Embracing a Common Future
Edmund Rice Christian Brothers
North America
Thursday, 09 August 2007
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Embracing a Common Future
Edmund Rice Christian Brothers North America Thursday, 09 August 2007 |
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SPIRITUALITY ARCHIVES '05
There is a Chinese Proverb that states that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name. All the signs are around us that we are in the dying phase of a continuum of the Congregation’s life. And that is not a comfortable place for any of us to be. But it is a natural place in the cycle of living systems.
We are like an actor who receives a response that wasn’t in the script. “My God! She said no. She was supposed to say yes. How do I reply, and where does our drama go from here?” God seems to have said “NO”, when we wanted a “YES”.
Our faith calls out to us to constantly live and re-live the paschal mystery of dying and resurrection. Do we really believe it possible to die into something new? Are we willing to become part of this gospel mandate - “unless the grain of seed die ...”?
Scientist Stephen Hawking uses a phrase, “remembering the future”, that would seem to be one that we as Brothers need now. If the heart decision on restructuring of the last chapter is to have any meaning than we must truly transform our minds and heart and promote prophetic religious living by “remembering the future”, remembering that there is a future and that we are the ones who will determine it, with God’s help.
The pathway of our new journey has been provided with new maps to guide us and encourage us, as we pursue keeping alive the gift that Edmund gave to the Church, a gift for extending the mission of Jesus Christ:
● the 1984 Constitutions - especially the renewed emphasis on the call we have to the poor;
● the Four Directions of the Johannesburg Congregational Chapter - which extended that call to all peoples at the margins, in all parts of the world, inviting and affirming that others were gifted with Edmund’s charism, while acknowledging that we are fragile instruments that God uses;
● “The Heart of Being Brother” and the “Decisions of the Heart” of the Congregational Chapter of 2002 - that places a renewed spirituality before us of what being brother means, and focusing the entire congregation on the need to restructure itself for the sake of mission.
At Cornwall I (July 2003) and Cornwall II (July 2004) we were engaged in the exercise of listening - listening to a chapter of our history and to what that history had to say to us at this time, and listening for God to come to know how and best we can serve his people. The Cornwall Assemblies and the resulting Declaration and documents from Cornwall II in 2004 have led us to this new province in North America. We have chosen to embrace and begin creating a common future.
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