The Heart of Being Brother (HOBB)

The Congregational Chapter placed before us this challenge of living a heart centered spirituality. In seeking to come to understand, and more importantly to live this spirituality, we seek to find within it some links to the central place that Edmund Rice’s spirituality holds for us. Unlike other religious congregations, we do not have a large body of writings from Edmund Rice that would clarify what sort of interior life he led that was unique for him. Let us be clear from the start that by spirituality is not meant the various devotions that Edmund might have practiced that were reflections of his time and culture in the life of the Church. What we seek to uncover is something deeper - that of himself that gave direction and meaning to his life. We have only glimpses of this through his own life that helps us to understand the dynamic relationship he had with his God.

I assume any follower of Edmund Rice could come up with his/her own suggestions that begin from a reflection and search to make clearer how a heart centered spirituality could be lived by Christian Brothers and others inspired by the Edmund’s charism. What I offer for reflection are three aspects or values of a heart centered spirituality that I feel can be drawn from the life of Edmund. There are also some exercises included within this article to assist anyone in his/her own reflections.

                        FIGURE 1: Three Aspects of Heart Centred Spirituality

In the diagram above, the burning heart, full of energy and passion of Edmund’s life was in truth the quest for God. "His faith in God, coupled with the deep intuition that life could be different, lit the fire that transformed his life." (Constitutions, p. vii, 1996)

The three aspects, while listed separately, are only done so for the sake of clarity and further development. In reality, they indeed blend into one reality, that reality as lived by Edmund during his life. It is a developmental spirituality that flows back and forth linking the three aspects as if the various sides of a box. But it is however the one and same box. They can also be considered as stepping stones to something more encompassing - the passion for God.

The three aspects are around a circle emphasizing the equality that exists in brotherhood and sisterhood. This spirituality derives from Paul’s admonition of inclusiveness: "By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe - Christ's life, the fulfilment of God's original promise. In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ." (Galatians 3: 26 - 28, The Message) There is no place for hierarchy or paternalism in a lived heart-centred spirituality.

Those people who have power need to be reminded of the cross. As one writer has expressed it, those that have wealth and power have the need to give up, as the rich man in the gospel was called to do (Luke 18: 18-23). They are the ones that need to give up power and the control over their own lives and that of others. They need to die to the old self in order to open themselves to allow God’s presence to be felt.

Edmund Rice was a wealthy man, a man of honour and prestige, even in the days before Catholic emancipation. He was privileged among his class. God called him to something more - to the acceptance of the cross that would turn his life around, that would open him up to begin to include a wider range of God’s poor and marginalised into his life. He would come to understand what it meant to be powerless, to be dependent only on God. The death of his wife and the situation of his daughter, we are told, were turning points in Edmund’s spiritual journey. They were Edmund’s entrance point into powerlessness, and the beginning of his understanding of the powerlessness of the poor and marginalised around him and their need to be liberated.

Once powerless, Edmund could begin to understand that Jesus’ message of liberation (Luke 4: 18 -21) was a message of inclusiveness for the marginalised and the poor, and that by his embracing that understanding in his own powerlessness before his God, he could begin to empower the poor to become liberated as Jesus hoped for in the Kingdom of God. The diagram above highlights that cycle from Edmund’s life. It is one that through our actions in ministry we need also to be constantly reminded. 

This cycle from power to powerlessness is the paschal cycle, the dying to self in order to be born to new life. As with Jesus, we all sink to the depths of a sense of abandonment by God, the dark night, in order to come to the singular acceptance of our God in our lives.

A second aspect of heart centred spirituality is that it is incarnational, which should naturally lead us to daily theological reflection. In our lifetime we have seen leaders such as Nelson Mandela undergo radical transformation through his experiences of 30 years in prison and a lifetime of resistance against apartheid in South Africa. From a voice of resistance, even at the physical level, he was able to rise above the hatred and recrimination that was so embedded in the social and political system in his country. How did he arrive at this transformation? The answer may lie in the words of another contemporary leader.

In 1999, Vaclac Havel spoke before the US Congress. In that speech he declared that the salvation of the world - of this human world - lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility. Authentic spirituality was experienced by these two men in their personal lives because they were in touch with the deepest realities and the truth about themselves, even when those realities were painful and unjust. We all have a wealth of human experiences, incarnational experiences, that can lead us to listen for God, but oftentimes, we fail to do so because we fail to give the time to reflect on what is happening within us and around us. We fail to truly accept that God is in the whisperings of the here and now of our lives.

A spiritual writer of the Vatican Council era once wrote this idea in the following way: "God’s visits go so deep that often we are not aware of them until they have taken place." Edmund Rice had a wealth of experience throughout his long life. These were experiences that through the time he spent in reflection being brought before his God, led him to come to understand and accept how God entered his life and that of his neophyte congregation.  His story is a constant telling of how life experiences led him to authentic reflective living.

A final aspect of heart-centred spirituality that we can examine is that it is relational and that it leads us to a quest for a wider God and for understanding our relationship to a wider world and creation.

In the Vatican II documents Gaudiam et Spes we are reminded that the quest - the search for God - is a quest to find life in its deepest and fullest expression. When we open our lives to God’s presence within us and around us we are in touch with a LOVE that is at the very centre of the universe. Such a life - connected with this divine encounter - becomes intimately connected with the world’s sufferings and cries and pains because these are carried in the heart of our Creator God.

It is this divine Love that is at the heart of the universe. Teilhard de Chardin has a beautiful mystical expression of this love in one of his writings from Hymn of the Universe entitled "The Mass on the World" in which he reflects on the the growth of Christ’s mystical body through the cosmos.  He later developed his thoughts further: ‘To interpret adequately the fundamental position of the Eucharist in the economy of the world . . . it is, I think, necessary that Christian thought and Christian prayer should give great importance to the real and physical extensions of the eucharistic Presence. . . As we properly use the term "our bodies" to signify the localized centre of our spiritual radiations . . ., so it must be said that in its initial and primary meaning the term "Body of Christ" is limited, in this context, to the consecrated species of Bread and Wine.  But. . .the host is comparable to a blazing fire whose flames spread out like rays all round it.’ (Mon Univers)

This divine Love or blazing fire propels and drives all life.  It is like molten lava that pushes its way in forces than can crack the surface of life’s hatreds and sufferings. The force - the lava - is God. God can break through and make all relationships new.  'Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is!' (Isaiah 43: 19)

Edmund was in touch with that love in his heart, his passion, his fire for mission.  In the face of those around him he saw Christ's face reaching out to him.  Thus it became Christ himself appealing in the young children on the streets, the prisoners in the jail or at the gallows, the widows and destitute around him in Waterford. Authentic heart-centred spirituality allowed that love-relationship to break out of narrow confines so that was able to carry God's love to others and to the universe itself.

hhh