Peace and greetings as “June is bustin’ out all over.” The sun is bright and shining! The light of day is long, and the heat is sizzling hot here in D.C. as summer ‘officially’ begins today when the Beacon arrives in your mailbox!
The back story for this month’s pondering comes from my participation in two community events that are featured in this issue of our newsletter: the Student Gathering in Tucson and the Province Retreat at San Alfonso. My experience of these gatherings stirred memories of my years of ministry as a university chaplain at Gwynedd Mercy University. There, the mission and values of the university were constantly emphasized to the entire learning community of faculty, staff, students, and administration. Chief among those core values was the value of “life-long learning.”
“Life-long learning” has stayed with me and is thus the subject matter for this month’s pondering. The Student Gathering was a wonderful experience as our community gathered, not simply to enjoy one another’s company, but also to deepen our understanding of moral theology and to be renewed in our appreciation of the very significant contributions of our founder, Saint Alphonsus, to our practice of it as Redemptorists. In his clear and creative presentation on the subject matter, Father Kevin O’Neil eloquently reminded us of the need to study and know the Church’s teaching, to be attentive and open to the contributions of the medical and social sciences, and to always be concerned to listen to and learn from the people that we are called to serve, teach, and companion in their lives. He reminded us that Alphonsus, the great teacher, pastor, and Doctor of the Church, was a life-long student committed to life-long learning for the care of God’s people.
Similarly, our Province Retreat was a graced experience for me as a learning community gathered to prayerfully reflect on and consider our call to be a community of missionary disciples. Father Brendan Kelly’s consistent message and challenge to us was that we Redemptorists must be men of faith who listen deeply to God, to one another as confreres and brothers in community, and to the cries of all God’s people and all creation. If we are to be the missionaries of hope that we are called to be as sons of Alphonsus then listening with a desire to understand and to learn more, as Father Brendan reminded us, is essential to discerning the experience and presence of the Holy Spirit in our community life and in our mission.
Both experiences have brought home to me both the invitation and the challenge to embrace the value of “life-long learning” and to make it my own in my life and ministry. They have also helped me appreciate the powerful and practical benefits of doing so. From the youngest to the eldest amongst all who gathered for these events, each of us learned something new or relearned something old on subject matters that are central to our mission and ministry to God’s people, not to mention our life together as confreres. What’s more, these experiences of listening and learning inspired some new insights, new energy, new hope, and a real experience of unity among us. They were real and grace-filled experiences, touching our souls and impacting our lives for the better.
We live in tumultuous times when listening and learning are often challenged by an attitude of “I’ll tell you; no, you’ll listen to me; I know it all,” which seriously impedes real encounters and dialogue between people, often reducing human interaction to mere transaction and power play. A commitment to listening and to life-long learning would, I believe, go a long way to breaking the back of the fear, suspicion, division, and discord that is draining our hope, depleting our spirit, and shutting us down. Listening and life-long learning help to create bridges of understanding, collaboration, creativity, and freedom to meet both the challenges and opportunities of our times.
A statement made by the speaker at a ministry conference that I attended almost forty years ago comes to mind as I conclude this pondering. “The person who says, ‘I am a learner’ is a victor in life, and anyone who says they have nothing to learn is a victim of it.” As men and women of faith, we believe that all of life is an education in love and that God’s longing is for our fullness of life. My prayer for us all is that we become victors in life, by God’s grace and our choice, by our resolve to listen deeply and to be life-long learners.
And then I think to myself, “What a wonderful world it would be!”