is the law. The whims and caprices of a dictator, or of someone who abuses the power delegated to him and governs as he pleases, makes the law much harder to bear. But being the law, equal for all in principle and by principle, it makes everyone equal under it. The ruling of the law, or the supremacy of Morals or Ethics, is the image of God’s supremacy since He is the Father of us all, and we are all equal before Him—hence in here lies the foundation of the dignity of a human person.

Voice of the people voice of God – In democracy the power resides in the people and always in the people. Since the people cannot rule as a whole, the power is periodically delegated to the ones who represent them in the governing of the nation. The same thing applies within a Religious Order; the power rests in the confreres who also periodically delegate it by elections to the so called Superior or Abbot.

Since the vow of obedience is made to God, to Him is also vowed the obedience that is mediated by or through a superior. Striving to act exclusively on the will of God, the superior of a religious order represents also the commitment that each individual religious makes to God, the community and the Church in general.

The vow of obedience
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me… (Jn. 14:21)

Since the disobedience of Adam and Eve, through which evil entered the world, the history of Israel could be read as one where obedience is always tampered with disobedience. For Jesus it is only through obedience to the Word of God, which means by acting on it, that a person is able to build his house on rock; any other way it is inconsequential, leads to nothing, and the house is blown away by the wind. (Mt. 7:24-27)

Jesus called all who heard him to accept and obey his teachings, to incorporate them in their daily lives, and to imprint them into their day-to-day attitude and behaviour. However, Jesus also called twelve men from their previous lives, jobs and families, to have them at his complete disposal; to them, he told in complete detail how to behave, what to do, where to go, how to go and what to say.

Obedience is due to God alone and the religious vow of obedience cannot be an exception. This happens not because we belong to an institution that needs an authority but because we need mediations between us and God. The vow is based then on the faith that the will of God comes by means of a governing body.

For this reason, the first objective of obedience, what is most important, is not the structuring of the Community but the self-fulfillment of each one of its members; thus, obedience has less to do with the submission or the renunciation of one’s will and more to do with the affirmation of God’s will, despite the desires and opposing forces that operate within us and within the superiors.

It is therefore no longer our will which alienates us from God after we’ve freely decided to devote ourselves to the Kingdom of Heaven, quite the opposite, it is the evil that resides within us which in every moment antagonizes our fundamental choice. Lastly, and as Jesus puts it, obedience is a result of love, I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. (Jn. 14:31)

Coordinator of charisms
But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. (Mt. 23:8-12)

Abbot, primus inter pares, prior, provincial, responsible, and superior are some of the titles that were given throughout history to that person who, elected by the majority, represents what we promise to God, the sacrament of divine authority to whom we ultimately owe obedience. All these titles in some form or other go against the passage quoted above because they put this person at a level above all others.

To my understanding, the best title for this position is coordinator of charisms, because each brother or sister has different charisms and for all these charisms to work harmoniously, with the view of forming one single body and for the greater good, it is necessary that there be a coordinator.

As the coordinator of charisms, the function of the “superior” is directed more to the community as a whole than to each of its members in parts. Each religious person is governed by his or her own conscience, and is therefore, apart from God, not obligated to satisfy anyone. As free and independent beings, we do not need anyone to tell us what we should or should not do.

As the idea of a coordinator of charism implies, in each community there is the need of a person who, like the maestro of an orchestra, harmonizes the distinct individuals to work in unison. In an orchestra, each musician plays a different instrument, each with its own unique and distinct sound; it is left up to the maestro, following a general score to which he himself obeys, to merge the contributions of all the different musicians into one beautiful melody.

So it must also be inside a religious community where each person should be above all truthful and faithful to himself and to his project or Mission, all the while bearing in mind that this would not make any sense unless it fits within the context of the common good safeguarded by the coordinator.

In case of conflict
Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.  Benjamin Franklin

Power does not always corrupt, but when it does it can even corrupt the one who in the community has the faculty to coordinate the charisms of all for the common good. The coordinator as well as the members of the community need to always be permanently within earshot of God and in dialogue with each other so that coordination and obedience are carried out according to the will of God.

We must always obey when what is asked of us goes according to our project and to what we have promised to God. However, if a member of the community has determined with all certainty that the coordinator demands obedience for reasons that are not in keeping with the will of God, in all good conscience, the member of the community can and should disobey because this type of disobedience is in fact obedience to God.

In the lack of this certainty, in case of doubt, it is preferable to obey; it will require certainly an act of faith in the coordinator but throughout the history of salvation, as it has been described in the Bible since Abraham, there are numerous examples where the question of obedience turned, many times, into a question of faith... either you believe, risk, trust and throw yourself knowingly into the dark abyss or you don’t believe, retreat and stay paralyzed.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC