By Fr. Niall O’ Brien mssc

Last year my superior called and asked me would I speak at the Jubilee Mission Congress which took place in Cebu at the end of September. I would have like to refuse. But the request had come from the bishops to him. If it had come directly to me, I would have been able to give home in Ireland and it wouldn’t be easy to get back in time to prepare. But by coursing it through my superior it was difficult for me to refuse. I am glad now that I didn’t.

Revolution from the Heart

When I got to the pre-Congress meeting in Manila I discovered the reason I was asked was not because of the gift of the gab but because of my book, Revolution from the Heart. Which to a great extent is about Basic Christian Communities. And to my dismay I was not being asked to give a talk but to give a workshop: two two-and-a-half-hour workshops. Workshops are much more difficult things. In a workshop you get another to talk, you get them to share their ideas and you collect their combined wisdom. Giving talks is the banking method. You supposedly have the wisdom and you share it with them. On the other hand, in the workshop method they have the wisdom and your job is to direct the group so that you are able to draw that wisdom out of them and pull it together and present something to the whole group which comes from each individual person in it.

Getting down to work

Well, I took myself to Cebu where various dignitaries, cardinals and archbishops. And people from all walks of life were gathering for the National Mission Congress. The city was abuzz with ‘missions’ of every possible sort and loads of hardworking workshops. In all hey expected 4, 000 people to attend through I don’t know what the final number was. My job was to get down to work and do the two-and-a-half hour workshops at St. Theresa’s College. I was scared that he participants were going to be neophytes who wouldn’t t know a Christian community if it bit them in the leg and we would have to start from scratch. But luckily on that count I was wrong. All the people attending were mature and had long experience with communities. As a result we didn’t have to waste time wrangling over problems which had been solved a long time ago. We were able to get down to work.

Women Power

We were in classrooms and the noise from the next room was terrible. I sent in a succession of seminarians to quell the chaos. Each failed – too timorous I reckoned. Then a fine, strong nun got up and said, “Leave it to me.” She disappeared and within a few seconds the next room sounded like a cemetery at midnight.

Ecclesial or Christian communities?

We tackled the thorniest problems connected with Basic Ecclesial communities. By the way, the name doesn’t matter – ecclesial or Christian. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But when you sue the word ecclesial you emphasize the fact that a Christian community should be connected with the Church.  That it is part of the church. That it is the Church in miniature. We were anxious to use this word because this is the word used in PCP II. I suppose it is another way of saying that thought the Christian communities should act locally they should think globally – think Church in the broad sense.

Reaching out to the un-Churched

One of those thorny problems which we had to face was the relationship between the small Christian communities and the long established mandated organizations which have been around for donkey’s years. I think the result of our discussion was good on this count because it became. Clear to us that most of us who had come who into the Church had grown up in the Church with the old, true and tried organizations basically feed the Christian life. They presume faith and they try to strengthen it and refresh it. On the other had, the Basic Christian Communities to a certain extent are for the un-Churched. They reach out to the un-Churched, to those who have not been touched. That’s why they are very successful in the rural areas and maybe in the in the squatters areas, too. We agreed that it was very important that neither group should feel threatened by the other. They should work in harmony and there is plenty of room for May flowers to bloom. You could be long to a Basic Christian Community and also to the Barangay sang Birhen or any organization there is. It was a case of orchestrating. The job of the parish priest was to be the conductor of the orchestra and make sure that all the different instruments in the parish work together in tune and in harmony.

Recommendations

We were then asked to make recommendations to the bishops. We made many recommendations, but one particularly strong one which many people will agree with is that where a parish has launched into Basic Ecclesial Communities a lot of work and tears and sweat has gone into them. if the next priest appointed does not follow on that, it causes great confusion and hurt on the part of the lay people who have given so many years of their life and suddenly find themselves switched into something else and, of course, it causes bitterness in the hart of the priest who has left when he sees his work going up in smoke. So what we asked for was that the newly appointed priest should be in harmony himself with the programs of the parish that he is about to take over. He shouldn’t come in and switch off everything. It would also be unacceptable to come in and cut off mandated organizations which have been going for years and years. Or ignore them. I know of a parish in Ireland, a woman frond of mine, who with herself and other lay people, gave a huge amount of there time in enlivening the parish and when the parish priest died the successor had no time for any of what they had done so they just threw up their hands in despair and gave up all the work for the Church. Sad. Our request then to the bishops was that in the reshuffling of parishes the nature of the existing parish should be taken into account before they appoint a new priest.

Because I kept my nose to the grindstone in order to do the workshops I never got around to the various ‘shows’ there were in town or to all the speakers but I was told by the others that the Mission Congress was one of the best things that ever happened on  the Church’s religious scene tin the Philippines. May I leave you with one thought that came up at our workshop, appropriate enough in this month of October, the month of missions: Evangelization is mission at home. Mission is evangelization abroad.

Evangelization is mission at home. Mission is evangelization abroad.