Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other's traditions, explore each other's practices, and honor each other's contribution to the mission of Christ's Church.
In July’s Give Us This Day, the monthly prayer book published by Liturgical Press at Saint John’s Abbey, long-time Bridgefolk participant Fr. William Skudlarek OSB offers an “explainer” concerning how Catholics in the United States are being prompted to celebrate their Independence Day on July 4th. With permission, we reprint his essay here.
A Liturgical Celebration of July Fourth
Fr. William Skudlarek OSB
A good number of countries where Catholicism is (or used to be) the dominant religion still observe some Catholic feast days as national holidays. In the United States, on the other hand, two civic holidays, Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day, are inscribed in the liturgical calendar and even given a special Mass.
Like the Mass for Thanksgiving, the Mass for July Fourth has proper prayers and a proper preface for the Eucharistic prayer. In addition, it includes the Gloria, an alternate proper preface, and a solemn final blessing. There are, however, no assigned Scripture texts; the readings are to be taken from the Mass for Peace and Justice or the Mass for Public Needs.
The prayers and the choice of readings for the Fourth of July invite us to reflect not so much on what the Declaration of Independence has freed us from, rather, they remind us what it has freed us for: to be a nation that secures justice for all its inhabitants and calls them to be artisans of peace.
In the Scriptures chosen for the Mass on July Fourth, the word peace appears eleven times. The most striking occurrence is in the Responsorial Psalm where it says, Justice and peace shall kiss (85:11). These words call to mind the fervent appeal for peace Pope Saint Paul VI made in his 1972 World Day of Peace message: If you want Peace, work for Justice.
Peace and justice are two of the richest themes in the He- brew and Christian Scriptures. To wish others peace is to wish them the fullness of life. The Liturgy of the Eucharist has us do that right before we receive the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, who came that we may have life in abundance.
Peace is Christ s gift to us, but the gift goes hand in hand with the practice of justice, that is, with the right ordering of relationships. Such right ordering is always to be carried out with mercy and generosity, especially when disordered relationships are the result of past injustice. Creating a level playing field for everyone is necessary, but not enough. This nation also must try to find ways to make amends for the immense social, economic, and psychological scars left by the injustice of enslaving people who were forcibly brought here from abroad and of dispossessing and massacring Indigenous peoples the two original sins of this nation.
As we consider what it means to celebrate Independence Day liturgically, we cannot overlook the fact that this year the holiday falls in the week when the first reading for week- day Masses is taken from the prophet Amos. Throughout the week, with the exception of July Fourth, this farmer-turned- prophet will rail against the privileged and influential people of eighth-century BCE Israel who mercilessly exploited those they impoverished. On Saturday, however, Amos proclaims God s promise never to forsake a nation that repents of its unjust treatment of the poor and the powerless.
July Fourth is certainly a time to give thanks for what was achieved when this country claimed its place among the family of nations. It is also an occasion to repent for what we have failed to do, to strive for peace with justice, and to place our trust in a merciful God who promises not to abandon us.
Writing in Anabaptist World, the denominational magazine of the Mennonite Church USA, leading Mennonite historian John D. Roth has called upon Mennonites to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Anabaptist movement that birthed their church in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness. Ecumenical “steps toward reconciliation in the past two decades” with Lutherans, Catholics, and Reformed churches “make it clear that the commemorative events … will need to look different” from the way that Mennonites once presented themselves in ecumenical encounters.
For example, if earlier accounts of Anabaptist beginnings depicted the movement primarily in heroic, even triumphalist, language, the 2025 commemoration will need to include space for confession. For many Mennonites our impulse in ecumenical settings is to claim our distinctive theological themes — community, discipleship, nonresistance — as if they were talismans that secure our moral superiority. The principle of “right remembering” calls us to also recognize shadow sides of those distinctives — the way in which our focus on distinctives can blind us to other theological truths — or to the gaps that exist between our precepts and our practice.
Second, a focus on Anabaptist origins in 16th-century Europe can easily overshadow the global reality of the church today. History matters, but almost all of the growth in MWC-member churches during the past 50 years has been in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The renewal of the Anabaptist tradition today is happening in the Global South.
Finally, our commemorations in 2025 will need to acknowledge the significant ecumenical relationships forged since 2004. These have spiritual significance and call on Mennonites to revise how we tell the story of the 16th century.
Roth is professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College, director of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism and editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review. His article is available in the March issue of Anabaptist World.
It was 2003 and Bridgefolk had publicly launched, the summer before, with its first annual conference. Within our founding circle we were aware of the worldwide Sant’Egidio movement based in Rome. Sant’Egidio is a lay-led, Vatican-approved, “ecclesial movement” that has been active in peacemaking and solidarity with the poor since the 1960s. It gained international attention when it helped mediate an end to a 16-year civil war in Mozambique in 1992. As Mennonites and Catholics looking for models of how to combine the best of our traditions, Bridgefolk leaders felt great affinity for Sant’Egidio.
Following the Mozambique peace agreement, the Sant’Egidio community in Rome had sent a married couple, Paola Piscitelli and Andrea Bartoli, to New York to monitor United Nations compliance with the accord, while encouraging new Sant’Egidio chapters in the United States. When I learned that Andrea would be visiting my campus in Saint Paul, Minnesota, I jumped at a chance to meet him. We shared professional and vocational interests in international peacemaking, but what I really wanted to do was pick his brain about this hybrid ecclesiological category of “ecclesial movements” – officially recognized in the Catholic Church yet grassroots and participatory like Mennonites.
Gerald Schlabach (right) and Andrea Bartoli (left) wash one another’s feet at 2003 Bridgefolk conference.
“Proceed through friendship.” That was Andrea’s response. As we took a stroll around my university, I wanted to talk about canon law and historical precedents and ecclesiology. As a co-founder and then-co-chair of Bridgefolk, I hoped to map out some kind of master plan for Bridgefolk participants like me who wanted somehow to identify as both Mennonite and Catholic. Instead, simply, “Proceed through friendship.”
Andrea’s counsel reflected Sant’Egidio’s sense of its own charism or spiritual gift. The movement sees friendship as key to its own bridgebuilding through service to the poor, peace-building, and prayer (see here and here). In turn, both Andrea’s counsel and Sant’Egidio’s charism surely reflect the Italian culture in which Sant’Egidio was formed as well. Though he didn’t say so, I suspect that Andrea found my American preoccupation with planning and projects bemusing. Instead, he was gently nudging me toward a more relational – indeed a more organic – approach. As a theologian and Christian ethicist, I should have recognized this already; friends of mine have placed friendship at the very center of the Christian life.
After I shared Andrea’s counsel with other Bridgefolk leaders, “proceed through friendship” quickly became a motto of our own. We didn’t have to solve everything doctrinally or structurally. We weren’t going to anyway – that should have been obvious – but the motto helped us relax.
Theologians and practitioners of interreligious and ecumenical (or interchurch) dialogue emphasize that dialogue can and should happen in multiple ways. In the standard list of different types of interreligious dialogue, the “dialogue of theological exchange” is only one. “Dialogue of religious experience” happens as we share prayers, spiritual practices, and life stories without expectation of conversion. “Dialogue of action” happens as we work together for the common good through service, peacemaking, and mobilization for justice. And then there is the simple and basic “dialogue of everyday life” in which people of different faiths learn to know and trust one another as neighbors. And friends. The counsel to proceed through friendship has guided Bridgefolk intuitively into all four forms of dialogue.
This is not to say that Bridgefolk has achieved nothing more concrete than warm fuzzies and good vibes. Through the Mennonite-Catholic Theological Colloquium, Bridgefolk offered resources to the international bilateral dialogue between representatives of Mennonite World Conference and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity – then helped disseminate its findings. Even while strengthen friendships, Bridgefolk’s annual conferences have explored tough issues, from obstacles to sharing Eucharist to racial injustice and land reparation. Some of these have led to real breakthroughs, as with Bridgefolk’s development of a Mennonite-Catholic liturgy of footwashing to celebrate the unity we have come to experience despite obstacles to intercommunion. A case could be made that Bridgefolk has been freer to contribute creatively both to the international dialogue between Mennonites and Catholics, and to the wider ecumenical movement, precisely because it has depended on friendship not on an official mandate.
Friendship can devolve into insularity and cliquishness, of course. As the Bridgefolk movement moves into its third decade, this is a danger that will require self-awareness to avoid. When old friends at a party greet each other with warm bear hugs, they do well to keep their eyes open for newcomers hanging back shyly in the corners and draw them into conversation too. When conversation turns to reminiscing, old friends should work backstories into their stories, in order to initiate rather than exclude.
When a “friend group” is mindful of such dangers, however, friendship can remain invitational. Indeed, in a break-out session at Bridgefolk’s most recent conference, the moderator asked how participants had gotten involved in the movement, and many said that a friend had simply invited them. So long as the accent in “proceed through friendship” is as much on invitation to interested newcomers as on old timers sharing old times, friendship can be its own antidote to insularity.
Over the years, proceeding through friendship has been a way for Bridgefolk to expand its network more through word of mouth than through marketing itself. The 20-year history of Bridgefolk has coincided with the rise of social media as a way to maintain virtual communities and friendships – insofar as any virtual friendship can really be deep and authentic. Like many movements and organizations Bridgefolk has made use of social media as a tool to stay connected. But we have not depended on social media to advertise ourselves and grow thereby. Given all the toxicity that has gotten baked into social media over the last 20 years – religious social media as much as political – that may be for the best.
Some of us in Bridgefolk still dream of a day when it might be possible to find a canonical model like “ecclesial movement” that would make it possible to formally identify simultaneously as Mennonite and Catholic. Many of us long for a day when some form of intercommunion or Eucharistic recognition becomes possible. Even if such hopes only ever find fulfillment beyond our lifetimes, we can hope to be preparing the way now.
But ecclesial movements, like religious orders, only have reason to exist if they embody and channel a charism – a spiritual gift that God has called them to share in a particular way. In friendship, Sant’Egidio was willing to share its charism of friendship with Bridgefolk. So whatever else comes from Bridgefolk’s own way of proceeding through friendship, we will hold on to our own charism in the only way that anyone holds on to God’s gifts – by sharing and them giving away.
PRESS RELEASE RE: Bridgefolk 2022 conference 21-24 July 2022
Collegeville, MN (BRIDGEFOLK) – Participants in the Bridgefolk movement for dialogue and greater unity between Mennonites and Roman Catholics have long made the phrase, “Proceed through friendship,” their byword.
Celebrating their 20th annual conference under the theme, “Standing at the Crossroads,” as they met at Saint John’s Abbey in Minnesota July 21-24, Bridgefolk found reason to hope that the steady relationship building that is basic to its “charism” or gift might also help their churches face a challenge that their traditions share. Both are at a “crossroads,” after all, reminiscent of the one where the prophet Jeremiah told Israel to “ask for the ancient paths” and walk “the good way.” The challenge is to find ways to repent and repair the legacy of harm done to indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States through historic removal, European settlement, and misguided mission efforts.
How to seek just peace through racial justice and indigenous/settler encounter has been an ongoing theme in recent Bridgefolk conferences. This year’s theme proved particularly timely when the Vatican announced that Pope Francis would take an apology just days after Bridgefolk’s conference to the Metis, Inuit, and First Nations peoples of Canada for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools from the late 1800s until as late as 1990.
Though church collaboration with governments in running residential or boarding schools did not last as long in the United States as in Canada, churches south of the border – including Mennonite ones – also face the legacy of their own mission efforts. Rather than sharing the Christian message as an uncoerced invitation consistent with host cultures, too often churches have joined in colonializing efforts to assimilate native peoples and strip children of their cultures and languages. Furthermore, Mennonites whose ancestors immigrated to the U.S. and Canada have begun to grapple with the fact that policies of Indian removal made possible their very presence on the continent, even if those ancestors participated unwittingly.
Introducing these challenges, Sister Pat Kennedy OSB of Saint Benedict’s Monastery and Jaime Arsenault, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the White Earth Nation in northern Minnesota, shared the story of their communities’ collaborative project to reckon with their history. From 1878-1945 the Sisters of Saint Benedict operated schools on three sites, including the monastery itself, along with the White Earth and Red Lake Reservations. The Sisters have officially apologized for their complicity in the boarding school program, but Kennedy and Arsenault both insisted that this can only be a beginning.
Jaime Arsenault, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the White Earth Nation
“My work on historical preservation for White Earth is future-oriented,” noted Arsenault, while Kennedy underscored that her community must now work to build relationships of trust with White Earth and Red Lake. Sharing long-forgotten documents and photos from monastic archives offers one opportunity for healing to indigenous descendants. Artifacts are still being discovered among the archives, and even if they were originally given to the community as gifts, the community is working with Arsenault to return them to families and communities where they will be treasured far more for their material and spiritual connection with ancestors.
Boarding schools and forced assimilation were part of a much larger set of policies aiming to strip indigenous communities not only of their culture, insisted Arsenault, but of their resource-rich lands. In the following session, Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation stated the implication bluntly: “For white congregations there is no pain-free path forward in this. Reconciliation will cost you something. It should cost you something because it cost me everything.”
In what may be the most revolutionary text in the New Testament, Jacobs explained, Jesus told his followers that making repair when someone has a grievance against them is even more important than “bringing your gift to the altar” in worship (Matt. 5:23-24). Jacobs called on every congregation in every denomination that was complicit in boarding schools “at the very least” to “commit a significant amount of your church budget to indigenous language and cultural reclamation projects” not simply as charity but as something “you wrestle with at every quarterly business meeting” just like salary obligations and light bills.
Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation
Jacobs also called on congregations and parishes to assess the stories that their buildings tell through their iconography, flags, symbols, stained glass windows, and especially their portrayals of Jesus. “Does he look like a good old-fashioned Swede? Or might I find a Jesus with brown skin?”
Jacob’s challenge was paired with a presentation by Dr. Jeremy Bergen of Conrad Grebel University College in Ontario in a session that asked, “How Does a Tradition Repent?” With expertise on the theology of church apologies, Bergen is regularly called upon to comment on the residential-school scandal in Canada and the Catholic Church’s response. But he also notes ways that the stories of his Mennonite ancestors’ flight as refugees from war and persecution in Europe has long blinded Mennonites to the realities and histories of the indigenous people unto whose ancestral lands they settled.
That churches have begun to make official apologies both to one another for past persecutions and mutual recrimination, as well as to the descendants of enslaved and displaced peoples, said Bergen, is a noteworthy historical development and sign of the Holy Spirit’s work – but never sufficient. Tests of whether apologies are authentic and appropriate include: Are they vague or do they confess specific sins? Do they use a request for forgiveness as a way to control relationships or do they invite those receiving the apology to move toward reconciliation at their own pace, on their own terms? Do they merely seek to alleviate a sense of guilt, or do they contribute to a longer process of action and repair?
Dr. Jeremy Bergen, Conrad Grebel University College, Ontario
Perhaps the hardest task of repair for white settlers and their descendants is to actually return stolen land or the resources indigenous communities need to recover land. “It may be unrealistic to return all the land,” noted John Stoesz in a final session on the topic of repairing the legacy of harm to indigenous peoples, “but it is unjust to return none.”
Erica Littlewolf, Indigenous Visioning Circle Program Coordinator, Mennonite Central Committee-Central States, and a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, elaborated on that legacy of harm and injustice. The Doctrine of Discovery by which Europeans rationalized their displacement of indigenous people from the American continents can seem “cerebral” at first but its consequences continue to impact her people and their very sense of identity. “If you fail to see the roots of social ills, you will always blame the oppressed for their oppression.”
Repairing 500-year wrongs may seem daunting, but as an advocate for land recovery, Stoesz has practiced what he preaches. When his family sold its farm near Mountain Lake, Minnesota, he turned over half of his share in the proceeds to the Makoce Ikikupe organization, which seeks to reconnect Dakota people to the homeland from which they were expelled in Minnesota in the 19th century. His personal story and his elaboration of the work Makoce Ikikupe is doing to return Dakota land, revitalize Dakota culture, and renew the natural environment, underscored that the work of repair really is possible.
More than possible, the work of repair is joyful when it is grounded in deepening friendship, suggested various speakers. Speaking warmly of her relationships with the Sisters of St. Benedict to whom she often brings wild rice or sunflowers, Arsenault told of her hope to return a hundred-plus-year-old pair of moccasins with a floral design to a family she knows in the White Earth community. “No matter how difficult things get, there will be moments like that peppered throughout this experience – I guarantee you. How interesting that I brought flowers to the sisters to bring joy and that flowers might return to equally bring joy back.”
Whether “reconciliation” is the right word for this work was a question that some speakers at the conference took up, since indigenous people see no time of right relationship between their ancestors and Europeans in the past to which they can return. When those who have benefited from past wrongs are willing to live with their discomfort, relinquish their need for control, and do what they can to repair past wrongs in tangible ways, however, new and deeper relationship can bring healing for all.
Friendship itself may help us navigate a crossroads, after all. Bracketing the 2022 Bridgefolk conference were two sessions commemorating the movement’s history and anticipating further work, and yet key themes and lessons carried through. The progress that Catholics and Mennonites in Bridgefolk have made by “proceeding through friendship,” noted Bridgefolk co-founder Marlene Kropf, may seem slow but is real. Even when our unity is incomplete, noted Bridgefolk co-chair Abbot John Klassen, new rituals like annual hymnsings and footwashing celebrate our work and relationships so far. Surely, they agreed, these Bridgefolk gifts have something to offer to other dialogues and processes of healing.
The Hunger Inside: How the Meal Jesus Gave Transforms Lives by Bradley Roth, Paraclete Press, 2022 (224 pages)
Reviewed by Marlene Kropf
In a welcoming, conversational style, pastor-author Brad Roth offers both a personal story of encounter with the Eucharist, and thoughtful historical and biblical reflections on the role of the Eucharist in the church’s life and witness. His purpose in writing, he says, is to leave a “bread crumb trail” to the Lord’s Table for others to discover the richness of the feast to which all are invited.
Raised in an evangelical Mennonite family and congregation in Illinois, Roth grew up with infrequent exposure to the Lord’s Table. Like many other Protestant churches, his congregation celebrated communion only a few times a year. And when they did obey Jesus’ command to eat and drink at the Lord’s Table, the church taught him that the bread and cup were symbols, nothing more. Yet a hunger persisted within him for something more – for a more vivid experience of the living presence of the Risen Christ. Though he knew Jesus, he had not encountered him.
No one was more surprised than he was, Roth says, by the turn of events which brought him to recognize that more was going on in communion than he could account for with his mind alone. His heart was being stirred and his body enlivened by the palpable presence of Jesus. Hours after the ritual, he could still feel the lingering frisson of joy emanating from the meal.
To understand his own experience more fully and to encourage others to do the same, Roth went “deep and wide” in his search to illumine what God is doing in the communion ritual and what is happening in those who partake of God’s gifts. In one of his strongest chapters, he lays a foundation for the idea of a “sacramental universe” in which God’s presence and activity are known not only through the revelation of scripture but through the molecules and atoms of the material world itself. He draws on a wide array of thinkers and writers as varied as Augustine, Hans De Ries, Immanuel Kant, David Brooks, and Marie Kondo to support his vision of the sacraments as “the way God communicates his grace into human life in real time.”
Having established a sturdy foundation, Roth goes on to examine biblical themes traditionally associated with eucharistic theology: sacrifice, communion, hospitality, thanksgiving, remembrance, real presence, marriage supper, and mission. What stands out in these chapters is their breadth, clarity, and blend of scholarly sophistication with on-the-ground experience and vocabulary. For example, he uses contemporary metaphors to good effect when he speaks of the Lord’s Supper as a “superconductor” of God’s action or the encounter on the Emmaus road as “the Christian Big Bang” because it is the moment when the Christian sacramental universe unfolds. Likewise, his description of real presence comes alive when he says, “Jesus is not present because he has hacked reality and imposed himself, but because reality was always meant to be open to him.” Such fresh comparisons and analogies will delight and enlighten readers.
In the midst of theological explorations, Roth does not avoid some of the thorny questions surrounding communion: Who can participate? What about children? What is the relationship between baptism and communion? His discussions are generous; even when his study leads to conclusions that satisfy him, he finds what is worthy in varying viewpoints.
A feature of Roth’s eucharistic theology that many will appreciate is his attention to Anabaptist voices. Though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions have given exhaustive attention to the Eucharist, Mennonites and other Anabaptists, with few exceptions, have not explored this territory in depth.
An original contribution of Roth’s thinking is the connection he makes between “Gelassenheit” and the bread and wine of communion. Describing Gelassenheit as “Anabaptism’s little treasure,” Roth defines this German loan-word as the stance of disciples who are being transformed as they “yield to the will, ways, work, and presence of Christ.” In a brilliant analogy, he perceives the miracle of communion as a similar transformation: the bread and wine yield to the presence of Christ and become a kind of material expression of Gelassenheit, representing “bits of mended reality, a reality that depends on and finds its fulfillment in the risen Christ who in his resurrected body is not limited to a local presence in heaven but can be anywhere with his people.” The Bread of Heaven indeed!
Despite the thoroughness of Roth’s work, he misses a maternal aspect of communion that would have enriched his book, especially in his treatment of Jesus’ words, “This is my body … this is my blood.” Since the early days of Christian history, theologians such as Irenaeus and Chrysostom perceived Jesus as our Mother, feeding us during gestation and nourishing us at his breast in the blood flowing from his side. “Christ himself is food,” they agreed, not as a theological abstraction but as a warm and intimate feeding like that of an infant at her mother’s breast. The 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote similarly:
Our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself and does most courteously and most tenderly with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side.
In a final inspiring chapter, “Ite missa est” (“Go, it is dismissed”), Roth makes a strong connection between the celebration of communion and the church’s life of mission. He says, “The grammar of Christian worship isn’t a period, but a colon. You have been gathered, you have heard the word, you have been fed at Christ’s table: now go forth.” What follows are
heartwarming stories – an account of what happened when his own congregation made communion a centerpiece of their life for a year as well as stories from other faith communities.
With regard to the Bridgefolk community, both Roman Catholics and Mennonites will benefit from reading The Hunger Inside. The book offers Roman Catholics an inside look into the mind and experience of Mennonites who have not been formed in a sacramental world view; it can also refresh and renew their own understanding and experience of Eucharist. Because of Roth’s attentiveness to scripture and especially to Anabaptist history, the book can also provide a reliable pathway for Mennonites who desire a deeper and broader understanding and experience of the Lord’s Supper. Though Roth may have intended the book to offer a “bread crumb trail” toward such understandings, many readers will find instead that they have been served huge chunks of nourishing whole-grain bread on their journey. Let’s eat!
In a recent post on the Mennonite Church USA website, Bridgefolk participants Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Carl Bear share why the committee that compiled Voices Together, the new Mennonite hymnbook, made sure to include pre-Reformation texts and tunes. Some excerpts:
Singing pre-Reformation songs reminds us that the Anabaptist tradition was deeply influenced by and connected to the previous fifteen centuries of Christian history — both the bad and the good.
Owning this history as part of our history is essential for robust engagement in decolonial work for justice, locally and globally. It prevents us from failing to acknowledge our complicity in the foundations of colonialism established in this era, without which the Christian tradition, including the Anabaptist tradition, would not exist in the manner it does today.
At the same time, singing early Christian and pre-Reformation songs connects Mennonites to the essential and life-giving theological insights and artistic riches of ancient and medieval Christians, across cultures, with whom we join our voices and celebrate the ways in which God has been active in the church of all ages.
“Connecting with the past in worship today is a way to remember God’s faithfulness to all generations. It joins our local communities with a vibrant church that has followed Jesus in many cultures and circumstances. It helps us keep the struggles of the present in perspective. Recognizing God’s faithfulness throughout a history marked by constant change can free us from fearing change and fearing the future.” — “Worship Leader Edition,” 202
On this second day of the week of prayer for Christian Unity, I want to call your attention to a remarkable coming together of Catholics and Mennonites in a movement called Bridgefolk. The Mennonites, who are often referred to as one of the historic peace churches because of their commitment to non-violence, are not very numerous, especially in this part of the country, but they have a special connection with Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s.
Twenty years ago, a Mennonite pastor from Seattle who was drawn to Catholic spirituality and sacramental practice spent a sabbatical year at the Collegeville Institute. He and some Mennonite friends who shared his interest in Catholicism went to see our newly elected Abbot John to seek his counsel about what the next steps might be, and out of that conversation was born Bridgefolk, a gathering of Catholics and Mennonites who this year will hold their nineteenth consecutive annual meeting here at Saint Ben’s, the third time Bridgefolk will meet on this campus. Sister Anne Marie Biermaier OSB and Sister Karen Rose OSB, who is on the Bridgefolk Board of Directors, are handling much of the preparation for this year’s conference, which will examine how our two traditions understand and put into practice Christ’s commandment to love our neighbor, especially when our new neighbors are culturally, ethnically, and religiously different from us. I should also mention that in its early years, Sister Merle Nolde OSB was very involved in Bridgefolk. More recently, before her untimely death last year, Sister Theresa Schumacher OSB served on the board of directors and contributed greatly to the ecumenical mission of Bridgefolk.
Bridgefolk can be described as a movement of
sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Catholics who want to
celebrate each other’s traditions, explore each other’s practices, and honor
each other’s contribution to the mission of Christ’s Church. The Mennonites
offer Catholics their tradition of discipleship, peacemaking, and lay
participation. The Catholics offer Mennonites their spiritual, liturgical, and
sacramental practices. The goal of Christian unity espoused by Bridgefolk is
not conformity but communion, a communion of churches that respect one
another’s spiritual gifts and share them.
Some might criticize the Mennonites, saying they are so
committed to non-violence that they enable those who act violently, but such a
critique would reveal how little they know about this church. The Mennonites resist
violence, but they do so non-violently by devoting themselves to peacemaking
efforts, relief missions, and the promotion of social justice. Almost every
Mennonite I know seems to have spent some time in communities around the world
that are ravaged by natural disasters, civil conflicts, racism, or war. They
work quietly and generously to offer compassion, uphold justice, and bring relief.
Today we hear John the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God.
That way of referring to Jesus has become so familiar to us that we may not
realize just how shocking this metaphor is. To us a lamb is little more than cuddly
baby sheep. To John’s contemporaries, however, the lamb was an animal of sacrifice.
When the crowds at the Jordan heard John refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world, they must have thought of the paschal lamb of
the Exodus, whose blood was sprinkled on the doorposts of the Israelites in
Egypt so that the angel of death would pass over them. They might also have
remembered that Isaiah spoke of a servant of God who was like a lamb that did not open its
mouth as it was led to the slaughter.
That image of a lamb taking upon itself our sins and not
opening its mouth as it is about to be killed is an apt symbol of the Mennonite
way of discipleship. Their commitment to non-violence flows from their desire
to become like Jesus, the Lamb of God, who
did not resist those who came to arrest him and did not open his mouth when
accused, much to Pilate’s surprise (Matt 27:14).
The Mennonites describe their refusal to defend themselves by
means of violent words or actions with the German word Gelassenheit, one of those words that is almost impossible to
translate. Gelassenheit means
something like self-surrender, submission, yielding to the will of God and to
others, contentment, and a calm spirit. “Letting go” might be good way of
translating it—letting go of anger and hatred, letting go of insisting that we get our way, letting go of
harsh and demeaning words, letting go of judging those who do not agree with us. Gelassenheit is the opposite of promoting
self-interest at every turn and lashing out at anyone or anything that gets in
our way.
The Mennonites’ commitment to non-violence and peace making as
an essential component of the Christian message is an extraordinary gift that
they offer to the whole Church of Christ, a gift that we can and should accept
with overflowing gratitude
There are and have been other great witnesses to non-violence
as an essential feature of Christian discipleship. This week, of course, we
honor one of the greatest of them, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who showed us
that to be the Church of Christ the Lamb of God means putting innocence in the
place of malice, love in the place of violence, humility in the place of pride,
and service in the place of prestige.
With their example to inspire us, may we continue to strive to be that kind of honest, humble, peace and justice-seeking church, we who at every Mass pray that the Lamb of God will have mercy on us, and that, unworthy as we are to receive him in the sacrament of his body and blood, he will come to us and heal us.
LAWRENCE JENNINGS of Infinity Mennonite Church in New York City has been involved in community and economic development for more than three decades. Since 2013, he has been affiliated with GreenFaith, first as a Fellow, and currently as a lead organizer of the new Restoration Nation faith communities/green jobs initiative. A member of the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue at Iona College, he was one of the key organizers of the People’s Climate March faith contingent, and has ongoing involvement with the People’s Climate Movement, the organizing body that took shape after the March. In these involvements, as well as his work with The Groundswell Group and Moral Mondays, he works closely with faith communities and inner city and “frontline” groups that often are overlooked or excluded. He authored the Open Letter from African American clergy on Climate Change as part of the “Our Voices” campaign, and is on the Steering Committee of Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, both of which aim to encourage people of to speak out about the moral and scientific urgency of the environmental crisis. Lawrence was asked by GreenFaith to write a response to the Pope’s newly released environmental teachings from the Anabaptist/Mennonite perspective. His article originally appeared in two parts on the Mennonite Church USA website (here and here). Continue reading “A papal encyclical, a Mennonite resolution, and the relevance of Anablacktivism”→
Christians gather for Evening Prayer outside St. Joseph’s Church in Erbil. (photo: Don Duncan, CNEWA)
Ecumenical friendship is not only about theological dialogue and common causes–it is also about solidarity in suffering, our calling to “bear one another’s burdens” in the body of Christ so that we might “fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). The Catholic Near East Welfare Agency (CNEWA) is a Vatican agency that provides humanitarian and pastoral support for the Eastern Catholic churches. CNEWA works in Eastern Europe, Northeast Africa and throughout the Middle East. A key area of CNEWAs work has been supporting seminaries and training catechists in some of the oldest Christian communities that are struggling to survive in challenging conditions.
This year the church marks Advent and Christmas while many thousands of Catholic Christians have been displaced by expanding war in northern Iraq. They are waiting and wondering whether they will ever be able to return home. Their story is told in an article titled “Exodus” in the magazine ONE, published by CNEWA. Here’s a brief sample:
At night, above this landscape of abjection reigns a scattering of glimmering crosses. On the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, celebrated on 14 September, Iraqi Christians erect illuminated crosses on top of their buildings and leave them there for several weeks. The crosses they left behind in Qaraqosh and Bartella have most likely been taken down or destroyed, but crosses seem to have redoubled across the recently overpopulated Christian enclaves of Iraqi Kurdistan.
While the presence of the crosses certainly brings hope to the faithful, the harsh reality grinds on: It has been months since their expulsion and they are still languishing in churches, tents, abandoned basements, unfinished buildings, repurposed schools and social centers.”
