Category: Contemplation and silence

  • Sobre la esperanza en tiempos inciertosSearching Mothers | NTR | Zacatecas, 2025

    On hope in uncertain times

    By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

    At dusk this Saturday, the first Advent vigil begins, when Christian communities throughout the world embark on a journey, in the midst of the darkness of time, to receive the human and divine light of dignity and hope that the Messiah brings. The ancient hymn will resonate during the nighttime celebrations, Rorate caeli , whose lyrics and melody are like a lament that rises to heaven from the desolate city, crying out that “the clouds rain down on the Righteous One,” as the prophet Isaiah (45:8) implored during the exile in Babylon.

    Each year, this four-week calendar leading up to Christmas is accompanied by symbols of light, greenery, carols, sweets, tenderness, and community. According to each culture, the waiting period for the Messiah's arrival evokes the awareness that "something is lacking" for the fulfillment of those desires for new times of justice, truth, compassion and peace, not only for a people who arrogantly claim to be the only chosen ones, but for all of humanity and even for the entire cosmos.

    Every generation has seen terrible signs that the world is ending, whether through epidemics that make us feel how vulnerable our bodies and knowledge are; whether through wars waged by empires against emerging powers that threaten their arrogance; whether through the uncertainty of life itself, diminished by age, illness, failure, loneliness, or hopelessness.

    The biblical texts that we, the believing communities, meditate on these days speak of the expectation of the messiah, first with a strong apocalyptic tone that announces the destruction of the corrupt world, reaching the entire cosmos with a catastrophe that will destroy everything because of the human pride that has taken over creation.

    Then, as the date of the celebration of the Nativity of the Messiah Child, a Nazarene, approaches, the tone of the texts becomes more hopeful with the announcement of a God who is near, humanized, small, and fragile. It is the incarnate promise of a divine and human life that begins in complete vulnerability in the story of a migrant family with a newborn baby, trying to survive on the periphery of the empire and fleeing the fury of the local ruler, eventually finding refuge in Egypt, from where a definitive chapter in the history of human redemption will begin to be written.

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    However, the collective depression we are experiencing today as humanity due to the escalation of hatred to extremes – which is spreading across the planet in an apocalyptic way “like a lie of Satan,” as René Girard said in an interview he gave me in 2007 in Paris (Hope as apocalypse)– this seems to render any narrative of hope for our uncertain times illusory. The genocide in Gaza continues as the climax of the Nakba or Catastrophe that began in 1947 with the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their lands, paving the way for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, this systemic violence continues today before our digital screens, met with indifference by social media and the international community. The wars in Ukraine, Congo, and South Sudan have become so “normalized” that they no longer make the front page of newspapers, much less a trending topic in the digital world. In Mexico, public indifference to urgent issues such as the crisis facing corn, lemon, and avocado farmers—caused by the violence in Michoacán—along with the persistent femicides and forced disappearances, speaks to a growing discontent among the population, expressed through strikes, road blockades, and street protests. But the masses seem numb, retreating into bubbles of entertainment and unrestrained holiday shopping, which, among other ills, leaves household finances in ruins for months and years to come.

    Religious consumerism is also part of the overwhelming Christmas marketing, amidst kitschy decorations and echoes of folk crafts used to make piñatas featuring popular characters. It will certainly be present at Mexican posadas, Trump's piñata , which is sold in various markets in Mexico and the United States, will receive blows as a ritual of revenge amid laughter and boos until the cardboard breaks and the blond wicks of the tyrant fly out like shooting stars in some tenement courtyard in Mexico City, Chicago or Los Angeles for the delight of all.

    A few families may perhaps rediscover the “mystical” meaning of the Advent wreath, following the Avatar of Carlo Acutis explaining Advent 2025. This video, which is circulating online, aptly explains the spiritual significance of the ritual of lighting each of the four candles during this season that prepares for Christmas. The light lit each Sunday of Advent symbolizes the "people who walked in darkness and have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2), which the prophet foretold to the Hebrew people devastated by the division between the small kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with their leaders corrupted by the idolatry of power, seeking alliances with neighboring Syria to defeat the rival tribe.

    And like a non-place amidst so much noise, creating a void in the midst of the urban clamor, in Mexico the collectives of Searching Mothers (Searching mothers light Christmas tree) will set up Christmas trees covered with ornaments bearing the faces of those we have lost. They are today “the voice crying in the wilderness” (John 1:23) because they speak on behalf of the victims of the narco-state war and the idolatry of the necropower of our time.

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    Perhaps this is where the theological core of this season lies: the absence of the Messiah is something that has inspired Hebrew and Christian generations for centuries to mobilize in order to make the messianic times present through acts of remembrance, justice and an (im)possible reconciliation.

    Beyond a folkloric celebration of the coming of God-with-us, what we are about today is going to the other side of history to contemplate there, in the silence of the night, some glimmer of light that announces the arrival of the Messiah. And those who feel in every second of their lives, in every breath—like Vero and Fabiola, mothers searching for their missing children who shared their hope with us in a recent meeting in Guadalajara—the absence that hurts and motivates them to search out of love, are the ones who teach us what hope means in times of uncertainty, the heart of Advent.

    Next Monday, December 1st, the documentary Re-exists 2025 will be presented online (Presentation of the documentary Re-exists 2025), prepared by Uruguayan filmmaker Juan Meza. There, some of the stories of awakening, healing, and embodiment shared by people from seventeen countries and different religious and spiritual traditions from four continents facing diverse forms of violence where it has been possible to spell out hope.

    Advent is a time to continue weaving networks of combative hope , say the social movements on the peripheries of the empire, so that our world does not fall into the abyss. And it is possible to do so by listening to the people who for years and centuries have resisted and now accompany us in re-existing.

    Because there will always be hope as long as there are people and communities who live the end times, so insistently emphasized by Javier Sicilia and Elías González, as the opportunity to enter into another way of existing amidst violence but pregnant with the active expectation of messianic times.

    Happy Advent season!

    Mexico City, November 29, 2025

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  • Desaprendiendo la eficacia para habitar la incertidumbreDiedrick Brackens | The Cup is a Cloud | Los Angeles, 2018

    Unlearning efficiency to inhabit uncertainty

    By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

    It has been seven months since I left Boston, after five years of academic life in the frenetic gears of American efficiency, with a special challenge in the background that consisted of translating the master ideas of modern Latin American and European theology to multicultural groups of white students from the United States, and others who came mostly from Korea, China and Japan, plus some from Turkey, El Salvador, Colombia and Chile.

    The initial courtesy of colleagues, both students and professors, gradually gave way with a few of them to a genuine conversation, always with respect for individual work prevailing and few exchanges about the meaning of our work as an academic community.

    I cherish the best moments of those encounters, such as the colloquiums to which we gave the decolonial tone of “conversations” (Beyond Global Violence Initiative), where we were able to open windows so that colleagues from the north and south could listen to each other, with certain difficulties in moving between both worlds, not only because of the differences in language but also because of the diverse experiences that sustain the body, thought and the word.

    What we all enjoyed most were the gatherings in the warmth of Valentina and Domingo's Chilean-Bostonian home, exceptional hosts to both our hearts and our palates. There, we could share, with greater intimacy and freedom, the ideas and intuitions that had lingered in the auditoriums of the Chestnut Hill campus. Sometimes, with Francis's Italian flair, assisted by Martín, and in the warmth of Neto's affability in his home, always ready to welcome us like a true Salvadoran, each of us found our place in the ebb and flow of conversation, wine, and song. In those welcoming homes, we received friends from Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Spain, Ohio, Illinois, New York, Indiana, and California, passing through Massachusetts. And there, new projects for colloquiums, books, and trips were born, projects that continue to surprise and inspire us all to this day.

    But everything was interrupted by my sudden departure from US territory in the Trump era, leaving that seed of cordial intelligence sown in living memory.

    In the following months, back home and with interwoven journeys between South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Chile, I faced the challenge of seeing diverse worlds with new eyes, paying special attention to "those who dwell in the shadows of the shadows of the shadows." Thus, I was led—by the pure gift of my hosts during those travels—to experience moments of devastating and beautiful simplicity, such as accompanying Lance from the University of Pretoria to the Congolese refugee farm on the outskirts of the city. There, the pain of being homeless for more than five years was evident in his eyes, but within them also shone a glimmer of dignity that I still carry in my heart and spirit as a call to closeness.

    I vividly remember the walk along the cliffs of Cape Town with Grant and his team, where on a sunny but cold South African winter morning we contemplated how the two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian, meet, sometimes with fury and other times with tenderness. A metaphor for intertwined worlds.

    I also recall with emotion the ecumenical Taizé-style prayer led by my Dominican brother Claudio, along with Eda, a resident of Istanbul, and a group of African and Ukrainian students living there. Interspersing mantras for peace in various languages, they gathered in the dim light of the Church of the Preachers, located near the Galata Tower. It was a glimpse of what Pentecost means, albeit only as a bastion of spirituality amidst a vibrant, modern Muslim culture that looks with curiosity at what happens within these Christian enclaves.

    I treasure in my memory the simple and brief Eucharist in the small wooden chapel of the Jesuits in Tirúa, on a small altar covered with a Mapuche textile and adorned with an oriental-style oil lamp that created a luminous twilight, on a spring morning in Wallmapu, in the far south of Chile. I had the grace to share with them for a few days their joyful dispossession, as travelers accompanying the Mapuche people in defense of their territory, their language, and their ancestral spirituality.

    In each of those experiences, the question of how to build bridges to share spiritual intimacy between people and communities of diverse traditions lingered for me. And I remembered the rituals we have explored at Re-existe, precisely seeking new languages to celebrate together our precarious lives, open to hope, according to diverse ancestral traditions, from indigenous peoples to Abrahamic religions and the secular inner lives of those who are individuals or groups without religion.

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    Back in the land of my ancestors, now free from the daily pressure of the classroom and the unbearable academic meetings, I'm beginning to understand what it means to unlearn efficiency. To enjoy the free time of otium, beyond the negotium, as I told you here a few weeks ago.

    But it's about more than just slowing down. Something compels me today to live in the moment. otherwise as a renewed inner life and the place as my homeland. I seek an external rhythm between morning walks, religious duties, attentive reading of books piled on my desk for years, and more creative writing, loosening my pen and exploring new literary genres. But it's not enough. There's something more I sense on the horizon, the search for a "place" to put down roots, grow slowly, and blossom, following that creative intuition of Ivan Illich and Jean Robert (The place in the space age). The place and time where inspiration flows will gradually become clearer in the coming months.

    Now that I have time to “do nothing,” I feel invited to reinvent myself every day. I am certainly working in the present on wonderful intellectual projects, such as the collaborative book on political theology—with the introduction I am writing, inviting fifteen contributors from eight different countries to the table of words to reflect on “the common good” in times of great catastrophe—whose manuscript I am revising with the support of Francis and Nathan, dear colleagues I met at Boston College, and which will be published next year by a prestigious publisher in the United States.

    I am delighted to review the scripts for the documentary and the comic book – by Juan and Katsumi respectively – which will commemorate the past meeting Re-exists 2025. The Spirit connecting the peripheries which we will soon share in the digital world to continue strengthening our resistance against the evil that surrounds us today as systemic violence. This initiative has been creating a multifaceted space-time where we learn to re-exist, reinventing ourselves alongside other survivors.

    And with excitement, I also imagine—along with some Dominicans who are seeking new expressions of the charism of preaching in our unprecedented context—what will emerge from our meeting on Nicaea last October in Istanbul. Situated in today's cities and villages, which are like laboratories, we seek how to communicate to humanity the joy of being inhabited by the divine and human Word that redeems us, whether rooted in the secularized world or amidst diverse spiritual traditions.

    Encouraged by these vivid memories and by the ongoing work that connects with my deepest desire, I now face the challenge of "stopping" the whirlwind of efficiency, unlearning to live and think only in terms of production. It is a journey in reverse, but above all, an implosion of a dizzying desire, to return to the still center of body, desire, thought, and spirit from which it flows another mode of existence.

    And then I will learn to let myself be inhabited and moved – as I discussed with my friend Juan Carlos La Puente in the heart of the pandemic (Mutual accompaniment in the divine Ruah)– because of the uncertainty as a gift and surprise of the fluttering of Life that encourages us all.

    Mexico City, November 15, 2025

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  • Pensar el misterio de Dios desde las ruinas del imperio Sobre encuentros en tierras de Macrina y sus hermanos capadociosCarlos Mendoza | Monasteries of Göreme, Cappadocia | 2025

    Thinking about the mystery of God from the ruins of the empire About meetings in the lands of Macrina and her Cappadocian brothers

    By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

     

    Seven years ago in Toronto a theological initiative was born - during a conversation with Claudio Monge of the Dominican Study Institute (Dost-I) of Istanbul– to think together with other Dominicans about the meaning of preaching the Gospel in today’s laboratory cities, following the style of the order of preachers that for eight centuries has had as its motto “ueritas” to seek the truth wherever it is found, as did Albert the Great in the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas and later Meister Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, the School of Salamanca and Bartholomew de Las Casas in the 16th century until reaching the School of Le Saulchoir in the 20th century.

    We exchanged many emails and virtual meetings over the years, inviting Dominican friars, sisters, and lay people dedicated to theological work to share this concern. On the horizon of those years, we saw the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE as a propitious occasion to meet in Istanbul, a city located in a symbolic territory of that ancient Christian past that today urgently calls us to return to the sources of faith.

    This is a very different contemporary context from that of the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the Eastern Church gathered at the council that defined the orthodoxy of the Christian faith in a Greek key. From the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire, which somewhat resemble the ruins of the modern West today, we perceived the call to "give an account of the hope to anyone who asks us" (1 Peter 3:15).

    Nicaea 2025 was emerging as an opportune moment to return to the sources of the living Tradition of the Christian faith in its founding event, which is the power of the love of the triune God manifested in the life and Passover of Jesus the Galilean, with the depth of the Greek categories such as person (prosopon), substance (ousia) and loving circularity (perijoresis) to spell out the mystery of the Abba heavenly revealed in Jesus Christ by the inner fire of the divine Ruah.

    Along the way, the personal and professional priorities of those who initially responded to the proposal gradually shifted, until finally, last year, a group of twelve Dominican friars and sisters from Italy, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Mexico, and India began preparing a meeting in Istanbul. This would be the starting point for a shared journey toward theology at the "frontiers" of the contemporary world, as the friars' general chapters had pointed out in the post-conciliar period; located at "the fractures of humanity," as our brother Pierre Claverie, the Bishop of Algiers, murdered along with a friend and collaborator by religious fundamentalism, said; and present as preaching communities in the heart of the laboratory cities of the global village.

     

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    Istanbul is a multifaceted and vibrant city, the epicenter of a modern Islamic culture, traversing with difficulty and imagination the tense borders between religions, cultures, and economies in the complex geopolitical context of deglobalization. Christian communities make up less than 2% of the population. The power of Turkish-style Islam and its Ottoman past shines proudly in its mosques, universities, and bazaars. The great basilica of Hagia Sophia, which served as the seat of the Christian Patriarchate of the East for over a thousand years until the collapse of Eastern Christianity in 1453, has once again become a mosque after a brief hiatus from Turkish secularism, which is now sorely missed in the country's cultural life. The church of the Chora In a newly restored neighborhood of the city, with its splendid frescoes and icons of Christian art, it is a shining flash of that Byzantine past in the midst of the effervescent modern city.

    The "Nicea OP 2025" colloquium was a very modest gathering that built bridges with a few colleagues from Turkey interested in dialogue with the Christian West, especially through art and spirituality as a means of expression for the religions of the book (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), such as Professor Elif Tokay, who works on these topics with her graduate students at Istanbul University.

    The program of the meeting consisted of three days of reflecting on the meaning of the Christian faith in the context of interreligious dialogue, to accompany communities of faith in living the testimony of the Eternal God amidst the ruins of modern civilization, which find in Gaza their breaking point of that "dream of reason that has produced monsters," as the Spanish engraver Francisco de Goya declared in the late 18th century.

    From three theological categories common to the religions of the Book: salvation, creation, and sanctification, we shaped our dialogue, bringing each of these words into our context to interpret them today. Salvation amidst the systemic violence that produces discrimination, exclusion, and death of the majority; Creation as a cosmology of the new creation that explores ecotheology in dialogue with modern science and ancestral knowledge; and sanctification as a process of divinization of the cosmos and humanity through the power of the Spirit of God, inspiring processes of healing, memory, justice, and reconciliation, especially for the victims of humanity's violent history.

    Following this path, each day we focused on one of these axes, starting with an initial presentation by one of the participants, and then engaging in an exchange of experiences and ideas about what the preaching of the Word of God incarnate in Jesus Christ means in each of these areas.

    The second part of the day was led by Jean-Jacques Perennès and Elif Tokay, who, listening to the initial conversation, opened up new horizons based on their experience and reflection.

    Jean-Jacques, as a French Dominican who has lived in the Arab world for more than three decades, guided us with his knowledge of Islamic cultures to think about the meaning of preaching in those worlds (Bibliography of Jean-Jacques Pérennès), very close to Pierre Claverie and the monks of Tibihrine who offered their lives in Algeria for friendship with people and communities of Islam. He worked at the Dominican Institute in Cairo (Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies), then as assistant in the apostolic life of the Dominican friars during the government of Friar Timothy Radcliffe as master of the order, and more recently as director of the Jerusalem Bible School.

    Elif, as a researcher of Byzantine and Eastern Christianity around the concept of perfection or divinization (theosis) in Christian mystical thought, helped us with her comments and questions to find common ground with the spirituality of Islam. Given her doctoral work on Gregory of Nazianzus as a father of the Anatolian Church, as well as on patristic works translated from Greek and Syriac into Arabic, she opened up a unique and valuable perspective for exploring these connections between communities of believers from diverse traditions, meeting at this common point of the divinization of the cosmos and humanity.

    A visit to the ruins of Nicaea, today Izink in Anatolia (Archaeologists Discover Tombs at the Underwater Basilica in İznik), on a rainy day before the colloquium, had already set a certain tone for the conversations. How could we connect that crucial moment in ancient Christianity to speak of the divine being as a loving communion amidst today's ruins with the challenges that arise for Christian, Jewish, and Islamic communities today in times of extreme violence?

    At the conclusion of our meeting, we agreed to continue building collaborative networks with Dominican friars, sisters, and lay people present with their preaching in today's laboratory cities and their communities of dialogue, both local and virtual, especially with the youngest members of the Dominican family, to deepen their understanding of the faith in the service of the People of God today.

    I proposed preparing the next meeting in Mexico in 2026 to continue exploring the paths of "holy preaching" in that other geography of the global and epistemic South, to search there, amidst other ruins that are those of the region of non-being and of those who dwell in the shadows of shadows, for alternative ways to live and think about the loving mystery of God from the cracks of today's hegemonic power with its idolatries and traps that have humanity and the planet in check.

     

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    After a modest yet profound encounter with this Dominican family atmosphere, I set out to visit Cappadocia for the first time.

    The land of Basil and Gregory, the famous "Cappadocian Fathers," who made a decisive contribution in the fourth century CE to developing a theology of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Holy Trinity. Their texts had been key sources for the patristic courses I took, first in Mexico with Friar Luis Ramos in his classes at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), and then in Fribourg with Friar Christoph Schönborn, then a professor at that Swiss university who later served in his pastoral ministry as Cardinal of Vienna for many years.

    Although I remembered having read some reference to Macrina - the eldest sister of that illustrious Anatolian family who first suffered Roman persecution and then became a promoter of the nascent monastic life - it was by going to her land that I was able to grasp her great influence as a believing woman of her time, especially in the development of an alternative spirituality to that of the Roman Empire that her brother Naucratius also explored, together with his friend Chrysaphius, as part of the early Christian monasticism on the banks of the Iris River, today Kyzilirmark, from the Pontus region.

    Present-day Cappadocia bears no resemblance to its Hittite, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman past. Twenty-first-century Turkish modernity has brought modern urban centers dedicated to agriculture and mining to the region, with a powerful tourism industry catering to travelers from China, Russia, and Japan, who fill the skies of Cappadocia with hot-air balloons to fly over the archaeological sites of ancient rock-cut monasteries; or as swarms of tourists who collapse the underground cities created by its inhabitants since Hittite and Persian times to survive the intermittent wars of the rotating empires.

    In the midst of these hordes of tourists today in lands of ancient history, I took on the task of making meditative walks through these places, trying to suspend time, to reread some fragments of the history of the Cappadocian Fathers and especially the The life of Macrina and her family, told by her brother Gregory of NyssaI am left with Macrina's deathbed prayer: "You, Lord, have freed us from the fear of death. You have made the end of life here below the beginning of true life for us. You rest our bodies in sleep for a time and will awaken them again with the trumpet of the end of time."

    From their testimony, I am impressed by the depth of their hope, with an eschatological imagination for the day to come. Not scorning this world, but opening it to the perspective of the Love that never ends.

    Perhaps this is what we need today, in times of environmental and historical catastrophe, to reflect on the mystery of God amidst the ruins of the empires of yesterday and today. To open our hearts and minds to other possible worlds, emerging from the ruins with the cries of the survivors. Other worlds, too, offered by the God of life who never ceases to love all of his creation without condition or measure.

     

    Cappadocia, October 7, 2025

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