SPIRITUAL LIFE COMMITTEE

Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity

Monthly Reflection: January 2004

Missionary Servant Identity

Fr. Vincent Fitzpatrick, S.T.

 

          The Identity of the Missionary Servant is already adequately described in the Constitution, Directory and the Rule of Life. I don't believe that the request for a further study of Identity comes from a lack of information Any new statement made on the subject has to square with what has already been stated. What, perhaps, we are searching for at this particular time is not so much the Identity. Would it be better to rephrase the reflection: “the Missionary Servant in  the new millennium?”

          Since Vatican II we have exhausted everything which had to be said about what is called ‘charism.’  Identity is the expression of charism in the life of the individual and the Community. To avoid being  side-tracked into a discussion of that mercurial word, charism, let me stress only one important point. One who shares the vision and charism of our founder, Father Judge, will exhibit the Identity about which we are concerned. 

          Charism, to be authentic, must be able to adapt itself to the continual changing of the times and circumstances in which it operates. It is primarily a living thing. It exists and is operative only in the present.  It lacks a past and future tense. If it isn't here now , how do we identify ourselves?

          What I feel ought to be examined is a term we can borrow from the computer world, ‘upgrade.’  The essentials remain the same but the program improves the vitality of operation. This process seeks to remove the difficulties encountered in the application of the old and it takes advantage of newer developments in the field. What we search for in questions of Identity is not so much the essentials already adequately expressed in our documents. How are these essentials upgraded in the newer applications demanded by the changing times and circumstances in the life and mission of the Missionary Servant ? Liquid plaster poured into a mold does not undergo an essential change. It adapts to the form of the mold.

          Can the Directory play a major role in the changing atmosphere where we hope to apply our Identity? Can it serve as a useful road-map to define and encourage newer ways of living the spirit and vision of the Founder? The flowering of Identity is Mission which demands a reply to the newer challenges growing out of the weakening and loss of faith, with its diminishing influence of Jesus in modern public affairs. Mission in its concern for people  must focus on the Church and the effectiveness of Church, the instrument established for the well-being and salvation of God’s people, the promotion of justice, relief of the poor and abandoned. This is expressed more concisely in our familiar quote: “Sentire cum Ecclesia...”

          How are people and the world of 2003 different from the world of the early 1900’s. It is in this context we are called to study the Identity we are working on.

          Spiritual life and prayer are not subjects to be included in our reflection touching Identity. These are a given and their presence as elements of Identity are taken for granted. If absent we cannot begin to talk about Identity. We, as every baptized follower of Jesus, are called primarily to the development of gospel spirituality.. The deeper development of this which we call, ‘apostolic,’ will be what we recognize as our Identity.  This produces in the Missionary Servant the spirit and vision of the Founder.  The Divine Architect, the Holy Spirit, has built these gifts into the Founder’s response to the world in his time. The Spirit will continue the process in the heart of the disciple in the world of our time.  I think we need to be as conscious of this as was Father Judge himself.

          It remains for us who have become so important a part of Father’s vision to build into our own lives that ‘charity at white heat.’  This should be a hallmark of every Missionary Servant called specifically to be a ‘maker of apostles.’

          Are we convinced that the Holy Spirit is offering extraordinary gifts to our own generation in the person of one with so Christian a spirit, so gospel an attitude, so prophetic an insight and foresight about the needs of people and the Church of our day? Our Identity rests totally with him.

          Do we find affirmation in the Cenacle Family, a visible structure of his vision? Has the devotional life of the Cenacle become a fountain of living water nourishing in us an authentic apostolic spirit or will we say that the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the indwelling Holy Spirit are not very often on our minds and in our hearts as we labor with our own problems of daily conversion and the conversion of our people? How often does the Faith reason and person of Jesus support our appeals to them even as we draw these from the treasury of God’s word? Do we find the Word of God as indispensable as he found it? Do we share his love of the Church and his concern for the Holy Father?  Where are we with the laity? Do we see the grass-roots as the heart of the Church in the extraordinary way in which he saw them? Is the lack of justice and peace as painful to us as it was to him?

          These are just a few suggestions among so many more which touch upon our authentic Identity as we begin the New Year, 2004.