Vol. 38, No. 5/6 - May/June “Mission And Money Perspective From Religious Life” - ARICCIA 2006 - SEDOS RESIDENTIAL SEMINAR Sedos - Via dei Verbiti, 1 - 00154 ROMA - TEL.: (+39)065741350 / FAX: (+39)065755787 SEDOS e-mail address: [email protected] - SEDOS Homepage: http://www.sedos.org Servizio di Documentazione e Studi - Documentation and Research Centre Centre de Documentation et de Recherche - Servicio de Documentación e Investigación 2006/98 Contents Summary of the Annual SEDOS Seminar 2006 Fr Carlos Rodríguez Linera, OP Opening Session of the SEDOS Seminar 2006 • “ You Cannot Serve God and Money” (Mt 6:24) — Some Biblical and Theological Considerations Concerning Mission and Money Fr John Fuellenbach, SVD 1. Mission and Money • “A Mission for Money” — An Interpretation of the Prohibition of Money by Francis of Assisi Seen Against the Economic-Social Background of His Time — Stimuli for Today Fr Helmut Rakowski, OFM Cap 2. Mission to the Poor in the Gospel • Mission dans l’Évangile Fr Alessandro Guarda, MCCJ 3. Mission of the Church • Poverty and Mission Fr Fernando Domingues, MCCJ 4. Synthesis of the Work • Economy for Mission: Religious Life’s Prospects • Final Summary Fr Alessandro Guarda, MCCJ 5. Practical Cooperation: Working Groups’ Projects • English Groups • French Groups • Spanish Groups • Italian Groups 6. Appendix • Efficiency and Effectiveness in Mission Fr Joseph Mattam, SJ • ‘Opus solidaritatis pax’, Peace is the Fruit of Solidarity Fr Helmut Rakowski, OFM Cap 6. Acknowledgement Sr Mary Wright, IBVM 2006/99 Summary of the Annual SEDOS Seminar 2006 Greetings to all our readers! We have concluded our Annual SEDOS Seminar at Ariccia, where over one hundred religious men and women of different nationalities and from different Institutes for five days shared their insights, reflections and experiences on the use and meaning of money in our mission, past and present. Naturally, we did not expect to find a solution nor to come up with a formula to solve all the problems that the use and possession of wealth causes in our society. We just endeavoured to deepen the understanding of the abundance of blessings God puts in our hands to be administered in order to build His Kingdom. As Bernardo Vallejo, OP, writes, ‘Jesus of Nazareth does not deny the value of material possessions, but He goes on to reorient its meaning from the perspective of the Kingdom that is inaugurated with his preaching. First, before all things, is the Kingdom of God and its justice, which has as a reference point the dignity of all human beings who were created in the image and likeness of God. “Jesus replied: ‘They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat’” (Mt 14:16). The Son of God came not to give but to share. He came to share with us His divinity and to share in our humanity. This is the basis of solidarity to build the Kingdom of God. It is at this level of sharing that we can find justice and love as the children of God enjoying His Creation as a big family. To give implies to posses; to have what others do not have; to be above, richer and more powerful than others, to be able to control them and to impose our will and to make them feel dependent, grateful and, thus, humiliated. When we give we are free to give or to hold, to give much or to give little, to give more to this one or to that one. Those who please us and obey us and follow the path we set will receive more. Those who annoy us or we feel them to be ‘disobedient’ shall get little or nothing. Thus it is easy for money and authority to become a tool for ‘power and control’ that enslaves people and creates suffering. A tool of division and injustice that creates classes and sows the seeds of violence and hatred. Even within Religious Life this power and control is strongly felt, although oftentimes disguised under the ‘vow of obedience and poverty’. Administrators and not ‘owners and masters’; faithful servants striving, as good fathers and mothers, to sow the seeds of peace, unity and love among the children of God. The forum is open to everyone. All the participants in the SEDOS Seminar hope that different groups will take up these insights and continue to study and discuss this topic. The participants at the SEDOS Seminar are presenting to all brothers and sisters the challenge to continue the reflection on the understanding and the use of the wealth that God has put into our hands with His Creation. It is a challenge to our mission as we present our Religious lifestyle to the World as an alternative model of social community fostering peace and love among its members. Fr Carlos Rodríguez Linera, OP SEDOS Executive Director - Opening Session - 2006/101 “You Cannot Serve God and Money” (cf. Mt 6:24) Some Biblical and Theological Considerations Concerning Mission and Money - John Fuellenbach, SVD (Rome) - Introduction As the title of this talk indicates, I would like to present to you some biblical and theological considerations concerning our topic for this week: Mission and Money. The presentation aims at reminding us for whom we walk and in whose service we stand before dealing directly with the topic. We might be justified in calling it a kind of spirituality concerning matters of money and mission. The context in which I would like to present my talk is the Person of Jesus and his central message: the Kingdom of God (God’s dream for creation). It was the overall frame that he himself chose and in which he enshrined his whole message. Therefore, it rightly serves as the background from which we can approach our topic as religious men and women, that is, as disciples of Jesus. After all, our mission as Christians and as religious must be seen as the continuation of Jesus’ own mission, entrusted to us by the Risen Christ when he said to his Apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you”. And to enable us to do this impossible task Jesus added: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:21). Equipped with the power of the Risen Christ we can do it. Jesus expressed the exigency of this mission in the words: I must preach the Kingdom of God to all villages and towns because for this very reason I was sent” (Lk 4:43). And for that very reason he called disciples to expand his own ministry and to carry it to the ends of the earth (Mt 28:19). Therefore, to be called by him means, besides being with him, to be sent out by him in a world-embracing mission (Mk 3:13-15). Discipleship — the continuation of Jesus’ mission — is our basic vocation, clearly stated once again during the Second Vatican Council in the Document on Religious Life (Perfectae Caritatis, n. 2) where we read: the fundamental norm and the supreme law of all religious communities is to follow the Lord as he presents himself in the Gospels. At the risk of belabouring the obvious, I will say it again: it is important to keep in mind — particularly in our present time and situation — that the return to the Jesus who walked this earth and to his message of the Kingdom of God remains the only valid starting point to regain or reaffirm our basic vocation. This holds true for us religious as well, since it is discipleship that unites us all — no matter to which congregation or movement we belong. From the three basic characteristic elements of religious life: 1) to follow the Lord: 2) in the setting of group-charism; 3) and to do this today in our age and our concrete situation. Number one is and remains the most essential of all. Discipleship alone bestows on us our true identity and constitutes the essence of our mission. Therefore, all our deliberations this week about “Mission and Money” must be done in the light of our basic call. If we do so, we will not approach the topic from a purely human viewpoint — as necessary as that may be — but rather from our commitment to the Lord who told those who dared to follow him: You cannot serve God and money. Let me single out three fundamental non-negotiable presuppositions which determine the essence of discipleship. They are: • First, the fundamental achievement of Jesus concerning the true image of God, of myself and of my neighbour; [pp. 101-110] 2006/102 • Second, the principle motive for action in my life: Justice and compassion; • Third, the fundamental virtue of all virtues which Jesus demanded from anyone who seriously wanted to follow him: the Spirit of poverty. I. Jesus changed the three basic human relationships: to God, to oneself and to one’s neighbour 1. A Change in the traditional image of God. This has been called the “fundamental achievement” of Jesus. He revealed the true nature of God, and he wanted to convert all people to this God whom he experienced 1) as incomprehensible, unconditional love, 2) as all-forgiving and 3) as compassionately present to us in a love that suffers rather than condemns. This shift in the God-image has been seen as the “most revolutionary change in the whole history of religions” (Eugen Biser). The Pope in his first Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, returned to this image without any reservations or qualifying statements. God’s love is even greater than his justice: “God’s passionate love for his people — for humanity — is at the same time a forgiving love.