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Rooted in God and the Gospel

In fragility and strength,

searching for deeper ways to live our vowed life

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In the last analysis, this is it – becoming conformed to God in a community of love. It is about our human, baptismal and vowed vocation . It involves a deeply personal transformation through which this happens. Spiritual masters through the ages have articulated the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as the means through which we consecrate our lives to becoming God-conformed, the final purpose of life. Becoming God-conformed was an articulation by Bonaventure of Baggnoregio in his Soul’s Journey Into God. This journey can only be made in the world given us by God.

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BONAVENTURE Journey Into God

The created world is a kind of book

reflecting, representing, and describing

its Maker, the Trinity, at three levels of

expression:

VESTIGE

IMAGE

LIKENESS

Bonaventure: Breviloquim II, 12, 1 We may gather that the created world is a kind of book reflecting, representing, and describing its Maker, the Trinity, at three levels of expression: The aspect of VESTIGE (or footprint) is found in every creature; The aspect of IMAGE, only in intelligent creatures or rational spirits; The aspect of LIKENESS, only in those spirits who are God-conformed. Mary Beth Ingham CSJ explains further in her book Rejoicing in the Works of the Lord, p. 23: Through these successive levels, the human intellect (and heart) is designed to ascend (conform) gradually to the supreme Principle, which is God. In the book of nature we read the message of divine love, as the created order is a medium for divine communication. In its sacramental dimension, the natural world presents itself, not as something to be grasped by the human mind or dominated by human control, but as a work of intricate beauty to be admired and reflected upon. The dignity of this world and of each being appears clearly as the result of divine rational, loving and free creativity, called “The Eternal Art”. Reality is shot through with creativity and freedom, from the first moment of divine choice to create this particular world to the smallest activity of free willing. Intelligent or rational beings are themselves images of God. Those spirits who are God-conformed are themselves LIKE God.

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Side profile DaytimeMake-upVulnerableSees herself as an old woman in the mirror

Frontal profileRough textureNighttimeDistorted young body;Gravity has its rightful place

Picasso GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR 1903, 1932 (painted several times during the 1930s) I want to spend a little with Picasso’s GIRL BEFORE A MIRROR, because it can in some way I believe, enlighten the ideas of woman as a spiritual presence holding archetypal mysteries of life. It may help us reflect on the mysteries of life that we have experienced up to this time in history, in youth and in old age, and what it could mean as we face the future. It is an image of a woman that Picasso loved – Marie Therese Walter with whom he had a child, Maya. Girl Before a Mirror was painted during Picasso's cubism period. Picasso was an artist who was very bold with his artwork. Even with backgrounds that are normally placed to be a backdrop, they are mainly there to assist the main subject. The woman's face is painted with a side profile on the left and with a full frontal image on the right. One side (left) shows the day time where she seems more like a woman, dolled up with her make up done. The other side (right)with the rough charcoal texture portrays her at night. On the left when she takes off the mask of makeup, she is more vulnerable as a young lady. One way of interpreting the painting is when the woman looks at herself in the mirror; she is seeing herself as an old woman. The green discoloration on her forehead (right), darkens her facial features and the lines show that her young body has been distorted, and gravity has taken its rightful place. Another way of viewing the painting is that she is self-conscious, and she sees all the flaws in herself that the world doesn't see.

Sue Monk Kidd in Travelling With Pomegrantes: A Mother and Daughter Journey interprets the painting this way. The painting portrays a young woman, haloed in light, gazing into an oval mirror. Her pink, unblemished profile merges with a frontal view of her face that’s painted in bright yellow and shaped like a crescent moon. But the mirror is a wrinkle in time, and the image staring back at her reveals the young woman not as she is, but how she will be one day. The woman in the mirror appears as old and dark, her face shaded in violet and red, her eyes grown hollow, her body beginning to shrink. The younger woman’s arms reach out for her older self, as if trying to embrace the rather formidable mystery she has glimpsed. And curiously, her older self reaches back to her. There is a reunion of the Young Woman and the Old Woman. The aging woman reaches for her grown self and at the same time tries to make a lap for her young self.

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Marian archetypes for life’s journey

Annunciation: summons from within to bring forth something new, particularly one’s own spiritual and creative life.Pregnancy: seasons of waiting, incubation, holding the tensions of the processVisitation: seeking community and support from other womenNativity: the laborious beauty of bringing forth what has been conceived Flight into Egypt: protecting the new life from threatNurturing the Child: reordering everything in order tend to new lifePieta beneath the Cross: embracing necessary loss, surrender, and griefDormition: dying of an old self or way of being; dark nights.Assumption: rising of a new self; crossing thresholdsCoronation: the realization of new life; fruition & impact on others.

The painting seems to have within it all the mysteries of Mary, God’s mother: possessing a core of generic feminine meaning along with possibilities for interpreting it personally. Annunciation: summons from within to bring forth something new, particularly one’s own spiritual and creative life. Pregnancy: seasons of waiting, incubation, holding the tensions of the process Visitation: seeking community and support from other women Nativity: the laborious and lonely beauty of bringing forth what has been conceived Flight into Egypt: protecting the new life from threat, both within and without Nurturing the Child: reordering everything in order tend to new life Pieta beneath the Cross: embracing necessary loss, surrender, and grief Dormition: dying of an old self or way of being; dark nights. Assumption: rising of a new self; crossing thresholds Coronation: the realization of new life; fruition & impact on others. Why shouldn’t the paramount occasion in Mary’s or our own lives create a guiding story for women of the future, in community? We can understand Mary within a biblical and human context, but also as a living symbol of the Divine Feminine, a spiritual presence able to hold large archetypal mysteries of life.

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Conforming to God through identity and tradition

How do the identity and tradition of IHM offer the world a spiritual presence able to hold large archetypal mysteries?

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What is the biblical legacy of prophetic community life?

“one who is called or summoned”

Restoring order to God’s household (charismatic)

Preaching the good news of God's love for all peoples. (world orientation)

It is about transforming God’s people into the family of God. (community of love)

How could this relate to the biblical legacy of prophetic community life? The Greek word prophetes literally means “one who is called or summoned” to bring about one’s own inner transformation as well as that of the community. These functions of restoring, preaching, and transforming do not have age limits. The Holy Saturday women were not defined by age or possessions or status. Religious must publicly act out their message by boldly critiquing the structures (political, religious, social & cultural) of their time;

• by valiantly energizing people toward a new way of life that is transforming and life giving;

• and giving witness to their true character by shaping a way of life that has potential to transform themselves and the world.

Albert Nolan: Hope In An Age of Despair When the rich man asked Jesus what he had to do to earn eternal life, Jesus asked him to choose God. Go sell your possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and then join me and my disciples. In other words, “come into our community of love.” Jesus did not ask the rich man to be destitute, to have nothing to live on, or to beg for a living. He challenged him to join the group of disciples who are not in need because they share everything, and because LOVE is the source of their unity and diversity.

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Theological, spiritual, & ecclesial distinctiveness

• Faith, not blood

• The BOND is hearing the Word of God and keeping it. (Luke 8:19-21; 11: 27)

• Coming together with others not chosen, binding ourselves only by faith and the total self-gift to CHRIST for the sake of the world.

• Non-patriarchal household of faith

• Shared discipleship of equals

• Fostering the contemplative quest for God & the ministry of its members

Sandra Schneiders. Buying the Field. 98-99 elucidates the concept of “community life” as found in the Gospels.

The Church is a historical realization in the world of the new kind of family that Jesus inaugurated. It is not rooted in biology or physical kinship or ethnicity or any other kind of natural bond. In other words, Faith, not blood, is the foundation of this new social reality which came to be called The Church. Religious women and men choose to incarnate this reality in a special life form in which . . .

• Natural family or one founded by marriage plays no constitutive role. • RL is not utopian nor a corporation for assuring economic well-being • Not a benevolent society devoted to good works

• The BOND of community life is hearing the Word of God and keeping it. (Luke 8:19-21; 11: 27) • We come together with others whom we have not chosen, binding ourselves only by faith and

the total self-gift to CHRIST for the sake of the world. The characteristics of community life as we see it in the Gospels is. . .

» A non-patriarchal household of faith, » Shared discipleship of equals, which . . . » Fosters the contemplative quest for God & ministry of its members, and » Witnesses to the world the possibility that limited human beings can live the very life of the

Trinity and the unity in diversity of totally disinterested and altruistic love among radically equal persons.

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COMMUNITY LIFE, cont.

• A witness to what the world is called to become . . .

– A universal, transcendent, inclusive and beautiful community

– Announcing that all natural ties must finally be relativized by the unity to which the entire Creation is called.

» “Eschatological character”: living in the present that which the Church is drawn to live by the end time and realized fully in eternity

Gospel community life is a witness to what the world is called to become . . . – A universal, transcendent, and inclusive community no longer divided by family,

tribe, race, ethnicity, religion, or class – Announcing that all natural ties must finally be relativized by the unity to which the

entire Creation is called. » There is an “eschatological character”: living in the present that which the

Church is drawn to live by the end time and realized fully in eternity Religious life is about making a public life form of the prayer of Jesus: that they all may be one. . . As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. (John 17:22) Even this is not the final goal, but rather so the world might believe”. (John 17:21)

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BONAVENTURE

Right Living

Right Relationships

Right Loving

HEREFORD

Charism Community Connections

LUMEN GENTIUM Charism

Community of Love

World Orientation

SCHNEIDERS

Exclusive love of JC

Gathered around the Risen Christ

Spirit-empowered equal disciples

SHEKERJIAN

Moral Imagination Instinct

Judgment

Landscapes of being conformed to God

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How is my face transformed when my being is conformed to God?