“I had to rewrite all of my theology that I had studied before,” said the Austrian-born sister of the Congregation of Jesus, who delivered Loretto College’s Teresa Dease Lecture Oct. 24 to a gathering of about 65 people.
“More basically I had to learn a new meaning of what it is to be a Christian, what it means to be a follower of Christ. The response of Christianity to the suffering of humanity always was to show the greater suffering of Jesus Christ and so you have silenced every cry (but) theology which is overcoming the cries of the victims is in its very nature denying God.”
It all began in 1999 when Zechmeister, a professor of theology, travelled to El Salvador to serve as a visiting professor at the University of Central America (UCA). Touched by the people but committed to a position at the University of Passau in Germany, Zechmeister began making annual trips to El Salvador.
“It was a fundamental process of clarification of my whole life,” she said. “Things that were important until this experience got insignificant and other things that meant nothing to me became important. I fell in love with El Salvador and since 2008 I have been living permanently and working permanently there.”
What drew her back to the poverty-stricken country can be found in that very characteristic, the suffering of people in poverty.
“I learned the relationship of the suffering of these concrete people and the cross of Jesus Christ,” said Zechmeister. “I understood that if you don’t realize the relationship of the concrete suffering of people and you are only on the suffering of Jesus Christ and His cross it cannot give you redemption. If you cannot recognize Jesus’ cross in the crosses of these people, and that they had to bare this cross every day, then its power is lost.”
Not only did the widespread suffering of the people rooted in poverty change her understanding of suffering and the Christian response, it also altered her ideology of the world.
“My infantile childish conviction that our world is more or less alright, that with a bit of goodwill we can manage all problems, broke down,” she said. “Really this world is wild and cruel. This world is divided as those who can rely on the satisfaction of their basic needs like pure water, health and education, and the many people of this world who can’t rely on this.”
Sr. Noreen Allossery-Walsh, a member of the Ursuline Sisters who attended the lecture, was able to relate to this understanding of suffering first hand.
“I lived in Peru and had a similar experience,” she said. “Christians need to take the risk to be on the side of the vulnerable. We need to expose ourselves to the sufferings and not to be afraid of that.”
She continued by saying that her experience over five years in Peru taught her a true understanding of poverty and the suffering which accompanies lacking basic needs. Not only did this new understanding deepen her faith, Allossery-Walsh said it helps her to relate to the refugees she now helps settle here in Canada.
Zechmeister said her realizations of true suffering saved her religious life.
“El Salvador saved my religious life,” she said. “What helped me most was that I was meeting these persons who are living to follow Christ not in a metaphorical way but in an absolute real way that in the same time is promoting reality. I became a little more real in El Salvador.”