Transformation in the here and now

Colleges across the country in recent years have seen a great increase in social justice activity, with all sorts of organizations turning up advocating for a wide variety of causes that fall under the social justice umbrella. Today's generation of higher education students - this is true more broadly, no doubt - are better exposed and educated with an awareness of the ways in which our choices as individuals and as societies affect people around the world, and particularly how those less fortunate than ourselves often suffer such adverse fortune precisely because of the ethical choices that we make.




One of the effects of this maturing social consciousness has been a great increase in missionary-type trips, whether summer programs, semester programs, or year-long post graduation programs (such as my own Order's Augustinian Volunteers program). I've spoken with many, many people who have been on such trips, and the response is almost always very similar, that the person has had an incredibly powerful experience that has changed them, that they learned so much from the people there, that being with the poor and suffering there has strengthened their own Christian faith, that they were amazed at the simple joy of the underprivileged people, and similar sentiments.

All of this I suppose is very good, yet I have to say that there is something about it that troubles me. I've been thinking about this recently, and I've come up with a few thoughts that I would like to try to articulate.

One thing that strikes me is that we seem to be in danger of falling into a mentality that suggests that we need to go elsewhere, outside of ourselves, outside of our own environment, in order to be transformed in Christ. Certainly an encounter with the sort of suffering that we are not accustomed to in our own privileged worlds should bring us closer to the Cross, closer to the humanity of the crucified Christ. But if we so heavily emphasize the encounter with Christ in the poor of far-off lands, or even if we simply narrow our worldview to seeing Christ only in the poor, I believe there can be a danger that our hearts might become hardened to the dignity of the human person right in front of us.

What's more, by seeking a transforming encounter with Christ "over there," and "with them," are we closing ourselves to the Spirit who desires to effect the grace of transformation and holiness right here in our own environments, in our own lives, in our own families and communities? This was something Mother Teresa struggled with. Because she received so much attention for her missionary work, she was dealing with many people who were interested in her way of life only if it could mean being sent to some far off land to work with the poor. Her response so often was that in fact it is the affluent, the comfortable, the privileged of our own societies, particularly in Western Europe and the United States, who are suffering the most, mostly because we have a much harder time recognizing our need for God. If we only see God "over there" then perhaps it is no surprise that He is disappearing right here.

My second discomfort is that our strong emphasis on the "amazing and transforming" experience of being changed by the poor can in fact be a sort of objectification of the poor. Even that phrase, "the poor," conveys a sense of a collective object to which we direct our energies and pity, with the expectation (even if unspoken) that we will benefit spiritually as a result. So often when talking to people fresh off a mission trip they speak of the "amazing gratitude" of "the poor" who were so generous even though they had so little, who were so grateful to see us there. I wonder, though, what if they weren't so grateful? What if we went on a mission trip and the people expressed no gratitude whatsoever - neither hostility, but simply a total absence of demonstrated gratitude? Would we feel compelled to continue with such mission work, or is it rather that we seek such expressions of gratitude because they affirm a goodness that we long to believe is in us? I don't know, I'm just asking the question.

Henri Nouwen talks about the spiritual movement from opaqueness to transparency, including in our relationships with others. In his posthumously published book Spiritual Formation he writes:

Our society makes it difficult to see people as transparent because we are conditioned to relate to persons as characters - different, interesting or not interesting - to use as we need or want. "oh, she is good at that, and he is good at this, so let me manipulate, exploit, or use them for their valuable function," we often think to ourselves.

--
The word person comes from the Old French per-sonare, which means "sounding through." Our spiritual task is to resist the temptation to box our fellow human beings into figures and characters, and to see them rather as persons who "sound through" to a greater reality than they themselves fully know. As persons we sound through a love greater than we ourselves can grasp, a truth deeper than we ourselves can articulate, and a beauty richer than we ourselves can contain. (Spiritual Formation, p. 10, 11)

I think ultimately this gets to the heart of our own witness as disciples of Jesus Christ, understanding that we are at the same time individuals loved individually and uniquely by God, yet also we are Church, we are Body, we are a unified one greater than any individual part. If we see this, if we recognize what Augustine saw, that we in fact discover who we are in Christ by discovering who we are together, we can move away from the objectifying tendencies of "over there," hoping that your poverty and suffering might transform me, into a consciousness of "we" which allows us to relate to all peoples as subject to subject, discovering our own goodness and the goodness of all people in our common humanity. Then, perhaps, we may find ourselves more open to the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit in our here and now, a transformation that might do more to alleviate the sufferings of both underprivileged and privileged than going "over there" could ever dream of accomplishing.


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