LIVING A
SPIRITUALITY OF THE HEART
IN THE
The three basic elements of Fr. Chevalier's
Charism are a special vision, an inner inspiration and an awareness of mission. The vision of
the compassionate Jesus in the Gospels struck his heart in such a way that it
became an inner inspiration, "a
fire within". Within the heart of Fr. Chevalier this vision and
inspiration created a special response, an
awareness of mission, and a strong desire to spread this belief in
God’s compassionate love everywhere. This awareness of mission could be
expressed as: “My heart should become conformed to Christ’s heart. In that
way, I my self will become a witness of the compassionate heart of Christ, a
living sign, a sacrament of God’s compassionate love, a missionary.” For
Chevalier, being a missionary is not in the first place about what “what to
do?” but about “who to be?”
It was his conviction, that it is not so much our ministry, as such,
that will change the world, but the manifestation of God's unconditional love through
our ministry. It is our
Fr. Chevalier understood his
On the website of the new
European
I.
A Journey into the heart:
By
the way of discernment, through consultation, visits, study, sharing,
discussion and prayer has the community become increasingly aware of the
following elements[3]:
Ø
Our
European society and culture has need for our founding Charism and spirituality
of the heart, revealing the love, compassion and solidarity of God, as much now
as ever in the past.
Ø
To
be present as salt and light in this continent that is so marked by the
post-modern effects of globalisation, secularisation, human mobility, economic injustice, a
culture of death, misplaced affectivity and yet a thirst for love and a search
for the sacred.
The
Community is committed to a mission in:
As stated in a "STATEMENT OF PURPOSE" the
community wants to live and minister as:
Ø
an authentic
Ø
rooted in Christ and in the Gospel
Ø
at the service of mission in the context of our Western European culture
Ø
with a commitment to justice, peace and the integrity
of creation,
Ø
and an engagement in ecumenical and inter-religious
dialogue.
Being at the same time,
Ø
a point of contact
among European
Ø
and
a
catalyst for conversation to be heart in our continent.
In
the process of realizing their goals, the members of the community feel
attracted to the following basic attitudes
Ø
Responsive attitude, while being present as critical
friends to
discern local needs and respond in a prophetic way that increases solidarity,
empowerment and networking.
Ø
The attitude of
participant observation and observant participation.
Ø
Being
non-judgmental of contemporary Western European culture, refusing to demonise consumerism and the other
"isms" of our time.
Ø
The members try to connect
with the existential level of existence for people by learning the
questions of people: Where and how are people searching for meaning? How
is this intertwined with a spiritual search?
Ø
They will use dialogue as
a 'modus operandi' for living
Open
questions that still remain:
Ø
How to introduce the community?
Ø
Where and how are people searching for meaning?
How is this intertwined with a spiritual search?
Ø
How dialogue becomes a modus
operandi for living our Charism and Spirituality – dialogue of life as well as
dialogue of discourse?
Ø
How to relate to local parish and other churches,
interfaith links, etc.
Ø
How to support and sustain those who are attracted by
faith and spirituality of the community?
Ø
How to make appropriate connections to a local
worshipping community (if such exists)?
Ø
What about ourselves as a local worshipping community:
open the house for neighbourhood prayer? Facilitation of local liturgy?
Ø
How to live creatively the tension of living in a
neighbourhood of mission and simultaneously living in relationship with 8
sponsoring Provinces to whom we are accountable.
Ø How to become
significant others in the neighbourhood with its own cultural and social
dynamics
Ø How to be in
appropriate gift-exchange relationships as strangers (participant outsiders) in
the neighbourhood.
The whole process the
community has gone through, might be called " a journey into the heart",
because the community has been committed to a process of authentic discernment
where through observation, information, consultation, meditation and prayer the
members try to arrive at common choices and decisions concerning a way of being
present and ministering. Cardinal John Henry Newman has said that in the heart
"one finds the true reasons why one opts for a certain style of life or
for one's opinion…. The heart is the place of deep convictions" [4],
The heart is also the place
where God's Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, meets us, and where we are able to
meet the Spirit. The mission-awareness of the community arises from the
heart through a thoughtful and prayerful process of discernment as carried
out during this period of preparation. So by making themselves increasingly aware
of motives, choices, goals, attitudes methods and questions, the community is
taking a first step in living a Spirituality of the Heart.
II.
Meeting the Heart of Christ
within our hearts.
The following step in living
Spirituality of the Heart is not reported on the website, but I believe
certainly present in the reflections. I mean, the description of the process of
discernment did not make an explicit reference to Jesus, more particularly the
Jesus of Spirituality of the Heart. However, Spirituality of the Heart inspires
to look from a special angle at Jesus' way of being present and his awareness
of mission. Scriptures present many
images of Jesus and his mission. In the context of Spirituality of the heart we
are asked to answer the question: "What about you? Who do you say I
am?" (Matthew 16:15). By entering into our hearts and trying to
meet Him who is the way we are searching for, will we be able to answer this
question.
Every
one who wants to participate in a mission as undertaken by the community should
answer Jesus' question for him or herself. It might be important also for a
community with a common mission to arrive at an understanding of each other's
vision of Jesus. I present my vision of Jesus' mission not as the only
possible vision, but to show that in the context of a Spirituality of the Heart
we are not confined to the traditional images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd or
the presentations about the Heart of Jesus in John's Gospel. Together with Fr. Chevalier,
we want to look at the whole Jesus as the revelation of God’s
compassionate love. I prefer to look at Jesus as the one who invites
people to start building “a civilization of love" by overcoming the
many forms of discrimination in society, created by cultural, political and
religious customs and prejudices. Jesus carried out his mission by proclaiming
and practicing active compassion without bounds. He understood ‘being compassionate in an
inclusive way’ as the mission given to him by his Father: “Be compassionate, as your Father is
compassionate” (Luke
Jesus promoted a social vision totally different
from Jewish tradition. Jewish tradition was based not on an image of a compassionate
God, but on the image of the holy God. According to Jewish tradition
“holiness” was understood as 'living separately from everything unclean'. “You
shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) was understood as “You shall
be pure as God is pure”. Jewish society was based on a purity system[6].
Because of his compassion Jesus wanted to overthrow the divisions created by
this purity system. He dreamed of a society without boundaries, the universal
However,
the remarkable quality of Jesus’ life and ministry isn’t that he was a person
with a compassionate heart – many people before and after him has shown great
compassion to their neighbours. The remarkable thing,
and in that sense the uniqueness of Jesus’ ministry, is his compassion
without bounds. Jesus showed compassion not only to people belonging to his
own tribe or his own religion, but to everyone; not only to the morally good
but to good and bad alike. That was prophetic. That was divine. Jesus let God
be God in his life and ministry, just by imitating God’s way of action. God
makes his sun rise on good and bad alike and sends the rain on the honest and
the dishonest (Mat
The
meals, Jesus shared with tax collectors and other people of bad reputation show
Jesus’ prophetic hospitality. Jesus held
open house for everybody. That was then, at the time of Jesus, and is now, in
our time, a prophetic gesture. It is prophetic in the sense that this way of
life finds his origin in God’s compassionate heart and that it is in marked
contrast to the prevailing popular culture.
Therefore,
a Spirituality of the Heart invites us to get engaged in a way of living and
ministering that is centered on the God of compassion without bounds. That will
be a prophetic way of life and ministry, being sent to every human being and
not only to people of the Church. The way Jesus
practiced compassion in his life and ministry was inspired by his radical
relationship with his heavenly Father. Jesus' way of living and serving shows
us the theological, spiritual, social and political dimensions of a
Spirituality of the Heart.
Going back to the process of discernment of the
community, a reflection on all these different aspects of living a Spirituality
of the Heart makes it clear, at least for me, that the choices and priorities
of the community conform with Jesus' basic attitudes and intentions. However,
besides confirming them, a Spirituality of the Heart may make the options of
the community also more radical, remembering that for Jesus living and acting
compassionately was not just a matter of behaving nicely to other people, but a
matter he was ready to give his life for.
2.
"What about you?"
Does looking at Jesus in such
a way change our lives? True spirituality is not just a matter of a special
vision of Jesus as presented by the Gospels. As Cuskelly
emphasized [8], true spirituality begins
when we let God enter into our lives, are able to accept God as our God and
delight in being sons or daughters of God. In the same way, a Spirituality of
the Heart becomes really spirituality, more than just an intellectual
vision, when our lives, our way of thinking and relating, begins to change
because of our encounter with Jesus. The Jesus of our vision should truly become
the Lord of our hearts as the source of our behavior and ministry. A sign of
true Spirituality is the growth of joy and enthusiasm in our hearts while
getting more and more involved in a missionary project. That supposes a
"management of the heart" in order to make our hearts free for the
values as promoted by Jesus and to keep burning "the fire within,"
enkindled by the Spirit, just as Chevalier kept it burning until the end of his
life.
In this context it may be
interesting to mention a movement among Muslims, at the moment very popular in
III.
Incarnating a Spirituality of
the Heart into life and ministry of a
The question is how to give witness to
the redemptive power of God’s unconditional love in a city as chosen by the
community, according to a Spirituality of the Heart. When we look at the way
Fr. Chevalier gave shape to his Charism, three elements are outstanding: Community
Life,
1.
Community life: creating a
home
In his talk with the
title "Religious Life after 11th September: what signs do we
offer?[10]
Timothy Radcliff OP focuses upon "the crisis of homelessness" as an
aspect of modern culture[11]. He states:
"There is a crisis of homelessness…A widespread reaction
to this is to build communities of like minded people, with whom we may feel
safe and at home... Now, in this crisis of homelessness, religious life has
surely an urgent vocation to be the sign of God's vast home, the wide openness
of the Kingdom, in which all may belong and be at ease. If we are at home in
the spaciousness of God, then we may be at home with anyone. We may do this in
all sorts of ways."
Radcliff mentions the
examples of small communities embedded in foreign cultures or in a
non-Christian neighborhood, but also small groups of religious that embrace
cultural and ethnic differences within their own communities. It requires a
deep attentiveness, he says, going beyond the narrow limits of sympathies,
language or cultural and ideological differences.
In the context of a
Spirituality of the Heart, it might be interesting also to look at the correlation between heart and home, between
feeling at home in our hearts and feeling at home in the house where we live.
Our homes are the mirrors of our hearts. Everybody needs a place called ‘home’,
that means a home for one’s heart. Home is a place where feelings and needs of
our hearts are given attention and where we can be ourselves. At the same time,
a home is not a place to live permanently the whole day or every day. A home is
a place to leave and to come back to.
2.
Meeting the Heart of Christ
within the heart of people.
One of the most
fundamental aspects of a vision of Jesus presented in the context of a
Spirituality of the Heart is the conviction of faith that the Heart of Jesus is
a revelation not only of the Heart of God, but also of the heart of human
beings. As was repeatedly emphasized by John Paul II, while quoting Gaudium et Spes[12]: the humanity of Jesus
reveals the true meaning of our own humanity. In the context of a Spirituality
of the Heart it means that the core of Jesus human personality, that is his
human heart, reveals to us the potentialities hidden in each human heart. A
Spirituality of the Heart encourages us to look at Jesus not only as an example
of compassionate love without bounds, neither only as the Lord of our own
hearts, but as the Person who reveals how humanity and humankind were really
intended to be by its Creator.
This vision has enormous
consequences for the way we approach people. Our basic assumption should be
that, in one way or another, the Heart of Christ is revealed in the heart of
the persons we meet. It may be a loving and attentive heart; it could be a
searching heart or a wounded heart that is not yet able to open itself up, but
a human heart resonates in a certain way with the heartbeat of Jesus’ heart.
Authentic dialogue, consisting of
listening with an open heart and speaking with an honest mind, is the only 'modus
operandi' appropriate to approach people to whom the Lord in his
incarnation became so intimately related.
It is clear that for an
authentic dialogue two extremes should be avoided: the authoritarian approach
on the one hand and the liberal approach on the other hand. When using authority
(for example by taking the role of a teacher who pretends to know the answers),
we try to impose our convictions upon others. Finally, we just want to tell
others what to believe and what to do. Actually, we are cutting off all forms
of dialogue. If both parties use their authority, they will start an argument
or a ‘discussion of the deaf’. They are not really dialoguing because they are
not listening to one another.
At first sight a
liberal approach seems to be more acceptable and conform to our democratic
values, but in the long run it creates a very feeble basis for living together
in a multicultural society as recent riots in different parts of the world have
once again demonstrated. By using the liberal approach, we are actually saying
to people of other cultures and religions: "These are my values and
beliefs; they may be different from yours; I respect your values and beliefs;
let us take our differences for granted and not bother each other about what
should remain a private matter; let us now move on to the practicalities of
living and working together in society."
Neither the more classic
authoritarian approach nor the more modern liberal approach creates real
dialogue, because these approaches do not bother about the other person's
feelings, needs and deeper desires. Dialogue, inspired by a Spirituality of the
Heart, emerges from a real interest in what is living in the heart of the other
person. Therefore, a first requirement for dialogue in the sphere of a
Spirituality of the Heart, is the ability to listen to the other persons'
hearts, their feelings, needs and desires. The resources necessary for opening
up their hearts towards God and neighbour, towards
truth and love, are present within people's inner self, within their hearts.
What is cutting them off from these inner resources is their incapacity to,
appropriately, listen to themselves. The purpose of our dialoguing with
others – it could be inter-religious dialogue or inter-cultural dialogue - will
be to help one another to listen to our own hearts.
The Heart of Christ
speaks through people's deeper desires. Life-within becomes manifest
through people's feelings and needs. We need to listen with the ears of the heart
to the other persons’ feelings, needs and deeper desires, beyond what they are
verbally saying or non-verbally showing.
We have to attune to other persons’ feelings. Sadness, loneliness,
anger, confusion, anxiety or joy and pride or a mixture of different feelings –
all these feelings are revealing deeper needs and desires? We should learn to understand feelings as
signs of deeper desires and these desires again as signs of the desires of
Jesus' Spirit within the human heart. So we may ask ourselves, when I have
feelings like these, what kind of desires do I have behind these feelings and
what might the Spirit be telling me?
That means, there is a
fundamental need of approaching people in a non-judgmental way, freed from
prejudices or anxiety. To enable us to be non-judgmental, a sound and reliable
knowledge of people's cultural traits and social or religious values comes in.
Basically, in every encounter we are dealing with human beings who show their
inner life through the expression of their feelings, deeper needs and desires.
However, to become good listeners and dialoguers, we have to become
increasingly aware of the implications of the three dimensions of each human
personality:
"The universal, which we share with all other humans;
the culturally programmed, which we learn from our own culture of origin; and
our individual uniqueness which distinguishes each of us from all other
people."[13]
We could add to
"the culturally programmed" also
"the religiously programmed" part of our personally that often
prevents us from understanding the values and customs of people of other
religions or cultures.
Recently I read an
interesting article, written by a pastor working among people without any
professed religion in
“Why are we talking about grace, salvation, redemption,
forgiveness of sins, and heavenly glory? Why are we not speaking instead about everyday
experiences, which might lead us to go more deeply, of freedom from inner
and outer compulsions, of overcoming loneliness and hatred, of an insatiable
thirst for love and life, of unconditional love and affirmation? Why can’t we
make it clear that everyday things, whether pleasant or burdensome, can be
heralds of God – as we see in Jesus’ parables?"
He continues by telling
the following experience:
”When I was doing teaching practice in
The same author points
out “A recent survey has shown that more than half the population in the
former
Without any doubt could it be
said that all people search for life and love in their relationships, unless
someone is totally desperate or deeply depressed. A Spirituality of the Heart
could start from what “life” and “love” means. We could help people to
understand that God calls everybody to “live in abundance” and to “love
wholeheartedly”. We believe in God who is the Loving One and who pours out his
love in every human being’s heart. We believe in Jesus Christ who said: “I
came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John
10:10). In him “life was made manifest,” said
These are all nice and
beautiful words, but who among the people we meet in modern society has really
ever experienced unconditional love and affirmation in life, so that
they know what we are talking about when we speak about a God who loves us
unconditionally. Especially as priests and religious, we often talk too easily
about God’s love, presuming that people have any experience of true love.
Recently I read that in
‘Unconditional love’ and ‘life
in abundance’ are in short supply in today’s society. But they
are in constant demand. We may say, “unconditional and faithful love” and “life
in abundance” promised by Jesus, are only available in the form of seeds,
formed by the desires and longings of people’s hearts, but not in the form of
fruits already ripe. In the context of a Spirituality of the Heart, we could
invite people to share about their desires for love and the simple longing for
a good life. By dialoguing attentively and helping people to listen to their
deeper desires, we may make them aware of the fact how much they are in need of
a deeper more all-encompassing love in their lives.
3. Putting God in the center.
In the mind of Fr. Chevalier,
the three aims of our congregation are Adoration, Imitation and
In our reverence of God and in
regular prayer, we may find a common ground with some Muslims groups. The five
times of daily prayers Muslims are used to practice, remind us at the rhythm of
prayer in Christian monastic life. Laurence Freeman[17] reports of an encounter
with a Muslim Imam and his community in
"There was so much in all
this, the regular times of formal prayer as well as the silent prayer of the
heart – that resonated with my own experience and tradition. But as with the
particular Englishness of the English Muslims there was also significant
difference. Enough in common to build a friendship and to heal the scars
of past injustices and present
aberrations. But also enough difference to fuel the fear of the other that
infects the mind with prejudices and hatred."[18].
Conclusion
It is the
Spirituality of the Heart
affects our whole way of living and all aspects of our Mission and ministries:
the people whom we invite to become involved in the Mission as co-actors, (for
example lay-people); the agencies, groups or institutes with which we want to
work together, the people or groups of people that we address, the challenges
we have the courage to take on and the other choices we have to make, - all
these aspects should be inspired and directed by Spirituality of the Heart[19].
Open
questions
remain, for example, how to deal with conflict and violence
in the light
of Spirituality of the Heart. How to fight for justice, to work for peaceful
relationships and to support the integrity of creation while remaining faithful
to the principles of authentic dialogue? Much assessment of concrete
experiences and experiments in the field of Community life,
Some questions
for further reflection and sharing:
1. Does this presentation about
"Living a Spirituality of the Heart in the mission of an European
2. To what extent do you find it fruitful
to look at the process of building up a new
3. How to deal with the open
questions mentioned in the conclusion of this paper?
Hans Kwakman
[1] Quoted in Jan Bovenmars
[2] For this approach, see E.J. Cuskelly
[3] I quote these elements freely from the
materials of the website www.msceurope.co.uk
[4] Quoted by Jan Bovenmars
[5]
For this part I rely on Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus again for the
first time, The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, Harper
San Francisco 1994, p. 46 ff.
[6] A purity system is a social
system organized around the contrasts of pure and impure, clean and
unclean. Most important for our purposes
is the way “pure” and “impure” applied to persons and social groups in the
first century Jewish’ social world. One’s purity status depended on birth or
behavior. According to one purity map of the time, on the pure side we find
priests and Levites, Israelites and persons who were not Jewish by birth but
observed Jewish law. On the impure side of the spectrum we find the
non-observant Jews, the tax collectors, the handicapped, the lepers and
abjectly poor like beggars and shepherds, and finally the Gentiles. Generally
speaking men in their natural state were thought to be more pure than women.
The purity system created a world with sharp social boundaries between pure an
impure, righteous and sinner, healthy and not healthy, male and female, rich
and poor, Jew and Gentile.
[7] A critique of the purity system is the
theme of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and Levite were obliged
to maintain a certain level of purity. Contact with dead people was a source of
major impurity. Thus the priest and the Levite passed by out of observance of
the purity laws. On the other hand, the Samaritan was, not incidentally,
radically impure according to the impurity system. And this Samaritan, of all people, is
described as the one who acted “compassionately.” Thus this parable was originally a pointed
attack on the purity system and an advocacy of another way of life based on
compassion (Marcus J. Borg, p. 54-55.)
[8] E. J. Cuskelly, Walking the way of Jesus, an essay on Christian
Spirituality, St. Paul's Publications 1999 p. 29-30.
[9] This movement has been started and
promoted by the Muslim scholar (Kiyai) KH Abdullah Gymnastiar (Aa Gym for short),
[10] Congress of Religious, Rome 2004.
[11] Two other aspects of modern culture
Radcliff talks about are "Living without a story" and "the
Subversion of the Culture of Control".
[12] Gaudium et Spes 22: "In reality it is only in the mystery of the
Word made flesh that the mystery of human beings truly becomes clear… Christ
the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his
love, fully reveals human beings to themselves and brings to light their most
high calling… For by his incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way
united himself with each human being. He worked with human hands, he thought
with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he
loved."
[13] Howard Clinebell
in his foreword to David W. Augsburger, Pastoral
Counseling Across Cultures, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia 1986, p. 9.
[14] Bernd Knufer SJ, God talk with the religiously tone-deaf, The
Way, July 2005, p.51-52.
[15] Notice how these three aims mirror the
three aspects of Chevalier’s own Charism: his vision of God and Jesus, his
personal inspiration and his awareness of mission.
[16] Also called the
[17] Laurence Freeman, The Tablet
[18] Probably
Freeman is referring to a Sufi type of Muslim-congregation. The Sufis are the mystical sect
in Islam. The Sufis stress love for Allah and union with him in terms that
often strongly resemble Christian mysticism. (For example, as reported by
Laurence Freeman, some of them practice meditation and contemplation. At the
heart of this mystical tradition of Islam is the prayer of remembrance ("dhikr"), which most often consists of the
recitation of a name of God or simply of the word Allah). Sunnis comprise
around 85% of Muslims worldwide. The Wahhabis,
who have become famous lately for their role in
[19] Robert Schreiter CPPS speaks about the four coordinates of
mission: the “where” (the context), the ‘how” (the models), the “who” (the
people) and the “whither” (the challenges) upon which the “what” of mission
comes to be situated. He states: “How mission is inculturated,
how the Christian message interacts with other great traditions, who
bears the message, and what is envisioned as the end result of the
communication of the message all become part of the message itself.”
(Italics of HK). See his Preface to “Trends of Mission, Toward the Third
Millennium, Essays in Celebration of Twenty-Five Years of SEDOS, edited by
William Jenkinson CSSp and
Helene O’Sullivan, MM, Orbis Books,