Roma, February 2, 2004
0000
010/04
To the Members of the
Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer
My dear
Confreres,
Greetings from your brothers on the General Council who, like you, have been
set apart to proclaim the Gospel of God
concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord
(cf. Rm 1, 1-4). The Congregation has embarked
on a new sexen-nium as we begin to live
the consequences of the XXIII General Chapter.
As news of the Chapter spread throughout
the Congregation during the last months,
like Peter’s audience on Pentecost, many
Redemptorists have asked, Brothers, what
should we do? (Acts
2, 37). In this letter I hope to
bring you up to date regarding the first
steps being taken by the General Council
in re-sponse to the Chapter and invite you
to join in the discernment of God’s will
for us at the beginning of this new six-year
period.
Since the newly elected consultors had important commitments to complete after
the Chapter, the full General Council could
finally begin its work only in mid-December
and we used most of the time before the
Christmas holidays to get to know each other,
pray together and begin to plan our service
to the Congregation over the next six years.
We resumed these meetings on January 7 and
continued for another ten days. Given that
five of the seven members of the Council
are just beginning this service, we felt
the need to give time to our personal relationships
and to the centre of gravity among us, our
relationship with Christ, the Redeemer.
I believe we have made a good start in forming
our team and deepening the sort of Gospel
friendship that should link the members
of every Redemptorist community.
What have we been thinking about during our first month of work? Certainly we
are making a great effort to understand
the General Chapter, its analysis of the
Congregation and its vision for the next
six years. We have begun to glimpse some
of the consequences that the theme Giving
our lives for plentiful redemption
holds for us.
Why did the Chapter propose this theme for the sexennium? In my opinion, the
decision was not determined absolutely by
the recommendation of the Instru-mentum
laboris. In fact, the Chapter felt free
to consider a number of possible themes
and the vote to select this particular text
was actually quite close. While I need to
continue to pray and meditate about this
choice and discuss it with my confreres,
I believe that the Congregation senses the
need to consider at depth the charism that
breathes life into our Redemptorist vocation.
In this sense, the words of the theme do
not represent a superficial slogan but rather
the discern-ment of God’s will for all Redemptorists
here and now – and such discernment is always
a summons to change. For individual confreres,
communities, (vice-) provinces and, indeed,
the entire Congregation Giving
our lives for plentiful redemption is
our theme and ought to make a difference
in our lives.
For me, the gateway to
entering into the theme are the words
“plentiful re-demption”. I believe that
the XXIII General Chapter teaches us that
only if we are captivated by the call of
God and give ourselves unreservedly to His
plan for us will we find happiness, joy
and peace. But before making any plans about
how to respond, I think we need to allow
ourselves to be seduced again and again
by the utter bounty of God’s saving love
that is given in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer.
The abundance of God’s saving love so enthralled
Alphonsus that it led to his conversion
to Jesus Christ, to the abandoned poor and
to the community. Jesus, whose incarnation,
paschal mystery and Eucharistic pre-sence
together express the radical solidarity
of God with human beings, be-comes the centre
of his life and the reason for his self-giving
to others. And the conversion of Alphonsus
leads him to embrace the preference of Jesus
and live the reality of God’s love in situations
of social marginalization or ecclesial estrangement.
What is more, Alphonsus understands that
this conversion to Jesus Christ must be
realized in community, so he invites others
who feel the same captivation to live together
in a way that will ensure an ongoing connec-tion
with this abundant love and the preference
of Jesus Christ for the poor.
The theme, Giving our lives for plentiful redemption, is a call to conversion,
a summons for each of us to change our minds
about God and our lives while, at the same
time, considering how the structures of
our Congregation need to be transformed
in order that Redemptorists might be more
faithful, creative and audacious in carrying
out the mission that has been entrusted
to us. The Chap-ter has proposed two forms
that this conversion will take. First,
the capitulars “call on all confreres and
all communities to examine afresh the consequence
of the ‘definitive act of our whole missionary
life as Redemptorists’, that is, our religious
profession” (Message, 4).
It was also clear to the Capitulars that
“the Congregation should take up the challenge
of restructuring for the sake of our mission”
(Message, 11). Can you see how these
two challenges, a re-exami-nation of our
religious profession as well as the proposed
restructuring of the Congregation, are both
consequences of our theme for this sexennium?
A serious renewal of our religious profession and the ongoing restructuring
of the Congregation will pull us away from
certain securities in life that inhibit
a more unreserved response to God’s abundant
love. After all, is it possible to make
a more unconditional response than to give
our lives for someone? Yet that is what
we propose to do by our profession, which
is both “a response to the Lord, who first
loved us” as well as a commitment to “spare
no effort to arrive at a total gift of ourselves”
(Con. 56). At the General Chapter, I spoke
about our religious profession because I
believe that any hope for the ongoing renewal
of our Institute, even its
re-founding, must address seriously a number
of questions which touch on our identity
as the expression of the Redemptorist charism.
What does it mean to be communities of vowed
men today? What does it mean to profess
poverty, chastity and obedience in the charismatic
life of Redemptorist missionaries? How do
these religious bonds, “by which the members
dedicate themselves to God, necessarily
involve commitment to the apostolate and
strengthen that commitment” (Con. 54)? I
am convinced that a thorough and honest
appraisal of these and related questions
will inevitably lead us to the challenge
of continuing conversion that will move
us from a sedate and secure way of life,
by which we have diluted the radical response
of our pro-fession, towards a total dedication
to the mission of Christ, which we live
in self-renunciation, freedom and zeal (Con.
51).
At the General Chapter a great deal of time was spent considering the idea of
restructuring in the Congregation; in order
to clarify our own thinking about this important
question the General Council has begun work
on a document, which we hope to publish
to the Congregation around Easter. At that
time we should be ready to announce a process
aimed at putting into practice the orientations
of the General Chapter. We already see the
absolute necessity of linking re-structuring
to the theme of the sexennium, Giving our lives for plentiful redemption and
its summons to conversion to God, to the
abandoned poor and to the Redemptorist community.
Otherwise any change in the organization
of the Congregation risks becoming simply
a question of management rather than an
expression of the continuing conversion
of Redemptorists.
In our first months together the General Government has dealt with a number
of specific tasks. The message, orientations
and decisions of the General Chapter have
been put into a standard format and translated
into many of the languages of the Congregation.
Booklets containing these texts as well
as the message of Pope John Paul II to the
General Chapter are now being printed in
seven lan-guages. These documents are already
available in the members’ area of the website
of the General Government (www.cssr.com).
Before approving the calendar of activities for the year 2004, the General Council
spoke at length about how we should be present
to the Congregation, both at the time of
visitation as well as at other important
moments of our mis-sionary life. We have
approved a working document that contains
our own understanding of the general visitation
together with possible models of how to
carry it out. This document will be sent
to the (vice-) provincial superior and his
council well in advance of a visitation
to help the visitors and the (vice-) pro-vince
discover the best way of realizing the ideal
of our corresponsability
for the Redemptorist mission. We have also
decided to try to visit neighboring (vice-)
provinces at the same time in order to focus
our energy on a particular Region or sub-region.
We believe this will give us a more complete
under-standing of the reality of the Congregation,
while helping us promote greater solidarity
and effective cooperation among Redemptorists.
The process we have developed also provides
strategies that are aimed at maintaining
the dialogue between the General Council
and the units after the visitation.
Finally, we have been able to discuss the question of what sort of consultative
bodies, such as secretariats and commissions,
we will need in this sexennium. We agreed
to establish eight general secretariats
to deal with these areas of our life: evangelization,
formation, Redemptorist spirituality, partnership
with laity, Redemptorist Brothers, youth
and vocation ministry, finances and concerns
of our Redemptoristine nuns. Responsibility
for convoking these secretariats was assigned
to one or more consultors, who will spend
the next months contacting possible members
and outlining the objectives of each working
group. There was not sufficient time for
us to address the question of commissions
or the expediency of one or more institutes
to serve the Congregation in this sexen-nium.
These matters will form part of the agenda
of the next extraordinary meeting, 31 March
– 7 April 2004.
I hope that this information lets you know that the new General Council is learning
to work together and is taking seriously
its responsibility to carry out the program
that has been outlined by the Chapter. It
must be said, of course, that this program
is not easily reduced to goals and objectives,
especially when a central element of the
program is aimed at our own conversion.
But these first reflections on the theme
of this sexennium leave little doubt that
we are being invited to change. And, while
it is possible to change without growing,
it is impossible to grow without changing.
Mary, as portrayed in the gospel of Luke, gives us a way to
enter into the theme of this sexennium.
The third gospel speaks of Mary “treasuring”
things, then “reflecting on them in her
heart” (e.g. Lk. 2, 19). The purpose of
God in the events of her life is not immediately
clear to Mary. But she does not discard
what happens to her but rather carries the
experience into the sanctuary of her heart,
trusting that God will eventually make his
intentions clear. As we begin this sexennium,
I ask you to carry the message of the General
Chapter, especi-ally
the theme proposed for this sexennium, into
the refuge of your heart and seek to understand
what God is asking of us today. Pray that
the whole Con-gregation accepts the gift
that is being offered to us: the grace of
conversion to Jesus Christ, to the abandoned
poor and to our community.
Your brother in Alphonsus,
Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.
Superior General
