MARY THORNE reminds us of our calling to participate in God’s mission for the liberation of all creation. 

Participation is highly valued in Kiwi culture. We urge each other to come along, get involved, “give it a go”. We recognise the social nature of our being and we know that it is good for us to be connected and participate in common activities. When we look at this aspect of our culture more deeply in the light of the feast of Pentecost, it is clear that the transformative potential of participation is an important component of the struggle to achieve a more equitable society.

Of all the major Christian feasts, it is Pentecost which impels us to action.

Christmas fills us with awe and wonder. Emmanuel, God is with us, in all the beauty and ugliness of the human story.

Over the great three days of Easter celebration, we experience the weight of human brokenness and fallibility and the hope-filled joy of transformation from enslavement to freedom — from death to life.

Pentecost Fires Us

But it is at Pentecost that we receive the gift of fire in our bellies. The more brightly this fire burns, the more we feel connected to all created reality and the more we become sensitised to the atrocities and tragedies which impact our planet and its people. If we allow the fire to abide within us it emboldens us, gets us off the couch, out of the comfortableness of the familiar. It engages us in the work of bringing about God’s reign of justice in this world.

Present day faith communities who gather on Pentecost Sunday are inspired that the crowd of diverse human beings who had gathered in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago, could speak and hear one another because they were filled with one Spirit. They experienced unity in the Spirit of the Living God. We who believe in the Risen Christ, are unified by this Spirit into One Body and are given strength and courage to carry on the mission of Jesus of Nazareth in our lives today. This impulse to be actively involved in work for planetary peace derived from justice and right relationship is, in fact, the core principle of participation which is a strong thread in the fabric of Catholic Social Teaching.

Participation demands our awareness of and involvement in addressing structural oppression and creating societies based on ecological and social justice.

Participation in Liberation

In Luke’s Gospel Jesus articulates clearly what that mission is, when, at the beginning of his Galilean ministry, he goes on the Sabbath day to the synagogue in Nazareth and reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
. . . Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Soon after this, Jesus is beside the lake inviting the first disciples to join him in becoming a transformative community. The work of healing, restoring and reconciling is never solitary work; it requires the participation of a spirit filled community. The intention to change oneself is the starting place.

Participation in God’s Work

A prayer attributed to Óscar Romero of El Salvador reminds us that we are not the designers of this reign of righteousness, although we work to bring it to fulfilment. We are all required to open our eyes and ears to the reality of pain and abuse in the societies in which we live. We must make our contribution with love, joy and generosity, but it is God’s work. God’s Spirit animates, informs and energises the community of disciples in our participation in the mission to which we are called.

Participators Not Do-Gooders

The mindset needed for participation is described by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “Some of the dominant class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. Theirs is a fundamental role and has been so throughout the history of this struggle.”

But Freire warns of the cultural bias that would-be liberators come with: “As they move to the side of the exploited they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin. Their prejudices include a lack of confidence in the people’s ability to think, to want and to know. So they run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as harmful as that of the oppressors.”

He advises that there is the need for critical self-awareness or conscientisation: “Though they truly desire to transform the unjust order, they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people but do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensible precondition for revolutionary change.”

Finally he says that participation is with and led by the other: “A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favour.”

Models of Participation

Mary of Nazareth, the perfect model of discipleship, demonstrates the active, outward focus of one who participates. Newly touched by the Holy Spirit and full of the presence of God within her, she does not sit quietly to contemplate the holiness of her situation. She makes hurried preparation for the difficult journey to a town in the hill country of Judah where her cousin Elizabeth lives — an older woman, pregnant with her first baby. Mary’s impulse was to be there as help and support during her cousin’s time of vulnerability and struggle. On Mary’s lips is the Magnificat, a song of praise for God who redresses oppression and lifts up the poor.

The Catholic Church has initiated canonisation procedures to examine Dorothy Day’s role as an example of radical, fearless participation in the struggle to transform injustice and oppression. She was a writer and social activist who saw poverty and distress all around her in New York during the Depression years 1929-39. Dorothy Day was a lay woman, in and of the world, who came to believe and live out in her own life the Gospel imperative to care for the poor and oppressed. Together with the visionary French philosopher, Peter Maurin, she began soup kitchens, opened hospitality houses and founded the radical newspaper The Catholic Worker which protested strongly against war and economic exploitation. She incurred the criticism of society and Church at the time. Dorothy Day believed capitalism to be flawed structurally — she and Peter Maurin chose voluntary poverty as the foundation stone for their new movement. The Catholic Worker movement is still active around the world, including in New Zealand.

If Dorothy Day is canonised she will certainly be a hero and saint for our time. Her life exemplifies participation — that aspect which is so closely woven through all of the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

So, for Pentecost 2017 in Aotearoa New Zealand when we pray “Come, Holy Spirit”, let our faith in that Spirit be strong and our hearts be open wide so that we can indeed be energised to participate in the work to which we are called.

Tui Motu magazine Issue 216 June 2017: 3-4