Keeping in Balance: The Four Pillars of Christian Spirituality Workshop Presented by: Ann Marie Eckert

Transcription

1 Keeping in Balance: The Four Pillars of Christian Spirituality Workshop Presented by: Ann Marie Eckert All materials in handout quoted or drawn from: The Holy Longing: The Search for Christian Spirituality, Ronald Rolheiser, Doubleday, New York, NY, There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. We are not easeful human beings who occasionally get restless, serene persons who once in a while are obsessed by desire. (page 3) Spirituality is about what we do with our unrest (page 5) Rarely is spirituality understood as referring to something vital and nonnegotiable lying at the heart of our lives. This is a tragic misunderstanding. Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for those with a particular bent Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one No one has the luxury of choosing here because all of us are precisely fired into life with a certain madness that comes from the gods and we have to do something with that. We do not wake up in this world calm and serene, having the luxury of choosing to act or not to act. We wake up crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality. (page 6) Spirituality is more about whether or not we sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely (page 7) we can define spirituality this way: Spirituality is about what we do with the fire inside of us, about how we channel our eros. And how we do channel it, the disciplines and habits we choose to live by, will either lead to greater integration or disintegration within our bodies, minds, souls, and to a greater integration or disintegration in the way we are related to God, others, and the cosmic world. (page 11) A healthy soul, therefore, must do two things for us. First, it must put some fire in our veins, keep us energized, vibrant, living with zest, and full of hope as we sense that life is, ultimately, beautiful and worth living. Whenever this breaks down in us, something is wrong with our souls. When cynicism, despair, bitterness, or depression paralyzes our energy, part of the soul is hurting. Second, a healthy soul has to keep us fixed together. It has to continually give us a sense of who we are, where we came from, where we are going, and what sense there is in all of this. When we stand looking at ourselves, confusedly, in a mirror and ask ourselves what sense, if any, there is to our lives, it is this other part of the soul, our principle of integration, that is limping. (page 14) Page 1

2 The Essential of a Christian Spirituality The Four Nonnegotiable Pillars of the Spiritual Life Four essential pillars under grid any healthy Christian spirituality. These are universally prescribed spiritual challenges and are revealed by Christ as being the nonnegotiable elements within Christian discipleship. What are they? At one point in his ministry, Jesus specifies three clear components to discipleship: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. For him, these were the pillars of the spiritual life. However, we must understand these prescriptions in the way Jesus meant them. For him, prayer meant not just private prayer, but also keeping the commandments and praying in common with others; fasting meant a wide asceticism that including within itself the asceticism demanded by living a life of joy; and almsgiving meant, among other things, justice as well as charity. Looking at this, we see that Jesus was prescribing four things that are essential praxis for a healthy spiritual life: a) Private prayer and private morality b) Social justice c) Mellowness of heart and spirit d) Community as a constituent element of true worship. For Jesus, these four elements comprise the essentials, the nonnegotiable, of Christian discipleship. These are not elements we may choose or not choose to incorporate within our lives. They comprise the essence of the spiritual life. They also supply its balance. Only when all four of these are present in our lives are we healthy, as Christians and as human beings. (pages 53-54) Page 2

3 A. Private Prayer and Private Morality: Private prayer and personal moral integrity in things, even in the smallest private affairs, are things that Jesus makes nonnegotiable within the spiritual life. He asks us to pray in secret, to have a private, personal relationship with him, and through him, with God. Moreover, in Jesus mind, the test as to whether or not we are in fact doing this, having a personal relationship with God, is not a question of whether we feel we are having one or not, but of keeping the commandments: If anyone loves me, he or she will keep my commandments. In the Gospels, fidelity in keeping the commandments is the only real criterion to tell real prayer from illusion. (page 62) Who are the people who challenge me and keep me from becoming too complacent in my journey of faith? Who are the people who affirm me and remind me I am created in God s own image and likeness? Which members of the communion of saints (living and dead) inspire me by the way the live(d) their lives? What spiritual practices do I do? (prayer, spiritual reading, sacraments, retreats, etc) How fully do I live a moral life? What are the areas of struggle for me? Page 3

4 B. Social Justice More than a few Christians might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order. Jesus teaching on this is very strong, consistent throughout all the Gospels, and leaves no room for equivocation. (page 64) Jesus identifies his own presence with the poor and tells us that, ultimately, we will be judged on how we treat the poor. Bluntly put, we will go to heaven or hell on the basis of giving or not giving food, water, clothing, shelter, and justice to the poor. (page 65) God cannot be related to without continually digesting the uneasiness and pain that are experienced by looking, squarely and honestly, at how the weakest members of our society are faring and how our own lifestyle is contributing to that. This is not something that a few liberation theologians, feminists, and social justice advocates are trying to foist on us. This is not a liberal agenda item. It is something that lies at the very heart of the gospel and which Jesus himself makes the ultimate criterion for our final judgment. (page 66) How do I serve the poor, oppressed, those most in need? How do I advocate for those in need? How do I struggle to live simply so that others might simply live? How committed am I do living justly? Page 4

5 C. Mellowness of Heart and Spirit Sanctity has to do with gratitude. To be a saint is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less. (page 66) Sanctity is as much about having a mellow heart as it is about believing and doing the right things, as much about proper energy as about truth. Gustavo Gutierrez, the father of liberation theology, suggests that, to have a healthy spirituality, we must feed our souls in three ways: through prayer, both private and communal; through the practice of justice; and through having those things in our lives (good friendships, wine-drinking, creativity, and healthy leisure) that help keep our soul mellow and grateful. For Gutierrez, our task as Christians is to transform the world through love and justice, but he is clear that we will not succeed in this if our actions issue forth from anger or guilt. Only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart. (pages 66-67) What are the sources of my deepest joy? How do I exercise the creativity that God gave me? How do I incorporate gratitude into my very being? Do I take the time I need for mellowness of heart? Where do I struggle? Page 5

6 D. Community as a Constitutive Element of True Worship Jesus teaches us clearly that God calls us, not just as individuals, but as a community and that how we relate to each other is just as important religiously as how we relate to God. Or, more accurately, how we relate to each other is part of how we relate to God. For Jesus, the two great commandments, to love God and love one s neighbor, can never be separated. (page 68) Moreover, for Jesus, loving one s neighbor is not an abstract thing. Essentially it means that we must, in our worship of God in heaven, involve ourselves concretely with the worshipping community on earth. Hence, he tell us that anyone who claims to love God who is invisible but refuses to deal with a visible neighbor is a liar, for one can only really love a God who is love if one is concretely involved with a real community (ultimately an ecclesial community ) on earth. (page 68) For a Christian, concrete involvement within a historical community of faith (churchgoing) is a nonnegotiable within the spiritual life. (pages 68-69) A prominent Protestant theologian, Frederick Schleiermacher pointed out that, separate from historical religion, namely, the churches with all their faults, the individual quest of God, however sincere that search, lives an unconfronted life. Without church, we have more private fantasy than real faith. he submits that real conversion demand that eventually its recipient be involved in both the muck and the grace of actual church life. (page 69) What connects me to my local faith community? Regular worship Involvement in parish life on a regular basis Participating in committees, ministries, etc What are my struggles for finding God in the humanness of my faith community? Page 6