Reflections on Our Unfolding Heritage
by Brother André Mathieu, C.P.
I embraced a specific way of life when I made my profession. It consisted not only of a life-long journey with St. Paul of the Cross into the Heart of Jesus Crucified but it also included an external structure. That structure was to flow from the inner spiritual vitality of the community, and at the same time it was to feed that inner spiritual vitality. What I know today is that something was wrong in 1960. The so-called regular observance was being sustained for the most part by the brothers and students and a few priests. Remove the students and brothers and our province choirs would essentially be empty. Dispensations from the common life, from the various fasts, from the discipline, from choir observance, etc, were seemingly the order of the day. The various practices, e.g., culpa and so many others, were passed on to me without much explanation of what they were meant to accomplish. The end result was that much of what was being passed on was trivialized. I recall some conversations with cleric classmates of mine who openly said that the day they would be ordained would be the last day that they would appear in choir. For some of them our whole prayer structure was irrelevant. And yet they were ordained. The structure of Passionist community life was not a value for some and this would be self-evident after 1969. When the changes began to occur, we dismantled and dismissed an entire way of life overnight. I lived in Union City (1965-1972), and I remember as one part of the observance after another was dropped and as one practice after another disappeared—sometimes with barely a word of discussion. A vacuum appeared. Attempts were made to fill the vacuum with innovative forms but we were in a period of rejecting a way of living. There was no stopping the reaction from settling in and taking hold. We were not and are not today isolated from the rest of society. Our period of reaction coincided with Viet Nam, student rebellions in the universities; the sexual revolution—a strong reaction against the past that settled in and took hold of American (and world) society and our province. How counter-cultural were we and are we?
At the same time that we were in our rejecting mode, we also entered into a period of renewal There was excitement about new possibilities. I felt it! I rejoiced in it and took part in it. I was deeply involved in the setting up of the Staten Island House (1972-1978) which sought to incorporate Passionist life and ideals in a contemporary context. I was a member of the community for four years. [See Staten Island Revisited, his article on this experience.] I was young and idealistic and believed that we could envision and execute a contemporary model of Passionist life. Other such experiments were also going on in the province; e.g., Word of the Cross, Chelsea, New York. The pre-novitiate college residences (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Worcester, Massachusetts and Toronto, Canada) were established and our young people were now able to study in great centers of learning. Our province experienced serious hemorrhaging during these years as increasing number of our religious left us and new members grew fewer. We still, however, had a good number of active men, and we were hopeful about new recruits. Our community life, however, suffered from polarization, and we continued to settle for the minimum in prayer and community structures. Our corporate identity was weakened as increasing numbers of our active religious chose to live and minister outside our traditional boundaries. The reasons for this are diverse and legitimate but the fact remains that our local communities were diminished. Some hold the opinion that our corporate face should be erased. To erase our corporate face is to erase our future!
As I understand it, refounding has to do with knowing our history and celebrating it with just pride; acknowledging our need for reform; communally grieving the death of our community as we have known it and then courageously refounding the community in light of the Church and the world that we live in today. It is not a rejection of our past; rather it is a rejoicing in our past but with a frank acknowledgement that a given era is over. We need to live in the present. We are not starting something new. We are infusing new life into something of great value. And we don't do this ourselves. This is God's work, and this is our point of departure: acknowledging our powerlessness before the task ahead and humbly entrusting ourselves to God's Holy Spirit who alone can bring about the transformation that we need for refounding.
The first is that we are well into a paradigm shift from an institutional community to a relational community. That is to say that refounding is not something imposed from above but rather achieved by communal discernment. This communal discernment is shaped by our charism which is fleshed out in our Rules and Constitutions as well as the lived experience of our religious. We live in relationship with each other not merely as members of a corporate body governed by rules and customs. Secondly, this paradigm shift is allowing the individual religious to tap their potential. I am grateful that I live in this era of Passionist life and have been allowed to grow by means of educational and situational opportunities. Developing one's potential, however, needs to occur within the context of our contemporary life together. Thirdly, Father John O'Brien, C.P. reminded me at the Assembly that: "this is not the age of the laity, it is the age of collaboration of laity and religious." The Passionist family is bigger and greater than just its priests, brothers and sisters. And this is exciting! Refounding means the growth and development of our province in ways never imagined. We are only beginning to sense the possibilities. We must proceed with a communal heart filled with gratitude and openness to where the Spirit will lead us.
During my sabbatical year (1994-95) I lived with another community whose vocational literature proclaimed loudly: "Come and join us—we are open to everything!" I had difficulties with that literature then and I have more difficulties with it today. Everything will not attract anyone. We have a very specific charism, with a very specific mission in the church and world and we must be very specific in what we offer. We must spell it out. Before we can spell it out for others, we need to spell it out among ourselves. We have the rhetoric. We have more rhetoric than we need! We have the language, e.g., authentic community, etc. We need to spell out what it all means in the concrete, in the day to day living out of Passionist life in this province. We need to do it together. Time is running out. We are a dying province. The window of opportunity is quickly closing. I believe that refounding is the work of a future generation but we need to lay the ground work as best we can. Planning in the sense of merely closing buildings is avoiding the issue. Yes, we must continue to restructure the province. Most important, however, we must continue to give energy to developing viable contemporary communities in the tradition of St. Paul of the Cross. Time and energy need to be given to struggling with the very first chapter of our Constitutions. I believe that the basis for refoundation for us lies therein.
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