The Spirituality of the Order
The Path of Hospitality in the Manner of St John of God
PRESENTATION
In implementation of the principles laid down
by the 2nd Vatican Council, and more specifically in the Decree Perfectæ
Caritatis on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life, our Hospitaller
Order has been spent the past few years trying to help the Brothers and
Co-workers live the charism of Hospitality bequeathed to us by St John of God
to serve the poor and the needy.
It has therefore been promoting a pastoral and
evangelising dimension, placing particular stress on the need to ensure that
while making use of technology in the provision of care, we devote special
attention to humanisation. It stresses the need to enhance our identity while
respecting those who hold other beliefs, whether coworkers and those whom we
serve, carefully bearing in mind the bioethical implications of health care
today, seeking to respond to them in terms of the Church's Magisterium.
For many years we have been committed to a
reflection on our Spirituality, which we are now setting out under the title
"The Path of Hospitality in the Manner of St John of God. The Spirituality
of the Hospitaller Order".
For many years, the Brothers, and particularly
the Formation Masters and many of our Co-workers, had been advocating this.
Our intention was to examine our Spirituality
in contemporary terms. We felt the need to formulate it so that it would
adequately set out our interpretation of the manner in which the spirit of St
John of God should be lived today, in both our personal lives and the way we
serve the sick.
Various writers, particularly Brothers,
produced papers around this theme, but we needed one single reflection
expressing the feeling of the whole Order, today.
The LXIII General Chapter in 1994 addressed
this issue, considered it to be necessary, and gave its approval to draft such
a reflection. It was intended to be completed within a year. Chapter felt that
the celebration of the 5th Centenary of the birth of St John of God, 1995-1996,
would be the most appropriate moment to publish it. But as often happens, the
drafting took a great deal longer, far longer than expected.
Following the Chapter a Commission was set up
made up of Brothers from different cultures: Valentín A. Riesco, José Sánchez,
Bernhard Binder, Stephen de la Rosa, Rafael The, Francis Mannaparampil, a
Co-worker, Professor Pietro Quatrocchi, a priest and a sociologist. Fr Camilo
Macise, the General of the Discalced Carmelites acted as adviser on the part of
the work that each of these Commission members should be asked to undertake.
Two meetings were held with Fr Macise.
Eventually, under the guidance of Fr Macise, it
was decided to seek a theologian of the spiritual life to produce the final
draft on the basis of all the material that had been produced, incorporating
everything necessary to set out the Spirituality of our Institution in the way
it should be presented today.
Although we soon found the person to undertake
this task, he was extremely busy at the time, and he told us, to his regret,
that he would be unable to devote himself to the task as fully as he needed to,
in order to produce a document of this magnitude.
By then, six years had gone by. We were on the
eve of the 2000 LXV General Chapter, and we still did not have the final
version of the book, although we were hopeful that we would be able to complete
it fairly soon, because in the meantime we had given all the material to Fr
José Cristo Rey García Paredes, who had undertaken to pull all the parts
together.
After Chapter, at the end of November a small
Committee was set up to help Fr Cristo Rey. All the members were chosen on the
basis of their common language to facilitate the work. They were Brothers
Valentín A. Riesco, Jesús Etayo and Francisco Benavides. I also took part in
the various meetings, and in each stage I read the documents as they were
developed, and expressed my opinion on them.
Finally, with God's help the work was finished,
and we circulated it around the Order as an instrument for reflection, to help
the Brothers and Co-workers follow the spirit of John of God as we move along
the path that each one of us is called to take, thereby embodying what we felt
John of God would be thinking and feeling today, particularly with regard to
our service to sick and needy people.
This reflection is the fruit of a great effort
to portray St John of God as our spiritual Father from whom we have received
our inheritance, enriched by tradition, which we must take up with great
veneration and update by giving it new forms, a renewed zeal, in new places, a
universal character, in a globalised world which needs St
John of God's approach.
I am very happy to see how this reflection has
turned out.
It contains a first part devoted to Memory, to
our charismatic origins, describing the vocation of St John of God in these
four terms: emptiness, calling, change and identification. The path proposed
here is a powerful call to each and every reader. Enriched by the tradition of
the Order this part leads us to a conclusion which is firmly anchored in the
contemporary world, with a mission being performed jointly by Brothers and
Co-workers together, and a need for inculturation in the fifty countries where
we are present today.
The second part sets out the fundamentals of
our spirituality, starting with two biblical terms, mercy and hospitality,
firstly analysing them separately in their true sense, and then bringing
together everything that the Order has lived, and still lives today, in terms
of its spirituality. It brings us up to the present day, with what our
spirituality entails today in terms of humanisation, the fullness of our
vocation, and our being as Brothers who have consecrated ourselves like St John
of God.
The third and final part deals with the
spiritual path. Our spirituality is a path, a process, which as Brothers we
must live in the Community with all its demands, and which all of us, Brothers
and Co-workers to the extent that they feel called to it, must make it a
reality in our personal lives and in our mission. This sharing is an expression
of the fact that our spirituality springs from and lives within the people of
God, and that we are an Institution wishing to perform our mission united with
our Co-workers, wishing to share our spirituality with our Co-workers as a
possibility for their own lives, so that it can also be enriched by their
experiences and their values. This will truly require to stay on the move,
never putting down our roots, and never turning a deaf ear to the demands of
Our Lord.
Each of the three parts of the document closes
with a relevant reference to the present time, expressing the present moment
through which we are passing, and as a desire for what we are being called to
live in the immediate future.
John Paul II's Magisterium has constantly
strengthened the spiritual dimension of the Church's life and Consecrated Life.
I thank our Lord for what this book has to offer, we place it in the hands of
the Order, and which will lead us to think so often of our Father St John of
God, and view the situations we are living through and where we are called to
live our daily lives, in terms of his spirit. We need to be spiritual people;
we need to live our spirituality as John of God lived his, in terms of the
Merciful Christ and Hospitality, in our service to the sick and needy. May we,
like John of God, have the ability to set out along the path, to be travellers,
and never put down our roots.
I place all this in the hands of our Blessed
Mother, the ever-Virgin Mary, as St John of God called her, on her Feast as the
Patron of the Order.
The Solemnity of Our Lady Patron of the Order,
Havana, 15 November 2003
4th Centenary of the Order's
presence in Cuba
THE PATH OF HOSPITALITY
IN THE MANNER OF ST JOHN OF
GOD
Synthesis and Final Draft
by
VALENTÍN RIESCO OH - JOSÉ CRISTO REY
GARCÍA PAREDES CMF
INTRODUCTION
1. "The
work which that blessed man, John of God, so piously began"[1]
around the year 1538 in Granada, in a poor rented house,[2]
continues to advance; his spirit and his charism continue to spread throughout
our world after 465 years. Such is his fecundity and capacity to transform that
he is recognised by men and women of different nations, continents, races and
ages as their "spiritual father". Moved by his spirit, they carry
forward his projects to welcome in, assist, bring health to and rehabilitate
the most needy people. [3]
2. We
are not only passing through an age of change, but a change of age, in a very
real sense. The ways we thought, acted and lived in our immediate past are
becoming obsolete and anachronistic; old methods and institutions are losing
their effectiveness. The legacy we have inherited from John of God must not
therefore only be welcomed with veneration, but it deserves to be expressed in
new ways, lived with new cultural forms, and felt with a new zeal.
1. The change of age
3. The
change of age affects us in many ways: globalisation and localisation,
post-modernity, and the influence all this has on the Church and on the Order.
%
Globalisation and localisation: We are living in an age of
globalisation (the creation of vast worldwide networks); but we are also in an
age of 'localisation' (acknowledging indigenous, cultural, own values). Both
movements have positive sides. But there is also a downside. Humanising,
non-exclusive globalisation based on solidarity can offer previously
unthought-of possibilities for communion between countries, human groups and
individuals. A form of open localisation which is not inward-looking or
fundamentalist in character, can bring wealth and previously unimaginable
prospects to our world. Our charism is also being globalised at the same time
as it is becoming localised, and it is taking shape in different places and
cultures. We feel specially driven to respond to the Church's call to globalise
solidarity, kindness and charity, in a world where economic globalisation is
causing so much discrimination, and countless victims. We also feel driven to
defend the value of what is local and the individuality of each person,
especially those who are being sidelined by the globalising society.
%
Post-modernity: post-modernity is another distinctive feature
of the change of age. It is usually described as a common, globalised
"state of mind" which is present in one way or another in all the
world's peoples. It shows us that the age of totalitarianism, absolutism,
dogmatism and patriarchalism is passing, and the earlier Eurocentric view of
the world which tried to explain the control the whole world, is losing
momentum. The post-modern mentality is particularly strong among the younger
generation, but it affects all of us. It requires us to prefer humble and
fragmentary explanations of reality, and holds that it is more realistic to
introduce small rather than wholesale changes; that we must accept pluralism
and diversity, and show much more tolerance and hospitality to those who are
different, to the others. Against this background, hospitality and mercy take
on a new significance, and they also challenge us to translate them into
institutions and actions that are appropriate to our age. Post-modernity is
also a challenge to our spirituality which, consistently with it, is now being
defined more as a way, a path, than as a moral law or some abstract
requirement. Post-modernity is making us more sensitive to the plurality of
forms of human and Christian life, and it therefore opens us up to correlation
and communion. This is why we talk about a shared mission, a shared charism,
and a shared life.
%
Possibilities and dangers: we are being offered new and
wonderful possibilities, but at the same time we are faced with new and
terrible threats. We are entering an age which we do not dominate, and in which
we have to seek out new paths. At all events, the repercussions that this
change of age is having on us affects everything: spirit and body,
individuality and society, the world and transcendency. Relations between us
are no longer what they used to be. We are discovering new aspects of the
relationship between the genders (male and female), and relationships between
men and women are changing (both in the family and society). Faced with the
build-up of economic and political power, alternative forms of power are
emerging, which are threatening it (terrorism, mafias). Millions of human
beings are affected by this, suffering from the consequences of this struggle.
Humanity is characterised by amazing mobility - real or virtual - which is
preventing us from moving forward with peace of mind, towards a predictable
future, and is leading us into areas of great uncertainty. Economic growth is a
fact, but it does not prevent millions of human beings from growing
increasingly poor. There are so many contrasts and pressures on the human
psyche today that many people are being destroyed, depressed, and even losing
their minds. A substantial loss of "the meaning of life" and of
history is affecting all of us, more than ever before.
2. The Church and the Order in this context
4. The
Church is also party to this change of age. She is no longer what she used to
be.
%
She is
now more global. She is more multicultural and multiracial than ever before.
%
She is
conscious of all the possibilities offered by this new age, but she is also
exposed to all the threats and problems that a change of age brings with it.
%
Carried
forward by mercy, which is her constituent nature, Mother Church wishes to
welcome everyone in, and open up - in particular - to those in greatest need.
%
She
listens with new attention and a creative attitude to the words of the Risen
Christ who has sent her as a missionary to the whole world and to all ethnic
groups, to proclaim the Gospel and make Mercy present among them.
5. In
such an environment the charism of John
of God takes on again a formidable topical relevance which we have to
emphasise and configure. The Order has boldly and seriously embarked on the
process of renewal heralded in by Vatican II. We have reflected in depth on the
charism in our own age, and we have set ourselves new challenges and new goals.
This has given a new look to the charism of John of God in our age.[4] But we cannot stop there. Today we need that
creative imagination which the younger generations are best endowed with. Under
these historical circumstances, in our multi-centric and global world, in this
Catholic Church of particular Churches, the Order will be capable of perceiving
new responses, and new paths of the Spirit. In addition to the Brothers, we
also have other people who are knocking at the doors of the Order and who are
also aware that they have received the grace of the charism of John of God.
This is why today there is a new outreach to "shared mission" and
"shared spirituality", as the new definition of the Order's identity.
Today, the Order reveals a plural, intercultural and interracial face.[5] It feels that it is being called to offer
the spiritual path of John of God to men and women who do not belong to the
Western cultures, as has been the case hitherto.
6. The
challenge to be receptive to the spiritual wealth of nations and cultures,
without entailing the loss of the spiritual legacy bequeathed to us, is a new
source of encouragement to our historical charism, as an Order. The younger
generations sense a cultural air in their souls. There is a cultural divide
between different generations which we must not underestimate. Only people who
have continued to remain open-minded to reality can adequately understand it
and accompany the younger generations in their quest, and in their aspirations.
New and previously unknown challenges are emerging. It is no longer sufficient
to accept the charism as a legacy we have received. We must re-configure it,
give it a new face, interpret it in a more relevant way. We must "set
hearts ablaze" not only in the Order but also in our society, among
ordinary people and the Church. It would be impossible to set about re-founding
spirituality without the conviction that it is the Spirit at work, offering
what we so passionately desire as a grace to us. The Spirit is only asking us
to be vigilant, to be capable of welcoming, and to be receptive and willing to
take the new paths opening up before us.
7. The
purpose of this document is to offer
a number of basic elements of the spirituality of the Order, set in the new
historical and ethnically and culturally plural context which characterises the
Order today. We have therefore divided it into three parts:
I.
Memory: its charismatic
origins.
II. The Gospel keys: Mercy and Hospitality.
III. The spiritual path: the Hospitaller spirituality for our times.
I. Memory: Our Charismatic Origins
8. Let
us contemplate the spiritual path of St John of God. It will reveal to us the
original plan and the icon of our "path of spirituality".
1. The spiritual Path of St John of God
9. St
John of God was a man on the move, a wanderer: he went on pilgrimages and long
treks. It was there that he sketched out the route for his interior pilgrimage
and his spiritual path. John of God made his whole life a path - walking
barefoot and up a steep track[6]
- to reach the peak. Paradoxically he reached that peak by going down into the
depths of human misery and suffering. In his life we can identify four phases
that we might summarise with the following words: emptiness, calling, change and identification.
a) Emptiness: making room for Grace
- the first stage
10. After
a string of failures, St John of God experienced emptiness and discovered the
fullness of God: "God before and above all the things of this world!"[7].
He was a failure in his first adventures as a soldier, and like St Paul he was
thrown off his horse, threatened, and had no help apart from what God was able
to give him.[8] He was
a failure as a soldier, when a captain condemned him to be hanged on a tree,
because the booty placed in his safe-keeping had been stolen, and even though
he was not executed he was cast out of the camp, leaving him even poorer than
before. On his way from Fuenterrabía to Oropesa he complained that "the
world badly rewards those who most follow it".[9]
After nine years of silence, John once again enrolled in the army of the
Emperor to fight against the Turks. He returned from Vienna and landed in La
Coruña. Being so close to his birthplace he suddenly felt a longing to see his
parents from whom he had been taken away at the age of eight, and he was
greatly distressed when he discovered that while he had been away his parents
had died.[10] He felt empty. He discovered the
meaninglessness of life:[11]
"even were we masters of the whole
world we would be in no way better"[12]
and he therefore decided, "We must
not trust in ourselves."[13]
b) The call: to serve the Lord God
for ever - the second stage
11. His
uncle offered him the chance to stay in what had formerly been his parents'
home, but he declined, saying "I
wish to... go in search of a way to serve Our Lord... I therefore put my trust
in my Lord Jesus Christ that he may give me the grace to carry out this
desire...".[14]
And he went on seeking, but without finding what he was looking for. He
returned to Seville to tend sheep, "he
was not able to see where Our Lord wanted him to serve him", he was saddened.[15] He eventually gave up tending sheep, and
went to Ceuta. In order to help a sick family he set about working on the
"fortification of the city walls", and every night he gave the family
"his daily pay".[16]
He overcame a deep spiritual crisis with the help of a learned monk who
expressly ordered him to leave Ceuta and return to Spain. He reached Gibraltar
and made his general confession, in a flood of tears, John prayed for peace and
calm, and to be able to achieve his goal of providing the service that he
desired, "and to give peace and serenity to this soul". And this
prayer became an increasingly more generous act of self-giving, in order
"to serve You and to be forever your slave".
"He went about visiting
the churches to pray and wherever he went he tearfully implored Our Lord from
the depths of his heart to forgive him his sins and to let him know in some way
how he could serve him."[17]
12. He
did various jobs to obtain the wherewithal for survival, and eventually became
a bookseller, first travelling around the streets with his books. Anxious to
settle down in a new form of service, to perform an apostolate, as well as to
earn enough to live and to practise charity, he decided "to go to Granada
and settle there".[18]
In Granada he found some relief, devoting his time to his work, but he
constantly heard the voice that was urging him on from within, and he continued
to listen attentively to it. On the Feast of St Sebastian he went to the
Hermitage of the Martyrs,"sitting among the others", to listen to the
sermon preached by Master John of Ávila.[19]
And there the Lord was waiting for him.
13. Master
Ávila was his spiritual guide. He was very particularly moved by his commentary
on Lk 6,17-32 (the Beatitudes, and Blessed are the poor):
"No sooner had the
sermon ended when John rushed out of the place imploring and shouting for God's
mercy... He carried on like that until he reached his lodgings where he also
kept his shop and the stock... he began ripping into shreds the... profane
books and those of sound doctrine... he gave away free to anyone asking for
them for the love of God... Not only satisfied with stripping himself of all
his worldly good, he even began to take off his clothing to give it away as
well. Stripping himself of everything and giving it away... John once more ran
out into the streets of Granada. He was dishevelled and shouting out that he
wanted to be stripped so that he could follow the naked Jesus Christ, who
although he was the richest of all creatures, made himself poor to show us the
way to humility." [20]
c) Change: transformed by the Word
of God - the third stage
14. From
that moment onwards, John of God's vocation was defined as a naked desire to
follow the naked Jesus Christ, and to become wholly poor for the One who had
become poor for him.
"Some decent folk... did not
consider him to be insane as everyone else did. Lifting him up from the ground,
they... took him to where Father Avila was staying... Master Avila was pleased
to see such a tremendous demonstration of contrition for having offended Our
Lord in his new penitent...Brother John, take great strength from Our Lord
Jesus Christ. Trust in his mercy because he has begun to operate in you and he
will finish it...Be faithful and constant in what you have started to do...I
believe that the Lord is not going to deny you his mercy, so go now in peace
and with my blessing, and the blessing of God as well... John of God was so
relieved and found new strength. He wanted everybody to take him for a madman,
an evil man worthy only of contempt and being despised so that he could serve
Jesus Christ all the better so as to live in his sight."[21]
"Two respectable gentlemen of
the city took pity upon John when they saw all this. They took him by the hand
and led him away from the rabble and brought him to the Royal Hospital where
the city's insane are put away for treatment... The cures they used for such
cases like his consisted of flogging and placing the afflicted person into a
dismal dungeon... so that by means of inflicting pain and punishment the
patients might shed their madness and regain their sanity... they stripped him
naked and tying him up by the hands and feet, they flayed him with a doubly
knotted whip." [22]
15. At
the Royal Hospital John found the answer to his yearning to serve the Lord
where and how he desired. The experience of being considered among those who
had lost the most important part of what makes a person - their reason - and
feeling that he had been thrown down the deepest well of scorn and
commiseration, he recalled the path that Christ had followed to redeem
humanity: he had to go through the world of human misery and suffering, and
endure the scorn of those who considered themselves to be wise and normal, in
order to restore to health those who were travelling the path of sickness,
poverty and madness. He had to join their group, in order to show them that
they were also persons, sons of God like him... and like the rest of humanity.
"Looking about at the insane
patients being punished along with him, he said: "May Jesus Christ
eventually give me the grace to run a hospice where the abandoned poor and
those suffering from mental disorders might have refuge and that I may be able
to serve them as I wish." [23]
16. John
was "wounded by the love of Jesus
Christ". [24]
This was "the mercy that he had to
practise"[25] He
discovered the Path - the Way - whom he had so ardently sought and desired, by
showing solidarity with the poor and the sick, and experiencing and suffering
their same fate.
d) Identification: like the poor
Jesus and like poor humanity -- the fourth stage
17. He
began to embark upon the new and ultimate Path: he gathered firewood and sold
it. With what he earned, he was able to eat simple food, and give the rest to
the poor. His home was in the doorways of the squares and streets of Granada,
sharing the heat of the day and the cold of the night with the disinherited,
sharing their hopes and their sorrows. He decided to become a beggar in order
to help alleviate the sufferings and the misery of his brethren, calling out "My brothers and sisters, who wants to
do well for themselves? Who wants to do well for the love of God?".[26]
18. Seeing
the poor "turned away from doorways,
frozen, ragged and covered with sores. He was so moved with compassion at having
seen so much of all this, that he decided to do something about it as soon as
possible."[27] with the help of a number of devout persons,
he rented a house and installed what was necessary and "began to bring in poor people on his shoulders, and all those who
he found anywhere around the city"[28].
Jesus began to enable him to achieve his ambition to have a hospital of his
own, where he could care for the sick poor people, as his heart dictated to
him.
19. John
of God saw the hospital as a sacred place, the house of God. It was a hospital-home, open to all the
defenceless poor, without distinction, because God caused his sun to shine on
all of them, and where the guest was "the lord" and John his slave:
"For the city is large
and very cold, particularly now in wintertime, and many poor people come to
this house of God... we take in people suffering from every disease and people
of every type, so that there are cripples, the maimed, lepers, mutes, the
insane, paralytics, people with ringworm, and also very old people and many
children - and this is without counting the large numbers of other pilgrims and
wayfarers who come here"[29]
20. The
people were astonished, and failed to understand that "our Lord had sent him into the wine cellar to have access to his
charity."[30]
John grew in contemplation of "the
great mercy of God" and he himself became mercy and self-sacrifice: "he helped them all according as they
had need. he never once sent anyone away disappointed";[31]
"whatever he did and gave seemed little to him, and he yearned to give
himself in a thousand ways."[32]
The people said of him, "he was
always begging out of his great charity",[33]
"he always practised charity and
almsgiving"[34]. He spent whole nights praying to the Lord, "weeping and sighing in supplication to
Our Lord for pardon and to relieve the necessities facing him."[35]
John of God recognised that "the
things people do are not theirs but belong to God: honour, glory and praise to
God, because everything is his. Amen Jesus".[36]
This is why "whatever he did and
gave seemed to be little to him", [37]
because he lived his life imbued with the ever-spreading mercy of God who "had been so wonderful and generous to
him".[38] This
is why his greatest suffering was his inability to meet everyone's needs. It
was this that broke his heart[39] because "so
great was the charity which Our Lord bought about in his servant... that... he
became inebriated with his love. He never refused anything to anyone asking him
for something".[40]
For his meals, John of God "ate
baked onions or some other common sort of food" and slept on "a course mat upon the floor, his
pillow a stone and his covering a tattered old blanket. Sometimes he slept in a
trolley left by a cripple in a small alcove beneath the staircase".[41] In a corner, under the hospital staircase:
he lived in the same poverty as his poor brothers.
21. One
day he discovered that he was able to pawn himself, to give himself as a
guarantee for a debt, so that he could go on helping to alleviate all that
suffering and pain. He did not think twice about it, and he borrowed the money,
pawned himself, and the debts increased, and he continued pawning himself,
until he owed "more than two hundred
ducats".[42]
But his problems were far from over. The "needs and troubles... increase daily ... the debts and the poor
increase by the day.".[43]
The debts rose so much that the creditors used to come knocking on his door "they no longer want to give me credit
since I owe a great deal".[44].
He was trapped in a vice, and was being hounded the debts and the needs of the
poor assailed him, blocking him in a blind alley. "I often do not leave the house because of my many debts, and I am
also very unhappy when I see so many poor people... and I cannot help
them".[45]
22. In
prayer he discovered the meaning of all things: " I find myself a debtor and a prisoner solely for Jesus Christ".[46]
Captivity and commitment, which
were to become permanent shackles for him which, for the rest of his life, he
was never to shake off. Just before he died, he left the book of "these debts which I owe for what I
have done for Jesus Christ" [47]
in the hands of the Archbishop of Granada, Pedro Guerrero. And "feeling that his time had come, he
lifted himself out of the bed and embracing a crucifix, knelt upon the floor
where he remained for a short while in silence. Then remaining in that position
he said, 'Jesus, Jesus, into your hands I commend my soul'. Then he gave his
soul back to his Creator." [48]
23. John
of God was put to the test with pain and suffering. Like Jesus, he became one
of many demented people, but thanks to his faithfulness he was enriched with
the gift of true wisdom: he understood that the dignity of the person was
rooted in the richness of the heart; like Jesus, he discovered that the battle
against evil and suffering is a human need, and like Jesus he devoted himself
to doing good to all people, beginning with the most discriminated against: the
sick of all classes, sinners, prostitutes ... at the cost of being despised and
libelled. Like Jesus, he contemplated the world of men with gentle and merciful
eyes, and thanks to his boundless love, he spread love, and he became the
brother of all, and embarked upon a path of Hospitaller solidarity. Like Jesus,
he plunged into the utmost depths of human misery, allowing himself to be taken
off to the Royal Hospital. And in the Royal Hospital God continued to speak to
John, this time through the wailing, lamenting and despair of his brothers, the
sick. This is how Our Lord answered John's yearning and his decision to "be stripped so that he could follow
the naked Jesus Christ, who although he was the richest of all creatures, made
himself poor to show us the way to humility."[49]
Summary: John of God followed a spiritual
path which, from the disembodied harshness of being stripped, to the madness
with which the infinite love of Jesus Christ gripped him, entering the world of
poverty and marginalisation and reaching the basest depths of Granada society,
until, imitating his Master, he achieved a mystical identification with the
poorest of the poor, taking on their opprobrium and their debts until his
death.
2. Tradition: handing on the spirit of the Founder and Father
a) A Father and a brother in the
Spirit: the first Brothers
25. The
gift of John of God spread far and wide. His spirit was handed on to others.
His love for the poor and the sick attracted many others to his work of
charity. Most of them were benefactors who helped him with their alms, and a
large number decided to work with him serving the needy. A few decided to live
with him, in a new manner of following and imitating Jesus. And it was with
these that he set up a community of Brothers. The only rule of life he needed
to give them was his own way of living.
26. From
his own personal experience he knew that serving Jesus Christ in the poor was
by no means an easy thing to do. Those wishing to live with him and like him
were reminded in simple but stark terms that it was necessary to be willing to empty themselves and "leave the flesh and everything else behind."[50]
overcoming doubts and insecurity and moving forward "like a rudderless boat... like a rolling stone"[51];
he invited them to be aware of their weaknesses to avoid being carried away by
sudden bursts of enthusiasm, realising that in future they would have to become
"accustomed to toil and distress and
to the alternation of very bad days with very good ones".[52]
Time was therefore necessary, to discern
the call, and he recommended them to "strongly commend the matter to Our Lord Jesus Christ"[53]
and to take the path of personal ascesis, since it is "good for you to go and mortify your flesh
for a while and suffer a hard life, hunger and thirst, disgrace and weariness,
distress and anxiety, and misfortune; all... for God's sake, because if you
come here you must suffer all this for the love of God".[54]
He urged them to live in a close relationship with God, and to frequent the
sacrament: "Each day of your life
you should look to God; always attend the full Mass; make frequent confession,
if at all possible".[55]
Ultimately, anyone who wished to adopt his style of life needed to go through a
process of acquaintanceship and intimacy
with Jesus Christ, which would motivate them to imitate Jesus' self-giving
to God and to his fellows in love. There was no half measure possible. He set
out to achieve the highest possible level of love: "Remember Our Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed Passion and recall how
he gave back good for the evil they did him. You must do likewise, my son
Bautista, so that when you come to the house of God you can recognize both good
and evil".[56].
But he did not conceal the difficulties and the demands of this life: "But if you come here, you will have to be
very obedient and work much harder than you have ever done... not to sit idle,
for the most beloved son is entrusted with the greatest tasks and labour... All
this must be borne for God's sake, because if you come here you must suffer all
this for the love of God. You must offer God deep thanks for everything, both
the good and the bad."[57]
As his final criterion, which gave meaning to all the rest, he proposed that
they should aim at basing and focusing their life on the experience which
animated the whole of his love and work: "Love Our Lord Jesus Christ above everything in the world, for however
much you love him he still loves you more. Always have charity, for where there
is no charity God is not there - even though God is everywhere."[58]
27. He
wanted Brothers who had experienced the mercy of God[59]
which would enable them to live their lives full of love, serving to the
smallest detail, faithful, understanding, capable of forgiveness and
reconciliation, and united among themselves. In his way of being and living, he
handed them down an indestructible sense of security in the faith and charism
they had received. Very soon the people of Granada saw that the "Brothers were walking through the
streets, looking for poor people, and carrying them in their arms to the
hospital and on their backs, where they were looked after with great love...
Everyone knows that the Brothers gather up the poor in the streets, load them
on their shoulders, and take them to the hospital".[60]
The Order of the Brothers of St John of God was born in the Church.
b) The hospital spirit bequeathed as
a legacy
28. John
of God's first companions[61]
participated in his Hospitaller spirit and disseminated it. Antón Martín was
like the long arm of John of God; he founded and managed the Hospital of Our
Lady of the Love of God in Madrid which was named after him on his death;[62]
Pedro Velasco, transformed by God's grace like Antón Martín, his erstwhile
enemy who wished to have him executed, joined the Saint and imitated his life,
dying in the John of God Hospital in Granada. The mercy of God touched both of
them through John's testimony of mercy, and his wonderful acts of witness of
reconciliation and Hospitaller brotherhood. The other companions are referred
to by the witnesses as 'hospitallers' who lived at close quarters with the poor
and the sick whom they ministered to; they recognised that John of God was
their 'initiator'[63]
and imitated him in his boundless hospitality.[64]
Twenty years after his death, the Hospitaller spirit remained extremely
vibrant.
29. This
spirit has continued to live on throughout the history of the Order. Here are
those whom the Church has declared to be Saints, Blesseds and Venerables: St
John Grande, St Richard Pampuri, St Benedict Menni, numerous Blessed Martyrs,
and other Brothers whose cause of Beatification has already been introduced
(Francisco Camacho, José Olallo Valdés, Eustace Kugler, William Gagnon) and so
many others who, throughout the history of the Order have suffered martyrdom
and persecution for Christ and for Hospitality, in Brazil, Colombia, Chile,
Poland, The Philippines, France, Spain and, more recently, in other countries.
30. The
Order's spirituality has also been handed down through the founders and
re-founders of Communities and Centres of the Order: Brothers Pedro Soriano
(Italy), Giovanni Bonelli (France), Gabriele Ferrara and Giovanni Battista
Cassinetti (the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Francisco Hernández (America). In
more recent times we may remember Paul de Magallon (France), Eberhard Hacke and
Magnobon Markmiller (Germany), Giovanni María Alfieri (Italy) and St Benedict
Menni (Spain, Portugal and Mexico). The Hospitaller spirit has also been handed
on to our Co-workers who have taken part in the mission and shared in the
charismatic spirit.
31. The
spiritual values that have driven
this long history since the original experience of John of God, are:
% A profound experience of God's "grace" and "mercy", which leads us to recognise our
sinfulness and our need of forgiveness, and to welcome the gift of
hospitality granted by God with such abundance to John of God and his followers
.[65]
John of God experienced the infinite merciful love of the Father and felt moved
to practise mercy himself. Above all, he wished to contemplate the Passion and
Death of Jesus Christ. He expressed it simply and profoundly in these words
that he wrote to the Duchess of Sessa: "If we reflected on the breadth of God's mercy, we would never cease
doing good while we were able while for his love we give the poor what he
himself gives us... with open arms [he]
begs us to be converted, to mourn over our sins and to have charity first
towards our own souls and then towards our neighbour." (1DS 13). When
he invited her to contemplate the Passion of the Lord, it was to motivate
thanksgiving and contemplation, to enliven her hope in Jesus Christ in whom we
will find consolation and encouragement in times of difficulty and suffering, to do good and to practise charity to the
poor and the needy (Cf. 3DS 8.9; 2DS 9.19). And in John of God we see the
privileged place that he gave, and which the Order still gives to the Passion
of Christ in our spiritual path.[66]
% Following the compassionate and merciful Jesus:[67]
in Jesus, we discover the embodiment and the human expression of the God of
Mercy, the origin and the source of our hospitality (Const. 20); we follow and
imitate him in his deeds and attitudes (Const. 2c; 3a); we recognise him in the
person and in the face of the sick and the needy, lovingly welcoming them in
and helping them.
% Devotion to the Virgin Mary as a living and as the supreme model of hospitality: in the way she
welcomed in, served, interceded for and stood compassionately by the side of
those who suffered. [68]
% Harmonious and comprehensive experience of the love of God and love for our needy
neighbour.[69]
% Spiritual constancy when faced with obstacles: the experience of grace is such
that there is no difficulty and no suffering that is able to interrupt what is
done on behalf of the poor, the sick or the needy.
% Radiating hospitality: like John of God, his followers were also graced with a radiant and
robust hospitality, which invited others to participate in new Hospitaller
projects and to enter into a communion of charism and spirituality with them.
The spread of the charism was accompanied by the carefully planned formation of
the Co-workers, in the spirit of John of God.
% Caring for the sick and needy, as the Order's contribution to the one and
only mission of the Church.[70]
% Professionalism: the Hospitaller tradition of the Order bears witness to its concern to
relate the hospitaller mission to technology, science and the updating of
resources and facilities, in accordance with the problems and the possibilities
of every age.
% A spirit of self-giving unto death: one of the constant features found in so many
followers of John of God is that they unreservedly gave themselves to others,
to the point of offering their lives for the sick and needy. Heroic actions of
this kind can be seen throughout the history of the Order in different places
and times: epidemics, wars, dangers...
% Inculturation among the poor, or Hospitaller humility: it is 'Hospitaller minority' or
"kénosis" which led the Brothers to give up a life of comfort and any
form of greatness, adapting to live the humble lifestyle of the poor and the
sick.
3. The "topical relevance" of John of God's charism today: A
shared mission and inculturation
32. John
of God shared the gift that he had received with all kinds of different people
who felt attracted and influenced by the way he lived Christianity and his love
for the needy: simple people who joined him to help to serve, anonymous
benefactors, and members of the aristocracy who supported him with their
wealth, priests who cooperated with him to provide spiritual assistance to
those who were hospitalised, and many other volunteers, physicians and
individuals who cared for the sick with him and with the Brothers.
33. The
gift of hospitality in the manner of John of God has always continued to
spread, even to those who are not always animated by the values of the
Christian faith. The charism that has been handed down has spread with
remarkable creativity, giving rise to many achievements meeting the needs of
different times and places. We are becoming increasingly more acutely aware
that the charism of hospitality in the manner of John of God transcends the
Brothers who have made their profession in the Order. We are continuing to move
forward with a new vision of the Order as a "family", and we welcome
the possibility of sharing our charism, spirituality and mission[71]
with others, as a "family". This situation, which has only very
slowly gathered strength, is a challenge to us to identify so closely with our
mission that our Co-workers feel animated to do likewise.[72],
not only because the apostolic works of the Order, particularly in the
developed countries, have become enormously complex, but because it is driven
by the Gospel imperative to joyfully and freely share what we have freely
received from the Lord, for the good of the ecclesial community and for the
proclamation of the Gospel of mercy.
34. The
missionary Brothers - those working on the mission "ad gentes" - have
made it possible for the charism of John of God to extend far and wide, and be
inculturated; from inculturation we are now moving to the embodiment of the charism and the mission of the Order through our
indigenous Brothers. This means that we must supersede the ways we live our
consecration to hospitality in the manner of the countries from which the
missionaries proceed, and promote the style and manners of living it according
to every culture, preserving what is genuine and eternal in the charism. The
needs are even more significant on the mission, which must gradually move away
from the way we organise assistance according to 'first world' patterns to
adopt ways of practising hospitality in a manner that is consistent with every
real-life situation, embodied in the local socio-ecclesial environment, without
renouncing the Order's traditional value of promoting a decent level of care,
backed up by progress in science and technology, and provided by highly
qualified Brothers and Co-workers.
35. In
this way, while the charism of John of God is enriched by the values of every
culture, the Order will continue to be the critical conscience in places in
which medical and social care is lacking, and will promote the proper
development of health care and welfare structures to which everyone can have
access, particularly those who are most deprived.
II. THE BASIS: MERCY AND
HOSPITALITY
AS BASIC CATEGORIES
36. The
Order has expressed the charism of John of God in terms of two closely related
words: "mercy" and "hospitality";[73] we also find these words in the Word of God.
In our own age, these are two terms that speak to us of human values that are
highly prized in every culture. Here are a few reflections on each of them,
which are linchpins around which the peculiar spirituality of the Order
revolves. We shall be dealing with these three points:
% firstly, mercy, as a biblical and
anthropological category;
% secondly, hospitality in the
biblical and anthropological sense;
% thirdly, the special importance of
each of them in the Order's charism, bearing in mind in particular the New
Constitutions.
1. The starting point: mercy and hospitality, guilt and violence
37. Mercy
is first and foremost the capacity to show understanding, compassion and
forgiveness, and to be agents of reconciliation manifested through our reaction
to guilt and to sin. Human beings can act faithfully to God's project or decide
to act against his will, against human rules, and against the covenants we have
concluded. We can live in a manner and with attitudes that produce harmony and
self-development, and create an atmosphere of serenity and solidarity, or we
can do the opposite: in this case our acts of transgression affect our psychological
state and can throw it into disarray; we acquire an awareness of guilt, a sense
of guilt, and this affects us in every dimension of our lives. When
% we know we are guilty and feel
guilty in the eyes of God, we talk about sin,
% we know we are guilty and feel
guilty in our own and others' eyes, we talk about "moral" or "ethical" guilt,
% we violate a fundamental principle
in our value system, we have a guilty
conscience, and a sense of guilt.
38. This
is why it is not good to deny guilt, although it is not good to encourage
people to have a guilt complex which blows reality out of proportion and
disfigures it. Forgiving - knowing how to forgive and knowing that one is
forgiven - is the most radical way of overcoming guilt and sin.
39. Hospitality
is first and foremost the person's capacity to open up and to reach out to
others; it is also a reaction to violence. There is violence where there is
antagonism among ourselves, and we are incapable of living in peace, and coming
to terms with ourselves as persons. Interior violence makes us prefer conflict,
struggle, degradation. Violence triggers the worst in us, (our root sins) and
makes us more aggressive. The original violence was not all-out war with
everyone against everyone else, but the hostility of a human community -
family, village, country, religion, cultural entity - against outsiders and
aliens. When the violence of the spirit becomes a universal law, it claims the
monopoly of civilisation for itself, and fights against human diversity.
Violence exists where we disavow those who are different.
40. Religious
violence confesses "God is with us!", and denies the presence of God
in those who are different. Those who believe that God is only on their side
owe nothing to anyone. This creates sacred
egotism, "in order to exist it is necessary that the others do
not". This is why sacred violence is fundamentalist and homicidal in its
view of others; and it is also destructive to those who exercise it. Reaching
out and welcoming others, those who are different, and practising hospitality -
philoxenia as opposed to xenophobia! - alone can take on violence.
2. Mercy
a) The God of Mercy
41. The
supreme feature of God according to the Old Testament is mercy, and not
violence.[74] Mercy
infinitely surpasses anger: "In
overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting
love I will have compassion on you." (Is 54,8). The text that
epitomises the idea of mercy as God's specific identity is in Ex 34,6-7:
"The Lord passed before him,
and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no
means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."
42. Here
God is proclaimed as "rahum", the one who has a burning, maternal,
deep-seated love of the heart. This merciful love is totally freely given, not
because it is deserved but as a demand of the heart. Mercy is therefore
goodness, kindness, patience, understanding, and the readiness to forgive
despite infidelity.
43. The
mercy of God is always manifested in a situation in which the Covenant has been
violated. Mindful of their infidelity, the people, threw themselves onto God's
mercy. Violations of the Covenant gave rise to God's anger. But with the
Prophets (Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah) his threats were converted into an
announcement of consolation and to manifestations of mercy, a Gospel (Good
News) for the poor (Is 40, 61).
b) The embodiment of Mercy
44. The
text in Phil 2,6-11 tells us that Jesus "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness
of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient
unto death, even death on a cross.". The Almighty God set aside the
desire for power: "I am among you as
one who serves" (Lk 22,27;
cf. Mt 22,25-28). Almighty God did
not mechanically destroy evil and death, but took it upon himself. This is why,
faced with the suffering of the innocent or with the absurd episodes in life,
God always reveals himself as invincible weakness. And since God shows himself
as weak, he suffers with the human being. Suffering is the bread which God
shares with us. Divine Mercy is God's repentance, God's weakness. God's
weakness corresponds to the weakness of the human being. Our God always
presents himself as the first one to give forgiveness. By forgiving, by
practising mercy, we are doing what God did to reveal himself as God to us
human beings.
45. The
New Testament shows Jesus as the great forgiver, the great healer who forgives.
In Him the whole of God's mercy is present. Exercising such an exclusive
property of God, forgiving, (cf. Mk 2,7;
Lk 15) Jesus took the place of God
the Father. Jesus was concerned about people in their whole being, descending
into their very depths, penetrating their hearts, but without staying only in
their soul, and in their psyche, but also healing their bodies. "Jesus
himself was the therapy he gave" (Hanna Wolff). When he pardoned, Jesus
unleashed a process of total readjustment within the pardoned person. In Jesus,
mercy, not violence, was revealed. The Incarnation was the coming down of God
(God's kénosis). It was the sign that God is not violent. God loves weakness,
and made himself weak. Jesus did not appear with the absolute character of a
sacred person, but as "one of many" (Phil 2,7), as a person of this world. Jesus became everyone's
neighbour, without exception. Jesus loved all, because He is the icon of God,
and God is Love (1Jn 4,7). He
rejected all kinds of violence out of hand. Jesus spoke of his Abba not as his
Lord and master, but as his friend; not as a dominator, but as a servant; He
said that the essential things were revealed not to the wise, but to the
unlearned (Mt 11,25; Lk 10,21). The thread running through
the history that began with Jesus is bringing down powerful structures,
renouncing violence and efficiency for its own sake; this is why He so strongly
recommended forgiveness and urged us to forgive again and again (up to seventy
times seven! (Mt 15,22). Jesus was
the great educator who leads us to still waters, and teaches us how to overcome
violence, whether sacred or social.
46. The
hymn with which Paul opens his Letter to the Ephesians stresses the greatness
of God who, in Jesus and through Jesus, forgives our sins. If free giving is
one of the features that exhibit what is so surprising about God, mercy in
particular brings him close and makes him accessible to us. God is not only
given freely, but when He forgives He gives himself to us as a gift of mercy.
Being merciful is the property of God. God exercises his presence among people
by forgiving them: "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Lk 5,21; Mk 2,7). Jesus takes on the
frontline role which is reserved to God. The Incarnation of the Son of God was
the supreme manifestation of God's Mercy. His Abba is "the Father of mercies and God of all
comfort," (2Cor 1,3), "God, who is rich in mercy." (Eph 2.4).
47. The
way Jesus identified not only with human beings but in particular with the
hungry and the thirsty, with exiles, with the sick, with prisoners and with all
needy people (Mt 25,34-45) showed the
lengths to which the mercy that he embodied was able to reach. He received no
mercy and on the Cross he went so far as to say: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt 27,46). But the Son was nevertheless
listened to, and his prayer bore fruit in the Resurrection. He rose from the
loving depths of his Father's heart: You are my beloved Son. Today have I
engendered you (cf. Ps 2,7; Heb 1,5). He was born for eternal life
from the merciful love of the Father.
c) Mercy in the Order's charism
48. "Mercy"
is the key to the charism and the spirituality of John of God[75]
and his Order.[76] We
seek to be a living and collective icon of Mercy in the Church.
% The starting point: we acknowledge that we are merciful to the extent that John of God himself
and each one of us have been touched by the Mercy of God and have experienced
it in our lives: "If we reflected on
the breadth of God's mercy, we would never cease doing good while we were able".[77]
We feel that we are equipped and consecrated to be merciful. We wish "to
love Jesus above all the things of the world, and because of his love and
goodness to do good and show charity to the poor and needy"; we wish to
imitate Our Lady, the "Ever-Virgin" Mary in her maternal love (Const.
4b.c).
% Our spiritual objective is to "strive
to incarnate in ever greater depth the sentiments of Christ towards the sick
and those in need and to manifest these sentiments with actions of mercy";
"make ourselves weak with the weak"; to make our life "for them...a sign and proclamation of
the Coming of the kingdom of God." (Const. 3). Our vocational response
leads us to cultivate within ourselves an increasingly more ardent love for the
poor, the needy and for sinners.
% The manner which has characterised us from the very beginning, is
demonstrated through the following virtues: "humble, patient and responsible service; respect for, and faithfulness
to, the person; understanding, lovingkindness and self-denial; sharing in the
anxieties and hopes of those who suffer." (Const. 3b).
3. Hospitality
49. The
Order has traditionally expressed the charism it has received using the term
"hospitality". This word has not only retained its expressive power
to this day, but some even put it forward as a fundamental category of a new
morality for our present age.[78]
This is why it is important to reflect on the expression, as the hub around
which the particular spirituality of our Order revolves.
a) What is hospitality?
50. Hospitality
speaks to us about the relationships that are established between a guest and
the host. In these relationships obligations and responsibilities are created.
The guest and the host establish a mutual relationship: one cannot exist
without the other. The guest is an absentee, who may at any time become present
and demand his right to be given hospitality. Where there is hospitality the absentee has rights to be claimed with
respect to the host (the right to be taken in), and the host, who does not yet
have that capacity until the guest is present, acquires duties towards the
guest when he appears (the duty to take him in).
51. Why
are human beings hospitable? It is not easy to know why. But one thing is
certain: the hospitality relationship is not mechanical because the guest can
leave and the host can refuse to take the guest in; but neither is it
arbitrary, because the host feels morally obliged to take in a guest, even when
it is inopportune.
52. The
fundamental feature of hospitality is taking in and recognising the guest, and
recognising one's capacity as the host; but this recognition and this welcome
has a number of special features:
% Hospitality is virtually universal. Anyone can be a guest;
recognising a person as a guest presupposes that one takes a very important
step towards recognising all human beings as virtual guests. Anyone in this world is a virtual guest, or a
virtual host. In many cultures it is prohibited to ask guests where they come
from, or ask their name, as if this were a symbolic representation of the
absentee. Protecting the anonymity of the guest is the sign that in each guest
we see any person in the world. We have specific duties towards visitors who
come to us as they pass by. A lack of interest in their name, origin or lineage
does not mean we despise them, but that we willing to offer hospitality
reaching out to the whole world.
% Hospitality reveals a high sense of
morality and of policy. The guest is not only received as a particular
individual, but also as an ambassador who can be replaced, as a representative
of other people. Human beings therefore form groups and communities, societies,
nations, and each individual belongs to them. Hospitality therefore confronts
us with something of great ethical and political significance: taking in the
stranger, the alien, the other, the person who does not belong "to
mine". Hospitality is recognition of people who are "different":
we accept that the guest is different from ourselves. We give the guest freedom
to differ from us.
% Hospitality is virtually sacred. In many peoples there is a sense
that this "other person", the guest, is enshrouded in mystery. A
certain air of the sacred envelops the guest. The guest could be a god. Hosting
gods is something that appears many times in Greek mythology, in the Bible and
in the tradition of very widely differing cultures. It is said that gods
frequently take forms that are unrecognisable, and seek assistance from humans.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, Paul says that some have hosted angels without
knowing it (Heb 13,2). This gives
religious sanction to the right of hospitality: we have to treat outsiders as
if it was a visit from God. The figure of the guest is covered with ambiguity,
presented as being in an uncertain place, in which something important to
ourselves is at work. It is a place of fear and desire at one and the same
time. The guest becomes a symbol of mediation between two different spheres.
When the guest is taken in, a meeting occurs between beings of different
orders: the divine, the distant, the boundless, the inconceivable, is taken
into a human environment. This meeting sometimes takes on the character of a
violent breaking-in, which destroys the established order and upsets the
familiar environment; in some cases, it is also something disconcerting and
imponderable.
% Hospitality is an event. It is unpredictable and
uncontrollable. We never know when it will happen, or with whom. The host must
always be prepared, because the guest can arrive at the most unpredictable
time.
% Every meeting of hospitality is unique and brings with it care for a specific person; it must be performed
and interpreted according to the features of the people exercising the
functions of the guest or the host. The duties of the guest and the host are
general duties, but they are performed within a finite and specific horizon.
One may be willing to fulfil the obligations imposed by showing care for any
human being, regardless of the particular characteristics or features of that
person, by virtue merely of belonging to the human race. But these demands
always occur in the specific terms of a given individual. A host expecting a
universal guest, as the only one truly worthy of attention, rejecting all other
visitors who knock at the door, because none of them fully fits in with the
human condition, would be rejecting the possibility of the event of hospitality
taking place.
b) Hospitality in Revelation
53. Judaeo-Christian
revelation is particularly sensitive to the event of hospitality.[79]
It begins by telling of how God welcomed the human being into his Garden: He
worked for his guest (growing "every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,"); He offered
him food and clothing ("You may
freely eat of every tree of the garden") (Gen 2,8-9,15-17). The revelation ended by recounting how God
requested the human beings to be hospitable, too: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and
opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."
(Rev 3,20).
54. Hospitality
turned human beings into God's guests, made God the guest of human beings, and
made human beings guests to one another. Adam and Eve were God's guests in his
Garden of Eden. Abraham, and subsequently the people in Egypt, were taken to
the land of manna, milk and honey, and there they were God's guests: "for the land is mine; for you are strangers
and sojourners with me." (Lev 25,23;
cf. Ps 23,5;27,10). God was Abraham's
guest and stayed in his tent in the Vale of Mambre; then he was the guest of
the people that walked through the wilderness, and dwelt in the tent of the
meeting. Lastly, he agreed to stay in the house of the Temple: "The glory of the Lord filled the house of
the Lord" (1 Kings 8,10-11).
Hospitality opened the eyes of human beings so that they could see and
recognise themselves as guests to one another. Abraham and Moses felt as aliens
in a foreign land. So did the people in Egypt. They understood that the human
being is made for hospitality.
55. Hospitality
is the welcome given to each one at the mother's breast. Hospitality received
and hospitality given in tents, houses, towns or countries. Hospitality was not
not merely a question of taking in a guest, but involved "including"
of the guest into one's own circle of interests, protecting them against their
enemies, sheltering them, respecting them in the depths of their being, and
through the care shown to them as persons, meeting their needs.
56. The
icons of hospitality in the Old Testament were Abraham, who took in the three
men, the widow Zarephath and Elijah who showed mutual hospitality, the
prostitute from Jericho, Rahab, who took in Joshua's envoys, the old man who
took in the Levite and his wife (Judg
19), and Tobias who took in the Archangel Rafael, and Ruth.
57. The
New Testament is the great explosion of hospitality, where it reaches its peak.
Jesus is the Sacrament of God who welcomes us in, serves us and ministers to
us, who restores our dignity and our health, who identifies with us, who washes
our feet and dies for us. It is worthwhile contemplating the figure of Jesus,
for example, as depicted in the Gospel of Luke, as the genuine path of
hospitality. Jesus also welcomes the hospitality of human beings: the
hospitality of Mary, who hosted Him in her womb, the hospitality of several
Pharisees, of Martha and Mary, of Zacchaeus, etc. Christian spirituality sets
great store by the hospitality which sees the presence of Jesus in the poor,
the prisoners and the sick, and in all those human beings who need our
solidarity, love and service.
58. The
great Christian parable of hospitality is the parable of the Good Samaritan. In
reply to the question of the lawyer, "Who is my neighbour?" Jesus
answered with a parable. One might think that the neighbour was the man who had
fallen among thieves, the person in need. But Jesus turns the lawyer's question
around, and asks him once again: "Which of these three, do you think,
proved neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers?" (Lk 10,36). What is important for Jesus
is not the fact that neighbours exist, or that there are people who recognise
the needs of others. It was the fact that one can take on the status of a
neighbour by exercising mercy to those in need of it. This is why the lawyer
did not have to be concerned about going out to look for people in need, but to
make himself a neighbour, and exercise mercy himself, as the Samaritan had
done. In this parable hospitality and mercy are merged.
c) Hospitality in our Father St John
of God
59. John
of God made his whole life a project, a path of merciful hospitality. But
within this great anthropological and biblical proposal, he felt called to
emphasise hospitality to the poorest, to those human beings who were most
degraded, the physically and mentally ill, without any exclusion or
discrimination. For John of God, hospitality was the rationale of his whole
existence, viewed in that sense. It was this charism that he received with an
amazing and sometimes incomprehensible intensity. He took in everyone, he even
went out to look for them. He gave them the whole of his being. He identified
with others. He gave them his time. He discovered the sacred character of the
outsider.
60. His
form of hospitality was to welcome in and serve the sick as a brother and a
neighbour. His main concern was to console his patients with his words, and
then give them everything they needed. "In the morning, before leaving the house, he saw to it that they had
enough provisions .... At night when
the house had settled quietly down and in spite of the fact that he felt worn
out; he would not retire until he had gone around to visit each and every
patient. he consoled them with his kind words, giving them both spiritual and
temporal comfort.[80]
Loving the Lord in the poor and the sick gave him a joy which he was unable to
disguise.[81]
61. John's
charity was very creative. This comes out very clearly in one of the
descriptions of his hospital: "Since
this house is for everybody, without making any distinctions we take in people
suffering from every disease and people of every type, so that there are
cripples, the maimed, lepers, mutes, the insane, paralytics, people with
ringworm, and also very old people and many children - and this is without
counting the large numbers of other pilgrims and wayfarers who come here."[82]
He demonstrated it in the way he went begging for alms, which he adopted as his
apostolate, reminding those who gave that the first to benefit from alms-giving
was the giver. John of God excluded no one from his boundless love. Whether he
was dealing with the poor or the rich, it was a love that had its origin in
love of Jesus Christ and love for Jesus Christ, in whom he loved all men and
women as his brothers and sisters.
62. It
was St John of God's identification with Christ that made him a great master of
mercy: God gave him a compassionate and profoundly human heart. Like Jesus, he
taught more through his deeds than his words. He was not concerned about
drawing up statutes or rules for running things; he merely lived the gift that
animated him, to do good, to pray for long hours during the night, and to visit
one or other of the patients and to listen to all with very great patience, consoling them and giving to each one
according to their needs and possibilities. Like Jesus, he lived, loved and
served, giving his life for all. Like Jesus, he laid down only one commandment
which would shed a great deal of light later on when it became necessary to
codify rules in order to help to keep his spirit alive in people and in the
works of the Order.[83]
The Brothers who followed his way of life learned from him to take in, serve
and love the poor sick people with the deeds they had seen him performing, and
which were taken up later up in the Constitutions of the Order, to perpetuate
the model of Hospitality inherited from our Founder:
"Ensure that in our hospitals
that the service that we give to the Lord in his poor is agreeable. This means
that before you go to bed with the charity which is required you must cut their
hair and their nails as necessary, because this is not dangerous to health, and
you will also wash their hands and their feet and, if necessary their whole
body, with warm water prepared for this purpose; and when this is done you will
dress them in a clean shirt and put a cap or a cloth on their head, and when
the sick person is clean you will put him in his bed, which will have clean
sheets and pillows; and in the winter, he must be kept warm, and this is the
way in which the bodily care will be provided".[84]
d) Hospitality in the Constitutions
and the writings of the Order
63. The
whole rationale of the vocation of the Brothers of St John of God is to "keep the merciful presence of Jesus of
Nazareth alive" embodying "the
sentiments of Christ towards the sick and those in need", in order to
show that the "Christ of the Gospel
is still alive among men."[85]
Jesus of Nazareth is "the root and
the crown" of our spirituality.[86]
The Brother has a very specific mission and ministry: to represent Jesus by
serving the sick, and taking in the poor and the abandoned. Jesus handed on the
peace of the Kingdom to those who were tired and heavy laden, and liberated
those who felt oppressed by evil, by sickness, and gave peace to those whom he
found troubled.
64. The
purpose of the Constitutions is to offer a framework of a new spirituality for
the Order suitable to the new age. The Order realises that without conversion
and a serious spiritual commitment, it is not possible to carry through the
renewal which the Council requested.[87]
In its renewal process, the Order made a number of choices:
% Humanising care: the primary purpose of the Order is to defend the dignity of the sick
human being (Const. 10d; 12c; 23a; 28b; 43d).[88]
The Hospitaller apostolate is thereby identified with humanisation. This
reveals, simultaneously, the need to humanise the religious life and to enhance
the humanising capacities of the Brothers: "healing themselves while they
heal others". Unless we focus on the human side we lose the very sense of
the charism of servants of hospitality.
% The purpose of the Hospitaller vocation is to enter into a Covenant with suffering
people, which is the charismatic expression of our Covenant with God.
% It also consists of creating bonds
of brotherhood. John of God felt that
he was the brother of all: from the
poorest of the poor to Prince Philip.[89]
Creating bonds of brotherhood is one of the distinctive features of the
Brother, beginning with his sense of being the brother of those who suffer and
those who share with him the ministry of hospitality (45b; 46b.c; 23),
professionals, volunteers and benefactors, with whom he is called to live in a
Covenant to serve and promote Life.[90]
% Hospitality must be understood in
terms of a preferential option for the
poor and humanisation (Const. 5a)[91]
of our service to the sick and needy in general.
4. Rethinking mercy and hospitality in our age: relations with the
outsider
a) Relations with
"strangers"
65. Hospitality
and mercy speak of the relationship of human beings with their neighbour,
brother and sister, and with "strangers". This outside reality may be
a friend (communion!) or an enemy (hostility!), or the alien who frightens us,
or our own body as a scenario of suffering, or alienation as a result of our
own actions (cf. Rom 7). Meeting the
"other", the "friend", the "enemy", the
"alien", the "outsider" can lead to a variety of different
reactions: joy, welcome, solidarity, irritation, fear, curiosity, or interest
in the exotic. What we do not know about others causes fear; it makes them
appear as a threat and a fascination at the same time: a threat, because they
compete with us; a fascination, because the outsider awakens possibilities that
have hitherto been undiscovered in our own life.
66. Something
is strange or alien when it appears to be outside
our own environment, our own space, something that belongs to someone else.
It is something that is against us, something we cannot understand, unusual,
heterogenous, not available to us. Reality appears strange when it is held up
against what is "mine", "ours"; to be defined as alien or
strange, we have to recognise the relationship between both terms. In this way,
something is strange when, to a certain extent, it belongs to us: we recognise
our own in terms of what is alien or strange, and we recognise what is alien or
strange by what is ours. This is why the guest is not the traveller who comes
and goes, but the traveller who comes and stays: but he stays temporarily. The
guest occupies a borderline space. And so does the host who takes him in. The
space that they both occupy is not their own.
67. And
something is strange or alien above all when it appears to be outside our own time. Every individual
lives in "their" time. We might talk about others as being
"other times", other paces of life. Living with others therefore
means harmonising time and pace, harmonising the time of others with my own
time. Hospitality becomes something that is closely bound up with respect for
other people's pace and time, and not only a question of respecting their
spatial environments. Viewed from the point of view of one's own time, other
people are generally an inconvenience, people who bother us, and cause us to
move ahead or backwards. Other people are slower or faster than we are, people
who live in a time frame which, for whatever reason, is strange to us or seems
alien to us. Those who are truly alien are not so much those who live at a
great distance from us, but those who live in a different time from ours. The
person who is marginalised is not living in some spatial periphery, but
literally in another time. This is why hospitality has a great deal to do with
the ability to "waste time" or to "devote our own time".
68. The
outsider - whether in time or in space - is always the person who calls out and challenges us, who turns
up unexpectedly and inexhaustibly. What is alien demands a response from us.
Not responding to what is alien is also a kind of response: this neutralises
future questions and we thereby protect ourselves against an unpredictable
future. What is alien can throw our own identity into crisis. This is what
makes it attractive and risky. The cultural experience of what is alien always
presupposes a confrontation with possible alternatives in one's own life, and
throws down a challenge to what we are and have. What is alien is a reserve on
which to draw, to enrich and correct the limitations of our own positions.
Durkheim, in this connection, said that the moral quality of a culture is
measured in terms of its relationship with the outsider. What we respond to
always exceeds what we offer as a response.
b)
Apprenticeship in hospitality and mercy
69. Hospitality
understood in this way, and mercy as love and non-violence, demonstrate to us
the fundamental truths of the human being. People discover themselves by going
out to meet other people. Self-discovery is an inter-subjective act. We know
our rights and our duties to the extent that we go out to meet others.
Discovering oneself to be a guest or a host, as someone who is taken in or
someone who takes others in, means discovering an identity which gives rise to
obligations and responsibilities. Individuals only become persons through the
approval or the disapproval of others.
70. The
words of Merleau-Ponty are very eloquent in this regard: "Learning to
consider one's own as alien, and the alien as one's own". This is achieved
by learning to practise a type of hospitality and mercy which is not enslaving
or indifferent, but which is capable of living with what is heterogenous, and
which knows how to rise above one's own and others' contingencies. We learn hospitality
and mercy by growing accustomed to taking an interest in other people,
outsiders, respecting them and trying to take on board their peculiarities.
c) On a mission of mercy and
hospitality "today"
71. Under
the present conditions of life, it is very easy to travel, and our experience
of otherness and alien things is becoming increasingly more frequent in the
experience of human beings. There are massive waves of immigration and
emigration. We are living in a society on the move, a globalising and
globalised society. We are living in multicultural societies which make us
discover and experience pluralism. This demands tolerance of others, of aliens.
This situation enables us to see that no compact, homogeneous groups exist, and
that there are no more any clearly defined and clearly delimited realities
anymore. We are surprised when we see how our own things become alien, and what
was initially alien enters our own environment. Complex societies require
greater sensitivity in order to deal with all the situations of exclusion
created by the excessive demand for our own identity or which stem from any
social order. In contemporary society there is a loss of "gravity" in
its members. They are less bound than before to the "weight" of a
territory. They are less easy to control. They live more loosely and with
greater interdependence. We are living in a scenario in which there is little
point in emphasising identity as if it were something well-defined, once and
for all. Today we find it better to talk about a "complex identity"
(Amin Maalouf). It is on the basis of the alien and the outsider that we can
better understand our own.
72. The
perverse situations of our world are also well-known. We know that the number
of poor and marginalised people is not declining, but growing, despite the new
technologies and the processes of globalisation. The sacred view of the human
being is giving way to idols before which modern societies bow and pay tribute.
The education which society offers the new generations (through the mass media
and the socio-economic environment) does not emphasise the value of
hospitality, but places greater stress to individualism and a materialistic and
hedonistic view of life. This mentality does not prevent or stop - and is not
equipped to - such perverse phenomena as the consumption and trafficking in
drugs and pornography, and free love, with the consequent loss of the dignity
of human sexuality, greater poverty and injustice, the outbreak of so many new
diseases from which thousands of human beings are suffering. With the
degradation of humanity there is also ecological degradation (water, coasts,
marine resources caused by industrial mining, air pollution caused by textile,
food and drink industries and petrol refineries, and genetic manipulation), and
environmental degradation (looting nature, the depletion of resources, the
threat of a breakdown in the ecological balance).
73. Our
capacity for hospitality is being sorely challenged by the population
explosion. Every day the world's population increases by 220,000. Rapid
population growth is throwing down new challenges: families are being uprooted,
urbanisation is spreading, available and accessible resources are being
unsustainably exploited to meet the huge needs of the population. In many
places and in many individuals, it seems that humanity has lost the sense of
the sacredness of life: fratricidal wars, violence against defenceless women,
the exploitation of innocent children, heartless capitalism which is widening
the gap between the rich and the poor. There is a huge imbalance between the
30% of the human beings who live in a world of material affluence and the 70%
who are condemned to remain in thrall to poverty and the deprivation of the
most basic elements in life. The cultures of the poor are also being threatened
due to a lack of resources, and by being seduced by alien models of material
development.
74. The
attitudes of welcome and thanks, service and solidarity (hospitality!) of our
contemporaries reveal all their splendour in so many institutions and
initiatives: voluntary services, NGOs, a wide range of different types of
social institutions, peace armies, movements working for justice, for ecology,
for human dignity, and for the rejection of all forms of xenophobia, etc. There
are also many peoples in the world who still preserve their precious traditions
of hospitality as one of the most highly prized values. But it is also true
that even among these peoples the value of hospitality is beginning to wane,
because of the even more fundamental value of security; insecurity caused by
violence, war, crimes and terrorism is so threatening that the traditional
values of hospitality are bearing the brunt. But within all of this world of
grace, the Order of the Brothers of St John of God is present, with the weight
of its tradition. The Order wishes to be able to keep pace with the times and
to respond with new vigour to its specific vocation, by offering places in
which organisation, professionalism, technology and humanisation can be coupled
harmoniously with attitudes and deeds of welcome, service, solidarity and the
healing of physical and moral suffering.
III. The Spiritual Path
Taking
the Path of John of God "today"
1. Spirituality today
75. In
the Church - and also in our world! - there is a deep yearning for
spirituality. Confronted by loss of sense and meaning and the accumulation of
what seem to be insoluble problems, and the frenzy of an age in movement, we
all feel the need to connect with the Mystery, with the Spirit which gives
stability and a reason for living and being. We are thirsting for spirituality.
The Church has tried to channel this thirst for spirituality through different
schools of spirituality.
76. Today
we see a kind of globalisation of spirituality. Inter-faith dialogue has had
marvellous results in this field. But at the same time there are demands for
the more local aspect of spirituality. Accordingly, a spirituality is being
designed with African or Asian or American or European features... At the
beginning of the new century we view spirituality in a more comprehensive
manner. Spirituality has to do with the body and the soul, the individual and
the community or society, with what is local and what is worldwide, what is of
local religious relevance, and what is of ecumenical religious relevance... The
same is happening in our Order. In the Order we have a globalised spirituality
which responds to the gift we have received, but at the same time our peculiar
spirituality is taking on particular, local features in different parts of the
world.
77. We
view spirituality as a process, as a path. We divide it into various stages.
Our Constitutions illustrate the goal to us. We have to find the path in order
to reach that goal, and we must find the most appropriate method of
spirituality for this purpose. The Spirit is our "interior teacher";
it leads us to the perfection of Love, of the Covenant, of union with God, with
our fellow humans and with the cosmos. In this life we shall never reach the
goal, and that is why the words of Gregory of Nyssa, in his "Life of
Moses" are so eloquent:
"Stopping along the
road to virtue is the beginning of the road to vice. ... Everything that is
marked out with boundaries is not virtue. With respect to virtue, the only
limit to perfection is that it does not have limits... The apostle, who always
hastened along the path of virtue, never ceased to press forward, because he
felt that it was dangerous to linger along the path... perhaps the perfection
of human nature consists in always being ready to achieve a greater good".
78. The
Church presents this same perspective to Religious in the document
"Starting Afresh from Christ" where it says:
"It is precisely in the
simple day-to-day living that consecrated life progressively matures to become
the proclamation of an alternative way of living to that of the world and the
dominant culture... In addition to the active presence of new generations of
consecrated persons who bring the presence of Christ to the world and the splendour
of the ecclesial charisms to life, the hidden and fruitful presence of
consecrated men and women who are experiencing old age, loneliness, illness and
suffering is also particularly significant. In addition to the service already
rendered and the wisdom which they can share with others, they add their own
particular precious contribution by joining themselves in their sufferings to
the patient and glorious Christ for his Body, the Church (cf. Col 1:24)"
(Starting Afresh from Christ, no. 6)[92]
2. The paradigm or model of our spiritual path
79. "Our hospitality has its source in the life
of Jesus of Nazareth." (Const. 20) whom our Founder St John of God
faithfully imitated, devoting himself entirely to the service and salvation of
the poor and sick (Const. 1a). Now we are
John of God: we share his gift, his faith, his sensitivity to human
suffering, his unconditional self-giving to serve them, his humility and his
loving creativity.[93]
His spiritual path is the pedagogical proposal offered to us by the Holy Spirit
to develop within us the charism of hospitality. Like him, we are people on a
path, wanderers and pilgrims in a globalised and enormously complex world. His
interior pilgrimage, his spiritual path to the lowest depths of human misery
are the best proposal for the spirituality of the mission and communion (Const.
5): a house and school of spirituality!
80. The
stages through which St John of God passed: "emptiness - calling - change - identification" show us the stages that we have to pass through,
too. We understand them not as a linear sequence of stages, but as a spiral,
because they are reproduced and repeated in each stage of our life. John of God
is converted for us into the symbol of the path which leads us from emptying
(kénosis) to emptying, and from emptying to service unto death (Cf. Phil
2,6-11).
a) Experiences of emptiness: being
uprooted to "be born again"
81. In
any journey, we leave one place to reach another. Setting out implies being uprooted: and what used to be our normal
state of life, our Lebensraum, begins
to lose its meaning. We feel like strangers in our own home. Thus begins the
process which marks the beginning of a path which very often leads us, we know
not where. We are St John of God, and like him we have sensed the emptiness of
the things of this world. With him we experience an uprooting.
82. This
experience is wonderfully reflected in the biblical figure of Moses and the
People. Initially, Moses faced life with the wisdom of the Egyptians. Little by
little, after a long trek through the wilderness, he discovered that his life
and the life of his people was being led by Yahweh. He therefore gave up all
immediate sense of security and the false gods, and in his life he welcomed the
initiative of the one true God who urged him to set up his tent, to walk
forward overcoming obstacles and barriers: mental barriers and feelings (fear,
the tendency to be discouraged, refusing to make the effort that was necessary
to achieve his promised future), which are stronger and more violent than the
wilderness and the rivers themselves.
83. The
spiritual path begins with an initial experience of the limitations of this
world and of life. Through the grace of God one feels the contingent nature of
everything. Nothing of what we see is absolutely necessary! We search for a
meaning to life, for a meaning of history, and all we find are partial or even
contradictory answers. What is most promising subsequently disappoints and
deludes. The lack of affection, the sense of frustration, disappointments and
failures (the family, friendships, study, projects that come to nothing...)
lead us to ask questions about the substance of the values which take priority
in society, and to seek those which can give our lives meaning. Even though the
greatest success may be eventually insufficient to sooth the anxiety of the
human heart: "You made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless
till they rest in Thee" (St Augustine). But above all Jesus tells us:
"For what does it profit a man if he
gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" (Lk 9,25). The experience of being
called, the experience of a vocation is usually the first step towards a change
of life. The voice of God is powerful and it silences all other voices. It
invites us to go "further still", and engenders a yearning for
something different.
84. On
various occasions in the course of our lives, we may experience this. These are
the moments in which we need to "be born again", because we have had
serious failures, either interior or external. They are usually moments of
chaos in our lives, experiences of death which seem to close every possibility
of moving forward. The experience of emptiness can lead us to discouragement,
to a passive acceptance of reality, to allow ourselves to be carried along by
life instead of leading the life and living it. Then it can also be an alarm
signal, telling us to go back and pick up our own existence with our own two
hands once again, and allow the questions and the stimuli which, even though
silent, were at least alive within our soul and let them ring out again.[94]
The experience of emptiness, of welcoming, borne with endurance, and not
superficially soothed, will enable the grace for re-creation or interior
restoration to work.
85. This
is the stage that Teresa of Jesus called the two first mansions, or which John
of the Cross called the beginning of the ascent of Mount Carmel. St John of God
describes them to us as an experience of death in a world of death, without a
way out. They are also the first steps in the spiritual life which John of
Ávila - the spiritual director of our Father St John of God - described as the stage of the unlistening
of the language of the world, the flesh and the Devil ("Audi, filia", I A).
b) The "call" and the
calls that continue throughout life: "Listen, my son!"
86. When
a person gives up living for himself, he discovers a mysterious plan for his
life. He is then capable of listening to the voice of God and to experience the
power of the spirit leading him towards "the unknown". The experience
of a vocation has been compared to being "seduced", or to an
"irresistible attraction". Jesus, the Son of God, comes out to meet
us, he cuts the path short and invites us to change direction and to follow
Him.
87. The call initially takes place almost
without our realising it. Happy events and moments of discouragement following
a sense of experience or disappointment, are the language that God uses to
speak to us. One thing is certain: it is the voice of God at a particular
moment in time that rings out in the depths of the person and removes layers
that enable that person to tune into it: "listen, my son, lend your
ear". Through contradictions or through the clash or the harmony with
one's deepest aspirations, the individual feels the seduction exercised by way
of life and of manifesting Jesus of Nazareth, and his love for the Father and
his fellow brothers and sisters. He experiences the urgent need to change his
way of life, to break with the monotonous and repetitive form of Christianity
based on practices without further complications, in which the person always
sought, almost always without realising it, that it would be possible to gain
the love of God.
88. The
seduction of the Mystery does not always take place in areas of pure
transcendency, isolation or intimate prayer to God. This seduction frequently
occurs, as it did in the life of John of God, when meeting the crucified people
of this world, with the marginalised and those who are despised. It is in them
that one can discover the face of God and the calling of God through them, a
calling which is unavoidable and which challenges us to the depths of our
being. In the face of those who are deformed, we discover the presence of the
Transfigured Christ.
89. The
call, the vocation, is a stage in which discernment is needed, and spiritual
accompaniment and support, and answers to many questions. The masters of the
spiritual life talk about the "beginning of the road", or the third
mansions. But here it is necessary to make a great ascetical effort which
enables us to adjust our lives to the life that God is proposing.
90. Throughout
life "new calls" occur, which deepen the first call, giving it more
substance. These are the moments in which we discover a new direction, when we
feel called to change mentality (metanoia), in which we feel the interior need
to be sent out to new mission frontiers. Responding to God's call under these
circumstances is as vital as it was to respond at the beginning. If we fail to
reply, the spiritual path is blocked.
91. The
entrance gate to the spiritual path is certainly the vocation, but it must be
accompanied by the response. The response is expressed above all through prayer
and humble obedience and service. St John of Ávila prayed "listen to the
first Word... only God who is the Supreme Truth" (Audi, Filia, I, B) 1.), "by faith" (Audi, Filia, I. B) 2.).
c) Change and Consecration
92. Whoever
knows that they are being called by God to live in the manner of St John of God
and answers that call experiences for themselves as a person undergoing a
mysterious and gradual interior transformation, as someone changed and
consecrated, prepared by the Spirit for a way of life, stripped, and emptied of
themselves.
93. As
he did to St John of God, God speaks to us through the cries of humanity
suffering from sickness, poverty and injustice. He awakens and strengthens in
us compassionate and merciful love, outreach and welcome, lovingkindness and a
sense of solidarity and fraternity. This transforms the scale of values that
had previously defined our lives. When we configure ourselves in Hospitality,
the Holy Spirit makes us capable of manifesting the special love of the Father
in our lives to those who suffer, and to continue in time the way of life of
Jesus of Nazareth, living in chastity, poverty and hospitality, cooperating in
the mission of the Church, and serving God in suffering humanity (Const. 1d;
2b; 7b).
94. This
transforming action of the Spirit is celebrated and welcomed in the liturgical
celebration of our Religious Profession (cf. ET 47; Const. 9a). In it we
recognise that God is consecrating us through the many events of our lives.
95. It
is not sufficient to participate in acts of consecration. We have to allow
ourselves to be consecrated. When this occurs, God does all the rest. We enter
into a mystical stage, in which God, through Jesus and the Spirit, once again
becomes the great protagonist of the life of his chosen one. The masters of the
spiritual life define this stage as the four mansions, as the change from one
ascetical stage to another, more mystical, stage. John of God did not
experience this stage in contemplative isolation, but in mystical contemplation
in the midst of his charitable, merciful and hospitaller work. He felt that he
had been anointed by the Spirit in his contact with human misery. That is also
our path of continuing consecration. John of Ávila taught how listening to the
voice of God led the believer to adopt a new vision, and to take up a new
attitude to the will of God, leading him to set out and forget this evil world,
and even his parental home. (Audi, Filia, II-V).
d) Mystical identification with the
poor, marginalised and suffering Jesus
96. Walking
in the Spirit never ends in this life. Its aim is total identification with the
Lord. The last stages place us before a transformation or an ever greater
transfiguration which can be described as a "mystical betrothal", an
authentic symbiosis: "It is not I
who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2, 20). The Spirit manifests himself and acts in us as
Hospitality. He configures us with the
compassionate and merciful Christ of the Gospel, in order to keep alive in time His merciful presence
(Const. 2).
97. These
final stages of the spiritual life are the ones that make it possible for us to
discover the secret potential of our lives, which exceeds all imagination and
all desire. Whoever refuses to be carried to this point is frustrating
themselves. These last stages are called "the last mansions" by the
Spiritual Masters, or "the arrival at the peak of the Mountain", or
the opportunity in which God feels captivated by the soul of the believer (Audi, Filia, VI).
3. Taking part in the Path of the People of God
98. Our
charismatic, communitarian and personal spiritual path is set in the great
spiritual Path of the People of God, of the Church. Where the spiritual path of
the Church appears in a paradigmatic, exemplary and pedagogical way is in the
sacramental and liturgical cycle. That is also our path. The liturgical-sacramental cycle of the
Liturgical Year is the great environment in which our spiritual path takes
place. Throughout it we enter into contact with the whole of the revealed
message. The continuing reading which
Mother Church offers us, day after day, week after week, is the best spiritual
food, and the best guide along the paths of the Spirit.
99. Vatican
II told us that "the liturgy is the
summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it
is the font from which all her power flows...
From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, as from
a font, grace is poured forth upon us; and the sanctification of men in Christ
and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are
directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible
way."[95]
This is why the daily celebration of the Mass, in the context of the liturgical
cycle:
% incorporates us into the sacrifice
of Jesus and to the worship that He offered to his Father (Const. 7c);
% expresses and performs our mission
as a Hospitaller family);[96]
the love of Jesus, which is present in the Eucharist, renews our Hospitaller spirit (Const. 30);
% the reserved Eucharist and the Real
Presence of Jesus in our tabernacles converts our communities into genuine
schools of hospitality.[97]
Our Eucharistic hospitality is the source of our charismatic hospitality. And
our charismatic hospitality strengthens and enlivens Eucharistic hospitality,
which we express in the daily celebration of the Eucharist and in the prayerful
welcome of the Real Presence of our Lord in our chapels.
100. In
the penitential season, as well as in the Community and personal celebrations
of Reconciliation, we celebrate God's Mercy, we recognise our collaboration and
participation in evil, we open up to God and to the Community and we welcome in
the grace that transforms. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is central to our
spirituality which practices Mercy and the unconditional and hospitable welcome
of others.
101. The
sacrament of the anointing of the sick
has always had a special place in the pastoral and spiritual ministry of the
sick. St John of God used it with great solicitude; the tradition of the Order
has retained it as the manifestation of true love to the sick. Mother Church
offers us the possibility to celebrate Jesus' merciful and transforming
presence with us through the sacrament of
the anointing of the sick. The Community celebration of this sacrament,
both as subjects of the celebration or as the celebrating Community, enables us
to experience the real and healing presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
come into the world of pain and sickness. Participating in the prayer and
anointing of the Church for the good of the sick is one of the highlights of
our spiritual growth as Hospitaller Brothers.
102. The
Liturgy of the Hours, in which we
regularly participate, unites us extremely closely to the Path of the People of
God. Praying the Psalms, listening to the Word, which is more effective than a
two-edged sword, guides our lives along the Way of the Lord, infallibly. This
is why we do not wish to set aside this life-giving pace. When we participate
in the prayer of the Church, we also enter into communion with humanity, particularly
with suffering men and women - the Church of pain. It is important for us to
renew our awareness of this dimension of our spirituality: we are the voice
that blesses, praises, gives thanks and offers supplication to the God of Life
and the Father of Mercy, in the name of those who are unable to do it
personally, or who have not experienced the joy of their divine sonship.
4. Participants in the Path of spirituality of the Order and its
Communities
a) Charismatic transmission
103. Our
spiritual path is the Path of the Order and of the Communities of which we form
part. Spirituality takes place through processes of transmission,
"contagion" and communion. This is why the Community is so important.
Hence the importance of the Order (in the present and in the past) as a school
of the spirituality of hospitality. We receive the charism of hospitality in a
Community of Brothers called together by the Lord Jesus so that we can walk together towards the Father and make the Kingdom
present in the world of Health and Care (Const. 26a). Entering a Community of the Order means
entering into a great spiritual tradition, and committing oneself with creative
fidelity to it, so that the Spirit can quicken the gift of hospitality, through
us, in those who bear it.
104. The
Brothers and those earlier institutions take on a new importance in this
context. They stand as the witnesses, the ministers of a spiritual tradition.
Contact with them is enlivening. Their presence and influence is particularly
important in places in which, due to the youth of the Brothers, there is a
danger of losing contact with our origins. The older Brothers and the Brothers
who have been given their formation within the Great Tradition have to exercise
the function of charismatic paternity.
b) Fraternal love
105. Like
John of God, we are called to establish bonds of brotherhood. One of the most
negative results of the secularisation of our societies is the loss of the
Brothers' social identity in our societies. We are becoming socially
marginalised, in the sense that society no longer recognises our role as
consecrated men. Yet all people need to feel that they fit in, and to be
socially accepted. The response is to find a membership group, to find a group
with powerful primary relations, where there is the social support needed to
strengthen our own identity. Our place of reference par excellence for finding the whole sense and meaning of our
identity, is the Community in which we live. And if, because of spiritual
individualism, the Community does not support this deepest vocational reason
for our whole existence as consecrated men, it is no surprise that there are
those who look for it outside, or who privatise this dimension, and try to
identify socially through the activity they perform (nurses, social workers,
etc.), reducing their community membership to the job they perform, no longer
being identified by what they are,
but what they do.
106. The
gift of hospitality prepares us to live and to manifest attitudes of outreach
and welcome, understanding, lovingkindness and service first and foremost
within our own Community (Const. 36b). The mercy we experience encourages us to
appreciate the value of the other Brothers, as persons who have received the
same gift, and to develop bonds of communion which the Spirit has established
among us, to be signs and witnesses of the fact that differences of age,
culture and ethnic origin all become relative when the relationship is
established based on the values that support coexistence within humanity:
appreciating the value of others, and accepting them for what they are.
107. The
sense of the sign of brotherhood in communion remains as topical and as
vigorous as Jesus wished it to be: it is an invitation to grow in Him as the
One who has been sent by the Father, and the sign that we are his disciples
(cf. Jn 13,35; 17,21; Const. 26b).
The possibility of being a sign to society lies above all in the capacity to
establish communion between the Brothers, in fraternal love. This is always seen
as a Gospel value: "fraternal communion is a theological space, before it
is an instrument for a specific mission, in which we can experience the
mystical presence of the Risen Lord" (cf. Mt 18,20; VC 42).
c) Sharing the experience of God and
discerning His will as a Community
108. The
community of merciful hospitality is the ideal environment for our
spirituality. It is, and it is called to be a biocoenosis, a biotope, a place
where people live and grow. The Community will be a "school of
spirituality" to the extent that the Brothers realise and appreciate the
fact that the deepest reason that we have to come to know one another and live
together is our personal experience of God, and that "our community is, because of its nature, the specially favoured place
where the experience of God should be able to reach its fullness and be
communicated to others." (Const. 27; cf. P.C.15). This makes it
urgently necessary to overcome the tendency towards individualism in our
interior life, and to encourage communion in the spirit, dialogue and meetings
so that we can share the faith, our difficulties and the means which help us to
live that faith. We must be committed and make the effort to moving ahead along
this path together, and to practise mutual assistance, fraternal correction,
while communicating our experiences of God to one another.
109. The
liturgical celebrations, common prayer and community meetings are opportunities
in which, led by the Spirit, and welcoming Christ as the centre and hub of our
assemblies, we can and must practise communication and dialogue at the level of
faith, reviewing and evaluating out lives and seeking to welcome in the will of
God for the Community and for each Brother (cf. Const. 38, 3).
110. A
Hospitaller Community is called in particular to be a community which is expert
in spiritual discernment. Perhaps this is one of the aspects that we might
develop more than others in the future. Discerning the good spirit is something
that ranges far beyond mere acute intellectual insight. In this regard no one
may consider themselves superior to anyone else. In discernment, a community
places itself humbly before God with the desire to discover his will. This is
why discernment demands prayer, listening to God and to the Brothers, mindful
that God usually reveals his mysteries to the most simple, the poor and the
young.
d) A Community on a mission of
hospitality
111. The
mission of hospitality - which is central to the life of the Order - is present
and embodied in the local community. Communion and mission require each other
and complete one another (cf. Const. 41a; 43c).
112. We
do not act on a personal basis: the Community sends us, and at the same time it
supports us and makes us credible as Brothers of St John of God (cf. Const.
43c). In the Community, all the Brothers are committed to proclaiming the
Gospel to the poor and the sick. Not all of us can devote ourselves to serving
them, of course, but all of us participate in what the other Brothers are
doing, who themselves are animated and encouraged by those who do not perform
professional work due to age, sickness, or their official duties elsewhere.
This sense of communion on the mission has to be cultivated and lived, mainly
in places where the average age of the Brothers is high and social and labour
requirements make it impossible to continue performing the professional duties
that are specific to our service to the sick and needy.
113. We
have been called through Hospitality to create a community of apostolic life
(Const. 5b; cf. Mk 3,13-14). It is on the mission that our community reaches
its full sense and meaning (Const. 41a) and where the fruit of our meeting with
God and with our Brothers is manifested. It is on the mission that the transfiguration of our identity as
believers is made visible and where the compassionate and merciful Christ of
the Gospel is made present and is actualised. He becomes hospitality, service
and self-giving to the sick and needy in us and through us (Const. 2c; 5a).
What makes our identity is not any one level of our life taken separately from
the others. Transformation is the fruit of the gift of Hospitality (Const. 2b).
This means that we cannot separate our apostolic work from our prayer life, and
our fraternal life in community, and we cannot imagine that it is thanks to our
activities and our work that we have performed that places us in the presence
of Christ. Hospitality makes us apostles, and we become apostles when we act
professionally, fully exercising our skills and talents, and also when our age
or other restrictions prevent us from being by the side of the sick and the
poor in order to serve, heal and minister to them, because our constituent
feature is being hospitality, from
which actions and activities of hospitality flow.
114. Performing
apostolic work does not entail suspending community life (Const. 43c). On the
contrary, community life is very powerfully expressed in the dispersal of its
members which is demanded by the need to show mercy and hospitality to the
needy; it forms part of our spirituality to be aware of the bonds which unite
us all, scattered in many different places. We have to live together at a
distance, by participating in our community's spiritual programme. We must
never feel that we are alone. Being incorporated into the people is a very
special form of apostolic diaspora in hospitality, and of community living.
Here we demonstrate the fact that our community has been created for others and
not for itself (Const. 5b; 41a).
e) A community with a sense of
Church
115. We
must never forget that we are members of communities that belong to the great
community which is the Church, and the particular Churches, with their Pastors.
For this reason we therefore let ourselves be led by her spiritual promptings, her
Magisterium, and by the unforeseeable action of the Spirit in her and we
cooperate in her mission to make the Kingdom present (Const. 1d; 5a; 41a),
mindful that the Church of Jesus would be incomplete without the witness of the
service to charity and the mission of bringing health. The apostolic works of
the Order are called to be environments in which we publicly confess, proclaim
and practise Christian love, just as the parish is the place where we publicly
confess and celebrate the faith.[98]
116. Communion
with the Church quickens the Brothers' vocation as a "compassionate and
merciful priest" in the manner of Jesus (cf. Const. 7c; 30b): incorporated
into the suffering people, he offers the Father the worship of the giving of
his own existence and of the existence of the poor and sick; he is also the
prophet of the God of Mercy who came down to the world of the poor to show them
his love and to denounce situations of social or structural injustice; the
Brother, in the Church, embodies the mandate of Jesus who manifested his
self-giving in love to the very end, by kneeling down before his disciples to
wash their feet, and sending them out to perpetuate the practice of hospitality
and service so that his permanent presence in the Eucharist is not merely a
rite which is repeated, but a memorial of his self-giving in order to
communicate life and place the life of his brothers, humanity, at the same
level of dignity (cf. Jn 13,1-17; Lk 22,17-21).
5. Our "personal" way of spirituality
117. It
is not enough to follow and share the path or way of the People of God. Each
one of us is a unique being, an irrepeatable person. Along the spiritual path
there is also an individual dimension in which no one can replace us and which
falls under our absolute and personal responsibility which we cannot delegate.
a) Personal prayer as a path of
spirituality
118. "The
prime source of our charitable mission is the Father's merciful love (cf. 1 Jn 4, 10-11). This means that on both
the personal and community levels we must, in the dialogue of prayer, work
towards the integration of interior life and apostolic activity, that we may be
capable of living love of God in harmony with service of our brethren"
(Const. 28a). In prayer, Jesus wished to perform wonders of mercy for us (St
Benedict Menni). He bends over us in our weakness, He looks at us with infinite
gentleness, He holds us with all the love of his heart just as He leaned over
the bed of the sick, and just as He looked into the eyes of the children and
the sinners, and welcomed in Mary Magdalene, Zacchaeus and Peter. In prayer we
are called to allow Jesus to look at us, and to enable the light of his life to
shine into our minds and our hearts, to see God's will for us at each moment,
and to follow him with the obedience of sons.
119. In
our meeting with God in personal prayer, the Brothers realise the truth and the
dynamism of their path forward in the Spirit. A loving and regular meeting with
our Triune God becomes increasingly more intense and more extensive, until we
reach the stage where we pray all the time. The quality of interpersonal
dialogue with our God shows how far the Spirit has reached within us. It is
true that we do not know how to pray as we should. The Holy Spirit comes to our
aid (Rom 8,26-27). He guides our
progress forward in prayer, and he surprises us in prayer with his inspiration.
When our daily concerns and our work commitments do not enable us to allow the
life of prayer to flower, our path of Spirituality is held up, and we can
actually backslide.
b) A personal spirituality project
120. Every
Brother must express his path of spirituality in the form of a personal
programme or project, worked out seriously, discerned with his director or
companion along the path of the Lord, and as far as possible shared with the
Brothers in the Community.
121. The
personal life project becomes a manifestation of our continuing vocational
response. It is the best sign of the fact that we have responsibly taken on the
vocation that we have received and are willing to retranslate it at all times
into appropriate actions: we know that in order to be the family of Jesus, and
as Brothers we must not only listen to the Word but we must also put it into
practice.
122. Our
life project is our response to God's Covenant and is focused on the Kingdom of
God which is coming. Chastity, poverty, obedience and hospitality which
characterise our commitment to God's Covenant with his people, takes on its
full sense in the context of the Kingdom of God and the apostolic discipleship
of Jesus. With the practice of these evangelical counsels, the Spirit enables
us to prophesy against systems of injustice, the discrimination against the
weak, waste and violence. The Gospel charisms which the Spirit has given us for
the life of hospitality grow within the context of an impassioned mission and
love for people, which incorporates us increasingly more deeply into the
people, and their history, and identifies us ever increasingly with the least
of this world.
123. An
essential part of our personal life project is that we should be ready at all
times to serve the people as Brothers of St John of God. This is the most
evident expression of our Hospitaller spirituality. It is the spirituality of
self-giving, of permanent service, of unreserved outreach and welcome; it is
the real path which leads to the peak of love which, as was the case with Jesus
and John of God is achieved by descending to the greatest depths of human
misery and weakness, dedicated to
assisting those who suffer "to helping those who suffer (14), with those
attitudes and actions which characterise the Brother of Saint John of God: humble, patient and responsible service;
respect for, and faithfulness to, the person; understanding, lovingkindness and
self-denial (Const. 3b) showing solidarity with them in their sufferings
and their hopes.
c) Contemplatives on the mission
124. Apostolic
work is not purely exterior work. It is the sacramentalisation of the mission
of the Spirit and the Risen Lord. This requires us to integrate interiority and
activity (cf. Const. 28a; 103a). On the mission we do not cease to be with
Christ. On the contrary, it is then that we are united with him in an unusual
manner. It is good for us to bear in mind that "a constant danger with Gospel
workers is that of allowing themselves to be involved so much in their activity
for the Lord that they forget the Lord of all activities" (John Paul II).
One very important part of our spirituality is to prepare ourselves for the
service of charity, renewing the awareness that when we serve the weak we are
serving Jesus himself. The "mysticism" of hospitality drives us on to
live with a contemplative. We have the privilege of being able to contemplate
Christ unceasingly: the small ones - every individual person is
"small" and weak - are the living icons of Jesus. Attending to human
bodies to heal them of evil, as Jesus did, in order to give them dignity and to
convert them into spaces of dignity and of religious and Christian experience,
is essential to our spirituality.
125. The
fruitfulness of our apostolate is vitalised when we feel our solidarity with
those who suffer, "in awareness that
our merciful love for them is never a one-sided action" (Const. 42c):
the Hospitaller apostolate is a source of spirituality. Not only because the
Brother evangelises, but because he feels evangelised by the evangelising work.
God speaks to us through others, particularly in those who are in need of our
help: God becomes groaning, asking, thanking... and he invites us to listen and
to discern his messages; the immigrant and the sick person are the
"others" who embody and actualise diversity, and what is different,
with which the Spirit desires to surprise us; to discover the values that exist
in human groups and in individual persons, allowing ourselves to be amazed and
enriched by them, is a source of spirituality. The consequences are
unpredictable, just as the Spirit is unpredictable.
126. The
Hospitaller apostolate is a genuine school and melting pot of humanisation: it
stimulates us to grow as followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who gave back to
humanity the face which his Father had decided to give it from the beginning,
while purifying egoism and lack of solidarity, to ensure that outreach and
welcome, understanding, service and total self-giving could be fashioned and
transmitted in acts of mercy and care. In his weakness, the sick person is not
only a beneficiary, but also an agent of understanding and love: the patient is
"our university" (Fr Marchesi)
who, without any need of theories, helps us to acquire genuine science,
the authentic wisdom of living. The Hospitaller apostolate is also shared with
the health care professionals and social workers, and all those who cooperate
with the apostolic Centres of the Order. This is a source which enables us to
constantly review and revise our attitudes and motivations, urging us to
ascertain that the suffering person is "the centre of our whole apostolic activity and of all our concerns"
(Const. 103b); if we devote all our energies and talents to serving God in the
sick and needy (Const. 22b; 1d); if, personally and as communities, we are moral guides, critical and creative
consciences[99] -
today we would use the term re-founders[100]
- of a style of hospitality which is on the same wavelength as the hospitality
of St John of God; if we keep his spirit alive and promote it, individually and
as Communities (GS: 127b); if we are so closely identified with our mission and
"it is always clear that our chief
concern is the sick or needy person, and we are so imbued with our mission that
those who work with us feel inspired to behave in the same way"
(Const. 23a). With our Co-workers we are committed to cultivating and promoting
the values of the human person and to contributing to develop and deepen what
we are calling "the culture of hospitality".
d) The bodily dimension of our path
of spirituality
127. The
incarnation of the Word continues in time, and becomes a reality in the
individual person; in the person of the Brother who serves, and in the sick or
needy person whom he is serving. Corporeity is the form of mediation of human
relations, and forms part of our spiritual process. Our body is the temple of
the Spirit and a member of the body of Christ; its mission is to glorify God.
Our history is engraved in our body, as are our deepest memories. The body is
the place of our existential adventure. It has a Eucharistic vocation; it tends
to be converted into a body which is given up, as the body of our Father, John
of God was given up. The virtue of chastity, lived as Hospitaller Brothers, is
the seed of personal fecundity, because "in this apostolate we carry out the mission of serving, protecting and
encouraging life and affirm the dignity and value of the body" (Const.
10d).
128. Psychosomatic
unity means that there can be no spirituality except through the body, and no
form of worship which is appropriate to the body which does not also end in the
spirit. The relationship between the psychosomatic balance and the spiritual
life is beyond debate. Hence the importance of cultivating the balance of our
bodily reality: peace, internal serenity, our affections and sensitivities are
transmitted through our senses. Jesus placed his hands on the sick when he
healed them (Lk 4,40).[101]
e) Vigilance and receptiveness to
the Spirit
129. The
Brother of St John of God wishes to remain very vigilant with regard to the
action of the Spirit in our age and in different places. Vigilance will lead us
to live our spirituality under situations of martyrdom[102]
in which it is not so much action but passion which characterises the way we
perform the mission; in interfaith dialogue, where we propose Jesus as our
Lord, the servant of all, the Body given up, and we are his witnesses in terms
of a spirituality of kénosis and humility; in an attitude of communion with the
laity, both women and men, discovering in them the energy we need for
perseverance, to give ourselves "ad vitam", for a mutual
relationship; in situations of conflict and under harsh conditions in which we
are the messengers and witnesses of justice, and a pledge for peace.
6. Formation as a path of spirituality
130. The path of spirituality has a reduced version which we call
"charismatic induction or initiation", and which occurs in the first
few years of life in the Order, and then "continuing formation",
which extends throughout the whole of our life.[103]
a) The first stage: charismatic
induction or initiation
131. During
initial formation and professional training, the Brother learns to do things:
to study, to express himself, to perform professional work, to meditate, pray,
and be a good Religious. This is the time of the ideals - of sanctity,
communion, "embodiment in the world".[104]
This enables the Brother to appreciate the value of others and to view them
critically: they have failed to do certain things, and he will do them in
another way, because he will put into practice what he knows and feels. In this
stage, the Brother views reality "through the eyes of methods",
namely, through an ideology which little by little he makes his own. we do not
adjust to reality as it is. We enter into contact not with reality itself, but
with the image that we have of that reality. It is therefore not surprising
that when we come face to face with real life, the daily routine awakens us and
clashes with the ideal we have always dreamed of. Frustration and
disappointment can also act as a school for our "embodiment" in the
world, in terms of the experience/acceptance of our own fragility, of the
insubstantial nature of naked ideas and the limitation-richness of other people
and of structures.[105]
132. Similar
experiences are repeated again in the apostolate, when the moment arrives to
leave the active life because of age or poor health. Those moments in which we
experience a crisis will be calls to us to stop on the path, to take in the
power of hospitality and rediscover that we have been called and consecrated to
be hospitality, and to proclaim the
Kingdom in the manner of Jesus (Const. 21), who had to experiment failure,
suffering, distress, fragility, and abandonment, and even the Cross and death,
to understand and to be capable of suffering with and liberating those who
suffer and die abandoned (cf. Heb 2,14-18).[106]
b) The second stage: operational
responsibility
133. After
initial training, the Hospitaller Brother is fully incorporated into the
apostolic work of the Order. Moving away from a guided existence, from being
protected, to a situation of operational responsibility, also needs special
accompaniment, and powerful support, to enable the Brother to live fully the
youth of love and enthusiasm for Christ.[107]
134. Middle
age faces us with the risk of routine and restlessness, or even a lack of
enthusiasm because of the few results we perceive. This is the time to revise
and review our first love, our original vocation, in the light of the Gospel
and of our charism. We find a new drive and a new motive for perseverance in
our vocation. It is in this stage that we concentrate on essentials.[108]
135. Mature
age is when we might fall into individualism, to slow down in our lives, or for
taking things easy. The spiritual path helps us to tone up our lives, to purify
us and to offer ourselves with generosity. This age offers us a possibility to
mature in the gift and experience of spiritual paternity.[109]
c) The third stage: increasing
limitations
136. Old
age is characterised by a gradual withdrawal from active work, either because
of sickness or forced inactivity. Even though it is frequently a painful time,
it nevertheless offers the elderly Brother the opportunity to allow himself to
be fashioned by our Lord's Easter. Under these circumstances the mission of
merciful hospitality is tinged with the Passion; the Passion which identifies
us with the Passion of our Lord. Thus the Brother completes the mysterious
process of spirituality that began a long time earlier. Death is then awaited
and prepared for, as an act of supreme love and total self-giving.[110]
d) The crucial moments
137. Independently
of what stage we are in, our life always has crucial and decisive moments.
External factors, such as a posting, a failure, a historical event, or internal
factors such as sickness, depression, a loss, a friendship, a crisis of faith
or identity, can create enormous tensions in our lives, until it creates the
impression that we are about to snap. Under these moments spiritual
accompaniment is essential,[111]
prayer, fraternal closeness, the presence of friends. This is the way in which
the Brother can rediscover the meaning of his Covenant with God and the primacy
and fidelity of God to that Covenant. The proof is a providential instrument of
the Spirit for growth, for identifying with Jesus, and for making progress in
following the crucified Christ.[112]
CONCLUSION
138. When,
as Brothers of St John of God, we allow the thirst for spirituality which we
harbour to flourish in us, we must be attentive to the surprises that the
Spirit brings. Something new will be born within us. Barriers will tumble. The
impossible will become possible. New wildernesses will bloom. Our thirst will
be quenched. We shall be joyful and enthusiastic messengers of the Good News of
Mercy and Hospitality. We shall be a parable of a new world in the midst of the
world of suffering and marginalisation.
139. The
people of God and the whole of humanity are in need of our witness, and our
spirit has a humanising power. But we must also emphasise the spiritual
strength and energy which we are given from the holy people of God and of all
humanity, of which we form part. This is why we believe that the more we feel
that we are Church and the people of God, and members of humanity, the more
will our spirituality develop, and become more profound and more relevant. We
are called to live our spirituality by sharing our gift, and also the gifts and
talents of others.
140. As
Prophets of Mercy, animated by the spirit of St John of God, we take up the
invitation which John Paul II has extended to us at the beginning of the Third
Millennium in his Letter Novo millenio
ineunte: "Duc in altum! Let us go forth in hope!"[113]
Christ Jesus, our hope (1Tim 1,1)
will encourage us to remain faithful to our prophetic mission.
INTRODUCTION
1. The change of age
2. The Church and the Order in this context
I. MEMORY: OUR CHARISMATIC ORIGINS
1. The spiritual Path of St John of God
a) Emptiness: making room for Grace
- the first stage
b) The call: to serve the Lord God
for ever - the second stage
c) Change: transformed by the Word
of God - the third stage
d) Identification: like the poor
Jesus and like poor humanity - the fourth stage
2. Tradition: handing on the spirit of the Founder and Father
a) A Father and a brother in the
Spirit: the first Brothers
b) The hospital spirit bequeathed as
a legacy
3. The "topical relevance" of John of God's charism today: A
shared mission and inculturation
II. THE BASIS: MERCY AND
HOSPITALITY
AS BASIC CATEGORIES
1. The starting point: mercy and hospitality, guilt and violence
2. Mercy
a) The God of Mercy
b) The embodiment of Mercy
c) Mercy in the Order's charism
3. Hospitality
a) What is hospitality?
b) Hospitality in Revelation
c) Hospitality in our Father St John
of God
d) Hospitality in the Constitutions
and the writings of the Order
4. Rethinking Mercy and Hospitality in our age: relations with the
outsider
a) Relations with
"strangers"
b) Apprenticeship in hospitality and
mercy
c) On a mission of mercy and
hospitality "today"
III. THE SPIRITUAL PATH
TAKING THE PATH OF JOHN OF
GOD "TODAY"
1. Spirituality today
2. The paradigm or model of our spiritual path
a) Experiences of emptiness: being
uprooted to "be born again"
b) The "call" and the
calls that continue throughout life: "Listen, my son!"
c) Change and Consecration
d) Mystical identification with the
poor, marginalised and suffering Jesus
3. Taking part in the Path of the People of God
4. Participants in the Path of spirituality of the Order and its
Communities
a) Charismatic transmission
b) Fraternal love
c) Sharing the experience of God and
discerning His will as a Community
d) A Community on a mission of
hospitality
e) A community with a sense of
Church
5. Our "personal" way of spirituality
a) Personal prayer as a path of
spirituality
b) A personal spirituality project
c) Contemplatives on the mission
d) The bodily dimension of our path
of spirituality
e) Vigilance and receptiveness to
the Spirit
6. Formation as a path of spirituality
a) The first stage: charismatic
induction or initiation
b) The second stage: operational
responsibility
c) The third stage: increasing
limitations
d) The crucial moments
CONCLUSION
[1] Rule and Constitutions for the
Hospital of John of God in Granada (1585) Title 1, 1st Constitution (cited
in Primitivas Constituciones, Madrid
1977, p 12.)
[2] 1587 Constitutions,
Introduction, loc. cit pp 81-82.
[3] John of God is not ours. He
belongs to society, to the Church.
Neither are we solely responsible for making him live on throughout
history. But, with the help of God, we
must ensure that both he and his Order live on in time. Brother PASCUAL PILES
FERRANDO, Let yourselves be led by the Spirit (Gal 5:16) Circular letter to the
Brothers of the Order, Rome, 24 October 1996 (para.9.3).
[4] Cf. Declarations of the LXV
General Chapter (Documentation), Granada, 6-24 November 2000; The Charter of Hospitality of the
Hospitaller Order of St John of God, Rome, 8 March 2000; Brothers and Co-workers together to serve
and promote life, Rome, 8 March 1992; John
of God lives on, Rome, October 1992;
The New Evangelization and
Hospitality on the Portals of the Third Millennium, LXIII General Chapter of
the Hospitaller Order, Bogotá 2-28
October, 1994; Pierluigi Marchesi, The Hospitality of the Brothers
of St John of God towards the Year 2000, Rome 1986; Piles Ferrando, Let yourselves be led by the Spirit (Circular letter to the Brothers of the Order), Rome, 24 October 1996; Piles Ferrando, Hospitality at the Dawn of the Third Millennium.
Making the Prophecy of St John of God Come True (Circular
Letter), Rome, 2 February 2001.
[5] "We number 1,500 Brothers, about 40,000 Co-workers counting our
employees and volunteers together, and 300,000 Co-workers-benefactors. We are
present in all five continents, in 46 countries and in 21 Religious Provinces,
1 Vice-province, 6 General Delegations and 5 Provincial Delegations. We perform
our apostolate on behalf of the sick, the poor and the suffering in 293
Centres. Although we are all members of one and the same body, our Order, we
nevertheless live in widely differing situations. Some of us are in highly
technically advanced societies and Centres, while others are living in
developing societies and Centres; some live in countries that enjoy peace,
while others are suffering from violence and war, or the aftermath of violence
belonging to a recent past; some enjoy the benefits of a free society, but others
have their freedom and their fundamental rights severely curtailed; some of us
are devoted specifically to hospitaller work, while others are more concerned
with social issues and marginalization; some are trying to help people to live,
while the mission of others is to help them to die with dignity. Although all
of us are working with the aim of providing comprehensive, holistic care, some
concentrate more on physical health, others on mental health, and others still
are helping to create the conditions to enable people to enjoy decent living
standards. Some live in the North, others in the South, some in the cultures of
the East and others in the West." The Hospitaller Order of St John of God, The Charter of Hospitality of the
Hospitaller Order of St John of God. Caring
for the Sick and Needy in the Manner of St John of God Rome, 8 March 2000,
p.1.
[6] John of God was aware that to achieve fullness and avoid perils, we
must "be ever wakeful and ready to leave" because "we do not
know the hour at which they will knock at the door of our souls" (Letters, 1st Letter to the Duchess of Sessa
(I DS), 7; Letter to Luis Bautista (LB), 6 &29.
[7] Letters, passim
[8] When supplies were running out during the siege of Fuenterrabia,
"John of God volunteered to go and look for food. They had captured a mare
from the French, so he mounted it in order to ride there and back. once he had
gone about two leagues from where he mounted, the mare recognised her usual
surroundings and bolted forward... She
threw him amongst some rocks with such force that he lay unconscious for over
two hours... he seemed to be dead for blood was pouring from his mouth and
nostrils. Once he had regained consciousness, the agony from the fall made him
realise his peril from being captured by the enemy. rising from the ground as
best he could, he fell down upon his knees and fixed his gaze upon heaven and
in a voice barely audible, he called upon the name of Our Lady the Virgin
Mary... Taking hold of a stick he forced himself to walk once more and slowly
made his way back to where his companions were waiting for him, and put him to
bed. (Francisco de Castro, Historia de la vida y sanctas obras de Juan
de Dios, in Manuel Gómez Moreno, Primicias históricas de San Juan de Dios,
(hereafter Castro), Ch.1, Madrid 1950, p 33, in J. Sánchez,
o.c.).
[9] Castro
[10] "Born of middle‑class parents who were neither very rich nor
poor, he grew up with them until he was eight years old, then without their
knowledge he was abducted by a cleric" Castro.
[11] "Everything passes away... as long as we are living in this exile
and in this vale of tears" (1DS 6; 2DS 10)... "death consumes and
destroys everything this miserable world gives us and allows us to take with us
nothing but a piece of torn and roughly sewn canvas" (3DS 15).
[12] 1DS 10
[13] 1DS 10
[14] Castro
[15] "He was not able to see where Our Lord wanted him to serve him ...
he became restless and ill at ease". Castro
[16] Castro
[17] Castro
[18] Castro
[19] Castro
[20] Castro
[21] Castro
[22] Castro
[23] Castro
[24] Castro
[25] Castro
[26] Castro
[27] Castro
[28] J. Sánchez Martínez. "Kénosis-diaconía" en el
itinerario espiritual de San Juan de Dios, Jerez, 1995, p. 331, 441.
[29] 2GL 5.
[30] Castro
[31] Castro
[32] Castro
[33] Process for the Beatification of St John of God, L-52/1.23, f81.
[34] Ibid. L 52/1.20, f73v.
[35] Castro
[36] 1GL 11
[37] Castro
[38] Castro
[39] 1DS 15. Castro also says that his heart suffered when he saw the poor
in need without being able to help.
[40] Castro
[41] Castro
[42] 2GL 7
[43] 2DS 2
[44] 2GL 17
[45] Ibid 8
[46] Ibid 7
[47] Castro
[48] Castro
[49] Castro
[50] LB 13
[51] Ibid 8, 9
[52] Ibid 6
[53] Ibid 7
[54] Ibid 9
[55] Ibid 15
[56] Ibid 10
[57] Ibid 11, 13, 9
[58] Ibid 15
[59] cf. 1DS 13
[60] J. Sánchez Martínez. "Kénosis-diaconía", pp. 292, 307, 393.
[61] Nothing is known about them. Only Castro's biography, in Chapter XX,
mentions Antón Martín as the companion of St John of God. Conversely, in
"The Trial" which preceded the Castro biography, many references are
made to the Brothers of the Habit of John of God, and there was also mention of
his companions in the biographies written by Dionisio Celi and Antonio Govea. John
of Ávila (whom our Founder calls "Angulo" in his letters) named four
of John of God's companions: Antón Martín, Pedro Pecador, Alonso Retingano and
Domingo Benedicto.
[62] L. Ortega Lázaro, El hermano Antón Martín y su hospital en la calle Atocha de Madrid
(1500-1936), Madrid 1981,. p. 31. cf. 17-19
[63] Cf. J. Sánchez Martínez.
"Kénosis-diaconía", TT 8/5; T 9/5; T 10/5, p. 346, 356, 364.
[64] Cf. J. Sánchez Martínez. "Kénosis-diaconía" , T
11/20, p. 383: They took in all kinds of poor people, suffering from all manner
of sickness, regardless of whether they were Muslims or Christians, without
abandoning any one of them.
[65] This essential aspect was evidenced in the earliest Constitutions.
[66] Like John of God, what captivates us about Jesus in particular is his
total giving out of love, dying on the Cross for us: the contemplation of the Passion of Christ, as the "Man of
Sorrows" (Is 53,3) which occupies a
prominent part of our spirituality (Const. 33). On this point the Order's
tradition takes us back to our Founder, who was most devoted to the Passion of
Christ. When he contemplated the crucified Christ, our Father focused so much
on Jesus’ sufferings and on the love which drove him to accept them; a love
which led him to the point of even forgiving his enemies. John urges us to
achieve this degree of love, when he says to Luis Bautista: "Remember Our Lord Jesus Christ and his
blessed Passion and recall how he gave back good for the evil they did him. You
must do likewise." (LB 10). John of God does not invite us to imitate
Christ's sufferings by devoting ourselves to a life of penance and sacrifice,
but to give ourselves to the service of the suffering out of love. It is in the
suffering face of the sick, in the distraught life of the poor, that John
discovered and contemplated Christ. For John, serving them is not a cross, it
is not a sacrifice, but it is the manifestation of the reality that the love of
God had flooded and overwhelmed his life, so that he could not help loving
everyone, at all times, but especially when they were weak and vulnerable.
[67] Our spirituality is essentially Christocentric. John of God was a
passionate lover of Jesus. We have learnt from him how to focus our lives on
Christ and contemplate Him in the way He served, loved and healed the sick.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Master who, through his deeds shows us the attitudes
and the deeds that we must embody in order to continue his work of love. Like
Jesus we are called to feel our hearts moved at the sight of the dereliction
and misery and poverty of the people (cf. Mt 9,36) and to give ourselves up to
serve them and console them, as the only thing which is important to us in our
lives (cf. Mk 6,34-44). Like Jesus we experience the capacity of being aware
that when we draw close to and serve those who are in need, the internal
strength that drives us is manifested (cf. Lk 8,40-48); when we contemplate
Jesus who identified with the poor and sick, taking on their sufferings and
their sickness (cf. Mt 8,17) our decision to devote ourselves to the suffering
is renewed, and like Jesus we take on the condition of servants who, by giving
up our lives, promote and defend the lives of the poor (cf.. Mt 12,15-21;20-28.
[68] The Virgin Mary, the figure of the Church and the first of all
consecrated persons (cf. VC 112) is for us a model of service to Christ in
Hospitality. John of God had a deep love for Mary: he venerated her and
imitated the way she lived; he was her devotee, and felt accompanied and
protected by her in the most difficult moments in his life. All the Letters of
John of God begin with "In the name
of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of Our Lady the Ever-Virgin Mary"; and he
habitually urged his correspondents to strive to work in "His service and that of Our Lady the Ever-Virgin Mary"
(1GL 12). He invoked Our Lady when he recited the holy rosary and this
encouraged him to recite it: "I have
been getting on very well with the Rosary, and I hope in God that I shall
recite it as often as I can and as He wishes." (LB 17). He knew how to
hand on to his companions his trust in the Virgin and his desire to imitate her
in serving the poor and sick. One example is the witness of Bro. Antón Martín
who, in his will wrote "in the name
of the most Holy Trinity... and the Blessed Glorious Virgin, our Lady, Mary His
Mother, to Whom I look as my Lady and Advocate in all I do... at the service of
our Lord Jesus Christ and His Glorious Mother" (L. Ortega Lázaro, El Hermano Antón Martín y su Hospital en la C. Atocha de Madrid. 1550-1936,
Madrid, 1981, p. 8). Following
the tradition of the Order, the Constitutions take up the Marian sense of our spirituality: the Virgin Mary is the model
of our consecration to God (no. 25), profoundly
hospitaller in her life dedicated to serving the person and the work of
Jesus (cf. no. 42b). Her example encourages us to make our pilgrimage in the
faith like her (cf. LG 58) and to imitate her, accompanying those who suffer
with strength and deepest love, thereby associating ourselves with her son's sacrifice which is continued in
the suffering of mankind (Const. 34a; cf. 4d). Mary, Health of the sick and
Mother of Mercy has always had a special
place in the life of our Hospitaller Community (Const. 34b), and in the
heart of each Brother. We feel encouraged to honour Her and imitate her
simplicity and willing readiness, her self-giving and fidelity to God's project
for our lives (cf. Const. 4c) while we venerate Her with the affection of
dutiful sons, celebrating her feasts, and in particular the Feast of Mary, the
Patron of the Order, and with our traditional devotions of which the recitation
of the Rosary stands out above all the others (cf. Const. 4d; 42d).
The Virgin of the Magnificat highlights one of the most evident aspects
of our spirituality: the God of Mercy fulfills his promise of liberation and
shows particular love for the poor and the humble, and will ensure that his
power of mercy will triumph over the arrogance of the powerful of this world
who oppress the weak. Like Mary, we are called to feel a sense of communion
with them, and to feel their unjust situation as if they were our own, and to
commit ourselves in the Gospel manner to their total liberating them (cf. Lk 2,46-53).
And when Mary visited Elizabeth, she offered herself as a model of
hospitality when she set about assisting her cousin and in all simplicity
devoting herself to serving her, and above all because it was in her that God
manifested his salvation and brought it into the world, taking flesh in the
womb of Mary, choosing her as the mediator to communicate his Spirit to
Elizabeth and to the child that she was carrying within her (cf. Lk 2,41-44) raising acts of hospitality
to the level of a sacrament which evokes and performs his saving action.
[69] Const. 1984, 103a.
[70] Ibid., 1984, 103'c.
[71] VC 54
[72] In the wake of Vatican II, in the mid-Eighties the Order began
animating and pushing through a movement for a Covenant with our Co-workers. Recently, the Church has acknowledged
that the laity work for the mission or collaborating in the mission of
Religious, share the charism and mission
of the Religious, such that "a new chapter, rich in hope, has begun in
the history of relations between consecrated persons and the laity" (VC
54) (cf. Const. 23a).
[73] cf. V.A,. Riesco, La Hospitalidad manifestación del Ser de Dios en favor del hombre.
Fundamento bíblico de nuestra espiritualidad.
[74] It is not easy to explain why, but the God of the Old Testament was
often presented as having violent, even demoniacal, characteristics. This
helped to conceal the need to explain the mystery of evil, and to take a stand
against all forms of idolatry, and demonstrate that Yahweh was the only God.
[75] This is repeatedly stated in the first chapter (Fundamental
Constitution) of the New Constitutions. Firstly, they show John of God as a
man: "inwardly transformed by the merciful love of the Father, he lived
love for God and neighbour in perfect unity" (Const. 1); he
"faithfully imitated the Saviour in his attitudes and actions of
mercy" (Const.1).
[76] Secondly, the Constitutions say that "Our Hospitaller Order was
thus born of the gospel of mercy (Mt 8,17; 25, 34-46) as lived in its fullness
by Saint John of God" (Const. 1); through consecration in the Spirit,
Brothers are configured with the merciful and compassionate Jesus, and
participate in the merciful love of the Father, keeping alive in time the
merciful presence of Jesus of Nazareth (Const. 2).
[77] 1DS 13
[78] Cf. Daniel Innerarity, Ética de la
hospitalidad, ed. Península, Barcelona 2001.
[79] N.B. Pagadut, Be hospitable, Claretian Publications,
Quezon City, Philippines 1992.
[80] Castro
[81] ...and one day this witness recalled that he went into his kitchen,
where he found him very happy and clapping his hands and singing a sacred song.
And the witness said: "You are fine today, Father," to which he
replied: "Those who serve God are always happy" (Witness 30. In Gómez Moreno, op cit., p. 214).
Very often he went there and saw him working and healing the sick,
dressing them, washing them and putting them in their beds, embracing them,
with a smile on his lips and so much love and charity that was almost
frightening, and it seemed that he wanted to love all of them. (Witness 59. In Gómez Moreno, op cit., pp 231-232).)
[82] 2GL 5
[83] "Love Our Lord Jesus Christ above everything in the world, for
however much you love him he still loves you more. Always have charity, for
where there is no charity God is not there - even though God is
everywhere." (LB 15).
[84] Const. 1587, Chapter 17.
[85] Const. 2c, 3a, 5a
[86] Cf. GS 22; Const. 20
[87] "Renewal has two fundamental aspects: firstly, it seeks to remove
the weaknesses of our lives and remove the barriers that are hampering our
fraternal communion; secondly, it endeavours to enable us to discover our
"strong points", which help us to achieve a union which is similar to
the union existing between the Father and the Son" (P. Marchesi, The Bases of Renewal,
Rome, 1978, p. 18.
[88] ("...we realise that the fundamental need of man is not the
economy, but the need to be recognised as a person, with worth in his own
right, worthy to receive care, attention and love, regardless of the
differences of culture, institutions, social class, religion, race, etc." (P. Marchesi, Humanisation, Rome, 1981, p. 198).
[89] "As soon as John of God arrived at Court, the Count de Tendilla
and the other nobles who knew him, notified the King telling him all about him.
When he was admitted to the court he said: 'My Lord, I usually call everyone my
brother in Jesus Christ'" (Castro).
[90] Hospitaller Order of St John of
God, Brothers and Co-workers
united to serve and promote life, Rome, 1992
[91] In the 1980s, in the spirit of the humanisation movement, the Order
sought to find a way of reorganising the mission to help to meet old and new
needs of humanity. It is interesting to see the conclusions of the work of the
Assembly of Provincials held in 1981: "Our Meeting restated its hope in,
and commitment to, the continual renewal of the Order. We are convinced that it
can only be carried out if every single member of the Institute lives in a
continual attitude of heeding the needs that arise as a result of our
consecration to God as Hospitaller Brothers and if we try to translate this
attitude into a concrete response to the hopes which the Church and Society
place in us. Considering that the world is going through an important period in
its history, in which fundamental personal values are being both demanded and
crushed, we hereby undertake a definite
commitment as a concrete expression of the charism of the Order to defend and
promote forthwith the respect due to the dignity of man. This has made us
firmly convinced that humanisation, in the sense it acquired in the person of
Jesus of Nazareth, is the unifying and integrating bond that will help us to
put the renewal process into practice, in the moment of history through which
we are passing." (P.
Marchesi, Humanisation, p.
89-90)
[92] See also no. 10: "This is a time when the Spirit is breaking
forth, opening up new possibilities. The charismatic dimension of the diverse
forms of consecrated life, while always in progress, is never finished.
Cooperating with the Spirit, consecrated persons prepare in the Church for the
coming of the One who must come, the One who is already the future of humanity
in progress." See also nos 18, 21, etc. Let us not forget that this
document is based on the image of the "path" or "way".)
[93] Cf. General Government, St
John of God lives on, Rome, 1991, pp 12-13..
[94] This is what happened to St John of God: it was when he felt that he
had no real human roots that he experienced the calling, inviting him from
Oropesa, to give up leading the life of a shepherd and looking after the horses
of the Count, to devote himself to the service of the Lord "he sadly
remembered how well fed, protected and healthy the horses in the Count of
Oropesa's stables were, whilst the poor were so badly off, ragged and hungry,
he said to himself: "John, would it not be better if you learned how to
feed and care for the poor people of Jesus Christ rather than farm
animals?" (Castro).
[95] SC 10.
[96] "In the Eucharist, Jesus joins us to himself in his very paschal
offering to the Father. We offer and are offered. Religious consecration itself
assumes a Eucharistic structure, it is the total offering of self closely
joined to the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In the Eucharist all forms of prayer come
together, the Word of God is proclaimed and received, relationships with God,
with brothers and sisters, with all men and women are challenged. It is the
Sacrament of filiation, of communion and of mission. The Eucharist, the
Sacrament of unity with Christ, is at the same time the Sacrament of Church
unity and community unity for the consecrated person." (Starting Afresh with Christ, no. 26)
[97] "The unceasing openness and readiness [of Jesus] to be the refuge,
consolation and comfort of the sick is an incentive to us to persevere
alongside the person who suffers, keeping him company in his pain and
solitude." (Const. 30c).
[98] The Church needs us as we need it, and this will be more and more the
case in years to come. We must communicate with each other within the Church.
Our vocation and our Order's charism should be always present in the minds of
believers, their identity and programmes clearly defined, and be an
encouragement and a model for them, pointing the way towards the fulfilment of
our common baptismal vocation to sanctify".P. Marchesi : "The Hospitality of the Hospitaller
Brothers of Saint John of God towards the year 2000"- Rome, 1986.
[99] P. Marchesi : "The
Hospitality of the Hospitaller Brothers of Saint John of God towards the year
2000"- Rome, 1986.
[100] Spirituality in the mission is expressed through the enthusiasm, the
prophetic imagination and the apostolic creativity we exhibit. When the Spirit
is lacking, there is routine, monotony, mere repetition. But the presence of
the Spirit is the fire which animates and re-creates all. A Brother with a
Hospitaller spirit never settles into routine. He always discovers the novelty
of the Kingdom of God in everything he does.
[101] Our body has an extremely close connection with nature. It is that part
of nature that we have most managed to train. Our spirituality thereby acquired
profoundly ecological tones, which we must not ignore: this enables us to
better perceive the possibilities of all human bodies, but also their
misfortunes and their degradation.
[102] In the life of the Brother there is always the possibility of
martyrdom, the "serious case" of giving oneself up in charity, the
confession of the faith and the proclamation of hope. Martyrdom is a gift. And
this has always been recognised. It is a gift for the martyr and a gift for the
Order. It is a paradoxical gift, but nevertheless a real gift. We can flee from
it beforehand, if we avoid the danger, if we seek security, if we avoid any
type of risk. But life of this sort does not deserve to be called
"Hospitaller" and "merciful". Martyrdom as the horizon of
our life gives our Hospitaller life a special hue. The different forms of
martyrdom include those commitments to the poor which involve marginalisation,
isolation and condemnation. This is when the Hospitaller can say "I was in
prison", "I was exiled".
[103] "In our Religious Life we pass through specific important phases
which we must carefully cultivate: the first years of Initial Formation in each
of its stages, the age of maturity, the moments of crisis and then a gradual
withdrawal from the active ministry.
The life of Religious Institutes, and above all their future, depends in
part on the Continuing Formation of its members. It is the duty of every Institute
to find adequate means and set aside sufficient time to enable the Brothers to
acquire adequate Formation. (Formation
Programme for the Hospitaller Brothers of St John of God,132, Cf. Ongoing Formation in the Order, 1991.
[104] FP, 39 and 44
[105] Ibid., nos 46-57. The
features of our formation model is: comprehensive, ongoing, experiential,
personalised, gradual, differentiated,
liberating, prophetic, and universal.
[106] Ibid., no. 24: "in the
light of the path that our Founder took. It is a challenge to the Order
educate, form and train the Brothers, to bear witness to the Gospel of mercy in
contemporary society with creative fidelity".
[107] Ibid., nos 92 and 137c
[108] Ibid., no. 26h Ongoing Formation in the Order, 33
[109] Ibid., no.136 Ongoing Formation in the Order, 34
[110] Ibid., no. 44 Ongoing Formation in the Order, 35 &
36
[111] Along the personal path of spirituality it is essential to have
spiritual support and accompaniment, not only when we are young but at every
stage. The example of St John of God's relationship with John of Ávila is an
excellent benchmark for us to follow. We need to communicate at the deepest
level with a particular brother or sister who is experienced in the path of our
Lord. Such a person stands as a benchmark, a foil, a source of stimulus. Our
Superiors, as far as they can, must provide a service of spiritual animation
for each and every member of the Community.
[112] "Each Brother and each person under Formation must know how to
integrate and experience all positive or negative events as a part of their own
history of salvation on the basis of which God speaks to us and leads
us."( FP, 27 & 50).
[113] NMI 58.
