SVD
Generalate

Dear Confreres,

We began the yearlong sesquicentennial jubilee celebration of our Society on 8^th September 2024 with great joy and enthusiasm, coupled with gratitude and hope. The participation of the members of the Arnoldus family, our mission collaborators, lay associates and benefactors in the celebration added color and vitality to it.  At this delightful historic moment, the “Documents of the 19^th General Chapter SVD 2024” is also made available to us for our personal and communitarian reading, reflection and action. Our sesquicentennial celebrations should complement our understanding and implementation of the mandate of the Chapter and shouldn’t become constraints.

The Documents of the 19^th General Chapter (henceforth, Document) is the outcome of a long and laborious process that was spread over three years, passing through various stages, involving all confreres and communities, engaging three preparatory commissions, two of them being international, comprising two communal reflections, in which our formandi and lay associates also participated, and was energized by consistent prayer and discernment, before it was given a specific shape and definitive direction by the 19^th General Chapter.

The Document contains the statement and the decisions of the Chapter. Although it is an expression of the mandate of the Chapter for the entire Society for the sexennium 2024-2030, every one of us has participated, in one way or the other, in bringing it to the present form, and therefore, has a task of achieving its objectives.

The special significance of this Chapter Document is that it comes to us at the time of the Society’s sesquicentennial celebrations; that it contains a number of constitutional amendments (24 in all); that it presents several concrete decisions in the form of resolutions and recommendations (27 in all), that it does not provide questions at the end of each of its sections for discussions like the previous Chapter documents, and that it includes the statement of the SVD lay partners’ workshop that preceded the 19^th General Chapter in Nemi.

Contemplating on the concerns of the Society, the Document captivates our concentration to some significant aspects of our life and mission that deserve greater attention and augmentation, such as, (a) our intercultural missionary identity, (b) formation as our shared responsibility that needs to be integral and guided by the new Ratio Formationis Generalis of the Society, (c) biblical apostolate as fundamental to our being as Divine Word Missionaries, (d) disciplined and transparent progress towards financial self-reliance, (e) our commitment to Laudato Si Action Platform, (f) formation and animation of SVD lay associates, (g) our preparedness for ethical application and implications of the rapidly advancing digital media, particularly, the artificial intelligence, etc.

In all the above aspects, the Document intends to infuse an integral approach that makes the ad intra and ad extra aspects of our witness and service interconnected. It underlines the idea that our ad intra witness is fundamental to our ad extra mission and that the latter is an extension of the former.  This insight is well encapsulated in the Chapter theme, “Your Light Must Shine Before Others” (Mt 5:16): Faithful and Creative Disciples in a Wounded World.

Capturing the content and context of the Chapter theme, the statement exhorts us to respond faithfully and creatively to the various forms of woundedness of the world. It urges us to be shining light before others. In order to grasp the meaning of being a ‘shining light’, we must return to the gospel text, Mt 5: 14-16 in which Jesus uses the metaphor of light to explain the nature and function of his disciples.  

He tells them, “You are the light of the world . . .  your light must shine before others . . .”  There is an apparent conceptual confusion between the essential (you are light) and accidental (your light) aspects of discipleship. Here, Jesus uses the concept, ‘light’ metaphorically and not parabolically. He tells his disciples that they are the light of the world, and their good works should radiate God’s goodness to the world. As his faithful disciple, if I am the light (essential), then, I must shine and not my light (accidental) must shine.

However, this apparent confusion can be clarified in terms of our treasured dictum, “Our Name is Our Mission”. My identity is that I am a Divine Word, and my mission is to be the Divine Word to others. Similarly, if I am the light, then my mission is to be light to others, especially to the wounded ones, as the Chapter Document discloses diligently. The Document is a declaration of our determination to drive away the darkness of the world by being the light of the Word.

Another significant element in the gospel text is Jesus’ insightful use of the metaphor of the ‘city’ along with the metaphor of the ‘light’ with an intention to add the communitarian dimension to the light.  He says that a city built on the hilltop cannot be hidden. In the age of individualism and ethnocentrism, it is the community of disciples that should be light which stands witness to God’s goodness in the world.

Our intercultural communities have a powerful witness value in this wounded world. They are to be ‘hilltop’ communities. Our sesquicentennial jubilee celebration provides an apt occasion to discern collectively to identify and remove those ‘bushel baskets’ that hinder our ‘hilltop communities’ from being visible signs of God’s goodness to the world.  The Document enjoins us that being credible to our communitarian charism and creatively consolidating the dynamics of our intercultural life and mission are to become part of our primary objectives.

It is a human tendency to be content with sustaining the status quo in what we do and how we do. We would prefer that our everyday life and ministry be a carbon copy of the previous day because in such an approach there is predictability, continuity, sense of security, and stability. We prefer to play by the rule book so that we can be ‘politically correct’.  We may even choose to ‘administer’ the same or even outdated treatment for the illnesses we encounter, even though we may be aware that such frequent and repetitive use of the same medication can prove to be ineffective or even detrimental.

There may be some wounds that are perennial and persistent, and we are used to prescribing the same ‘medicine’! It is time to examine such an approach and search for innovative ways to increase the impact of our service. Therefore, the challenge before us is to explore new ways of animation, administration, coordination, collaboration and dialogue in the exercise of our ministries and extending of our services that would heal the wounds and radiate God’s goodness to the world we inhabit.

Certainly, some of us are earnest in seeking new ways and trying to achieve a breakthrough in making the healing power of God more tangible in our context. In our efforts to disseminate, discuss, plan, execute, and evaluate the impact of the execution of the Document, we are aware that it is part of our missionary service that we search for solutions to the problems of the world (ad extra). At the same time, in our eagerness to heal the woundedness of the world, we should not be oblivious of the woundedness in our ‘own world’ (ad intra).

Embracing the wounded world necessarily includes an honest acknowledgement of our vulnerabilities as wounded healers. It will make us more empathetic towards the wounded without transmitting our woundedness to them. The spirit of the Document is that as faithful and creative disciples, our witnessing to the light will have a greater impact in dispelling the darkness of the wounded world.

As Divine Word missionaries committed to making visible the goodness and kindness of God in the context of our Province / Mission / Region (PRM), in collaboration with our mission partners and lay associates, we leave no stone unturned to realize the 19^th General Chapter’s objective, “to enhance our growth in authentic discipleship by strengthening our identity, and being creative in our ways of proclamation and witnessing to Christ in a wounded world.”

Fr. Anselmo Ribeiro, SVD
and the Leadership Team