Bro. Steve O'Neil, SM, member of the Marianist Encounters Coordinating Team, shared this address during the opening prayer service of the Marianist Encounters Conference.
As we begin this weekend focusing on the Marianist Family Encounters Project, I felt it was important that we feel we are all on the same page in understanding what Pope Francis means when he talks about “encounter.” Most of my reflections this evening come from two sources; first, an excellent article by Robert Ryan entitled "Pope Francis, Theology of the Body, Ecology and Encounter," published in the Journal of Moral Theology in 2017, and second, the Instrumentum Laboris for the Global Compact on Education.
One scholar believes that this concept of “encounter” is a defining one for Pope Francis. It is clear that for Francis, encounter is mainly a verb. It is an action. We have to physically do something. When used as a noun, it implies a previous or imminent action. In his first encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope says, “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” He goes on to say, “authentic encounter requires sustained, face-to-face, bodily interaction and includes genuine listening and openness to the other.”
It is this type of encounter Pope Francis describes in his 2020 inauguration of the Global Compact on Education when he called for a “village of education” capable of forming a network of open, human relationships and offering a broad range of life experiences and learning processes which train individuals who are willing to offer themselves in service to the community. He also states that respect for diversity is “the first premise” of an educational covenant. He is also clear that this type of education is not limited to formal education but includes education in families, churches, and social communities.
Francis also calls for this type of encounter with those most directly impacted by environmental devastation. He is particularly concerned with those directly dependent on natural resources in activities like farming and fishing and who often do not have the resources to adapt to climate change. In Laudato Si, he says there is an “intimate relationship” between the poor and the fragility of the planet. The Pope’s language of encounter ensures that solidarity does not remain in vague, distant feelings that accomplish little; rather, it must be rooted in physical contact with the marginalized.
Pope Francis goes on to equate this type of direct encounter to what he understands as an ecological conversion, an encounter with Jesus Christ in relationship to the world around them. The human/Earth relationship can only be restored with a true encounter with creation. This can happen on many levels. One such encounter involves simply spending time in pristine nature. This kind of experience often serves as a start for deeper conversion. The cathedrals of creation thus can open the space for a genuine experience of the divine.
The encounter with nature can also include the experience of nature in daily life. Witnessing the goodness of creation can happen in one’s backyard, in the park at the end of the block or a view of the river running through the city. Experiences like this, however, require a genuine openness that begins with the awareness of the other. Additionally, if this sense of encounter with nature is pressed further, and if God is particularly encountered in those who are suffering, then the face of God is particularly revealed in places where the created world is suffering the effects of environmental devastation.
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