Recollection Material – MAY 2023 Together in Solidarity and Compassion

Mt. 9: 35-38.

          Some specialists remind us that the great diffusion of Christianity in the first centuries was due, among other things, to the charity that the communities showed to the poorest and under privileged of society. Faced with a pagan society marked with cruelty, Christianity brought in a great dosage of humanity, mercy and compassion. Many were converted upon seeing the disinterested charity of the communities the generous gestures of solidarity. In our contemporary world where diverse forms of thought flourish, neo-paganism goes opening road, Christian and religious communities need to make clear and eloquent the message of Jesus by means of solidarity and active mercy. Solidarity is a seed of the kingdom of heaven that one needs to identify, channel and give meaning. Paradoxically, the inhuman situations that exist in our world contribute like a spur to awaken the conscience of many, and are converted into a clamor for solidarity and help it disinterestedly. That is why our communities, living the Augustinian Recollect charism, cannot be alien to this sign of the times and must be attentive to channel all the initiatives of solidarity, giving them a fully Christian meaning, inviting to move beyond the simple human elements and to remind that the essential motive of solidarity is not only philanthropy, but the charity of Christ. For all this, we will dedicate the recollection of this month to reflect on the solidarity and compassion in our communities.

Return to yourself.

          We begin this day of recollection leaving aside everything that scatters and distracts us. It is necessary to return to the heart and discover, in the most intimate of our being, the vivifying presence of God. He calls you today and invites you to an encounter that may renew your life and empower you in your life and mission.

          Man must put his trust in God, and hope for help from him, not from the self. It is not the earth that brings rain on itself, nor does it send its own light; thus, just as the earth waits for the rain and the light from heaven, so also must man wait for mercy and truth from God.(…) Let us remain, brothers, in humility, in charity, in piety, because we have been called, (…) let us fear falling into pride (en. Ps. 46, 13).

Your voice is my joy.

          The Word of God is alive and effective. Let it appeal to us. The Word of God is a lamp in our path and reveals to us the will of God. On this day of recollection, let us open our heart and be enlightened by it.

          35 Jesus went around to all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. 36 At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few, 38 so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborer for his harvest.”

The firmament of the Scriptures.

Biblical Keys.

          The Gospel presents to us its solidary aspect within the evangelizing  mission of Jesus. The Gospel is solidarity in itself. Jesus roams the towns  teaching, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and healing all pain. Jesus makes real the yearning and the prophecies where God in person takes on the needs and pains of the people, as it happened in Exodus (Ex. 16; 17:1-7; or the image of the Shepherd: Ps. 23;  Ps. 80; cf. Is. 52:7-10).

          Jesus is the missionary of the mercy of God, who roams the geography of Galilee bringing the Good News. Jesus chooses the simple places (v. 35). The evangelists do not mention that Jesus would visit the great cities of this region like Tiberias or Seforis. Jesus visits the paganized towns, villages and cities like Capernaum, Caesarea Philippi, or Gerasa.

          The Lord seeks the last and the alienated from the faith. He is the Shepherd (v. 36) who seeks the flock, he looks after the dispersed, but he also shows concern about the sheep who need attention and have been abandoned by the religious elite, more preoccupied for the cult in the temple, or more harassed by the Pharisees, obsessed with the more literal possible observance of the Law and by a series of norms, more often created by themselves (cf. Mt. 4:23-25; Mk.1:39; 3:7-8; Lk. 4: 14-15, 44; 6:17-18).

          Jesus is the Shepherd who knows the needs of the flock: he cares, he nourishes, he comforts, he consoles (v. 35). The Lord makes himself in solidarity with the men and women he meets; he is not indifferent, he spends time with them, for this did he come (Mt. 15:24), to give his life for them. Paraphrasing Paul, he makes himself all things to all men to gain all (cf. 1 Cor. 9:22). Even if it is true that Jesus keeps his distance, he does it in order to reach everyone, avoiding comfort, the temptation of establishing the self, of retaining only one concrete flock that gives him what he needs. When in Capernaum he is sought by the people, he retreats because he had to go to other places (cf. Mk. 1:35-39).

          The compassion of the Lord is such that he renounces self-complacency and invites his disciples to pray, since the work, the harvest, is abundant and it is necessary that God send more laborers to work in that harvest (vv. 37-38). Again Jesus avoids the indifference of one who finishes his task and goes, since now that the work has been finished, he is concerned about the future of those he had encountered.

          But the task of Jesus is not individualistic, Jesus makes his disciples accompany him, not simply to be spectators or a court of admirers, but that they may learn and be conscious of the dimensions of the mission. The apostles are apprentices but also companions. Later, the task of the Master will be entrusted to them: they are the ones sent by God to work in the harvest. The disciples are invited to share in the mission, the solidarity and the compassion of Jesus.

Augustinian Keys.

          The text that we meditate today for our monthly recollection, we can label as “a day of frustrated rest”, because Jesus had separated from the crowd with his disciples in order to rest a little, nevertheless when they arrive at the place where they were going, the multitudes were already waiting for them there. Christ, instead of giving orders to return to the boats and go to another place where there would be no one, since it was his free day, put aside these sentiments, and moved by mercy, he started to teach many things to these multitudes. We are dealing with a text that invites us to contemplate the sentiments of Jesus and be moved by them.

          The evangelists present ‘mercy’ to us as the most repeated sentiment of Jesus. Nevertheless, in face of this word we can ask ourselves: what ‘mercy’ are we talking about? It is necessary above all to clarify the terms and avoid ambiguities, so that things do not stop being themselves and become something totally distinct.

          This same thing is what happened to the term ‘mercy’ during St. Augustine’s time. For the pagans’ ears, the word ‘mercy’ reminded them of one of the characteristics that the Stoic Philosophers demanded of a virtuous man, i.e.,  to be ‘humanitarian’ with his fellowmen. Certainly this constitutes a great advancement in the thought and classical ethics, -since in the pre-Christian world there were obvious signs of human cruelty, because when man departs from God he becomes less human- St. Augustine realizes that it is not enough to direct one’s own actions moved by the desire to be virtuous, because in the depth a great pride can be hidden, and in the simple ‘mercy’ can be seen a means of self-glory and of seeking approval from others.

          For this St. Augustine above all invites to humility, because pride ambushes even the good works to destroy them (reg. 3, 1,8). We could say with the Gospel, that those who exercise ‘mercy’ moved only with a ‘pagan’ motive, i.e., with the desire to be praised and of feeling virtuous, has already received its reward (Mt. 6:5).

          St. Augustine for his part makes it clear that the pagan world had a reason when it invited to ‘mercy’, because to have ‘mercy’ is nothing else than to have the

heart open to those who suffer misery or who are in themselves miserable. The Bishop of Hippo comments thus:

(…) we deal not with the ‘mercy’ that is given to the miserable, to console them in their misery, or to see them free of these, because then we will translate better the expression in saeculum as “through eternity”, i.e., until the end of the world, where there will always be miserable people to whom we show ‘mercy’ (en. Ps. 105, 2).

          Nonetheless, St. Augustine  goes beyond and would invite us to think that radical difference between the pagan-stoic ‘mercy’ and the Christian Mercy is rooted in love. The Christian experiences compassion in face of the neighbor’s pain and misery and is moved to do something for someone who is needy. Nevertheless his reason for doing something or giving something, is not to feel himself virtuous, nor feel himself better than others, but the love of Christ, to be capable of recognizing, in the miserable person, the very face of Christ. St. Augustine points it out thus:

Give to Christ on earth that he may give it back to you in heaven. Forget what you are and consider what you shall be (s. 367, 3).

A great mercy: to achieve eternal life.

          On the other hand, ‘mercy’ for St. Augustine would have other characteristics. First, it cannot be reduced to an anonymous beneficent act or without signature. In the mind of the Bishop of Hippo, it would be like changing and completing the popular saying: “To do good without looking to whom,” but which “after you have done it, tell him for whom you have done it”.

          St. Augustine recognizes that the greatest mercy is rooted in being able to bring persons to an encounter with God, since the supreme good of man is not food, nor drink or the satisfaction of some kind of necessities, physiological or intellectual. The greatest ‘mercy’ is to make a person worthy of eternal life with God, and be able to share in the inheritance of the saints. This is the supreme good that the Christian mercy wants to share with all men, and the material goods that can be assured by mercy, must be the means that bring those who receive them, to give thanks and glory to God, for what the Lord himself has done for them, through those who act as his children, because they are merciful, and in this way they are able to come closer to God and attain eternal life.

Compare now someone who shares his bread with the hungry and someone who shares his soul with a believer; compare someone who spends his gold in favor of the temporal life of the poor, with someone who spends himself for the eternal life of his brother. How much more merciful becomes one who, after calling and welcoming someone who strays into the road of iniquity, introduces him into the house of God, incorporates him into the members of Christ, where the refection of justice restores him,  and secure in the remission of sins (s. 3501), 3 [= s. Erfurt 2, 3]).

Mercy without frontiers.

          And more, for St. Augustine mercy must have no frontiers. If every person is miserable because of his own human condition, and the earth is full of man’s misery, by the grace of God the earth itself is also full of the goodness and the mercy of God.

Man’s misery abounds on earth, the mercy of God abounds all the more; the earth is full of man’s misery, but it is also full of God’s mercy (en. Ps. 32, 2, 2, 4).

          For this reason, the merciful action of the Christians cannot remain enclosed within the confines of the Catholic Church, or among Christian believers. The merciful action must first of all be exercised with the brothers who share the same faith, it can also be exercised with all those who suffer the oppression of misery, not counting the race, color or religion:

The fact is that St. Paul the Apostle, in order to very clearly teach mercy is to be granted to everyone, affirms: Therefore, untiringly when we have time, let us do good to all, most especially to members of the family of faith (en. Ps. 4,2).

          Nonetheless, also in these cases, St. Augustine insists that it is necessary to let the receiver know in whose name they receive them. And even though some may think that St. Augustine has a sectarian purpose or of indoctrination through merciful acts, and the intention is that those who receive mercy may obtain it in exchange for their conversion to Christianity, this was not the intention of St. Augustine. What he simply wanted was that those who receive merciful acts from the Catholic faithful or from the Catholic Church itself may know that it is in the name of Christ that they are helped, not with the purpose of gaining their conversion, but that they be grateful and in this way show that the counterpart of mercy is gratitude.

The authentic mercy that is invested on the neighbor must be invested for this: that he be thankful to God. One must call him and exhort him to this, to educate and instruct him to this, because including even the alms themselves that serve the bodily needs and the temporal life must be done with this intention and attitude: that those for whom they are done , love God for whose honor they are done (s. Erfurt,2,2 [=s. 350D, 2]).

          Therefore, it is necessary to let the person, who receives the merciful act of the Catholic Church, or of the Order, know in whose name he is helped or is assisted, particularly in order that this person be grateful, not only to the person who helped him, -who in the end is only an instrument or a channel of grace and of mercy- but particularly to God, in whose name and for love of whom such act of mercy is done.

          For St. Augustine mercy was not only a theme of predication or theory. We owe to the Bishop of Hippo the first center or house of welcoming the poor, the sick, and the pilgrims in the history of Occidental (Western) Christianity, an element the is quite frequently ignored and unfortunately not spoken about. St. Augustine at the end of his life commanded an edifice to be built which he called Xenodochium (s. 356, 10), a place near the Basilica of Peace in Hippo where the poor, the sick and the pilgrims were aided and assisted; something which did not occur to the great Fathers of the Western Church who preceded him. For him mercy was not only  theory, but a reality.

Five urgent texts of the Constitutions: Together in solidarity and compassion.

1. “In St. Augustine, who is a masterful teacher and educator in his life and in his books, we find the basic principles of his pedagogy and the timeless values of the interior life, the search for truth, fraternity and communion, freedom, justice and solidarity, love and friendship” (no. 310).

2. “The brothers are also to commit themselves to those initiatives that promote social justice, human solidarity, peace, and the integrity of Creation” (no. 317).

3. “The Prior General is to strive for the progress of the Order, he is to promote religious and apostolic life, unity and solidarity among the provinces and the brothers; he is to ensure observance of the Constitutions, the Additional Code, and the ordinances of the general chapter.” (no. 348).

4. “In accordance with the social doctrine of the Church, the brothers are to preach social justice by word and by example, and they should pay a just wage to those who work for them or who provide any service” (no. 57).

5. “Consecrated Poverty (…) It is a love which does not look out for its own interests, but rather for those of Jesus Christ, and it makes of the religious a person in solidarity with the people, and especially with the poor, whom he must love in the intimacy of Christ” (no. 46).

From the Word to the Action.

How do you live solidarity in your community?

What concrete actions are done to show the mercy done for the poor?

Why do you believe that it is important that our communities, towards the interior and towards the exterior, become spaces of mercy?

Final prayer.

          “On earth the misery of man abounds, and the mercy of the Lord abounds the more; the earth is full of the misery of man, but also it is full of the mercy of the Lord” (en. Ps. 32, 2, 2, 4).