A group of British reporters once asked a friend of Mahatma Gandhi how it was that Gandhi was able to speak so eloquently and at such length without any prepared notes. The friend, Mahadev Desai, replied, “You and I, we think one thing, feel another, say a third, and do a fourth, so we need notes and files to keep track. What Gandhi thinks, what he feels, what he says, and what he does are all the same.”
There are, of course, reasons to be wary of making comparisons between the recently deceased Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., and Gandhi. Nonetheless, I found myself thinking about the foregoing exchange recently, and the manner in which Desai’s comment speaks to my experience of Gustavo.
Gustavo was a person of profound integrity, and his theology flowed out of that integrity—his thought, his feelings, his words and his actions were all of one piece—so that there was a truthful wholeness to him.
This integrity might be best understood in relation to one of his more important, though frequently overlooked, concepts—that of spiritual poverty. For Gustavo, persons and communities of faith are called to spiritual poverty. That is to say, in faith,they are called to empty themselves in humility before God—not in a self-annihilating way, but rather in a manner that allows them to move closer to their truest selves by becoming more fully attuned and responsive to the wisdom and will of God.
Spiritual poverty, or spiritual childhood, requires persons and communities to surrender not only their pride, avarice and hard-heartedness to God, but also their fears and the ways in which they may have internalized narratives of degradation and humiliation. Through the work of surrender, these persons and communities come to be at the disposal of God—open to doing the will of God.
Gustavo not only articulated this conceptualization of spiritual poverty—to a profound degree, he lived it out. It was this commitment of his whole person, I am convinced, that accounted for his consistency of thought, feeling, word and action.
But why empty oneself before God? Why surrender oneself in this particular way? For Gustavo, the answer is fundamentally because God is love. In emptying ourselves before God we open to the possibility of sharing that love which makes present the fullness of life.
Though coincidental, it is entirely appropriate that in the wake of Gustavo’s death, Pope Francis released an encyclical whose first line reads “He loved us.” This is an essential and recurring theme in Gustavo’s work: Through Jesus and the Spirit, God has loved us first and invites us to know and respond to that love.
Indeed, it is this divine love that grounds love of neighbor and moves persons and communities to solidarity and protest at situations that mock, degrade and do violence to human life. For, as surely as God favored Abel’s offering over that of Cain, divine love exhibits a preferential option for the poor, marginalized and oppressed—demanding, in love, personal, cultural and politico-economic metanoia.
Again, as a testament to his profound integrity, Gustavo’s whole person bore witness to that love.
A tangible sign of the love that Gustavo had for others and for the world was his sense of humor and his laughter. Anyone who knew him quickly came to know his mirth and wit. It was dependably present. But its consistency should not obscure the fact that it was remarkable. Remarkable in that a person who was so intimately familiar with the sin of the world, with the brutalities of injustice, dehumanization, apathy and greed, could still emit such joy in his way of being.
But perhaps it is not all that surprising.
In Resurrection Hope, Kelly Brown Douglas notes the subversive function of laughter—laughter works to de-absolutize the wretchedness that characterizes so much of history. In its relativizing power, joyful laughter gives testimony to the reality that sin and death are not ultimate, that they are not the only word spoken within historical reality; nor do they have the final word on life. In its own modest way, then, laughter bears witness to the resurrection. Thus, joyful laughter is a sign of hope.
In A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutiérrez wrote:
To hope does not mean to know the future, but rather to be open, in an attitude of spiritual childhood, to accepting it as a gift. But this gift is accepted in the negation of injustice, in the protest against trampled human rights, and in the struggle for peace and fellowship. Thus, hope fulfills a mobilizing and liberating function in history.... Camus was right when in another context he said, “true generosity towards the future consists in giving everything to the present.”
In faith, in love and in hope, Gustavo gave everything to the present. The world is a better place for it.
Gustavo Gutiérrez, friend of God, friend of the poor, presente!
Read next: “R.I.P. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the prophet who revolutionized Catholic theology for the poor.”
