October 2006 Christian Spirituality By George A Lane SJ

FINDING GOD'S WILL: DISCERNMENT Continue from ...... This magnificent realization of man's co-creativity with God in the making of the future is a product of our own age. We cannot say that Ignatius had this view of the word and of God's will, but we can say that his method for decision-making based on the discernment of spirits is congruent and compatible with this view. For as a person ponders or considers a certain good course of action (A), they will experience that consolation, which God alone gives, that peace, joy, felt-compatibility, that rightness of choice, only if they are truly choosing for God. And then whatever the particular concrete choice they make in this context, it can be said to be the will of God no matter what its specific content may be. What Ignatius proposes is a methodology for choosing which places the emphasis not on the concrete particularities of the choices but on the conditions and context out of which the choice is made. Once again, what is chosen is not so important as that the choice be made in faith, in grace, in love, and for the service of God. It is the dispositions, the intentions, and the motives that are most important. These were Ignatius' primary concerns. Spirituality for our time Are the essential elements of traditional spirituality viable in an active apostolic life today? Can we find a solid spirituality operative in the life of a person who is deeply attuned to our own times? We can find just this in the life and writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. His world view is at once contemporary and profoundly spiritual; contemporary because evolutionary, he sees the world in process; and spiritual because his is a faith-vision of the world and of man. Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest and a world-renowned paleontologist. Since his death in 1955 his writings have been published and many of them have been translated into English. Teilhard has profoundly influenced our time and has caught the fancy of hundreds of thousands of people, believers and non-believers alike. In this section we will sketch in barest outline Teilhard's faith-vision of the world, and then to describe his spirituality, in finding God in all things, which follows upon this vision. The fundamental premise in Teilhard's vision is that the world is in process; it is in a state of becoming; it is in evolution. "To our clearer vision the universe is no longer a State but a Process. The cosmos has become a Cosmogenesis." Cosmogenesis is Teilhard's own term for the ordered whole of the world in the process of becoming. The world is developing, moving from the statges of pre-life, to life, towards the perfection of human thought and knowledge and unanimity. This changed notion of the world, from something static to something in process, is fundamental for the understanding of our times.

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2006. All rights reserved.