in other words...<School of Community>. GS takes place once a week when we as a community, joined by interested friends, come together to discuss a text, or section of a text, (previously chosen, usually based on a theme, or coming from a specific writer, philosopher, theologian, etc) that we had read and prepared to discuss during the week. It is based on life, not how smart you are or analytical, how out-of-the-box you can think or how much you have to teach others. How interesting you can be in the discussion or how much insight you can bring to the table. Think book club or talking over the latest interesting excerpt you read from an enlightening book (here we are ruling out sitting around talking about Harry Potter...) that really impacted your life. You cannot wait to share it with your friends, talk over your own thoughts and ask your friends what they think...see how deep you can go. Its a book club for life. When we read the text several times over during the week, we take the time to reflect on the text, the author, the message, but most of all how we encounter in our daily life what is being communicated through the text. Do we meet the truth of the text through our daily experiences? How? or Does the text bring us deeper into living our daily experiences? Or, on the other hand, do we question the text, the truth of what is written, or struggle with fully understanding what is being communicated? Ultimately it is about sharing life--with one another, and even deeper within yourself. Uncovering things you didnt realize or take time to see. It is about going deeper into life with your community and your friends--together--and through your relationships with one another, the discussions, the questions, the searching--to find deeper sense, deeper truth, deeper beauty in your life.
The decision on what text we were going to read to start this year off was rather spontaneous--the three of us, accompanied by Klaudia on her last night in Vienna, were sitting in our living room discussing "HOPE". It was a fascinating conversation during which P. Jacques said something that especially caught my attention: "There is a difference between Hope and Optimism and the two should not be confused, in fact, they are RADICALLY DIFFERENT. Hope doesn't promise change. It does not promise relief or joy in the future and thus alleviates the weight to be carried. It doesn't promise that everything will get better soon or tomorrow. It is not a frantic, expasperated, panting for something different, but a simple delight in today and an "<awaiting> for the fullness of happiness and perfection that we are meant for in eternity. It promises that there is a sense to things. And most of all...it promises that you are not alone. That even in the darkness there is meaning, there is fullness, there is someone there with you. Hope is knowing--He never leaves me--and thus I can keep on living a beautiful life no matter the situation. Optimism, on the other hand, suffers under the weight of what it carries and thus tries to ignore, push aside, wrap itself in illusion. Optimism laughs and smiles as a facade while underneath it gasps for breath waiting for it all to pass, cursing the weight as it carries it and looking forward to the future in order to escape the present. Hope doesn't escape. Hope lives in truth and embraces reality with a smile of deep peace.
(this is obviously in my words but im just expressing what P. Jacques was explaining )
Then P. Jacques went on to quote Pope Benedict from his last encyclical Spe Salvi
(this is obviously in my words but im just expressing what P. Jacques was explaining )
Then P. Jacques went on to quote Pope Benedict from his last encyclical Spe Salvi
<Con-solato is present in all suffering. The consolation of God's compassionate love, and so the star of hope rises>Blown away. Then and there we decided-we would read the Holy Father's encyclical Spe Salvi (on Hope) for our Gemeinschaft Schule.
For the first two weeks before we officially started the GS, we read two other texts to get in the ˆgrooveˆ of GS: two of the Papal Addresses given by Pope Benedict XVI at the World Youth Day in Madrid. Both of them were rich and saturated with wisdom, depth, and beauty. But the second text we read, the Pope's address during the Way of the Cross through Madrid, once more and even deeper moved and shaked my understanding of this simple, and simply misunderstood word, <HOPE>
+Here is the text with little inserts of my thoughts and thoughts drawn out during the GS we had on the text. The question we focused on in GS--<How can someone find joy in the midst of suffering?>
Dear Young People,
We have celebrated this Way of the Cross with fervour and devotion, following Christ along the path of his passion and death. The commentaries of the Little Sisters of the Cross, who serve the poor and most needy, have helped us enter into the mystery of Christ’s glorious Cross, wherein is found God’s true wisdom which judges the world and judges those who consider themselves wise (cf. 1 Cor 1:17-19). We have also been assisted on this journey to Calvary by our contemplation of these wonderful images from the religious patrimony of the Spanish dioceses. In these images, faith and art combine so as to penetrate our heart and summon us to conversion. When faith’s gaze is pure and authentic, beauty places itself at its service and is able to depict the mysteries of our salvation in such a way as to move us profoundly and transform our hearts, as Saint Teresa of Jesus herself experienced while contemplating an image of the wounded Christ (cf. Autobiography, 9:1).
+Beauty: what we are discovering in the cross is not what is wrong, angry, bad, hateful, but the TRUTH AND BEAUTY OF GOD. How beautiful it is that the harmony of faith and art can bring us deeper into faith and even into conversion. What a beautiful responsibility and grace for artists to serve God through their talent.
+The WISDOM of the Cross--some can look at Christ as a fool and lunatic, that in the end he failed just as the soldiers taunted him to save himself from the suffering of the cross if He indeed was the Son of God--but in the Cross is not failure and stupidity or lunacy but Wisdom. What depth this word "wisdom"conveys! And what is the wisdom?--we read later that it is the wisdom of what God loves and how he loves--a wisdom that we are supposed to follow and carry on to others. Who are those who are wisest--those who carry their crosses out of love in ∫imitation of Christ.
As we were making our way with Jesus towards the place of his sacrifice on Mount Calvary, the words of Saint Paul came to mind: “Christ loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). In the face of such disinterested love, we find ourselves asking, filled with wonder and gratitude: What can we do for him? What response shall we give him? Saint John puts it succinctly: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 Jn 3:16). Christ’s passion urges us to take upon our own shoulders the sufferings of the world, in the certainty that God is not distant or far removed from man and his troubles. On the contrary, he became one of us “in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way — in flesh and blood … hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love — and so the star of hope rises” (Spe Salvi, 39).
+In seeing his love we automatically want to respond, want to repay, want to do something in return. We are so engrained in our just society of give and receive. of receive and pay back. but here, authentic love doesn't close in on itself but always bekons to be given further, wider, more fully. The wisdom of the cross is the way in which Christ loves man, and this love is to be imitated by every man--thus what is there let but HOPE. If man actually lived according to the wisdom of the cross--what would there be left in the world BUT hope.
+How can we carry our cross with joy? Our joy is to be there with Him. We are never alone under our cross or hanging on it. Because He did it first, he is always there even before we receive the weight. The only reason our suffering, our pain and endurance, our carrying through has any weight or significance is because of the victory he already won for us...the triumph he already brought to the cross. It may be our cross, our suffering as opposed to our neighbors, but we are never carrying it alone.
+This hit me in mass the other day-I should only be brought to smile in the midst of suffering because I can freely say, "It doesn't matter how much I think I cannot carry on anymore. How much this or that is weighing me down, or aggravating me or how much I think I cannot endure this or that situation anymore. There is no way that if I join myself to where He is, fully and completely in His suffering, on my cross, under this weight....I can ONLY BE VICTORIOUS. WITH HIM IN HIS VICTORY. good can only come. The JOY, thus, is in the HOPE. It is not a hope that promises happiness and relief and joy in some FUTURE MOMENT, but in the exact moment you embrace hope because like Fr. Jacques said--Hope is often, and shouldn't be confused with optimism. Hope is KNOWING. It is surety of things that are not seen, or felt, but are still and always will be there--HIM. He never leaves.
Dear young friends, may Christ’s love for us increase your joy and encourage you to go in search of those less fortunate. You are open to the idea of sharing your lives with others, so be sure not to pass by on the other side in the face of human suffering, for it is here that God expects you to give of your very best: your capacity for love and compassion. The different forms of suffering that have unfolded before our eyes in the course of this Way of the Cross are the Lord’s way of summoning us to spend our lives following in his footsteps and becoming signs of his consolation and salvation. “To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves — these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself” (ibid.).
+these words leave me speechless.
+We cannot take people's crosses away. We can only help them find joy in carrying them--the joy that comes from reassuring them that they are not alone. That is why I am here. Why were are here on this earth as humans for one another. But more exactly why I am here in Vienna and what I sometimes forget. I am here to be a sign of God's presence to those who are suffering. To those who don't know God and have no one beside them, despair haunts their suffering and suffocates their desire to live. But when someone is beside you, that hope is given spark to ignite the flame, and through your presence you can be an instrument of God's presence, which we can then pray that one day they come to realize that it was not only us that was there with them helping them find the light in the darkness, but the eternal presence of Christ.
Let us eagerly welcome these teachings and put them into practice. Let us look upon Christ, hanging on the harsh wood of the Cross, and let us ask him to teach us this mysterious wisdom of the Cross, by which man lives. The Cross was not a sign of failure, but an expression of self-giving in love that extends even to the supreme sacrifice of one’s life. The Father wanted to show his love for us through the embrace of his crucified Son: crucified out of love. The Cross, by its shape and its meaning, represents this love of both the Father and the Son for men. Here we recognize the icon of supreme love, which teaches us to love what God loves and in the way that he loves: this is the Good News that gives hope to the world.
+We receive the love of God in the Way of the Cross. Normally people speak of the ˆsilenceˆ of the Father, but here the Pope speaks of his embrace of mankind through His Son. <The Father wants to show his love for us through the embrace of his crucified Son.> It is not that He doesn't speak to mankind in this moment of suffering, but he speaks through His Son.
+Suffering is not the end or a dead-end road, but the source itself of HOPE. As Christians we must be the testimony of HOPE. But where do we meet hope and grow in hope? The Pope speaks of three ways in ¨Spe Salviˆ: 1. Prayer, 2. Suffering (it is so important because it is everywhere and this is the most important part in order to meet and learn hope. Hope is the new soul of suffering. We have many little everyday hopes like passing a test, that it will be sunny when we want to go on a bike ride, etc. but in suffering we are discovering what is most important in our lives. Discovering through our suffering and the suffering of others.) 3. Justice, which is the practice arena for hope. God placed everything in his justice. But we are not to have fear in face of justice, but rather, hope, because the justice of God is Truth, and Love, and Mercy.
+The task of the Catholic Church today: to give and share hope.
Let us turn our gaze now to the Virgin Mary, who was given to us on Calvary to be our Mother, and let us ask her to sustain us with her loving protection along the path of life, particularly when we pass through the night of suffering, so that we may be able to remain steadfast, as she did, at the foot of the Cross.
+We need today, more than ever, the correct understanding of life. Mary at the foot of the cross, through faith and hope, had the correct understanding. What is this correct understanding: That everything in God's Will as good and all would work out for the good. There are horrible things surrounding us everyday in the world that we are experiencing from a distance and sometimes very closely and personally, but in the hope of Christ and Mary we can have the correct understanding--God brings good out of everything, even the bad things, and in the end all will work towards the good and all will be fruitful (far beyond our ability to understand).
My favorite realization in these past two weeks:
Hope remains when things do not make sense--when there is no feeling, or understanding to carry you. It is like Wings. like Air, or Breath. It is the Weight of Nothingness. It is the whisper, <Just don't leave me alone and all will be bearable.> It is not about a solution or something changing. Looking forward to change--that is optimism. Hope is light, companionship, relief. It is the moment you realize you can continue on when you thought you couldn't. It is what allows you to continue living IN THAT MOMENT. Not just to get to the next moment, but to live the current moment in all its fury and discord, deeply and fully.
No comments:
Post a Comment