One of the surprising outcomes of the last General Chapter is that, through the help of our facilitator, we identified four characteristics of our MSSP identity which the Chapter is now inviting us to reflect more upon. These characteristics are: encounter, hospitality, solidarity and beauty. We could see that these virtues are very much present in our communities, in our buildings, and in our ministries, and it is our duty to continue to appreciate and nurture them.
These reflections that we share throughout the year with you can serve as an opportunity for us to deepen our awareness of these qualities. In each of our major MSSP celebrations, I can see a connection between these virtues and what we celebrate in our liturgical calendar. In particular, I feel that the celebration of the Solemnity of Mary Assumed into Heaven, can help us deepen our appreciation of beauty.
We all know that true beauty speaks of God. That is why the Chapter document states that “Recognising the way in which beauty turns people’s hearts to their Creator, the Society strives to ensure that the settings in which its various ministries are carried out are not simply functional but also reflect something of the Creator’s beauty.” (footnote to no. 15)
It is not only beautiful spaces that reflect the beauty of the Creator. Beautiful lives do so even more powerfully. The Benedictus antiphon on the Solemnity of the Assumption speaks of Mary in this way, “See the beauty of the daughter of Jerusalem, who ascended to heaven like the rising sun at dawn.” Indeed, what could be more beautiful than a life lived according to God’s will? What could make the beauty of God shine through better than a person who offered no resistance whatsoever to God’s action in her life? Pope Pius XII, in his Apostolic Constitution defining the Dogma of the Assumption, quotes St. Germanus of Constantinople as saying “You are she who, as it is written, appears in beauty, and your virginal body is all holy, all chaste, entirely the dwelling place of God, so that it is henceforth completely exempt from dissolution into dust.”
Do we still find this kind of beauty attractive? Do we still find God and holiness appealing? The attraction to this kind of beauty is an acquired taste. We need to actively work to have it. Are we consuming the right kind of literature and/or media which can help us maintain it? I believe it helps a lot to be exposed to the beautiful lives of people who have gone before us, either through what they have written or what has been written about them. We might experience what St Ignatius went through when, still caught up in ideals of chivalry, he tasted for the first time in a unique way the life of the saints. I am sure that our Founder went through a similar experience when choosing between clinging to his nobility and embracing a humble way of life.
We always have to keep in mind that our primary task as missionaries and evangelizers is to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel as it is made visible in our lives, both personally and collectively. As Pope Benedict XVI said in one of his homilies (later quoted by Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium), “The Church considers herself the disciple and missionary of this Love: missionary only insofar as she is a disciple, capable of being attracted constantly and with renewed wonder by the God who has loved us and who loves us first. The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction’: just as Christ ‘draws all to himself’ by the power of his love”. It is the beauty shining from within our lives and our communities that can achieve this.
This is the great task that we are being called to, and maybe the celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption offers us the possibility to recommit ourselves to this ideal – to reflect in our lives a beauty that uplifts.
Blessings
Fr Martin Galea mssp
Superior General