Sunday, April 8, 2018
TO EXPAND THE FRONTIER OF THE REALM
Some are called to Apologetics, the defense of the Faith. I am not. I am called to Missions, the expansion of the Faith. Apologetics, in my view, defend the fortress of former understandings; Missions, in my view, venture beyond the frontiers to greater understandings. I am not defensive of the Faith, but rather expressive of the Faith; I am not confined to the past, but rather set free into the future.
I have come to believe that the work of a Jesuit missionary, possibly all missionaries, is to learn about both Creation and the Emerging Realms in places not yet explored. In one sense, we are on a teaching mission, but in another sense, we are on a learning mission.
Christ Himself grew frustrated with the scribes and teachers of the Law. They would NOT open their minds to the new possibilities for the Faith. They were defending what they had known and cared little about what they had not yet come to know. They refused to consider this missionary from the Father, a soul who was trailblazing God’s course for God’s people.
I have experienced the resistance of the Apologists. They are quick to “correct”. They are quick to shout, “Heresy”. They are determined to silence the frontier-voices. And like the religious-political powers of first century Jerusalem … their massive walls eventually turn to ruins that gather the dust of the passing of Time.
Everywhere I go in these distant realms, I find the Lord already at work. And when I am wise I learn so much about the ways and wishes of the Lord, ways and wishes I had not known before.
I make camp each night at the frontier of tomorrow … and with the dawn I venture on.
In His Service always,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
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Friday, April 6, 2018
A MATTER OF TRANSLATION
So much of the work of evangelism is the matter of translation. All my life have read the scriptures, not in Aramaic, or Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, but in English, at first in the English of Britain in the early 1600s, later in the Americanized English of the 1950s, and still later in the vernacular of our modern times. As a Jesuit missionary and as most missionaries of our times, I must translate the Gospel not only into the vernacular tongue but also in the vernacular of the culture. All preaching, if done effectively, is about translating the Gospel for the immediacy of the times, the culture and the circumstance. Though the Gospel does not change, its translation must adapt.
While the American Gospel adapted to rugged individualism and agrarian imagery, the Gospel in these hills of jade is adapted to communal endeavor and ancestral imagery. The story is the same but the sound of the syntax is different … at least, in these later years when the Lord helped us to discern the difference between colonialism and evangelism.
This process of translation never ceases, it must not rest lest the Gospel become imprisoned in the nostalgic past. So may tell me … “I love the old hymns!” And I respond …”No, you love the hymns that were once new in years past. The truly old hymns would be in Hebrew and most all the psalms. This is one of the reasons why mainline churches in America began to decline starting in the sixties (now fifty-some years ago). We clung to the past; we retreated into the past; we turned a great share of the American Church as a preservation of history rather than a heritage that still creating “new wood”. And because the “new, green wood” ceased to be accommodated, the great oak began to die.
We stopped translating the Gospel, not all of us but many of us. We began to speak in an ancient tongue that turned a blind ear to new inspiration. We desperate tried to preserve the former understandings and in so doing, we silently told God to stop Creating and Revealing. As science and other disciplines rapidly expanded our knowledge of how the universe and the human psyche work ..we sought to find our security in a changing world by living in the world of lesser knowledge, sometimes a world of superstition.
And so … with the reluctance of so many of the mainline Church … God called and is now calling for new missionaries into the world of present understandings and the needs of the time. The River of Life flows on … and too many got our of that river so that might settle in a time now past.
In His Service Always,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
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Thursday, April 5, 2018
NEVERMORE!
“Nevermore!” declares the raven of Edgar Allen Poe, “Nevermore!” At this stage of my spiritual maturity, I say to certain distortions of the Gospel, “Nevermore!” Much in the manner of a recovering alcoholic or a recovering addict … my reborn Christian life declares, “Nevermore will I return to those ways which did me harm and did harm to those I love.”
Gone are the days of casting judgment on sinners whose sins could never be my own. Gone are the days of lying to my self and others simply to defend a scriptural inerrancy that scripture itself does not claim to have. Gone are the days of manipulating crowds to get them to the altar more to prove my own success than to truly redeem their souls. Gone are the days when doctrine, true or false, is viewed as more important than life and practice. Gone are the days of Christian nationalism and Christian racism and Christian imperialism.
Now my days are spent in loving souls who are also sinners like myself. Now my days are spent learning from the lessons the Lord placed within His Creation and finding even clear understanding of the Lord’s ways by so doing. Now my days are spent reading scripture as scripture was originally intended. Now my days are being honest and transparent, genuine and authentic in my deals with God and with people, offering holy assistance that is both Divine and humane. Now my days are spent in the practice of ministry in acts of holy charity. Now my days are spent in seeking to live purely as Christ would live within me as a citizen in His Realm.
“Nevermore!” sayeth the raven. “Nevermore!” sayeth those in recovery. “Nevermore!” sayeth this soul who has been called to the More Perfect Love.
In His Service always,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
*****
April 4, 2018
THE MIST OF OUR MORTALITY
As I take in the vista spread out before me of the Sacred Hills of Jade, I notice how the hills more distant are of a fainter shade of blue. The mist that goes unnoticed in the nearby world is added to by each mile of distance. The further away, the more the hills grow misty. The further away, the more the hills grow mysterious. And I have always been drawn to the mysterious for I was born a searching soul.
Almost everywhere a soul could be on this earth that soul is in the midst of mist. Oh, nearby in the familiar, we fail to see the mist for we have grown accustomed to its presence. But some soul standing across the valley, when they search the hills for us … we become part and parcel of the mist that we ourselves fail to see. We are forever living in the mist of our culture, our own experience, our own prejudices, our own preconceived notions, our opinions that we simply accepted as being true. And though we do not realize … we are partially blinded by these mists in which we live.
This leads to a subtle, unexpected aspect of every Christian’s call to be a missionary in some misty place. When we journey to that other place, whether in the distant hills of jade or in the shadows within our own inner selves,… we can begin to see the mysteries in more clarity and we can look to finally the mists from whence we came.
I and many others, possibly even you (I venture to say probably even you) become missionaries into misty places where we learn so much more about other people and so much more about ourselves.
In His Service always,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
April 3, 2018
CONQUEST, COLONIZATION, OR CHRIST-IFICATION
For so many decades, for so many centuries, missionaries from European Christendom alloyed their Christian evangelism with their European culture. Either by way of the Christian conquistadors or the Christian colonialists, the indigenous populations were as much converted to a European culture as they were to Christian Way. And as a Jesuit … I must confess that even Jesuit missionaries were blind to this alloy of European culture with Christian Gospel. But of late, some of us including myself have repented of our past insensitive and arrogant ways … and now seek to be about thee work of Christ-ification.
By Christ-ification I mean the allowing of Christ and the Spirit to be at work in the indigenous culture. To tell the Story and allow that particular culture to be transformed as if Christ were directly speaking to them. This holds true not only with ethnic cultures but also with socio-economic sub-cultures and even subcultures formed in the flow of Time. You could add that the Church itself must learn to be a missionary in changing times and circumstances.
As I journey further and further into the Sacred Hills of Jade, into cultures that were not the same as my own origin’s place and time, I pray that those who listen to the story of the Christ and accept Christ’s invitation offered to them will create by way of the Spirit a music and liturgy, ecclesial forms and practices, that are natural expressions of the Christ within their culture.
As a Jesuit missionary into these hills of jade, I go neither to conquer nor colonize … but to bring them the Story of Christ.
Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
April 2, 2018
OUR TIME OF DAILY SELF-EXAMINATION
In our Ignatian Spirituality, so named after the founder of the Jesuits Ignatius of Loyola, we daily examine our lives through the questions known as the Daily Examen. The five steps in order are:
1) GIVE THANKSGIVING FOR THE BLESSINGS OF THIS DAY
2) ASK FOR THE PRESENCE OF THE SPIRIT TO HELP YOU THROUGH THIS TIME OF SOUL-SEARCHING.
3) REVIEW WHERE YOU STUMBLED, STRAYED, SINNED OR REGRESSED IN LIVING OUT YOUR CHRISTIAN LOVE IN THAT DAY.
4) ASK THE LORD FOR FORGIVENESS AND THEN ASKING FOR THE LORD’S HELP WITH CHANGING YOUR LIFE NOW HAVING LEARNED FROM THE BLESSINGS AND STRUGGLES OF THIS DAY.
5) PRAY FOR THE COMING DAY THAT WITH THE LORD’S ASSISTANCE, YOU WILL PROGRESS IN YOUR MATURING IN LOVE.
Each day and every day, we ask these questions in a time of private and prayerful self-examination not for the purpose of fostering guilt and shame but rather for the purpose of fostering hope and possibility.
For a more detailed explanation of the Daily Examen, I refer you to https://fathercharitasdelacruz.blog/the-daily-examen/.
Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
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APRIL 1, 2018
Easter Sunday … the celebration of a new way of Life, the Way of Christ alive within us and among us. Easter Sunday … comes near every day here in the Sacred Hills of Jade, this Realm of dreams and possibilities, this Realm which exists on the frontier of all-things transforming, here at the edge of tomorrow. And so I too on this Easter Sunday … begin once again in my beginning once more again. I am Father Charitas de la Cruz, a name which translated means …“the Charity of the Cross”, a Jesuit priest having learned so much from my good Benedictine Brother, Anthony.
The distant hills have always beckoned me. I believe the Lord has called me to be an explorer of beyond the fences of the settlers. While many are cloistered in a colony within the world, I am a trailblazer for those who might follow. I am a missionary into other cultures, not trying to convert them to the culture of my origin but to bring Christ to their culture, not to conquer or convert but rather to what I term …”to help them to experience “Christi-ification” of the world in which they live. I am a missionary who journeys not to geographical places but to changing times.
So I pray that you will accompany me on my missionary journeys … to walk with me as a fellow pilgrim as we explore the Lord’s Realms of Possibilities and Dreams.
In His Service always,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz
Into the Sacred Hills of Jade 