Jan Hulshof sm

' A certain woman, the widow of one of the guild prophets, complained to Elisha: 'My husband, your servant, is dead. You know that he was a God-fearing man, yet now his creditor has come to take my two children as his slaves.' 'How can I help you?' Elisha answered her. 'Tell me what you have in the house'. 'This servant of yours has nothing in the house but a jug of oil,' she replied. 'Go out,' he said, 'borrow vessels from all your neighbours - as many empty vessels as you can. Then come back and close the door on yourself and your children; pour the oil into all the vessels, and as each is filled, set it aside.' She went and did so, closing the door on herself and her children. As they handed her the vessels, she would pour in oil. When all the vessels were filled, she said to her son; 'Bring me another vessel.' 'There is none left,' he answered her. And then the oil stopped. She went and told the man of God who said: 'Go and sell the oil to pay off your creditor; with what remains, you and your children can live.'

In one of the Hasidic Tales there is a nice story that has the same point. 'A man visited the Rabbi of Kotzk and asked him for some advice with regard to his plan to leave his place of birth to improve his living conditions and discover the resources he needed to live. The Rabbi told him a little story: A Jew of Krakow, called Eisik, the uncle of Jekel, dreamt many times about a treasure buried close by a windmill. In his dream he was told that he had to dig it up. Once, early in the morning, he left his house, started digging carefully on the spot of his dreams, but he did not find the treasure. The miller asked him why he had been digging close by his mill. Eisik told him his dream. The miller shouted: ' Well, imagine, I dreamt of a treasure buried in the courtyard of a certain Jew in Krakow, called Eisik. Without saying one more word the man from Krakow went back home and dug up the treasure in his courtyard. That's how a man finds a treasure in his own house, the Rabbi said to his visitor'. Martin Buber explains:

So if we look for resources we should not start looking at a future which is not yet ours. Our resources are not primarily the vocations that are not yet here. We have to look at what we have in the house. It is tempting to reduce the question of resources to the vocations issue. Of course, vocations are tremendously important. They will be resources for the future of the province, once they are there. Still we must resist the temptation to look for resources somewhere else than where we are now. The miracle can only happen if we offer what we have in the house. I was therefore impressed by the report on the state of the Irish Province in the Provincial Newsletter of February 1999. Your Provincial faces up to the vocations issue in very plain terms. Still he is very careful not to reduce the perspective of the province to the question of vocations. He speaks of the resources of the province; he points at the experiences in the field of Marist laity which are an enrichment for all. "I am convinced that we Marists are making a worthwhile contribution to the life of the Church in Ireland, in our parish ministry, in our school ministry, in chaplaincies in other schools, in third level ministry, in the churches that are not parishes and in the individual ministries that we are engaged in. We are blessed to have a vibrant group of younger Marists and their influence is being felt more and more as they take up positions of responsibility and leadership." "Tell me what you have in the house!" Only after that, is the issue of vocations raised in this context. And the provincials letter ends pointing to the basic resource of community life as God's gift to us, for the older Marists the setting for their contemplation and ministry of presence, for the strong Marists in their middle years a setting that keeps them from falling into a sterile activism, for the Marists passing through a crisis a setting that provides support and a safeguard for fidelity, for younger Marists the place that welcomes their generosity and creativity. So we should not think that our poverty prevents us from being the seeds for the future.

Everything, as common and fragile it may be, can become a bearer of divine presence, if filled with the Spirit of God. That's the mystery of the sacraments. The sacraments build on what we have in the kitchen: a bit of bread, some wine, a few drops of oil, a jug of water. Filled with the Spirit of God, they become messengers and bearers of the presence of the divine world in the midst of our world. We don't have to emigrate to the place of our dreams, but just to go into the kitchen. In this context it's interesting that the old Latin Missal had the story of Elisha on Tuesday in the third Week of Lent. On the preceding Monday the Missal had the story about Elijah and the cure of the Syrian Naaman. The cure of Naaman was in the mind of the liturgy a symbolic foreboding of baptism: the water of the Jordan, moved by the Spirit of God, becomes the sacrament of eternal life. The reading of the subsequent Tuesday, the story of Elisha, then was read as a symbolic foreboding of baptismal anointing: the ceaseless flowing of the oil becomes the messenger and bearer of the abundance of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit comes to us in many ways. The Church calls the most important resource of each religious family a "charism" a gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that Mary, full of the Holy Spirit, gives us a share in her spirit. It is not the first time for Marists to be invited to go back to that source. Recently, in the week after the feast of Assumption, I was in Ste Foy. I couldn't help recalling the famous session of the General Chapter of 1872 in the same house of Ste Foy. At that time, after years of discussion and misunderstandings, also about the role of our Founder, the Society struggled to define again its spiritual and supernatural origin. On the feast of the Assumption the Capitulants asked Mary to do for them what Elijah did for Elisha, when he left him his mantle and his spirit. The Spirit of Mary is the unique and everlasting resource for every Marist, every Marist community and for the whole Society:

So our answer to the first question of the prophet Elisha is decisive: 'Tell me what you have in the house yourself'. Miracles happen, especially in times of shortage. But they start with the answer we give to the question: 'What do we have in the house ourselves?' I think the question should lead us in the days to come. It points at our own resources, not in the first place in terms of houses, supplies and facilities, but in a deeper sense: in terms of grace, spirit and charism. I think, this morning, in our personal reflection and prayer, each of us should try to ask what graces, gifts and qualities he or she received in his or her life, as a human being, as man or woman, as a believer, as a Christian, as a religious, and last but not least as a Marist.

Lionel Blue " A young rabbi austerely tells a warden to wake up an old boy who has snored throughout his sermon. "You sent him to sleep, so you wake him up yourself!" replies the warden" (The Tablet 14th August 1999, 1103)

Many Christians in Europe today go through the experience of a kind of spiritual drought, as if the times of Elijah have recurred, when the prophet spoke to Ahab: 'As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word' (1Kings, 17:1). They miss the living water of so many familiar religious practices, traditions and references. Often the word 'secularisation' is used to label this experience of spiritual drought. I use the word because the Chapter of the Marist Fathers of 1993, the last one held in this century, chose as its main theme: 'evangelisation in a secularised world'. Several Marists didn't like the Chapter to focus on 'secularisation'. Marists from other continents found the whole item too European. Others felt that the word was already outdated and they pointed at new streams of religion, evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist and esoteric New Age religion, not only in America and Asia, but also in Europe. Others found the word 'secularisation' unclear, since it could be understood in a neutral, but also in a negative sense and in order to create clarity they distinguished between 'secularisation' and 'secularism'. 'Secularism' is a theological term. It is loaded with a negative judgement. It proclaims a world without God. 'Secularisation' is a sociological term, saying that public references to God are less and less visible in our society. 'Secularisation' does not say that man can do without faith. It only describes that signs of religion are disappearing in our society. In that sense I believe the word is still very useful to indicate what we experience in our lives, in our families, in our communities, in our countries.

In that sense the General Chapter of 1993 asked the question: 'What is the mission of the Marists in a secularised world?' The chapter did not use the word in a negative, but rather in a neutral sense. 'Secularisation' doesn't point at unbelief but rather at a 'culture-change'. It doesn't mean that faith has disappeared, but that the language and institutions of our world no longer refer directly to God. This process started already a few centuries ago. Scientists, lawyers and politicians gave up looking for religion to underpin their work. The areas of science, politics and law became autonomous. State and religion became separated. Religion became a matter of personal option. This already was the sort of world that the first Marists faced. 'In these processes of culture-change we recognise the kind of world for which the Society of Mary was founded', the General Chapter comments.

We know that Colin condemned whole-heartedly what we now call 'secularism'. He was quite outspoken in his assessment of his time. For him his century was a period of spiritual drought. 'We should be quite clear that our age is one of pride and arrogance. People call it a century of enlightenment, and in material terms that may be true, but in religious terms, it is a century of the profoundest ignorance. The highest ranks of society themselves are not well instructed in what concerns God, the soul, religion. This is easily seen if you are travelling by public carriage or on a steamer. In matters of religion they know absolutely nothing. That , alas , is the result of a bad education, in which everything concerning spiritual matters is neglected'. This is a very clear language. One could easily conclude that Fr. Colin was just a reactionary preacher, as there were so many in the first part of the last century.

Still we don't know how he would have assessed 'secularisation', since the distinction between 'secularism' and secularisation' was not current in his days. Anyhow, Fr. Colin did not send the Marists to work against this secularised world, as so many reactionary priests and missionaries did. Neither did he ask the Marists to withdraw from this world. He sent the Marists to work in this world, as Jan Snijders has shown in 'The Age of Mary'. It's only a difference of one word, but it's a world of difference. Colin had the hope and trust that also in the middle of this secularised world and under the conditions of this world it was possible for people to be touched by the word of God. This hope of our Founder, this trust, is one of the important assets that we have in the house and that we are asked to bring out. It's enough to give life to our lives, It's enough to give life to our world.

Of course there are great differences between our situation and the situation of the first Marists. Secularisation in their time was confined to the well-educated classes. Today it has penetrated daily life, the classroom, the newspaper, the television, the hospital and the living-room, Sunday and weekday. It has reached also the remote villages of the countryside, also in the Bugey where the first Marists gave their home missions. It even has penetrated into the very church buildings. In July Ad Blommerde and I took walking trips in Le Bugey. We stayed in a little cottage near to Premilieu, a little village of 100 inhabitants. It was the only village where Fr. Colin, in June 1827, went for a home mission in summertime. The little church still exists. On Sunday July 11 there was no Eucharist, but at night we attended an exuberant performance of an African Gabonese Dance Group led by the black singer and dancer Annie Flore. The program had been organised by the regional 'Festival Improvisation et ephemere Plateaua d'Hauteville'. The sanctuary of the church, the very place where once Fr. Colin had said Mass for the villagers, had now become the platform for a dance group. And the pulpit where he once preached the Word of God, had become the pedestal for the TV camera. Annie Flore even invited the marie of Premilieu for a dance in the sanctuary of the church under the watchful eye of the priest in charge of the parishes of the region. This was not at all an anti-religious manifestation. Annie Flore recalled with great respect the priests and religious of Gabon who had taught and encouraged her. No trace of secularism. But secularisation, Yes. I was struck to see the church, where Fr. Colin once gave a home mission, used for recreational and cultural amusement of summer holidaymakers.

Social research confirms everyday experience. When in 1995 a survey among European youth was conducted, it appeared that young people are more familiar with the Shell symbol or with the symbol of the Olympic games that with the sign of the Cross. Many people don't know at all that Christmas has something to do with Jesus. When last Christmas all the streets were provided with Christmas trees and pictures of Father Christmas, the people of the Salvation Army in Utrecht had stretched a banner from one side of the street to the other with the words: 'Jesus our Saviour!'. A friend of mine told me that he heard two people saying when they went by: 'Today they drag Jesus into everything'.

Basically, I believe that we are living in a secularised and individualised society, as it was confirmed by the European Value Systems Study done in 1981, repeated in 1990 and extended to the US and Canada. Secularisation as matter of fact affects all countries of Western, Northern and Southern Europe and it affects these countries much more than the US and Canada. Although the situation in Northern Ireland and the Republic is to some extent different from the situation in other European countries, the conclusion of the survey also apply here. The survey refers to the loss of confidence in the church and to the existence of a first generation of unchurched in Ireland. Together with the opposition in the eighties by many Irish people to the link of church and state, the figures of the survey indicate that a process of secularisation is under way in Ireland as well.

This cultural change is not limited to Europe, but it is very typical for the European countries. Marists in Brazil, in India or in the Philippines face secularised patterns of life and thinking among their students. Still, I believe that what we call 'secularisation' applies particularly to the European scene. In African societies Christians meet religious elements everywhere. That is not the problem. The challenge is to let the Gospel take root in their own cultural soil. In most of the Asian countries Christians live with the omnipresence of religion. The absence of visible religion is not the main problem. Their challenge is whether and how Christianity can enter into genuine dialogue with the great Asian religions. In Latin America social life is still full of religion, in popular religiosity, in traditional church practice, in basic communities, in Pentecostal and fundamentalist movements. That is not the main problem. The challenge there is to translate the Gospel into terms of a just society. North-America is, as every visitor from Europe will notice, in many aspects a very religious continent. The survey results clearly show that North America and South America score much higher regarding Christian religiosity. 'After all, the survey comments, it is clear that religion played an integrative function for immigrants in the US and still does; that it provides identity to people in the American melting pot and provides community, and that in contrast to Europe, religion was never a political issue in the US.' The need to keep 'God out of it' is after all very European. It is the antibiotic prescribed by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch father of the Law of Nations in the seventeenth century, to our European cultures in the age of the religious wars: to develop a public order that , although not built on the denial of God, would operate by putting God in brackets. {To avoid misunderstandings, Grotius was a deeply religious person and he nurtured a great ecumenical love for the churches of Europe.}

In this sense secularisation is a typical European process. The Christian faith in the United States too has its problems, but people seem to accept that there must be a visible and audible space for religion in society. Christians all over the world face different challenges. We in Europe face ours: how do we live faith, hope and love in a secularised world? European Marists wonder whether they should work in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania rather than in Europe. This is quite understandable. The soil for preaching the Gospel seems to be much more prepared and fertile over there. There is a world of a difference between the average Dutch parish and the parish of Santa Rosa in Callao in Peru, where I gave assistance each Sunday during my sabbatical year. Each Sunday there were eight masses and each time the Church was overcrowded, with all kinds of people and with many young families and teenagers. Faith was in the air. Young people didn't question everything, as many people do in Holland and Ireland. They were grateful for every word of encouragement and every sign of friendship. In a certain sense I felt like playing a home match every Sunday. Of course the question arises: 'Why then not go to work in Peru, or in the Philippines, or in Mexico, in stead of Holland, or Ireland or France?' Of course we need missionaries today as well as yesterday. I think, we should remember why the Society waited until the nineteenth century to make its appearance. This didn't happen by chance, according to Fr. Colin. It was because the age of Mary had begun and she had called the Marists to carry out her work in this age of indifference, unbelief, of crime and of false learning.

When we speak of a 'secularised world' and of an 'individualising society' we are not talking of 'other people'. We meet it in our own families, our parishes and our religious communities. Everywhere we have moved away from collective styles of life and thinking that just one generation ago were still taken for granted. Quite a number of traditional and collective forms of piety have lost their appeal and religious communities are no exception. We know only too well that it is easier to discard forms of the past then to find new ones. The General Chapter of 1993 does not idealise secularisation. It draws our attention to its negative effects on our lives and communities. There has been a growth in individualism. Loneliness and a lack of genuine intimacy remain problems. In our relationships with others, there are difficulties with community life and communal projects, a lack of adequate structures for community life and for prayer. As regards the outside world, we fall pray to consumerism and to overwork as a means of escape from inner emptiness and in our relationship to God it has become more difficult to devote sufficient time to prayer.

But before falling into lamentations about the negative aspects of our world, let us admit that in the past too the public symbols of the presence of God were often quite ambiguous. History shows: The kingdom of God, the working of the word of God - peace and reconciliation are not guaranteed by the presence of churches, religious statues in public places, crucifixes in classrooms, religious newspapers or public prayer in parliament. To discover this is an experience of Good Friday and Easter at once. In a rural parish the municipality had decided to rearrange the village square and therefore to take away the Sacred Heart statue in front of the Church. The parishioners were upset, until on Easter Sunday, the curate gave a marvellous homily on Mary Magdalene complaining: 'The Lord has been taken away, and I don't know where they have put him' (John 20.13). The essential question is not whether we see the statue of Christ in front of the Church, but whether we succeed as a community to grow into one image of Christ. This is the experience of many people today: 'The Lord has been taken away, and I don't know where they have put him'. The question is whether we succeed in meeting the risen Lord who is already among us, in a new way, before even we recognise Him.

What this priest was saying is: 'Don't idealise the past. What we are going through might look like a Good Friday. But it can become a life giving Easter experience. In the past there often was less community and less companionship than we now like to think. Living under one roof is not the same as community life. Community life is more than going through the same exercises of piety, more than doing the same work, more than reciting the same Creed, reading the same newspaper and eating at the same table. Maybe the whole Church of the past was at times more a collectivity than a real communion and so were our religious communities. A collectivity is a monolith with little interaction between individuals and between groups, little respect for each one's own personality, little challenge. On the outside a collectivity seals itself off from 'others': religious from 'the world', Catholics from Protestants, the hierarchy from the laity, Christians from unbelievers, fellow countrymen from foreigners, men from women. A community, on the contrary, is not monolithic. It is 'communio'. It allows persons and groups to interact while fostering mutual identity. It does not grow by sealing itself off from outsiders, but is challenged and confirmed in dialogue.

The nostalgia for the past often does not spring from Gospel values, it may spring from less limpid sources. In the Church we easily tend to rail at individualism. Jesus certainly did not promote individualism. But Jesus died for the unity of all men and women in the kingdom of God. He wanted to bring his flock together, but he never intended his Church to be a herd of uniformity, a monolith, a collectivity. He wanted his Church as space for communion of men and women with various qualities, gifts and charism's. Conversion, following of Christ, stewardship, faith and witness are very personal challenges. We can complain about secularisation and the importance attached to the individual. It is true, they undermine traditional forms of social control. But, isn't that exactly what Jesus did himself, constantly: for instance when he denounced hypocritical forms of charity, of prayer and of fasting. We should develop our awareness for the positive aspects of secularisation. According to my opinion, Marists should not talk scornfully about the lack of religious practice, the lack of religious knowledge, the lack of religious traditions and symbols. What do we really know about the hidden faith and the hidden struggle of so many people, men and women, old and young?

When I help in a parish and am asked to prepare a funeral and go to see people at home, I'm always struck by a deep and hidden kind of religious awareness and religious longing in the lives of so many people, who seldom or never go to Church. When people no longer attach importance to public worship and to public rites and symbols of faith, it does not automatically mean that they have given up everything. Apostolate in a secularised world supposes a special sensitivity to the life of faith that is hidden and growing under the surface of public religion. Once we are aware of this we discover many other resources and positive elements in our secularised societies. The General Chapter of the Marist Fathers of 1993 readily points at such positive aspects. A greater emphasis on personal responsibility and the personal journey of faith, respect for the individual persona and more tolerance, a greater involvement in a world where both women and men play their part, a world less divided into clergy and laity, growth in democratic practices , more positive assessment of the world and extensive use of the human sciences. And finally, in our relationship with God a prayer life that is more linked to actual experience.

So, what we need is a basic trust that what we have in the house, in this period of religious drought, is enough to bring life to ourselves and to the world in which we live; a basic trust that the seed of the Gospel can spring up in the fields of a secularised and individualised culture. In this situation we ask ourselves this: What is our call? Who is our Model? What are our priorities? Who is our hope?

Jan Hulshof sm.