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| My experience of religious life and prayer |
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| Scritto da Chrispine Otieno, imc | |
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Introduction
Having been in the seminary for some years now and having had an experience of novitiate and short period of religious life, I feel encouraged to share my general view or rather a reflection on the reality of community life and prayer life with my brothers and sisters. It would be realised that the essay is purely experiential and fruit of reflection but not a scientific disquisition. We are aware that all that we think and believe can not all be reduced to the few lines written but at the same time, the few words tend to give a taste of the reality when analysed in their appropriate contexts. Experience of religious life. The religious life is a life of commitment, a life in the steps of the saviour Jesus Christ. Let me begin with the discussion I had with other religious. One day at Urbaniana university, I was discussing with some sisters and one could realise the frustrations or better the difficulty they face in the religious life. That is, being born in a different culture, formed in another and living in complexity of other cultures. This is just but enough complexity. The religious houses don’t contain ‘re-animated saints’, they are normal human beings who in a special consecration tend to follow Christ. An African religious author, Matungulu used to talk of following Christ in the light of his chastity, obedience and poverty. A sister pondered, how comes that there are many religious and even non-religious ministers that suffer from psychosomatic complications? One of us responded that such like diseases are caused by depression among others! The next question could be the cause of depression in consecrated persons. According to me, the society of today is moving towards auto sufficiency such that Martin Buber’s philosophy of I-thou relationships are ripe for throwing out and the I-it relations are ready at the doorstep. I mean that the dignified relationship that ought to be among persons is diminishing at the expense of “utilitarianistic or consumistic relations”. From my African background, I remember John Mbiti’s expression, ‘I am because we are…’, and allow me to assume that this expression ought to be vivid in any society wherever human beings are existent. A human being is social by nature, said Aristotle. The fact of human communicability has been stressed especially by the existentialist philosophers and even by John Paul II in the philosophy of Human person. Outside walls of Christianity, the teaching of kong fuzi(founder of confucianesimo) who talks of human heartedness(Ren) in the society, has more in line with Jesus commandment of love, “ as I have loved you so love one another”. For the religious, the love itself is deepened in the consecration and the evangelical counsels. Now, one may wonder why a religious may pronounce with his or her own tongue, “non me ne importa affatto”(its none of my business), that is, in a community where all come together to live a particular charism. For the Consolata missionaries, the founder used to stress the family spirit, whether it is actualised even today is another discourse. In fact, a sister was saying that in our natural families, when one falls sick or even facing other predicaments, he always receives the concern, attention and care of the family members. The puzzle is: this reality is almost limited in our blessed religious communities. One sister from Vietnam said, “even if you share your problem with one, you are never sure if tomorrow she will use the same confession to insult you or as a topic of discussion with others especially where there is deficiency of stories in a conversation.” Other surprises could be that a religious has lived with the another in the community but has no knowledge of his “surname”, in which case the surname is not the one on the passport. It is a language of the present world that I am busy, occupied, appointment, studies and others. The fact is that these excuses have no heads and even their tails doubtedly exist. I mean these kind of defensory responses are according to me meant to block the beauty of communication or Heidegger’s being with. However, this is not universal like air to be found in every corner of the earth. Once I visited a community and the people were eating within 5 minutes and moving out of the refectory with a reason that there were home work; the experience evaluates this with minimum percentage of truth. These cited cases may insinuate phobia and consequently, people living in the same community may experience coldness therein hence search for warmth elsewhere due to its necessity. This line of argument leads us to draw necessarily that an individual may be responsible for his own depression. However, the possibility for coincidental contribution of the community doesn’t also remain hypothetical. Moralists may confirm that a habit once cultivated pains to abandon ( the Gospel talks of plucking out an eye which may obstruct our way to heaven);and so many of us may misquote various authors for defending subjectivism and relativist view of religious life that already gives us comfort in our communities. One religious once told another in a religious community that Gandhi said, “ ogni uomo fa pulizia a casa sua”. (Each man cleans his own house) This phrase of Gandhi is true in itself in so far as it means self conversion prior to the societal conversion, but wrongly quoted to mean, “mind yours I mind mine.” Marvellous! I tend to think that if community life is well cultivated with sincerity and honesty, the living of the evangelical councels will not be any challenge for the two go together. Consequently the mission or apostolate will be enjoyable. For example, the rich young man in the Gospel was told to go sell his property, give to the poor and come follow Jesus; among other interpretations, I would say that for the man to consecrate himself to Christ, he had to have a good relationship with the others. Personally i am very convinced that without the grace of God i cant live the vows even for a day, however, putting in mind the relationship which grace has with nature, personal effort also counts for grace does not destroy nature.(The encyclical of pope Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Celibatus, has a good explanation on the vow of chastity, the role of grace and human role in celibate life.) My ecclesiology professor, Fr. Pirc said one day during the lectures(29/3/07) that ‘the Christians will less criticise a priest who misbehaves with his vow of chastity than of a priest who always wants to accumulate all for himself,’ that is, the infliction on the vow of poverty. I always remember with surprise, one priest known to me who at his transfer to another parish, carried with him almost all things because they were “his”. In the first place, the goods of the parish are never for the parish priest but for the portion of the people of God in that place, hence a parish priest is but an administrator. In our own context of religious life, we have to encourage the spirit of sharing and charity but always with care and responsibility. On obedience I would rather say briefly that real love for one’s own vocation and consecration will impel one to respond to this virtue, however some responsible dialogue is significant. In the discussion of community life the distinctness of each one’s personality should be as well underlined alongside other previously cited cases. Having said the above, we now turn to another dimension of religious life, prayer. Prayer and religious life According to me, religious life without prayer is like a human being without a soul. Since we know the hylomorphic constitution of the being of humans, we can imagine the consequence of the absence of the life principle, soul. Our consecration is not to material things but primarily to Jesus himself who is presented by evangelist Luke as a man of prayer despite being God; the precaution should be taken not to cling to the either extremes at the expense of the real “I”. It is common in some countries to see Christians enter the church chatting as if it were a supermarket and even during the liturgical celebrations the Sms and smiles are passed.in the same line, it would be more shameful for us religious to discuss whether prayers are necessary or not, in fact for a religious consecrated to Christ and even seminarians they can never be optional. In these years of my seminary life, I heard one brother lament that those psalms(in the liturgy of the hours) are traditional and so the church should walk with time. Without prejudice to this brother, I feel that he just lacked a bit of meditation on what the psalms convey. One just need to commit himself or herself to the office of the readings and he will answer his own doubts. The risk is to doubt extravagantly like Descartes who doubted even that he was thinking while thinking. One of the greatest crisis that apostles faced was the arrest of their master and in fact Jesus knew and insisted that they pray so as not to fall in the temptation. Once one loses contact with the master, he may tend to look outside the fence just like some of the apostles felt like going back to their former occupations because Christ was no more. Without the deep relationship with Christ, what value will my chastity, obedience, and poverty have? What meaning will the mission have? These are questions to be contemplated all the days of our religious life. At this juncture, I feel I should rule out the phantasm that young men or ladies should not be too prayerful as may be some of us have heard it said. I don’t deny, psychologists may be right that some young men with the fear of growing and facing their real self may hide in prayer. But this hypothesis may not apply to all descendants of Abraham for I think that spirituality is not carved from somewhere when the age is already advanced but it is cultivated gradually, otherwise there will be no real castle in the air. One just needs to look on the life of some saints like Francis de Sales. Conclusion. From our reflection, one may deduce that though religious life is enjoyable, the freedom to enjoy it must always be crowned by a sense of responsibility. Amedeo Cencini, in his book …on emotional maturity says that a religious is really free when after discovering his real self, learns to put Christ at the centre and from him draw life for his own self. I feel therefore that we brothers and sisters in the religious life and even in priesthood need to be faithful to our freely donated vocation so as to grow in sanctity not only individually, but that through our sanctity the whole people of God may also be sanctified. The people of God today are exhausted of hearing from “empty containers”, and being spiritual guides, we have to re-nourish our containers so that our voices may sound and taste smooth for the beloved brothers and sisters in the mystical body of Christ. May we always respond to the love and Grace of the lord. Chrispine Otieno Consolata Missionaries’ Seminary Bravetta (Roma) |
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