CPPS Identity

Who are we?:

“WE ARE MISSIONARIES OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD!”

 Preliminary Remarks

The theme of our Identity as CPPS is not new.  It seems that even Gaspar addressed this issue I his own lifetime and with his newborn community!  One of the sayings of St. Gaspar which the missionaries collected after his death refers to the very subject we are addressing! Who are we?  “Each one then should live according to the spirit of the Institute.  It is heard said: I like the spirit of the Cistercians, others, I like the spirit of the Jesuits, etc.  They do it this way or that.  Stupidity!  Then you should become Cistercians or Jesuits and not come into this Congregation!  You did not become a Cistercian nor a Jesuit; and you aren’t really of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood either because you don’t have her spirit.  Who are you then?” (No. 12). This question takes us to the very heart of our being where our identity is forged.  It is an essential question which we must face, as our numbers grow smaller and our mean age rises, as we reach out to invite others to join us in our mission, and as we expand to other countries.  We need to focus on the essentials.  As we prepare to celebrate the Bicentennial of our Congregation, it is an opportune time to reflect upon our identity.  Who are we and how do we live today the charism handed on to us by our founder, 200 years ago?  Where are we going?  What is our focus?  Underlying this general concern of our membership is the question of identity.

To reflect on our identity is not merely an academic topic.  It is of vital importance for our very survival.  We are at a decisive crossroads in our history.  We will only be able to continue on as a vital force within our Church and within society, in the measure with which we are capable of recapturing the founding spirit of St. Gaspar and of incarnating that spirit in the diversity of cultures and in the changing social realities in which we live.  That is why it is so important for us to pursue painstakenly this search of identity, because it will be our guarantee of a vital future. We don't wish merely to remember with nostalgia a glorious past which cannot return, but dream about the unfathomable possibilities which are out there before us and of new projects to carry out!

The search for our identity is calling us to new life and to new hope.  Perhaps for awhile we were as a ship afloat on the high seas, without a fixed destination.  We didn't have a great deal of clarity about who we were or where we were going, and each one was busy about being a diligent and zealous laborer in God’s vineyard, but without having clear in our own minds the specific contribution which we were making to the Universal Church and to the building of God’s Reign.

For to reflect on our core identity as Missionaries of the Precious Blood, it only makes sense when we first realize that whatever we can say or propose must be based on our christian identity, that is, as followers of Jesus. He is the rock upon which we build our house.  He is the spring from which our identity flows.

Jesus is the unmistakable center of religious life.  Religious men and women strive to live in a radical following of Jesus.  He is our model, our way and our goal.  Our mission starts with Him who calls us together around Himself and who wishes to share his mission with us.  The foundation of our missionary activity rests upon this vital relationship and a constant  reference to Jesus, the first missionary.

Essential to the personal identity of Jesus was the consciousness that He was One sent by the Father.  Jesus was a man sent on a mission.  As He went about Galilee preaching the Good News in Word and in gestures of healing and forgiveness, He began to associate others to His mission.  As the “body of Christ” we share in Christ’s mission and in a sense becomes his body and his blood in our world today.

In a time when the entire Church has become more aware of her basic “missionary” nature and when each baptized christian is missionary by his or her very call to the Christian life, it is important that we re-look at our understanding of what it means to be a “missionary congregation”.  We are living an awakening of the consciousness that we are all missionaries, and not only those who go or who are sent to mission in foreign lands.  One indication of this new consciousness is the decision of the Provinces of Cincinnati and the Pacific and of the Chilean Vicariate to translate the official title of the Congregation to "Missionaries" of the Precious Blood in their respective jurisdictions.  Obviously, something much deeper than a mere change in title is at play here.  We need to rediscover our missionary charism as a part of our core identity.

Yes, we share Christ’s mission…along with the entire Church!  And so as we grope with “identity questions” it does not suffice for us to say that we are in mission as baptized christians.  True.  But not enough!  Not enough in the sense that this affirmation alone will not help us discover our particular identity and contribution to the mission of the Church in today’s society. We must understand ourselves within the universal mission of the Church and at the same time discover what our unique contribution to that mission might be in the light of the spirituality of the Precious Blood.  For that is what we are called to do.  Each Congregation which exists has a purpose…or had one!  Each Congregation is called upon to shed some light on the complex mystery of the person and the mission of Christ, through their particular charism.  We, Missionaries of the Precious Blood, are GIFT for the church and for society!  We have been given a charism by the Spirit for the entire community.  This is what we have to discover or rediscover for the times in which we live. 

We must first of all believe that our Congregation has something to offer to society and to the Church that will enrich her and contribute in a positive way to the building of God’s Reign.  It might do us all well to read and meditate on the parable of the talents wherein Jesus reminds us that if we do not share with others the talents which has been entrusted to us, we run the danger of losing even those talents we try to protect and save.  It is only in sharing who we are and what we have, that our gifts are multiplied and bear fruits.  As the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, a great treasure has been entrusted to us:  the spirituality of the Precious Blood!  We are called upon to share that spirituality with all peoples in order to enrich the world in which we live with her contents and meaning.  When we dare to take the risks involved and share the gifts we have, we will be blessed and enriched and the future will open up before us.  We might re-read this parable and reflect upon it in light of the call to “creative fidelity” which we have read in Vita consecrata.  In the parable of the talents, the servants who were rewarded were those who brought together both faithfulness and creativity—and not the one whose priority was faithfulness alone.  St. Gaspar prayed and dreamed of having a thousand tongues to proclaim to all peoples the “mysteries of the Blood of Christ” and his tireless, enthusiastic efforts, in the midst of great hardships and challenges, attracted many to his Congregation which has spread to 17 countries around the world.  We are called today to continue that dream in new and creative ways, for the Blood of Christ still speaks forcefully to the society in which we live.  But it is only in sharing the vision and the dreams that spring forth from the spirituality of the Blood of Christ, that we will indeed have a “great history still to be accomplished,” as  John Paul also expresses in Vita consecrata (no. 37). If we want to see real growth in our lives, we will not become immobilized, nor will we absolutize what we are.  We will not close ourselves within a static conformity, fearful of risk, burying our talents.  Because not to share that gift is to lose it!

As we move foreward in our reflections, we will do so, framing it all in one of the basic components of our society: that of being a society of apostolic life.  And as you have been able to read in the latest edition of The Cup of the New Covenant, the basic component of a society of apostolic life (SAL) is that of mission.  Mission is the backdrop.  It is what we exist for.

THE CRY OF THE BLOOD:  A CALL TO MISSION

The Church is missionary by its very nature and mission forms a very essential and vital part of all the forms of Consecrated Life which are rooted in the christian vocation.  The mission is diversified according to the variety of charisms.  Since “mission” is an answer to “being sent”, we must ask ourselves:  by whom are we sent?  And to whom are we sent?  God calls us by "mediations".  The Blood of Christ becomes for us the mediation of that call which gathers us in community for a particular mission.

In the Old Testament it was the blood of the human person which was shed that provoked the compassion of God.  The present Pope in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelium vitae (1995) writes the first chapter under the provocative title: "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground".  It is a chapter which we should read with great care, in the context of the present reflection.

"'What have you done?' Yahweh asked. 'Listen to the sound of your brother's blood, crying out to me from the ground.                      (Genesis, 4, 10-11)

The Pope speaks of how the blood of Abel continues to cry from the earth today:  in aborted children, in those who suffer persecution for their faith, in the victims of genocide and oppressive political systems, in those who suffer from malnutrition and starvation and in all those who suffer marginalization due to gender, creed, race, or economic conditions.  The culture of death which engulfs us takes on many faces.  The blood of so many innocent ones today is a continuation of Christ’s Passion being lived out in today’s world.  Their blood continues to cry out, awaiting a response .

"And Yahweh said, 'I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt.  I have heard their appeal to be free of their slave-drivers.  Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings.  I mean to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land to a land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow.'"        (Exodus 3, 7-8)

The Pope then speaks of the Precious Blood as God’s response to the cry of Abel’s blood (Hebrews 12,24), as the source of perfect redemption and the gift of new life (Evangelium Vitae, # 25).  An essensial aspect of mission is to make the blood of today’s victims heard and to respond in compassionate solidarity.  And the Pope calls all christians and peoples of good will to proclaim the Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae, # 82-84). 

In these words of the Holy Father I feel a call to our own Congregation which bears the name of the Precious Blood, to be “the voice of the victims of oppression and suffering”, to be the eyes and the ears for our Church and for Society, raising the consciousness of all peoples to the cry of the blood which shouts from our often blood-stained earth.   The Holy Father calls all christians to this mission, but aren’t we being called in a special way?  As a society of apostolic life in the Church we  are expected to enrich and to contribute to the mission of the Church from our particular identity as Missionaries of the Precious Blood!  We are being called to be a “living voice of the Blood of Christ which cries from the earth in the blood of those who suffer today”!  Could this not become a way of focusing on our identity and on our mission, a way which crosses over the boundaries of culture and language, a way of understanding ourselves in whatever apostolate or ministry in which we are engaged?

Questions such as “Where do we hear the cry of the blood in our particular situation or context?” and “How can we respond to that cry in our ministries?” become questions which help us to focus on our mission from the perspective of our Precious Blood identity. They are questions which can unite us as we seek to respond with creative fidelity to our charism.

In whatever society we are living the “cry of the blood” can be heard!  It is heard in the homeless, in the lives of those with chemical and alcohol dependencies or eating disorders, it is heard in the tormented lives of young school children who go on shooting sprees taking the innocent lives of classmates and teachers, it is heard in the victims of AIDS and those living with HIV, it is heard in the lives of the victims of broken marriages, destroyed families, of unwed mothers, it is heard in the cries of the orphans of parents who have died of AIDS in Tanzania, it is heard in the blood taken in genocide which soaks the African soil, it is heard in the despised and marginalized lives of the “untouchables” in India, it is heard in the exploited lives of coffe plantation workers in Guatemala who never go to school and have little or no access to health care…)  The list could go on and on and each one of you could add many more “voices” to the list. 

It would seem to me that an important part of our mission is to hear that cry and to make the voice of the blood heard in today’s society which would much rather ignore it or wish it away!  For to hear the “cry of the blood” is unsettling!  It disturbs our peace and challenges our comfort and securities!   Just as the cry of the blood of Abel moved God to compassion and intervention to liberate humankind from all that oppresses, so too are we called to take a stance.  Ultimately, the cry of the blood of Abel is what led to the shedding of Christ’s Blood in response!  And so we who hear the cry of the blood, are also called to respond to that cry with the Blood of Christ, a blood which speaks of Covenant, of Cross, and of Reconciliation!

The circumstances may be different from one place to another and in one culture or another, but whereever we find ourselves, and in whatever ministry we are involved in, the cry of the blood rises up from the very earth we tred!

When one travels from the international airport of Santiago, Chile towards the center of the Capital City, you travel on a four lane highway which takes you between the fields and near some apartment buildings.  One would think that all is very beautiful, but the tourists don't realize that behind those buildings poverty and misery are hidden.  And so it is that many times in our daily lives, we would like to live and to act as though the poor did not exist.  We cover our eyes and our ears so as not to see nor hear the cry of the Blood.  We, missionary men and women, are called to be the "living memory", the voice of the voiceless, the critical conscience of society and of the church, so that they do not remain deaf and indifferent to the cry of the Blood of Christ today.

But this was a relatively “bloodless way” to silence the cry.  There are more violent ways!  Such was the case of Monsignor Juan Gerardi, Auxiliary Bishop of Guatemala City who was cruelly assassinated about two months ago.  Guatemala had just come out of a 37 year civil war which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly poor indigenous.  He headed up a Commission on Reconciliation and Truth which investigated over the period of years the many acts of violence against individuals and against whole towns perpetrated during the long war.  The conclusions which accused the military themselves of being the protagonists of about 80% of all the deaths, was published in a four volume edition, which bore the title: “Never Again!”  The cover of each volume depicted a half naked indigeous person with wings (made up of the bones uncovered in common graves) and one cover the man would be covering his eyes, on another his ears, on the third his mouth, and on the forth, he would be cupping his hands around his mouth shouting out to the world the truth!  Monsignor Gerardi held a press conference on a Friday night to give to the public the results of his commission’s long and tedious investigations.  Two nights later, when he was returning home from a relative’s home where he had had supper, when he was getting out of his car which he had driven into his garage next to his residence, he was attacked by a person lying in ambush.  He crushed his head with a cement block.  Then drug the lifeless body out of the car and further into the garage, and then in cruel violence, continued to blugeon out the eyes, and then crushed the ears, and the mouth of Monsignor Gerardi, leaving him unrecognizable except for the episcopal ring still on his finger.  The execution was typical of Guatemalan death squads.  The message to the Church and to society was clear:  See not!  Hear not!  And speak not!    Monsignor Gerardi was courageous in making the cry of the blood heard in Guatemala, although the price he paid for it was his own blood shed in martyrdom.

We are called to be “ministers of the Word of God” (Normative Texts, C3) with a special focus or emphasis on the Precious Blood.  “The Society dedicates itself to the service of the Church through the apostolic and missionary activity of the ministry of the word.”  St. Gaspar discerned the “call of the blood” in his times and culture in the acute need of personal and ecclesial conversion in the Papal States, and in the violent situation of the bandits in Napoleonic times. 

Today this task of evangelization includes as integral to it, the promotion of justice, of life, the decrying of injustices, the defense and promotion of human dignity and human rights, from the womb to the tomb.  These are not “add ons”.  Papal documents from Paul VI to John Paul II have named these aspects as “integral parts of the mission of evangelization.”  It touches upon the prophetic dimension of religious life.  I believe that the cry of the blood is calling us back to a more prophetic stance and not mere “keepers of the institution” and “maintenance people” for the diocesan parishes.

MOBILITY AND FLEXIBILITY

Our Holy Father has called religious to a “creative fidelity”  to our foundational charism.  It is only in being “creatively faithful” to the dreams and inspirations of St. Gaspar, our Founder, that we will have a future at all.  Let us take time to “dream dreams and to see visions”!  This is what Pope John Paul calls us to in his Apostolic Exhortation Vita consecrata when he says: “Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things.” (#110)    We must always be open to a better understanding and application of the source idea of our foundation, in all of its richness and originality.  Our call is future-oriented, open to the unexpected, and free to be uprooted.  The very term “creative fidelity” implies that we are constantly moving in a healthy tension between our origins and transformation in new expressions of our charism.

Historically, at the beginnings of our Congregation, the notion of the "itinerary missionary" was very much prevalent.  Gaspar and his companions  came and went from the city to the countryside, crisscrossing the Papal States preaching popular missions and conducting spiritual exercises and so he is known in Italy still today.  In 1986 while in Italy for a sabbatical year to deepen my own insights into St. Gaspar and Precious Blood Spirituality, I spent two months in the University for Foreigners in Perugia to begin my studies of Italian.  While there I resided at the House of Clergy.  Usually I would spend the week-ends at the House studying, touring, and relaxing.  This was great until one day the priest who was in charge of the House asked me what Congregation I belonged to.  When I responded that I was a Missionary of the Precious Blood, he immediately identified me as a Son of St. Gaspar del Bufalo.  And then very energetically he “commissioned me” to spend the following weekends preaching in the local parishes, since a Missionary of the Precious Blood has to be out on the road preaching and not sitting at home!  And so, with only two weeks of Italian under my belt, I had to begin to preach in the parishes on the weekends!  Still today this concept of mission as itinerancy is valid and in some countries it once again is beginning to gain strength.  But, our concept of missionary has also been widened.  At any rate, there will always be a certain element of "itinerancy" connected with the image of a Missionary.  In the light of what has been previously said about the cry of the Blood, I would like to propose another way of understanding "itinerancy, mobility and flexibility” for the Missionary of the Precious Blood in today's world.

We have seen that the Blood speaks to us eloquently of the options of God, from Exodus (12: 1-14) when the doorposts of the houses were painted with blood in order to protect the Israelites from the destruction and extermination, until the Cross when Jesus was hung in the garbage heap outside the walls of the City of Jerusalem,  dying among the  marginalized (v. 1-6).

As a Congregation, we are missionaries "painted with the Blood of Christ", taking up in our lives and in our works the very same choices of Christ, identifying ourselves with those who suffer, with the poor and with the marginalyzed.  And as the warrior in Isaiah  63, "our clothes are stained with blood" in a sign of our commitment to defend the innocent and the little ones in their struggle for a better life.

From her infancy, Maria De Matthias drew inspiration from the image of the Paschal Lamb.  Fr. Spencer, S.J., asked our Missionaries in Brazil during a retreat he preached in January of 1992: "Where is the Lamb being sacrificed today?"  To whom are we sent?  Where is the blood calling us to today?

Our identity and our mission is centered in that cry and in our response to it.  The cry of the blood crosses over the boundaries and involves us all.  As an international Congregation under the banner of the Precious Blood, we are united in a common discernment, a discernment which helps us to discover the Call of the Blood and which challenges us to a creative response in fidelity to our spirituality and to our missionary charism.  To be persons who constantly ask the question and seek to respond to the call, we will acquire a particular identity in the midst of our diversities.  We will be at once “faithful to our founding charism” while at the same time, responding “creatively” to the new forms the call of the blood takes in changing and diverse circumstances. 

In order to fulfill our mission today, mobility and flexibility are needed.  The biggest threat to our missionary identity is the tendency to "become installed", whether as individuals or as congregations, whether because of shyness, caution, fear, exhaustion, depression, external threats which limit our pastoral activity, or simply due to the lack of creativity.

We need to be open in order to respond to the signs of the times as discerned in community.  Tensions between "traditional" and "established" apostolates and the new ones which should and must be opened, will surely emerge.  We are being called to renew our current commitments in the light of the Spirituality of the Blood and in the Missionary Charism, making "the poor", "the Other", the emphasis of our apostolate.  The Blood calls us to make our parishes and our educational centers more "missionary" in their focus.  A Missionary Community is always standing in the doorway, waiting and discerning the call (Normative Texts, C 32).

At our recent Provincial Assembly in Cincinnati, Bishop Untener of the Saganaw, MI diocese, spoke to us of how he challenges the people in the Church of Saganaw to live the “Year of the Holy Spirit”.  He made a DECREE which was proclaimed throughout the diocese and stating that “before any meeting of whatever nature in the church of the diocese, a few moments should be taken, to ask themselves “where is the Spirit leading us?”  After hearing Bishop Untener speak I lay in bed that night thinking:  “Wow, what would I DECREE, if I could, for the Congregation?”  And I came up with this:  “Let every incorporated member, companion, and candidate, ask himself or herself each day:  “Where have I heard the cry of the blood?  And how have I responded to that cry?”  That is what it’s all about.  This has got to be our focus.  This is at the heart of our identity, of our being and of our doing as a Family of the Precious Blood!

We need to recover those “missionary feet” that Joe Nassal wrote of in his insightful and inspiring article in the latest edition of The Cup of the New Covenant.  Yet often it seems that our feet are set in cement, or are in shackles!  We have in many cases lost our flexibility and our capacity to respond to new situations and to new challenges.  To be missionaries implies a mobility to respond to that Call whether individually or as an institution.  The concept of the missionary is one that is opposed to the idea of installation, or the search for securities.  As a Polish priest once said to me, the missionary is one who has to plant his roots only in God.  And I would add this phrase: and we must plant our roots in the heart of a pilgrim God...in the heart of the same God who was carried through the desert in the Ark of the Covenant, designed to be portable.

This requires of the missionary a great availability to be guided as Jesus indicated to Peter in John 21,20.  When we promise obedience in our ceremonies of incorporation as members of the Congregation, what we are actually promising is "fidelity to the voice of the Blood which is calling us."  It bespeaks a willingness to let the poor be our guides making them the center of our apostolates and of our ministry.  It means evangelizing from their vantage point.  This is the most radical and fundamental call of the missionary.  As missionary women and men, we must be willing always to renew our apostolic commitments, living new styles of community and apostolic life, in answer to this Call of the Blood.

Our first challenge is to overcome our paralysis, our exhaustion and our motionlessness.  The Missionary of the Precious Blood is a mobile and flexible person, always available to go to where the Blood of Christ calls us today!

While it is important that we be concerned about maintaining what we once had, or even retirement issues and vocations, these cannot be our primary concerns.  The vitality of our future lies in building something worth coming to!  We shouldn’t be concerned about numbers.  But we should be concerned about focus, about passion, about fire in our bellies, for MISSION.  We must renew our commitment to go to the fringes, to stand with those who are disenfranchised, who have no voice, whose blood is being spilt daily on our streets and on the battlefields, with those who are being shoved out of our mental hospitals, and out of our hospitals.  We are called to make their voice heard!  We are called to stand with them as Jesus did!  We might be diminishing in numbers, but we can still have a loud voice!  We will not die out as a congregation if we rekindle the fire in us, when we rally once again as Gaspar did to a creative response to the needs of his times.  But that fire and passion begins in YOU and in ME!!

Are you and I FREE to be led by the blood?  Are you and I FREE to respond to the call of the Blood?  Are you and I FREE to raise up our voices to be the voice of the voiceless?  Are you and I FREE to take a prophetic stance?  Are you and I FREE to put the poor and the marginalized into the center of our ministries?

In order to respond to our missionary charism or perhaps to discover it for the first time, will call all of us to a fuller immersion into the Paschal Mystery.  We have talked and written for years on these topics.  Now we are challenged to BE WHO WE SAY WE ARE!  We have to let go of our securities in order to give space to creativity and fresh responses.  We are being called to live the life and carry the charism of St. Gaspar in radically new ways and in new places.  Our security is killing us!  It is only in letting go that we will build a vital future.

The needs are clear and the ideas are in place.  Now we need people willing to risk and to do new things.  Religious life is not about building monuments to herself or glorifying our past, but about building the Reign of God!  By being the voice of the voiceless, by standing with the disenfranchised of society, and by calling both church and society to place the needs of the poor and marginalized as priorities in their mission in solidarity, we will be faithful to our mission and will be living the prophetic dimension of the Ministry of the Word for the renewal of the church, called by the blood and sent by the blood for the building of God’s Reign.

THEME:  “Who are we?  We are Missionaries of the Precious Blood”

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

1.    Where do we hear the cry of Abel’s blood in our lives and ministries? And what does the Blood of Christ call us to in response?

2.    Are we as an institution and as individuals “free” to respond in mission to the “cry of the blood”?  If not, why?  What holds us back?

3.    How can we contribute from our Spirituality of the Blood, to the mission of the Church?

4.    As a Society of Apostolic Life in the Church today, how can we live the missionary dimension of the Ministry of the Word for the renewal of the Church?