Memoria and Koinōnia – Remembering our Call to Communion
1. Introduction
On behalf of SEDOS Executive and the entire SEDOS membership, it gives me immense warmth and great pleasure to see your presence grace this august occasion. It is my pleasure to present this welcome address today amongst you, the most esteemed members of SEDOS.
It is a glorious moment to extend my warm wishes, in the name of SEDOS Executive, to welcome you all in this beautiful setting in Ariccia to this SEDOS Residential Seminar which begins this evening and which will continue until Friday. I want to convey my heartfelt gratitude to his Eminence Dieudonné Cardinal Nzapalainga, C.S. Sp for accepting the invitation to give the keynote address for this Seminar on the theme “Prophetic witness for universal communion: Mission in conflict zones and healing” here at Casa Divin Maestro, Ariccia, (ROME).
Before we begin this Seminar, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who are sincerely committed to this event to make it a success: the SEDOS Team and SEDOS Executive Committee, and SEDOS Members. This event would have been impossible without the support of each and every one present here.
As you all know, SEDOS Seminars are opportune moments to reflect and debate upon the problems of mutual interest with our esteemed participants from various missionary congregations. The last seminar was based on “The Changing Landscape of Religious Missionary Life” which was graced with positive feedbacks from participants, missionaries, etc.
2.The Context
The theme of discussion for the next few days is “Prophetic witness for universal communion: Mission in conflict zones and healing.” On each day, we will be invited to focus on a different dimension of this theme. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the Biblical foundation for Prophetic witness for universal communion will be explored. On Wednesday the focus will be on Psychological Approach; while Thursday will put an emphasis on the Spirituality of Non-Violence. Friday is a day reserved for sharing the outcomes and insights of the week “On We Go” – you will hear a little more about that later as the week progresses. Each topic for reflection and discussion for these few days’ Seminar was chosen keeping in mind the interest of mission and missionaries.
To my mind, our theme broaches the role of missionaries as prophets and prophetesses who should be healers of victims of conflicts. The first presupposition this topic raises, on the one hand, is that of synergy among us, who belong to different religious lives and vocations; on the other, we have the challenge of synthesising the disparate elements of our theme: “prophetism,” “witnessing,” “mission,” “conflict,” and “healing.” For example, the face of conflict is variegated: there are many victims of rape, orphans, amputees, both internally and externally displaced persons, emigration, bearers of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), gaping poverty disillusionment and cadavers to be properly buried. We should not forget those victims who blame religion and God himself for their predicaments. Yet, we need to heal them all.
Obviously, we live in an age that is filled with signs and wonders, many of which are gloomy and terrifying—our politics continues to be in turmoil, fears of wars and terrorism persist, our environment is being polluted in ways unseen before, our families, youth and societal institutions continue their collapse. The world has been afflicted by conflict, war, and violence. Today we see everything from personal discord and community conflict to political unrest and regional wars. What is our role as followers of Christ, as missionaries and what is it like being a mission Church in the context of violence and war?
Providentially, “universal communion” made it to the topic of our residential seminar, and on it I want to dwell because the various vocations God has inspired in the different religious lives attend to the variegated faces of conflicts we mentioned above through our different charisms.
3.Communion a s Silver Bullet
Brothers and Sisters, as we gather for our 2024 seminar, I want us to think about what binds us together as partners in the work of evangelisation for an effective missionary work. Of course, there are many elements of theological bonding among us that one may invoke. I want to mention just one — “universal communion”, as our theme calls it. Moreover, Joseph Ratzinger, the late Pope Benedict XVI, entitled one of his books, “Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today” (1996). I want to extend the same call to missionaries and religious today, that is, ourselves.
I want us, during these days of our residential seminar, to see our missionary visions and contributions to be a participation in “communion ecclesiology”. “Communion as silver bullet” suggests that all the tangents of the theme for our residential seminar this year is encapsulated under communion. Indeed, communion ecclesiology includes missiology, not just the harmony between the universal and local churches that Ratzinger underscores in his book “Called to Communion”. This welcome address seeks to emphasise one point: “communion with God and one another is the core of missionary prophetic healing.” This theme of “communion” draws attention to the missionary dimension of communion ecclesiology, which has become the mainstay of Vatican II’s interpretation, according to the 1985 Synod of Bishops in Rome.
4.Remembering “Communion”
I think that we need to “remember” the tangent of communion in our missiology because (1) of its power to heal the violence and conflict emanating from our “democratic communion” and (2) in furtherance of the Church’s invitation to missionaries to appropriate the semantics of communion ecclesiology. Obviously, the ubiquity of violence and conflicts around the world and the untold sufferings they unleash on humanity, to seek “communion” becomes an imperative for a world on the brinks of collapse. Our desire to assuage the sufferings of the world behooves us to ask about their origin. One origin of conflict is a misunderstanding of “communion”.
What is Koinōnia for our democracy? Koinōnia, translated as “communion,” “sharing,” and “fellowship,” just to mention these three, has its Greek usage among Greek political philosophers. The basic meaning of koinōnia, for the Greeks, is the fact that citizens share the same polis — city-state. Consequently, koinōnia for them means sharing in something, especially the city-state. This definition of “communion” is still rife among us today. We see the limitation of this city-state definition of “communion” in the distinctions made among citizens of different countries and the distribution of violence and conflicts we see in its wake.
For Christians, on the contrary, koinōnia means sharing in somebody or someone. The someone or somebody of koinōnia is Jesus Christ. Instead of a sharing or communion in something as the Greeks conceived of koinōnia and appropriated by most of our democracies, for Christians, it is the sharing in the person of Jesus Christ. How does one share in Christ, one may ask?
The classic statement of response of the ascended Lord to Saul on the way to Damascus, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5), provides the proof that each Christian, especially those persecuted and hurting in whatever shape and form, Jesus shares with them in their suffering. This reality of communion (koinōnia) as sharing in Jesus Christ is further substantiated by Matt 25:31-46, where Jesus considers every treatment meted out to any Christian as directly meted out on him — whatsoever you do to the least of these, you did it to me.
It is from the realisation that Christianity is founded on koinōnia — sharing in the Lord Jesus — that healing as a missionary imperative begins to make sense. This is the case because the healer and the sick both share (koinōnia) in the Lord Jesus. Hence, healing is inseparable from missionary work because the healing work of the earthly Jesus continues in the healing ministry of today’s missionaries.
It is important to remember that communion ecclesiology splits koinōnia in two — vertical (our collective connection with God through the gift of salvation) and horizontal (our fellowship with one another as the recipients of salvation). Horizontal koinōnia or the implications of being recipients of God’s salvation obligates us to be there for one another through what the Church calls corporal and spiritual works of mercy — making “healing” both spiritual and physical. Matthew 25:31-46 and 1 Cor 12 expatiate on the social dimensions of horizontal communion. In a word, both texts make everyone’s affairs our affairs. We need to feed the hungry, quench the thirst of the thirsty, take the sick to the hospital and visit them there, etc. This is the Matthean imperative. 1 Cor 12:13 insists that Christian oneness, because of baptism and reception of one Holy Spirit, create one inseparable body of Christ with every part looking out for other parts, especially the weak parts/members. These conclusions would be meaningless, were it not for the examples of the life and exemplary actions of Jesus Christ. It is now our turn to imitate the Christ.
5.The Job of Making Chris Present
“Remembering communion” remains of actuality in pontifical theology. Pope Francis, in his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, addresses the importance of memory and remembrance. To remember, is to remember Jesus Christ; and to remember Jesus Christ is to share in a “communion” or to belong to those whose lives are shaped by the acta et dicta of Jesus Christ. The four-fold usage of “memoria” in Lumen Fidei 9, prefigures the realisation of the communion for which Christ shed his blood in the promise of a future multitude of descendants to Abraham (Gal 2-3). I lend my voice to Pope Francis’ determination to rediscover the memory of the Church as “a light to be recovered” to prevent ecclesial amnesia.
The necessity for a recourse to the concept of “memoria,” according to the encyclical (Lumen Fidei, 25) is that humanity suffers from historical “amnesia” and relativistic conception of non-scientific truth. Lumen Fidei, 25 points out that “memoria” has three dimensions: foundational, unitive and transcendental.
“Memoria” is transcendental not only because it precedes each one of us, but also it encapsulates the meaning and goal of human life. Indeed, the “transcendence” of “memoria” reminds us that “memoria” has God as its foundation, the grounding principle of all reality. It follows that missionaries are not laying new foundations but sharing the communion of salvation freely received from Christ with the human race. The memory of the labor of our founders and our current missionaries must spur us toward a future full of hope that the Holy Spirit renews communion among us today and will continue to do that ad vitam aeternam. The Church reminds us that we make Christ present in our missionary works in these words:
“How can we not recall with gratitude to the Spirit the many different forms of consecrated life which he has raised up throughout history and which still exist in the Church today? They can be compared to a plant with many branches which sinks its roots into the Gospel and brings forth abundant fruit in every season of the Church’s life. …. The Synod recalled this unceasing work of the Holy Spirit, who in every age shows forth the richness of the practice of the evangelical counsels through a multiplicity of charisms. In this way too, he makes ever present in the Church and in the world, in time and space, the mystery of Christ” (Vita Consecrata, 5).
Quintessential to “remembrance” for our purposes is Jesus’ link between his mission as a Savior and the work of healing, preaching, and social transformation, under the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus takes up the prophetic tradition of Isaiah when he appropriates Isaiah 61:1-2a: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Lk 4:18-19).
Our remembrance of Jesus’ ministry recalls to us what our own missionary engagements and blueprint should be. We heal through medical and psychological sciences, not necessarily through the invocation of the Word like Jesus and his disciples did. We heal sacramentality through the sacraments of the Anointing of the sick and Confession. We further heal through encouraging words to those whose marriages have taken a beating, and those whose traumatic life experiences nudge them toward suicide. Moreover, our journeying alongside the lonely, immigrants and refugees, even by our mission of presence without spoken words, is therapeutic.
6.“SEDOSing” Healing
Lest we forget, the universal church calls us, consecrated persons, to become promoters of communion ecclesiology in these words: “A great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the Church as communion, so strongly proposed by the Second Vatican Council. Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practise the spirituality of communion as “witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God’s design”. The sense of ecclesial communion, developing into a spirituality of communion, promotes a way of thinking, speaking and acting which enables the Church to grow in depth and extension. The life of communion in fact “becomes a sign for all the world and a compelling force that leads people to faith in Christ … In this way communion leads to mission, and itself becomes mission”; indeed, “communion begets communion: in essence it is a communion that is missionary” (Vita Consecrata, 1996, no. 46).
The “spirituality of communion” is never to go it alone, but to always go it with others because the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, according to the Creed we profess. Our mission of healing of conflicts and ailments must be in apostolic continuity for a united and strong Church. For our purposes in this welcome address, “called to communion” aims to signify our unity or communion as agents of the Church’s mission. This ties in with Vita Consecrata 47:
“Consecrated persons are called to be a leaven of communion at the service of the mission of the universal Church by the very fact that the manifold charisms of their respective Institutes are granted by the Holy Spirit for the good of the entire Mystical Body, whose upbuilding they must serve (cf. 1 Cor 12:4-11)”.
This understanding of “communion ecclesiology” as missiology reminds us of the synergy and complementarity that is at the heart of our collective charisms. It makes it clear that our different charisms cannot be isolated from those of others. Furthermore, missiology becomes integral healing through the synergies of our collective charisms.
However, we cannot talk about “communion ecclesiology” without connecting it to the Eucharist. As we know, every Eucharistic celebration celebrates the sign of human salvation wrought by Christ (signum rememorativum). The concrete sign of a Eucharistic celebration is the visible communion of the people of God redeemed by Christ – the Church. The anticipatory sign (signum prognosticum) of a Eucharistic celebration is the hope of the eschaton towards which the Church journeys, a hope which reveals that the Church is a pilgrim people of God. The presupposition here is that the Eucharist makes the Church. This fact does not negate the argument that the Church is also a creatio verbi – the Church as the consequence of the preaching of the good news; for this is the etymology of the Greek word ekklesia – a calling out of a faith community. As consecrated persons, we participate, according to our different charisms in this building of communion. We, as consecrated persons, join in the universal mission of the Church and we never work outside of it:
This understanding of “communion ecclesiology” as missiology reminds us of the synergy and complementarity that is at the heart of our collective charisms. It makes it clear that our different charisms cannot be isolated from those of others. Furthermore, missiology becomes integral healing through the synergies of our collective charisms.
However, we cannot talk about “communion ecclesiology” without connecting it to the Eucharist. As we know, every Eucharistic celebration celebrates the sign of human salvation wrought by Christ (signum rememorativum). The concrete sign of a Eucharistic celebration is the visible communion of the people of God redeemed by Christ – the Church. The anticipatory sign (signum prognosticum) of a Eucharistic celebration is the hope of the eschaton towards which the Church journeys, a hope which reveals that the Church is a pilgrim people of God. The presupposition here is that the Eucharist makes the Church. This fact does not negate the argument that the Church is also a creatio verbi – the Church as the consequence of the preaching of the good news; for this is the etymology of the Greek word ekklesia – a calling out of a faith community. As consecrated persons, we participate, according to our different charisms in this building of communion. We, as consecrated persons, join in the universal mission of the Church and we never work outside of it:
“All this brings out the character of universality and communion proper to Institutes of Consecrated Life and to Societies of Apostolic Life. Because of their supra-diocesan character, grounded in their special relation to the Petrine ministry, they are also at the service of cooperation between the particular Churches, since they can effectively promote an “exchange of gifts” among them, and thus contribute to an inculturation of the Gospel which purifies, strengthens and ennobles the treasures found in the cultures of all peoples. Today too, the flowering of vocations to the consecrated life in the younger Churches demonstrates the ability of the consecrated life to make present in Catholic unity the needs of different peoples and cultures” (Vita Consecrata, 47).
The different “needs of different peoples and cultures” include the resolution of conflicts that our residential seminar calls us to attend.
1.Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, “Communion” in Dictionnaire critique de théologie, sou la direction de J. Y. Lacoste, P. U. F., Paris, 1998, pp. 236-242.
