austraLasia #3474
GC27 unpackedDUBLIN: July 25, 2014 -- Perhaps more of a reflection than a guide, Fr Jack Finnegan, Irish Delegate to General Chapter 27, sums up the best of GC27 in 11 pages which he entitles 'Rooted in the Gospel'. These pages are worth reading. You might call them 'Not the GC27 Document', as a positive rather than parody reference, because the author did not feel bound to either the original or translated language of the document. Other than Don Bosco's mottoes (W&T, DMA) and the more recent 'Grace of unity', you will find the language refreshingly different..
'Rooted in the Gospel' is informed by the chronology of the Chapter. After providing us with a raft of facts (204 reps for 15,000 men in 132 countries looking to provide a 6 year programme, using three official languages and three other translated ones) the author offers us the four pivotal questions which the Chapter was about. Already here you sense that he is unpacking the experience, his personal experience of the Chapter, by putting the questions in different terms.
The pilgrimage around Don Bosco Land reminded him - as he reminds us - that lean-tos (sheds), be they at Colle or Valdocco, are part of our origins.
The core reflection is on what it means, and what the Chapter meant, to be 'radical', especially in reference to the Salesian community. Are we 'cold fortresses' or 'warm oases', or something else? He offers the 'parable' of the Green, eco-sensitive tree-hugging, recycling (they also pray) religious community, locked away from the dodgy and deceitful, then shifts the image slightly to the way we tend to mimic the bourgeois gated communities - no 'peripheries' there! He warms to that theme, then: "bourgeois lives dancing to and mimicking the rhythms of middleclass existences" but tells us that GC27 really did try to come up with responses to this situation, especially reminding us of 'God's vast Dynamic Mystery' (not GC27 language, precisely, but the intent of the language it did employ, 'la trama di Dio', the weave and weft of God's involvement in human affairs). The Chapter, he feels, has given us an alignment ('radical Gospel way' in Chapter language) for leadership at every level for the next six years, and a way to tackle the 'functional atheism' (strong term? But a Chapter one, he says) among religious.
A section entitled 'Some personal reflections' follows, drawing on the experience of the Retreat and discussion on the lights and shadows of the Congregation as revealed in the RM's Report (with an interesting footnote on Don Bosco's choice of nomenclature which he borrowed, the author suggests, from the railways. The final sentence of that footnote is intriguing: "In this part of the world the General is still referred to as the Rector Major and is considered to be in direct succession to Don Bosco.")
There is an illuminating (almost literally, given the 'fire' image) paragraph or three on 'radical'. "With Don Bosco we are invited to become tongues of fire for the world" and not just "lanterns because we are afraid of the fire".
Mystics, Prophets and Servants: "In the grace of unity the mystic, the prophet and the servant become the aroma of Christ in the world...The result is a growing capacity to live from the heart, to live wisely yet passionately, to be alive to the creative concerns of Spirit, and to put aside the distorting ambitions of grandeur and power. At such moments the door to paradox opens". This is a challenging passage and deserves contemplating at length. He is drawing very much from the material and ideas that were presented by Fr Bartolomé during the retreat.
The reflection concludes with a brief run-through on the process, which he treats more kindly than some I have heard from, the elections ('I remember one scintillating comment from Padre Cristo Rey: “Sometimes passports prove more important than charisms!”'), but quickly adds that "Padre Cristo Rey’s approach and wisdom and the discerning cooperation of the chapter members kept politics at bay". A para. or two on the papal audience, and his conclusion: "Let the work begin in the grace of unity!"
You will enjoy this 'unpacking' of the Chapter, but will need to sit with it a while. What a wonderful thing it would be if we had 204 such reflections!
GC27 unpacked
'Rooted in the Gospel' is informed by the chronology of the Chapter. After providing us with a raft of facts (204 reps for 15,000 men in 132 countries looking to provide a 6 year programme, using three official languages and three other translated ones) the author offers us the four pivotal questions which the Chapter was about. Already here you sense that he is unpacking the experience, his personal experience of the Chapter, by putting the questions in different terms.
The pilgrimage around Don Bosco Land reminded him - as he reminds us - that lean-tos (sheds), be they at Colle or Valdocco, are part of our origins.
The core reflection is on what it means, and what the Chapter meant, to be 'radical', especially in reference to the Salesian community. Are we 'cold fortresses' or 'warm oases', or something else? He offers the 'parable' of the Green, eco-sensitive tree-hugging, recycling (they also pray) religious community, locked away from the dodgy and deceitful, then shifts the image slightly to the way we tend to mimic the bourgeois gated communities - no 'peripheries' there! He warms to that theme, then: "bourgeois lives dancing to and mimicking the rhythms of middleclass existences" but tells us that GC27 really did try to come up with responses to this situation, especially reminding us of 'God's vast Dynamic Mystery' (not GC27 language, precisely, but the intent of the language it did employ, 'la trama di Dio', the weave and weft of God's involvement in human affairs). The Chapter, he feels, has given us an alignment ('radical Gospel way' in Chapter language) for leadership at every level for the next six years, and a way to tackle the 'functional atheism' (strong term? But a Chapter one, he says) among religious.
A section entitled 'Some personal reflections' follows, drawing on the experience of the Retreat and discussion on the lights and shadows of the Congregation as revealed in the RM's Report (with an interesting footnote on Don Bosco's choice of nomenclature which he borrowed, the author suggests, from the railways. The final sentence of that footnote is intriguing: "In this part of the world the General is still referred to as the Rector Major and is considered to be in direct succession to Don Bosco.")
There is an illuminating (almost literally, given the 'fire' image) paragraph or three on 'radical'. "With Don Bosco we are invited to become tongues of fire for the world" and not just "lanterns because we are afraid of the fire".
Mystics, Prophets and Servants: "In the grace of unity the mystic, the prophet and the servant become the aroma of Christ in the world...The result is a growing capacity to live from the heart, to live wisely yet passionately, to be alive to the creative concerns of Spirit, and to put aside the distorting ambitions of grandeur and power. At such moments the door to paradox opens". This is a challenging passage and deserves contemplating at length. He is drawing very much from the material and ideas that were presented by Fr Bartolomé during the retreat.
The reflection concludes with a brief run-through on the process, which he treats more kindly than some I have heard from, the elections ('I remember one scintillating comment from Padre Cristo Rey: “Sometimes passports prove more important than charisms!”'), but quickly adds that "Padre Cristo Rey’s approach and wisdom and the discerning cooperation of the chapter members kept politics at bay". A para. or two on the papal audience, and his conclusion: "Let the work begin in the grace of unity!"
You will enjoy this 'unpacking' of the Chapter, but will need to sit with it a while. What a wonderful thing it would be if we had 204 such reflections!
