Mission amid Myanmar’s Buddhist pagodas
Taunggyi (AsiaNews) - "It blooms because it blooms". Human reason or ecclesial re-elaboration are not enough. The mission arises from the divine Logos that "burns but is not consumed," one that still beckons and sends out.
I am writing from Taunggyi, eastern Myanmar, at 1,400 metres above sea level. Here, the tropical climate is tempered by the winds. Some 59 seminarians sit in front of me, involved in their year of spirituality. This is the year of discernment and prayer, between the two years of philosophy and four years of theology.
The course I have to teach is important; it is centred on Christ’s ministry. This is the third time I have had this opportunity. Year after year, deepening the mystery that gave rise to everything, i.e. the Holy Trinity, is a must.
This may seem a paradox. Rather than hands-on actions, which are certainly important for the country’s development, the most objective need here in Burma, at this time of the year, is a meeting with God’s revelation "as he is”, i.e. nothing less than knowing God as God, as Jesus revealed him to us.
With 59 students who plan to give their lives to Christ, I cannot beat around the bush with some nebulous theology. It would be like taking them into the high seas and leaving them at the mercy of the wind.
Myanmar is a Buddhist country. The famed Shwedagon Pagoda stands majestically in central Yangon drawing huge crowds. It is loud and clear, saying it needs no other religions. Across the country, the 300,000 monks who inhabit its thousands of monasteries get up early every morning for their daily alms, lining up, from the smallest to the tallest. They too are another reason why the country can do without other useless religions, or rise out of someone else’s ashes.
Yet, here I am, introducing 59 seminarians to the mystery of Christ. Why? If the Mission has a "because", it is to be found at "the source". It rests on God’s mystery, not on man’s soul and his hope of salvation, nor on the claims and/or ecclesial practices that measure and often reduce Grace’s action.
Let a rose help me in my brief reflection. As the 17th century mystic Angelus Silesius said with respect to the rose, “it blooms simply because it blooms”. The same goes for the Church’s mission, which cannot be based solely on a "principle of sufficient reason," a principle "that has to be provided" a ratio reddenda "to be proposed", or "imposed", which would soon become "presumption". Only pigs would find it useful, safe from the never-ending objections of modern times, and our frequent doubts about faith.
In past centuries, in fact, saving souls was the "sufficient reason". Outside of the Church, only damnation. What about now? When we reduce the inquiry to its foundation, the search for such a principle, we are actually looking for a reason that will reassure us, one that is "sufficient" guarantee, a sufficere that brings with it an efficere and a perficere. However, as Heidegger rightly pointed out, these terms refer to a facere, doing or producing, ours! In thus doing, we can never think adequately about the "because" of the mission with respect to its foundation, that is, the mystery from which it springs.
Our facere would take over. Thus, to justify the Mission, we would need the poor, and the destitute. We would need charity, works that, whilst important, are not decisive. Or theological axioms like the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (outside the Church there is no salvation), which for centuries has undoubtedly motivated hundreds of heroic missionaries.
As I and the boys in Taunggyi penetrate the mystery of God, we will find that like the rose that blossoms because it blossoms, God’s mission needs no other reason, no other "because". There is nothing to do or demonstrate or impose. There is only a Mystery that we have “to let be”.
I realise that in introducing the boys to the God of Jesus Christ, there is not much I have to do. I simply have to let God be as he is. If God had a “because”, it would fatally impose itself as “a sufficient reason”, a necessity, and a safe calculation. But calculations divide. Whilst, like the rose, all creation stems from Him, He occurs, “blossoms because he blossoms”. In fact, He is the mystery that presides over the blossoming.
The mission that follows should simply be the expression of this blossoming. The latter is always happening, like an actus purus, a pure act, a love that "burns but is not consumed" like the burning bush, as the Sacred Author wrote (Ex, 3:3) to describe God.
Of course, the gap with Western ideas is huge. The seminarians’ philosophical background is limited, but the point is as much one of understanding, deducing or doing something, as it is of letting God be in them as he is.
This means letting grace blossom in them. This is the power of recognising "a foundation that does not want to impose itself as a 'necessity’, but is 'chosen' because of the reliable character of their devotion" (Sequeri). We find this dedication in Jesus as told in the Gospel of Mark.
We are reading the Scriptures in full, even between the lines, so that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee onto Jerusalem, his words, miracles, death, can reveal something of God’s mystery, "as he is."
I realise that the kids follow, do not pull back, ask questions. They are also realising that such a God does not put them in a “safe place", but exposes them to an unusual and fascinating freedom. As one of the kids said, "I follow him because he frees me".
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20/03/2019 15:27
24/03/2018 11:19
