Xaverian Charism Project

June 2012 XAVERIAN AVERIAN HARISM PROJECT BROTHERS X C Working Papers on Xaverian Spirituality, Life Form, Ecclesiality & Mission XAVERIAN CHARISM STUDY WORKING PAPERS ON XAVERIAN SPIRITUALITY, LIFE FORM, ECCLESIALITY & MISSION JUNE 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD 3 INTRODUCTION 5 XAVERIAN SPIRITUALITY 15 XAVERIAN LIFE FORM 29 XAVERIAN ECCLESIALITY 53 XAVERIAN MISSION 73 CONCLUSION 93 FOREWO RD Xaverian Brothers Generalate 4409 Frederick Avenue • Baltimore, MD 21229 • USA 15 June 2012 Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Xaverian Foundation Day Dear Brothers, Xaverian Associates and Collaborators, At our 26th General Chapter in 2007, we endorsed a directive on Mission Formation which called us “to continue to promote the study and explication of our Founding Vision and Charism and its on-going implica- tions for the life and mission of the Congregation.” For the past five years we have been involved in a Con- gregation-wide study of our Charism. This study included research on the Founder and our early history conducted by Brother Regj Cruz. His research formed the basis of Charism Conferences that he and I conducted in all regions of the Congregation. In addition, Brother Regj conducted modified conferences for the chief administrators of Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools in the United States and for those in XBSS who are responsible for conducting faculty formation. At various times during each year we also provided resources to help further our study and reflection. These included the introduction of Founder’s Week - those seven days between the anniversary of the death of Theodore James Ryken on 27 November and the Feast of St. Francis Xavier on 3 December - and the publishing of reflection resources for the Advent and Lenten seasons. In December 2010, the General Council and I also created two permanent commissions to continue the study of our Congregational Charism: a Commission on Congregational History and a Commission on Xaverian Spirituality. It is our hope that these Commissions will further our ongoing study and explication of our Founding Vision and Charism. Now, with the publication of these “Working Papers on Xaverian Spirituality, Life Form, Ecclesiality, and Mission” we present additional resources which should assist us in rearticulating our Charism for Xaverian life as we approach our next General Chapter in 2013 and the 175th Anniversary of our Foundation in 2014. While these Working Papers provide theological and contextual background for our study of charism, my hope is that they will serve as a resource for each of us to reflect on our lived experience of the Xaverian Charism and to dialogue our lived experience with the foundational aspects of the Charism that are presented here. On this Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, one of the major feasts of our Congregation since our foundation, may we rededicate ourselves to re-presenting the Sacred Heart of Jesus through our participation in the passion and compassion of God for all of God’s creation. Sincerely, your brother, Brother Lawrence Harvey, C.F.X. General Superior 3 FOREWO RD 4 INTRODUCTION The Holy Spirit is an admirable artist. He is bound by neither rules nor models, and He works where and how He wills. Of the winds we do not know where they are going. It is quite the same with the Di- vine Spirit. In order to detect the origin of this congregation down to the deep roots, these same roots become as thin as very thin hair, so that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find their first germ. (Theodore James Ryken, Autobiography, ca. 1871) n Consecrated Life, charism refers to a phenomenon that is intrinsic in every religious congregation that can claim its origin in the Spirit’s (com)passion. It has always been I there, even before postconciliar theologians of Consecrated Life appropriated the term. Generally speaking, each of God’s faithful has a Personal Charism, that gracious gift God gra- tuitously gave not for the benefit of the receiver but for the sake of the Church: The Holy Spirit distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. By these gifts, He makes them fit and ready to undertake the various tasks advantageous for the renewal of the Church. These charismatic gifts, whether they be the more simple and widely diffused or the most outstanding, are to be received with thanksgiving and con- solation.1 Among these “outstanding” charisms were those entrusted to “founders who were raised up by God within His Church.”2 It was the council that appropriately gave founders a pivotal place in understanding the deeper call of the Spirit to their congregations. It also insisted that consecrated women and men “let their founders’ spirit and special aims [which] they set before them as well as their sound traditions - all of which make up the patrimony of each institute - be faithfully held in honor.”3 A few years later, Paul VI – the first pontiff to use the term charism with explicit reference to founders – underscored that “in this (insistence, the Council) finds one of the princi- ples for the present renewal and one of the most secure criteria for judging what each institute should undertake.”4 Despite this invitation, religious congregations faced difficulties in coming up with a compel- ling articulation of their respective charisms. At the heart of the problem is that it has taken decades to come up with a well-developed framework for discussing the phenomenon. Initially, most (if not all) congregations centered their study solely on the Founder’s Charism. It was in- 1 Lumen Gentium, §12. 2 Evangelica Testificatio, §11. 3 Perfectae Caritatis, §2b. 4 Evangelica Testificatio, §10. INTRODUCTION evitable that such would happen as many congregations lacked a painstaking study of the life and works of their founders in the 1960s. However, many saw the founder as the end-all of the study and fixed the understanding of charism according to the socio-historical conditions of the founding moment. Jesuit Fr. John Caroll Futrell, cofounder of the Institute of Religious Formation, saw this act of “defining” charism as very problematic: T h e charism of the founder cannot be fixed in an abstract, verbal definition. To attempt to do so is to attempt to identify living, individual communities on the level of theoretical ‘natures’. But religious communities, like persons, are living organisms actualizing their own individuality through their own unique way of experiencing life and of integrating relationships….The founder’s charism, as shared and lived by the members of the community today is a mystery, as is anything which is dynamic and alive. It cannot be defined. It can only be described.5 (emphasis supplied) The institutional church would push the issue further by affirming that charisms develop dynam- ically through the congregation itself. All consecrated members in an institute have a shared responsibility to “live, safeguard, deepen and constantly develop” the “experience of the Spirit” which the founder “transmitted” to them.6 They do this through the personal charisms they bring with them, which now “are intended for the enrichment, development and rejuvenation of the life of the institute.”7 The next two decades witnessed a profusion of conferences, articles and theses on the phe- nomenology of charism. Unfortunately, the variety of approaches to the phenomenon was rather disconnected and by the beginning of the 1990s the waters became murkier when ideas like “refounding congregations” or “reweaving narratives” became au courant among religious lead- ership and membership. It did not help that writings which not only questioned but also negated the very existence of charisms appeared in journals and books on consecrated life. Spiritan Fr. Anthony Gittins lamented that “the term charism has been widely used, but not always with fi- nesse. It has become a lazy and an irritating word, a catch-all term which hardly bears scrutiny.”8 Quite appropriately, the 1990s was heralded by a powerful three-point declaration from Domini- can Sr. Elizabeth McDonough addressed to religious as the millennium approached: First, either a religious community has a charism or it does not. If a community does not have a charism, it is not going to survive. Second, if a community has a charism, the members understand it or they do not. If a community has a charism but the members do not understand it, the community is not going to survive. Third, if the 5 John Carroll Futrell, “Discorvering the Founder’s Charism,” The Way Supplement 14 (1971): 64-65. 6 Mutuae Relationes, §11. 7 Ibid., §12. 8 Anthony J. Gittins, “Sows’ Ears and Silk Purses: The Limitations of Charisms and Communities,” Review for Re- ligious 43 (1984): 707. 6 INTRODUCTION community has a charism and understands it, the members can either strive to live it or they can decline to do so. If a community has a charism and more or less understands it but the members decline to live it, then that community is not going to survive. More pointedly: if any community lands on the negative side of any of the above disjunctive assertions, then it probably does not merit survival. But note again: this assessment is not directly concerned with the foibles and failures of human endeav - ors; it is concerned with the importance of the charisms of consecrated life as such. Precisely because charisms are gifts of the Spirit to and for the church, they are too precious to be left indefinitely in the trust of people who are heedless of a charism’s inherent value or unmindful of their personal responsibility to embrace and live its practical consequences…. As disconcerting as this statement may be for the adher- ents of some contemporary trends, it bears noting that no one can actually reweave or re-create a charism of religious life….

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