Active Love
"Let justice roll down like waters." (Amos 5:24) Photo at National Museum of African American History and Culture by Betty D. Thompson
When it comes to action for justice and peace, what has our group seen in years of companionship with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)? Can the ways of Catholic sisters tell us something useful about our lives as lay people?
The sisters we know are realistic, not simplistic. They pay attention to the world as it is, and they do that both contemplatively and actively. They think carefully and communally about urgent needs and the systemic causes of those needs. With limited capacity, they prayerfully choose where to put their energies. In action, they are present with solidarity, compassion, skills, and hope. And women religious have been doing it creatively and in many forms since sisters first came to this continent.
We can do this. Here are resources for reflection, learning, and ways to take action.
The sisters we know are realistic, not simplistic. They pay attention to the world as it is, and they do that both contemplatively and actively. They think carefully and communally about urgent needs and the systemic causes of those needs. With limited capacity, they prayerfully choose where to put their energies. In action, they are present with solidarity, compassion, skills, and hope. And women religious have been doing it creatively and in many forms since sisters first came to this continent.
We can do this. Here are resources for reflection, learning, and ways to take action.
- Catholic Social Teaching and conscience are foundations.
- Solidarity is the core of creative, active presence in the world.
- Choosing a focus asks us to be aware of both trees and forests.
- Ways to Act can help you make a difference, with info on issues where LCWR is very engaged -- leadership, dialogue, human trafficking, immigration, eco-justice, self-awareness and racial justice, and nonviolence. Personal action matters. Action to change structures is also essential.
Let's begin with wisdom...
“The call to action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel. It does not connote any return to a privatized spirituality. It obliges us to integrate spirituality and justice as two aspects of one reality.” – Sister Theresa Kane
“The question has to be: What is the work that nobody else is willing to do? For me, that is the essence of religious life. It is what our founders and foundresses did. They had the ability to see the work that needed to be done that no one else was doing, name it, and then bring others into that work.” – Sister Nancy Schreck
“The work is simple, actually. We are the ones who complicate it. All we really need is a passion for God. God will do the rest. This takes us back to contemplation. With open eyes we see our world. With an open heart we embrace our world. Through the day-to-day routine that surrounds us, we give ourselves with open ears and open arms to the guiding work of bringing to birth with glad and practical cooperation whatever it is that lies before us.” – Sister Marcia Allen
"Collectively women religious have immense and varied experiences of ministry at the margins. Has it not been the privilege of our lives to stand with oppressed peoples? Have they not taught us what they have learned in order to survive: resiliency, creativity, solidarity, the energy of resistance, and joy? Those who live daily with loss can teach us how to grieve and how to let go. They also help us see when letting go is not enough. There are structures of injustice and exclusion that need to be unmasked and systematically removed. I offer this image of active dismantling. In Suchitoto, El Salvador [on] the day of celebration of the peace accords, people came out of their homes with sledge hammers and began to knock down the bunkers, to dismantle the machinery of war." – Sister Pat Farrell
“The message of a prophetic congregation must be conscious…. Get busy about what we need to be busy about. Put your money there, put your time there, and put your community meetings there…. This is dangerous. If you are really speaking to the society in which you live, and it’s with a message that this society needs to hear, a lot of people are not going to like you saying it – at least at first. You can’t call yourself a prophetic congregation and not walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the prophets.” – Sister Joan Chittister
"It is usually easy to recognize the prophetic voice when it is authentic. It has the freshness and freedom of the Gospel: open, and favoring the disenfranchised. The prophetic voice dares the truth. We can often hear in it a questioning of established power, and an uncovering of human pain and unmet need. It challenges structures that exclude some and benefit others. The prophetic voice urges action and a choice for change. What would a prophetic response to the [current issues] look like? I think it would be humble, but not submissive; rooted in a solid sense of ourselves, but not self-righteous; truthful, but gentle and absolutely fearless. It would ask probing questions. Are we being invited to some appropriate pruning, and would we open to it?... We can claim the future we desire and act from it now. To do this takes the discipline of choosing where to focus our attention. We need to actively engage our imaginations in shaping visions of the future. Nothing we do is insignificant. Even a very small conscious choice of courage or of conscience can contribute to the transformation of the whole. It might be, for instance, the decision to put energy into that which seems most authentic to us, and withdraw energy and involvement from that which doesn’t. This kind of intentionality is what Joanna Macy calls active hope. It is both creative and prophetic. In this difficult, transitional time, the future is in need of our imagination and our hopefulness. In the words of the French poet Rostand: ‘It is at night that it is important to believe in the light; one must force the dawn to be born by believing in it.'” – Sister Pat Farrell
“Spirituality and the work for justice are entirely inseparable. If either one is authentic, it leads to the other.” – Sister Pat Farrell (I quote her often because she lives what she says. Read an great short bio of her life in mission, by David Gibson.)
“The question has to be: What is the work that nobody else is willing to do? For me, that is the essence of religious life. It is what our founders and foundresses did. They had the ability to see the work that needed to be done that no one else was doing, name it, and then bring others into that work.” – Sister Nancy Schreck
“The work is simple, actually. We are the ones who complicate it. All we really need is a passion for God. God will do the rest. This takes us back to contemplation. With open eyes we see our world. With an open heart we embrace our world. Through the day-to-day routine that surrounds us, we give ourselves with open ears and open arms to the guiding work of bringing to birth with glad and practical cooperation whatever it is that lies before us.” – Sister Marcia Allen
"Collectively women religious have immense and varied experiences of ministry at the margins. Has it not been the privilege of our lives to stand with oppressed peoples? Have they not taught us what they have learned in order to survive: resiliency, creativity, solidarity, the energy of resistance, and joy? Those who live daily with loss can teach us how to grieve and how to let go. They also help us see when letting go is not enough. There are structures of injustice and exclusion that need to be unmasked and systematically removed. I offer this image of active dismantling. In Suchitoto, El Salvador [on] the day of celebration of the peace accords, people came out of their homes with sledge hammers and began to knock down the bunkers, to dismantle the machinery of war." – Sister Pat Farrell
“The message of a prophetic congregation must be conscious…. Get busy about what we need to be busy about. Put your money there, put your time there, and put your community meetings there…. This is dangerous. If you are really speaking to the society in which you live, and it’s with a message that this society needs to hear, a lot of people are not going to like you saying it – at least at first. You can’t call yourself a prophetic congregation and not walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the prophets.” – Sister Joan Chittister
"It is usually easy to recognize the prophetic voice when it is authentic. It has the freshness and freedom of the Gospel: open, and favoring the disenfranchised. The prophetic voice dares the truth. We can often hear in it a questioning of established power, and an uncovering of human pain and unmet need. It challenges structures that exclude some and benefit others. The prophetic voice urges action and a choice for change. What would a prophetic response to the [current issues] look like? I think it would be humble, but not submissive; rooted in a solid sense of ourselves, but not self-righteous; truthful, but gentle and absolutely fearless. It would ask probing questions. Are we being invited to some appropriate pruning, and would we open to it?... We can claim the future we desire and act from it now. To do this takes the discipline of choosing where to focus our attention. We need to actively engage our imaginations in shaping visions of the future. Nothing we do is insignificant. Even a very small conscious choice of courage or of conscience can contribute to the transformation of the whole. It might be, for instance, the decision to put energy into that which seems most authentic to us, and withdraw energy and involvement from that which doesn’t. This kind of intentionality is what Joanna Macy calls active hope. It is both creative and prophetic. In this difficult, transitional time, the future is in need of our imagination and our hopefulness. In the words of the French poet Rostand: ‘It is at night that it is important to believe in the light; one must force the dawn to be born by believing in it.'” – Sister Pat Farrell
“Spirituality and the work for justice are entirely inseparable. If either one is authentic, it leads to the other.” – Sister Pat Farrell (I quote her often because she lives what she says. Read an great short bio of her life in mission, by David Gibson.)