“Intergenerationality and SCAM” (Joint Missionary Animation Service)
The preacher, Fr. Rolando Ruiz Durán, a Xaverian missionary who gave us this retreat three days ago, shared with us an experience he had as a missionary of his Congregation regarding intergenerationality, reflecting within the context of SCAM. I will share only a few key points that, in my opinion, can be useful at various levels of our common life:
- Personal testimony: Having lived his missionary experience in diverse contexts (Africa, Europe, the Islamic world), facing intergenerational and intercultural challenges within the community.
- Intergenerationality: Having known how to recognize intergenerationality as a treasure, as a family, and discovering the current face of the missionary. The mission today is not only about giving, but also about receiving, from a fraternal and decolonized attitude.
- Community Life: Life in an intergenerational missionary community (ages 30, 55, and over 70/80), with diverse experiences and distinct cultures, revealed both tensions and lessons learned in her experience.
- Interreligiosity and Witness: Her shared life of faith with Muslims showed that the coherence of an intergenerational and intercultural community is, in itself, a Gospel witness.
- Challenges and Opportunities: She points out that tensions exist due to differing visions between generations, but also mutual learning opportunities. In her experience, she denounces the temptation to view young African, Asian, or Latin American missionaries as recipients of aid, rather than protagonists of the mission. Today, she challenges all of us SCAM missionaries about how we live this experience, and proposes fraternity, openness, humility, and the effort to find ourselves at a “common ground” as key.
- Contributions: The benefits of intergenerational dialogue are identified: exchange of wisdom and skills, emotional support, inclusion, transmission of values, and improved well-being.
Some insights emerged during the dialogue and sharing, such as: older adults should not perceive the presence of young people as a threat, nor with fear, nor with a desire for dominance, nor believing that they are running away from reality or know less because they are young; nor should they think they should simply obey without explanation, because some put their future or their vocation at risk… this cultivates hypocrisy in them. But, on the other hand, young people should not say: “Your time is over… it’s ours now, you don’t have our qualifications or our 21st-century knowledge, we can no longer do what you do…”
Final questions for personal and community reflection: How do you evaluate your openness to intergenerational dialogue? How do you identify lessons, resistances, and concrete ways to grow together from diversity? Are the young people who come to you as a threat or an opportunity?
Intergenerationality, in the missionary and intercultural context, is both a challenge and an opportunity to embody the mission in an authentic, credible, and fraternal way. The key lies in dialogue, patience, mutual openness, and living the Gospel through diversity.
Sister Marie Claire