For many years, I have been actively involved in Catholic Church reform movements, advocating for a church that accepts men and women as equals, that is not run by an authoritarian old-boys club, and that is LGBTQ supportive. I write and lecture as well about the dangers of rigid fundamentalisms and advocate for an historical-critical understanding of Sacred Scripture.

That being said, my current focus is the need for spirituality.

Some people equate spirituality with religion, but the two are different. Religion is the medium not the message. Healthy religion should promote spirituality; but it does not always happen. A lot of contemporary people, like the “nones,” are, in fact, turned off by institutional religion and proclaim that they are “spiritual but not religious.” People hungry and thirsty for spirituality are searching for satisfying and solid nourishment. Too often, in many churches, they are finding the cupboards bare or the food unsavory.

Over the years, a number of friends and former students have gone on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. There they found a satisfying sense of spirituality that changed their lives. But many people can really do it closer to home.

In Chapter 7 of John’s Gospel, Jesus cries out: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink.’’ (John 7:37-38) Jesus’ call is significant. People do thirst for more. Thirst for justice, for truth, and for compassion. They thirst for the Divine.

Spirituality connects people to the Divine. To the depth of Reality. It provides peace and harmony in our lives. Spirituality goes to the very essence of what Christianity is all about. Spirituality is not something added on top of our Christian life.

Spirituality should be our way of life: in LIVED awareness of the Divine Presence, the Sacred, the Ground of Being, Emmanuel, God with us. There are many ways to describe the depth of Reality, just like there are many ways to describe what it means to love someone and to be loved. Some of the old images of God may no longer speak to contemporary people; but God has not abandoned us. And we should not abandon God. We simply need to reflect on better ways of conceptualizing and speaking about our experience of the Divine.

I still remember the observation by Dag Hammarskjold (1901-1961), former Secretary General of the UN: “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.”

As I have stressed before but stress again, our communities of faith – like our schools, study groups, and our parishes — should be centers of excellence where people speak courageously about their awareness of the Divine Presence through personal shared faith stories, through drama, music, and art. And through deep reflection. We should invite and welcome the questioners and the seekers. We need to listen to young people at the start of their adult lives and to older people, confronting their life transitions.

But people, far too often, get busy and ignore what is really important in their lives. My old friend Fr. Richard Rohr (born 1943) said it well in his 2018 book Breathing Under Water:       

        “Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. They are often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of “Christian” countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else — and often more so.”

Regardless of our place in the human journey, the Gospels remind us that God lives and walks with all women and men: all races, all nationalities. God is not focused on gender or sexual orientation. Matthew 25 is very clear: “’Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”

Christian spirituality is committed to the search for truth within a healthy multicultural and multi-religious pluralism. It involves both intellectual inquiry and personal introspection to discern facts from falsehoods and to understand one’s own beliefs. 

What to do:

• Develop personal spiritual practices. Engage in daily reflection, finding time to meditate or praying to understand your thoughts and feelings.
• Practice mindfulness, finding spiritual experiences in your daily life.
• Make a habit of recognizing and appreciating the good things in your life to boost feelings of hope and kindness.
• Develop a sense of purpose by reflecting on the meaning of your life and what you believe is right and wrong. And then act accordingly.

 

 For future reading and reflection: Awareness: Conversations with the Masters by Anthony de Melo, S.J.

 

• Jack 

(Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be)