One sentence in the Testament Letter has always captured my attention: “to see God, seek God, love God in all things.” It has a Jesuit flavour (seeking and finding God in all things). This sentence presents a gradation that goes from seeing to loving by passing through seeking. I have always wondered whether the order of the words chosen by Conforti was correct. I used to think that the logical order would place seeking before seeing, for one looks for something, then sees what he finds, and eventually loves the object of his search.
This is why I have always considered this list of verbs a succession written down in one go, without paying attention to the chronological order, but only with the intent of pointing out the stages of the discovery of God, but leaving space to the possibility of reordering these stages as one pleases.
Recently, however, I sort of appreciate that such sequence is not casual. Perhaps, there is a compelling reason behind the choice of placing seeking after seeing, and loving after them. This reason could rest on the fact that St. Guido considers the encounter with God an event which is not sought but totally received, as a free and unconditional gift. Let us consider the case of St. Paul that meets Christ on the road to Damascus. It is an event that takes place without any previous planning: Paul bumps into the One who will become the object of his love for his entire life.
What emerges during that encounter is Paul’s desire not to get out of that experience of light, joy and communion. Paul will do anything to preserve it. Seemingly, Paul longs to remain dazzled by the light that has transformed him (you must look for the things that are above – Col. 3: 1-2; what we aim for is not visible – 2Cor. 4:18; also the Letter to the Hebrew, which Conforti quotes in TL, recalls this reality: Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection – Heb. 12:2). Such search for the communion with Christ is not a static reality, but a journey of deep exploration, of ever new knowledge, of love, of light, with ever growing intensity. Hence, in St. Paul occurs that very journey indicated by Conforti: seeing, seeking, loving.
Since I work in formation, I always ask myself whether this transforming encounter – this “having seen” – has actually happened in the Xaverian who is preparing for the mission. Sometimes, my impression is that this “seeing” is not so clearly defined: the person wishes to be a missionary, to become a priest, but is unable to verbalise a moment in his life when he has been touched by the love of God in a transforming fashion, like it happened to Paul or to many sick that have been healed by Jesus and his Gospel. The apostles can remember this event so well that they can even indicate the time (…it was about the tenth hour – Jn. 1: 39), while Paul tells about it on several occasions, in the Acts of the Apostles and in his letters, as a foundational moment of his life and mission.
I wonder whether it may be possible to become missionary without this “seeing”, without having a clear memory of this encounter with Christ and having perceived its transforming power. Probably, when “seeing” fades away “seeking” becomes prevalent. Nonetheless, this last case risks ending up being a journey which is not orientated by God. That is to say, the search is determined by human criteria: I want to be a missionary, I want to be a priest, I want to help others, I want to go to that mission, I want to solve my existential situation, I want… I desire something that comes from me, and maybe is not coming purely from God.
Finally, according to St. Guido’s directions, the formation of the missionary is not based on the idea of shaping the person by following a model in the future, that is, ‘I try to help the person grow in such a way that he may fit a model of missionary I have in mind and that will reach full realisation at the end of formation’. Rather, formation would be founded on memory, on remaining in the light that irradiated the moment of conversion, the moment when one “saw”. To do this, formation should help the person gain all those spiritual means that maintain him in that communion with God which was once experienced. Therefore, formation would not be motivated by “hope” (i.e., adaptation to a model in the future), rather by the “memory” of a concrete event that has already taken place, and which is peculiar to and constitutive of every individual.
As in St. Paul, mission has the traits of the communication of an event rather than those of the transmission of a vision of God and of the world which has been learned. Even if situations may require to communicate abstract concepts and a view of the human being, God and the world, this inevitably happens through the interpretative lens of one’s foundational experience. The mission is a good news, a testimony of an encounter that really took place within the missionary’s soul, and the hope that a similar encounter may take place in the soul of his interlocutor as well. To paraphrase, mission is experita aliis tradere (to hand down to others the fruits of one’s own experience), just as John recounts in his first letter: We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard… (1 Jn 1: 3).
Thank you, St. Guido, also for this list of verbs that illustrate the foundation of our going and proclaiming.
Parma, June 2021
