1 Anselm Moons, OFM Award Acceptance Presentation April 11

Anselm Moons, OFM Award
Acceptance Presentation
April 11, 2014
Washington, DC
My brothers and sisters, I am grateful. I am grateful that the Franciscan Mission Service does the
great work you do. I am grateful to be in your company tonight. And I am grateful that the work of
JustFaith Ministries complements your work. And I am grateful for the easy comraderie that is
birthed by our common work of hope-building and restoration, the work called justice. The Holy
Spirit, to me, is discernable in relationships that form easily because of a breadth of spirit. Indeed,
breadth of spirit IS holy spirit. Holy can be measured in terms that include breadth – breadth of
embrace, breadth of welcome, breadth of concern, breadth of prayer. And, so, to gather with people
who love large, like you do, is holy ground. And I am grateful.
Thank you for the recognition of the work we do. Over the years that JustFaith Ministries has
existed, I often have had to remind people that JustFaith Ministries is not a social ministry
organization. We don’t feed the hungry, we don’t clothe the naked, we don’t advocate for the
marginalized, we don’t lobby politicians, and we don’t change structures. We are a formation
organization. We invite and inspire people of faith to feed the hungry. We invite and inspire
people of faith to advocate for the marginalized. We are some combination of evangelization,
education, transformation and spiritual formation.
And, I’d like to share with you what I have learned from doing this work for the last twenty-five
years (It was exactly twenty-five years ago that the first JustFaith group got started at Church of the
Epiphany in Louisville). And here is what I have learned about evangelization, education,
transformation and spiritual formation. As I will make very clear, everything I have to say is
intended as a compliment to the work of Franciscan Mission Service.
First, evangelization. I am concerned that what we have historically called evangelization has, like
almost every category of North American church life, been short-changed by a strangely selfpreoccupied message denuded of social mission. Pope Francis has called it “theological
narcissism.” It strikes me that much of Catholic evangelization has been a message intended to get
people into the Church, instead of proclaiming the Good News, instead of speaking to God’s dream
as Jesus does. I would like to remind us that the single most spoken phrase in the four Gospels is
“Reign of God.” “Reign of God” is spoken by Jesus 142 times! It is, in effect, his primary
message. So, here is a common phenomenon that plagues a lot of religious activity. We have a
teacher—Jesus—who is passionate about a possibility called the Reign of God. And he spends his
teaching career focused on this dream called the “Reign of God.” He lives his life in the desire to
fulfill that dream. And he continues this commitment even though it is clear that it will likely cost
him his life. And what do you suppose a teacher taking those risks would hope for – that people
pay attention to his message. But the temptation, when it comes to great teachers, is that instead of
listening and paying attention to the message of the teacher, we would rather worship the teacher.
Instead of listening to a challenging message, we would rather put little plastic statues of the teacher
on our dashboard to feel religious and holy. Worshipping a teacher is easier than following a
teacher. Going to church is easier than being the church.
I believe to evangelize in the name of Jesus is to evangelize people to the dream he speaks, lives
and dies for: The Reign of God. And the reign of God is identifiable in at least two very linked
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realities: an inner transformation of the self—we call it Christ-likeness—that expresses itself as
personal qualities like compassion, mercy, forgiveness, simplicity, community-mindedness,
nonviolence, humility and gratitude—all permutations of love. And this inner transformation
expresses itself as social transformation; the hungry are fed, the homeless are housed, the
abandoned are welcomed, the systems are reformed, the world is made new, by love. The Reign of
God is justice rolling like a river, the reign of God is blood flowing in veins of those who love the
poor, the reign of God is the politics that rushes to the good of all, the Reign of God is a Church that
is always scouting the seas of life for the wounded and vulnerable.
If my unpacking of the Reign of God is accurate, then everything related to Church is at the service
of this dream. We are calling people to a vision of what each of us can become and what this world
can become – they are so intertwined that it is impossible to speak of one without the other. We
are calling each other to a Church, a community that seeks FIRST this Kingdom of God, this Reign
of God. To evangelize people to Christ is to evangelize people to this dream. There should be no
Christians who are disinterested in justice because that would be, in effect, to dismiss Jesus. And
my point is I understand the work of Franciscan Mission Service to be an excellent example of
evangelization. I wish every parish had a chapter.
Second, education. Church educators spend an awful lot of time talking about catechism, which is,
when you right down to it, a description of conclusions – conclusions about God, about faith, about
life. That’s fine. No argument from me. It’s just that it’s incomplete. You see, catechism is
typically description, not exploration. Catechism gives us the destination, but not much of a road
map. We can tell people that God is love and we are called to love. Fine. But we need to give
people occasions to explore love, to apply love. We need to teach people about how to love in the
givenness of this world. We need to teach, especially in affluent places, what the world looks like
across town, what it feels like to grow up poor, disregarded, in lousy school systems, with few jobs
and only fleeting hope. We need to teach people by giving them practicums, if you will, by
dislocating themselves to the places Jesus walks. Afterall, that’s what disciples do – walk in the
path of the wise one. Education in the Church should include our catechetical understanding of God
and Jesus and faith, and it should also include a robust exploration of what the world looks like and
why people thrive in some places and are dehumanized in others. Church education SHOULD
include, through the primary lens of the Reign of God, a robust consideration of politics, economics,
ecology, land use, nutrition, and healthcare. Our churches should be universities that school people
in all things God and all things human. In fact, it is impossible to understand one without the other.
So, I consider the work of Franciscan Mission Service to be a remarkable example of religious
education. I wish every parish had a chapter.
Third, transformation. The lexicon related to Jesus Christ is all about change, metanoia. New sight,
new life, new birth, born again, death and resurrection. In other words, our faith tradition is rooted
in the understanding that there are things that human beings need to see that can get obscured from
view. There are things about being human that need to happen for us to know fullness of being,
abundant life, salvation. All of us have to let go to move on. All of us have to die to something to
move to the next beckon of life and love. And, so our work is about helping people to grow, to
change, to die and rise, to love in ways and in places that previously seemed unimaginable. Our
formation ministries are—or should be—at the service of transformation. And, as you know well,
this emphasis on transformation forms part of the soul of mission and voluntary displacement. The
work of Franciscan Mission Service changes people, and not just for a little while. Your work
deflects the momentum of wherever people thought they were going in the direction of those who
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have been left behind. It’s clearly transformative. It’s life-changing. It’s world-changing. It’s
inspiring. Your mission and work, like that of, for example, JVC and JustFaith and St. Vincent de
Paul speak of a kind of humility that says we have things to learn, AND we can only learn by, as
Pope Francis says, getting dirty and smelly in the lives of those who live in the dirty and smelly
places. So, I consider the work of Franciscan Mission Service to be an extraordinary example of
transformation. I wish every parish had a chapter.
Finally, spiritual formation. It is one thing to tell people to feed the hungry, to insist that the Gospel
says we are supposed to feed the hungry, that Catholic social teaching says feed the hungry, so,
dammit, feed the hungry. This does not work. This is why Catholic social teaching has been
somewhat toothless. Social mission that does not understand that it is the fruit of a heart
transformed becomes crabby and impatient. And I have gotten tired of crabby social justice people.
This is why it is so very important for a social mission to be linked with a spiritual mission. In the
language of the mystics, we are interested in “holy desires. “ What we hope for is not people who
can be arm-wrestled into submission—feed the hungry or risk eternal damnation—No, what we
hope to inspire are people who are so in love with the miracle of life that we can’t help but feed the
hungry. We want people who are “on fire” for justice because they draw deep from a well of grace
and insight that draws them to care for those who struggle. We want people who understand that
everyone is their sister and brother, and feel it in their gut. We are connected. I am invested in you
because you are me, you are precious, you are an image of the God who birthed us both. My
experience is that many, many expressions of Christian spirituality are shortchanged by the absence
of a missional compass. We may think spirituality is some kind of peaceful communion with God
found in solitude with a good cup of coffee and a soft pair of slippers. Instead, spirituality is the
heart’s conversation with our commitment to love this wonderful and wounded world and the
reflection on that commitment and experience. Spirituality is one part solitude and one part
interaction, one part acting and one part reflecting, one part exploration of the world and one part
exploration of the soul. I can’t go deep if I don’t go wide. And I can’t go wide if I don’t go deep.
We want people who do justice because they are different inside and out. And, so, I consider the
work of Franciscan Mission Service to be a powerful example of spiritual formation. I wish every
parish had a chapter.
Now, you might have noticed that I keep mentioning this word, “parish.” You know this and I
know this: most people come out of your excellent work and, sooner or later, start looking for a
parish. They want a spiritual home, they want community, they want a workshop, a place to pray, a
place to be challenged and nourished. They want a beehive. And right now, my friends, most folks
are having a hard time finding that spiritual home. Most people coming out of one kind of mission
experience or another with a heart for justice and go to the parish and feel like a stranger in a
strange land. Parishes have typically not been very hospitable to people who love justice. That
simply must change OR . . . or the parish will continue to die the slow but certain death that it is
currently experiencing: do you see young people at church any more? The current version of
Church is dying; we must change!
On page 26 of his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis suggests that parishes
can change. He writes and I quote, “The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it
possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and
missionary creativity of the pastor and the community.” He goes on to say, “We must admit,
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though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to
people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them
completely mission-oriented.” Let me say that again: “to make them completely mission-oriented.”
It is a very provocative and not fully explained statement. So, I will close by presuming to explain
what is on Pope Francis’ mind.
The parish he longs to see (I think), the parish I long to see (I know), the parish your work suggests,
and the parish I believe would attract young people is the parish that has organized itself around the
crescendo vision of Matthew 25. It will be a parish that has anchored everything it does in the hope
and intention of forming and sending its members to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and do
justice. It will be a parish that organizes all of its members into mission teams and will have its own
chapter of Franciscan Mission Service embedded in its formation ministry. It will be a parish that
sponsors its own Catholic Worker House. It will be a parish that has dozens of people doing home
visits for St Vincent de Paul AND legislative visits at their congressperson’s office. It will be a
parish that will have started a half dozen non-profit organizations that address needs that were
previously not being met. It will have it own economic development committee, will host
workshops on peacemaking and nonviolence, and will have a youth ministry that catechizes by
engaging its young people in action and mission. It will be a parish that will have many stories of
generosity and sacrifice and heartache and joy to tell. And these stories will all be celebrated
around a table every Sunday. And all those present at the table will be re-commissioned for another
week of mission, joy and compassion.
I think Pope Francis, and I hope all things Franciscan, would approve.
Thank you very much.
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