April 2003 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... Introduction In a broad sense spirituality may be described as a way to holiness; but more technically, spirituality is man's possession by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. There is, then, only one spirituality because there is only one Christ; but when the means of union with God becomes concretised, various different styles of approach appear. A particular style of approach to union with God is then called a spirituality. Fr John Courtney Murray, SJ has said that God would have each man wholly to be His witness, but not necessarily a witness to the whole of Him. Only the Church, as the community of the faithful, in many-splendoued variety can really bear witness to the whole counsel of God. Now this distinction between man's fundamental union with God and the various styles of approach to it has very important ramifications. At any given time and place in history, society challenges men and women differently, and therefore challenges them to respond to God differently. These challenges have brought forth responses from extraordinary men and women - the hermits of the East, the monks of the West, Basil, Athanasius, Origen, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Dominic, Francis, and Ignatius to name only a very few. So penetrating was their vision of the relevance of Christ to their society that they were followed by large numbers of Christians who wished to share their vision and their way of life. There is a distinction between the basic world-view (or God-view) of these great men, their vision, and certain techniques used by their followers to implement the vision. The vision is unchangeable, but the techniques used to implement and institutionalise it are intrinsically and necessarily adaptive. In the history of the Church certain structural elements remain constant throughout the history of spirituality although they may be implemented differently at different times. If we are going to have an authentically Christian spirituality for our own time, we have somehow to provide for the perennial elements like prayer, penance, mortification, and apostolic activity. There is much talk today of searching the writings of the 20th century, our own novelists and thinkers, to find a contemporary spirituality. This will undoubtedly be helpful, but it will only be by probing the mystery of Christ as He is transmitted to us through the history of the believing Church that we will find an authentic spirituality. Accordingly, our efforts will be to distinguish the vision of the great leaders in the Church from certain intrinsically adaptive techniques, and try to fit the enduring values to the spirit and conditions of our own time. A final word of caution. We are going to examine a theology of the spiritual life. Now there is a distinction between a systematic understanding of the Christian response and the lived experience of the spirituality. Ideally they should coincide and infuse one another. But the problem is that the lived experiences of the great founders of religious orders is a unique thing, and it dies out with the people who have had that experience. It is not the lived experience which stays on to influence us; it is the theology or the way that experience was explained and interpreted that survives. For example, some of the problems we might have about the hermits in the East and the monks in the desert were not necessarily problems for them, but they are for us. This is partly because we do not have the same vision that they did, but we do have the systematic explanation of their way of life and this is what influence us. We cannot criticize their life experience; but we can criticize and evaluate their articulation or explanation of it in order to discover what may be valid for our own purpose.

- To Be Continued -