Can one move from chaos to kairos? This passage is possible, but it is not an instantaneous or magical leap. Instead, it is a paschal passage: it implies that we pass, personally and communally, from death to resurrection; it requires that we do not cling to a transient past and that we open ourselves to the innovative, overflowing and life-giving action of the Spirit of Jesus, who acts from below in moments of crisis and death, closes some doors, but opens others, a Spirit who is never on strike, neither in the Church nor in human history.
Victor Codina, SJ
La Civiltà Cattolica – Apr 22nd 2022
Historians of religious life know well that in the course of Church history some religious institutes, both male and female, have disappeared after years of fruitful life. They also know that each new cycle of religious life – the transition from monasticism to mendicancy, from mendicancy to modern apostolic congregations – has in some way thrown the previous cycle into crisis. Time to recover and adapt has been needed. This is a positive process: Western religious life has been enriched by the experience of the desert, the periphery and the frontier.
Today, however, something different and new is happening in the Western world, affecting all religious institutes: a shortage of vocations and inverted demographic pyramids, with many elderly religious at the top and few young people at the bottom, as well as many leaving religious life. The question is: Why are they leaving?
This widespread situation causes uncertainty about the future of religious life and, in many cases, generates a climate of fear or panic: Will religious life disappear from the Churches of the Christian West? In time, will the same phenomenon occur in Asia and Africa? Will there be a move toward new communities of religious? Will new lay movements replace traditional religious life?
If we want to summarize this situation, perhaps we should speak of a “chaotic situation,” that is, a mix of confusion and disorder. All kinds of consequences ensue, not only pastoral and spiritual, but also institutional, economic and social. What can we do about our educational, pastoral, health and social apostolates when there is a lack of religious personnel and economic resources to maintain them? How can we cope with the considerable costs of infirmaries for religious? How can young religious be formed in this climate of insecurity? What future awaits the young people who enter very old religious communities? Is it possible to continue to dream?
With respect to the picture we have sketched, there are divergent positions amongst religious. For some it is a passing phenomenon, a temporary crisis that will soon be resolved. There are indeed examples of some religious communities that have recently seen an increase in the number of vocations. Others, instead, adopt an apocalyptic attitude: there is nothing more to be done, there is no future, we cannot continue to dream.
We must then delve into the current situation in order to discern some alternatives, which are neither naive nor catastrophic.
People often try to explain this phenomenon in a personal and subjective way: the senior generations of religious did not give adequate evangelical witness; meanwhile the youth are only interested in enjoying life and having fun.
It is clear, however, that today’s youth do not want to commit themselves to communities that are strictly bound to a past that no longer has a future.
At this point we enter into the well-known theme of epochal change, which expresses itself in different forms: a new axial period; the overcoming of the past era, centered on altar, priesthood and sacrifice; a change of paradigm, which questions the previous one and opens up to new perspectives. In any case, we have certainly not arrived at the end of history, as some naïve writers think.
We live in a secularized world, where the hypothesis of God has disappeared – a time of atheism – and believers are called to consider God not a stopgap, but a person who respects mediations and secondary causes. We must live before God as if God did not exist (Dietrich Bonhoeffer), taking responsibility for the world and history. We must accept God’s silence in the face of Auschwitz and the migrant children who die in rubber dinghies or on beaches.
On the other hand, things are not much better for the secularizing optimism of a few years ago. Utopian and rather messianic, secularism put all its trust in science and modern progress. Today, it falters in the face of harsh reality which involves injustice, hunger, wars, climate change, disease and death.
Faced with this change of epoch, the Christian faith must open itself to a clear evangelical discernment, so as not to commit two opposite errors: condemning the past as a failure and irrelevant, or opening itself to the new with an almost messianic fervor.
Often the causes of this crisis in the Church and religious life have been attributed to the Second Vatican Council. This statement is not only false, but is a sin of historical ignorance.
Before looking for new formulations for the current unprecedented situation of religious life, we want to consider some lessons drawn from history.
In the Church, religious life has always had its origin in a prophetic charism, aroused by the Spirit as a critique of an ecclesial situation that was not genuinely evangelical. It is a proclamation of the authentic values of the Kingdom and a seed of ecclesial and social transformation. Johann Baptist Metz, in speaking about it, used the expression “a therapeutic ecclesial shock.” For this reason, religious life is not born from the heights of power, but from the margins, the desert, the periphery, the frontier (Jon Sobrino).
However, there is no doubt that over time there has been a slow but steady tendency to leave the periphery and move toward the center: a clear temptation, and one not always overcome, to place oneself at the top of economic, social, ecclesial and spiritual power. Many times the religious community has become an elite in the true sense of the word, ever more distant from the people, self-referential, self-sufficient and isolated from other ecclesial charisms, with a certain collective pride, enclosed in a kind of “splendid isolation,” with the undeniable risk of seeking social status, of placing oneself above everyone else.
Before delving into more theoretical formulations, let us begin with a very eloquent text from the Acts of the Apostles (cf. Acts 16:6-12). In this text, it is somewhat puzzling that the Spirit of Jesus closes the doors of evangelization to Paul in certain areas and instead opens others for him, sending him to another place. But the meaning is clear: the Spirit desires that Paul not go to Jewish communities, but that he reach out to the Gentile world. Paul will do so, going first to Athens and then to Rome. The Acts of the Apostles concludes when the apostle has finished his missionary work to the Gentiles.
We have before us what Vatican II calls the “signs of the times.” The Spirit closes the doors of a religious life that is numerous, powerful, elite, self-sufficient and self-referential, but perhaps opens those of another style of religious life that is more evangelical and poor, more in keeping with the signs of today’s times.
Let us ask ourselves if our experience of chaos cannot orient us to a kairos, a favorable time. Pneumatology teaches us that the Spirit (ruah) acts from below. From the initial chaos of Genesis (tohu wa-bohu) the Spirit generates a breath of life (cf. Gen 1:2); from the wombs of barren women the Spirit brings forth leaders of Israel (cf. Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31; 1 Sam 2:1-11); and the Spirit causes a young virgin in Nazareth to conceive and give birth to Jesus (cf. Luke 1:35). For the Spirit, nothing is impossible (cf. Luke 1:37).
The Spirit is the origin and source of religious life; every new religious congregation is a gift and a miracle of the Spirit, who from poverty and littleness generates evangelical life.
Before talking about what doors are opening to religious life, let us point out that today many religious institutions are more concerned with reopening doors that are closing than with seeking new doors that are opening. In many cases young vocations are destined to spend a great deal of energy reopening or keeping open doors that are now closing, instead of exercising their imagination and creativity in seeking to open new doors. An example of this can be found in the text of the First Book of Kings in which Elijah commands his young servant to climb the mountain seven times to see if a cloud announcing rain is going to appear from the sea; in the meantime he, having thrown himself down, remains in prayer (cf. 1 Kings 18:41-46). Young vocations must scan the horizon of new possibilities, while others pray in silence.
At the origins of every new religious community, at the time of its foundation, there are a few poor, weak, unknown members who call themselves small: minor brothers, minims, a little company, little brothers and sisters. Over the years, this smallness has often turned into greatness and ostentation. We have chosen the option for the poor, but we have not become poorer. Today circumstances take us back to the minority of our origins: we are few, weak and poor; we have no assured future, just as the poor do not have one either. We cannot offer young vocations security and complete guarantees; we can instead promise them a great evangelical adventure, open to the future and to the breath of the Spirit.
We should ask ourselves if the decrease in vocations to religious life and ordained ministry is not perhaps part of God’s mysterious plan to make the whole people of God walk together toward mission, toward the kingdom of God. We must then speak of mission shared with others, men and women, discussing together what concerns everyone, where we all teach and learn and the dualism between the teaching Church and the learning Church is broken. It is an inverted pyramid, something so new that some say it could cause a “theological heart attack” in the defenders of the established order.
If we return to religious life, this change means much more than a mutual exchange among the various religious congregations and institutes. Nor does it mean that the laity must collaborate with religious life and its representatives, with its pastoral, educational, social or health care institutions. It is the whole of religious life that places itself at the service of the entire people of God in the common mission, in collaboration with parishes, with movements and with other types of communities open to the Kingdom, to the care of the common home (cf. Laudato Si’) and to universal fraternity (cf. Fratelli Tutti).
When we recall eminent figures of religious life, the founders and foundresses, we are surprised at the great richness and spiritual depth brought to the Church and humanity. Mysticism is an essential part of religious life: it is not possible unless one is personally passionate about the Lord Jesus and the Gospel. The current transformation to which it is called will not be possible without a conversion to mysticism.
Can one move from chaos to kairos? This passage is possible, but it is not an instantaneous or magical leap. Instead, it is a paschal passage: it implies that we pass, personally and communally, from death to resurrection; it requires that we do not cling to a transient past and that we open ourselves to the innovative, overflowing and life-giving action of the Spirit of Jesus, who acts from below in moments of crisis and death, closes some doors, but opens others, a Spirit who is never on strike, neither in the Church nor in human history.
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Religious Life: From chaos to ‘kairos’?
