Religious Life: Awakening to the Mystery of Christ
In considering the approach of the fifteenth World Day for Consecrated Life on 2nd February,
2011 Our Iceberg Is Melting may be an attractive contemporary parable regarding how to
respond insightfully to circumstances which are radically changing for apostolic religious life
in Ireland. The parable is based on the award-winning work of the Harvard leadership mentor
John Kotter. It is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and organisations to
face dramatically changed circumstances in their lives. It may well be helpful for religious to
consider the lesson of the parable in the context of the current realities of apostolic religious
life in Ireland. The parable draws its characters from a penguin colony in Antarctica. The
colony consists of magnificent emperor penguins that live as they have lived for many
generations. One penguin has, however, become aware of an approaching devastating
problem threatening their existence. The actors in the story, Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy, the
Professor, and NoNo, are like characters we’ll recognise in any group of people. The parable
is one of resistance to change and heroic action, seemingly intractable obstacles and wise
responses to these obstacles. I will not damage the delightful experience of reading this
parable for yourself but I’ll simply note that one of the most interesting lessons of the parable
is the importance of a felt sense of urgency if a call to change is to be engaged rather
creatively and effectively.
In its emphasis on the place of “urgency” in the process of making wise changes in the
context of fading certainties, the parable echoes a biblical theme; O that TODAY you would
listen to God’s voice. Harden not your hearts (Psalm 95). From ancient times, the
interpretation of Scripture has always sought to attentive to the urgency of its message. A real
sense of urgency in addressing the current state of decline in religious life is rare, but not
because of bad will but because the contemplative attentiveness that enables the hearing of
God’s voice may not have been cultivated with the depth and intentionality that these
challenging times require. Sadly, it is also all too easy to fall into a false sense of urgency
which perceives activity as the primary outcome of contemplative attentiveness, rather than
compassion and a softened heart.
In his Apostolic Letter marking the arrival of the new millennium, Novo millenio ineunte,
John Paul II noted how in changed circumstances “our thoughts could run immediately to the
action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow…. Before making
practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion…. A spirituality of
communion indicates above all the heart's contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity
dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers
and sisters around us. ….. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path,
external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become
mechanisms without a soul, "masks" of communion rather than means of its expression.
In urgently addressing the weakened state in which apostolic religious life finds itself in
Ireland, urgent action must be enlivened by the contemplative turn in the new millennium, a
turn which the new evangelisation seeks to serve. In the year before the millennium the postsynodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America, John Paul II reminded his readers that
“contemplation is not a privilege reserved to the few”. What was previously perceived to be
one of the unique defining features of religious life, is now a path to which all are
called. Taken together, the spirituality of communion, the new evangelization and the
universal call to holiness require the urgent transformation of the icon of religious life in Irish
society.
In previous generations the prevailing imagery of the icon of religious life in Irish society was
Jesus feeding the five thousand, clothing the naked, teaching the crowds and healing the
sick. While the following of Christ by the profession of the evangelical counsels remains the
core of religious life, this assertion cannot remain untouched by the developments in
Christology that are taking place today in the light of the enriched scientific evolutionary
understanding of the universe that we have today. This shift in understanding is well
portrayed by the professor and chair of Spirituality studies at Washington Theological Union,
Ilia Delio OSF in her outstandingly insightful book Christ in Evolution (Orbis, 2008). The
limits of human understanding of previous centuries constructed a Christ image that was
highly individualised and action oriented, reflecting the isolated, ego-driven modern
construction of selfhood. Delio notes that in our times, ‘we can now locate Christ at the heart
of the whole evolutionary process: from cosmic evolution to biological evolution to evolution
of human consciousness and culture. We can see then that the urgent issue that confront
religious life is not religious life; the issue is awakening to the mystery of Christ that seeks to
unfold, among other ways, in and through religious life in new ways in our time.
[This article by Sr. Bernadette Flanagan appeared in the February 2011 edition of Intercom]