This Ignatian Life

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Where Do You Draw the Line

September 21, 2009 By: plickteig Category: Paul's Posts Comments Off

I have recently started studying Theology again. In the course of my reading this week I came across an article about Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day. These two, founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, were often accused of being socialists, communists, anarchists, and agitators. What struck me about the article was not that people living 60 and 70 years ago were still using the same labels to incriminate others as they are today (though I did find that fascinating). Rather, I was struck by the simple, dogged determination of two people who, it can be argued, helped change the way that our nation looks at the issue of homelessness and human dignity. What’s more, their mission was not to make everybody become an affiliate of radical ideology bent on destroying society, though this is what they were accused of. Instead, they desired to spread the gospel.

Peter and Dorothy believed that their mission was to give life to the words of scripture. It was one thing for them to express their faith by going to church and receiving the sacraments, but they came to believe that there was a necessary connection between the table around which we celebrate Eucharist, and the table of human fellowship. Their critique was simple – the Church certainly had the goods with regard to doctrine and revelation of the faith. However, many Catholics was sorely lacking in their expression of that faith with regard to the care and concern we give to the poor, or those people that we deem undesirable for whatever reason (lazy, ignorant, immoral, etc.). If Christianity is about finding ways to draw people into communion, then both Dorothy and Peter believed there was a definite rift between words and deeds, and it was their hope to be able to bridge that gap. Thus, the two were about dialogue and resistance. The dialogue occurred between people with differing ideologies both inside and outside of the Church. Resistance was offered against those within the Church who neglected what is now termed the “preferential option for the poor,” and those outside of the Church who supported social structures and ways of life that limited a true expression of human dignity and compassion. Their mission was about care for others and they went to great lengths to embody this care.

While this breakdown is somewhat simplistic, what strikes me about the nature of our faith is that the rituals, dogma and doctrine are all oriented towards drawing us into a deeper relationship with God and, through that experience, into a greater sense of care for our neighbor. Dorothy and Peter were radical, to be sure, but the rationale of their radical deeds was to care for those in need as members of the Body of Christ. They catechized those who were ignorant. They helped people find work and food. They protested injustice and worked, personally, with those that were deemed undesirable. They did use methods that created conflict and agitation, and it is even true that their words were somehow similar to those of the era’s more radical political movements. Similar, though, is hardly the same, especially when one considers that the nature of the “radical ideology” that they professed was not about limiting the human person, but attempting to allow all people to have a sense of the dignity that social connectedness and material security can encourage. While their methods were categorized according to the social theory of the day, these categories were limited because they did not allow for the infinite capacity of God’s Spirit to be at work. After all, it was not only about money and community, but offering all people a sense of shared dignity as children of God. Truly, it was only the Spirit of God that would enable such deeds to be a success.

This leads me to the realization that sharing with others, caring for all people, is a choice. However, as a Christian it is the choice that I am asked to make. If I take seriously the truth that we are all part of the body of Christ, and that Christ is present in all people, I see many ways that I care for people, and ways that people care for me. However, I also see the way I draw lines between myself and others. I see the “other” and I see my desires and I say, “God, I will do this much for that person, but no more.” While some of this is healthy (I do need to eat, sleep, and reflect on experience, etc.) I find that the deeper I go into my understanding of God’s presence in my life, the more I have to consider moving the line. When I draw a line and say “I will do this for you, God, but no more!” I feel God standing just on the other side saying in a gentle way “Just a little further. You need a rest? Sure. When you are ready. But I want you to continue.” This is what I see in Peter, Dorothy, and many, if not all, saints. It is not that they began great, but that they were willing to continue growing. They continued to move the line. And to be honest, their example frightens me. They were radical. However, what made them radical was not just the ideology (which we have all heard in scripture and expressed in prayer a thousand times), but their willingness to act on it in a way that moved them outside of the boundaries they, and culture, had become comfortable with, into a place of deeper union with God.


Photo: “lines in the sand…” by Mateo from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Just Words

May 22, 2009 By: plickteig Category: Paul's Posts Comments Off

A number of years ago I came to believe in an absolute kind of way that God Is and that all things exist through Him. Prior to this time, I had believed in a God, sort of.  I was somewhat conscientious and observant of my own selective moral code.  That is, while I sometimes did the things that I considered morally relevant in the Church’s teaching, I usually did what I thought I could get away with. I went to Church and I said the words. I knew the prayers well enough that I could occupy my eyes and mind with other things.  I mouthed them like magical incantations that would somehow bring good things to me as long as I said them like I meant them. While I would sometimes reflect on the esoteric bits of terminology in the mass, more often than not, I would tune them out. They were just words. However, in one moment I came to believe in the God of Judeo-Christian history, the God professed by my parents, the God of a faith that I was sometimes at odds with and confused by (with rules that I found nearly impossible to observe), and everything changed. From that day on, I began to search for meaning in the words, for evidence, first in arguments, then in stories, then in practices of prayer and various spiritual traditions. It was this movement, finding the Spirit that scripture pointed to, that allowed me to understand there was more to our faith than just words.

Words have often been a stumbling block in my understanding of the Faith. For instance, I am not sure when I decided that it was OK for me to talk about Jesus, but it took a while. I am also not sure how I came to the point where I was willing to identify myself as a Christian without being embarrassed to say the word out loud. Even today I am still not one to talk about “my own personal Jesus” or claim that Jesus has “saved” and “delivered” me. Claiming that I know the person of Jesus, not to mention what he would do in a particular situation, makes me nervous. As for being “saved” and “delivered,” well, while I have hope in salvation, I do not have certitude. I mean, while I am certainly not the person I was before I began practicing Christianity in earnest, I find that my tendency to choose to do things that are short-sighted and self-serving still persists. I still need deliverance. Truly, to paraphrase a well-known quote, I am a sinner called to serve. I claim Jesus because I desire to follow, know and love the Christ, not because I have suddenly become a saint. I desire the good, because I recognize in myself a tendency to do otherwise. I live in hope of the resurrection. I live in hope of salvation.  These things, they are all bigger than the words we use to describe them.  Words alone do not do the Truth justice.

I have known fools, braggarts, drunks, philanderers, liars, thieves, drug-dealers and prostitutes, and I have seen grace in them as they have been transformed, learning to live, and love, in other ways. I have known people who chose to act with kindness and gentleness when they had every “right” to choose anger and vindictive deeds as their way of life. What’s more, others have known me as a failure, and they have still offered me kindness.  I have hurt those who I claimed to love, and been amazed by their forgiveness. When I have said harsh things, I have been shown gentleness by complete strangers, and the times when my own belligerence might have been on display, I have been gently corrected. In these interactions, I have been taught another way of living with and loving the people who enter my life. In this way, the message of Christ had less to do with mere words, and more to do with the living witness to the Gospel of compassion and grace. Sometimes words were the tools people used to convey their experience of God, but more often than not it was the way they followed their mighty words with even mightier deeds that revealed their belief and trust in the faith they professed.

Why do I claim Christ?  Is it because I choose to believe in the words of scripture like a child does a fairy tale?  No.  It is because in other’s deeds I have witnessed the graces that the words we profess attempt to describe.  These deeds, in turn, have given me the hope and desire to live my own life in a new way.  The longer I claim to follow Christ, the more I recognize that it is not what I say, but what I do that matters more. Over time, the words of scripture slowly changed me by changing the way I lived my life. As my familiarity with the words of scripture grows, so does my passion for living them out. I can imagine myself living in them.  I can sense the Spirit dwelling in me.  Christ was the Word made flesh, and the words that passed through history to change my mind that fateful day so many years ago were not mere syllables to be repeated in endless recitations of prayers in mass.  Rather, those words (revelations of the true Word) allowed me to glimpse a way of life that could only truly be witnessed by becoming flesh in me. I know the arguments and I can philosophize all I want, but unless I love, do acts of mercy, and forgive others when I feel wronged, then there is little good words can do. The Word must live in me. By allowing the Spirit of God, sent by Christ, into my heart to enliven my own deeds, I allow Love to speak more loudly than words alone ever could.

Photo: “Just Words” by dbwalker from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

The M-word

April 02, 2009 By: emiliotravieso Category: Emilio's Posts Comments Off


Around this time of year, we see lots of groups from U.S. high schools and colleges who come to the Dominican Republic for an “Alternative Spring Break.”  Many of the Catholic schools organize what they call “outreach trips,” “service programs” and “immersion experiences,” or else maybe “work retreats” and “pilgrimages.”   These names are all significant, and all of them refer to real values.  It’s also significant, though, that many of the schools seem to go out of their way to avoid using the term “mission.”

Meanwhile, everybody else – and I don’t just mean the Evangelical Protestant groups with matching t-shirts – seems to be quite comfortable with the idea of doing “mission.”  For example, the U.N. uses the term for its official visits to any country, and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist leader, uses it to describe his initiatives that run outside normal government structures.

What’s going on?  Why are Catholics so uneasy with “mission,” while the word has become common currency in secular spheres?  Perhaps many Catholics have become aware of the way that “mission” language has been associated (sometimes naively, sometimes not) with colonialism, intolerance and blindness to God’s presence in other religions throughout our history.  In this light, the alternative terminology reflects a healthy desire to encounter other people(s) in a way that is respectful and careful.

At the same time, though, we run the risk of thinking that euphemisms are a solution, without necessarily acting all that differently than before.  Another risk we run, even when our “immersion experiences” and “service trips” are carried out well, is that we might forget the centrality of mission itself in our identity and vocation as Church.

Mission is about more than respectful encounters with others; it is even about more than solidarity with others.  Mission includes all of those things, but beyond them, it is about the commitment to ever-expanding communion with others.  If other types of encounter can create awareness or bring help across borders, mission, at its best, creates new relationships in which all kinds of borders (both interior and exterior) begin to dissolve.

The challenge, then, is to responsibly recover the value of mission.  Far from being stuck in a Crusades mentality, many Catholic missionary groups have developed deeply respectful approaches – for example, the Archdiocese of Miami’s lay missionary group, Amor en Acción, is rooted in a theology of “mission-in-reverse” (see www.amorenaccion.com for more).

From an appropriate theology of mission, we have something important to offer.  Communion, the fruit of relationships built through mission, is more necessary than ever in today’s fragmented and increasingly unequal world.  Also, now that mission-language has become so common in non-religious spheres, perhaps what we have learned from our past mistakes, and the more responsible frameworks and practices we have developed for mission, can be helpful to other people of good will with different sorts of missionary projects.


Photo: “Content at Home” by jjoiv from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)