A new page in history is being written
Dear brothers, sisters, and friends of the Assumption family,
I am writing to you from Quebec City, where I am making a canonical and fraternal visit to the brothers of the community. This Sunday, December 28, I will celebrate Mass to mark the opening of the jubilee year commemorating the centenary of the founding of Montmartre. It is a moment of joy and thanksgiving. I invite you to pray for our mission in Quebec and its future. May the centenary celebration help the brothers in Quebec to write a new page in history with determination and creativity!
Since I am in Quebec, I would like to quote an author from this region. Father Jacques Grand’Maison, a sociologist, uses a metaphor to describe the situation of Quebec society in the past and today. The society of the parents and grandparents, he says, is like a page that has already been written and completed. Given such a stance, no individual participation is possible. Everything is religious and nothing is against religion. Religion dictates everything and one must simply follow it. One is Catholic because one was born into a Catholic family; one goes to Mass like everyone else without questioning one’s personal faith. This is excessive. Today, the people of Quebec live in a different society that has wiped the slate clean of everything, including its history, religion, and culture. They are therefore faced with a blank page on which everything remains to be written. They must invent everything in order to write their personal and collective history. To do so, they must constantly reset the clock, as if their current challenges had no connection to time and space. Among other things, this new stance poses a problem of memory. “I remember,” but I don’t know what! This “destructive” clean slate also leads to excess. What is even more dangerous about this position is that individuals consider themselves self-sufficient. They construct themselves, owe nothing to the past, and are capable of shaping their own humanity. Their historical consciousness is absent, and their place in time becomes a handicap.
Faced with excess on both sides, Fr. Grand’Maison offers us a new perspective, that of a page being written. This new situation allows everyone to write their own story, taking into account the history of their people and their nation. Everyone is invited to become the subject of the story they tell.
This raises the question: How do we find the subject of a story and a sentence? The subject is usually found at the beginning of the sentence. If I may, I would like to paraphrase metaphorically the first verses of the Gospel according to Saint John: In the beginning was the subject. The subject was with God. The subject was God.
The subject is God. He is the subject through which each of us becomes another subject, an autonomous subject.
God is also the verb. A verb requires action. A verb that drives us to love, to heal, to help. It is a verb that keeps us moving. He is a preposition. A preposition establishes relationships and indicates the right place. He is an adjective. An adjective makes everything precise and beautiful. He is an adverb. An adverb clarifies and significantly modifies actions. He is every element of the sentence. He gives meaning to the whole sentence.
The Word became flesh so that all flesh might become the Word: a word that gives us hope and love, openness and courage, justice and mercy. Let us therefore welcome this Word and make it our own. Let us use it to tell the story of a God who becomes man at the heart of our humanity in its vulnerability. Let us use it to tell our story with God, a story that is both human and salvific.
Merry Christmas to you and your family!
Fraternally,
Chi Ai Nguyen, A.A.
Provincial
