FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
For the theme of my thesis in Spiritual Theology I chose Contemplation and Action in Father Dehon. Why did I chose this title? Most of all I was motivated by my desire to make an in-depth study of our Founder's charism, and I also hoped to better understand, in a special way, how he was able to integrate two different components (spiritual and apostolic) in his life.
At the beginning of my research the thing that struck me the most was the apostolic drive in Fr. Dehon's life; a drive which made this religious, dedicated to reparation and to the Heart of Jesus, an ardent apostle of the working class.
However, rather than having a precise knowledge of him, I had, as it were, an intuitive feeling for him. I loved his way of being in the Church (mystic and apostle), even though I did not know how to define it well. This is partly because the religious formation I received had not given me much help in knowing and in properly integrating these two components which exist in the life of every apostle.
In addition my stay in Rome was like a sabbatical: it was a time that I had requested to bring myself spiritually and humanly up to date. Certainly there could not fail to be, in this course concerning the Theology of the Consecrated Life on which I had centered my sabbatical time, a thorough study of what I felt was lacking in my knowledge of the charism of my Institute.
Another reason why I chose this theme was the importance and insistence which was given to this argument by the very course of Theology on the Consecrated Life, to which this brief thesis intends to be the conclusion. Directly or indirectly, the post-council documents emphasized an integration of the two dimensions of Christian life: contemplative life and active life, and considered them as two aspects of a single, mysterious reality. The same thing can also be said of the Synod on the Consecrated Life in their declaration of harmonization and integration: "...being for God and acting in His service both enter into a plan for life".
Method
Before starting to work on the theme, Contemplation and Action in Father Dehon, I hesitated a great deal. I tried to decide what method to follow and I attempted various possibilities. As a means of exploring the terrain my first attempt was that of gathering the material for the theme into sections: devotion to the Sacred Heart in Father Dehon, the spirituality of the victim and reparation, social activity, what the official documents of the Congregation said about him... But, in that way I always remained on the outside, without touching the real Father Dehon. What interested me was not so much what they said about him, but how they could help me to grasp the living Father Dehon, in his environment and in his context.
Encouraged by Father Santiago Silva, who guided me in this research, I chose to approach Father Dehon through his most personal writings and to follow him through the evolution of his life, as he himself had done when writing his Notes sur l'Histoire de ma Vie (his Memoirs). Thus for my general design I followed the same one that Father Dehon had proposed in his Memoirs.
The end result being:
Chapter 1: Formation This covers the period of La Capelle, Hazebrouck and Paris (1843-1865), and subsequently the period in Rome; from his days as a seminarian up to his ordination as a priest (1865-1871).
Chapter 2: The Vicariate at Saint Quentin This covers the time of his first ministry as a priest (1871-1877).
Chapter 3: The Founding of the Congregation This chapter also encompasses the founding of the College St. Jean (1877-1888).
Chapter 4: Fr. Dehon, Social Apostle This covers the most intense period of his social activity; it corresponds to the period of his religious and apostolic maturity (1888-1903).
It was with the study of this period that I concluded my work.
As a basis for my study I mainly used Fr. Dehon's most personal writings: Notes Quotidiennes (that is, his Diary) and Notes sur l'Histoire de ma Vie (his Autobiography), as well as his abundant written correspondence. It was, in fact, this documentation which constituted the primary source for getting to know his personality and his spirituality.
In particular:
1) I tried to respect the chronology of the events and to situate them in their proper context.
2) I made a detailed analysis of every phase and, at the end of each chapter, I emphasized the most interesting of the aspects which it had covered.
In this way it was much easier for me to make a final synthesis.
Results
Chapter 1: Leo Dehon as Student and Seminarian
He received the first call to the priesthood when he was in his adolescence. While still a young student of Law, in Paris, he became a catechist for the poor and illiterate and took part with dedication in the St. Vincent de Paul Conference. It was there that Leo Dehon had his first experience of the social question.
In the seminary of Santa Chiara in Rome, under the direction of Fr. Freyd, he dedicated himself totally to his spiritual formation, to the study of theology and to preparation for the priesthood.
The central idea of his personal diary during these years can be summed up by calling it the search for a union with God. These years were a true novitiate for Leo Dehon: a school of spirituality, an initiation into the interior life.
In his Diary Father Dehon allows us to see the long road of asceticism which he had to follow. Not only did he not forgot the apostolic dimension, during that period he actually had to keep it at a distance, as if it were a temptation, in order not to neglect his studies.
Leo Dehon, in the year of his ordination, lived his priesthood in its mystical dimension, more like a state of union with Christ than as a function of the Church in the service of his fellow man.
It was only subsequently, in Saint Quentin, that Leo Dehon began to discover the pastoral demands of the priesthood.
Chapter 2: Vicar at Saint Quentin
When his studies were finished and a plan to enter the Congregation of the Assumptionists had been abandoned, Father Dehon was posted by his bishop as seventh vicar in the parish of Saint Quentin. There he immediately threw himself into an intense apostolate, which continually took on new dimensions: catechism, creation of the patronage, a young people's club, social congresses, a diocesan oratory... Nothing was planned in advance, but followed the logical development of an apostle's work. The reason why he created the patronage was simply because he was responsible for the catechism of young people in school. He had the preoccupations of an apostle and of a priest. And again, it was within this logical development of a pastor's work that he created the young people's club. After that came the organization of the Bureau Diocésain des Oeuvres which had as its primary consequence, the Congress of Saint Quentin in 1876.
Thus from the Patronage to the Great Congresses (subsequently), there was a profound unity in all this activity: the development of an organic and energetic logic. What is certain is that with Father Dehon, study and social science did not precede action but were derived from it. The years 1871-1877 were, for him, a progressive and practical initiation, always linked to the concrete situation of the people who depended on his pastoral care.
It was this vital shock, as a pastor in this enormous, industrial parish, that opened his heart to the crying needs of mankind, and did so in such a way that this new discovery brought him to the other pole of the priesthood: apostolic action. These are the two poles which, because of his continuous attempt not to have one exclude the other, caused a great tension in Father Dehon. He continually sought the solution to this problem.
In the middle of this intense activity Fr. Dehon felt nostalgia for the former period of his union with God. His interior life began to suffer. He himself accounts that his soul suffered not a little from it. Thus, he sought the necessary means to help his good will and, in 1874, with other priests, he started the Diocesan Oratory: a kind of priestly community (I wanted to do something for the clergy, because sanctification is the best of the apostolates).
In spite of his continual commitments and their successes he recounted that did not feel he was in his right place. Something was missing. He wanted to become a religious, but he himself said: I wanted the religious life and Our Lord was not showing me clearly which way I should go. He tried again to enter the order of the Spiritani, and since his bishop did not let him go and because he could not leave his various works (I am summarizing for simplicity's sake), he became the founder of a new Congregation on the spot.
The Foundation seemed to be like the conclusion of a long quest. It was to be the synthesis of that balance which he was seeking and would permit his priesthood to cast itself into contemplation and spread itself into action.
Chapter 3: Founder
Father Dehon, who had wanted to become a religious in order to withdraw from the dispersion caused by works, became a founder precisely because of them. His apostolic activity had become an obstacle to his religious life. A fairly unusual situation, but one which can be understood in the continuing dilemma of the Dehonians: an availability and willingness to follow events as signs of Providence.
Difficulties
This was the most difficult period for me both to analyze and to understand: the moment of the foundation (the Spring months of 1877) and those first successive years in which Father Dehon seemed to change his style of apostolic life.
In the first place it was difficult because of the type of Congregation he founded: an ideal Congregation of love and reparation. In February Father Dehon had gone to Rome with his bishop with the secret idea of becoming a novitiate of the Spiritani, who do not have a special place for the spirituality of the Sacred Heart, and in June of the same year he had already decided that he himself would found this ideal Congregation of love and reparation.
In the second place there was the fact that during the first years after the foundation, Father Dehon went from being a priest thirsty for God and completely immersed in apostolic action (as he had been in the preceding period) to becoming a mystic; so much so that he told his first companions that contemplation was the only thing essential for the Oblates of the Sacred Heart, action was only incidental.
I have become aware, throughout the various stages of my research, how he, carried along by "providential" circumstances, lived this period as a time of getting things in order, and how this, among other things, strongly marked the initial style of the Congregation.
However, once he had gotten over his excessive emphasis on the mystical life and on the supernatural, which in other circumstances Father Dehon himself was to also consider as being "providential", we once again find him back to being his customary self. After the Consumatum est and the re-establishing of the Institute, Fr. Dehon rethought his life and found himself again. We might say that he went back to his Dehonian style. Without ceasing to affirm and insist on the primary need of the interior life and of union with the Heart of Jesus, he threw himself once again into the Apostolate (accepting being Chaplin of Val des Bois, sending out the first missionaries, founding a magazine). He did so precisely to put into operation the spirit of Love and Reparation, a pair of words which were very familiar to him and which synthesized the charism of his Institute.
A third difficulty, which I examined above all in Chapter 4, was the one concerning the theme of this work: Father Dehon, mystic and/or apostle? Did Father Dehon want to found a Congregation of a contemplative or of an apostolic type? Lastly, was the social apostolic commitment taken by him personally or as a charismatic direction also for his Congregation?
Chapter 4: Social Apostle
We know that the Social Apostolate was the field in which Father Dehon was most engaged and which characterized him the most outside the Congregation. He urged his religious to the apostolate with the most needy and to the places where the Church had the most need because he saw in this a way to make the charism of his Institute concrete.
Having acquired trust and serenity and freed from the interior anguish with regard to the survival of the Congregation, Father Dehon could now (in 1888) give free rein to his rich personality. The period from 1889 to the beginning of the new century was marked by intense activity of a social and cultural nature. I mention here, as a typical example of this apostolate, the publication of the magazine Le Règne du Coeur de Jésus dans les âmes et les sociétés. The title is already a program in itself, as I have tried to show. It was a question of intuition, and of a specific and characteristic choice made by Father Dehon: It is necessary that the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he was to say, starting from the mystical life of souls, descends and penetrates society... The date of the publication of the magazine (January 25, 1889) is also very significant.
Final Synthesis
It was a marvelous surprise for me to discover that in Father Dehon there was a life and an action characterized by a very unifying thought. By putting together the conclusions of each chapter one can see a Father Dehon with a very characteristic method of action, with a style of life which is typical of him, a style which I classify as Dehonian.
Scholars have claimed that Father Dehon never produced a synthesis of his thought, although he had written a great deal. That is because his writings were not dictated by the needs of a scholar but rather by a man of action, by an apostle.
However, continually urged by his love for God and for souls, two things are constantly present in all of his writings: the spirituality of reparatory oblation, and the demands of society. His vision of faith was decidedly theocentric, but at the same time very attentive to the dramas of the world and to the rightful expectations of mankind.
These two aspects have a reciprocal relationship to each other and condition each other reciprocally: the love of Christ leads one to the people in order to raise them and save them, and the love of the people leads one to the Heart of Christ because only in Him can salvation be obtained. The spirituality of reparation and oblation which Father Dehon developed in all of his writings, reveals his strong conviction that the first activity of the apostle lies in his interior life.
At 67 years of age, Father Dehon compared his work to two furrows, both with the same origin. He was anxious to always remember these two furrows: the preoccupation of men in social commitment, and the life of union with and oblation to Our Lord. Dehonian originality lies precisely within this articulation; for it is thus that the love of men and the love of God are joined together.
Lastly, that which is deeply impressive in the spiritual evolution of Father Dehon is the balance he always sought between apostolic action and contemplation. It was not a late discovery or a concept dating from his period of social activity, it was a constant during his entire life.
In conclusion I would like to use one of the reflections of his Roman period. In this we can already see how Leo Dehon was exhibiting the dynamic and the tendencies of his soul: Mary, he wrote on May 9,1868, leaves the contemplation of her Savior to place herself at the service of Elizabeth, or better, she unites the love of her neighbor to the love of her God.
And on May 12th he observes the reverse movement: Mary dedicates herself with zeal to service without abandoning the contemplation of her Savior.
In this little abstract, which is extremely telling, there are two notes which define Father Dehon's spiritual itinerary: contemplation in the seminary, and dedication and action in the parish of San Quentin. Subsequently, after the foundation of the Congregation, we see him maintaining the balance, at times delicate but always sought, between apostolic action and contemplation.
All his life Father Dehon was to evidence a tension between these two poles to which he felt drawn: the love of God and the love of mankind. One was not to be realized without the other.
Final Note
I have already been asked to speak of the contribution and of the originality of this work. I don't know that it is original. Perhaps its originality lies in its accentuation on this contemplation-action alliance which was such a constant in Father Dehon. Perhaps it is because it was done in an evocative summary, not with generalized statements but by allowing Father Dehon himself to speak about it through his most personal writings. In this I have made abundant use of Fr. Bourgeois, whose studies have been for me like fatherly springs from which I have drunk liberally and abundantly.
The fact that I was able to approach the manuscripts in their original language was a great advantage. French is always the basic language for those who wish to get closer to Fr. Dehon. Even more, it is the mother tongue of the Congregation which the Dehonian should be proud to speak.