Some
years ago, I heard of a mother whose child was sick. To save the child
an operation was necessary and for that she needed about $20. She
had no money, the child had no operation and consequently died. About
a week later the grieving mother was sweeping the house. She noticed
a loose floorboard and listlessly lifted it. To her amazement she
found a bundle of money - much more than what she needed. It had been
hidden there by her father who had lost his memory. On finding the
money the anger and the grief of her child's death hit her in a new
way. All the time she had had in the house the resource that would
have saved her child but, because she did not know of it, she could
not use it and so her child had died.
Pentecost
was not just a sending of a Spirit but it was a discovery of their
own power and giftedness by the disciples. They had been hampered
by their vision of a Messiah who would give them easy salvation and
easy promotion. Jesus had come and died as a criminal. This had shattered
their false expectations and only then was Jesus able to rise again.
They were able to see the real Jesus and the real message that had
been there all the time. But now that he had risen some were returning
to the old hopes. St. Luke in the first chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles tells us that having met together, they asked him, 'Lord,
has the time come? Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?'
That settled it really, he had to leave if they were to be empowered
to take responsibility to look after themselves. He ascends into heaven.
They stand there amazed until the two men in white appear and say,
"why are you (idiots) looking up into the sky?" Jesus had
gone and left them with more than enough resources with which to carry
on but they could not see them. It was ten days later that they became
aware of the Spirit that was within them all the time, and then they
began to preach. It is significant that they immediately began to
reach beyond barriers. Language and culture were no longer a block.
All were able to hear and understand each other. Babel was reversed.
There
are many indications today that we are nearing a new Pentecost in
Christianity, especially in Roman Catholicism. We are being re-empowered
by resources that were present and hidden in our Asian religious traditions
including those that even predate Christianity.
Vatican
II paved the way for a new balance by its generally ecumenical attitude.
After the Reformation the Church had restricted access to the Word
of God for the ordinary people. Only after Vatican II and its decree
on Revelation, Dei Verbum, were Catholics again encouraged to take
nourishment directly from the Bible, which had been for many the 'bad
book' of the Protestants.
It
is very important for every living body to be in touch, as directly
as possible, with its roots and original vision. For centuries the
faithful ordinary people had been cut off from direct access to the
founding stories, the myth, or the roots, from which our faith grew.
Reflection on the Bible in one's heart, owning its attitudes, and
sharing on it as it bears on one's situation, has become once more
part of Catholic life. This is essential to the Basic Ecclesial Community
way of being Church. This way of being church, where God is heard
and responded to primarily in the lives of people, is taking flesh
during the present decades, especially in communities of the poor.
This could happen only when we recovered the Word that we had abandoned
to the Protestants.
The
broader insight of the document of Vatican II on NON-CHRISTIANS, that
God speaks to us in all cultures and religious traditions, is also
of paramount importance as we try to read the direction in which the
Spirit is moving the church today. "The Catholic Church rejects
nothing that is true and holy in these religions" (Nostra Aetatae
2).
Today
for the first time, according to Father Bede Griffith, the Church
is beginning to encounter the cultures of Asia not as an obstacle
to the spread of the Gospel but the as the very soil in which the
Gospel has to take root. This principal of inculturation, as it is
now called, was introduced by the Vatican Council on the analogy of
the Incarnation itself. Just as Jesus was not merely a man but a Jew,
a man of Semitic culture, speaking Aramaic, meditating the Bible,
the sacred book of the Jews, and expressing himself in terms and images
and symbols and concepts of his people, so the Church in every country
has to become incarnate, to speak the language of the people, to adopt
the customs and traditions of the people and to express her message
in the images and concepts that belong to the local culture. This
is of course a matter of great delicacy, because the Christian message
has to be preserved in its integrity while it finds a new form of
expression. Yet the difficulty in not so great as it might seem, because
the Christian message is after all not primarily a doctrine but a
Person and an Event. It is Christ himself who has to become incarnate
in each culture and the paschal mystery has to be lived again among
every people.
As
we move into the third millennium there is, for the first time in
history, an official Church openness to the richness of divine revelation
in the religions of Asia, especially Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
This is meeting the search for a deeper spirituality that is a sign
of our times and can be seen in the thousands who are turning to TM,
Zen and Christian meditation. This openness to the East in our time
is also an openness to recover the Christian mystical tradition which
goes back to apostolic times. It is a recognizing of the mysticism
of St. John for whom the Father and Son dwell in us (Jn. 14:23) and
that of Paul for whom we are the temples of the Holy Spirit who is
ever crying "Abba, Father" within us (Romans 8:11, 26. Galatians
4; 6).
"When
the early Church met the Greek world of culture," according to
William Johnston S.J., the great authority on East-West religious
dialogue, "there was an explosion of new vitality in the infant
Church. The same is happening in our times as Christianity opens up
to the richness of the religious traditions of Asia." The language
of this tradition is silence and contemplation and according to Vandana
Mataji, an Indian Hindu who became an RSCJ Sister, if "contemplatives
do not bring peace to the world nobody can." In a world where
there is so much violence in families and in communities we need a
spirituality that acts out of stillness.
