IMMOBILITY, CHANGE AND
THE GOSPEL
Martí
Colom
Brother
Roger Schutz, the founder of the ecumenical community of Taizé, used to say
that “God does not condemn anyone to immobility.”[1] It is a beautiful saying
from someone who understood that we are made to advance and evolve, someone who
was always concerned about the lack of horizons in the lives of people and
institutions and who wanted to live, as he put it, in a state of permanent uninstallation.
One
of the paradoxes of our age is that we experience quick changes and a constant
acceleration of the pace of life and at the same time there is a significant
immobility under the surface of things. The technology to which we have access
evolves so rapidly that it is often hard to keep up with it. What a few years
ago was unthinkable has become normal, and yet will soon be dated in order to
give way to new tools and devices that will fill up our lives and allow us,
among other things, to communicate in new, faster and more precise manners. We
experience the permanent uninstallation of our daily habits, since yesterday’s
routines (how we shared information or accessed it, how we bought a book or a
train ticket, how we learned a language, how we took notes in a meeting…) have
been radically altered by the new media, which have even modified the way we
relate to each other. Yet, it would be a mistake to presume that this constant
acceleration makes us immune to immobility. For, as we stated before, it is a
shallow transformation, a change of what’s external, of the outer “bark” of our
lives, which is quite possible to manage in such a way that our inner core, our
substance, remains untouched.
It
is in the realm of our intimate choices and ideas, of our personal and
collective system of values (and there technology’s impact isn’t that critical)
where immobility should be a concern; for it is here in our core where
immobility usually reigns and where it is at the same time more harmful. In
spite of the rapid technological transformation our age does not see an equally
fast evolution of our mentalities. On the contrary we, as individuals and
societies, continue by and large to be entrenched in a variety of small
ideologies and beliefs that very often create conflict, or promote old
antagonisms, prejudices, suspicion, and an incomprehensible absence of dialogue
with those with whom we disagree.
This
immobility is harmful because in the rigidity of our spirit we lose the greater
opportunities to move on and to identify new ways of mutual understanding; the
inflexibility of our ideas cripples us. Immobility, in short, is really a
condemnation because it hinders our growth. Cardinal Newman said it well, more
than a century ago (in a phrase later made famous by Winston Churchill): “In a
higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be
perfect is to have changed often.”[2]
In
the vibrant moment in which we find ourselves in the Church today, in the midst
of what some are calling “the spring of Pope Francis,” it is important to
remember the voices of people like Schutz and Newman. Without ever forgetting
the richness of tradition they invite us to mistrust rigidity, and to see
ourselves as a people in motion, members of a pilgrim Church, of a dynamic
community, spirits on the move that do not want to be sentenced to immobility.
As Christians, we know that we should never forget our roots but rather to
deepen, every day, in the wealth of Jesus’ message. John XXIII said it
perfectly: “It is not the Gospel that changes: it is us, who begin to
understand it better.”[3] Ultimately, we will only advance in such a new
understanding of the faith if we let go of immobility in our hearts.
[1] K. Spink, Hermano Roger. La vida del fundador de Taizé. Herder, Barcelona, 2009, p. 80.
[2] J.H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Longmans, Green and Co., London/New York, 1900, p. 40.
[3] Quoted in G. Gutiérrez, “La recepción del Vaticano II en Latinoamérica”,
in G. Alberigo; J. P. Jossua (eds.), La recepción del Vaticano II.
Cristiandad, Madrid, 1987, pp. 213-237; quote in p. 217.
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