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SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1985

Following Joelmir Beting’s return to Brazil I waited for the time I would be called to interview the comandante. It was a long wait, as all anxious waits are. My parents and I spent the days going around Havana: visiting the Federation of Cuban Women, where Vilma Espín greeted us warmly; a nursery school; and the national office of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). We strolled through the downtown part of the city, had icecream at Coppelia — the best icecream parlor in the world, where only fresh products are used — and went shopping in the international hotels’ shopping centers — dollar stores that are only for tourists. While paying a call on Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana, my mother was given a beautiful picture in color of an effigy of Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s patron saint — a mulatta, as so many Latin American Marys are. Moreover, like our own Lady of the Apparition, it was found in the ocean by poor fishermen in 1607.

I had no hopes of interviewing Fidel Castro over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, my parents went off to Varadero, which is considered the most beautiful beach in Cuba. I couldn’t go, because I was scheduled to give a public talk on Jesus’ spirituality that evening at the Dominican convent. Around 70 people attended, including several communist friends: Brazilian Hélio Dutra and his wife, Ela; Marta Harnecker of Chile, the author of several books on the fundamentals of Marxism; and Jorge Timossi, from Casa de las Américas. Two very dear friends were also there: Cintio Vitier, one of the best Cuban poets, and Fina, his wife. Among the priests was the congenial Father Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, vicar general of Havana and secretary of the Cuban Bishops’ Conference. Young and adult lay people, monks, nuns, and seminarians also attended. I gave the talk in the conference room of the convent. It brought to mind the lingering presence of the Dominican friars in Cuba; of Bartolomé de las Casas, defender of the indigenous peoples; and of those who founded the University of Havana in 1728. Now, there are only five Dominican friars on the entire island, two of whom are at the Vedado convent.

When we speak of spirituality, the word reminds us of spiritual retreats, quiet and secluded places, saintly people with photographs of sunsets by the sea or ponds like mirrors. Spiritual life sounds like something opposed to carnal, material life; something that entails a retreat from the world, from everyday life; a unique privilege for those poor mortals who don’t benefit from the haven offered by contemplative monasteries. There are countless “spiritualities” within the church: the Dominican, the Franciscan, the Jesuit, the Marian; those offered by workshops on Christianity; etc. Theologically, what does it mean to “adopt spirituality”? It means adopting a way of following Jesus. We can follow him the way Francis of Assisi or Theresa de Avila or Thomas à Kempis or Teilhard de Chardin did. Despite the fact that among the Latin American poorer classes several native, devotional, and pilgrim spiritualities sprang up around black- and brown-skinned Marys — such as Our Ladies of Charity, of Guadalupe, and of the Apparition — at the institutional level of the church the spiritualities imported from Europe prevailed. The theology was also imported. Religious schools taught a European, bourgeois way of following Jesus that contradicted not only our reality — which was characterized by flagrant social contradictions — but also the Gospel’s own prescriptions. Rome’s difficulties in understanding liberation theology are the result of its inability to accept a theology other than the one prepared in Europe within the church.

Can there be different theological approaches within one and the same church? When I lived in the hills of Santa María, in Victoria, a worker who lived next door asked me for a book on “the life of Jesus.” I gave him a copy of the New Testament. Every time I saw him I would ask, “Tell me Mr. Antonio, have you read the life of Jesus?” One day he told me, “Betto, I’ve read all the Gospels and learned a lot, yet I must tell you something: I found that the stories about Jesus are too repetitious.” This is a good example, showing that, in the Gospels themselves, there are four different theologies: Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s, and John’s. Theology is the reflection of faith within a given reality. Luke wrote his evangelical account with pagans in mind, whereas Matthew wrote for the Jews.

Who writes theology within the church? All Christians do. Theology is the fruit of the reflection that the Christian community — immersed in a reality — makes of its faith. Thus, each Christian theologizes just as each housewife economizes at the market. Not every housewife is an economist, just as not every Christian is a theologian. Theologians are those who have a good command of the scientific bases of theology and who, at the same time, grasp the reflection of faith given by the community and formulate it systematically.

After Vatican II the Latin American church started to formulate its own theology. It stopped importing it from Europe. Prior to this, every seminarian had had to speak some French in order to study the works on theology of Father Congar, de Lubac, Guardini, or Rahner. This theology, which came into being in the Christian base communities in the region and was the result of the challenge posed by the liberation process of the oppressed, has been systematized by such men as Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff. It differs from Europe’s “liberal theology” in its methodology. Theology is faith’s answer to the challenges posed by reality. What were the most important events in Europe during this century? Undoubtedly, World Wars I and II. They gave rise, in European culture, to disturbing questions regarding self, the value of the human being, and the purpose of life. All of the philosophical work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Karl Jaspers; the literary work of Albert Camus and Thomas Mann; and Buñuel’s and Fellini’s films try to answer that question. Theology is no exception. In its attempts to relate to European reality, it seeks the mediation of personalist philosophy, whose axis is the human being.

Now, then, what is the aspect that has characterized Latin America in this century? It is the collective, majority existence of millions of hungry people. It is the nonperson. And theology has discovered that the mediation of philosophy doesn’t suffice for understanding the political and structural reasons for the massive existence of the nonperson. It is necessary to resort to the social sciences — even to Marxism. This relationship gave rise to the methodology of liberation theology, which corresponds to the liberating, evangelical experience of the Christian faith in Latin America. To fear Marxism is like fearing mathematics because you suspect it was influenced by Pythagoras. Today, no one can honestly talk about social contradictions and not pay some tribute to the concepts systematized by Marx. It doesn’t matter whether or not they are Marxist concepts; what’s important is that they scientifically convey the reality they express. Even Pope John Paul II borrowed from Marx when he spoke of class tensions and social inequalities in his encyclical Laborem Exercens, on human work. Before fearing Marxism because it declares itself to be atheist, we should ask ourselves what kind of fair society we have built in this world that declares itself to be Christian.

Spirituality refers not only to our spiritual life. It refers to man as a whole, in his spiritual and bodily unity. No such division between matter and spirit exists for the Hebrews. St. Paul even mentions “spiritual body,” which sounds contradictory. In the Bible spiritual knowledge is experimental knowledge. Actually, you only know what you experience. The spirit-body division comes to us by way of Greek philosophy, which made inroads on Christian theology starting in the fourth century. The Greeks thought that the more we negated physical, corporal, and material reality, the more spiritual we were. In the Gospels, the totality of the human being is what brings life to the spirit. Thus, spirituality isn’t the way you feel the presence of God. Nor is it the way you believe. Jesus said, “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Thus, spirituality is a way of living life according to the spirit. José Martí, outstanding hero and forerunner of Cuba’s liberation, said that “doing is the best way of saying.” For Christians, living is the best way of believing. Faith without deeds is worthless; as James stated, “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:14–17).

Our way of life is the result of what we believe. Our way of being the church is a reflection of our concept of God. In order to know a church, the best question to ask is “what do your faithful think about God?” It is a mistake to think that all believers believe in the same God. I often ask myself if there is any similarity between the God I believe in and the one in whom Reagan believes. We forget that in the Old Testament the prophets were worried by idolatry, the gods created in accord with human interests. There is still much idolatry. In the name of God, the Spaniards and Portuguese invaded Latin America and massacred millions of indigenous people. In the name of God, multitudes of slaves were brought from Africa to work the land. In the name of God, bourgeois rule was established in this part of the world. Could it be that the name spoken by conquistadores, slave owners, and capitalist oppressors is that of the God of the poor, of whom Jesus spoke? I remember the tragedy of Albert Schweitzer, who was a musician, doctor, and theologian. Influenced by Protestant research works on the authenticity of Jesus, he concluded that the young man from Nazareth hadn’t expected to die so soon and that therefore the conspiracy woven around him had taken him by surprise. Now then, a god is never wrong. If Jesus couldn’t anticipate the time of his death, it was because he wasn’t God, Schweitzer concluded.

A few years ago, an English minister by the name of Robinson published a book that became a bestseller: Honest to God, which was translated in Brazil as A Different God. The author states that we must be honest with God and confess that we do not know him. What we know are sketches, such as the god invoked in official documents, at critical moments in life, and in political speeches. How do you know a person: by what you think about him or by what he reveals? If true knowledge is derived from revelation, we can best know God in Jesus Christ, his historic presence. Even though medieval theology defines God as omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc., what we find when we open the Gospels is a fragile being who lives among the poor; cries over the death of a friend; feels hunger; argues with the Apostles; is enraged by the Pharisees; insults Herod; is aware of temptation; and, when in agony, goes through a crisis of faith when he feels abandoned by his Father.

Perhaps Albert Schweitzer wouldn’t have lost faith in the divinity of Jesus if he had recognized that divinity is not expressed by the fact that Jesus had some kind of a computer in his head enabling him to foresee everything. According to the New Testament, God’s main attribute is love. In his first epistle, John the Apostle is quite clear: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God, and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love” (I John 4:7–8). For the Greeks, who influenced the medieval definition of God, love can never be an attribute of a god; to the contrary, it is a lack, to the extent to which it implies a relation with the loved object. In this sense, Jesus is God because he loved only as God loves, and therefore he did not sin. He was a man centered not upon himself but upon his Father and the people. This concept of loving God led to the founding of a church based on fraternity, on a community of interests, rather than authoritarianism. It is a concept which enables Christians to discover the presence of God in all those who, though lacking faith, are capable of attitudes of love. God is present even in those who lack faith, and he has identified historically with all those who most need our love: the oppressed. “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink,” Jesus said in Matthew 25. Love is necessarily a liberator.

Once you have clarified this question of a loving God, a God calling for justice and defending the rights of the poor, it is easier to speak of Jesus’ spirituality. If we consider the Gospel accounts, we can clearly see that Jesus’ spirituality wasn’t one of withdrawal from the world, of moving away from everyday life in order to better serve God, of denying earthly realities. In John 17:15, Jesus asked his Father to keep his disciples from evil without taking them out of the world. Jesus’ entire existence was one of immersion in the ideological conflict, in the arena where different concepts and options for or against the oppressed were discussed. Neither was Jesus’ spirituality that of moralism. That is the spirituality of the Pharisees, who turn their moral virtues into a sort of conquest of sanctity. Many Christians have been trained along these lines and lose strength in their faith because they don’t manage to adjust to the pharisaical moralism they seek. God seems to live on the top of a mountain, and spirituality is taught as a manual for mountain climbing to be used by Christians interested in scaling its steep slopes. Since we are of a fragile nature, we begin our climb over and over again — it is the constant repetition of the Sisyphus legend, rolling the stone uphill.

Now, then, one of the best examples of Jesus’ non-moralism is the story of his encounter with the Samaritan woman. From the point of view of the morals prevailing in those times she was an outcast — for being a woman, a Samaritan, and a concubine. It was to that woman, however, that Jesus first revealed the messianic nature of his mission.

An interesting dialogue took place between them: “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.’”

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father… But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:15–23).

At no time did Jesus recriminate with her for having had six men in her life. He was interested in verifying that she was truthful. She didn’t lie, didn’t take a pharisaical position; therefore, she was able to adore “in spirit and truth,” in a subjective opening to God and in an objective commitment to the truth. Thus, Jesus showed that Christian life wasn’t a movement of man toward God; before that, there is God’s love directed toward man. God loves us irremediably. It only remains for us to know if we are more or less open to that love, for every love relationship demands reciprocity and entails absolute freedom. Christian morality, then, doesn’t stem from our pharisaical intention of being sinless; it is a consequence of our love relationship with God, as love imposes fidelity on a couple. The parable of the prodigal son is a good example of the gratuitousness of the Father’s love. “But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The father’s pardon and happiness is expressed over the mere fact of the son’s return even before the latter explains the reason for his absence and apologizes. So is God’s love for us.

We see that Jesus’ spirituality was life in the spirit, within the historical conflict, in a communion of love with the Father and the people. This spirituality was the result of his opening to the Father’s gift and of his liberating commitment to the life aspirations of the oppressed. For Jesus the world wasn’t divided between the pure and the impure, as the Pharisees wished; it was divided between those who favored life and those who supported death. Everything that generates more life — from a gesture of love to social revolution — is in line with God’s scheme of things; in line with the construction of the kingdom, for life is the greatest gift given to us by God. Whoever is born is born in God to enter the sphere of life. At the same time Jesus’ spirituality contradicted that of the Pharisees, which consisted of rites, duties, asceticisms, and the observance of discipline. Fidelity is the center of life for the Pharisees; the Father was the center of life for Jesus. The Pharisees measured spirituality by the practice of cultural rules; Jesus measured it by the filial opening to God’s love and compassion. For the Pharisees sanctity is a human conquest; for Jesus it was a gift of the Father for those who opened up to his grace. Jesus’ spiritual vigor stemmed from his intimacy with God, whom he familiarly called Abba — that is, Father (Mark 14:36). Like all of us who believe, Jesus had faith and he spent hours in prayer to nourish it. Luke recorded those hours in which Jesus allowed his spirit to be replenished by the Father’s Spirit: “But he withdrew to the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16); “In these days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12); and “Now it happened that as he was praying alone” (Luke 9:18). In that communion with the Father, he found strength for struggling for the scheme of life, challenging the forces of death, represented particularly by the Pharisees, against whom the Gospels present two violent manifestos (Matthew 23 and Luke 11:37–57). And in this sense, all who struggle for life are included in God’s scheme, even if they lack faith. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:37–40).

It is your fellow man, and especially the one who lacks life and needs justice, in whom God wishes to be served and loved. They are the ones with whom Jesus identified. Therefore, there is no contradiction between the struggle for justice and the fulfillment of God’s will. One demands the other. All who work along that line of God’s scheme for life are considered Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 3:31–35). This is the best way to follow Jesus, especially in Latin America’s present situation. I prefer to say that Jesus had a spirituality of the conflict — that is, a vigor in his commitment to the poor and to the Father who granted him immense internal peace. True peace is not obtained by erecting walls; it is the result of trust in God. Courage is not the opposite of fear, faith is. That faith gave Jesus the necessary will for carrying out the scheme of life, even by sacrificing his own life in confrontation with the forces of death, such as oppression, injustice, and religion made sclerotic by rules and rites.

After the talk few questions were asked. The audience seemed inhibited. It was late, and I went with Jorge Timossi and Marcela to have some rum at Marta Harnecker’s house.