A Pilgrimage of Hope
The path to communion with God
Circular of the Superior General
Chapter I
Preparing for the pilgrimage
I have written this circular for us, Brothers of the Institute, and also for the people with whom we share our life and our mission. Through it I want to underscore the need and the urgency for us to return to the essence of our lives, faithful to the charism we have received from Father André Coindre, a charism incarnated and handed down to us by Venerable Brother Polycarp and our predecessors.
It is not easy to say something meaningful and useful for people of such a wide range of [cultures and] mentalities. I would be quite content for this circular to be of at least some encouragement in helping us live more deeply the spirit of the General Chapter of 2006, and spur us on to undertake our pilgrimage of hope with a sincere desire for conversion and with a desire to experience the Father’s great love in an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother (cf. General Chapter of 2006, Ordinance).
In addition to my trust in God and the support of my Brothers another reality encouraged me to accept the role of service as Superior General of the Institute. I would not have to concern myself with drawing up a new program. It has always been quite clear to me that our own religious life is founded on the Word of God and on the charism of André Coindre as we find them expressed in our Rule of Life and the legacy of our predecessors. Our latest General Chapter indicated to us the salient points of this program. My task is simply to be attentive to them, to listen to and discover the voice of the Spirit.
Last April 8, the Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, we [the members of the general council] published the booklet of the account of the proceedings of the Chapter of 2006 and its decisions. In the introduction, we wrote that the chapter members “Urged on by Hope,” desired to launch out into “deep waters,” that is to say to live religious life today in a radical way. As a means of doing this, they proposed that the Institute undertake “a pilgrimage of hope on the path of communion.” We were also asserting that in the words “pilgrimage,” “hope,” “path”, and “communion,” could be found the key “for our living religious life authentically and for being signs of hope in our present world” (A Pilgrimage of Hope, p. 3). I think it is important that I pause here and explain each one of those words.
Brothers, I invite you to undertake our pilgrimage with eyes and hearts turned towards the Heart of God who is calling us to live out our communion with Him with ever-greater intimacy. Brothers and collaborators, it is through such intimacy that we will advance in our pilgrimage of hope on the path to fraternal communion and in our communion in charism and mission.
A Pilgrimage, a path
“I was glad when I heard it said,
‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ ”
(Ps 122:1)
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest,
where she may lay her young, at your altars,
o Lord of hosts, my king and my God.”
(Ps 84:2-4)
Journeying is characteristic of the human person. Before becoming sedentary, humans were nomadic. They moved from place to place in order to find food and meet their other various needs. Today this characteristic manifests itself in a thirst for travel, a desire to discover new worlds, almost as if today’s human beings were in a constant search for something missing in their lives. But the journey sometimes even becomes a flight, a means to avoid having to be with self or with others.
To set off on a journey is also a Christian attitude. Christian life has from earliest times been seen as a pilgrimage: we come from God and we are returning to God. The people of Israel wandered for forty years in the desert. Jesus walked upon the paths of this world as we do. The Virgin Mary, a pilgrim in faith and in hope, also set off to follow a path, as did so many saints, such as James the Greater, Bartholomew, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola… not forgetting a along line of missionaries, and so many of our own Brothers.
The religious sets off on the path towards the holy places of God and of his saints. Even from the first century of Christianity the disciples of Jesus made their way towards places like Jerusalem, Rome, St. James of Compostela, Le Puy, Fourvière… I was born in a little village in Navarre, Spain, near the road to St. James of Compostela. Thousands of pilgrims traveled that road in the Middle-Ages. But all of that seemed to belong to a bygone era, when, in the second part of the 20th Century, the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela was reborn. Today, if you set out at any part of the year, on any day, and at any hour, it is almost impossible not to come across at least some pilgrims traveling to the shrine.
What possible motives can these people have for undertaking such a pilgrimage, on foot, knap-sack on their backs, alone or in groups? There are those who do so to feel themselves free in a world in which there are so many slaves, others do so for the sake of physical exercise to maintain or improve their physical health, others are attracted by the lure of a contact with nature, others are motivated by a love of history or art, others do so as a reaction to the frenetic rhythm of today’s world, others as a gratuitous response to the idol of efficiency, for others it is their personal protest against the comforts of modern society, others do so to experience for themselves their insecurity in the face of thirst and exhaustion, others to plum the depths of their beings or to experience a need for others, or to free themselves from wallowing in the egotism of self, or to leave themselves open to significant encounters with others and to find again the simple joys of being, and finally, still others undertake the pilgrimage to live out a deep experience of God who comes to meet them on the road.
What motives urge me on to undertake the pilgrimage in my religious life as I respond to the call of the Lord? Brothers, I open up my own log book before you. The image of a pilgrim invites me to be a more authentic religious and to make efforts to seek in God the meaning of my religious life. God, Mother-Father, has given me life in the person of Jesus, his Son and my brother. Jesus became my companion on the journey; he gives me his Spirit to love Him and to love my Brothers, and he awaits at the end of the road to welcome me into his house which will become my home. As a religious, I do not minister in the world with exclusively humanitarian goals; I am a consecrated person so as to live out the joyful experience of the “God-alone-is-sufficient-for-me.”
I live out the deep experience of God in an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother, identifying myself with him in his way of being and living. This leads me to appreciate everything that is good in the world and in today’s culture: concern for nature, interest in learning, scientific and technological advancements, appropriate respect for the human body, awareness of the sufferings of others, solidarity, the dignity of women, etc. But equally these same notions lead me to be critical, to reject the false idols of individualism, materialism, exaggerated consumerism, comfort-seeking, the quest for efficiency at any cost, superficiality, and hedonism, etc.
In a world in which people are valued according to their purchasing power and by the things they possess, living for God leads me to undertake the pilgrimage with less and lighter equipment, with what is necessary, stripping myself of things and of myself, letting-go of all attachments, constantly searching, always on the alert, far away from mediocrity and self-sufficiency.
As a pilgrim, I strive to let myself be led by the Holy Spirit, and to live in a state of ongoing conversion to the God of Love. This attitude helps me to pray “in spirit and in truth.” This relationship strengthens me and gives shape and form to my life of communion with others, and my commitment for the sake of the Kingdom.
Hope
“For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
God alone is my rock an my salvation, my fortress;
I shall never be shaken.”
(Ps 62:2-3)
“The Lord loves us too much, my dear brother,
not to draw us out of the abyss
after having allowed us to see the bottom of it.
Let us always live in hope.
Abraham became the father of believers
for having hoped against all hope.”
(ANDRÉ COINDRE, Writings and Documents, 1, Letters 1821-1826, Letter VIII, p. 87)
On June 4, 2005, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Bernard Couvillion published the circular entitled “A Patrimony of Hope.” Brothers, I do recommend that you re-read it to refresh your memories. At the risk of repeating some of the ideas that he developed in that circular, I am going to set before you a few considerations on the theme of hope.
God hopes in us
God hopes in us long before we hoped in him. God hopes in us because he loves us. God hopes in us when he created the world; God hopes in us when he created us in his image and likeness. And God manifests hope for mankind, when even after sin, God gives us his only Son, becomes a human being, a son who, “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Ph 2:6). God hopes in us when Jesus submits to death, suffering and dying with Him on the Cross. And God hopes in us when he raised Jesus as a guarantor of our own resurrection.
God is our hope
God becomes hope for us in Jesus Christ through the action of the Spirit. He is the “God of hope (cf. Rm 15:13), the ‘Father of glory’ who, in his Son, reveals to man ‘His immense glory’ (cf. Ep 1:18) and opens up His kingdom to him (cf. Mk 1:15; Lk 17:21) [1].
In Jesus Christ the Father reveals to us his fatherliness. God reveals to us that we are sons, that we are called to intimacy with him and that our life is a path that leads to resurrection. Christ is well and truly our hope, for in him all the promises have already been fulfilled (cf. Ac 2:25-35; Lk 4:21; Rm 8:11; Col 1:18; Heb 10:23).
The text of the first letter of St. Peter says it so much better than any commentary that I might try to make.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation to be revealed in the last time. (1 P 1:3-5)
We hope in God
Hope is an essential element of the human person, dwelling at its very core. Hope is a constant journey between the what-is and the what-will-be; it is a plan which evolves day after day. And in the midst of the tension in anticipation of the what-is-to-come, believers discern a thirst for God. I was saying earlier on that it is God who is first to hope in us. And that is why the complete truth about hope might be expressed as: hope is God’s attraction to us and our attraction to God.
Since Christian hope is a theological virtue, it is not of our making; it is the work of the Holy Spirit. At its source is our participation in the Trinitarian life, since it is through the gift of the Holy Spirit that in Christ we are made Sons of the Father and heirs of God (cf. Rm 8:16-17). Hope emanates from the certainty of the love of God, and consequently, hope leads to a filial abandonment into the hands of the Father. Hope is the trusting assurance of having received the inheritance of being sons of God, in fulfillment of God’s promise to us. For the Christian, the Kingdom has already begun even if it has not yet come to its fullness. Hope is the today of the sons-of-God, pilgrims making their way on the road in the knowledge that they have not yet arrived at their destination.
Since Christ is our hope, hope will remain vibrant in us if we remain rooted in Him (cf. Col 2:6; 1 Co 3:10-11). As with the disciples at Emmaus, our encounter with the Resurrected One will rekindle our hope. Like Jesus, we will be able to hope even in the dark night of our own Gethsemanies. Like Jesus, we will remain confident in the Father, despite his silence, even when there seems to be no reason for hope, and no guarantees of success. Hope is a boldness of faith which can enable us to hope, to hope as Abraham hoped, against all hope (cf. Rm 4:18-19). Hope is the certainty that we will obtain what we do not yet possess.
Called to be hope, called to build up hope
Every day the media inform us of natural disasters, injustices, poverty, hunger, illness, war and death. We can not close ourselves off in an ivory tower to dream of a perfect world to come, shielding our eyes from looking upon reality. We must not allow ourselves to wallow in an attitude of defeatism or pessimism either. The Christian is a realist with hope. The Christian vocation is a call to hope (cf. Ep 4:4). Our optimism has its basis in faith in a Creator-God – “and God saw that it was good” (Gn 1:4) – and in a Liberator-God. It is up to us to know how to read the signs of hope. Let us seek the signs of life, and not be overwhelmed by the signs of death. Like the prophets let us condemn the signs of death and let us proclaim the signs of life which are to be found throughout human history and the history of the Church. Let us believe in the goodness of creation and in the threads of our human history with which God weaves the tapestry of the History of salvation. Let us hope always that God who resurrected Jesus will in turn resurrect this humanity of ours.