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Lorica Renewal Program Patrician Brothers

The Entrance

New South Wales

Perspectives on Spirituality

Monday 20th August 2012 11.30am – 1.00pm Session One Contemporary Understandings about Spirituality 3.00pm – 5.00pm Session Two Defining Spirituality Faithfully and Creatively 5.30pm Eucharist Tuesday 21st August 2012 9.00am – 10.30am Session Three The Cycle of Spirituality 11.00am – 12.30pm Session Four Spirituality and the Importance of the Imagination 4.00pm – 5.00pm Session Five Discussion: Where are we with all these ideas? 5.30pm Eucharist Wednesday 22nd August 9.00am – 10.30am Session Six

Christian Spirituality: The Spirituality of Jesus – A New Imagination about God

11.00am – 12.30pm Session Seven Christian Spirituality: Defining Themes

Lorica Program Patrician Brothers

The Entrance, New South Wales

Session One

Monday 20th August 2012

David Ranson

The Contemporary Search As he welcomed the dawn of the third millennium of the Christian era, Pope John Paul II wrote to the Churches saying:

. . . I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness . . . It is necessary therefore to rediscover the full practical significance of Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, dedicated to the ‘universal call to holiness’. The Council Fathers laid such a stress on this point, not just to embellish ecclesiology with a kind of spiritual veneer, but to make the call to holiness an intrinsic and essential aspect of their teaching on the Church . . . . . . . to place pastoral planning under the heading of holiness is a choice filled with consequences. It implies the conviction that, since Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity . . . It is . . . clear however that the paths to holiness are personal and call for genuine ‘training in holiness’, adapted to people’s needs. This training must integrate the resources offered to everyone with both the traditional forms of individual and group assistance, as well as the more recent forms of support offered in association and movements recognized by the Church. This training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer. . . . Learning [the] Trinitarian shape of Christian prayer and living it fully, above all in the liturgy, the summit and source of the Church’s life, but also in personal experience, is the secret of a truly vital Christianity, which has no reason to fear the future, because it returns continually to the sources and finds in them new life. Is it not one of the ‘signs of the times’ that in today’s world, despite widespread secularization, there is a widespread demand for spirituality, a demand which expresses itself in large part as a renewed need for prayer? Other religions, which are widely present in ancient Christian lands, offer their own responses to this need, and sometimes they do so in appealing ways. But we who have received the grace of believing in Christ, the revealer of the Father and the Saviour of the world, have a duty to show what depths the relationship with Christ can lead. The great mystical tradition of the Church of both East and West has much to say in this regard. . . . Yes . . . our Christian communities must become genuine “schools” of prayer . . . It is therefore essential that education in prayer should become in some way a key point of all pastoral planning.1

Novo Millennio Ineunte (2001), nn 30-34.

Spirituality: A fashionable word and spoken of in a number of ways We live at a time in which ‘spirituality’ enjoys wide interest. Many persons today have become interested in developing a spiritual life; resources in spiritual awareness abound throughout our community.

1 Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, At the Beginning of the Third Millennium, Apostolic Letter (6 January 2001), nn. 30-34.

Session One ~The Contemporary Search

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Though it is a hopeful indication that people are seeking to develop the spiritual dimension of their lives more fully, not everything that presents as ‘spiritual’ is necessary helpful. Critical discernment is essential. In the plethora of possibilities for spiritual development, various counterfeits to genuine spirituality can present. . Acknowledging the Contemporary Search for Spirituality Where do we see the search for spirituality today, in our own experience? SBS DVD “Decadence” Episode 6. From Disenchantment to Re-Enchantment (Max Weber) The Strive for Re-enchantment

The decline of church-going Christianity has not led to a decline in belief. Vestiges of Christianity such as carols and cribs now jostle alongside neo-paganism, astrology, tarot cards, palmistry, self-help ‘New Age’ therapies, and transcendental meditation. People still want a Christian wedding and perhaps a Christian baptism, but this nominal Christian membership is not going to stop them consulting clairvoyants, dabbling in meditation, being fascinated with the paranormal and consulting an astrologer. Religious belief has become a DIY cocktail: a mixture of the sermon on the mount, a paternalistic Christian God, plus reincarnation, the stars, feng shui and a sort of pagan pantheism of the transcendent in nature. Welcome to the spiritual supermarket. Each person builds his or her own mosaic of practice, belief and experience. A lapsed Catholic described his fascination in Tibetan Buddhism, how his wife is on her local parish council, why he is delighted that his children are attending a church primary school and how a Bon spiritual healer did wonders for his health . . . . He rounded off his whistlestop tour of spirituality – he had a lot of time for Hare Krishna and was complaining that he could not find tapes of Tibetan Buddhist chants – by admitting that he had baulked at being prescribed a deer’s heart by his Bon healer. Spirituality becomes a search for life enhancing and life-transforming experiences that will make you a better person who can live more skillfully – calmer, more intuitive and more alert. The quest is for an internal spiritual balance or empowerment: self-perfection. The god is ultimately the self. As TV’s Oprah Winfrey claims: “I’m highly attuned to my divine self.”2

Perhaps, one of the telling characteristics of the New Age is given by Joseph Komenchak, reflecting on Charles Taylor’s observations, when he laments, “the tendency to reduce one’s religion to one’s own very personal, even private spirituality (“following your bliss;” “being true to your own inner self”) which then becomes the criterion by which to decide what tradition, if any, to enter, what beliefs to hold, if any." 3 As Komenchak describes this is what Taylor argues as an almost perfect exemplification of William James’ definition of religion as “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine. We see an example in a statement such as this:

Beyond anything that could have been predicted in the dying years of the twentieth century, in twenty-first century life God continues to engage and preoccupy us.

2 Madeleine Bunting, “The Spiritual Supermarket” The Age 2 January, 1997, A11. 3 Joseph Komenchak, “Is Christ Divided? Dealing with Diversity and Disagreement,” Origins 33 (July 2003), 146. Komenchak is referring to Charles Taylor’s Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 79-107


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Something else is also happening. More difficult to analyze, and certainly less determined by common sets of beliefs or behaviors, this ‘something’ is a felt or lived desire for the sacred. And as deeply rooted as it is in human nature, I am confident that this is a desire which has never gone away. It is not a renewal of religious dogma but of religious feeling. It has resonances of late nineteenth – and early twentieth-century transcendentalism but would now more often and more simply be called spirituality or perhaps mysticism. Resistant to explanations or external authority and dogma, sometimes tentative yet palpable in its effects, this is increasingly the focus of books, discussions, personal and shared reflection, and committed spiritual practice. It can coexist with formal religious belief or practice, yet is not dependent on them. In fact, as independent as it often is, it is curiously democratizing while decidedly not being ‘spirituality-lite.’ In fact, in its broad inclusiveness and emphasis on self-knowledge and responsibility, it brings into clear relief what human beings share beyond the conventionally divisive labels, creating a turning point as important as any earlier reformation in how we think about spirituality and religion, and our spiritual and religious selves more generally.4 [Italics in the original]

Historically, we live in a time of

Ascendency of the Self The Dominance of Self-Experience The Primacy of Affect (feeling)

This has enormous implications for the way in which people today search for ‘something more’ and express spirituality. However, the recent history of religious reflection itself has contributed to this. Schleiermacher’s (1768-1834) definition of religion: a ‘creature-feeling’ William James (1842 - 1910), The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, New York: The Modern Library, 1902.

Religion as “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine.” Ineffability: it defies expression for no adequate report can be given in words. It must be directly experienced, cannot be imparted to others

Noetic quality: a state of knowledge, a way of knowing, has insight Transiency: cannot be sustained for long Passivity: cannot be contrived, or manufactured, one is grasped.

James works from an empirical approach. He is criticized, particularly by theologians, because his work doesn’t take into account the way interpretation of the experience, our understanding of it, actually shapes it

Rudolph Otto (1869-1937) and the Numinous

Numen = consent, nod of the head, divine will.

[The numinous] is the emotion of a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures. It is easily seen that . . . this phrase, whatever it is, is not a conceptual explanation of the matter. All that this new term, ‘creature-feeling’ can express, is the note of submergence into nothingness before an overpowering, absolute might of some kind; whereas everything turns upon the character of this overpowering might, a character which cannot be expressed verbally, and can only be suggested

4 Stephanie Dowrick, In the Company of Rilke, (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2009), 5-6.


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indirectly through the tone and content of a [person’s] feeling-response to it. And this response must be directly experienced in oneself to be understood. 5

The experience of the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum: daunting and fascinating Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-6) The Transfiguration (Mark 9: 2-8)

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Retrieving a sense of ‘manifestation’ through his phenomenological study of religions

[We] become aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content: ie, that something sacred shows itself to us. . . From the most elementary hierophany – e.g. manifestation of the sacred in some ordinary object, a stone or a tree - to the supreme hierophany (which for a Christian, is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ) there is no solution of continuity. In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act – the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world6.

The “real unveils itself” for homo religiosus through

Sacred space Sacred time and myths Nature and cosmic religion Human existence and sanctified life Rites of passage and initiation.

An understanding of ‘spirituality’ based on the primacy of affect, on feeling a certain way, on ‘feeling connected’ in a certain way leads to various common frameworks by which ‘the spiritual’ is sought and engaged: Ego Therapy

The pursuit of psychic harmony and well-being – a kind of ‘ego-therapy’ to restore equilibrium of energy. Merely a matter of personal and private taste it, too, like some earlier forms of spirituality, resists accountability.

Pietism

Spirituality synonymous with the devotional life, the intensification of the aesthetic experience, a pious moment in which spiritual practice is engaged for the simple emotional uplift it might yield without due regard to the social and moral imperatives of genuine spirituality. Such movements regarded intellectual scrutiny as foreign to the spiritual life. This was the danger of the school of spirituality known as devotio moderna of the fourteenth century and the patterns of ‘enthusiasm’ of the eighteenth century

Spiritualism The sense of an extra-terrestrial world inhabited by celestial and spirit beings of one kind or another with whom immediate and direct contact is both sought and acquired. Mostly, this has the objective of the manipulation of forces of power that give answer to life’s powerlessness and apparent chaos. Such, however, is a sophisticated form of escapism. In the history of spirituality this has taken the form of ‘illuminism’ in which visions and voices are

5 Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 10 6 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 11


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part of a private gnosis from which all of life becomes directed. In contemporary contexts, with spirituality divorced not just from theology but now also from religion itself, it takes the form of a preoccupation with the possibilities of magic and the occult in its various forms.

Secular Spirituality – Civic Spirituality “Civil religion is about the imaginings that help us build as a community, a people, a nation. Civil religion is the kind of religion I am most interested in, and I’m beginning to think Australians might have a latent genius for it.”7

The danger of ‘rally religion’: Heidegger’s Rectorship Address 19338 See also Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom. London: Routledge, 1942 and Les Murray, A Working Forest, 1997.

Bibliography Begley, John. “Philosophy and Religious Experience.” Australasian Catholic Record 73 (1996), 213-224. Berger, Peter L. A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the rediscovery of the supernatural. London: Allen Lane / The Penguin Press, 1969. Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The silent takeover of religion. London: Routledge, 2004. Dawson, Lorne. “Otto and Freud on the Uncanny and Beyond.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (1989):2, 283-311. Dupré, Louis. “Philosophy of Religion and Revelation: Autonomous Reflection vs. Theophany” International Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1964):4, 499-513. Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1957 _______. Patterns in Comparative Religions. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Flanagan, Bernadette, “Sitting Spirituality: Where Church and Seeker Meet.” The Way Supplement 101 (2001), 20-29. Flanagan, Kieran and Peter C. Jupp, eds. A Sociology of Spirituality. Aldershot/Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Floristàn, C. "Spirituality. A Retrospective and Prospective View." In Twenty Years of Concilium - Retrospect and Prospect. Edited by P. Brand, E. Schillebeeckx and A. Weiler. Edinburgh/New York: T. & T. Clark Ltd/ The Seabury Press, 1983, 53-61. Forman, Robert K.C. Grassroots Spirituality: Why it is; Why it is here; Where it is going. UK: Imprint Academic, 2004. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A study in Human Nature. New York: The Modern Library, 1902. Johnston, William M. “The Spirituality Revolution and the Process of Reconfessionalisation in the West.” Pacifica 16 (February 2003), 1-16.

7 Stephen Crittenden, “Highly Spirited” The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 January 2001, Metropolitan Summer 2 8 Cited in Tony Kelly, “Reflections on Spirituality and the Church,” The Australasian Catholic Record 78 (2001:3).


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Kelly, Tony. “Reflections on Spirituality and the Church,” The Australasian Catholic Record 78 (2001):3, 309-320. King, Mike, “Towards a Postsecular Society,” Network, the Science and Medical Network Review (Winter 2003), 7-11. Lloyd, Murray, “Spirituality enhanced active listening – tuning in to the inner being.” Journal of Dementia (July 2005). Lynch, Gordon. After Religion: ‘Generation X’ and the Search for Meaning. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002. ______. The New Spirituality: An introduction to progressive belief in the twenty-first century. London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. McIntosh, Mark A. “Thinking about an unfathomable God.” The Way Supplement 102 (2001), 28-37. Newman, Barbara. “On Being Sprituality but Not (yet? Ever?) Religious,” Spiritus: A journal of Christian spirituality. 10 (Fall 2010), 2282-287. Otto, Rudolph. The Idea of the Holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923. Partridge, Christopher, The Re-Enchantment of the West Volume II – Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2005. Priestley, J. Spirituality in the Curriculum. King's College, University of London, 1996. Ranson, David. “Revisioning Spirituality” Conference: Journal of the Catholic Education Conference. 17 (May 2000):1, 20-24. Ranson, David. “Evangelising an Unknown Future,” Conference: Journal of the Catholic Education Conference. 17 (August 2000):2, 7-12. _______. Across the Great Divide: Bridging Spirituality and Religion Today (Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2002). Rossiter, Graham. “Perspective on Contemporary Spirituality: A Starting Point for Re-orienting Catholic School Religious Education.” International Studies in Catholic Education 2 (2010) ______. “A Case for a ‘big picture’ re-orientation of K-12 Australian Catholic School Religious Education in the Light of Contemporary Spirituality.”

_______. “Some Perspective on Contemporary Youth Spirituality: A ‘need to know’ for church school Religious Education.” Rymarz, Richard. “Lost Generation: The cultures of Gen X Catholics.” The Australasian Catholic Record, 81 (2004), 144-153. Schneiders, Sandra “Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners?” Horizons 13 (1986):2, 253-274. ______. “Religion vs Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum.” Spiritus 3(Fall 2003:3), 163-185, _______. “Spirituality and the God Question,” Spiritus: A journal of Christian spirituality. 10 (Fall 2010), 243-250. Sherry, Patrick, “Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and Enchantment,” Modern Theology 25 (2009), 369-386.


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Tacey, David. The Spirituality Revolution: The emergence of contemporary spirituality. Sydney: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2007. (especially Part IV) Torrance, Robert M. The Spiritual Quest: Transcendence in Myth, Religion and Science Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism. London, Metheurn/New York: Dutton, 1911. Waaijman, K. "Toward a Phenomenological Definition of Spirituality." Studies in Spirituality 3 (1993), 5-57. Waaijman, K. "A Hermeneutic of Spirituality." Studies in Spirituality 5 (1995), 5-39. Zinnbaeur, B. et al. "Religion and Spirituality: Unfurrying the Fuzzy." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, (1997):4.

Lorica Program

Patrician Brothers


Session Two Monday 20th August 2012

David Ranson

Defining Spirituality

For Catholics, one of the problems in sorting out [the] new interest in spirituality is to figure out how the term spiritualty is being used. Traditionally, it has tied to St. Paul’s sense of “life in the Spirit,” as opposed to the path of the carnal person. This was the understanding of the early fathers of the Church, and in the scholastic period, of Thomas Aquinas. In the late modern period, the term came to be used pejoratively, particularly in France, where it was applied to those individuals who hankered after heightened states of religious sentiment and mystical escapism . . . In our own day there is the added phenomenon of people who boast of being spiritual rather than religious. . . .

Within the broad Catholic tradition, though, spirituality has meant, and continues to mean, the ways in which people, beyond the ordinary practices of the faith, have sought to live their Christian lives more intensely. . . .

. . . Catholic spirituality today provides a broad array of styles, practices and literatures . . . It is in the pluriform possibilities of Catholic spirituality that we find both old and new ways of living more intensely in the Spirit.1

Spirituality ‘from above’ or ‘from below’? A dogmatic position supplying a ‘definition from above’ (C.-A. Bernard)

If we take the ‘definition from above’ then spirituality cannot be thought of, nor discussed, apart from theology or from explicit faith. Spirituality is always an internalization of objective faith, the way in which we appropriate and internalize what we have received, what has been revealed

Spirituality is first of all the science of the reaction of the religious conscience vis a vis the object of faith- this is the intellectual aspect; secondly it is the science of those human acts that have a special reference to God, that is, asceticism and mysticism”2 The discipline that reflects on the personal and corporate experience of God in faith, the historically and culturally conditioned articulation of that experience. Annice Callahan (1989)

Any talk of spirituality outside this context is therefore regarded with deep suspicion, without meaning and illusory. But how then

Do we take into account such a widespread interest in spirituality outside the context of formal religion?

And how do we understand the inter-cultural dimension of spirituality and the plurality of spiritualities?

1 Lawrence S. Cunningham, “Catholic Spirituality: What does it mean today?” Commonweal 24 (February 2006), 11-15. 2 François Vandenbroucke: “Spirituality and Spiritualities” Concilium (1965), 28.

Session Two - Definining Spirituality

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Given the pluralism, can we come to a definition of spirituality that is independent of explicitly religious faith? Enter the definition of spirituality ‘from below’ – that attempts to define spirituality, not simply from the perspective of explicit faith (with its expression in creed and liturgy) but from a more basic anthropological level supplying a ‘definition from below’ (j.-C. Breton)

From this ‘ontological’ appreciation of spirituality, various academic definitions for spirituality have been offered:

From the perspective of the actualization of the human capacity to be spiritual, to be self-transcending – that is, relational and freely committed spirituality encompasses all of life3 That basic practical or existential attitude of the [human person], which is the consequence and expression of the way in which [they] understand [their] religious – or more generally, [their] ethically committed – existence; the way in which [they act] and react habitually throughout [their] life according to [their] objective and ultimate insights and decisions.4

Spirituality is the ongoing transformation which occurs in involved relationality with the Unconditional.5

Self-transcendence which gives integrity and meaning to the whole of life and to life in its wholeness by situating and orienting the person within the horizon of ultimacy in some ongoing and transforming way.6

The experience of consciously striving to integrate one’s life in terms not of isolation and self-absorption but of self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives. [It is Progressive, Consciously pursued, Personal integration through self-transcendence]7

The Problem with Spirituality is whether we speak Greek or Hebrew (Jean Daniélou)

What do we mean when we speak of ‘spirit and say that ‘God is spirit’? Are we speaking Greek or Hebrew? If we are speaking Greek, we are saying that God is immaterial. If we are speaking Hebrew, we are saying that God is a storm and an irresistible force. This is why, when we speak of spirituality, a great deal is ambiguous. Does spirituality mean becoming immaterial or does it mean being animated by the Holy Spirit?8

Christian spirituality ‘caught’ between two concepts of ‘the spiritual

“Christianity is the synthesis that is mediated in Jesus Christ between the faith of Israel and the Greek spirit.”9

3 Joann Wolski Conn: Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development (New York: Paulist, 1986), 9. 4 Hans Urs von Balthasar: “The Gospel as Norm or Test of all spirituality in the Church”, Concilium 9.1 (Nov. 1965), 5. 5 Kees Waaijman, "Toward a Phenomenological Definition of Spirituality." Studies in Spirituality 3 (1993): 5-57. 6 Sandra Schneiders. “Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals or Partners? Horizons 13/2 (1986), 266. 7 Sandra Schneiders. “Spirituality in the Academy” Theological Studies 50 (1989), 684. 8 Jean Daniélou, “L’horizon patristique,” cited in Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Volume 1: The Experience of the Spirit, translated by David Smith, (New York: Seabury Press/London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 4. Congar explains that Daniélou’s essay was originally meant to be included in Recherches actuelles (Le Point théologique, 1) (Institut Catholique Paris, 1971), 22-23, though the author withdrew the essay from publication. 9 Josef Ratzinger, cited in F. König and K. Rahner, Europa: Horizonte der Hoffnung (Graz-Wien-Köln, 1983), 68.


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Christianity combines two types of spirituality – or had two kinds of spirituality encoded in its character. The New Testament is written in Greek and belongs not just to the Greek language, but to the Greek ethos (character) as well as to the Jewish; but it is the Jewish, not the Greek, which strictly speaking is biblical. Christianity has historically needed to bend, as it were, the Greek (and later on the Latin, character to the biblical ethos. . . . The Greek style of spirituality has first and foremost to do with concepts. The Jewish style of spirituality has first and foremost to do with situations. As Christians – even as secular people – we have to combine both. But we shouldn’t confuse them. The conceptual style is detached . . . The situational style is involved . . . As Christians and particularly as Catholics, our ethos includes both types of spirituality and over-emphasis on either one is spiritually unhealthy.10

The Neo-platonic contemplative ideal The Hellenistic understanding of ‘spirit’ as disembodied primarily becomes introduced in later centuries to the time of Jesus

The Hellenist understanding of Spirit did not enter Christian thinking and discourse until the time of the Apologists who were writing in the 2nd and 3rd century – people like Irenaeus and then the writers of the Alexandrian School such as Clement and Origen.

“By the fourth century the Greek mode of viewing [spiritual] reality will have become the accepted framework for Christian thinking and the basic source of Christian’s doctrinal distancing of God from ordinary life. The more typically Jewish Christian distancing will carry on through ritual.”11

Plato (429 – 347 BC)

Plato vied the human subject, or soul, as a searcher always restless short of permanent possession of the Absolute Good which beatifies. Such possession is achieved through theoria, or contemplation, which is the fruit of an ascending purification (katharsis, ascesis) of both love and knowledge and which reaches its goal when nous, the divine element in the soul, is assimilated to its supreme source.

Created in the image of God (imago Dei, ad imaginem Dei) However with sin, the likeness to God (similitudo) has been lost. Sin is the choice to satisfy some of the many desires that draw us away from attending to the one desire that leads to fullness of life. We now live in the regio dissimilitudinis (alienated, enslaved by forces beyond his control which inhibit us in the pursuit of our goals); a pre-occupation with instinctual gratification or because of total absorption in alienating external projects and ambitions. The soul is bent over to the earth and degraded to the level of the beasts. We have “exchanged the glory of God for the image of a bull that eats grass”

Imagehood continues. It takes the form of a tendency towards God that constitutes our humanity which expresses itself through our yearning for God. This is an ontological yearning (delectatio): this is a pre-elective movement in the direction of God. Our awareness of this desire has a beginning, but the reality pre-exists consciousness Purified desire eventually leads us into the likeness of God – the process of divinisation

10 Matthew del Nevo, “Two Types of Spirituality,” unpublished paper. 11 Bernard Cooke, The Distancing of God: The ambiguity of symbol in history and theology, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 35.


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Philo (20 BC – 50 AD)

An Alexandrian Jew who weds the Greek contemplative ideal to the monotheistic faith of the Bible

He introduces an allegorical interpretation to Scripture in order to show the soul its way home to God. Like Plato, Philo holds that ultimate bliss resides in the vision of God, or knowledge of him who truly is. The ascent into an invisible region in order to be initiated into mysteries begins with a discipline of the body and an ascetical life-style. (“The Contemplative Life”) Divinisation for Philo implies a self-naughting: an awareness of the ‘absolute nothingness of created being’ driven by a divine eros, an inspiration by which God calls us upward to himself. “ . . . escape also from your own self and stand outside from yourself . . . For it is the mind that is filled with the Deity and no longer in itself, but is agitated and maddened by a heavenly passion, drawn by the truly Existent and attracted upward to it.”

The Semitic understanding of ‘spirit’ as embodied . . . . . Ruach A gale Something living compared with something dead, something moving over

against what is rigid and petrified. The irresistible force of the Creator’s power

The breath of life and the power to live enjoyed by humans and animals

Ps 104:29 “When you take away their ruach they die. When you send forth your ruach they are created; and you renew the face of the earth.”

Often associated with Yahweh’s dabar (word) – the breath of God’s voice All things are thus called into life through God’s Spirit and his Word

Ps 33:6. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the ruach of his mouth.

What makes the spirituality of the Gospels intriguing and characteristic is the way in which it both continues and ruptures the spirituality of its time Towards a working definition of Spirituality Spirituality lives and breathes in tension

• Defined ‘from above’ and defined ‘from below’ Two starting points: interpretation and experience

• In the West, caught in the intersection of two cultural legacies

• A two-fold movement at the service of greater connection: ‘upwards’ and ‘downwards’

“This instant and eternity struggl[ing] within us” (The contemporary Lithuanian composer, Arvo Pärt’s ‘definition)

Spirituality awakens us; it is the dimension of our lives which works to awaken us and to keep us awake to the deepest currents and springs of life, or as David Tacey remarks, that which gives “depth, meaning and resonance to what we do ordinarily.”


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Michael Leunig, once portrayed, in a customary drawing, one of the clearest definitions of the spiritual In his portrayal, he has his figure, eyes wide open, haversack over his shoulder, following his duck, (symbol of the soul for Leunig), on a journey over what at first looks like the tops of mountains. Closer analysis of the picture reveals the apparent tops of mountains to actually be the noses of upturned faces that are asleep. This is Leunig’s inimitable way of declaring that the spiritual person is the one who lives their life awake, whilst the rest of the world slumbers. It is not surprising that elsewhere, Leunig prays,

“God awake us, and awaken with us.”12

Yet, “I have never met a man who was fully awake. How could I have looked him in the

face?” We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not be mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep . . . To [the one] whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labours of [people]. Morning is when I am awake and there is dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep . . . The millions are awake enough for physical labour . . . only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.13

It is an ‘awakening’ to both the height and depth of our experience. Spirituality is a certain attentiveness to life. It is a certain attentiveness to life which contains within itself a certain desire, a certain hopefulness, a certain anticipation. “He who looks outwardly, dreams. But he who looks within, awakes.”14 The ‘awakening’ to which Thoreau alludes lays at the heart of the gospel. There, though, it is our encounter with the risen Jesus which awakens us. He is the One who comes to greet us, and who calls us, “to come and see.” (John 1:39). The Risen Christ, in the Spirit, continues to open our eyes and our ears, so that we might see and hear, might listen more deeply, and might perceive more fully the truth of ourselves, of the world and of the divine promise that is offered us (cf Matt 13:14-16). The Risen Christ awakens us to the depth and to the height, to the entire breadth, of our humanity and our divine vocation (cf Eph 3:16-19). Our discipleship of the Risen Christ demands that we ‘stay awake’ in constant expectation of the varied ways in which his approach is incarnated within our experience (cf Matt 24:42; 25:13; Mk 13:33, 35). The Spirit thus “rouses us from our slumber,” from our passivity and inertia and brings refreshed vision and new energy. It is St. Paul, however, who reminds us that we “do not live in the dark” for “we are children of light and children of the day: we do not belong to the night or to darkness, so we should not go on sleeping, as everyone else does, but stay wide awake.” (1 Thess 5:4-6; Rom 13:11). Thus, the paschal mystery finds its vitality in the way that the Spirit leads us from our slumber into a life which is fully awake. The Pentecostal miracle is the transformation of slumber, the New Testament metaphor for fear, into wakefulness, which is its metaphor for love. For love fully awakens us whilst fear renders us somnolent. If Jesus has come that we may have life and have it to the fullest, he does so not in some ethereal theological way. He does so by first awakening us, by opening our ears and our eyes, so that hearing more and seeing more, we become more aware, more receptive, more alive; he does so be enabling us to move beyond our fears and to trust that life is, in the end, entirely gracious. Life belongs to the one who is awake, no longer fearful, but enlivened by love.

12 Michael Leunig, A Prayer Tree, Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1990. 13 Henry Thoreau, Walden, (Signet Classics, 1960), 65-66. 14 Carl Jung, cited in Bushrui and Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet, 152.


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To see, to become aware, however, is not as simple as it sounds. Our vision is blurry for as T. S. Eliot suggested, we cannot bear very much reality Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality.”15

By instinct and by choice we can shield ourselves from seeing too widely, and from hearing too deeply. In her 2004 book, Putin’s Russia, the recently murdered Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, lamented that her society, “wants nothing more than to be lulled into sleep.” 16 There is a part in each of us, more or less, that wants to live life asleep.

15 T S Eliot, Four Quartets, ‘Burnt Norton,” I. 16 Cited in James Button, “A tough crusader falls,” The Sydney Morning Herald, 14-15 October 2006, 27.


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Bibliography Alexander, J. "What Do Recent Writers Mean by Spirituality." Spirituality Today 32, (1989):3, 247-56. Ault, Nancy. “Envisioning a Systems-Based Spirituality for Lifelong Christian Education.” Colloquium 37 (2005:1), 45-67. Bechtler, Regina. "Convergences in Theology and Spirituality." The Way 25 (1985): 305-14. Breton, J-C. "Retrouver Les Assises Anthropologiques De La Vie Spirituelle." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 17, no. 1 (1988). Cousins, E. "Spirituality: A Resource for Theology." CTSA Proceedings 35 (1980): 124-37. Cousins, E. "What Is Christian Spirituality?" In Modern Christian Spirituality: Methodological and Historical Essays, edited by B. Hanson, 39-44. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. Cunningham, Lawrence.S. "Spirituality after Vatican 2: The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality." U.S. Catholic Historian 18, no. 2 (2000): 27-34. Cunningham, Lawrence, “Catholic Spirituality: What does it mean today?” Commonweal (24 February 2006), 11-15. Dreyer, Elizabeth A, and Mark S. Burrows, eds. Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2005. Dupuy, M. "Spiritualité." In Dictionnaire De Spiritualité, 1142-73. Paris: Beauchesne, 1990. Eire, C.M. "Major Problems in the Definition of Spirituality as an Academic Discipline." In Modern Christian Spirituality: Methodological and Historical Essays, edited by B. Hanson. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. Floristàn, C. "Spirituality. A Retrospective and Prospective View." In Twenty Years of Concilium - Retrospect and Prospect, edited by P. Brand, E. Schillebeeckx and A. Weiler, 53-61. Edinburgh/New York: T. & T. Clark Ltd/ The Seabury Press, 1983. Forman, Robert K.C. Grassroots Spirituality: What it is, Why it is here, Where it is going. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2004. Frolick, M. “Spirituality Report” CTSA Proceedings 55 (2000), 152-153. Hanson, B. "Spirituality as Spiritual Theology." In Modern Christian Spirituality: Methodological and Historical Essays, edited by B. Hanson, 45-51. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990. Megyer, E. "Spiritual Theology Today." The Way 21 (1981): 55-67. O’Murchu, Diarmuid, Reclaiming Spirituality. New York: Crossroads, 2001. Pieris, Aloysius. “Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches, “ Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 10 (Spring 2010), 38-51. Priestley, J. "Spirituality in the Curriculum." King's College, University of London 1996. Principe, W. "Toward Defining Spirituality." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 12, no. 2 (1983): 127-41. Principe, W. "Theological Trends: Pluralism in Christian Spirituality." The Way 32, no. 1 (1992): 54-61.


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Ranson, David. Across the Great Divide: Bridging Spirituality and Religion Today. Strathfield, NSW: St. Pauls Publications, 2002. Schneiders, S. "Spirituality in the Academy." Theological Studies 50 (1989): 676-97. Schneiders, S. "The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline." Studies in Spirituality 8 (1998): 38-57. Sheldrake, P. "The Study of Spirituality." The Way 39 (1999): 162-63. Waaijman, K. "Toward a Phenomenological Definition of Spirituality." Studies in Spirituality 3 (1993): 5-57. Wakefield, G.S. "Spirituality." In A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, edited by G.S. Wakefield. London: SCM Press, 1983. Vandenbroucke, Francois. “Spirituality and Spiritualities”. Concilium (1965), 28 Villegas, Diana L. “Personal Engagement: Constructive Source of Knowledge or Problem for Scholarship in Christian Spirituality.” Horizons 28 (2001:2), 237-254. Von Balthasar, Hans. “The Gospel as Norm or Test of all Spirituality in the Church”. Concilium 9 (November, 1965), 5



Session Three

Tuesday 21st August 2012

David Ranson

Spirituality: A Cycle Spirituality: ‘a certain awakening’ – linked to consciousness: not a singular activity but a constellation of activities, i.e. an unfolding experience Spirituality and Consciousness The cornerstones of consciousness (Bernard Lonergan) Be attentive Be intelligent Be rational Be responsible Be in love

The four activities of Attending Inquiring Interpreting Acting

The Spiritual Moment: A Moment of Awakening What have been the moments of ‘awakening’ in my own life?

“You know how much of our lives we’re alive, you and me? Nothing. Two minutes out of the year. When we meet someone new; when we get married; when we’re in difficulties; once in our life at the death of someone that we love. That’s it. In a car crash and that’s it.” (David Marnet, Edmond, playscore).

Context provides the ‘trigger points of transcendence”. ‘Limit experiences’

of nature of communion of contingency of congruency

Peter Berger’s Signals of Transcendence – 5 Prototypical human gestures (1969) Order The experience of the joy of play which suspends time and death and points towards

eternity Hope and courage with respect to the future of humanity The thirst for justice and the rejection and condemnation of absolute evil The sense of humour, combining both comedy and tragedy, which in turn points to

the finiteness of human existence Michael Novak

Freedom Honesty Community Courage

Session Three - Spirituality: A Cycle

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DeHart’s Dutch study on transcendence in youth

Personal confrontation with suffering and death Seeing certain films and television programmes and listening to certain kinds of

music or radio programmes Wars and national disasters Communicative experiences such as good conversation or getting to know another

person in a positive way A break in the family routine, such as divorce of conflict between parents, but also

the experience of a wedding1

Different contexts, - geographical, social, historical, political, economic, - provide different moments of awakening, different ways and means of attending, inquiring, interpreting and acting. These moments and means are very much influenced by contextual forces

The structures of society, the terms in which it voices its aspirations, the objective and subjective forms of the common conscience, build up the religious conscience, which in turn manifests them . . A particular type of society and a particular social balance (including the essential elements of the significance of power. . . ) are reflected in the problems of spiritual experience.2

The Cycle of Spirituality Each stage to be distinguished logically rather than chronologically

The identification of stages helps us

Differentiate the stages Not to confuse one stage with another Not to overburden one stage with the expectations of a further stage in the cycle Recognise where we need to continue to move, where we can stuck.

The two ‘moments’: the ‘Spiritual’ and the ‘Religious’ Johnston’s ‘micro-spiritual’/’macro-spiritual’ “Being Spiritual but not Religious” The Splitting of Spheres The Formation of Triangles

‘attend’, ‘inquire’, ‘interpret’: a pseudo spirituality that remains ‘a good idea’

‘attend’, ‘inquire’, ‘act’: a spirituality conditioned more by whim and prejudice but without depth.

‘interpret’, ‘act’, ‘inquire’: intellectual speculation becomes the substitute for more subjective

exploration that is attentive to the affective life of an individual

‘interpret’, ‘act’, ‘attend’: an intensely devotional spirituality resistant to intellectual credibility.

1 The above are taken from John Shea, Stories of God, (Chicago: The Thomas More Press,1978), 11ff and J. Van der

Ven, PracticalTheology: An Empirical Approach. (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1993), 221

2 (Michael de Certeau, “Culture and Spiritual Experience.” Concilium 9 (November 1966):2, 3-16


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Bringing the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ together: historical reflections 1. Henry John Newman (1801-1890)3

Three forces: the spiritual, the theological, the pastoral Associated with Christ as Priest, Prophet, King Tensions between the distinct forces essential to a living organism

Truth is guiding principle of theology and theological inquires; devotion and edification of worship, and expedience of government. The instrument of theology is reasoning; of worship our emotional nature; of rule, command and coercion. Further, reasoning tends to rationalism, devotion to superstition and enthusiasm, and power to ambition and tyranny.

Each force needs the corrective of the other two Theology needs to draw on prayer and personal experience if it is to avoid rationalism, as it needs to be shaped by pastoral prudence Governance needs to respect the devotional experience of people if rigid pastoral policies are not to crush their spirit and to be in accord with the truth of the Gospel, so that pastoral policies don’t reflect simply the whim of those in authority Arduous as are the duties involved in these three offices, to discharge one by one, much more arduous are they to administer when taken in combination. Each of the three has its own interests to promote and further; each has to find room for the claims of the other two; and each will find its own line of action influenced and modified by the others . . .

Truth must have the last word: faith and practice, spirituality and pastoral order are all answerable to revelation

2. Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925)4

keen student of science (geology), philosophy, Biblical criticism and religious history

Loisy and B. Tyrrell of the Modernist Movement became lifelong friends 1905 founded the London Society for the Study of Religion.

1908 The Mystical Element of Religion as studied in St. Catherine of Genoa and

her friends. 1921 Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion

Hügel’s Triad of Religious Elements Institutional

First encountered as a Child Religion is a fact, a thing External, authoritative, historical, traditional Danger: claim for absoluteness, exclusivity, against modification

3 The Via Media of the Anglican Church. 3rd Edition. (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1901), xv-xciv. 4 The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends. (London/New York: J.M. Dent & Co/E.P. Dutton & Co, 1908), 50-82.


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superstition ‘Mystical’ (spirituality) seen as ‘revolution’

Intellectual Adolescent phase

Time of questioning, reasoning, argumentative, abstractive. “Direct experience . . . brings home to the child that these sense informations are not always trustworthy . . And again, the very impressiveness of this external religion stimulates indeed the sense of awe and wonder, but it awakens curiosity as well. The time of trustful questioning, but still of questioning, first others, then oneself, has come”

Religion here becomes Thought, System, a Philosophy Danger: rationalism Mystical seen as ‘subjective’, ‘sentimental’

A clear, cold Deism, a purely Rationalistic Religion

Mystical (Adult) Certain interior experiences, certain deep seated spiritual pleasures and pains, weaknesses and powers, helps and hindrances are increasingly known and felt in and through interior and exterior action , and interior suffering, effort and growth

Religion here is felt rather than seen, or reasoned about Loved and lived rather than analyzed Action and power rather than either external fact or verification Danger: incurable tyranny of mood and fancy – fanaticism Intellectual seen as hair splitting rationalism Institutional seen as oppressive ballast

These three elements ever involve tension, of a fruitful or dangerous kind

Reason why the tension is not held together: The religious temper longs for simplification


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Bibliography Dowson, Martin and Stuart Devenish, eds. Religion and Spirituality. International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice. Series edited by Elinor L. Brown, University of Kentucky, Rhonda G. Craven, University of Western Sydney and George McLean, Catholic University of America, 2010. Lash, Nicholas. Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God. London: SCM Press, 1988. Lonergan, Bernard. Insight: a study of human understanding. New York: Philosophical Library, 1958. Ranson, David. Across the Great Divide: Bridging Spirituality and Religion Today. Homebush: St. Paul’s Publications, 2002. Ryan, Tom, “’Speaking for Myself Personally . . .’ Awareness of Self, of God, of Others,” Australasian Catholic Record. (April 2002), 259-272. Shea, John. Stories of God: an unauthorized biography. Chicago: The Thomas More Press, 1978. Zinnbaeur, B. et al. "Religion and Spirituality: Unfurrying the Fuzzy." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 4 (1997).



Session Four

Tuesday 21st August 2012

David Ranson

The Importance of Imagination in Spirituality Seeing and Hearing in a New Way

Spirituality : A certain attentiveness to life. An awakening

A ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ the deeper currents in life. Our ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ are opened

“I thank you God for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes . . . .

(now the ears of my ears awake now the eyes of my eyes are opened.)”1

The two faculties of ‘sight’ and ‘hearing’

The Spirit touches the ear and the eye that we may ‘hear more’ and ‘see more’ The juxtaposition of the cures of the blind and the deaf (eg Mark 7:31-37 + 8:22-26) “If anyone has ears to hear, let them listen” (Matt 11:15; 13:9, 13, 43)

“Much as you hear, you do not understand; much as you see, you do not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears hardly hear and their eyes do not dare to see. If they could see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, they would turn back and I would heal them. [Is 6:9]. But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears, because they hear.” (Matt 13:14-16)

The two lungs of prayer Hearing + Seeing = Listening = Receptivity = Wakefulness = Aliveness “Stay awake” (Matt 24:42 + 25:13) “Be alert and watch . . .” (Mk 13:33, 35)

Approach all of life with a sense of expectancy, with a heart that strains to hear and to see the coming of the Kingdom in our midst (Lk 17:21; 21:29-33)

“Be ready, dressed for service and keep your lamps lit, like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding. As soon as he comes and knocks they will open to him. Happy are these servants if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak.” (Lk 12:35-38)

1 e.e.cummings quoted in T.N.Hart, The Art of Christian Listening (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 29

Session 4 ~ The Importance of Imagination in Spirituality

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“So take care how well you listen; for anyone who has will be given more; from anyone who has not, even what they think they have will be taken away.” (Lk 8:18)

Ausculta! Listen with the ear of your heart (6th century Rule of St. Benedict) This is a different way of coming to knowledge through ‘the hand’, i.e. approaching the world from ‘grasping’: Moltmann’s ‘way of the eye’ as distinct from the ‘way of the hand.’

Meditation is a mode of perception which we continually practice in everyday life without noticing it particularly, and without surrendering ourselves to it. We see that a tree is beautiful – but we still drive past it at fifty miles an hour. We become aware of ourselves – and hurry off to work, forgetting ourselves altogether. We have no time to become aware of things, or of ourselves. When we try to get to know something by the methods of modern science we know in order to achieve mastery: ‘knowledge is power’ proclaimed Francis Bacon. We take possession of our object and no longer respect it for what it is . . . But meditation is pre-eminently a way of sensory perception, of receiving, of absorbing and participating. . . . The Greek philosophers, the Fathers of the church and the monastic Fathers comprehended things ‘with their eyes’ . . . We really arrive at understanding when we go on looking at a flower or a sunset or a manifestation of God until this flower is the flower per se, and this sunset is the sunset, and this manifestation of God is wholly God and nothing but God himself. Then the observer himself becomes part of the flower, or part of the sunset, or part of God. For through his perception, he participates in his object or counterpart, and is transported into it. The act of perception transforms the perceiver, not what is perceived. Perception confers communion. We know in order to participate, not in order to dominate. That is why we can only know to the extent in which we are capable of loving what we see, and in love are able to let it be wholly itself. Knowledge, as the Hebrew word (yada) tells us, is an act of love, not an act of domination. When someone has understood, he says: ‘I see it. I love you. I behold God.’ . . . Today we generally understand things quite differently, for we perceive with our hands. Of course, the sense of touch is the primal sense of the skin. By feeling, we develop feelings. By touching, we ourselves are touched. Through touch we become aware of other people and ourselves. Through touch every child explores the world, and itself in the world. But in the modern world of self-awareness. . We want to ‘grasp’ everything. We acquire knowledge by means of our grasping, possessive and colonizing hands. Once we have ‘grasped’ something, we have it under control and possess it. Once we possess something, we can do what we like with it. So we know in order to ‘master’ our object. If someone things he understands something, he says, ‘Yes, I grasp that. I’ve got it. I can cope with it.’ The result is pure domination. If we compare these two ways of knowing, it is easy to see that modern men and women need at least a balance between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, the active and the contemplative life if they are not to atrophy spiritually.2

To Pray by Gazing

Gazing too is transformative. At school we were told by the teacher not to gaze out the window or into space, but to “pay attention,” We went on school trips to museums or art galleries and there we were permitted to gaze at what we liked. Today some people spend massive amounts of time watching

2 Jürgen Moltmann: “Theology of Mystical Experience” in The Spirit of Life: A universal affirmation, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 199-201.


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television or computer screens, but none of this is proper gazing. Gazing is an absorption. To gaze is to absorb oneself or be absorbed by what one is looking at; one can “see” and “look”” but not, in our sense, gaze. Gazing needs one’s time absorbed in it, so that you forget time and the time you spent gazing becomes another time without space. Gazing absorbs your being and time vanishes into the gaze. But gazing is not gawping or staring (as at a screen); with a gaze, a true gaze as we mean it here, our sensibility is being nourished and elevated; at something which is merely entertaining (although it might be absorbing in some sense too) we do not “gaze,” rather we are “taken in” by it. In gazing we are not “taken in” but between my gaze and that at which I gaze, the distance is infinite, however intimate the moment. This is the wonder of gazing.3

From David Malouf:

. . . he had seen the storms approach and had clambered up . . . to a viewpoint high above the farm, in a stillness, once he had reached the top, that seemed ultimate. The birds had fallen quiet. They had gone in out of sight . . . the leaves around him were glowingly still. They seemed to have passed out of any reality in which they might be touched by rain or wind. They were transparent, you could see the light through them. It was the light . . . The light was inside things. He thought of the stained glass windows of St. Michael’s when there was a night service and all the colour and glory of the figures, afloat above clumps of darkness, existed for those outside . . . It was as if he had go to the other side of things. It was the quality of his seeing that had changed. Every tree now started out of the earth as a separate object newly made, not a peach tree, one of a row, but this tree and no other, all the trees in their rows utterly separate one from an other and casting shadows of individual shape on the sloping earth, which was all rough clods, each one golden brown and also lighted from within and so real that it came to you as if it had been flung clean from your hand.4

To truly attend to something, to truly listen, is the most difficult of tasks. Simone Weil argues we need to develop this capacity to be still, waiting, ready to recognise the disclosure of truth rather than forcing its conclusion with sheer muscular effort or, worse, with violence.

To have true attention we must know how to understand it. More often we confuse an aspect of muscular effort with attention. If one says to some students, “Come now, pay attention!” one sees them frown, hold their breath, contract their muscles etc. If after two minutes one asks them what they were paying attention to, they cannot answer. They have not paid attention to anything, They have simply not paid attention. They have contracted their muscles.5

This is simply an act of concentration , rather than attention, according to Weil. It simply leaves us tired. Attention, rather, consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means “holding that which is perceived.”6

Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is penetrated. . . . The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as [it is], in all [its] truth. . . .7

3 Matthew Del Nevo, The Work of Enchantment, (New Brunswick, USA and London, UK: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 7-8. 4 David Malouf, Harland’s Half Acre (London: Chatto and Windus, 1984), 14-15 5 Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies,” in Waiting for God (London: Collins Fontana Books, 1950), 70. 6 Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies.” 7 Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies.”


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In this there is the prayer of the eye, the prayer of gazing

This leads to an iconic consciousness about life – a sacramental consciousness. The experience of God must deepen the experiences of life. It cannot reduce them because it awakens the unconditional Yes to life. As Moltmann writes, the more I love God the more gladly I exist. The more immediately and wholly I exist, the more I sense the living God, the well of life, and life’s eternity. And so in rewriting Augustine, he prays:

When I love God, I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings, the scents, the sounds of all this protean creation. When I love you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all my senses in the creations of your love. In all the things that encounter me, you are waiting for me. For a long time I looked for you within myself, and crept into the shell of my own soul, protecting myself with an armour of inapproachability. But you were outside-outside myself-and enticed me out of the narrowness of my heart into the broad place of love for life. So I came out of myself and found my soul in my senses, and my own self in others.8

A limpid sound rises amidst the silence; a trail of pure colour drifts through the glass; a light glows for a moment in the depths of the eyes I love . . . Three things, tiny, fugitive: a song, a sunbeam, a glance . . . So, at first, I thought they had entered into me in order to remain and be lost in me. On the contrary, they took possession of me and bore me away . . . I melted away in it, lost in a strange yearning to attain some individuality vaster and simpler than mine . . . when the world reveals itself to us, it draws us into itself: it causes us to flow outwards into something belonging t it, everywhere present in it and more perfect than it . . . You came down into me by means of a tiny scrap of created reality, and then suddenly you unfurled your immensity before my eyes and displayed yourself to me as Universal Being. Lord, in this first image, so close at hand and so concrete, let me savour you at length, in all that quickens and all that fills to overflowing, in all that penetrates and all that envelopes - in sweetness of scent, in light and love and space.9

Imagination is the mental faculty that recognises the possibility in things as they are.

To see what all this really was, she insisted -beyond the relics and the old-fashioned horrors and show - you needed a passion for the everyday. That was how she put it. And for that, mere looking got you nowhere. “All you see then,” she told him, “is what catches the eye, the odd thing, the unusual. But to see what is common, that is the difficult thing, don’t you think? For that we need imagination, and there is never enough of it - never, never.10

With our imagination we see in and through something to another thing (analogical imagination)

Imagination should not to be confused with fantasy11

8 Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 98. 9 Teilhard de Chardin, “The Mystical Milieu” in Writings in Time of War (Collins, 1968), 117-118, 120 10 David Malouf, “The Sun in the Winter” In Antipodes (London: Chatto and Windus, 1985), 89 11 See Richard T. Knowles, “Fantasy and Imagination” in Imagination, Memory and Anticipation in Human and Christian Formation, Studies in Formative Spirituality, 6(1985: 1), 53-63.


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Fantasy: daydreaming, dreaming, wishful thinking, fantasising tends to be a private monologue, not shared does not lead to action I remain passive

Fantasy takes me out of life Becker (1973) suggests fantasy emerges out of fear

The child faced with its own vulnerability and the chaotic nature of things, develops a fantasy of the self and situation which is less fearful and more consoling

Fear calls for fantasy and fantasy, although alleviating the fear in the short term, increases it in the long

Based on fear our fantasies tend to be narrow, repetitive Imagination: an open-ended experience Imagination is something that can be communicated and it leads to action 1. Opens perception invites participation with a relaxation of tension looks for the possibility in things 2. Willingness to become engaged, overcome resistance, lack of ambivalence We say ‘Yes’ to the task, rather than “Yes, but . . “ or “later” or “maybe” 3. Movement In imagining a solution we are already moving to carry it out Imagination is a particular way of moving in the world there is a sense of harmony with ourselves, with others, with the world Imagination gives a sense of purpose But all in all authentic imagination keeps us grounded in reality Imagination is essential for our spiritual life.

Authentic Spirituality consists in this: letting it come home truly and deeply how things are and responding out of that situation. Peter Steele sj

“Spirituality gives depth, meaning and resonance to what we do ordinarily.” (David Tacey)

The process of conversion constantly acts to shape our imaginations.

Ricouer: any ethic that addresses the will in order to demand a change must first be subject to a poetry that opens up new possibility for the imagination Martini: conversion is a change in our image of God


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Bibliography Alves, Ruben A. Tomorrow’s Child: Imagination, Creativity and the Rebirth of Culture. London: SCM Press, 1972. Bausch, William J. Storytelling: Imagination and Faith. Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996. Brann, Eva T. H. The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1991. Brueggemann, Walter, The Prophetic Imagination. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978, 1985 reprint. Fischer, Kathleen R. The Inner Rainbow: The Imagination in Christian Life. New York: Paulist Press, 1983. Green, Garrett, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989. Kelly, Tony, “Faith Seeking Fantasy: Tolkein on Fairy Stories.” http://www.mcauley.acu.edu.au/theology/Issue3/kelly.htm. Accessed 18 February 2003. Lynch, William F. Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination. Notre Dame, IND: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960. Rahner, Karl, “Seeing and Hearing.” In Everyday Faith. London: Burns and Oates, 1968. Wilder, Amos Niven. Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976. See also Imagination, Memory and Anticipation in Human and Christian Formation, Studies in Formative Spirituality. Volume VI (February, 1985), Number 1.



Session Six

Wednesday 22nd August 2012

David Ranson

The Spirituality of Jesus: A New Understanding of God Our Christian Spirituality is always Christocentric For Christian life, the encounter always remains personal, i.e. person to person. It is a spirituality of intimacy. The encounter is a response to the invitation to a fuller, more human and more divine life that is the promise contained in such an encounter. The encounter opens up new height, and new depth, of possibility. Christian spirituality is the active commitment to continue to deepen the experience and implications of such an encounter. Extracts from Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church,” Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (30 September 2010). [Note the footnote reference are retained in these extracts to indicate the place of the extracts in the document]

Christians realized that in Christ the word of God is present as a person. The word of God is the true light which men and women need. In the resurrection the Son of God truly emerged as the light of the world. Now, by living with him and in him, we can live in the light.

This “condescension” of God is accomplished surpassingly in the incarnation of the Word. The eternal Word, expressed in creation and communicated in salvation history, in Christ became a man, “born of woman” (Gal 4:4). Here the word finds expression not primarily in discourse, concepts or rules. Here we are set before the very person of Jesus. His unique and singular history is the definitive word which God speaks to humanity. We can see, then, why “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a definitive direction”.[33] The constant renewal of this encounter and this awareness fills the hearts of believers with amazement at God’s initiative, which human beings, with our own reason and imagination, could never have dreamt of. We are speaking of an unprecedented and humanly inconceivable novelty: “the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14a). These words are no figure of speech; they point to a lived experience! Saint John, an eyewitness, tells us so: “We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14b). The apostolic faith testifies that the eternal Word became one of us. The divine Word is truly expressed in human words.

The patristic and medieval tradition, in contemplating this “Christology of the word”, employed an evocative expression: the word was “abbreviated”.[34] “The Fathers of the Church found in their Greek translation of the Old Testament a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Saint Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: 'The Lord made his word short, he abbreviated it' (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28) … The Son himself is the Word, the Logos: the eternal word became small – small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the word could be grasped by us”.[35] Now the word is not simply audible; not only does it have a voice, now the word has a face, one which we can see: that of Jesus of Nazareth.[36] . . . . .

Session 6 ~ The Spirituality of Jesus: A New Understanding of God

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. . . .Calling to mind these essential elements of our faith, we can contemplate the profound unity in Christ between creation, the new creation and all salvation history. To use an example, we can compare the cosmos to a “book” – Galileo himself used this example – and consider it as “the work of an author who expresses himself through the ‘symphony’ of creation. In this symphony one finds, at a certain point, what would be called in musical terms a ‘solo’, a theme entrusted to a single instrument or voice which is so important that the meaning of the entire work depends on it. This ‘solo’ is Jesus. … The Son of Man recapitulates in himself earth and heaven, creation and the Creator, flesh and Spirit. He is the centre of the cosmos and of history, for in him converge without confusion the author and his work”.[40]

In all of this, the Church gives voice to her awareness that with Jesus Christ she stands before the definitive word of God: he is “the first and the last” (Rev 1:17). He has given creation and history their definitive meaning; and hence we are called to live in time and in God’s creation within this eschatological rhythm of the word; “thus the Christian dispensation, since it is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim 6:14 and Tit 2:13)”.[41] Indeed, as the Fathers noted during the Synod, the “uniqueness of Christianity is manifested in the event which is Jesus Christ, the culmination of revelation, the fulfilment of God’s promises and the mediator of the encounter between man and God. He who ‘has made God known’ (Jn 1:18) is the one, definitive word given to mankind”.[42] Saint John of the Cross expresses this truth magnificently: “Since he has given us his Son, his only word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything at once in this sole word – and he has no more to say… because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has spoken all at once by giving us this All who is his Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty”.[43]

Statements in the Tradition:

Ignatius of Antioch: (2nd century) “Do not let anything catch your eye besides him . . .” 1 (Another translation has it, “Apart from him let nothing fascinate you.”)

St. John of the Cross (16th century)

“The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, and this Word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul.”2

Benedict XVI; (21st century)

“There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.” (24 April 2005)

1 Ignatius of Antioch, “The Letter to the Ephesians”, n.11, in The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A reader, edited by Bart D. Ehrman, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 320. 2 John of the Cross, Maxims on Love, 21 in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, (London: Thomas Nelson, 1964), 675.


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The encounter with Jesus today takes place foundationally in • in the experience of communion with fellow disciples: the Church • a deepening receptivity to the Word, personally and liturgically

“Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (St. Jerome)

• sacramental celebration “If we look to Emmaus, we are those disciples, walking along, thinking we know the road and our goal. We have known Jesus Christ, but then we are unable to recognize him. It is Christ who draws near us, who seeks us out and enters our lives. Through Christ’s hidden presence in our lives, we walk our road. We understand the cross, but we have not yet comprehended its event. We discover that Jesus Christ is with us. We are not yet with him, but he is with us. He is so through the Scriptures, a presence “like a burning fire.” Then he is with us when he breaks bread for us. Only the grace of the Word and the gift of the Eucharistic bread open our human eyes to the contemplation of the Risen Lord. Only then do we recognize Christ and really begin to see our road and our goal. Meeting the Lord, we begin a conversion, a spiritual transformation, and we are no longer alone, but give ourselves to a community. We begin to discover the joy of the Christian community and to recognize Jesus in our brothers and sisters.”3

Enduring questions in Christian discipleship:

• What do you want? What are you looking for? (John 1:38)

• Who do you say I am? (Mark 8:27)

• Do you love me? (John 21) At the center of our experience lies an incurable dis-ease, disquiet, restlessness, loneliness, a longing, a yearning, a desire, an ache for something we can never quite name. For what are we longing? What would satisfy our restless energy? Anne Frank, in her famous diary, asks exactly this question: ‘Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing - so longing - for everything - to talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone. And I do so long ... to cry! I feel as if I am going to burst, and I know it would get better with crying; but I can't. I'm restless, I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it was saying, 'can't you satisfy my longing at last?' I believe that it is spring within me; I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it in my whole body and soul. It is an effort to behave normally, I feel utterly confused. I don't know what to read, what to write, what to do, I only know that I am longing. That same question is asked everywhere. What would satisfy us? Why this relentless restlessness?’ We long for many things and are both buoyed up and fatigued by our own insatiable energies. These energies push us in every direction. Sometimes we know what we want, a particular relationship, achievement, acceptance, status, job, or home, and we believe that we will find peace by attaining it, but experience has taught us that full peace of heart will not be found, even there. Where will it be found?

3 Allesandro Barban, “Lectio Divina and Monastic Theology in Camaldolese Life,” in The Privilege of Love, edited by Peter-Damian Belisle, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 48.


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Generally we tend to think that we should be asking, “What does God want?” But no, God also wants to know what we want. The answer to that question is less for God’s benefit than for ours. Our answer will tell us what our real priorities are with regard both to God and the people and the world around us. What do we really want from life, from God? It is not such an easy question to answer - but it tells us where we really are and tells us what on earth we are doing for Christ’s sake.4

In this vision every man and woman appears as someone to whom the word speaks, challenges and calls to enter this dialogue of love through a free response. Each of us is thus enabled by God to hear and respond to his word. We were created in the word and we live in the word; we cannot understand ourselves unless we are open to this dialogue. The word of God discloses the filial and relational nature of human existence. We are indeed called by grace to be conformed to Christ, the Son of the Father, and, in him, to be transformed.

In this dialogue with God we come to understand ourselves and we discover an answer to our heart’s deepest questions. The word of God in fact is not inimical to us; it does not stifle our authentic desires, but rather illuminates them, purifies them and brings them to fulfilment. How important it is for our time to discover that God alone responds to the yearning present in the heart of every man and woman! Sad to say, in our days, and in the West, there is a widespread notion that God is extraneous to people’s lives and problems, and that his very presence can be a threat to human autonomy. Yet the entire economy of salvation demonstrates that God speaks and acts in history for our good and our integral salvation. Thus it is decisive, from the pastoral standpoint, to present the word of God in its capacity to enter into dialogue with the everyday problems which people face. Jesus himself says that he came that we might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). Consequently, we need to make every effort to share the word of God as an openness to our problems, a response to our questions, a broadening of our values and the fulfilment of our aspirations.5

What is the Spirituality of Jesus into which we are drawn?

Three primary spiritual ‘schools’ of 1st Century Palestine i) Apocalyptic:

An apocalyptic eschatological view of history, different from the Hebrew prophetic tradition and also from that present in the Wisdom traditions

• A deterministic view of God’s control over history centering on the conviction that present events, usually trials or difficulties of various sorts, are to be understood as the beginning of a triple drama of the last times: the present crisis, immanent divine judgment and subsequent reward of the just.

• This is represented in the spirituality of John the Baptist, and in the Essene

community

4 Meredith Lemos and Patricia Therese Benedict Thomas 5 Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church,” Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation (30 September 2010).


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ii) Ascension Mysticism conceived in terms of ascent to a heavenly world where a new and more direct encounter with the divine takes place: In this, Judaism shared with other Eastern religious traditions.

The literature of ascension. Quote from I Enoch (3rd Century BC) And behold I saw the clouds: And they were calling me in a vision; and the fogs were calling me; and the course of the stars and the lightnings were rushing me and causing me to desire; and in the vision, the winds were causing me to fly and rushing me high up into heaven . . . . and I observed and saw inside it [the second heavenly house] a lofty throne – its appearances was like crystal and its wheels like the shining sun; and I heard the voice of the cherubim; and from beneath the throne were issuing streams of flaming fire. It was difficult to look at it. And the Great Glory was sitting upon it – as for his gown, which was shining more brightly than the sun, it was whiter than any snow. None of the angels were able to come in and see the face of the Excellent and Glorious One; and no one of flesh can see him . . . . And the Lord called me with his own mouth and said to me, “Come near to me, Enoch, and to my holy Word.” And he lifted me up and brought me near to the gate, but I continued to look down with my face.

(1 Enoch 14:8, 18-21, 24-25.)

The ascents can take place in 4 ways In dreams In waking visions By the soul leaving the body Bodily ascents in this life or in resurrection

“it is possible to see the heavenly journey of the soul, its consequent promise of immortality and the corollary necessity of periodic ecstatic journeys to heaven as the dominant mythical constellation of late classical antiquity.”6

iii) Anawim: the spirituality of the poor

• A spirituality of the ‘remnant’ • Permeating the Book of Psalms: the Book of the Anawim

The experience of powerlessness Complete dependence Hope in the action/intervention of God Trust in weakness, surrender in the face of suffering.

Deut 32:10-12 1 Sam 1:26-2:10 2 Sam 7:18-29 Is 10:20-21; 30:15; 66:2 Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-16 Job

• Woven into the ‘Temple Piety’: the poor ones showed their trust in God by being faithful to the times of prayer and sacrifice7

6 Alan Segal in Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: origins to the fifth century, (London: SCM Press, 1991), 14 7 See Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, (Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1977), 350-355; and Hans Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, (Augsburg Publishing, 1979), 150-154.


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I will describe it tentatively here as a mysticism of suffering unto God. It is found particularly in Israel’s prayer traditions: in the Psalms, in Job, in Lamentations, and last but not least in many passages in the prophetic books. This language of prayer is itself a language of suffering, a language of crisis, a language of affliction and of radical danger, a language of complaint and grieving, a language of crying out and, literally, of the grumbling of the children of Israel. The language of this God-mysticism is not first and foremost one of consoling answers for the suffering one is experiencing, but rather much more a language of passionate questions from the midst of suffering, questions turned toward God, full of highly charged expectation. These mystics are no willing yes-men, neither assertive nor apathetic. They practice neither cowardly submission nor masochistic self-subjugation. They are not pious underlings. Their yes to God does not express shallow humility or infantile regression. And the prayer that expresses their yes is not a language of exaggerated affirmation, no artificial song of jubilation that would be isolated from every language of suffering and crisis and which all too quickly falls suspect to being a desperately feigned naiveté. What occurs in this language is not the repression but rather the acceptance of fear, mourning and pain; it is deeply rooted in the figure of the night, the experience of the soul’s demise. It is less a song of the soul, more a loud crying out from the depths – and not a vague, undirected wailing, but a focused crying-out-to. Jesus’ God-mysticism is also a part of this tradition. His is in an exemplary way a mysticism of suffering unto God. His cry from the cross is the cry of one forsaken by God, who for his part has never forsaken God. It is this that points inexorably into Jesus’ God-mysticism: he holds firmly to the Godhead. In the God-forsakenness of the cross, he affirms a God who is still other and different from the echo of our wishes, however ardent; who is ever more and other than the answers to our questions, even the strongest and most fervent . . . It is found today . . . wherever we pose to ourselves the ultimate and decisive God-question, the question about God in the face of the world’s abysmal history of suffering. . . . The mystical uneasiness of questioning . . . does not correspond, for example, to a typically intellectual cult of questioning, which indeed would be precisely the most distant from those who actually suffer. Not vaguely undirected questions, but surely passionate and focused questioning belongs to that mysticism in which we have to form ourselves in order to find true consolation.8

Jesus as the One Image of the Invisible God As Christians, we only know God through Jesus Christ, the one image of the invisible God that we have. (Col 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Cor11:7) Yet, we often fall back from this image? Why? Jesus is not only the image of God for us as Christians, but Jesus also discloses to us the most wonderful imagination about God. As Christians we know God through Jesus of Nazareth. Our memory of him gives us our only authentic image of God. Consequently, the one who is praying must ask, “Is my own image of God in harmony with the image of God given to us in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the perfect image of God, or does it come from other source?” Jesus offers an image of God beyond all that we have inherited. Our journey of prayer brings us up against the inadequacies of our own heritage and invites us into a new legacy, the legacy of Jesus himself?

8 Johannes Metz, A Passion of God: The mystical-political dimension of Christianity, translated by J. Matthew Ashley, (New York/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1998), 66-69.


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The Good News of Jesus Christ: We are given a new imagination about God

We are led by the Spirit into Jesus’ own experience of God as Father Jesus’ personal experience of prayer (Lk 3:21, Lk 6:12, Lk 9:18,29; Lk 11:1; Matt 14:23, Mk 14:36)

Jesus had a wonderful depth of sensibility and imagination. All his language is fresh and alert. It is a language full of thresholds; it opens the heart to the eternal. It took a powerfully disciplined and inspired imagination to discover and articulate the presence and shape of the Trinity. No other shape of deity holds such power and tension. In the Trinity the pure wildness of the unknown surges within the intimacy of personal form. . . It is no wonder that William Blake called Christ the Imagination.9

“Abba!” – a subversive understanding of God

In a climate where the very name Yahweh could not even be pronounced, a man dares to call the God of Israel as Abba Immediacy of God’s presence

The intimacy of that presence The intensity of that expereicne

Background of the Jewish understanding of God’s pathos

“ . . the difference between pagan and prophetic consciousness. There existence is experiencing being. Here. Existence is experiencing concern. It is living in the perpetual awareness of being perceived, apprehended, noted by God, of being an object of the Divine Subject. This is the most precious insight: to sense God’s participation in existence, to experience oneself as a divine secret. . . . . . . a realisation of having been experienced by God . . . We approach God not by making God the object of our thinking, but by discovering ourselves as the objects of God’s thinking. We can think of God only insofar as God thinks of us.10

Through Jesus, we learn to speak to God in a daringly fresh way

Lk 11:2 “Our Father . . .” Rom 8:15 “we cry, Abba! Father!” Gal 4:6 “God has sent into your hearts the Spirit of his Son which cries out Abba! that is : Father!”

Jesus’ gift to us is his experience of God 9 John O’Donohue, “The Priestliness of the Human Heart,” The Way Supplement 83 (Summer 1995), 51. 10 Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 263-268.


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We believe in a Triune God We come to the Father, through Jesus, in the Spirit

The Icon of Andrei Rublev: “The Hospitality of Abraham” (1425)

Measures 44 x 55 inches, painted in the monastery of the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius, at Zagorak, and now kept in Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow. The theme, based on Genesis 18:1-15, was not innovative, but is now given its most eloquent expression. The Eastern painters saw in these three angelic visitors an intimation of the Trinity.

Our God is a divine community of persons A mystery of persons in relationship Eternally dialogue In which each person is defined by the other A relational mystery The experience of God as both wild urgency and delicate intimacy A mystery of hospitality An eternal banquet A Circular Dance (Hippolytus, 2nd century) A Communion Through him With him In him In the Unity of the Holy Spirit All glory and honour is yours, Almighty Father Foreve r and ever. Amen

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