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Ed. Note: Sr. Katarina delivered this commencement address at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, on
December 20, 2002. It has been adapted and expanded for this issue of Initiative Report.
Commencement Address at the University of St. Thomas
by Sr. Katarina Schuth
As you complete this formative phase of your life, you begin a new stage that will call forth from you the fruits you are prepared to produce. I would like to explore with you some places where your talents and good will are desperately needed and then suggest a simple way for you to respond to those needs.
During the past month or two since I was asked to give this address, I reflected often on the situation of our world and the tasks awaiting you and others like you who are filled with energy and insight and enthusiasm—in a strong position to go forward and effect change in our society. And change we do need. Consider the world so troubled by violence and the threat of war.
We ask, “Where are the peacemakers? Who has the genius and the capacity to bring together alienated nations? Who has the desire to do so?” Consider our states and local governments on the verge of economic disaster. We ask, “Who is paying attention to those without a voice, to the poor and the homeless? What is fair in terms of taxation and distribution of wealth? Who has the desire to look out for the common good rather than for individual gain?”
Consider the church whose moral authority has been eroded by clerical sexual abuse and the cover-up scandal. We ask, “How can the Gospel message of forgiveness be spoken with force in the midst of the present crisis? What can we do to restore confidence in the church? Who will be invited to join in the struggle of renewing our faith?”
Consider our families and workplaces so deeply affected by what is happening in the world around us. We ask, “What is needed to maintain balance and stability in the midst of widespread turbulence? How can we ensure that our children will be raised in a peaceful world? What can be done to enliven our faith and enkindle hope?”
Response to these questions provides an enormous agenda, but, in addition, I have gained insight about other concerns from students in a class I teach—”Cross-cultural Perspectives on Religion and Society.” When introducing the course I ask students to identify some major cultural trends that prevail in our times relating to the two concepts of religion and society. Their lists are usually long, but not often cheerful. Some of their ideas have potential for at least some good: awareness of the fragility of the environment, and advances in science, technology, and communications, or even globalization.
Depending on how one interprets these notions, human development is certainly possible within them. More often, however, students list trends like: escalating nationalism, an expanding divide between rich and poor, the abandonment of moral integrity in business, rising fundamentalism, and increasing interaction of religion and violence. You could certainly add your own woes. What strikes me about the issues and concerns is the common thread of division and disagreement, often ending in injustice if not aggression and violence.
In whatever way we might want to describe what ails us these days, my point is not to dwell on the problems, but to explore with you how we might become involved in the world with a sense of hope and expectation for improvement. How can we enter the stage to create a more promising future for our desperate world?
The temptation, I believe, is to feel that problems are so overwhelming and so beyond our reach that any one person is powerless to effect change—not necessarily so. Consider Mother Teresa and Jimmy Carter, both of whom received the Nobel Peace Prize. Their simple actions of feeding the starving and caring for the dying, or building homes and supervising elections have made an enormous difference. Of course, she is now a “blessed” on her way to sainthood and he is a former president. But still, let me propose a possible way for any one of us to enter into this world-healing project.
Consider for a moment the many communities of which we are a part—nation and state, worship and work, neighborhood and family. What quality or virtue might be valuable in generating hope in these settings of our daily lives? I suggest that cultivating a spirit of reconciliation—bringing into agreement or harmony those people and things that are estranged—would go a long way in creating decency and peace in these troubled times. How might this spirit be made manifest?
Several years ago, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, then Archbishop of Chicago, established the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, an effort to reduce the polarization and acrimony that he found in the church. He called for a renewed spirit of civility, dialogue, and generosity to heal the divisions, and he suggested some simple approaches and processes to move us in the direction of reconciliation. He spoke of some principles of dialogue in relation to the church (contained in the document Called to Be Catholic: Church in a Time of Peril). I suggest that these might be valuable in today’s environment not only for resolution of church issues, but also for other concerns that divide the world. The principles address three dimensions:
- Who should be included in the discussion? Everyone who has something at stake should be invited into the dialogue, for no single group or viewpoint has a complete monopoly on the truth. Church leaders have special responsibilities for the faith, but solutions to the church’s problems will almost inevitably emerge from a variety of sources.
- What attitudes should we have toward those with whom we dialogue? We should presume that those with whom we differ are acting in good faith, deserving of civility and charity, and undeserving of blanket criticism or denunciation. We should look for the valid insights and legitimate concerns of others and try to address their strongest positions rather than discredit them by attacking their weakest points. In the same mode, we might demonstrate respect for others by being cautious about rendering quick negative judgments and impugning their motives.
- What considerations should be made concerning the context of the dialogue? We should engage the realities of contemporary culture by acknowledging both its achievements and its real dangers. All proposals should be tested for their pastoral realism and for their potential impact on living human beings.
…because we are trained neither to voice both sides of an issue nor to listen with both ears. The problem goes deeper than the bad habit of competitive conversation some of us have: tell me your thesis and I will find any way, fair or foul, to argue the other side! It is rooted in the fact that we look at the world through analytical lenses. We see everything as this or that, plus or minus, on or off, black or white; and we fragment reality into an endless series of either-ors. In a phrase, we think the world apart (p. 62).
In our own small universe, perhaps each of us can go about discovering ways to “think the world together.” For example, we might try dialogue rather than debate,
- where we contribute our best ideas to be improved upon rather than defending the indefensible with the hope of wearying our opponents;
- where we are willing to evaluate ourselves rather than criticize others;
- where we try to see all sides of an issue rather than two sides—mine and the wrong one;
- and where we listen to each other to understand and build agreement rather than listening to find flaws and reasons to disagree.
I remember an occasion when I was speaking to a group about some of these ideas and one gentleman stood up to disagree quite disagreeably with me. Having just spoken about being a reconciling person, I dared not respond to him in kind, so while he ranted and raved, I prayed—silently—to the Holy Spirit. Realizing that no precise argument would be persuasive, when he finally took a breath, I said something like “I respect your right to your views and I’m glad you had the courage to voice them.” He retorted in his booming voice, “Well, all right then,” and promptly sat down, but somehow I knew this was not the end of the discussion.
As soon as the questions were finished and the group adjourned for coffee, this man raced to the front of the room, still enraged. He continued with his diatribe, to which I knew there was no adequate answer. Finally, I simply put my hand on his arm and said, “God must love you very much.” He was puzzled and said, “Why are you saying that? No one has ever said that to me before.” (Not too hard to understand why, I thought.) But I responded, “I know by what you said, you obviously care a great deal about the church and you want the best for it.” Then I asked, “Do you remember last Sunday’s Gospel? The one where Jesus comes to the apostles after the Resurrection? They are all gathered, fearful, in the upper room. He appears to them and says, ‘Peace be with you. Peace be with you!’ That is my wish for you, too.” The man was flabbergasted and began to cry.
He confessed that he had moved five times in the past two years because he didn’t like the parish he was in; his wife was getting very disgusted having to move a family of seven again and again. I suggested that he might try just to pray when he went to church and not to set every pastor right about how to say Mass. He talked calmly for a bit and then said he couldn’t wait to get home to tell his wife about what had happened.
I don’t know the ultimate outcome for this man, but such moments remind us that beyond any power of our own, the grace of God works powerfully in others to transform their lives. The words of Jesus brought this afflicted man a degree of comfort. Granted, most of our opponents don’t go away that easily, but this difficult exchange ended somewhat peacefully by simply listening to and respecting this person.
To be able to respond with kindness and compassion while maintaining our integrity takes wisdom and courage. Where can we find the will to be the reconciling person in all the circumstances of our life? It seems to me that we need to be in touch with the mystery of God in our lives, becoming increasingly aware of God’s active presence. If we look beneath the surface, we encounter God as loving and challenging us, inspiring and empowering us. Though we may be able to do a lot of things for God, the church, and the world, if we are out of touch with the mystery—if our faith and our life are separated, our existence is shallow, our actions empty. By deepening our faith, paying attention to the pattern of God’s movement, we can become true reconcilers.
In his book, The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser, o.m.i., speaks about the necessity of pondering if we are to sustain our faith. He says that to ponder is less a question of intellectually contemplating something as it is of patiently holding it inside one’s soul, complete with all the tension that brings.
Thus when Mary stands under the cross of Jesus and watches him die…she is carrying a great tension that she is helpless to resolve and must simply live with (p. 220).” She “kept these things in her heart and pondered them.” We are called upon to do the same kind of pondering as Mary did. If we are willing to ponder and wait before we speak a sharp or unjustly critical word, before we judge family members unfairly and alienate them, before we depart from a gathering in anger, we can bring reconciliation.
Fr. Rolheiser suggests, “We are better persons when we carry tension, as opposed to always looking for its easy resolution.” This calls for a certain greatness of soul, he says, for if we try to resolve tension too soon or not at all we miss a more sublime experience. We need to sublimate our need for resolution to put other people’s needs into the equation. “Great joy depends upon first having carried great tension”(p. 221).
By following such a path, we can bring into harmony those around us who are estranged. Whatever our humanitarian impulses or religious beliefs, we hold in common a desire for peace and a reverence for life. In words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, we might “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly we will be doing the impossible.” As impossible as it may seem that any one of us can make a difference in our fractured world, imagine if each person here tonight—let’s say 1,000 of us—performed one reconciling act every day, what a different world we would know! In one year we would have 365,000 acts of reconciliation and in three years more than a million circumstances where healing is imparted. Each of us will be returning to or moving into situations where we can contribute in small and large ways to unity and peace—beginning at home, moving to our place of work, and finally reverberating through the whole world.
As we make this move beyond ourselves to the world awaiting our reconciling presence, we might consider the implications of living out our faith. Vincent Hovley, s.j., in an article, “A Rock to Build On,” (Review for Religious, Sept./Oct. 1994), says that, “We search for the healing and peace that comes from knowing how deeply God acts in our lives. Without that peace…we find it hard to be present to anything but our anxious concerns.”
At issue is whether we are willing to make a covenant of our lives in order to:
- find a heart to face our future without fear and with great trust, to surrender our spirit into God’s hands,
- find a heart to call down the flow of God’s holiness and to plunge ourselves into it, to pass over into it,
- find a heart to pledge ourselves as bread and wine poured out for others—this is Christ again making his covenant, his passover, in us (p. 776).
I invite you to be among those who renew the face of the earth one step at a time. In this season of hope that is celebrated in so many different traditions, may you be a reconciling messenger of peace to all you meet.
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