Sep 30, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
Captured
Fishing net – memories of my childhood come back to life. When I went to the market to buy fish with my mother, the fishmonger came with a net, dipped the net once through the basin, and a fish was wriggling in the net that could no longer get out of it. I felt sorry for the fish.
Psalm 124: 7-8: Israel’s thanks for deliverance. “Our soul has escaped the hunter’s net like a bird; the web is torn and we are free. ”Networks symbolize being trapped.
Was this the intention of Jesus when he asked Peter: “You should become a fisherman of men”? Question to our pastoral care: do we want to catch people (also for Christ) who can then no longer escape …?
Nature as a builder
If I want to learn about networks, the first thing I would do is take a look at nature. One network that many are disgusted with is the spider web. The human brain, for example, is a terrific network. Different cells are connected to each other, form nodes (synapses), ensure the smooth transport of information and control impulses and even react when certain functions fail by forming new nerve tracts and switching points. He must have been a genius who created such networks. Would such a network also be conceivable for the transmission of our Christian faith?
A common basic idea
How is a network created?
A prerequisite for the functioning of a network is a common orientation towards a binding, strong and comprehensible value model (base values). How quickly did networks develop during the flood disasters on the Elbe and Oder in order to be able to help the people affected. Working for people in need – can be a common basic idea.
Do we have such a common basic idea? Could Caritas be such a common basic idea: “See need and act”? Or could narratives from the gospel of Jesus Christ be such a common basic idea from which a network is then formed.
Communication
Many people claim that they are well connected. They then also refer to their address directory in the calendar or on social media. But communication is more than just knowing people. Communication means having a lively relationship with the other. Such communication creates transparency and thus trust. So communication is an important foundation for unity.
Serve life
Communication presupposes an encounter at eye level. At this point, it is often argued that in a hierarchical system like the church, such communication on an equal footing does not exist. Here, too, a look into nature can help. In its systems, nature certainly knows superior and subordinate orders. Nevertheless, communication works in your organisms because it serves life. The apostle Paul’s picture of the human body and its members (1 Cor 12) shows very well how successful communication in a hierarchical system is possible – if it serves life.
Our doctor
Telling a story: the higher law
Have history discussed in groups: impressions, insights …
Through what Kurt did, a network has formed that many people have identified with.
Prelate Dr. Stefan Dybowski
August 9th, 2021 monthly lecture St. Augustinus Monastery, Berlin-Lankwitz Communication
Aug 20, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
You probably remember the letter from Sr. Sybilla and with it the words of the founder, Father Johannes Schneider. Unity is a relationship. It is not simply there from the start. It has to be built up and maintained. And it is also subject to the laws to which every relationship is subject, namely, it can change. It can get stronger, but it can also flatten and disappear completely. This applies to every community (state, church, parish), it also applies to personal communities such as families and friends, and of course also to religious orders. The promise of a vow or the wearing of a religious uniform dress does not constitute unity. Unity is therefore an inner relationship that connects people with one another.
Concrete growth of unity
Today I would like to give you a few spiritual impulses that you can look at and try out for yourself personally.
As a preliminary remark: start carefully if you decide to do so. Such specific exercises can be very demanding, but also very effective.
My right seat is empty …
You are probably familiar with the children’s game where a child is allowed to wish someone in the free space next to them. Of course we wanted our best friends here back then.
Unity begins with perception. Take the seat next to you (whether right or left) on the subject of your observation. Who is next to me today (in the bank in the chapel or at the table at lunch)? Did I talk to my neighbor, look at her, smile at her? Do I know how she is, whether something is oppressive for her, whether she is in pain? Or do I have to say for myself that the place next to me is really empty, at least in the sense that I don’t really care who is sitting there.
Collect treasures in heaven
In his parables, Jesus uses the image of collecting treasures several times. He compares the kingdom of God with a treasure in the field or a precious pearl (Mt 13: 44-46). And in the Sermon on the Mount he asks us to gather treasures that are not perishable (Mt 6: 19-21). The image of collecting treasures is a popular theme for retreats.
I would like to encourage you to look for treasures in a very specific way in your own community. A treasure makes a person rich. Who enriches your community? What if this sister no longer existed? We’d be missing something.
Another justice
The following thought is a bit difficult, if only because we humans are usually very sensitive to it: it’s about justice. Unity means that everyone is treated equally and the same rules apply to everyone. As young people in the family and at school, we paid close attention to this. When we felt that someone was being preferred, we felt it was unjust and demanded justice. In principle, I do not want to deviate from this attitude. To preserve a community and its unity, it is part of the fact that there are binding rules that apply to everyone and that unite everyone.
But at the latest the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20: 1-16) makes you think. Some workers mutiny: this is unjust. But with what reward do I do justice to everyone? – a question that parents, teachers, supervisors, etc. have to deal with again and again.
I found a nice answer to this in the story of Jan and grandfather. Stefanie has lost a precious chain and Jan thinks she should be punished. For him it is not fair that his grandfather forgive Stefanie. But the grandfather with his rich life experience knows more. He doesn’t want to live in a world like this because he would freeze (a fantastic visual language). Do you feel like you’re freezing in your community? And could you learn something from your grandfather on the subject of unity?
Prelate Dr. Stefan Dybowski
July 15, 2021 Monthly lecture St. Augustinus Monastery, Berlin-Lankwitz
Aug 7, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
Start with a spiritual exercise. Ask yourself: What is the value of a community for you, or more specifically: what is the value for you of this community in which you now live or in which you previously lived? And I’ll tell you right away: Don’t just look at this question in theory, but in everyday practical life.
I think that the pursuit of unity depends largely on the value you place on community. If the community is of value to you (and not only on paper in a constitution, but in everyday life), then you will also want to meet the concerns of the founder, Rev. Johannes Schneider, and seek and deepen the unity.
1 + 1 + 1 = 3
Why do people form a community?
There are many good reasons for joining a community:
– Strength in togetherness
Men and women can very quickly be overwhelmed by tasks, difficulties and hardship. The experience of not being alone strengthens everyone in what they do. You can achieve more together than alone.
– Difference in diversity
Creativity plays a big role in our lives. This applies to the design of everyday life as well as to solving problems. Working groups are therefore often formed. A community is a good space in which ideas can grow and develop.
– Joy in the community
By joining forces (e.g. when doing sports and games, experiencing nature, making music and singing, while traveling) people experience a lot of joy.
All of these experiences can be summed up briefly: Community strengthens and helps the individual. Or expressed mathematically: 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
More than the sum of the individuals
The criteria just mentioned speak in favor of a community, but are not necessarily mandatory for such a community. Each individual could also live a spiritual life without belonging to a community. You can also see and experience that: that a community is only sought and lived when I have a need (e.g. need for support). – But I dare to say that this alone is not enough to strive for unity. That is only possible if I see something “more” in the community that is valuable and worth striving for to me.
The value of communication
The following exercises were carried out at marriage seminars: Each couple should build a house with already labeled blocks. What was important to them was put in the foundation, what seemed unimportant to them was put on the rubble. The houses were then presented. Many couples have reported that it was not the presentation of the finished house that was decisive, but that the communication that took place during the construction of the house was particularly valuable.
The value of the superfluous
There is a great temptation to distinguish what is necessary from what is not necessary in life and to separate yourself from everything that is not necessary: I do not need that, it is superfluous.
An interesting experiment in addition. To stand you need a few square centimeters of earth on which you have placed your feet. But if the earth (or better: the ground) were withdrawn from you all around, you would quickly get dizzy and scared. Even if I don’t need the floor around me to stand, they give me support and are important.
Spiritual exercise: collect in a table (with 2 columns) what is absolutely necessary and what is not absolutely necessary at first. And then go to the second column (not necessary) and see what value these things have for you.
The value of others
The strongest motivation for the value of the community still seems to me to be the appreciation of the individual. Joining a community is often shaped by the appreciation of another. Incidentally, calling stories also often have their origins in the fact that I learned to appreciate and love someone.
Search and deepen the unity
The value I see in the community is a good motivation to strive for and deepen unity. To put it provocatively: whoever sees the community as merely a functional association will use every opportunity to step out of the community internally and perhaps also externally. Conversely, however, the value that a community has for me can promote my own identification with the community and deepen my contribution to unity. Or again expressed mathematically: 1 + 1 + 1 = 4.
Prelate Dr. Stefan Dybowski
June 17th, 2021 monthly lecture St. Augustinus Monastery, Berlin-Lankwitz
Jul 22, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
Years back I gave a keynote speech on the subject of “Evangelical Council – Poverty” in one chapter. Since the evangelical counsels are essential basis of our spiritual life, I hope to be able to give one or the other an impulse or a help for their own spiritual life:
All three evangelical counsels – and in this case especially poverty – are not an end in themselves, but are an expression of the “life in abundance” promised in the New Testament (Joh. 10,10). This means that, as Sr. Zoe Marie Isenring writes in her book “The Woman in Apostolic Religious Congregations”, they should be “a means to be more and not less human”.
This sounded provocative to me at first and raised a few questions:
- Material poverty as such is not a value for me to strive for, but an injustice that we are to remedy on God’s behalf. God wants abundance for all people, also overcoming poverty. Since we cannot change these injustices with violence – i.e. new injustice – this aspect of poverty obliges us to a simple and undemanding way of life, to a responsible handling of property and becomes a duty of sharing out of solidarity with people, because that is what they do the essentials are missing. Understood in this way, poverty becomes a means of being more human for the community of people – the means of a more just world. Let us ask ourselves as individuals and as a community:
– How simple and undemanding is my lifestyle?
– Will my lifestyle and the life of the community become a sign or a stumbling block?
– Are we, for the people, the ones who solemnly take the vow of poverty and are now living comfortably, while the people outside are the ones who even have to live poverty?
- Poverty always has to do with renunciation. Conscious and free renunciation are inseparable from poverty. Where this aspect is missing, the vow becomes an empty phrase and our life becomes implausible. But poverty must not be reduced to just doing without. We are created as free and beloved daughters of God and God has given us the things of this world for use. We can use them with joy and responsibility. The vow of poverty does not release me and each of us from our responsibility for our own lives. The superior is not responsible for my life and also not for the fact that I did not get so many things in life or had to do without them! I was created by God in freedom and willed as a free person. Also and especially as a religious. Only when I see myself as loved and wanted and can accept the things of this world as gifts, am I able to let go of myself and everything, to continue to give and to do without. Let us ask ourselves as individuals and as a community:
– Do I experience myself as a daughter loved by God?
– Can I enjoy the things of this world?
– Can I see it as a gift or do I have to have it all?
– Do I know the difference between an insatiable “want to have” and a good “treat myself to something”?
– Can I also give something to others, be generous towards them?
– Can I do without becoming bitter or grouchy?
- The vow of poverty only has a meaning and value if it becomes not just an external way of life but an internal attitude. Only when I am not attached to the things of this world am I truly free to follow Christ. But that then confronts me with the question: What does my heart depend on? What do I trust, do I really trust this God or do I have to take care of myself? This is probably the most essential, but also the most difficult aspect of the vow of poverty. Only those who are poor in this sense are always free for God’s call and can follow him – without obstructing marching baggage. This is not only about material things, but also, for example, positions in the community, at work or in personal life that you have worked for, but which can quickly become wealth. Let us ask ourselves as individuals and as a community:
– What does my heart depend on?
– Do I trust God that He is leading me or am I afraid of Him and his demands?
– Do I have to secure my life and therefore have or keep everything?
– How rich or poor am I really?
– What cannot or do not want to let go: the office or the task that I have held for so long; the convent where I feel so comfortable; the position that made me so respected …?
There is still a lot to be said about the vow of poverty. But they are only intended to be a small impulse for reflection and help us to understand and live the vow of poverty a new and more deeply.
Sr. Petra Ladig
Jun 13, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
The many gifts of grace and the one spirit
In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul describes the life of the church there with the many different gifts of grace that can be found there and that are united in unity through the one spirit.
In a few days we have celebrate Pentecost. Can the Holy Spirit become our teacher to maintain and deepen our unity?
learn languages
Again and again I am enthusiastic about the story of Pentecost in Jerusalem. The apostles spoke bravely and enthusiastically about Jesus, the risen one. And the Acts of the Apostles reports that all could understand them in their own language. How could a Roman, an Arab, or an Egyptian understand a Jew? One can quickly dismiss this as a miracle of the Holy Spirit. A miracle – I would agree with that, but I wouldn’t dismiss it, on the contrary. I would want to learn from this miracle. Can I do that too: speak in a language that the other understands?
Babylon
The same language – and yet not understand (want to)
We’ve seen it in our own history: people use the same word (e.g. peace, freedom, human dignity) and mean something completely different. This gives rise to differences of opinion, conflicts, war.
Pentecost
A foreign language – and yet I can understand the other
But there is also the other. People want to approach one another, want to understand one another, because they are inspired by the same idea – perhaps also by the same spirit – and a community emerges. Pentecost is also possible today. Even today, God’s Spirit causes people to want and be able to understand one another, and thus leads them to unity.
You are my beloved son (beloved daughter)
The Holy Spirit is often referred to as the love that connects God the Father with the Son. This is shown very impressively at the baptism of Jesus. The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is reported in all 4 gospels. And in all accounts the Spirit of God is mentioned, who came down from above in the form of a dove. And a voice said, This is my beloved son, in whom I am very pleased.
I have found my satisfaction in you. – This sentence expresses the deep, loving relationship between Jesus and his Father.
Take the story of Jesus’ baptism into your spiritual contemplation! Here are a few questions: Has God said this to you before? When? Directly or through someone else? In what words or in what way? – Did you speak this sentence to others? What is your experience with it?
All should be one
In addition to love, the topic of “unity” is an important topic in Jesus’ farewell speeches (Jn 15-17), from which we often hear in the Gospel in the weeks before Pentecost.
In his farewell speeches, in which Jesus also promised his disciples the Holy Spirit, Jesus prayed for the disciples: “All should be one, like you, Father, in me and I in you” (Jn 17:21). Jesus asks for the unity of his disciples, i.e. also for the unity of the church and of all her members. For him this is more than a pious wish. His request for unity has two goals:
so that the world may believe (Jn 17:21)
The Jesuit Alfred Delp once said it very clearly shortly before his execution: “If the Church once again expects the image of a quarreling Christianity, it is written off.” In other words: it is no longer credible. Conversely, Christians living in unity can make others thoughtful and believe in Jesus Christ.
So that they may see your glory (Jn 17:22, 24)
In the previous monthly lectures we saw how an effort and deepening of unity can change people’s lives for the better and thus make them happy. This can be seen most clearly in the area of reconciliation.
Nobody should be lost
There is another request for unity in Jesus’ farewell speeches. Jesus asks that all should be one (Jn 17:11). And he adds that no one has been lost (Jn 17:12). Jesus is referring to an earlier statement: “It is the will of him who sent me that I should not let any of those he gave me perish” (Jn 6:39).
This request of Jesus can basically be related to eternal life; in other words, Jesus wants all people to be saved and go to heaven.
But you can also relate this request to everyday experiences: I don’t want anyone to be dropped or written off. Jesus met people with this attitude. There were quite a few who were written off and avoided by the society of that time and also by the representatives of religion: tax collectors, the sick, strangers, lepers, adulterers. Nobody wanted to have fellowship with them, their unity was broken. Jesus turned to these people, often causing offense. But people felt that he did not write them off. In his eyes (i.e. in the eyes of God) these people were valuable. And this care has often changed her life.
Prelate Dr. Stefan Dybowski
May 10th, 2021 Monthly lecture St. Augustinus Monastery, Berlin-Lankwitz
May 27, 2021 | SPIRITUALITY
Liturgy as a teacher of unity
We have already remembered several times that unity is not a common external characteristic, but a living relationship. Hence the reminder of the founder to preserve and deepen the unity. How can one maintain and deepen this unity?
Lent gave us a good answer. The theme in March: Reconciliation (2nd reading from Ash Wednesday: “Be reconciled to God!” 2 Cor 5:20).
Easter also provides an important impetus for our question of how to preserve and deepen unity. So today I would like to speak with a sentence from the Acts of the Apostles: They had everything in common (1st reading, 2nd Easter Sunday reading year B): “They had everything in common” Acts 4,32-37)
A heart and a soul
The text (Acts 4,32-37) begins with this wonderful sentence: “They were one heart and one soul.” This is sometimes said when two people are united by a deep and intimate friendship. The apostle Luke uses this description to describe the life of the young early Christian community in the book of Acts. A nice expression to describe unity.
Question for reflection: Were or are there people with whom you are or have been, so to speak, “one heart and one soul”? How did you experience these times? How would you describe this (the same interests, the same views, sympathy, times spent together …)? Or have you had other experiences with this sentence?
Share
Luke goes on. And says this phrase: “They were one heart and one soul” means more than a match of views and interests or a feeling of sympathy. Luke becomes very specific: someone sells his property and makes the proceeds available to others. Sharing is the key. I share what I have with others, and that is how a communion, a unity, arises.
What I have, I give you
In the previous chapter (Acts 3.1-10), Peter and John heal a paralysed man who was begging in front of the temple. Peter builds up a relationship with him. “Look at us!” Then he rejects the beggar: “I do not own silver and gold.” And then comes his promise: “What I have, I will give you.”
Share life
In the book of Acts it is first reported that material things are shared here. But soon you can guess that not only material things were shared. The sentence “None of them suffered hardship” suggests that emotional hardships could also be meant here. There is someone, lonely, sick, sad … and the others don’t leave him alone with his need, but share with him what they have: time, attention, patience.
Criticize or try
This section of the life of the young Christian community is often viewed with scepticism: Was it really like that or was something too idealized by the writer? And besides, it was a small community. In today’s congregations that would be unthinkable given this size …
Maybe, but that doesn’t prevent us from trying it out. I suspect it won’t turn your whole life upside down, but some things will change.
My contribution to the unit
Unity is not just an external reality that I find or that I am placed in. Unity arises and lives from the fact that I can do my part to maintain and deepen it.
Spiritual exercise: what contribution I make so that the unity in the community can be maintained and deepened. What am I ready to give?
… so that the wedding can take place
There is a story in which two young people want to get married. But because they are so poor, they cannot afford a big wedding party. So, they ask each of the guests to bring a bottle of wine. The contents of the bottles were poured into a large barrel, and when the guests drank from it, everyone was disappointed. Everyone just added water.
Maintaining and deepening unity … so that the wedding (celebration) can take place.
Prelate Dr. Stefan Dybowski
April 19, 2021 monthly talk St. Augustine Monastery, Berlin-Lankwitz
