North East of India is fascinating corner of India. There are, of course, other places perhaps more captivating and even mesmerizing than the North East. However, just as one’s birthplace is incomparable with any other place, it was in the North East that I exercised the first years of my priesthood as a Salesian of Don Bosco (SDB) in India. Ordained in 1968 (Rome) I returned to India in 1971 and beganBeginnings of  my ministry among the young people of the North East in Don Bosco Dibrugarh (Assam). I was hardly a year there when I was asked to go to Kohima, Nagaland’s capital, to serve as assistant parish priest among the Angami speaking sturdy, strong and loving friends at Christ King parish (1972-1973). That too did not last too long. In 1973 I was asked to be secretary to Fr. Abraham Alangimattathil (the future Bishop of Kohima-Imphal) in Dibrugarh. In the providence of God, I was asked to go and recruit some vocations from Ranchi area. It was at Bishop’s House Ranchi that I received a telegram informing me of the appointment of Fr. Abraham Alangimattathil as the first Bishop of Kohima-Imphal. When I returned to Dibrugarh I was drawn into organising along with Fr. Shenoy S.J. the Episcopal Ordination of the would-be new Bishop in Kohima.-Imphal.  To make a long story short, the Episcopal Ordination took place at Don Bosco School ground in Kohima on 14 October 1973.  The late supper on the ordination day at Little Flower School of the FMA, the fish curry that caused a havoc and the installation of the new Bishop in Imphal (Manipur) a few days later are part of history (to be continued).

Don Bosco knew how to educate the young to responsible freedom. The strong personalities that emerged from Valdocco, the scene of his first years with the young. Some of these personalities are Dominic Savio, Michael Magone, Cagliero, Costamagna and many other high profile figures. Don Bosco’s love lead the young to a love for God.

CULTURE OF WORK AND PRAYER

Don Bosco used to say, “My dear children, I do not ask you to fast or scourge yourselves. I exhort you to work, work, work!” When asked how Don Bosco managed to accomplish so much, his reply was “Thanks be to God, hard work is for me more of a delight and relaxation than a burden”. Fr. Caviglia was of the opinion that 90% of his talks to the Salesians revolved around the themes of work, temperance and poverty. Don Bosco’s process of beatification and canonization ran into difficulties  with regard to prayer and work. It was asked when did Don Bosco pray, for he was seen as an indefatigable worker. The counter question, “when did not pray?” won the day.  It is true that he did not spend long hours in prayer like saints Cure’ of Ars or  Cafasso. Nor was he allergic to spending long hours in prayer. However, in the spirit of “My dear children, I do not ask you to fast or scourge yourselves, I exhort you to work, work, work!” and “Thanks be to God, hard work is for me more of a delight and relaxation than a burden” (BM IV, 148), Fr. Caviglia holds that 90% of Don Bosco’s talks to the confreres revolved around the themes of work, temperance and poverty. Fr. Ceria in his turn affirms that the specific characteristic of Salesian prayer is the ability to turn into prayer. In this scenario it is more easy to see work than prayer, and yet for Don Bosco turning work into prayer, it would be evident for those who understand him deeply to conclude that he prays while he was working as well as when he was seen praying only. In others words he prayed always. Prayer was everywhere in his life. No wonder he was defined as “union with God”. This uninterrupted union with God in the life of Don Bosco  made the General Chapter 26 ask every Salesian to pray for the “grace of unity” between contemplation and apostolic activity which would keep at bay the danger of fragmented and superficial acitivity. What gives unity to our being, writes Chrys Saldanha, is not action, not even prayer, but love. Here it is useful to cite in full the words of Chrys:

“…our reflection and experience tell us that genuine love is always expressed in two ways which complement and compenetrate each other: intimacy and dedication. In love which takes the form of intimacy, one desires to be near the loved one, to see his face, to speak with him, to enjoy his presence and his word. In love which takes the form of dedication, one wishes to work for the loved one, to serve his interests and his happiness, even at the cost of sacrifice. Thus it is, for example, with the wife and mother: her love for her husband and her children is expressed and also increases both in the moments of intimacy with them as well as in the hours of work and fatigue endured for them. A love in the form of intimacy alone, without dedication or fatigue, would be nothing but sentimentality or laziness. A love in the form of work alone without a face-to-face communion, would become a lack of appreciation for the other person. In both cases, love would be on the way to its decline and possible death.

“So, it is our vocation and fundamental attitude as apostolic religious to live our communion of love with God in the fervor of intimacy and in the generosity of dedication, i.e. at the level of our personal relationship with God as well as at the level of our activity for God.

“It is love, then, that makes possible the unity of work and prayer” (Chrys, 80-81). For years we have been discussing as to what is more important: Work or Prayer forgetting to look at Don Bosco more clearly.  Neither work nor prayer is what is important, but LOVE expressed through either prayer or work. Here again, it would be futile to carry on  deliberating which should get an existential priority in the Salesian charism, or in the day to day existence for sons/daughters of Don Bosco. Here again, let us listen to Don Bosco. He would say: “The world is becoming materialistic, hence we must work and make known the good  that is done. If one performs even miracles praying day and night in his cell, the world will not pay attention to him and believe him. He world needs to see and touch. The present world want tosee the works, wants to see the clergy work…” (BM XIII, 96 cited in Chrys, 78).

CULTURE OF LOVE FOR A CULTURE OF WORK

For Don Bosco love meant loving kindness, a love that was made felt through acts of kindness. Such a love gives birth to a chain reaction of  relationships which at every point deepens one’s friendship with others. And when one realizes that friendship is the best form of evangelization, one can imagine the possibilities loving kindness opens before us for sharing the Good News.

Intimacy and dedication, the two interpenetrating aspects of love should lead one to combine the spirit of Mary and that of Martha (Lk 10:38-42). And I believe that the combination   of the two giving birth to a single reality of hard work (of Martha) interpenetrated by a constant listening to the Lord (of Mary) is the contemplation in action and action suffused with uninterrupted union with the Lord after the example of Don Bosco.   And whenever we leave our work for a moment in order to pray is “recognize and affirm that God works without ceasing” : “My Father is still working and I also am working” (Jn 5:17).

To realize it in one’s life Don Bosco proposes several practical ways such as, explicitly to think of God, use of ejaculatory prayers, visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and prayer before, during and after work. This is how our whole life becomes a “liturgy of life” (SDB C 95) heading the words of St. Paul, “ I appleal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).

CULTURE OF EDUCATION AFTER THE HEART OF DON BOSCO

Don Bosco is one of the great educators of the young. To the young he was simple and clear. The educational method of Don Bosco is born of life he lived. The dream he had at the age of 9 taught him to win over the young “not with blows”, but with kindness, meekness and charity. And  he was asked to carry out the mission of education by being “humble, strong and robust”. And that is what Don Bosco did during his life time and has passed on to posterity. We read in letter of 1886, “Don Bosco has already been sacrificing his life for the education and instruction of the young for fifty years. The results of his work are so gratifying and so widespread that Don Bosco has become the most famous educator of his times, both in the old and in the new world. What has contributed to his fame is his Preventive System” (Braido,115).

The Preventive System is a spirituality-cum-educational experience. Here “spiritual” is understood as letting God permeate the educator’s daily life: his/her thoughts, words and actions, especially the educator’s plan for the education of the young. It is being present to the young in different ways, allowing them to bring out/develop what is best in them (ex “out” ducere “to lead”

CULTURE OF JOY

Education cannot happen in sadness, in repression, in force. Education is a thing of the heart. It takes place in joy, freedom  and in healthy relationship. So, for Don Bosco, the playground, recreation, sport, music, singing, dramatics, celebration of feasts and significant occasions, outings and picnics are all important. “I want to see, says Don Bosco, my boys running and playing to their hearts’ content, because then I know what they are doing” (BM V,3). In the spirit of being present to his boys, Don Bosco encourages the educators of every age, each one according to his ability to become, “the soul of recreation”. “Give everyone ample freedom, we read in a write-up on the Preventive System by Don Bosco, to jump, run and make as much noise as they want. Gymnastics, music, declamation, dramas, outings are very effective means of building up discipline. They foster morality and holiness” (ll sistema preventive nell’educazione della gioventu, 295). We give below  the words of Don Bosco in which we see that he attributed to freedom of expression as a constitutive and unique pedagogical principle. While answering the question raised in a letter address to him namely, “What is your educational system”, Don Bosco wrote: “It is very simple : give the young all the freedom to do what they like most. The secret is to discover in them the seeds of their good dispositions and help to develop them. And sin ce each one does with pleasure only what  he knows he is able to do, I keep to this principle and my students not only do their work, but they do it with love” (BM XVII, 64, as cited in Chrys, 127).

CULTURE OF OFFERING VALUES

Don Bosco summed up these values in three simple words: health, wisdom and holiness. In this connection I would like to share a conversation I had recently on the occasion of the conclusion of the international Terra Madre in Mawphlang, Meghalaya yesterday (Saturday 7 November, 2015).

Introduction

From a comprehensive understanding of culture we move on to focus our attention on Inculturation, a word not easily met with except in post-Vatican II documents. A similar word “enculturation” was familiar with cultural anthropologists. Enculturation was introduced into theology by Pierre Charles. But it was Fr. J. Masson who first coined the phrase inculturated Catholicism in 1962. I remember him using this term often in our Missiology classes in Rome. Julian Saldanha says, “According to Y. Congar, the term “inculturation” was coined in Japan.[1]

The term inculturation is a loaded one. It stands for all what we know about incarnation of the Word and about culture. Seriously taken both incarnation and culture are beyond our human capacity to understand them exhaustively. Limiting ourselves to inculturation we may say summarily that it is the process of giving birth to “culturally rooted Churches, rooted in the life and culture of the people.” It is to plant a Church and attentively seeing and caring for its growth through different phases of its maturity. It is a process humanly speaking will never end except in Eternity. Here we must affirm that to plant a Church is much different from transplant a Church, a Church that has grown in another culture or community.

Two citations are very important at this point. The first is from Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi. The other is from John Paul II.

The first, succinct and powerful reads, “The split between Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed.”[2]

From John Paul II we have the following programmatic utterance. He writes, “a faith that does not become culture is a faith not fully accepted, not thoroughly thought out, not faithfully lived.”[3] This deepest link between faith and culture is brought out by the same John Paul II when he writes in the encyclical Redemptoris Missio, “Through inculturation the Church, for her part, becomes a more intelligible sign of what she is, and a more effective instrument of mission.”[4] We are also told that , “Inculturation is a slow journey, which accompanies the whole missionary life. It involves those working in the Church’s mission ad gentes, the Christian communities as they develop, and the Bishops, who have the task of providing discernment and encouragement for its implementation.”[5]

Before proceeding with the other aspects of Inculturation some brief terminological clarification may be in place.

Adaptation: Adapting the Christian message to make it intelligible and understandable to the people sounds good. At the same time it remains subjective. The term does not express the indissoluble link between Christian message and local culture. Adaptation should make it clear whether it is of the missionary or of the message. It denotes something external.

What applies to adaptation can also be said of other similar terms like accommodation, contextualization (originally referred to theological education in non-western countries) to, indigenization (stresses promotion of local ministries) and localization.

Acculturation:  It denotes contact between cultures (other than one’s own) and the ensuing change. In Anthropology it simply means  culture-contact.

Interculturation: It stresses the interdependence of cultures for mutual enrichment.

Enculturation: It is the process by which an individual becomes part of a given culture.

Incarnation: It is the process specifically of Christian religion. It means God became Man. He was born of the Virgin Mary. Incarnation is the basis and model for inculturration.

Inculturation: It is the process by which a particular Church expresses its faith and life in and through the local culture. Inculturation has to be always accompanied by interculturation (Vincent Anthony). ‘Since every culture is limited both in its vision and expressive resources and no single culture can exhaust the depth of Christian faith, any attempt to live the Christian faith exclusively in one culture restricts its scope and makes the local Church get isolated into a ghetto” (Jose Panadan and Vincent Anthony in Inculturation and Local Church, footnote, 332). It is in the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae (1979) of John Paul II the term “inculturation” appears for the first time in a major papal document.

 The Process of Inculturation

A genuine understanding of the local Church will always stay with the heart of the Good News. And Inculturation touches the heart of the Gospel. How the Good News takes root in the hearts of those who believe in Jesus is do0ne through a process called inculturation.

In this process there are three factors: first, there is the

Good News. This good news is not in the air, because it reaches man in one cultural form or another. Jesus himself was not someone abstract. He was born a Jew. He lived in Palestine bound by time and space: He was born in a particular year and in a specific place. He was culturally conditioned.  But the Good News he came to communicate helped to transform Jewish culture and all other cultures. In this sense the Good News is not Greek or Aramaic or English. It is what Jesus communicated to us in Aramaic, and we now, in English or in any other language  of the world.

Therefore the effort to separate the core of the Gospel from its cultural expressions or the effort to convey the same (namely, the core  or essence of the Gospel) with others in any language or form or means is a process. This process may take a long time and much energy. It may last one’s whole life too. Paul VI reminded the Church of this life long task when he wrote of the importance of “assimilating the essence of the gospel message and of transposing it, without the slightest betrayal of its essential truth.”[6]

The second factor is the evangelizer himself /herself who has his/her own culture/language/ways and means of communication. Then there is the culture of the community, say the parish community. These various factors have to be seen in the culture of the universal Church which has develop a culture of her own.

Hence when we realize that inculturation has to take place in this scenario of multiple cultures, it becomes a  multi-layered process. The way to go forward through this multi-layered process is DIALOGUE at all levels. And dialogue calls for understanding of culture/s at different levels and in depth along with strengthening the various network of ideas through bringing in the Spirit of Christ through individual and community prayers.

Stages in Inculturation

1. The response of a culture to the first and on-going announcement of the gospel

2. The process by  which the Christian life and message insert themselves into a particular culture

3. The process which makes the message of Christ penetrate a socio-cultural ambient, promoting its genius and values.

These points are summed up forcefully by FABC when it said, “Inculturation consists not only in the expression of the Gospel and the Christian faith through the cultural medium, but includes, as well, experiencing , understanding , and appropriating them through the cultural resources of a people.”[7]  The strong and weighty observation made by David J. Bosch in Transforming Mission is worth citing here:

“The [above] process of inculturation had been so successful in the West in the past, says Bosch, so much so that Christianity had almost become the religious dimension of that culture. In the course of time, unfortunately, Christianity got so highly domesticated by the Western culture that it did not easily allow the gospel to go through the same process in other cultures.”[8]

In its final analysis, the process and the fact of Inculturation clarifies, strengthens and affirms the over all and specific IDENTITY of the local  Church. It realizes more and more its place in the Universal Church. Fr. Pedro Arrupe says it all when throws light on the concept and reality of Inculturation as a central  element  in the reality of evangelization: “Inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message in aparticular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question, but becomes a principle that animates, directs and unifies the culture, transforming it and remaking it so as to bring about a new creation.”[9] In the same vein Kavunkal concludes, “ Becoming a local Church through inculturation would thus mean becoming a dynamic, prophetic, and counter cultural presence in the presence of other cultures and religions, which will include transforming the dehumanizing elements in those cultures.”[10] Jesus’ exhortation to be salt of the earth and the light of the world sums as simply as possible the inculturizing effort of any local Church. Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi describes concretely what should be the result  of a Church that is inculturizing and inculturated.  The process of inculturation affects through the power of the Gospel “…people’s criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of salvation.”[11]

To conclude this reflection on the process, stages and content of Inculturation it is good to cite fully the simple but convincing words of Samuel Rayan and Parmananda Divakar.

Rayan writes, “ The faith falls like a seed  into the folds and furrows of every new historical situation –a new culture, a new age, new society, and new religious conceptions and sensitivities. There it dies and rises to new existence; and the sapling draws sustenance from the milieu, builds itself up with the human and religious that is there, and waxes strong in God’s light and air without let or hindrance. The faith will bear its own flower and fruit, but in terms of the light , soil and air with which it builds itself, in terms of the situation and the needs, possibilities and experiences of the people whose faith it is. No living thing frows according to rules written down in a book or orders given from far or near. Life develops from within according to its own inner dynamism. Any pruning found necessary is done  not  for uniformity’s sake but to secure greater fruitfulness, and it is done  by the responsible, believing, reflecting community itself. There can be no question, then of importing or exporting made and canned liturgies, theologies, Church structures and dogmas. These in the process of the communication of the Gospels, have to  keep dying  and rising , sprouting and growing afresh in every locality and every age within the context of concrete needs and challenges…”.

Divarkar  says, “ This is the challenge of inculturation that faces the Church everywhere, whether in areas and communities that have just been evangelized or in the traditionally Christian ones: new ways of  living the faith must be found to satisfy new and more varied needs, arising from new and perhaps strange situations –ways that are rooted in the past but creatively alive to a preent that is so quickly overtaken by the future; hence also, men and women must be found who can trace these ways for others, people who are solidly established in tradition but alive and vibrant to the Spirit as he acts in all the ambiguities of the present hour, opening out into the uncertainties of the future.”

Rayan adds:” A faith or Church which does not grow from seed or sapling, which does not pass through the risks and pains of growing up, but is ready-made and imported, is likely to remain static and sterile.”[12]

After having seen that Inculturation is the best way to allow the Good News take root in the culture (life ) of  a people, we shall have a look at the different milestones of the long journey to “Inculturation”.

Limits of Inculturation

Interculturation

Inculturation is never ready-made. It is a process unending. And the realization that all theologies need one another  -challenging, influencing, invigorating  and encouraging each other.

Today no one works alone. It is applicable also to cultures. Hence Interculturation.

Both inculturation and Interculturation can impact all areas of Christian life.

THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR INCULTURATION

Introduction

CREATION

INCARNATION

REDEMTPION

PENTECOST

Conclusion

The assurance of Jesus “Surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt 28:20). “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28: 10) is the strength of the missionary as the Church undertakes everything in Her power to make the Gospel Message become the flesh and blood of the believing  community through inculturation.