Before beginning this short dissertation on Leo Dehon’s tangible commitment for the construction of the Kingdom of God, we need to take a moment to seriously reflect on the concept of the Kingdom of God. Faced with such a need to grasp this concept, we must start with the fact that the Kingdom of God which Jesus announces is a gift, a grace. Jesus, as much with His words as with His works, proclaimed a new nearness of God towards men; and He did so in the light of His intimate experience: starting from His singular relationship with the Father. It is here, in this filial intimacy, that Jesus lives the fullness of the coming of the Kingdom. In Jesus, God has come near to humanity in an absolute way; God has communicated in such a radical way that one can truly call Him Abba, Father, which constitutes a truly new and decisive experience1.
Leo Dehon lived this transforming experience of feeling himself loved, accompanied and led by the love of God, in the first person; for this reason, remembering one of the most significant moments of his life, that of his priestly ordination, he wrote in his Memoirs: “I rose a priest, possessed by Jesus, entirely replete in Him, in His love for the Father, in His zeal for souls, in His spirit of oration and sacrifice”2. Later on he will add that he is willing to be a “docile instrument in the hands of Our Lord”3. There is no doubt that with these words Leo Dehon declared himself available to communicate to the world his plan to build the Kingdom based on love, on filial trust and abandonment to the divine will. It is thus one realizes that because of his decision to take a retreat in 1893 he was able concentrate on making the following resolution a project for his life: “I give myself entirely to Our Lord, to serve Him in everything and to do His will in every moment. With the help of His grace I am ready to do and to suffer all that He desires”4. We know that his resolution did not end as a pius proposition, the fruit of a few days of the fervor of a spiritual retreat. On the contrary, we know his capacity for work and for availability was placed at the service of the cause of God and of His Kingdom. His life would always be marked by an intense and constant search for the love of God because, as he himself states, “Only God can and must fill our heart... Since our objective must always be His Glory, our light His Spirit which speaks to us in the peace of our soul... and our meditation must be on His perfections and His law”5.
If we need to sum up the message of the Good News in a few words we would say that it is all concentrated in these words: “The Kingdom of God is at Hand” (Mk 1:15). However, what exactly does this announcement mean when being said by Jesus? In Jesus, God has come near to man in an absolutely new way. In Jesus, it is not man that has drawn near to God, rather that God has graciously communicated with man. It is a nearness without precedent which reveals itself here and now, with the presence of Jesus. In this way one can affirm that the Kingdom is no less than a new and marvelous presence of God offering itself to mankind and opening the doors of an unhoped for future. It is a future marked with the indelible stamp of love and mercy. In the words of Leo Dehon the idea is expressed this way: “It is Our Lord Himself who has described to us the reality of His love: ‘Learn from me, I am meek and humble of heart’. Infinite meekness, sweetness and humility of heart. These are the characteristics of our divine King Jesus. His yoke is gentle, His burden is light”6 For Leo Dehon the very heart of the Gospel lies in the tremendous recognition of the merciful love of the Father made clear by Him in the nearness of Jesus, meek and humble of heart. As a consequence of this, for him, only love can be the supreme law that reigns in the Kingdom of God, that rests on the pillars of meekness, sweetness and humbleness of heart.
These reflections tend to observe the following itinerary: To begin with, we will try to draw near to the repercussions that the question of the Kingdom of God had on the spirituality of Leo Dehon; later it will be his cry of “Adveniat Regnum Tuum” that will occupy our attention; ending with some practical considerations which have led the Dehonians to the commitment for the construction of Kingdom of God here and now.
I. Leo Dehon and the Spirituality of the Kingdom of God
To understand fully what the Kingdom of God means it is necessary to state that this does not have to be situated unilaterally in the supernatural dimension, that is to say, in the other world, nor is it necessary to reduce it exclusively to an interior place. The Kingdom of God is a reality which affects both the world and the history of humanity. The spirituality of the Kingdom of God moves within the coordinates and the challenges of the escatalogical tension between what already exists and what does not yet exist.
The Kingdom of God was founded in the historically real Incarnation of Jesus. This was inserted in the history of the world and it penetrated it in the same way as in the Parable of the Mustard Seed and of the Yeast (Cf. Lk 13:18-21). The Kingdom of God is a mystery which slowly realizes itself in the heart of each individual. It is a reality that is hidden in each one of us, like the seed of mustard buried in the earth or the yeast hidden in the dough. From the moment of the Incarnation, the Kingdom of God “remodels” the world and transforms creation into a new, not yet finished, process. The full realization of the Kingdom of God is still in the future. It will finish and will be offered at the end of time as the work of God. And even more, it is also God who created it. It is He who calls on men to collaborate effectively in building His Kingdom. Captivated by the invitation from the Lord, Leo Dehon “wanted to respond to it by being intimately united to the Heart of Christ and by establishing His Reign in individuals and in Society”7. And he did this because the great passion of his life was the Kingdom of God, which is none other than the effective Kingdom of justice and charity for all which must be present in the factories and in the parliaments, in politics, in art and in piety, that is, it should install itself and make itself real in the heart and in the concrete reality of history. For the establishment of the Kingdom of God the Christian is called and is sent to consecrate all his strength towards the realization of the Kingdom of God and its values - “justice, love, mercy”8 - in our world; not only in the field of charity but also, and above all, in the social and political structures.
1. A Kingdom of Love
Before going ahead with our reflection it is important that Leo Dehon himself clarifies what the Kingdom of God means for him: “The Kingdom of the Sacred Heart is the same Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but with a matrix of love and homage to the Heart of the Savior”9. With this we can state, without fear of equivocation, that for him the Kingdom of God is the same as the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart; and for this reason it is perfectly coherent that in the majority of the occasions in which he speaks of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart one can interpret that he is referring to the more current concept of the Kingdom of God; because for him “the Kingdom of Christ is the love of the Sacred Heart”10. It is neither strength, nor imposition, nor power, nor denial, nor privations; quite the contrary, it is love that is the key which one must use to interpret the behaviors that will lead to the construction of the Kingdom of God, because, as he himself comments, “Christ loved us, this is His symbol... You will love, this is the moral... To believe in love is all our faith. To do the works of love, this is the fulfilling of the precepts. The Heart of Jesus is the summing up of all religion. The Heart of Jesus is the beginning of love and the object of love”11.
For Leo Dehon attention to the Heart of Jesus is the authentic key of interpretation of that which he professes in his faith, of that which he works with his hands; it is the cause which unifies all the aspects of his reflection (his theology and his spiritual life, but also his social and political thoughts). It is the powerful intuition which radiates throughout the wide range of commitments he made during his life. All the history of humanity and of the universe, all the economy of salvation, from the creation to the glory, above all of the creation and the redemption of man, come together for him and are felt fully through contemplation of the Heart of Jesus. Because it is in the Heart that the great “gestures” of love of the Father are gathered and symbolized; He who so loved man that He sent His son as Savior” (Cf. Jn 3:16).
Leo Dehon saw in the love of Jesus the reason that “justified” and gave meaning to his own submission: “He loved me so much that He gave Himself, delivered Himself, betrayed Himself. All this for me... Lord, you wish to inspire me with the feelings of your Heart, to live by its life, which inflames me with its zeal, to extend its knowledge and its love throughout the world... You entrust me with the mission of propagating the love of the Sacred Heart”12. These are eloquent words which speak for themselves and make clear the spirituality that animates Leo Dehon’s commitment to construct the Kingdom of God. This is a Kingdom which, before being a task to develop towards the outside, is an interior “effort” which must be “proclaimed” in a personal relationship with God-Love. After all, the Heart of Christ will be the mirror in which Leo Dehon will look in order to take on the difficult and compromising task of propagating submission within the love of the Word Incarnate which is made manifest in his Ecce venio (Cf. Heb 10:7). For this reason, for Leo Dehon, the spirituality of the Kingdom of God will be that which illuminates all of his activities: his spiritual concerns as much as his social and political concerns. It will have that role because he is convinced of the need to bear witness to the love of Christ for His father and for mankind13.
To the fact that Leo Dehon’s experience of faith is reminiscent of the words of Paul to the Galatians in 2:20: “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given Himself up for me”; we would add that he himself refers to this in his own experience: “The Savior loved me and gave himself for me. He loved me first and greatly; otherwise how could He have arrived at the extreme of giving Himself for me and accepting all sufferings? He loved me; I was His vine He cultivated with love, wrapped around with constant care. He loved me... and because He loved me He wanted to give His life to save me”14 From this perspective all of Leo Dehon’s life - apostolic life, battles, hopes, failures, misunderstandings, etc. - has its origin in this conviction that Christ loved him in first person.
2. A Kingdom Obstacled by Sin
Sin is so completely apart from the spirituality of the Kingdom of God. We cannot overemphasize the importance that Leo Dehon gives to the question of sin. He considers sin to be the cause and the worst expression of all evils, because it degrades man and leads him away from his goal: to live in the love of God. In addition it is sin that leads man to live turned away from and on the margins of Truth, because, as he himself said, “hearts filled with the spirit of the world have nothing in common with the Kingdom of Truth. For they do not understand or participate in Truth... Because understanding it requires humility, a distancing from human codes, victory over the passions, submission to God and His will”15. Leo Dehon denounces sin in all its forms, including the grievous refusal of the love of God, the tepidness of consecrated souls. He analyzes the life of the Church and of society and sees the cause of all evils in the lack of love, in an incomprehensible and disastrous ingratitude, in the unrecognized love of God.
Everything in the life and spirituality of Leo Dehon is orientated to love and to the elimination of obstacles to love, as it says in our Constitutions: “Father Dehon was very sensitive to sin... He was aware of social evils; he had carefully studied their human causes, both individual and social. But he saw the refusal of the love of Christ as the deepest cause of this human misery... Father Dehon expected his religious to be prophets of love and servants of reconciliation of people and the world in Christ”16.
Living a life of human love in union with Christ means dealing with the reality of sin. Sin is the absolute opposite of love. Leo Dehon understood that sin wounds the generosity of God, insofar as it is “an offense against God, who deserves nothing but adoration and love... it is giving preference to Satan, to passions...it is an odious ingratitude”17.
3. A Kingdom Built On the Foundation of Reparation
In a Reparation spirituality like that of Leo Dehon, sin, the rupture and distancing from God, does not have the last word. On the contrary, the only possible antidote to what comes from discord and separation is love and reconciliation18. Leo Dehon is aware of the fact that in order to build the Kingdom the only possible model is the Gospel, whose pages welcome, draw near to, comprehend and are merciful with those who suffer from the oppression of the yoke of sin: “Jesus Christ Himself explains His position with regard to sinners in the Parables of the Lost Sheep, of the Lost Coin and of the Lost Son. We see Him converse with sinners... His mercy welcomes the sinner”19. The Christian response to sin is to love the sinners. However, one understands this is neither a complicate love nor a permissive tolerance. The welcoming and pardoning of sinners must be part of the spirituality of the Kingdom of God, founded on the structures of Reparation. In the language of his time Leo Dehon would say that “The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the true and only redeemer and the only true source of love”20.
Leo Dehon felt that in order to build the Kingdom one must have a fundamental attitude which saturates all being and all doing. This attitude is availability, and for this reason the question that must flower in the hearts of whoever wishes to be a builder of the Kingdom will be: “Lord, what do you wish me to do?”21. Being and being available constitute the true way of being redeemers; it must be the oblative attitude which saturates apostolic commitment, commitment in the world, work and study, efforts of faith, efforts of love, worship and oration.
In addition, reparation can be considered as the correct willingness for one living the ideal life and for taking on the construction of the Kingdom of God, given that this is no more than having the conviction that the values of the Kingdom can and must transform the world and make it more fraternal and more harmonious with the plan of the happiness of God.
4. A Kingdom with Implications
Bearing in mind what has been said up till now it is important that we reflect on the implications involved in the reality of the Kingdom of God according to the spirituality of Leo Dehon, which, as it could in no other way be, is based in the pure Gospel. To enter the orbit of the Kingdom of God necessitates the realization of a series of conditions:
a) In the first place one must refuse all impatience and all despair before the apparent insignificance of the first results of one’s efforts. As a model of reference we can use the Parable of The Mustard Seed (Cf. Mk 4:30-32); it is important to hope and to give time for the seed to germinate and bear its fruit. In addition, in Leo Dehon’s words, it is necessary to have filial trust, to maintain a strong trust even through the worst tests and difficulties22.
b) Secondly it is important to emphasize that the growth of the Kingdom does not depend on our own endeavors23 but on the hidden strength that lives in the Word. We can trust in the Parable which tells how The Seed Grows of Itself (Cf. Mk 4:26-29); it is important for one to germinate the seed and to have hope. According to Leo Dehon, building the Kingdom requires activating a spirit of faith and love for Our Lord24.
c) After this comes the fact that it is of vital importance to know how to accept the imperfections of the present and to include the abundant presence of the weed in the wheat. (Cf. Mt 13: 24-30). The Kingdom is not a perfect society that one establishes to arrive imminently and in a definitive manner, it requires patience and mercy25.
d) Finally, it is good to note that despite all the obstacles the Kingdom of God not only will develop, but the world will grow with it: as in The Parable of the Yeast (Cf. Mt 13:33). The growth of the Kingdom is in solidarity26 with the growth of the world, it does not develop on the margins of the history of men but inside it and in relation to all that men do and seek.
Before ending this section it is important that to emphasize that the spiritual inheritance of Leo Dehon concerning the Kingdom of God does not lead us to recall events, situations and writings in a sterile way... as something that comes from the past. Quite the contrary, it obliges us to encounter it here and now, bringing his experience of faith into the present, just as he did in his time. His fundamental experience led to his being convinced that God is love, and from this Love must flow all the springs from which come the waters that transform the world. We will close this section with some of his own spiritual desires: “Let us establish in ourselves the perfect Kingdom of Our Lord. Make this the beginning and the end of our actions. That all (actions) have as their point of departure, their basis, His inspiration and His will, and ultimately His glory”27. Later, in his Spiritual Diary, he will write: “Jesus is Our King, a King of peace. He shall reign over nations and over souls. His law is the Gospel. His Kingdom is sweet, exempt from excessiveness, without violence. His mercy is inseparable from justice. He was the first to suffer the yoke of His own law. He poured grace on His subjects. When He punished, He did it in order to save”28
II. Your Kingdom come
Jesus lived and spoke of the Kingdom as nobody had done before: He spoke in parables, sermons, beatitudes and prophecies; He spoke through the medium of His own actions, of His being handed over and of His death. In some way we can describe Jesus of Nazareth as being a personal experience of the Kingdom: He is the Kingdom made present through love and expressed as a complete human being throughout the entire world. This is why He came and made Himself present on the face of the earth; here, where being ostracized is strongest, where the darkness is most intense. Here, on the suffering earth, is where Jesus began to realize His Kingdom: He welcomed the marginalized, healed the sick, created a group of people prepared to spread the action of God over the earth. For this He went up to Jerusalem, with the aim of presenting His message; for this He died on Calvary, appearing later, resurrected29. Only in this context can one understand the words of Jesus: Your Kingdom come. Jesus taught His disciples to preach the new mystery of His Kingdom because He knew that God was His Father. This is why He translated this certainty in the form of a prayer: Father Thy Kingdom come! Strictly speaking, this phrase, Thy Kingdom come, should be translated as Bring Your Kingdom! We ask this of the Father and pray to Him to show Himself throughout the world as He who gives life, as the power of creation that sustains us and impels us with His grace. God is Father and His Kingdom, proclaimed and realized through Jesus of Nazareth, is us. This is why, in asking that His Kingdom come, we pray to God the Father to make us capable of being His children, that is, the owners and heirs of this Kingdom.
In this section we intend to reflect upon and describe the characteristics which “adorn” Leo Dehon’s commitment to the construction of the Kingdom and which led him to exclaim: “I desire that your Kingdom come”30. And so much more so when every morning, in the act of oblation, we offer the Lord our willingness to proclaim His mercy and work for the coming of His Kingdom31. The spirituality of Leo Dehon had among its prime objectives, as we have seen above, to endeavor to construct the Kingdom of God and His justice (Cf. Mt 6:33)32. This construction necessarily and inescapably involves following Jesus of Nazareth. This means that he who wishes to be a builder of the Kingdom must place his feet in the footsteps of the Master and this means that his path must be the path of the Lord. This presumes something more than an intellectual investigation, it also requires a personal experience an adhesion, a reply and a commitment.
1. Kingdom of Justice
We know that Leo Dehon was not a theoretician, nor was he a man only involved in reflection in the laboratory or at his desk. There will be none of this in his life. He was a man of action. The sad social situations that surrounded him obliged him to study in order to find the most suitable solutions. He was not a man who immersed himself in dreams or who lost himself in sterile, mental laboriousness. He considered inactivity and a disinterest in the Kingdom of God and in the well-being of his brothers to be truly scandalous. For this reason, he presented his apostolate with as much availability as he could in order to improve his service to his brothers, especially to the most needy.
In glancing quickly through his biography we immediately discover that the thing that most characterized him was his way of struggling so that the Kingdom would cease to be a dreamed-of project and would convert itself into a concrete reality. He was capable of uniting, as few are, an intense and contemplative life with a wide and diversified apostolic activity. It would not be exaggerated to claim that, even though it may seem paradoxical, Leo Dehon managed to be, at the same time, a mystic and an uncontrollable activist33. He was a man who, in his active availability to be involved in the search for the will of God, demonstrated a concrete commitment to the building of the Kingdom. Throughout his entire life - with his works, his writings, his sermons, his initiatives - he sought the construction of a Kingdom of social justice for all, with rights for all, and with greater duties for the most gifted - giving them the opportunities they need to become leaders. By means of all his efforts and initiatives he urged his brethren to find their model for action in the teachings and the principles of Jesus of Nazareth, for whom the law, the Sabbath, the sheep or the ox, are always less important than the man34. This attitude was troublesome in a world that was ruled by checkbooks, or by the weight of a current bank account, or by the force of economic laws. It is not only in the past that his words would be judged uncomfortable, they would also be considered troublesome today. We are convinced that Leo Dehon (who proclaimed and lived a radical path: of the Gospel and of the Kingdom) would nowadays be a very uncomfortable presence in any country in this world, especially in our Western countries, so entrenched in and delighted by a market economy where the only thing considered valid is earnings and where they have put up the best and the biggest altars to the “baales” of the economy.
Reading his writings concerning social problems and the economy it seems as if we are experiencing that same problem today; even though it may have a different matrix, it continues to be the same. Being witness of the situation and of the living conditions of workers, of the poor, of mothers and their children, etc., he wrote: “many of our brethren, despite rough and persevering labor, live in poverty. They have tiny rooms, full of children who lament, frequently because of their hunger pains... On whom should we lay the blame for this?”35 There is absolutely no doubt that he was very critical of the social realities and frequently said things that must have sounded very strong in the ears of his contemporaries, going so far as to severely condemn these situations of social injustice as what he would come to call the fruits of a “rotten society”. However he did not stop at the mere denouncing or the simple descriptions of these situations; on the contrary, he took part in an unconditional way, in support of the most disenfranchised: “all the workers demands have a just foundation”36.
He took a dim view of usury, of the abusive earnings of a few to the detriment of the immense majority, of speculation, of manipulation, of the exploitation of man. We could continue discussing economic concepts for a very long time, but since detaining ourselves here would deter us from our objective, we will limit ourselves to presenting, as an example, Leo Dehon’s own words regarding his thoughts on usury: “What do we mean by modern usury? It is a complex of injustices... characterized by the exercise of a pressure or of a fraud on weak or over-trusting people”37.
He was indignant about what he saw in the factories, he considered it an absolute massacre of the dignity of man because the wages of the workers went up and down according to the market, like the price of slaves38. This was neither just nor human, and it could not be tolerated. Much less so if it was done because of, or done in the name of, an economic model where the only thing one sought was a greater profitability on their investments. For this reason Leo Dehon came to state that the first form of charity owed to the proletariat was a just wage. In addition he added that if the injustices of our society are not sins, then no sin exists. One must help the poor, not only to live but to lift themselves up39.
Leo Dehon fought like few others at that time for the right of all to a dignified job, for the organization of free trade unions, for a family wage, for a Sunday rest day, for the achievement of better moral and hygienic conditions in factories, for the participation of workers in company earnings. There is no doubt that these charges and demands made more than a century ago, continue to be extremely contemporary concepts. For him, only Jesus of Nazareth would be capable of bestowing on man the “Kingdom of His Gospel, authentic freedom, dignity, respect, comfort, pure joy”40. However, let us leave it up to Leo Dehon himself to reveal his plan of action for building the Kingdom of justice: “If we want Christ to reign in society, we must earn nothing from our love for the people. One has to be in solidarity with people who suffer an unmerited misery and have no support; one should go to their homes, to their work-places... and accompany them in their suffering and in their demands41.
2. The Kingdom which Adheres to the Decalogue and to the Gospel as Social Codes
An apostle such as Leo Dehon, concerned with building the Kingdom of God, could do no other than think and write that this Kingdom begins with the individual, penetrates the conscience and afterwards acts on all of society42, forming an open hearted people who are capable of cohabiting in justice and in holiness. In this sense, for him the only thing possible is that justice become the characteristic of human cohabitation, since “the decalogue is the divine charter of social life. The 10 Commandments of God are divine measures which are aimed at insuring the happiness of man”43. These words make it clear that at the end of the last century Leo Dehon was clearly aware that social imbalances - provoked by the industrial process, the phenomena of urbanization and economic systems - needed to receive an authentic and balanced response in evangelical values and not in pseudo-solutions, offered by political and economic theories or ideologies, which only lead to some of the social classes being privileged.
For Leo Dehon the Gospel is not merely a mystic book, it is also a book of moral practice. For this reason he says that the “idealism of social works” is rooted in the same idealism of the Gospel. From it we can extract a practical consequence in bringing about the building of the Kingdom: give food to the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give clothing to the naked... These things could only be done suitably by idealists, by those whose actions were animated by the spirit of faith and charity, not by the faint-hearted nor by the installed44. It was always the Gospel that sustained him in this conviction: the Gospel which one must read correctly and which is the most powerful leaven introduced into the dough of the world in order to convert it, beginning with love for the Father, in the fruits of justice, dignity and peace for all. Let us leave it up to Leo Dehon himself to describe the situation for us, and we will see if his words have anything to do with reality or if this appearance is merely coincidence: “This faint-hearted generation has changed Christ for us. Was He not already the Christ of the workers... the Christ who took His apostolate to the sinners, the publicans, the men of the world? The lion of Judah has metamorphorcized into a timid lamb. Our Lord, whose strong and powerful apostolate inspired Paul, James and all the conquerors of souls, has turned into a weak and fearful man who now speaks only to children and the sick”45.
We will now, in a few lines, sketch the repercussions which, according to Leo Dehon, come from the fulfilling of or the forgetting of the Decalogue46. He analyzed the causes of social disorders and that which impedes the implanting of the Kingdom of God and he saw that the first and most important cause of these disorders was egoism; since this impedes us from remembering that we all have the same Father and, in addition and as a logical consequence, since each person follows his own interests on the margin of the need of the other, it also impedes us from loving our brethren. For him the fourth commandment is the social commandment par excellence because it teaches respect, attention and solidarity, essentials for achieving a balance both in the smallest social nucleus (the family), and for the large, national or international society. The sixth should work against corruption, immorality; while the seventh is the code for justice and charity and, at the same time, the hammer against usury. In his opinion the eighth excludes frauds, trickery and the “businesses” which seek their own profit.
Among the large number of economic and political ideological controversies at the end of the century, Leo Dehon had absolutely no doubt of the success of evangelical values in constructing a more just society. Let us end with his own words: “Christ came to renew the spreading of the law. He urged us to seek justice above all. He raised the law to its perfection and taught us charity, abnegation and humility, and offered us the necessary graces to practice these virtues. It will be under the guidance of Christ and of His Church that society will be able to turn to the practice of the Decalogue, and, through this, the reestablishment of social order”47.
3. The Kingdom which, Faced with Current Challenges, is Built with a Suitable Willingness
In arriving at a description of the suitable willingness with which Dehonians must take on the building of the Kingdom, depending on the challenges presented by today’s society, it is important for us to pause, if only briefly, and observe Leo Dehon’s attitude on this as a builder and an apostle of the Kingdom:
a) For him the Kingdom of God was no more (nor less) than the Gospel of love that enters into and forms a part of the concrete history of mankind; it is the same thing as the establishment of justice, shared prosperity, fraternity and peace. To serve this Kingdom it is important not to cease shaking the sleepiness of the clergy, urging the priests to get out of the sacristies and “go to the people”48 with decision and without timidity; for it is here that the life of the priest is played out, especially among the poor and the humble, the indigent and the exploited. He encouraged them to go where there was suffering and where there was hope, where there was a call to gather together in order to build a more just, a more evangelical society. In addition he insisted that the Kingdom was not constructed with paternalistic attitudes which were merely content with doing charity.
To build the Kingdom requires justice and evangelical charity. He wanted the apostles of this Kingdom to be in the streets, in the factories, among the people, raising the banner of renovation and social justice.
Along this same line, for him, the old works and the old methods were of no use because they did not attract people. The builder of the Kingdom must not let himself be driven by false prudence: “If a shepherd sees that his sheep are lost... he cannot remain inactive. The good shepherd does not hide when the wolf comes. (For this reason) the priest must be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the lighter of the sacred flame... He must be the man of prayer and sacrifice... of study and of social works... He must be the disciple and the apostle of the Heart of Jesus”49.
All this, as is clear, has not remained anchored in the past. On the contrary, if Leo Dehon was very criticized in his time by the defenders of economic liberalism for the ideas expressed in his Christian Social Manual50, there is no doubt that with these ideas and especially with his style of life corresponding with these ideas, which continue to be prophetic seeds for the building of a new world based on justice and peace, he would still, today, clash head-on with the style of life that is imposed on us by our consumer society and by the law of supply and demand presented to us by neoliberalism.
b) Once we have “seen” the emphasis that Leo Dehon put on the building of the Kingdom in the historic moment in which he happened to live, we feel it is good for us to pause very briefly and see what the economic principles of neoliberalism are (they are those which rule in our current society), and then go on to indicate what, in our opinion, should be the attitudes which mark the willingness of a Dehonian in his mission of installing the Kingdom in the world and in society.
1. Neoliberal Principles51
a) Individual liberty as an absolute value, without reference to community;
b) Ferocious and aggressive competitiveness;
c) Cult of money, which is converted into an idol;
d) Lack of solidarity, which creates marginalization and social exclusion and responds to the axiom “there is no salvation outside of the market”.
2. Evangelical Principles
a) Recognition and welcome of the other as other. The parable of the “Good Samaritan” can be a magnificent example;
b) Compassion, which includes mercy for the suffering of victims, but works for the elimination of the causes that provoke them. Its best expression is “I desire mercy not sacrifices”;
c) Liberation from dependency on idols and elimination of different marginalizations: social, ethnic, ecological, cultural and sexual. “Free the poor and the oppressed and install justice”;
d) Solidarity, which tends to eliminate the frontiers of tribe, class, economy. “Each time you do this to the least of one of my brothers you do it to me”.
3. Dehonian Willingness52
a) Availability53, our Congregation54 and Sint Unum55: attitudes which will enable a Dehonian to be attentive to the appeals and needs of the men of our time;
b) Justice and charity, “Following the Founder...we want to contribute to establishing ‘the reign of justice and Christian charity in the world’”56;
c) A reply of freedom, “liberation from all that harms the dignity of people and threatens the realization of their most profound aspirations: truth, justice, love, freedom”57;
d) Solidarity58, in Dehonian terms, must awaken and nourish the thirst for justice and redemption which the world needs; to construct the Kingdom is to wash the feet.
For this reason, according to our Constitutions, to make a clamor and to do as much as possible so that “Adveniat regnum tuum”, requires that “In our manner of being and acting, by participating in constructing the earthly city and building up the Body of Christ, we should be an effective sign that it is the Kingdom of God and His justice which should be sought above all and in all”59.
Conclusion
In the preceding pages we attempted to show how Leo Dehon wanted to respond to the unrecognized and forgotten love of God with an absolute availability to His will and with a total commitment to the most needy and marginalized brethren. As we have seen he wanted, with his choice of life, with his writings and social initiatives, to repair, reestablish, reinstall the Kingdom of Christ in society, which is the Kingdom of justice and Christian charity, through a ministry of reconciliation: a reconciliation founded on the search for truth, freedom, respect of human rights, social justice and forgiveness. He dreamt that from the Heart of Christ, open on the cross, there could be borne a spirituality capable of transforming men and giving them a new heart, one which would succeed in transforming, from the roots, this society without a heart. And he consecrated his life to this, so that the Kingdom of the Heart of Christ, the Kingdom of justice, of generosity, of solidarity for the little ones and for those who suffer, might become a concrete and palpable reality.
Leo Dehon’s fixed gaze on the face of Our Lord did not weaken his commitment towards the concrete man. Quite the contrary, this “absorption” in the transcendent strengthened his capacity to influence history and to commit himself to mankind and their cause, to liberate people from all that attacked their dignity and disfigured them.
The mission of reconciliation, of justice and of peace, led Leo Dehon to dedicate himself to those who are most removed, to those in the world who are most in need of bread and justice, but who, more than anything, need to be loved and considered. Let us leave it up to Leo Dehon himself to “illuminate us” with respect to this: “Christ had pity for the children who are weakness itself. He healed the blind, the crippled, the lepers...; He had pity for all people, for this mass that seemed to Him a flock without a shepherd, for these souls cut like the grains in an immense harvest...; He had pity for the humble workers, oppressed by all types of injustice, for he whose hands were hardened by tools”60.
Leo Dehon committed his life to the building of the Kingdom. For him this task supposed an active hope in a new world, one which necessarily implied a conversion and an interior reworking of the heart. He understood that the Kingdom is not an ideological system that is imposed from above, and he fought so that the Kingdom might become an external and concrete realization. Towards this end he stated that “he who wishes to extend the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart must consecrate his entire life”61.
A hundred and twenty years have passed since the foundation of the Congregation. Leo Dehon has become both history and historic. For us, the members of the Congregation, that which is determinant is not only his words and his writings, but his entire life. Leo Dehon as a person, with his specific charism and his life, has turned into a model and a program for the construction of the Kingdom which is “the project of God. My plan is the communication of my life and happiness... to establish an eternal society with Him: the Kingdom of God”62.
As he knew how to read and interpret the signs of the times and also knew how to apply a “remedy” to the ills of the society of his time, he hoped that we would also know how to block the evils which blind our society, with renewed methods and renewed enthusiasm. We must be capable of replying to the distinct interrogations which are posed by the current economy and which question our choice of life: a) the gulf between the North and the South (migratory movements...); b) The environmental crisis (Ozone layers, desertification, deforestation, contamination, energies...); c) Unemployment, structural failures, underemployment; d) Production and trade of arms...
In one of the two glass doors of the chapel of our Community of Salamanca I, the phrase ADVENIAT REGNUM TUUM directs our focus and, in each of our Community celebrations and each of our intimate meetings with the Lord, reminds us of our commitment and our real and concrete option for the construction of the Kingdom. It is a commitment that is, at the same time, personal and communal. It is a commitment that takes with it the appeals and the pleas that the Kingdom of God shall come and be established here and now. It is a commitment that is a petition for the Kingdom to come, but it is neither passive nor dispassionate nor quiet, but implies putting the hand to the plow and opening the furrow in order to be able to sow the seeds of the Kingdom. It is a commitment that implies reactivating hope, the most radical hope of the heart, that this work does not succumb to the prolonged brutality of absurdities that happen in the personal and social environment. It is a commitment with the disinherited and the marginalized, with the slave and with the excluded. It is a commitment to prophecy and reconciliation. It is a commitment to the Word, to prayer and to life. It is a commitment to the provocation of love because, as Leo Dehon writes: “There is nothing more provocative than love, and the love of God is superbly provocative”; and if we do not have this provocation then we become mediocre builders of the Kingdom, because “we do not reflect sufficiently on the love of Christ”63. It is a commitment that the Kingdom might be a palpable reality in the street and in the community, in the workplace and in the offices of employment, in the hospitals and in the places of leisure, in the brother and in the unknown person.
1 Cf. E. Leclerc, El reino escondido (The Hidden Kingdom), Sal Terrae, Santander 1997, p.195.
4 Fr. Dehon wrote that this resolution was the reason for the retreat that he took in Braisne from October 17 to November 16, 1893. This resolution being added to the fruits of this retreat is covered in his Notebook VI of Notes Quotidiennes (Daily Notes) and in number ll of the appendix to page 433 of the Italian edition of his Spiritual Diary.
5 NQ I, 71-72, March 30 and 31 of 1868.
6 L. Dehon, L’année avec le Sacré-Coeur (The Years With the Sacred Heart), Etablisments Casterman, S.A., Paris, p.178.
8 These words were in a document written by Fr. Dehon, entitled The Kingdom of the Sacred Heart, which G. Valerius, S.C.J. quoted in his article Leo Dehon and the ADVENIAT REGNUM TUUM Movement in Dehoniana 72 1987/2, (Spanish translation) p.210.
10 L. Dehon, L’année... (The years...) p.178. Along this same line, going further into this thought, Leo Dehon writes, remembering the words of St. Margaret Mary, “Jesus Christ will reign despite His enemies, but He will reign for His Sacred Heart” (O.Sc. IV, 546).
11 NQ III, 60, October 14, 1886.
13 Cf. NQ II, 27, December 15, 1869.
14 Quoted by Avelino Diez, in Tras las huellas del amor (On The Footprints of Love), p.65 (manuscript not yet published), who attributes these sentences to Leo Dehon in his book Coronas de amor (Crowns of Love).
15 L. Dehon, L’année... (The Years....), p.320.
18 Cf. Csts. n.7: “Father Dehon expected his religious to be prophets of love and servants of reconciliation of people and the world”.
22 Cf. Leo Dehon, Directorio Espiritual (Spiritual Directory), Gráficas Gurrea, Pamplona 1947, p.116.
23 Writing to Fr. Freyd, his spiritual director par excellence, he would say: “I do not worry, I place everything in the hands of God” (Document of March 9, 1873: AD, B 36/2).
24 Cf. NQ III, 103v, February 25 - March 11, 1890.
25 Commenting on the beatitudes, Leo Dehon tells the novices: “We will make mercy the uniform of our Work” Cahier Falleur I, 13.
26 Cf. Csts. n. 29, “In following Him, we must live in real solidarity with people... (and that) human effort needs to be constantly purified and transfigured by the cross and the resurrection of Christ to arrive at the fullness of the Kingdom”.
27 NQ I, 49, February 28, 1868.
29 Cf. X Pikaza, El padrenuestro en la vida religiosa (The Our Father in the Religious Life), in Folletos CONEL, n. 60, p.12.
30 NQ II, 39, January 1, 1870.
31 Act of Oblation, Fridays I.
33 Cf. José Fernandes de Oliveira, Por causa de um certo Reino (For the Cause of a Certain Kingdom), Edicoes Paulinas, San Paulo, 1978, p.24.
46 We will follow what has been collected together in O.Sc., II, 67-69.
50 Cf. Avelino Diez, El Padre Dehon adelantado social (Father Dehon, Social Progress) in Studia Dehoniana 37, 1994, p.147.
51 Principles which were published in the Opinion Page of the newspaper El Pais, Monday, June 29,1998, signed by Juan-José Tamayo (theologian and General Secretary of the John XXIII Association of Theologians).
52 Extract from the Rule of Life of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
53 The availability which one should have with the poorest, with the most needy and with those who live on the margins of our society: they must be the ones who are privileged by our dedication. Cf. Csts. n.18.
54 Cf. the motto, order of the day and conclusions of the XX General Chapter, held in Rome.
55 “The Sint Unum emphasized by Father Founder, requires... a progressive liberation from egoism which is the refusal of the love of God and of fraternity... (and) calls for constant conversion” (Csts. n.95).
56 Csts. n.32. Fr. Dehon left an eloquent testimony of his sensibility to social problems, capable of uniting the mystic experience with a real commitment to the building of the Kingdom.
58 “Sensitive to what obstructs the love of the Lord in today’s world, we give testimony to the fact that human effort needs to be constantly purified and transfigured by the cross and resurrection of Christ” (Csts. n.29).
60 Primo Corbelli, Por una civilización del amor (For a Civilization of Love), Published by Claretiana, Buenos Aires 1985, p. 119-120.
62 Signed manuscript by Fr. Dehon, found in the General Archive in Rome among envelopes containing various newspaper clippings and numerous handwritten pages of notes on social problems. Kept in the classification 8/3 and catalogued under the title: Synthèse de la question social, 27 pages portant ce titre en la dernier page (Summary of the Social Question, 27 pages carrying this title on the final page). The manuscript is composed of 27 pages, almost all written by one hand. Even though it does not carry a date one can establish that it is earlier than 1895.