Since I entered the Xaverian missionaries’ family, I have been facing and dealing with situations or challenges that became opportunities and led me towards building my own spirituality, and per se, knowing more, loving more and following Jesus with more enthusiasm. I would like to share how my journey with the youth made me grow since I had to undergo not only doubts, brokenness, fear but also experience blessedness.
From day one of my formation, I have been journeying with youth in different categories (minor prisoners, children, group of youth …). I would like to stress on two or three specific prior moments in my journey with youth. First of all, when I was in third year of Philosophy, I was sent to work with prisoners. It was a year quite upsetting to me from an apostolic point of view. The pastoral work we were doing inside the prison was for me an opportunity to be in contact with the reality of the evil that our environments also experience. It was a difficult pastoral that made me feel at the same time, mercy from God and discouragement from a human point of view. I felt pity when some prisoners showed regret for their past and others expressed their innocence. They were apparently showing signs and a great desire to amend, but great was my surprise when after the release of several of them, they returned to prison again just after two or three weeks because they had committed another fault. I started losing hope in their possible change since more than 80% did not change at all. I felt like I was still at the starting point again and again. Too many questions crossed my mind to the point that I had no more taste to go to those places where people already lost hope in a possible future life. I had the impression that they had the good conscience to be in that sad situation. Nevertheless, it was a challenging moment for me to learn how to be strong and courageous enough to persevere in my journey with them until the end of the year. During that journey, I then developed a great openness to all other dimensions, welcoming criticism and proposals to improve.
The other apostolate with the children was rather a blessing for me. I was here in the second year of Philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, my days spent with the kids were the polar stars of my vocation. Every time I was with them, they made me understood who God is. With them, I lived not the knowledge of God, but the recognition of God. The children helped me to recognize the Lord that I was constantly seeking to know. In fact, by their innocence, their transparency, their naivety, their tenderness, their simplicity, their littleness, the children showed me the Lord. Because of them, I was able to internalize the depth of the word of the Gospel: "Whoever wants to follow me must look like a child". I understood then that it was not a matter of becoming a child, but of following the Lord with a child's mind, with the qualities of a child. Finally, I realized that God is great not due to his power or his magnificence but he is great because he always deliberately chooses the path of childhood, the path of littleness. From that moment, all my consciousness, all my philosophy, my ideals, my projects, only endeavored to converge in the unique service of this way, of this path.
Finally, when I arrived here in the Philippines three years ago, I was assigned to work with the youth just after four months of learning English. The challenge was great not due to the English language that I had managed to speak, at least to entertain in a dialogue, but this was because of the Tagalog (national language), more spoken by mostly all the youth in our pastoral area. At that moment, I was quite mute and the moments with the youth were the terrible hour where I could feel the weight of being a missionary. I just wanted to quit and run away. Then one day, I remembered the episode of the healing of the blind Bartimaeus and was inspired by it. The verse 49: “take courage and get up, he is calling you,” constantly resonated in my heart. I had like an assurance from God telling me: “do not let up, do not quit" It was at that very moment I understood I needed to develop the particular virtue of courage.
As I said earlier, these daily experiences are helping me to shape my own spirituality, which I call a missionary or a living spirituality for I consider it very much approximate to the grounded realities of people. In fact, spirituality usually evokes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience, something that touches all of us. Thus, based on my personal experience, I would define spirituality as a living force, a conscious effort to keep balanced every area in life. The usual temptation is to limit spirituality to a journey towards sacredness or transcendence, while it should first be a journey towards maturity or humanity. In other words, a spiritual person is not first of all the one that constantly do meditations or prayers, but being a spiritual person is synonymous with being a person whose highest priority is loving himself and others. Therefore, qualities such as caring, kindness, compassion, tolerance, service, community are highlighted from him.
With these three significant experiences of my life, I understand today that our pastoral needs first of all spiritual persons. That means mature people who pay great attention to others and are at the same time capable of great interiority. It requires people whose missionary deeds would not damage humans. With the prisoners for example I felt like our pastoral requires sometimes people who would not believe that their words will be sufficient to say how much God loves mankind. This because on the ground I encountered situations that made me shock and speechless. I sometimes found myself in situations I was discreetly begging their love. Some of the conditions of those poor people made me realize at a certain moment that I have not got the right to prevent their fragilities, their weaknesses from simply letting them incarnate in me. I was then talking about God without deafening the person I was talking to. To say the truth, the realities on the ground were sometimes places of a great confusion where I learned to celebrate and practice vulnerability and forgiveness. I believe that living with them was for me like a bath in the pool of siloam, washing my eyes with its water. That is to say I was able to see because, by my desire, by the vocation with which I was sent off, I let the saliva of the speaking mouth become the saliva of the mud which cures the blind man that is inside me. I was then able to see and welcome what had been transmitted to me. I could see God’s icon in every man and woman I met in my different apostolates. There were encounters that could not be experienced by expecting something better. I then had to go ahead like somebody who has been sent and who could perceive out of an obvious necessity that the spirit is shared by humanity as a whole, even where God was silent. That was for me the great importance of sometimes looking for solitude. This was a moment for me to listen to God through prayer; and therein I came to realize that I am his beloved son.
Today I am happy of having had that experience because I believe they are preparing me to be ready in facing the new realities in the future. The missionary or living spirituality I developed so far in my pastoral work enabled me to have a loving eye that sees far ahead, that has hope in the other and hope in myself. This spirituality of mine let me say today with a great conviction that there is in man a fraternity that passes fraternity when one thinks it is exhausted. There is in man a love that passes love when it seems impossible to love, when it does not give pleasure any longer, when it does not make sense any more. Once my spiritual director told me that “nothing exists in man that cannot go through the night and be reborn in forgiveness.” Rightly, the missionary spirituality makes me affirm today again that nothing exists in man that has not its end in an excess of love of the humanity beyond his defacing and ugliness.
By Olivier Dzuna Fotso
