Reflection No. 1

Reflection No. 2

Reflection No. 3

Reflection No. 4

Reflection No. 5

Bi-monthly Reflections for the
Centennial Year of Arnold Janssen and Joseph Freinademetz
prepared by the Arnold Janssen Spirituality Center, Steyl

“Precious is the Life given for Mission”

Reflection No. 1: The Love of God shines in our Hearts in Rainbow Colors …  (A.Janssen)

Arnold Janssen: the wrong person, at the wrong time, in the wrong place!  The wrong person, since Arnold did not have those personal qualities one would normally look for in the founder of a world-wide enterprise.  A classmate commented, “Of all our class Arnold Janssen would have been one of the last you would consider suited for such a task.” The wrong time because the 1870s were very difficult for the Church in Germany with Church leaders imprisoned, parishes without priests, religious orders banned.  Due to this Kulturkampf he even had to cross the border and found the mission house outside his own country.
The wrong person!  Yet here we are a hundred years after his death and Arnold is more talked about and prayed to than ever before.  The candles placed by pilgrims before his Tomb in Steyl have been burning continuously, day and night, since his canonization in 2003. The work he started is growing still, and now with various lay associate groups.  We work in over 70 countries.  More important than this numerical growth are the efforts being made to respond to the challenges of our day, even when this leads us along paths hardly imagined by Arnold. Clearly the right person and the Spirit was able to make good use of this “poor instrument of grace”. 
The Spirit can likewise do great things through us if our dedication is as generous and wholehearted as Arnold’s who saw his life and missionary commitment as a response to God’s “inexpressible love”.   “All three Persons showed their love for us in a completely new and unheard of way.  The Eternal Son by becoming human; the Holy Spirit by coming to dwell in human hearts, the heavenly Father by sending the Darlings of his Heart [the Son and Spirit] to reveal his love to us.”  Sharing in this deepest desire of God for humanity was for Arnold what mission work was all about.  His experience of God’s love gave him enthusiasm and strength, and to further this will of God he was ready to accept whatever sacrifice was necessary and to put up with the criticism of others.
Not surprising, then, that Paul’s expression, “The love of God is poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5), was one of the five texts most quoted by Arnold, for it is the basis of all mission work.  Indeed, mission is really God’s love flowing into our loveless world to bring true life and joy.  God’s love continued its flow through Arnold out to the world and this led him to appreciate ever more “the value of souls”, the dignity of each person.  “Love of neighbor finds its highest expression in spreading the Gospel,” was the basis of his missionary enthusiasm, of his burning passion.  “For such a cause no sacrifice is too great.”
And we?  Sure, we say mission work is worthwhile and have dedicated our lives to it.  Yet all too often the enthusiasm that burned in Jesus and in Arnold seems to be now in us just a smoldering fire, no longer a burning Christ-like passion. “May the Heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all!” remains hardly more than a pious prayer.
How to rekindle the fire?  Hopefully celebrating the Centennial Year of Saints Arnold and Joseph can help.  Their example can inspire us to foster an attitude of dialogue that consciously tries to appreciate and defend the dignity of every person.  In a retreat before a mission departure Arnold said: “Meditating on the throne of God [in the human heart] will help us see what a tremendous value mission work has.  Imagine that we could gaze into the hearts of all those in a state of grace.  We would see their hearts suffused and enveloped with light and at the center the Triune God.  What an astonishing sight!”  This sense of astonishment and awe permeates Arnold’s talks.  Astonishment that the Triune God would show such love for us poor humans in this way.  Awe at the dignity and beauty which this infinite love bestows on every person,  “to be a son or daughter of the Father, a sister or brother of the Son, a temple, a spouse of the Holy Spirit.”  In his last Pentecost sermon Arnold put it like this: “The Holy Spirit is the God of love who comes in order to make humans lovable in God’s eyes and to reveal God’s love for them.”
It is especially when we show love and respect to others that the Spirit helps us to appreciate ourselves as lovable.  Here is the key to holiness, a lifelong process.  “Love alone widens the human heart.”  Arnold made conscious efforts to show his love and respect, though not always successfully according to some who lived with him.  He was no flawless saint, but he did try earnestly to be open to the transforming love of the Holy Spirit.  In 1901 Arnold asked the community: “If you wish to do me a special favor, then help me to pray for something of the fullness of divine love for my cold heart.  And what I have in mind here in the first place is not love for God but love for all of you.  How grateful I would be if you would pray for me to have such a love.”  Fr. Gier, one of his early critics, said that for those who knew him in the early days the older Arnold was like a different person.  And yet as late as 1906 the Bishop of Roermond had to investigate the validity of serious complaints from some of the Brothers and even some of the Sisters in Steyl. 
Like Arnold we too have to struggle against our weaknesses, all too aware of our frailty.  But it is a struggle filled with hope, knowing that it is God’s love that changes us rather than our own efforts.  A hope directed not to some vague future but to the present.  The indwelling Spirit of Love makes each person lovable already now. 
This is the basis of those fundamental challenges set by our General Chapters: 

1. to approach the other in dialogue with an attitude of “solidarity, respect and love” (SVD 2006);
2. “to be a compassionate presence of Jesus in his prophetic mission” (SSpS 2002); 
3. to contemplate the mystery of the Blessed Trinity dwelling in us, “whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of our brothers and sisters” (SSpSAP 2003).

 “Just as sunlight,” wrote Arnold, “when it shines through falling rain is refracted in the seven beautiful colors of the rainbow, so shines the love of the Holy Spirit in a seven-fold way in the hearts of the saints and gives them that special beauty which delights the eye of a spiritual person.” 
May the indwelling Holy Spirit lead us to take delight in the rainbow-colored beauty of each person we live with and of those we serve, and indeed above all of ourselves.

                                                                                                         Peter McHugh SVD