By Fr Francis Gonsalves, SJ –
“We’re so glad to inform you that Indian Catholic Matters (ICM) is turning Three on July 26.” Editor-in-chief Verghese Joseph’s email surprised me. It seems like yesterday when Verghese and Tom met me, introduced a newborn ICM, and asked: “Father, why don’t you write for ICM?” I mumbled, noncommittedly, “Let’s see!” Eventually, I did begin writing for ICM.
When requested to write something for this 3-year ICM milestone, I thought of the Trinity—not that I had some hotline to heaven; but because I’m currently online teaching/learning Trinity at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, my home-cum-workplace. Talking of trinities, here’s my dream for ICM: May ICM beget ICM: Innovative Cyber Missionaries. How so?
Innovative Indians: In his ‘The Argumentative Indian’ Amartya Sen argues that India can be a leading light in providing innovative intellectual contributions to the world. With her rich, unique, ancient and kaleidoscopic cultures, languages, spiritualities and faith traditions, couldn’t Mother India be a thinktank to innovate and influence global thought?
While Indians can be argumentative and productive, they’re often arrogant and myopic—especially so nowadays with populist, nationalistic, anti-democratic and anti-poor plans and programmes destroying the ‘Idea of India’ that our ancestors envisioned and enshrined in our Constitution, which is threatened, today. There’s dire need for ingenuity, involvement and innovation. Here’s where everyone ‘catholic’—in the sense of ‘universal’—has a duty to innovate and ensure that God reigns, Christ redeems, and the Spirit renews India.
Cyber Church: I’m writing this when Coronavirus has crushed everything we cherish, Church included. Today, we’re forced to celebrate church life in a ‘Cyber Church’. ‘Cyber’ comes from the Greek ‘kubernēsis’ meaning ‘ability to lead’. Can we, Indian Christians, lead others? Sadly, many look towards ‘yesterday’ with nostalgia or daydream about ‘tomorrow’ for return to some ‘normal’ that never was and never will be. So, look within! Look above to the ‘Uppar-wallah’: Above-all Being! What must Church be and do amidst Covid crises?
Describing Church, Lumen Gentium no. 4 of Vatican Council II says: “The universal Church is a people brought together into unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Put differently, when one looks at the Church one must see the Triune God. Jesus’ revelation of God’s One-and-Threeness, unity-in-diversity, communion-and-contrast, poorness-and-richness, emptiness-and-fullness, death-and-rising must be clearly visible in the Indian Church if it is to declare, truthfully, that it is the Body of Christ, today. Can any ‘body’ Catholic say this?
The greatest gift that ‘Indian Catholic Matters’ has given us in its 3-year timespan is a glimpse of what matters most: ‘kubernēsis’—the ‘ability to lead’ in cyberspace—using a trinitarian template of invisibility and universality (Abba-Father), visibility and particularity (Jesus, Son) and virtual spatial-temporal-versatility (Holy Spirit, who “blows where it wills”: Jn 3:8). God only knows how far and how deep ICM has gone! Our cyber-mission needs to be understood and deepened.
Mass Missionaries: No mission, no church! A mission-less church is like a well-equipped hospital with topnotch doctors, but no patients. In a Covid context, on the one hand, we can rest content that the Indian Church is busy with a ‘mission’ of doling out food, grain, medicine, masks, soaps and sanitizers; but, on the other, isn’t this what the colonializing Christendom Church has been doing for centuries? Can Catholics rest content with being only charitable, benevolent donors—feeding the masses with crumbs that fall from the Masters’ tables?
Arundhati Roy says: “Charity douses anger with pity; charity reduces receivers to being beggars; charity makes donors feel a sense of power and self-righteousness that they oughtn’t really to have.” She sees the pandemic as a portal, a doorway. Can’t we build “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1) where Abba-Amma-God will reign, where Jesus will be the model of dying-and-rising, and where the Spirit will ensure that the Good News reaches the ends of the earth?
Lumen Gentium no.11 of Vatican Council II describes the “eucharistic sacrifice” as “the source and summit of Christian life.” ‘Mass’ derives from the Latin ‘missa’ implying mission. All Mass-goers are necessarily mission-doers or missionaries. At the end of every Mass, when the main celebrant dismisses the assembly, saying: “Go! The Mass is ended!” liturgy in church ends and life in the world begins. But, with online virtual masses, where shall we go with lockdowns? What is our mission? Pope Francis shows us the way ….
In 2013, the first year of his pontificate, in Evangelii Gaudium—‘Joy of the Gospel’—no. 273, Francis wrote: “I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world.” Ever wondered why you are alive in this world while others are dead? Simply because you are a mission. Catholic mission is not so much about ‘doing’ as it is about ‘being’. So, be mission! Be missionary! Christify cyberspace!
An ICM Triadic Challenge: Being ICMs—Innovative Cyber Missionaries—entails downsizing big church buildings and institutions: those imposing educational, medical, social-developmental self-styled ‘centres’ so as to convert Church into the ‘poor church’, ‘church of the periphery’ and ‘field hospital church’ — images proposed by Pope Francis. Long live the ‘domestic church’: your own home! Here, Christians can be salt and light—leavening cyberspace.
Congrats ICM! Zindabad editors, contributors and readers who pooled heads, hearts and iPads to ensure that ICM “ranks 31st in this year’s Feedspot top 100 Catholic websites in the world.” Go forth, innovative, cyber missionaries!
Fr. Francis Gonsalves is a Gujarat Jesuit, former Principal of Vidyajyoti College, Delhi, and currently Dean of Theology at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune. He is also the Executive Secretary of the CCBI Commission for Theology and Doctrine. He has authored many books and articles and is a columnist with The Asian Age and The Deccan Chronicle national dailies.