acta capituli generalis diffinitorum ordinis praedicatorum fr. carolo a ...

that lives in our lives. We must strive not to be unfaithful, neither to beauty nor to
the humiliated.
4. Do we dare imagine how this might change our lives? Dare we move beyond our
fears in a world of terrorist alerts? Dare we act in a Church that is often tempted
to close itself off from the ‘fuller and deeper understanding’ that John XXIII, in
convoking Vatican II in 1959, dreamed would come from ‘discussion’ and from
‘ideas striking against one another?’ 4 Do we dare risk being drawn beyond the
security of what we know, dare to go out and enter the homes of those whom we
do not know, to find ourselves bewildered and silenced? For this silence is creative:
it is the silence of our nuns; it is the silence of the voiceless that invites us
into another world.
5. To enter this other world is to discover ourselves as one small part of a world
where the liberating word comes from elsewhere. It comes from those on the margins
of society. It comes from those in our world whose concerns are bigger than
themselves, who care for creation and the environment, for prisoners and patients,
often putting their own lives at risk. To enter this world is to yield the illusion
of power in order to be ‘possessed by others.’ 5 To do so is to learn humility,
to be docile before the wisdom and language of others’ experience, where we
preachers receive much more than we give.
6. Like Dominic, we are but beggars, waiting in silence for a word from God and
from others.
7. It is important for us to dare to learn with others how God has communicated
himself to them, and from them learn the languages we need for our preaching.
This is important if we are to be witnesses of a life that can only be experienced as
gift and mystery.
8. To preach in this world is to share the life, the hope, and the promise that lives in
the world of the other. To preach in this world is to walk on the frontier between
sharing the lives of all those others and sharing the promise of salvation, bringing
the good news of Jesus Christ to them and discovering that he has gone before us
into Galilee.
9. In this world we will have something to say, but only if it is a word for which we
have suffered, a word we have fought for, and a word for which we have prayed.
And this response – like that of the trumpeter of Krakow, 6 whose hourly call ends
abruptly – might be a word that ends in silence as the only adequate response before
suffering humanity or before the immensity of the mystery.
4 Ad Petri Cathedram, No 71, 29 th June 1959.
5 Sr Mayte Merino, Obedience until death, Krakow 2004.
6 The trumpeter, atop the tower, was the town watchman who warned of danger. This he did in 1241 when
the Mongolian Tatars advanced against Krakow. As he sounded the alarm, he was struck in the throat by a
Tatar arrow. In commemoration of this, from the 16 th century, on the hour, the tune ends suddenly. It is also
said only the Mongols know how the tune ends.
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