551[1]
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
THE WAY<br />
a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits<br />
January 2016 Volume 55, Number 1<br />
PRAYER AND THOSE WHO PRAY<br />
© Des D. Mona @ Flickr
THE WAY January 2016<br />
Foreword 7–8<br />
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe: For the Seventieth 9–19<br />
Anniversary of Hiroshima<br />
James Menkhaus<br />
Pedro Arrupe was Superior General of the Jesuits in the turbulent years<br />
immediately after the Second Vatican Council. Earlier in his Jesuit life, he<br />
had been novice master in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was<br />
dropped on that city. Here James Menkhaus asks what lessons can be<br />
drawn from Arrupe’s experience seven decades after Hiroshima was<br />
destroyed.<br />
Praying with Images: Some Medieval Advice 20–30<br />
Anne Mouron<br />
Of the three Abrahamic faiths, Christianity has been most consistently<br />
content to use images as an aid to prayer. Here Anne Mouron describes a<br />
late medieval text, The Desert of Religion, which offered the monks for<br />
whom it was originally intended a series of meditative illustrations alongside<br />
its poetic text. This can suggest ways of incorporating such images into<br />
prayer that have lost none of their relevance in the intervening centuries.<br />
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 31–44<br />
Robert E. Doud<br />
‘The reason why the universal Church canonizes saints is so that we will<br />
look around us and see examples of holiness for us to copy.’ Starting from<br />
this premise, and drawing on examples from poetry, art, and the writings of<br />
Thomas Merton, Robert Doud reflects on how such examples can touch<br />
our own prayer, and so enable a deeper growth of the holiness that is the<br />
ultimate goal of any Christian life.<br />
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 45–56<br />
Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
Advaita is a Hindu term signifying a certain unity between human beings<br />
and the divine. The Christian theologian Bede Griffiths attempted to<br />
reconcile this notion with his own faith, and use it to open up a dialogue<br />
with Eastern religions. Although his understanding remains controversial,<br />
Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong argues that it represents an important element in<br />
the relationship between Indian Christians and their Hindu neighbours.
THE WAY January 2016<br />
Spirituality and Living<br />
Pray Anywhere 57–59<br />
Matt Kappadakunnel<br />
Matt Kappadakunnel is a busy investment manager living in Los Angeles.<br />
Like many committed Christians, he struggles to find time to pray as he<br />
would wish to. Here, in our occasional Spirituality and Living strand, he<br />
offers a New Year reflection on how to find times and spaces for prayer.<br />
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 61–78<br />
Loan Le<br />
Within the Roman Catholic church, a ‘Year of Religious Life’ has just<br />
drawn to a close. Loan Le here uses the thought of the French<br />
Dominican theologian Jean-Marie Tillard to show how a state of life<br />
characterized by the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience can only<br />
be fully understood in the context of the wider Church. For it is only<br />
within the Church that we can hear and respond to such a call of the<br />
Spirit.<br />
Paying Attention to the Wisdom of Our Sorrows 79–88<br />
Peter Wilcox<br />
The idea of making use of the experience of sorrow in order to live a more<br />
positive and fruitful life may seem a strange one. However, in his work as a<br />
psychotherapist over the last three decades, Peter Wilcox has become<br />
convinced that this is possible. Here he suggests ways in which sorrows can<br />
indeed be used positively, rather than being wasted in regret and<br />
recrimination.<br />
The Experience of the Absence of God According to John of<br />
the Cross<br />
Louis Roy<br />
The experience of God’s silence or seeming absence has been described by<br />
many Christians (and Jews) over many centuries. For some, this has led to<br />
an abandonment of their faith; for others, the experience has ultimately<br />
brought them to a deeper trust in God. The Spanish Carmelite John of the<br />
Cross reflected deeply on this phenomenon, and here Louis Roy traces<br />
some aspects of his thought.<br />
89–98
THE WAY January 2016<br />
The Spirit in Contemporary Culture<br />
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life and the ‘Little Way’ of<br />
Social Justice<br />
Meredith Secomb<br />
Many would think of the contemplative life as one that withdraws from the<br />
world and its demands into silence and prayer. As such it would seem to be<br />
the polar opposite of, and incompatible with, the active pursuit of social<br />
justice. Meredith Secomb’s psychological and pastoral work has led her to<br />
believe that these two approaches to the world need to be brought<br />
together, and are not only compatible but mutually enriching.<br />
99–109<br />
Book Reviews<br />
Michael Rogers on Ignatian spirituality and pilgrimage<br />
Philip Endean on Christianity and the Internet<br />
Brendan Callaghan on spirituality and healthcare<br />
John Pridmore on the Song of Songs<br />
Ian Coleman on Christian cosmology and today’s spirituality<br />
Kate Kirkpatrick on the philosopher William James<br />
Jan Graffius on seventeenth- and twenty-first-century art<br />
James Sweeney on practical theology<br />
T. Frank Kennedy on Jesuits and music<br />
FOR AUTHORS<br />
The Way warmly invites readers to submit articles with a view to publication. They should normally be about<br />
4,000 words long, and be in keeping with the journal’s aims. The Editor is always ready to discuss possible<br />
ideas.<br />
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
The folios from BL, MS Add. 37049 are reproduced by kind permission of The British Library Board. The<br />
scripture quotations herein are generally from the New Revised Standard Version Bible © 1989 by the<br />
Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are<br />
used by permission. All rights reserved.
THE WAY January 2016<br />
ABBREVIATIONS<br />
Autobiography<br />
Constitutions<br />
Diary<br />
Dir<br />
Exx<br />
Jesuit Life and<br />
Mission Today<br />
MHSJ<br />
‘Reminiscences (Autobiography)’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip<br />
Endean and Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996)<br />
in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms (St Louis: Institute<br />
of Jesuit Sources, 1996)<br />
‘The Spiritual Diary’, in Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings, translated by Philip Endean and<br />
Joseph A. Munitiz (London: Penguin, 1996)<br />
On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of<br />
1599, translated and edited by Martin E. Palmer (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996)<br />
The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, translated by George E. Ganss (St Louis: Institute<br />
of Jesuit Sources, 1992)<br />
Jesuit Life and Mission Today: The Decrees and Accompanying Documents of the 31st – 35th<br />
General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009)<br />
Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu, 157 volumes (Madrid and Rome: Institutum Historicum<br />
Societatis Iesu, 1898– )
Conference<br />
15-19 August<br />
2016<br />
Hinsley Hall Leeds<br />
Where are the Exercises<br />
taking us now?<br />
A conference for those involved in the ministry of the<br />
Spiritual Exercises<br />
The Conference will seek to explore this important question by<br />
focusing on three aspects arising in the ministry of the Spiritual<br />
Exercises.<br />
• Current Culture: Nikolaas Sintobin SJ will explore engaging with<br />
younger generations and the internet – social media and spiritual<br />
development.<br />
• Ageing: Bishop Emeritus Brian Noble will discuss the Ignatian<br />
insights that can contribute to the spiritual needs that can surface<br />
in the increasing longevity of our population.<br />
• Social Edges: Anne-Marie Paulin-Campbell and Puleng<br />
Matsaneng will offer their experience of using Ignatian ‘adaptation’<br />
in crossing cultural and racial divides in South Africa.<br />
Booking and further information<br />
www.thepilgrim.org.uk<br />
admin@thepilgrim.org.uk
I<br />
FOREWORD<br />
T IS NOT UNUSUAL, among the New Year’s resolutions made by<br />
Christians, to find some related to prayer. People hope to pray more<br />
regularly, or for longer, or with greater attentiveness. Nor is it unusual,<br />
as with most such resolutions made at this time of year, to find them<br />
abandoned and forgotten after just a few days. Yet the desire to live a<br />
better life of prayer does not go away, and seems somehow to be hardwired<br />
into the spirituality of the average follower of Christ.<br />
This issue of The Way looks at both what it means to pray and who<br />
it is that is doing the praying. Anne Mouron takes us back to the late<br />
Middle Ages, describing a manual to aid monastic prayer assisted by very<br />
contemporary-looking illustrations and diagrams. Matt Kappadakunnel<br />
outlines how, when seeking to discover ways of praying in a very busy<br />
life, finding suitable places may be as important as being able to set aside<br />
an appropriate amount of time. Meanwhile, if working for social justice<br />
seems at first sight to be at the opposite end of the spectrum of Christian<br />
living from contemplative prayer, Meredith Secomb suggests that these<br />
two approaches can be seen as complementary rather than competing.<br />
Sometimes negative experiences block that road to God that is<br />
opened up by prayer. A factor common to Christianity and Judaism is<br />
the feeling of God’s absence, and the desire to make some sense of it.<br />
In Christian spirituality one of the chief exponents of this quest for<br />
understanding is the Carmelite friar St John of the Cross. He called the<br />
experience of God’s seeming absence the ‘dark night of the soul’, and<br />
Louis Roy here shows the continuing relevance of his analysis. As a<br />
practising psychotherapist for the past three decades, Peter Wilcox has<br />
had plenty of opportunity to see how some people are able to make use of<br />
the sorrowful aspects of their lives to grow in fruitfulness, and applies his<br />
insights to faith development. Few events of the last century can have<br />
been more challenging to faith in a good and caring God than the<br />
dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and<br />
Nagasaki. Pedro Arrupe, who would later become Superior General of<br />
the Jesuits, survived the first of these bombings and tended its victims.<br />
James Menkhaus draws lessons from his experience, seventy years on.<br />
Strictly speaking, prayer can never be merely a solitary activity, linking<br />
us as it does not simply with God but with all those others who have<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 7–8
8 Foreword<br />
prayed through the centuries. Robert Doud asks how we can be supported<br />
in our own attempts to pray by what the Roman Catholic Church<br />
traditionally calls ‘the communion of saints’. Bede Griffiths was a<br />
Christian spiritual writer deeply influenced by Hinduism. Ambrose Ih-Ren<br />
Mong explores his understanding of the Hindu concept of advaita, union<br />
with the divine, and how this deepened Griffiths’s own faith. Finally,<br />
prayer is at the heart of traditional religious life in community, and Loan<br />
Le’s essay outlines the belief of the French Dominican Jean-Marie Tillard<br />
that such a life could only be understood in the wider context of the<br />
Church.<br />
‘Say this when you pray’, said Jesus, and gave his disciples the Our<br />
Father, a prayer that runs to only 66 words in the King James Version<br />
of the Bible. There can be few followers of his who have been content<br />
with that alone, and prayers, and words about prayers, have multiplied<br />
ever since. Seen in one light, this edition of The Way is simply one more<br />
addition to this conversation about conversing with God. But by pointing<br />
not only to the prayers, but to those who are praying them, it may perhaps<br />
invite you to join their number and explore for yourself what it takes to<br />
deepen a life of prayer.<br />
Paul Nicholson SJ<br />
Editor
LESSONS FROM THE<br />
SPIRIT OF PEDRO ARRUPE<br />
For the Seventieth Anniversary of<br />
Hiroshima<br />
James Menkhaus<br />
O<br />
N 6 AUGUST 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan<br />
by the United States. This was the first time a nuclear weapon<br />
was used in war. Three days later, a second bomb was detonated on the<br />
outskirts of Nagasaki. These military strikes are credited with bringing a<br />
swift end to the Second World War, as the unconditional surrender of<br />
Japan quickly ensued. Seventy years after the bombings, it is appropriate,<br />
perhaps imperative, to contemplate whether humanity has learnt anything<br />
since using these weapons of mass destruction.<br />
One of the survivors of Hiroshima was Pedro Arrupe, who is well<br />
known for being the Jesuit Superior General who realigned the Society<br />
of Jesus towards the vision of St Ignatius and the spirit of Vatican II.<br />
But, twenty years before Arrupe would ascend to the highest levels of<br />
Jesuit governance, he was a young missionary learning about the Japanese<br />
language and customs. Arrupe’s descriptions of the fateful morning in<br />
August 1945, as well as his reflections 25 years after the atomic bomb,<br />
challenge humanity to pause. Arrupe wrote: ‘History is truly the teacher<br />
of life, but only on condition that we know how to interpret her’. 1 Now,<br />
as then, humanity needs to continue interpreting its lessons.<br />
The Japanese Missionary<br />
In 1927 Pedro Arrupe left the medical studies that he had been pursuing<br />
to enter the Society of Jesus. Early in his Jesuit training he decided he<br />
wanted to go to Japan to be a missionary, in the footsteps of Francis Xavier.<br />
1<br />
Pedro Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections of Pedro Arrupe, translated by Yolanda T. DeMola<br />
(Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1986), 54.<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 9–19
10 James Menkhaus<br />
Pedro Arrupe, shortly after his arrival in Japan<br />
In 1938, while in the United States, Arrupe received a letter telling him<br />
that his request to be sent to Japan had been approved. Upon his arrival<br />
he quickly strove to learn Japanese calligraphy and the tea ceremony, and<br />
also adopted a Japanese prayer posture by squatting on a small mat. 2<br />
Arrupe knew that he had to find out as much about the Japanese as<br />
possible in order to work with them. Despite his background in languages,<br />
he struggled to learn Japanese. He continued to study diligently because he<br />
knew, as his biographer George Bishop points out, ‘Without assimilating<br />
the culture and without speaking the language there was no possibility<br />
of preaching Christianity’. 3<br />
As the tension increased between Japan and the United States,<br />
eventually resulting in war, Arrupe’s recent visit to the USA drew<br />
attention from the Japanese military police, the Kempetai. In December<br />
1941 Arrupe was arrested on suspicion of espionage. The letters written<br />
by Jesuits from all over the world that were found among Arrupe’s<br />
personal effects did not help his cause. He was put into a cell with an<br />
area of four square metres, containing a dirty straw mat, a metal receptacle<br />
and rats. The walls were stained with blood. Describing his first night,<br />
2<br />
3<br />
Hedwig Lewis, Pedro Arrupe Treasury (Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 2007), 28.<br />
George D. Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, SJ: Twenty-Eighth General of the Society of Jesus (Anand: Gujarat<br />
Sahitya Prakash, 2000), 8.
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe 11<br />
Arrupe later reflected, ‘It was very cold. One could not sleep; I was<br />
shivering and my teeth were chattering. There is absolute silence. The<br />
hours pass with the increased slowness of waiting.’ 4<br />
Arrupe’s time was spent either alone in the quiet cell or under<br />
interrogation from the Kempetai, who thought he would eventually admit<br />
to being a spy. Guards would come to speak with him about his religion<br />
and Arrupe enjoyed preaching to them about God. During interrogations,<br />
Arrupe often told his life story, how he was a doctor and became a priest<br />
after witnessing miracles at Lourdes. While interesting to his interrogators,<br />
his stories could in no way prove his innocence.<br />
Beginning at midnight on 11 January 1942 Arrupe underwent 37 hours<br />
of continuous interrogation in which he was questioned about politics,<br />
religion and numerous other ‘inconsistencies’ concerning his beliefs. After<br />
this interrogation he returned to his cell, fearing that his execution was<br />
imminent. A short time later he was escorted to the prison governor’s<br />
office and, to his surprise, was told that he was being released. The governor<br />
informed Arrupe that he had been imprisoned because of rumours against<br />
him, but that the Japanese people believed ‘one of the best ways of judging<br />
the innocence or guilt of the accused is to examine him closely in his<br />
everyday actions’. 5 It was not his theological arguments that had saved<br />
his life, rather, ‘his internal completeness, his simplicity, his transparency<br />
of soul’. 6<br />
Upon hearing this news, Arrupe thanked his guards and the governor,<br />
telling them they had done him a service. To their astonishment, this man<br />
who had been mistreated and isolated for over a month was not angry or<br />
spiteful. When the flummoxed governor asked him to explain, Arrupe<br />
replied,<br />
You have taught me to suffer. I came to Japan to suffer for the Japanese<br />
people. Jesus Christ suffered more than any other man. The believer<br />
is not afraid to suffer with or like Christ. You have helped me to<br />
understand this. 7<br />
The policeman fought back tears as he told Arrupe he was free to preach<br />
his religion. After the war, US war crimes investigators asked Fr Arrupe<br />
for the names of those who had held him captive, but he refused to<br />
4<br />
5<br />
6<br />
7<br />
Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 19.<br />
Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 75.<br />
Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 76.<br />
Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 76.
12 James Menkhaus<br />
divulge the information. He did not want revenge on those who had<br />
done him wrong, but to move on to forgiveness and healing.<br />
On 9 March 1942 Father Lasalle, his superior, asked Arrupe if he<br />
would like to go to Nagatsuka to become the new novice master. Although<br />
fearful that his knowledge of Japanese language and customs was not yet<br />
strong enough for him to serve in such an important role, Arrupe<br />
accepted the position. Two days later, he said goodbye to his parishioners<br />
in Yamaguchi and journeyed to the outskirts of Hiroshima. Staring at the<br />
valley he had called home and which had been the beginning of Xavier’s<br />
journey, he ‘left part of his heart behind in Yamaguchi’. 8<br />
The Day of the Atomic Bomb<br />
The Jesuits had two houses in Hiroshima: one was a parish church in the<br />
city and the other the novitiate in the hills outside at Nagatsuka. Arrupe<br />
was charged with the care of 35 young Jesuits in the novitiate house.<br />
The morning of 6 August 1945 began like any other. Arrupe said Mass<br />
on the Feast of the Transfiguration at 5:30 a.m. At 7:55 he heard the<br />
sound of a B-29 circling above, but he assumed the planes were making<br />
their usual patrols. Around 8:10 a.m. he walked into his study with<br />
another Jesuit and, no longer hearing the planes, assumed they had left.<br />
At 8:15 a.m. a blinding flash of light filled the house. Some Jesuits<br />
were thrown across the room from the power of the blast. While the<br />
explosion was instantaneous, Arrupe reflected, ‘Three or four seconds<br />
seemed an eternity because when one fears that a beam is about to<br />
crash down and flatten one’s skull, time is incredibly prolonged’. 9<br />
He<br />
immediately checked on those in the house and was relieved to find no<br />
one had been seriously injured. Suspecting a bomb had fallen just outside<br />
the house, the men went out to investigate.<br />
Continuing to search for the cause of the explosion, they looked<br />
down towards the city and saw smoke. Moving to high ground to<br />
ascertain what was going on, Arrupe recalls, ‘From there we could see<br />
a ruined city: before us was a decimated Hiroshima’. 10 The entire city was<br />
engulfed in flames. Many of the homes were built of wood, paper and<br />
straw, and at the time of the blast families were lighting ovens to cook<br />
their morning meals. These two aspects ensured the city would be<br />
8<br />
9<br />
Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 82.<br />
Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 23.<br />
10 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 23.
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe 13<br />
consumed in a lake of fire. Clouds gathered in the sky above the city and<br />
a black, heavy rain fell in the north. Arrupe and his novices tried to enter<br />
the city, but were prevented for twelve hours by the sea of fire.<br />
Not knowing what to do in the face of tragedy, the men did the only<br />
thing they could think of: ‘We fell on our knees,’ Arrupe recalled, ‘and<br />
prayed for guidance, as we were destitute of all human help’. 11 200,000<br />
victims of the blast needed aid, yet there was no water to put out the<br />
fires and the wounded began to stream out of the city. Arrupe recalls that<br />
God answered his prayers ‘in a very special way’ with a ‘simple and essential<br />
idea’. The men cleared as much room as they could in the chapel and<br />
made it into a hospital. They were able to care for 150 people. Arrupe’s<br />
expertise as a doctor gave him the ingenuity to work with the sparse<br />
means at his disposal.<br />
Because neither Arrupe nor any other human being understood the<br />
type of burns that appeared on the bodies of the victims, he was unsure<br />
how to treat them. Most of his patients would tell Arrupe that they were<br />
not directly burned. They described a flash of light, but then thirty<br />
minutes later burns appeared on their bodies. Arrupe began to lance<br />
the blisters that covered people’s bodies and kettles and basins were used<br />
to catch the liquid that flowed from these wounds. He described the<br />
situation, ‘The suffering was frightful, the pain excruciating, and it made<br />
bodies writhe like snakes, yet there was not a word of complaint’. 12<br />
Thousands of people lay in the streets begging for help. Arrupe<br />
recalls a child with glass in his eye, a man caught between two pillars<br />
with his legs calcified up to the knees, people burning alive, and children<br />
searching for their parents. When they reached the house of the other<br />
Jesuits, all five were badly wounded. They tried to escort them to<br />
Nagatsuka, one being carried on a home-made stretcher. As they left the<br />
city they saw thousands of people near the river, trying to put out the<br />
fires and cool their bodies. As the evening approached the tide slowly<br />
rose and many were unable to move, half buried in the mud. Arrupe<br />
recalls, ‘The cries of those drowning are something I shall never forget’. 13<br />
The fires burned throughout the night.<br />
One of the most moving stories from Arrupe’s reflections is his<br />
encounter with Nakamura, a fervent Christian who received communion<br />
11 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 26.<br />
12 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 29.<br />
13 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 31.
14 James Menkhaus<br />
every day at the 6:30 a.m. Mass<br />
with Fr Arrupe. As he was<br />
passing through the streets in<br />
the days following the bomb, he<br />
entered what was left of her<br />
home. There, lying on a table<br />
in the room was Nakamura.<br />
She was burned, and pus oozed<br />
from the sores on her body. She<br />
had been lying there for fifteen<br />
days, only moving to get rice for<br />
her wounded father. Her muscles<br />
were hollow and rotten, and<br />
maggots were already eating<br />
her body. When she saw Fr<br />
Arrupe she asked him weakly,<br />
‘Father, have you brought me<br />
Communion?’ 14 She died shortly<br />
after receiving the Eucharist.<br />
A church destroyed by the Hiroshima blast<br />
Arrupe often recalled how much<br />
she had taught him about faith and Christ’s consoling presence in the<br />
Eucharist.<br />
Although many people needed aid, the Jesuits continued to say Mass<br />
in the chapel with bodies strewn across the floor. Arrupe recalled the<br />
puzzled looks of the wounded, staring at him inquisitively as he said Mass.<br />
Arrupe recollected, ‘In spite of it all, I do not think I ever said Mass with<br />
such devotion’. 15 He explained,<br />
I can never forget that terrible feeling I experienced when I turned<br />
toward them and saw this sight from the altar. I could not move. I<br />
stayed there as if I was paralyzed, my arms outstretched, contemplating<br />
this human tragedy. 16<br />
Nearly every person who was treated by Arrupe and his novices survived.<br />
Even more powerful for Arrupe was the number of survivors who were<br />
so inspired by his actions that they later asked to be baptized.<br />
14 Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 169.<br />
15 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 31.<br />
16 Bishop, Pedro Arrupe, 157.
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe 15<br />
Pedro Arrupe’s encounters with the victims of Hiroshima taught<br />
him many lessons about the human person, the power of destruction and<br />
the helplessness of not being able to save everyone. It is impossible to<br />
divorce his actions and words as Superior General from the formative<br />
lessons he learnt in the months following August 1945. His challenge to<br />
Jesuits and all people to consider the poor and defenceless before acting<br />
was made concrete by his presence at Hiroshima.<br />
The Seventy Years after the Bomb<br />
In 1970, now the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Arrupe wrote<br />
a reflection, revisiting the experience of being a survivor of the atomic<br />
blast. His insights were not only appropriate for the changes in the world<br />
during that decade, but are still prophetic for the twenty-first century.<br />
For Arrupe, the dropping of the bomb was an experience stuck in history,<br />
frozen in time. He wrote, ‘It is not just a memory, but a perpetually vital<br />
event outside history, which does not go away with the ticking of the<br />
clock’. 17<br />
In the same way, the injustices Arrupe highlighted in his<br />
reflection do not go away with the ticking of the clock. He specified unjust<br />
social structures, racism and atomic weapons of mass destruction as three<br />
central issues that afflict humanity.<br />
Unjust Social Structures<br />
Throughout Arrupe’s reflection he returned to the unjust social structures<br />
that cause people to remain in conditions of marginalisation and hunger.<br />
‘More than half of humanity is undernourished’, Arrupe wrote, ‘and<br />
the situation of these underdeveloped countries becomes daily more<br />
intolerable’. He went on to conclude that the responsibility for the ‘sin’<br />
of the current situation rests with ‘a large segment of human society’. 18<br />
While an individual may have a moral perspective, the interests of the<br />
development of a country or economic system often take precedence<br />
over responsibility to the poor and outcast in society.<br />
Arrupe’s words in 1970 closely mirror the strong denunciation of<br />
modern society by Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope, whose Jesuit<br />
formation occurred while Arrupe was Superior General. For example,<br />
in Evangelii gaudium, the Holy Father writes about the new economy of<br />
17 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 52.<br />
18 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 62.
16 James Menkhaus<br />
exclusion that treats people as leftovers in society. ‘How can it be that<br />
it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure,<br />
but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of<br />
exclusion.’ 19 The Pope also challenges people, as Arrupe did, to be more<br />
observant about the waste of food and resources in society. Pope Francis<br />
refers to this modern mentality as a ‘globalization of indifference’ that<br />
is ‘incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping<br />
for other people’s pain … as though all this were someone else’s<br />
responsibility’. 20<br />
Pope Francis’s strong condemnation of contemporary<br />
ideologies of indifference echoes Arrupe’s criticism of the way in which<br />
civilian casualties caused by the atomic bomb were treated as merely<br />
incidental.<br />
Pope Francis has continued to emphasize similar themes in his recent<br />
encyclical Laudato si’. He applies his critique of the globalisation of<br />
indifference to environmental degradation, challenging people to be<br />
more aware of how their actions affect the common good and the earth,<br />
humanity’s common home. Francis warns, ‘The [global] warming caused<br />
by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions<br />
on the poorest areas of the world’. 21 His concern for the poor and their<br />
particular susceptibility to the effects of climate change is evident<br />
throughout the document. The problem of climate change was not as well<br />
understood in Arrupe’s time, but Pope Francis’s concerns closely correlate<br />
with his own reflections on the responsibility the rich nations have towards<br />
the poor and marginalised.<br />
Racism<br />
The second issue Arrupe cited as destructive in society is racism. He<br />
writes, ‘It is truly inconceivable that in the twentieth century the worth<br />
of a person or of a people is measured by the color of the skin’. 22 Arrupe’s<br />
observation remains pertinent to recent events in many parts of the<br />
world. A number of violent incidents have demonstrated that Arrupe’s<br />
concern is not anachronistic.<br />
In the USA alone, controversy over police brutality against African<br />
Americans has led to riots in St Louis, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland.<br />
19 Evangelii gaudium, n. 53.<br />
20 Evangelii gaudium, n. 54.<br />
21 Laudato si’, n. 51.<br />
22 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 64.
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe 17<br />
In August 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed eighteen-year-old African<br />
American, was shot multiple times by a police officer, Darren Wilson.<br />
The civil unrest that followed lasted over a week and made international<br />
headlines. Months later, a grand jury failed to indict Wilson and his actions<br />
were found to be warranted. In April 2015 another incident in Baltimore<br />
again led to riots and civil unrest. A 25-year-old African American man<br />
named Freddie Gray was arrested and sustained fatal injuries while in<br />
police custody. Six officers have been indicted on charges ranging from<br />
illegal arrest and misconduct to assault and involuntary manslaughter.<br />
Even more recently, in July 2015, a police officer from the University of<br />
Cincinnati named Ray Tensing shot a motorist, Samuel DuBose, fatally<br />
in the head after pulling him over for not having a front number-plate.<br />
Tensing’s body camera indicates that DuBose made no threatening moves<br />
towards the officer and he was unarmed. Tensing is currently awaiting<br />
trial.<br />
Numerous examples of racial distrust in the US have caused a reexamination<br />
of the relationship between blacks and whites in the<br />
country. Perhaps emblematic of this new analysis is the controversy<br />
about the flying of the Confederate flag over the State House building in<br />
South Carolina. After the horrific racially motivated murder of African<br />
Americans worshipping at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church<br />
in Charleston, South Carolina, the call to take down the flag sent<br />
shock waves through the country. The Confederate flag is viewed by<br />
many in the US as a symbol of slavery and the racial divide that remained<br />
in the pro-slavery states during and after the Civil War. Therefore,<br />
protesters feel it has no place on a US state building in the twenty-first<br />
century. Balancing historical remembrance and the healing of the racial<br />
wounds that have marked the US since its founding is a difficult process.<br />
Weapons of Mass Destruction<br />
The third issue Arrupe addressed was violence and war. 25 years after<br />
Hiroshima, Arrupe warned against weapons of mass destruction remaining<br />
in the hands of the militaries around the world. ‘The only sure guarantee<br />
that they will not be used is their non-existence.’ 23 Nuclear weapons are<br />
now accessible to more nations than ever before, who have stockpiled<br />
the potential for mutually assured destruction. Negotiations during the<br />
23 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 65.
18 James Menkhaus<br />
summer of 2015 between Iran and the Western powers over the Iranian<br />
nuclear programme underline the importance of preventing nuclear<br />
proliferation that is ever-present in this debate.<br />
While nuclear weapons are still available to many countries around<br />
the globe, there is a new form of technology that perhaps presents an<br />
even greater immediate danger. The skies over Afghanistan, Pakistan,<br />
Iraq, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries contain thousands of<br />
drones sent by the US and other Western countries in an attempt to<br />
fight against militant groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Drones have<br />
resulted in civilian deaths in these countries, despite the fact that no<br />
official declaration of war has been made. Estimates vary widely, but<br />
drones have certainly been responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths<br />
in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. 24 Many civilians in the West are in favour<br />
of using drones in war because they decrease the likelihood of losing<br />
their own soldiers in battle.<br />
Atomic bombs have not been used in war since 1945 because of<br />
their enormous power and the threat of mutual destruction. The<br />
Hiroshima bomb killed over 100,000 people in a single blast, and modern<br />
nuclear warheads are many times more powerful. 25 Countries understand<br />
that the use of one of these bombs is likely to invite instant retaliation.<br />
While the possibility of a rogue nation or a suicidal dictator using nuclear<br />
weapons remains, there are more checks and balances than in the time<br />
when Arrupe was writing. Drones, however, have become the new silent<br />
killer: they are safer for soldiers, make fewer headlines—but still result in<br />
the deaths of innocent people. Unlike nuclear weapons, whose function<br />
is to be self-limiting, their use will tend to redouble as more and more<br />
countries gain the technology needed to kill from great distances without<br />
leaving the safety of home.<br />
The Challenge for the Next Seventy Years<br />
Unjust social structures that lead to hunger and marginalisation, racism<br />
that devalues people because of the colour of their skin, and weapons<br />
24 Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and Center for Civilians in Conflict, The Civilian Impact<br />
of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions (2012), 20. Available at: http://web.law.columbia.<br />
edu/human-rights-institute/counterterrorism/drone-strikes/civilian-impact-drone-strikes-unexamined-costsunanswered-questions,<br />
accessed 1 August 2015.<br />
25 ‘By late 1945, the death toll at Hiroshima stood at 120,000 to 150,000 …. Many tens of thousands<br />
died years later due to complications from exposure to radiation.’ (International Encyclopedia of Military<br />
History, edited by James C. Bradford [New York: Routledge, 2006], 608)
Lessons from the Spirit of Pedro Arrupe 19<br />
that kill faceless victims on the<br />
other side of the globe are all<br />
still challenges for humanity in<br />
the twenty-first century. In his<br />
reflection, Arrupe narrowed down<br />
the causes of injustice, explaining,<br />
‘The diagnosis of war as well as<br />
that of violence is the result of a<br />
single violence, hatred’. It is not<br />
that bombs or drones are evil, nor<br />
developing the technology that<br />
makes them possible. The enemy<br />
is in the hearts of human beings<br />
who preach hatred and use it as a<br />
weapon of control and destruction.<br />
Arrupe continues, ‘The antidote<br />
for hate is called love … which is<br />
the most precious quality of the<br />
human person’. 26<br />
While establishing a culture<br />
Children praying at the Hiroshima memorial<br />
of love may be a difficult task, the lesson we need to learn from Arrupe<br />
may ultimately be to return to the insights of his Japanese internment.<br />
There, he learnt the power of silence, the importance of listening and a<br />
sense of internal completeness that transformed his captors into his friends.<br />
In a world where war and hatred have not decreased in the past seventy<br />
years, Arrupe challenges us to offer the love of Christ to all people,<br />
regardless of their religion, culture or skin colour. Perhaps it is a simple<br />
lesson from history that humanity is just not yet ready to learn but, as a<br />
starting point, we cannot forget what was taught on 6 August 1945.<br />
© Freedom II Andres @ Flickr<br />
James Menkhaus is an assistant professor of theology at Gannon University in Erie,<br />
Pennsylvania, USA. In 2013 he completed his dissertation, which examined<br />
dimensions of solidarity in the thought of Pedro Arrupe. He has taught courses and<br />
published articles on Ignatian spirituality and contemporary ethical issues.<br />
26 Arrupe, Recollections and Reflections, 68.
PRAYING WITH IMAGES<br />
Some Medieval Advice<br />
Anne Mouron<br />
I<br />
N A PREVIOUS ARTICLE, I considered The Manere of Good Lyvyng, a<br />
fifteenth-century translation of the Liber de modo bene vivendi ad<br />
sororem (‘A book for a sister on the way of living well’) which in the past<br />
was widely attributed to St Bernard of Clairvaux. 1 This text, which gathers<br />
together ‘some small lessons of religious conversation taken out of<br />
the writings of my forefathers’ 2<br />
and is aimed at a female audience, is<br />
remarkable for the absence of images, verbal or visual, which have so<br />
often been seen as characteristic of medieval texts written by or for<br />
women. The Desert of Religion is another fifteenth-century devotional<br />
text which has been ‘taken from many books’ (l.922) but is in many ways<br />
a very different work. 3 It is a Middle English poem, not a prose text; it<br />
is a relatively brief work of only 943 lines; and in all likelihood is a text<br />
originally aimed at monks, not female religious. Its greatest difference<br />
from The Manere of Good Lyvyng, though, is the presence of illustrations<br />
on each and every folio of the poem.<br />
The Desert of Religion<br />
Unlike The Manere of Good Lyvyng, which is extant in one manuscript<br />
only, The Desert of Religion survives in three fifteenth-century manuscripts<br />
from the north of England, now in the British Library: MS Add. 37049,<br />
I would like to thank Ronald Richenburg for his many stylistic suggestions. This article is best read in<br />
conjunction with the British Library online resource: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?<br />
ref=Add_MS_37049, fols. 46 r –66 v .<br />
1<br />
Anne Mouron, ‘Praying without Images: Some Medieval Advice’, The Way, 51/4 (October 2012),<br />
91–101. And see The Manere of Good Lyvyng: A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard’s Liber de<br />
modo bene vivendi ad sororem, edited by Anne Mouron (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014).<br />
2<br />
Manere of Good Lyvyng, 41.<br />
3<br />
The present author is preparing an edition of The Desert of Religion (based on BL MS Add. 37049)<br />
for the Early English Text Society. Henceforth, unless otherwise specified, references are made to this<br />
forthcoming edition. All translations from the Middle English are mine, and subsequent references are<br />
given in the text.<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 20–30
Praying with Images 21<br />
MS Stowe 39 and MS Cotton Faustina B vi, part ii, all of which contain<br />
illustrations. 4 Its title, The Desert of Religion, was given to the text by its<br />
first editor, Walter Hübner, in 1911. 5 This is entirely appropriate, for the<br />
concept of the desert (or wilderness) lies at the core of the poem, and is<br />
frequently repeated throughout, as the beginning of the text demonstrates:<br />
‘Lo, then, would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.’ David,<br />
that was always a prophet, we hear him say thus in the Psalter: ‘Fleeing,<br />
I fled from more and less, and dwelt in hard wilderness’. This wilderness<br />
well betokens the hard penance that men who flee from the world<br />
(that is the flesh) and grow in spiritual wilderness should feel, as<br />
religious men do who flee the flesh and follow their soul …. He went<br />
to dwell into the desert, as it is written in the Gospel: ‘Then was Jesus<br />
led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted’. For the desert of<br />
religion is called a field of temptation. Religion that good men should<br />
hold may be called a desert by good reason. (ll.1–24; my emphasis)<br />
The poem, written in rhyming couplets, describes itself as a ‘little<br />
treatise of … vices and vertues’ (ll.926–927) and is divided into 22 short<br />
sections which focus on the typical didactic concepts found in devotional<br />
manuals of the period: the seven virtues, the seven deadly sins, the<br />
creed, the ten commandments and so on. The ninth section of the poem,<br />
for example, deals with the seven deeds of mercy:<br />
Two are to feed the hungry and thirsty who need it with food and<br />
drink. The third is, always when there is need, to clothe those that<br />
are naked and without clothes; the fourth, as men understand, is to<br />
visit men lying in God’s fetters; the fifth is to give shelter to the<br />
destitute and to poor pilgrims that walk far and wide; the sixth is, as<br />
it is found in books, to visit prisoners in chains; and the seventh is<br />
to bury the dead. (ll.411–423)<br />
But The Desert of Religion also emphasizes monastic preoccupations such<br />
as humility, pride, accidia (a species of sloth) and the sins of the tongue,<br />
all of which are given particular prominence in the poem.<br />
4<br />
For the provenance of MS Add. 37049, see James Hogg, ‘Unpublished Texts in the Carthusian<br />
Northern Middle English Religious Miscellany British Library MS Add. 37049’, in Essays in Honour of<br />
Erwin Stürzl on His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by James Hogg, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und<br />
Amerikanistik, 10 (Salzburg: Institut für englische Sprache und Literatur, 1980), volume 1, 241–284<br />
(here 252–258). For MS Stowe 39 and MS Cotton Faustina B vi, see Anthony Ian Doyle, ‘A Survey<br />
of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th, and early 16th<br />
centuries’, unpublished PhD. thesis, Cambridge University, 1953, volume 2, 192–193.<br />
5<br />
‘The Desert of Religion’, edited by Walter Hübner, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und<br />
Literaturen, 126 (1911), 56–74.
22 Anne Mouron<br />
The Desert of Religion says that it is ‘taken from many books’. The<br />
chief source is the Speculum vitae which, in spite of its Latin title, is a<br />
Middle English rendering of Frère Laurent’s Old French Somme le roi, ‘an<br />
international spiritual classic’. 6 Other texts include The Prick of Conscience,<br />
a popular didactic, devotional and encyclopaedic poem, and Richard<br />
Rolle’s Emendatio vitae, a Latin text which offers its readers ‘twelve stages<br />
or “steps” of the spiritual life, from conversion to contemplation’. 7<br />
Because of the formulaic, catechetical nature of its material and its<br />
great reliance on the Speculum vitae, The Desert of Religion does not offer<br />
much information on the identity of its author. The only possible reference<br />
in the text to the author-compiler is that ‘a holy man sent it to his<br />
friend(s)’ (l.928), and the poem’s Prologue alludes to ‘men of religion’<br />
(l.10), implying that the author-compiler and his primary audience were<br />
probably such men themselves. 8 The very first line of the poem, ‘Elongaui<br />
fugiens, et mansi in solitudine’ (Psalm 54:8), seems to refer to a monastic<br />
authorship. In his life of St Stephen, the twelfth-century prior of<br />
Grandmont, Gerard Ithier, explains this verse as applying to monks:<br />
The Blessed Stephen was asked whether he was a canon or a monk or<br />
a hermit? … A monk is indeed said to be alone or a keeper of himself;<br />
he is alone because in spiritual solitude he prepared for himself a<br />
place to inhabit with God, so that he could in all truthfulness say:<br />
Elongavi fugiens in solitudine et mansi (Ps LIV). 9<br />
The insistence on the concept of ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’ in The Desert<br />
of Religion may more specifically hint at a Carthusian authorship. Although<br />
the twelfth-century Renaissance generally emphasized a return to the life<br />
of the Desert Fathers, as Clifford Hugh Lawrence noted, ‘it was the<br />
6<br />
Ralph Hanna, ‘The Yorkshire Circulation of Speculum vitae’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval<br />
Manuscripts in England, edited by Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney (Woodbridge: Boydell and<br />
Brewer, 2008), 279. See Speculum vitae: A Reading Edition, edited by Ralph Hanna, 2 vols (Oxford:<br />
OUP, 2008), introduction, lxx. Speculum vitae is organized around five sets of items: the seven petitions<br />
of the Pater noster, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the seven deadly sins, the seven virtues and the<br />
seven beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. And see Frère Laurent, La Somme le roi, edited by<br />
Édith Brayer and Anne-Françoise Leurquin-Labie (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2008).<br />
7<br />
See The Prick of Conscience, edited by James H. Morey (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications,<br />
2012); Richard Rolle, Emendatio vitae, orationes ad honorem nominis Ihesu, edited by Nicholas Watson,<br />
Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 21 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1995), 20.<br />
8<br />
The use of the first person plural pronoun at regular intervals within the work seems to indicate that<br />
the author-compiler includes himself among its religious audience.<br />
9<br />
Vita S. Stephani auctore Gerardo priore Grandimontensi septimo, in Patrologia Latina, edited by Jean-Paul<br />
Migne, volume 204 (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1855), col. 1024B–C (my translation).
Praying with Images 23<br />
Carthusians who really succeeded in translating the ideal of the desert<br />
hermits into a monastic fortress of stone’. 10 The twelfth-century Cistercian<br />
William of St Thierry bears witness to this claim at the beginning of The<br />
Golden Epistle, which he addressed to the Carthusians of Mont-Dieu:<br />
The Brethren of Mont-Dieu introduce[d] to our Western darkness<br />
and French cold the light of the East and that ancient fervor of<br />
Egypt for religious observance—the pattern of solitary life and the<br />
model of heavenly conduct. 11<br />
It should also be noted that the Carthusians themselves regarded their<br />
monasteries as heremi, or ‘deserts’. 12<br />
If it is true that the meaning of<br />
‘desert’ as a religious house is not exclusively confined to the Carthusians,<br />
they are certainly the order which insists on it most.<br />
Since the Speculum vitae and The Prick of Conscience were attributed<br />
to Richard Rolle, since one section of The Desert of Religion was excerpted<br />
from Rolle’s Emendatio vitae and since the poem contains an image of<br />
Richard Rolle, some scholars have suggested that The Desert of Religion<br />
was the work of a ‘follower of Richard Rolle’. 13 Although this is certainly<br />
a possibility, there is no way of knowing one way or the other.<br />
If The Desert of Religion was simply made up of 22 sections exploring<br />
devotional subjects with conceptual lists, as the earlier quotation about<br />
the seven deeds of mercy illustrates, it would hardly be different from the<br />
numerous didactic manuals written after the Fourth Lateran Council<br />
of 1215. The Desert of Religion certainly includes these lists, but it offers<br />
its reader much more besides. Of particular interest is its presentation<br />
of conventional didactic material within an allegorical framework and<br />
with the help of two series of illustrations: tree-diagrams, and depictions<br />
of saints and hermits—illustrations which feature in all three manuscripts<br />
of the poem. In other words, and unlike The Manere of Good Lyvyng,<br />
The Desert of Religion provides its reader with an abundance of images.<br />
This may at first be surprising in a poem written for Carthusian monks,<br />
10 Clifford Hugh Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle<br />
Ages, 3rd edn (Harlow: Pearson, 2001), 156.<br />
11 William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mont Dieu, translated by<br />
Theodore Berkeley (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1980 [1971]), 9.<br />
12 This is already the case in the oldest acts of the Grande Chartreuse. See Recueil des plus anciens actes<br />
de la Grande Chartreuse (1086–1196), edited by Bernard Bligny (Grenoble: privately printed, 1958), 3.<br />
13 Peter Kidd, ‘Codicological Clues to the Patronage of Stowe MS. 39: A Fifteenth-Century<br />
Illustrated Nun’s Book in Middle English’, Electronic British Library Journal (2009), 9 n. 23.
24 Anne Mouron<br />
but one will note that, in its three components (text, tree-diagrams and<br />
illustrations of praying hermits), the poem embodies the three stages of<br />
the lectio divina: lectio (the text), meditatio (the tree-diagrams) and oratio<br />
(the praying hermits).<br />
Praying with Images<br />
Tree-Diagrams<br />
Although The Desert of Religion begins with a quotation from the Psalms<br />
emphasizing the concept of wilderness and the desert, the Prologue ends<br />
with a different verbal image, that of the forest:<br />
In this spiritual forest trees grow with branches and boughs: some<br />
grow to heaven and some down to hell, some to stand and some to be<br />
felled; some grow in a spiritual enclosure, and some to be removed<br />
by digging with the turf (ll.43–48).<br />
It is worth observing that, from the early Middle Ages onwards, the desert<br />
and the forest came to be regarded in the same way, that is, as an area<br />
of solitude where life was hard. Jacques Le Goff, for example, mentions<br />
that, according to Columban’s biographer Jonas of Bobbio (c.640), the<br />
Irish saint was offered a place to live in the Vosges which he ‘liked …<br />
because it was in the middle of a forest: “a vast desert, a harsh solitude,<br />
a rocky terrain”’. 14 In this view, therefore, these two loci, the desert and<br />
the forest, are not mutually exclusive.<br />
In The Desert of Religion’s forest, twenty trees, good and bad, are<br />
depicted, including a Tree of Virtues and a Tree of Sins, a Tree of<br />
Humility and a Tree of Pride, a Tree of Abuses in Religious Places and<br />
a Tree of Abuses in the World, a Tree of the Creed, a Tree of the Seven<br />
Sacraments and of the Seven Virtues, and a Tree of the Seven Deeds<br />
of Mercy. Indeed, apart from the Prologue and Epilogue, every other<br />
section of The Desert of Religion begins and ends with a reference to a<br />
tree, as the following lines illustrate:<br />
The first tree of this beautiful forest is the tree of virtues which is<br />
always pure and firmly plants its roots in meekness. Of this tree virtues<br />
sprout forth and spring upwards and spread its leaves, and they grow<br />
both with branches and boughs. (ll.49–54)<br />
14 Quoted in Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:<br />
U. of Chicago P, 1992), 51 (my emphasis).
Praying with Images 25<br />
© The British Library Board, Add. MS 37049, ff. 46v–47r<br />
The Tree of Virtues, Add. MS 37049, fol.47 r
26 Anne Mouron<br />
The section ends thus:<br />
This is the tree of which we hear that David speaks in the Psalter:<br />
‘The righteous is like a tree that stands beside the course of water<br />
streams and he gives his fruit in the appropriate time; his leaf shall<br />
neither fade nor wither’ (ll.83–88).<br />
As this last quotation shows, the familiar image of the tree is not<br />
taken from everyday life, but from the scriptures (Psalm 1:3). In The<br />
Desert of Religion, this allegorical forest or verbal image is complemented<br />
on the recto folio by a tree-diagram, which usually lists in its leaves the<br />
concepts mentioned in the text itself. Such tree-diagrams are obvious<br />
mnemonic devices and are certainly not unique to The Desert of Religion.<br />
They are encountered elsewhere, but mostly in Latin, rather than the<br />
vernacular.<br />
In The Desert of Religion, tree-diagrams serve two functions: allowing<br />
readers to memorise essential doctrine more easily, but also enabling them<br />
to meditate on a particular subject. Indeed, readers are encouraged to<br />
develop their own reflections according to other works they may have<br />
read or heard, sermons they have listened to and images they have seen in<br />
church painted on walls or inscribed on stained-glass windows. In other<br />
words, the tree-diagram provides readers with links that their memory<br />
can access, as though clicking on a hyperlink. The third tree-diagram,<br />
for example, lists (without any acknowledgement) the twelve degrees of<br />
humility from Bernard of Clairvaux’s De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae,<br />
a text which attained immediate fame and may very well have been<br />
known to the poem’s original readers. 15<br />
Moreover, if one compares the section on the seven deeds of mercy<br />
in The Desert with their treatment in the Speculum vitae—the source text<br />
for this particular section—one sees that in the Speculum the deeds of<br />
mercy are first named, but then each one is examined separately. 16 In The<br />
Desert of Religion, however, readers are only given the list. It is up to<br />
them to formulate their own meditation. This essential participation by<br />
the reader makes each and every reading of the poem unique to that<br />
reader.<br />
15 The Desert of Religion, MS Add. 37049, fol. 49 r . For Bernard’s text, see De gradibus humilitatis et<br />
superbiae, in St Bernard, Tractatus et opuscula, edited by Jean Leclercq and H. M. Rochais (Rome:<br />
Editiones Cistercienses, 1963), 1–59.<br />
16 For the first deed of mercy, for example, see Speculum vitae, volume 1, 253, ll. 7563–7582.
Praying with Images 27<br />
Saints and Hermits<br />
The Desert of Religion also includes a second series of illustrations, mostly,<br />
but not exclusively, of saints and hermits. The first tree, for example, is<br />
aptly illustrated by Paul the First Hermit, whose life has been written<br />
notably by Jerome and later by Jacobus de Voragine in The Golden<br />
Legend. 17 Paul the First Hermit, or Paul of Thebes, is believed to have<br />
withdrawn to the desert in the fourth century to escape persecution. In the<br />
illustration accompanying the first tree, Paul is praying in his cave and<br />
looking towards a raven which brings him bread. The whole illustration<br />
is framed by the following words:<br />
For forty years, I dwelled in the wilderness in a cave, where God of<br />
his great goodness granted me to have each day half a loaf of bread<br />
which he sent me by a raven. There, my clothes were more and less<br />
made out of leaves that protected me from the elements (fol. 46 v ).<br />
In the original, this framing-text took the form of eight lines of rhyming<br />
couplets. As these are written in the first person, the reader is obviously<br />
meant to identify with Paul and to become a hermit like him by meditating<br />
on the concepts listed in the text and tree-diagram opposite.<br />
The allegorical framework of the forest, the tree-diagrams and the<br />
illustrations of saints and hermits: these three features of the poem<br />
provide readers with a virtual representation of themselves as hermits<br />
in the forest. In other words, in The Desert of Religion, the very images<br />
introduced in the poem redirect the readers’ thoughts towards God in<br />
order to cut them off from the secular world. One could even go further<br />
and claim that in The Desert of Religion the use of images actually negates<br />
the world altogether.<br />
The Manuscripts<br />
I should like to conclude with a brief look at one of the individual<br />
manuscripts of The Desert of Religion, MS Add. 37049. The poem, text<br />
and images are spread out on the verso and recto folios for each section<br />
of the poem apart from the Prologue and Epilogue. The verso folio is<br />
17 See Jerome, Vita S. Pauli primi eremitae, in Patrologia Latina, edited by Jean-Paul Migne, volume 23<br />
(Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1845), cols. 17–28C; Bazyli Degórski, Edizione critica della ‘Vita Sancti<br />
Pauli primi eremitae’ di Girolamo, dissertation, Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Rome, 1987; Jacobus<br />
de Voragine, De sancto Paulo heremita, in Legenda aurea, edited by Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols<br />
(Florence: SISMEL, 1998), volume 1, xv, 141–142.
28 Anne Mouron<br />
© The British Library Board, Add. MS 37049, ff. 46v<br />
Paul the First Hermit, Add. MS 37049, fol.46 v
Praying with Images 29<br />
divided vertically into two halves, with the text on the left and the image<br />
of the hermit or saint on the right; the recto folio is taken up entirely<br />
with a tree-diagram. 18<br />
Although the text of the poem and the tree-diagrams change very<br />
little from one manuscript to the next, the same does not hold true for<br />
the illustrations of saints and hermits. A consideration of the first section<br />
of the poem, the first tree with Paul the First Hermit, may serve as an<br />
example. In MS Add. 37049, unlike the other two manuscripts, above the<br />
depiction of Paul the First Hermit there is an angel holding a shield with<br />
the five wounds of Christ. The illustration contains two distinct areas: the<br />
hermit in his cave and heaven above. There is an obvious interaction<br />
between the two as the angel presents the hermit (and the reader) with<br />
an image for devotion and meditation. This intervention of the heavenly<br />
realm may be the result of the hermit’s solitude—throughout the poem<br />
the hermit is never represented with a fellow hermit—but at the same<br />
time, as represented in MS Add. 37049, he is never really alone. The<br />
numerous angels featuring in the upper half of the verso folio in many<br />
other sections of the poem in this manuscript show that the hermit is<br />
part of a spiritual community. If in The Manere of Good Lyvyng the<br />
addressee is told to ‘forget [her] own people and [her] father’s house’ 19<br />
and is provided with a new and spiritual family (as I noted in my earlier<br />
article), 20 in The Desert of Religion, readers are repeatedly advised to leave<br />
the world for the solitude of the desert, but at the same time they are<br />
also provided with a spiritual community to make up for the loss of the<br />
secular one.<br />
Focusing on God<br />
When one compares The Manere of Good Lyvyng and its lack of everyday<br />
images with The Desert of Religion and its numerous illustrations, one<br />
may be reminded of two texts by two of the better known Middle<br />
English mystics: the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton’s<br />
Scale of Perfection. Alastair Minnis underlines the contrast between these<br />
two works, with one text strongly advising the absence of images (Cloud<br />
18 MS Cotton Faustina B vi follows the same layout. MS Stowe 39 divides the verso folio horizontally.<br />
19 Psalm 44: 14. Although not translated in the The Manere of Good Lyvyng, this verse is actually<br />
quoted in the Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem. See Patrologia Latina, edited by Jean-Paul Migne,<br />
volume 184 (Paris, 1862), col. 1214D.<br />
20 Mouron, ‘Praying without Images’, 99–100.
30 Anne Mouron<br />
of Unknowing) and the other one advocating their presence (Hilton’s<br />
Scale). 21<br />
However, in The Manere of Good Lyvyng and The Desert of Religion the<br />
situation is perhaps best looked at in a different way. For if The Manere<br />
of Good Lyvyng has no visual illustrations, it has a number of verbal<br />
images taken from patristic and scriptural sources rather than from<br />
everyday life. These are images that separate readers from the world and<br />
focus their attention on God. On the other hand, The Desert of Religion, in<br />
all three manuscripts, offers the reader a multiplicity of images; but these<br />
are not taken from everyday life either. These images also isolate the<br />
hermit-reader from the world and, in MS Add. 37049, offer opportunities<br />
for devotion and ultimately a spiritual community to which to belong.<br />
Possibly the question, in both The Manere of Good Lyvyng and The<br />
Desert of Religion, is not so much the presence or absence of images, verbal<br />
or material, but rather one of control. By controlling the nun’s or hermit’s<br />
environment, the text facilitates what The Desert calls the ‘austerity of<br />
strict living’ (l.32), for as the poem’s Prologue indicates by referring to<br />
another verbal image, which goes back at least to Cassian, ‘For when man<br />
enters the religious life through devotion, he is as a man who should go<br />
into the field to fight against the Fiend’ (ll.12–15).<br />
Anne Elisabeth Mouron obtained her DPhil. from Lincoln College, Oxford, in<br />
1996. She teaches medieval literature at Wycliffe Hall and is a member of Regent’s<br />
Park College. She has published various articles on late medieval devotional texts,<br />
has co-edited with Christiania Whitehead and Denis Renevey the Doctrine of the<br />
Hert (2010), and is the editor of the The Manere of Good Lyvyng (2014).<br />
21 Alistair Minnis, ‘Affection and Imagination in The Cloud of Unknowing and Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’,<br />
Traditio, 39 (1983), 323–366, at 324. Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton and the Cloud author are known<br />
as three of the Middle English mystics. The other two are Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. For an<br />
assessment of all five, see Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London:<br />
Longman, 1993).
SAINTS, THE CHURCH<br />
AND PERSONAL PRAYER<br />
Robert E. Doud<br />
T<br />
HE JOB OF THE CHURCH is to help people become saints. 1 One of<br />
the ancient names for the Church is the Communion of Saints.<br />
Another very ancient, indeed biblical, name for the Church is the Body<br />
of Christ. The Body of Christ is also what we receive in the sacrament<br />
of the Holy Communion: it is the communion, the community and the<br />
common unity of all Christians, local and worldwide. The Communion<br />
of Saints is the Church, and the Body of Christ is the Church. The job<br />
of each member of the Church is to help the other members to become<br />
saints, while joining them in the same process.<br />
All Christians are, in some sense, saints. 2 We have all been cleansed<br />
in the waters of baptism; we have all thereby washed our robes in the<br />
blood of the Lamb, as the biblical Book of Revelation says (7:14). We, as<br />
members of the Church, are God’s Holy People. But we are still sinners.<br />
No one of us on earth will be perfect until we die and go to heaven. In<br />
this world, we are all saints and sinners at the same time.<br />
Many Christians, especially Roman Catholics, also talk about saints as<br />
those almost perfect people who have led lives of extraordinary holiness<br />
in this world, and who have been canonized as saints by a Church. 3 Some<br />
were considered to be saints long before there was a canonization process. 4<br />
Thus, we have Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, Stephen and Agatha. We<br />
1<br />
Karl Rahner, ‘Veneration of Saints’, Theological Dictionary (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965),<br />
479: ‘The magisterium speaks of the significance of the saints when describing the Church as a sign<br />
among the nations and basing her credibility squarely on her holiness …’.<br />
2<br />
Elizabeth A. Johnson, ‘Saints and Mary’, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, edited by<br />
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin, volume 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 156. Johnson<br />
quotes Lumen gentium thus: ‘in various ways and degrees we all partake in the same love for God and<br />
neighbor, and all sing the same hymn of glory to our God’.<br />
3<br />
The Roman Catholic Church has a formal procedure for canonization; the Orthodox and Anglican<br />
Churches also recognise and celebrate saints, and add feast-days for new ones.<br />
4<br />
Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint,<br />
Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 50–52.<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 31–44
32 Robert E. Doud<br />
name churches after these holy<br />
people. Many others have been<br />
exceptionally holy without ever<br />
having been named as saints.<br />
I always enjoy hearing the<br />
epistles read in church, especially<br />
when St Paul mentions his<br />
travelling companions. Today, it<br />
was Sosthenes. I often leave<br />
church thinking about these<br />
associates of St Paul. I am sure<br />
Sosthenes is a saint, although<br />
he was never canonized. Then,<br />
I think of Sylvanus, Timothy,<br />
Barnabas, Silas, Onesimus, John<br />
Mark and Philemon. If they were<br />
partners in the gospel with Paul,<br />
it is highly unlikely that they<br />
failed to become saints.<br />
All Saints’ Day, by Johann König, 1599<br />
I think that the early Church<br />
stressed martyrdom too much. Of course, when we had so many martyrs,<br />
they would take priority in becoming saints. At some point in church<br />
history, however, with fewer martyrs around, monks and nuns started to<br />
be canonized. By now, there may be too many canonized religious and<br />
too few lay and married saints. We need role models for ordinary people<br />
today who are not called to die for their faith but to live it.<br />
Making Saints<br />
To explore and to understand the idea of sainthood is to seek after the<br />
idea of holiness itself. 5 The Church is there to make people holy. To probe<br />
the nature of sainthood or holiness is to probe the nature of the Church.<br />
Canonized saints are exemplary people who show that the Church has<br />
done its job well. Saints show the Church to be the People of God, a<br />
pilgrim people, the Communion of Saints and the Body of Christ. The<br />
Roman Catholic Church’s process of canonizing saints, while generally<br />
taken by Catholics to be inspired by God, may seem to be flawed in<br />
5<br />
Rahner, ‘Holiness, Human’, Theological Dictionary, 207–208: ‘Human holiness is an absolute surrender to<br />
the God of eternal life as he is in himself’.
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 33<br />
many ways. Maybe the Church makes too many saints. Maybe it takes<br />
too long to become a saint. Maybe the Church misses some of the best<br />
people when it makes saints. Maybe it is not necessary for saints to have<br />
miracles attributed to them in order to be canonized.<br />
We should all be looking around for people who are holy and who<br />
can be examples of holiness for us as well. Is there someone in my<br />
workplace who is not only a better worker but also a better person than<br />
I am? Is there someone whose participation in the liturgy and in the<br />
work of my parish makes him or her a person to whom I look up? Who<br />
are the models of prayer, community service and social justice that I can<br />
emulate? These people have characteristics of holiness that I can imitate<br />
as I become holier myself. To some extent, saintliness or holiness is in the<br />
eye of the beholder. The reason why the universal Church canonizes<br />
saints is so that we will look around us and see examples of holiness for<br />
us to copy.<br />
Thomas Merton, Holiness and Modern Life<br />
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was a Trappist monk whose life story and<br />
many writings are well known in the Catholic community, and far<br />
beyond it among other monks of other traditions, such as Hinduism and<br />
Buddhism, and among people interested in spirituality around the<br />
world. Christian monasticism has maintained close contact with the roots<br />
of Christian spirituality in the early Church. Merton has become the<br />
best known, and perhaps also simply the best, interpreter and purveyor<br />
of the early church tradition of prayer and mysticism. He has provided<br />
many people in the modern and postmodern world with access to monastic<br />
spirituality.<br />
I first read Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation as a boy in high school.<br />
At college I often carried a copy in my hip pocket, and used to get<br />
together with a group of junior seminarians who would read it together<br />
after confession on Saturday night. This was in 1961 or 1962, just before<br />
the Second Vatican Council; after the Council Merton revised his book<br />
as New Seeds of Contemplation. 6 Some of us were also interested in Zen,<br />
yoga and the hip poetry of the Beat Generation. Merton’s ironic view of<br />
the world and of worldly values resonated well with the budding interior<br />
life of the Catholic seminarian of that time.<br />
6<br />
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1972), 65: ‘The more I<br />
become identified with God, the more will I be identified with all the others who are identified with him’.
34 Robert E. Doud<br />
The truest<br />
part of<br />
ourselves is<br />
fused with<br />
God at every<br />
moment<br />
A key notion in New Seeds of Contemplation is the contrast or<br />
distinction between the true self and the false self. 7 Each one of us has a<br />
true and a false self. Many people never get to know the true self at all.<br />
They manage to spend an entire lifetime living out the agenda of the<br />
false self, which builds an inflated existence for itself on strictly worldly<br />
terms. 8 Inside, there is a shy, hidden and unexplored region called the<br />
true self. The true self is a sanctuary in which God is always<br />
present, like a private chapel within ourselves where we can<br />
go to be closer to God than to our own breath. It is a great<br />
consolation to the monk or contemplative person that, even<br />
when we seem not to be praying at all, the truest part of<br />
ourselves is fused with God at every moment and everything<br />
else with which we busy ourselves is of secondary and finite<br />
importance. Deep within us there is a self that is true and<br />
real, a self that God creates, moment by moment, giving it love and<br />
grace. God calls to us ever so gently just to walk or sit in the realisation<br />
that God is there. A small and flickering candle of worship is eternally<br />
lit within us. The tiny space in which that inextinguishable candle is lit<br />
is the true self. 9<br />
A saint is one who has managed to change the focus of attention,<br />
in a habitual way, from the false self—which never disappears, even in<br />
advanced sanctity—to the true self that is ever-present in perfect quiet<br />
and humility. John the Baptist said of the coming of Christ: ‘He must<br />
increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30). This is the wisdom of the<br />
true self. The Jesuits say Deus semper maior, or ‘God ever greater’; the<br />
interior experience is of the self shrinking away before God. It is an<br />
experience of God becoming ever more wondrously, although perhaps also<br />
more quietly and subtly, present. Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, begins:<br />
‘My soul magnifies the Lord’. Glory belongs to the Lord, and the ability of<br />
the true self to rejoice in that truth and abide in that reality is the test,<br />
proof and joy of the spiritual life.<br />
7<br />
Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 38: ‘This true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from<br />
the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion ….’ Excellent subsequent material on the true self is<br />
found in Anne E. Carr, A Search for Wisdom and Spirit: Thomas Merton’s Theology of the Self (Notre<br />
Dame: U. of Notre Dame P, 1988), and in Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True<br />
Self (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).<br />
8<br />
Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 21: ‘It is when we refer all things to this outward and false<br />
“self” that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God’.<br />
9<br />
James Martin, My Life with the Saints (Chicago: Loyola, 2006), 387; Martin quotes Merton as<br />
writing, ‘For me to be a saint means to be myself’.
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 35<br />
Praying with the Saints<br />
Sometimes when I am praying, I feel that Merton, or Bishop Fulton<br />
Sheen, another charismatic figure in the Catholic spirituality of the 1950s,<br />
is present with me. Bishop Sheen spoke occasionally at my parish church<br />
in Brooklyn, New York, and I always tried to be present in the sanctuary<br />
on these occasions, dressed in cassock and surplice. I still sometimes feel<br />
the presence of these men. I know others who feel the presence of<br />
Dorothy Day or Edith Stein. 10 I know a hairdresser who prays to St Rita<br />
all day long. An old aunt of mine enjoyed constant communion with<br />
St Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Some of the saints I know best<br />
are canonized, and some of them are not. I think that the poet William<br />
Wordsworth is a saint; I think that Gerard Manley Hopkins is a saint. I<br />
feel a deep kinship with them, and if I go for long walks alone at night,<br />
or in the day, I feel that saints and poets walk with me.<br />
Eventually, Fulton Sheen became an archbishop, but we always<br />
referred to him as Bishop Sheen. He was a prominent speaker on radio and<br />
television from the 1940s up until the 1960s. It was quite chic among<br />
some of the café society set in New York during those years to become<br />
Catholic, that is, to be converted by Fulton Sheen. What was not<br />
commonly known about Bishop Sheen is that he was a philosopher in<br />
his youth. He had earned his doctorate at the University of Louvain in<br />
Belgium and he went on to become a professor at the Catholic University<br />
of America.<br />
There were many Catholics in academic life who were dismayed<br />
when Mgr Sheen gave up his academic post to become director of the<br />
Society for the Propagation of the Faith (SPOF) in New York. He was<br />
not yet thought of as an administrator and popular preacher. He brought<br />
a kind of erudition to preaching that was uncommon in his era, and he<br />
raised enormous amounts of money for the SPOF. As a child I loved to<br />
read the jokes in his little booklet that came to the house every few<br />
months. The good bishop himself appeared as a character in the cartoons.<br />
It was from Bishop Sheen that I first heard of Teilhard de Chardin. 11<br />
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit, was, in the 1950s, president<br />
10 Woodward, Making Saints, 139; ‘[Edith Stein was] a modern intellectual [philosopher] who had<br />
come to faith in the person of Jesus through the disinterested pursuit of truth’.<br />
11 Walter J. Burghardt, Long Have I Loved You: A Theologian Reflects on His Church (Maryknoll: Orbis,<br />
2002), 35: Burghardt notes ‘what Cardinal [Maurice] Feltin called his [Teilhard’s] marvelous seductive<br />
“global vision of the universe wherein matter and spirit, body and soul, nature and supernature,<br />
science and faith find their unity in Christ” ’.
36 Robert E. Doud<br />
of the National Geographic Society in New York City. Teilhard had spent<br />
many years in China as a palaeontologist, doing research on Peking (now<br />
Beijing) Man. He had also helped evaluate the findings of anthropologists<br />
in South Africa on early hominid discoveries. In addition, Teilhard de<br />
Chardin was a mystic. Even before the Roman Catholic Church had<br />
accepted the theory of evolution as scientifically true, Chardin had written<br />
theological works presenting evolution as the way in which God creates.<br />
Teilhard contemplated prayerfully the deep presence of God in matter<br />
as divine love shaped that matter into the various living species on the<br />
earth. His ideas were condemned by the Vatican, but his reputation for<br />
sanctity, vision and scientific honesty grew among Catholic intellectuals.<br />
As a college sophomore, I heard Sheen speak about Teilhard de Chardin<br />
with great reverence as early as 1960. I now consider both Sheen and<br />
Teilhard to be saints.<br />
The writings of Teilhard de Chardin were extremely influential at the<br />
Second Vatican Council which, as we well know, changed the Roman<br />
Catholic Church radically and permanently. The Council was a New<br />
Pentecost that poured out the Holy Spirit in ways that may not be fully<br />
appreciated even now. Perhaps no one had more influence on the direction<br />
of that visionary council than Pope John XXIII. 12 For me, John XXIII was<br />
the greatest saint of the twentieth century. It was his incredible humanness<br />
and inclusiveness that set him apart from and above the rest of us, and<br />
at the same time brought him so very close to us.<br />
The Saints in Art<br />
Another aspect of the saints is the inspiration they have given to the<br />
arts. 13 I think of my visit to the Cathedral of St Bavo in the city of Ghent,<br />
in Belgium. This cathedral is the home of a huge work of art, a painting<br />
originally created to go behind the main altar. The altarpiece is called<br />
The Adoration of the Lamb, and it was painted by Jan van Eyck (1390–<br />
1441). At the centre of the painting is the Lamb of God, standing on an<br />
altar placed in the middle of a field, surrounded by nature. Blood is<br />
flowing from the Lamb into cups, to be drunk as wine would be drunk,<br />
12 Martin, My Life with the Saints, 184. Martin quotes Pope John XXIII thus: ‘The secret of life is to let<br />
oneself be carried by God and so carry him [to others]’.<br />
13 David Tracy, Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-religious Dialogue (Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 109: ‘The<br />
philosophers and theologians … [are] demanding extra-biblical support for the [Christian] narrative<br />
… through philosophical or cultural [artistic and poetic] arguments’.
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 37<br />
The Adoration of the Lamb, from the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck, 1432<br />
by streaming hordes of people who converge on the altar in long columns.<br />
The people are kings and queens, lords and ladies, soldiers, priests, nuns<br />
and monks, families, children, peasants, artisans of all kinds. There are<br />
also saints and angels; the surface of the artwork is extremely busy.<br />
What the artwork depicts is exactly what the cathedral itself<br />
represents, a focus or destination towards which all humanity is called to<br />
come. The three great divisions of humanity—or divisions of the<br />
Church—are the Church Triumphant, including all the saints in heaven,<br />
whether canonized or not; the Church Suffering, or all the souls in<br />
Purgatory who are preparing to enter heaven; and us, the Church Militant,<br />
the ones still on earth who are fighting the good fight and are yet to win<br />
a permanent place in the Kingdom. All are in some sense saints, God’s<br />
Holy People, participants in the Communion of Saints. We are enshrouded<br />
or embedded in this Mystery, and in the reality of this gives us our identity.<br />
There is another work of art, also Flemish and also famous, that I<br />
would present as the perfect counterpoint to van Eyck’s The Adoration of<br />
the Lamb. This other painting is called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.<br />
It is a Dutch genre painting, typically droll and self-deprecating in its<br />
depiction of Dutch life. The painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525–<br />
1569), pictures the boy Icarus, who has fallen from the sky into the sea,<br />
surrounded by many people, all of them going about their stolid business—<br />
caring for animals, ploughing, driving a cart along the road—none of<br />
them noticing that the boy needs help, or that this lad has accomplished
38 Robert E. Doud<br />
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1555<br />
something no one else has ever done. He has flown close enough to<br />
the sun for it to melt the wax holding his wings together and cause him<br />
to fall to earth before them. They fail, or they refuse, to be surprised,<br />
impressed or enchanted by anything that confronts them. They are like<br />
some people in the modern and postmodern world who are unable to<br />
notice the marvellous and the miraculous, the mystery of being and life<br />
that surrounds them.<br />
There is a famous poem by W. H. Auden called ‘Musée des Beaux<br />
Arts’. This poem reflects on two of Bruegel’s paintings, Landscape with<br />
the Fall of Icarus and Census at Bethlehem, both of which hang in the<br />
Musée des Beaux Arts in Brussels. The first verse of Auden’s poem is<br />
about Census at Bethlehem. This painting pictures a pregnant Mary, with<br />
Joseph, awaiting her turn to seek admission to an inn. As with the boy<br />
Icarus in the other painting, nobody seems to be paying any attention<br />
to Mary and Joseph. The poem says:<br />
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting<br />
For the miraculous birth, there always must be<br />
Children who did not especially want it to happen, skating<br />
On a pond at the edge of the wood. 14<br />
14 W. H. Auden, ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, in Collected Poems (London: Faber 2007), 179.
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 39<br />
The Census at Bethlehem, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566<br />
There is something spiritual in how we compare or interpret works<br />
of art. Allowing for differences, we see a likeness between indifference<br />
and disenchantment in the age of Bruegel and in our own time. Some<br />
people care about mystery and enchantment, and some do not. To van<br />
Eyck, perhaps, the Eucharistic mystery drew towards itself the members<br />
of all ranks of the secular and worldly community. To Bruegel, the worldly<br />
community had come to disregard the sacred and the miraculous. It is<br />
highly unlikely that the children in Census at Bethlehem or the adults in<br />
Bruegel’s Icarus would ever line up to go and see, or join in contemplating,<br />
The Adoration of the Lamb. The special and fallen boy Icarus is like the<br />
slain and risen Lamb, but nobody notices him. The earlier painting (van<br />
Eyck’s) draws out the meaning of the later paintings (Bruegel’s). Van Eyck<br />
presents the reality of enchantment, while Bruegel gives us a picture of<br />
disenchantment. A spiritual lesson is learnt in the contrast.<br />
We live in a ‘destitute time’, as the poet Hölderlin and the philosopher<br />
Heidegger say, because we have lost enchantment, this sense of wonder<br />
and miracle. 15<br />
Enchantment, here, is the eagerness to see holiness in<br />
15 See Martin Heidegger, ‘What Are Poets For?’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert<br />
Hofstadter (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), 89 following.
40 Robert E. Doud<br />
others and then to be holy ourselves. We miss a good deal of the<br />
goodness, even greatness, constantly surrounding us. We miss even our<br />
own goodness, the sense of the self as holy and as called to become<br />
more holy. The fallen Icarus can be seen as a powerful figure of Christ just<br />
as the ‘lamb that was slaughtered’ (Revelation 5:12, 13:8) is a figure of<br />
Christ.<br />
The job of the saints is to re-enchant our world and our surroundings,<br />
to make us notice the divine agenda, which is all about our holiness, God<br />
sharing divine life and grace with the likes of us, human beings. The<br />
Church is the community of saints everywhere who treasure the reality<br />
and possibility of transparency to divine light and grace. The individual<br />
saints are people whom we recognise as having been personally transparent<br />
to God’s grace and responsive to the will of God in their own times<br />
and places.<br />
The real communion with saints, spelt here without capital letters—<br />
the (small ‘c’) communion or community of saints—involves awareness<br />
of each other, dialogue with other persons, welcoming strangers, noticing<br />
the new, the different, the wondrous and the miraculous, especially the<br />
extraordinary goodness, in the ordinary people around us. This is what<br />
making saints is all about: noticing specialness, noticing holiness in the<br />
great saints, but also in ordinary people, and most especially in ourselves.<br />
Noticing our own holiness makes us humble, because holiness brings with<br />
it the knowledge that what we have belongs to God before it belongs to<br />
us. It is a gift. Humility, then, is our point of connection with others;<br />
the communion, if you will, with saints; the togetherness that makes us<br />
God’s people, a covenanted people. With humility, mere individuality<br />
becomes personality, and the person becomes capable of communion<br />
with others.<br />
The feast day of a saint is called in Latin the natalitia, that is, the<br />
heavenly birthday, the day on which the saint is reborn into eternity—<br />
the day on which the saint died. Death itself is looked on as a birthday<br />
from the point of view of eternity. Just the other day I came across<br />
another painting, The Death of the Virgin by Bartolomeo Vivarini (fl.<br />
1450–1491). In the background of Mary’s death scene is a picture of<br />
Jesus as an adult and as the Risen Lord, holding Mary on his lap as an<br />
infant in swaddling clothes. It thus depicted Mary on her birthday as a<br />
new saint in heaven, where her earthly son is fully manifest as eternal<br />
Lord!
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 41<br />
The Death of the Virgin, by Bartolomeo Vivarini, 1485<br />
We Do Not Pray Alone<br />
We think of saints as especially close to God and as influential for<br />
others in their relationship with God. They are also capable of an<br />
extraordinary number of close relationships with other human beings,<br />
living and dead. Saints are friends. They are powerful, accessible and<br />
helpful. Close relationship with God intensifies and multiplies our capacity<br />
for loving relationships with one another. The saints love us; they care for<br />
us; they intercede for us. They pray for us, whether we know who they are<br />
or not, and whether we ask them to help us or not. They demonstrate<br />
for us, in their exalted state, the true nature of the Church and of our<br />
relationships with each other in this world as well. We are all called to<br />
be saints; in some way, we are all already saints.
42 Robert E. Doud<br />
Having a personal and basically Ignatian 16 spirituality myself, I pray<br />
to certain saints in clusters. One of my favourite clusters contains<br />
Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Robert Bellarmine, Isaac Jogues, Peter<br />
Canisius, Edmund Campion, Eusebio Kino, the North American martyrs,<br />
the Salvadorean martyrs and the English martyrs. Not all the saints in<br />
these clusters are canonized. The Jesuits Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner,<br />
Walter Burghardt and David Hassel are also in my cluster. For me, they<br />
are surely members of the Church triumphant, and they are available<br />
for friendship and intercession. I have other deceased Jesuit mentors<br />
and friends who are included in my prayers as well. I am sure that their<br />
accomplishments in the world continue to shine in the everlasting<br />
Kingdom of God.<br />
Saints are not jealous or envious of one another. Giving more<br />
honour to one saint does not mean giving less honour to other saints.<br />
Many important friendships in my life have been with Franciscans. I am<br />
a Californian, and the missions around my state remind me constantly<br />
of the Franciscan padres and their legacy. Hence, I pray to another<br />
favourite cluster: Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua,<br />
Bonaventure, Juan Crespi and Junipero Serra. I pray with, for and to<br />
friends of mine, living and dead, who are OFMs, Conventuals, Capuchins,<br />
Atonements or Third Order Regulars. I think it makes my own prayer<br />
more powerful and effective if I link it to these contemplatives and<br />
missionaries.<br />
Another community of spiritual friends to which I belong is that of<br />
the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. Indeed, I am a<br />
former member of that religious congregation. Founded in 1932, this<br />
community is a new one in the Catholic Church, and has no canonized<br />
members. Nevertheless, having known the traditions of that community,<br />
and many of its members as well, I know it to be a channel of grace and<br />
holiness opened up in the Church by God. Fr Thomas Augustine Judge<br />
is the founder of that community and congregation. Sr Boniface Keasey is<br />
the founder of the Trinitarian sisters’ community. Fr Lawrence Brediger<br />
is revered by Trinitarians as another saintly member. I lived for a while<br />
as a young religious with the venerable Fr Thomas O’Keefe. I often<br />
unite my prayers to what is called the Missionary Cenacle Family.<br />
16 Martin, My Life with the Saints, 98: ‘The path of St. Ignatius means searching for signs of God’s<br />
presence in the stuff of the everyday’.
Saints, the Church and Personal Prayer 43<br />
When I pray, I do not pray alone. I fancy that myriads of saintly figures<br />
flow with me and around me in my own times of prayer. In my prayer, I<br />
share the joy and glory of the saints. I squeeze myself into one of my<br />
clusters of saintly friends. I remember many of the faculty who educated<br />
me in Catholic schools. I remember my own schoolmates and classmates.<br />
I remember my students and others who might have been influenced by<br />
me. I pray that the influence I gave others might be in the long term<br />
positive and not negative. I pray for blessings in the lives of people I may<br />
have neglected or offended along the way. The Church community, always<br />
at prayer, is a vast network of mutual enhancement that is based in patterns<br />
of exchange and transference between members.<br />
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles does not<br />
contain a very large number of statues. What it does have is a marvellous,<br />
elegant, yet understated tapestry that surrounds the congregation. On<br />
that tapestry, hundreds of saints are depicted in pilgrimage or procession,<br />
towards the altar. This tapestry, I tend to think, is like a twenty-firstcentury<br />
interpretation of van Eyck’s altarpiece in Ghent. The tapestry<br />
was designed on computer in Ohai, California, and actually woven in<br />
© Adam A. Sofen<br />
The Communion of Saints, tapestry by John Nava, Cathedral of Our Lady of the<br />
Angels, Los Angeles
44 Robert E. Doud<br />
Bruges, Belgium. The tapestry depicts the Body of Christ in so far as it<br />
depicts the People of God who are members of the Body of Christ. It<br />
shows all the saints: the saints on earth, or Church militant, moving<br />
with and among the Church triumphant, the saints already in the<br />
Kingdom. It depicts the saints, not only as special individuals but, more<br />
appropriately, in their unity and community with God in Christ. The<br />
full meaning of the tapestry comes alive in the communion procession;<br />
we are all drawn together as pilgrims as we move towards the altar.<br />
The Communion of Saints is a mystery of faith and a doctrine of<br />
the Church. It is also part of our prayerful and liturgical experience. We<br />
all participate in the physical, spiritual and sacramental body of Christ.<br />
The intimacy of that participation is far beyond what we as earthly saints<br />
can understand or appreciate. Receiving the Eucharist has implications,<br />
not only for a person’s friendship with Christ, but for his or her growing<br />
intimacy with the entire Church. The most seemingly insignificant<br />
member of the congregation enjoys a rich participation in the holy<br />
mysteries we celebrate together. Going to communion in procession is<br />
a sign of our communion and connectedness. Moving in line for<br />
communion, I often say: ‘He must increase, I must decrease’. In procession,<br />
the whole Church community moves as one body in one flowing motion;<br />
this is the Body of Christ.<br />
Robert E. Doud is emeritus professor of philosophy and religious studies at Pasadena<br />
City College in California. He has a particular interest in bringing together philosophy<br />
and poetry, using poetry as material offering insight into philosophy and using<br />
philosophy as a tool in the interpretation of poetry. His articles have appeared in<br />
Process Studies, Review for Religious, The Journal of Religion, The Journal of the American<br />
Academy of Religion, Philosophy Today, The Thomist, Religion and Literature, Horizons,<br />
Soundings and Existentia.
BEDE GRIFFITHS’S<br />
ADVAITIC APPROACH TO<br />
RELIGION<br />
Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
I<br />
N HIS SPIRITUAL JOURNEY from Benedictine monk to Christian swami,<br />
Bede Griffiths attempted to accommodate the Hindu Vedic tradition<br />
within Christianity. Part of this Vedic teaching is the philosophy of<br />
non-duality or advaita, which Griffith adopts and modifies in his theology.<br />
This non-dualistic vision of the whole cosmic reality enables Griffiths<br />
to appreciate other religious systems and eventually to view them as<br />
complementary to Christianity. While he affirms the differences in<br />
religions, he also perceives them as united in the one Spirit at the deepest<br />
level achieved only through contemplation of the divine mystery. This<br />
advaitic approach to understanding the Absolute led Griffiths to believe<br />
that eventually all religions would converge without losing their distinct<br />
identities.<br />
Towards a Christian Advaita<br />
Developed by the Hindu philosopher ankara in the eighth century AD,<br />
advaita, or non-dualism, ‘expresses a relationship between God and the<br />
world or between God and the soul’. This relationship is understood in<br />
terms of ‘non-reciprocity, dependence, non-separatedness, non-otherness<br />
and distinction’ between God as cause (Brahman) and creation as effect. 1<br />
1<br />
See Kuruvilla Pandikattu, Religious Dialogue as Hermeneutics: Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach<br />
(Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2001), 60–61. Pandikattu explains<br />
these terms: ‘Non-reciprocity: .… There cannot be a relationship of mutuality between the cause and<br />
effect …. Creatureship is intrinsic to creatures but creatorship is only extrinsic to [the] creator.<br />
Dependence: Effect has no existence apart from the cause …. Non-separateness: … is due to total<br />
ontological dependence on the cause …. Non-Otherness: … denies otherness strictly understood, that is,<br />
mutual foreignness, heterogeneity and ontological independence from its cause .… Distinction: Though<br />
ankara insists on the nondifference of Cause and effect, he denies at the same time their absolute<br />
identity .… If absolute equality and identity were insisted on, the relation of cause and effect would be<br />
done away with.’<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 45–56
46 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
Bede Griffiths sought to articulate<br />
a refined Christian version of<br />
advaita in his attempt to construct<br />
a Christian theology that is<br />
relevant to India. It is not a<br />
theoretical construction based on<br />
speculation but evolved from<br />
his personal experience through<br />
years of study and meditation. It<br />
sprang from his practice of the<br />
ascetic life in the tradition of<br />
the Indian sannyasi, or itinerant<br />
holy men. Even before he went<br />
to India, during his childhood,<br />
Griffiths had a vague intuition<br />
of advaita on an evening walk<br />
when he felt at one with nature. 2<br />
Bede Griffiths, in the robes of a sannyasi For Griffiths, advaita is a<br />
mystical intuition of being one<br />
with the divine reality; his experience of non-duality in his encounter<br />
with God is equivalent to the experience of the soul in its very centre,<br />
beyond images and concepts. Hindus and Buddhists may express this<br />
non-dual reality differently, but Griffiths believed that their experience<br />
of the non-duality of the divine is fundamentally the same. Christians<br />
have a lot to learn from Hinduism and Buddhism in their quest for the<br />
Absolute. At the same time, Christians also have a lot to offer to<br />
Eastern religions in terms of refinement and reinterpretation of the<br />
advaitic experience. This involves seeing the Hindu notion of advaita in<br />
the light of the Christian understanding of creation, the notion of the<br />
person and the incarnation of Jesus Christ.<br />
Rejecting the monism of pure advaita, which affirms the absolute<br />
identity between Brahman and the soul, Griffiths describes a Christian<br />
advaita characterized by intuitive knowledge, love and an affirmation<br />
of the reality of the world. He believed that individuals do not lose<br />
their identity, even in deep communion with God. Relationship with<br />
God does not abolish the individuality of the soul. The relationship<br />
cannot be one of total identity or complete absorption. Griffiths writes:<br />
2<br />
See Judson B. Trapnell, Bede Griffiths: A Life in Dialogue (Albany: SUNY, 2001), 13.
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 47<br />
For the Hindu and the Buddhist … in the ultimate state there is an<br />
absolute identity. Man realizes his identity with the absolute and<br />
realizes that this identity is eternal and unchangeable. In the Christian<br />
view man remains distinct from God. He is a creature of God, and<br />
his being raised to a participation in the divine life is an act of God’s<br />
grace, a gratuitous act of infinite love, by which God descends to man<br />
in order to raise him to share in his own life and knowledge and<br />
love. In this union man truly shares in the divine mode of knowledge,<br />
he knows himself in an identity with God, but he remains distinct in<br />
his being. It is an identity, or rather a communion, by knowledge<br />
and love, not an identity of being. 3<br />
In his Christian interpretation of advaita, Griffiths was influenced<br />
by Meister Eckhart’s mystical experience: ‘As Eckhart says, God only<br />
speaks one Word, and in that word the whole creation is contained. In<br />
God the whole Creation exists externally in identity with him.’ 4<br />
For<br />
Griffiths, advaita is the intuitive power of the mind that Eckhart described:<br />
This power has nothing in common with anything else, it knows no<br />
yesterday or day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there<br />
is no yesterday or morrow); there is only a present now; the happenings<br />
of a thousand years ago, a thousand years to come, are there in the<br />
present and the antipodes the same as here. 5<br />
In Eckhart’s view, ‘in God’s own knowledge of himself in his Word there<br />
are no real distinctions …. In this sense it is true to say that the knowledge<br />
of God is “advaita”, without duality.’ 6<br />
Another important influence on Griffiths was Thomas Aquinas, who<br />
also speaks of the unity of God:<br />
He is supremely undivided inasmuch as He is divided neither actually<br />
nor potentially, by any mode of division; since He is altogether<br />
simple …. Hence it is manifest that God is ‘one’ in the supreme<br />
degree. 7<br />
3<br />
Bede Griffiths, Christ in India: Essays towards a Hindu–Christian Dialogue (Springfield: Templegate,<br />
1984), 36.<br />
4<br />
Bede Griffiths, The Marriage of East and West: A Sequel to the Golden String (Springfield: Templegate,<br />
1982), 84.<br />
5<br />
The Works of Meister Eckhart: Doctor Ecstaticus, translated by C. de B. Evans (London: John M.<br />
Watkins, 1952), volume 1, 228, quoted in Griffiths, Marriage of East and West, 168.<br />
6<br />
Griffiths, Christ in India, 204.<br />
7<br />
Summa theologiae, 1. 11. 4.
48 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
But in this oneness of God there are three Persons to be understood in<br />
terms of relationship and procession—that is, the way in which one divine<br />
Person originates in another. This brings us to Griffiths’ understanding of<br />
the Trinity.<br />
The Trinitarian God<br />
Griffiths applies his understanding of advaita to the divine mystery of<br />
the Trinity, first in the relationship between the Son and the Father:<br />
We could then speak of God as Saccidananda—Being, Knowledge,<br />
Bliss—and see in the Father, sat, Being, the absolute eternal ‘I am’,<br />
the ground of Being, the source of all. We could then speak of the<br />
Son, as the cit, the knowledge of the Father, the Self-consciousness<br />
of eternal Being, the presence to itself in pure consciousness of the<br />
Infinite One. 8<br />
Here we see Griffiths interpreting Jesus’ relationship with the Father in<br />
a modified advaitic sense: Jesus experienced himself as one with God<br />
the Father, and yet distinct. It is an ontological unity that nevertheless<br />
preserves the identity of Jesus so that he can relate to the Father as a<br />
distinct Person. As we have seen, Griffiths rejects a pure advaita that<br />
erases distinctions completely. He clearly explains his understanding of<br />
advaita in the context of John’s Gospel:<br />
But there [in John’s Gospel], Jesus reveals this inner mystery of His<br />
openness with the Father. This to me is the climax of it all, that<br />
this Son of Man, this man knows Himself in this unity with the<br />
Father. He can say, ‘I and the Father are one’. And that is the<br />
mystery of unity-in-distinction. This is the point that is generally<br />
missed …. Jesus does not say, ‘I am the Father’. That would be pure<br />
advaita, pure identity, but says rather, ‘I and the Father are one’,<br />
which is unity-in-distinction …. And He also says, ‘I am in the Father<br />
and the Father is in me’. That is the proper way of expressing advaita<br />
in Christian terms. 9<br />
The focus here is on the human consciousness of Jesus Christ as Son to<br />
the Father—this is ‘unity-in-distinction’.<br />
8<br />
9<br />
Griffiths, Marriage of East and West, 190.<br />
Bede Griffiths, ‘The Personal God: The Trinity’, lecture given to the Ojai Community, 17 September<br />
1983, quoted in Wayne Teasdale, Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought (Woodstock,<br />
Vt: Skylight Path, 2003), 116.
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 49<br />
For Griffiths the Holy Spirit is ‘the eternal uncreated energy of God<br />
the Father and the Son as well’. 10 He says that the Spirit,<br />
… manifests itself in the energies in matter, in the energies of life,<br />
the energies in our whole human being …. The Spirit is the Love of<br />
God acting in us as an energy, bringing us into being, and calling us<br />
back to Himself. Love is working in us to return. 11<br />
In sum, the love between the three persons of the Trinity is deep and<br />
mutual, but they are neither merged into one nor separated as individuals.<br />
It is their mutual interdependence that gives rise to a wholeness that is<br />
greater than the sum of their parts. This is the fundamental idea behind<br />
Griffith’s formulation of the Christian advaita.<br />
Towards a Convergence of Religions<br />
Griffiths’s reflections on advaita<br />
as an experience of the divine<br />
mystery also allow him to have<br />
a vision of how different religions<br />
can converge, how they can<br />
complement and cooperate with<br />
one another, moving beyond<br />
mistrust and rivalry. Such<br />
convergence, based on advaitic<br />
experience, does not diminish<br />
the importance of the differences<br />
among the diverse religious<br />
traditions, but joins them in a<br />
‘unitive pluralism’. 12 This phrase<br />
describes the harmonization of<br />
religions based both on the<br />
acceptance of differences and<br />
an advaitic commonality. He<br />
writes, stressing the importance<br />
of religious integration:<br />
Marble relief of the Holy Trinity from Sé<br />
Cathedral, Goa, early seventeenth century<br />
10 Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, 119.<br />
11 Griffiths, ‘The Personal God’, quoted in Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, 119.<br />
12 Bede Griffiths, Return to the Center (Springfield: Templegate, 1976), 24.
50 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
On this depends the union of East and West and the future of<br />
humanity. We must try to see the values in each of these revelations,<br />
to distinguish their differences and to discover their harmony, going<br />
beyond the differences in an experience of ‘non-duality’, of transcendence<br />
of all dualities. 13<br />
While acknowledging that in each religious tradition there is an<br />
experience of the transcendent reality, Griffiths also respects their diverse<br />
interpretations or expressions of that reality.<br />
It is important to note that Griffiths does not say that all religious<br />
experiences are experiences of the same thing, but that they converge<br />
in the transcendent mystery. At the same time, he believes in the presence<br />
of a vision of non-duality occurring at some point in these various<br />
religious experiences. This means that the universal mystical experience<br />
in all authentic faiths possesses this one advaitic insight.<br />
Complementarity<br />
After many years of study, reflection and meditation at the Shantivanam<br />
Ashram in India, Griffiths began to realise that the cosmic revelation<br />
found in eastern religions is not a mere preparation for the gospel but<br />
actually complements Christian revelation. In Vedanta and Christian Faith,<br />
he writes:<br />
The divine Mystery, the eternal Truth, has been revealing itself to all<br />
men from the beginning of history. Every people has received some<br />
insight into this divine mystery—which is the beginning of human<br />
existence—and every religion, from the most primitive to the most<br />
advanced, has its own unique insight into the one Truth. These<br />
insights, in-so-far as they reflect the one Reality, are in principle<br />
complementary. 14<br />
It was Griffiths’s understanding of advaitic mystical experience that<br />
eventually led him to understand the complementarity of religions. He<br />
believed that,<br />
… to share in the vision of God means … to pass beyond all concepts<br />
of the rational mind and all images derived from the sense. We must<br />
pass into that world of non-dual, in which our present mode of<br />
13 Griffiths, Marriage of East and West, 177.<br />
14 Bede Griffiths, Vedanta and Christian Faith (Clearlake: Dawn Horse, 1973), vii–viii.
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 51<br />
consciousness is transcended …. In this view of the ultimate mystery<br />
of being, which is the beginning and the end of all our human<br />
aspiration, Hindu and Christian unite not only with one another but<br />
also with the Buddhist and the Muslim. 15<br />
For Griffiths, this experience is universal in the mystical tradition of all<br />
faiths, and our study of all the different religions will lead us to a deeper<br />
understanding of the divine mystery.<br />
Griffiths’s thought underwent a radical shift from his early ‘fulfilment<br />
theory’, according to which other religions found their completion and<br />
fulfilment only in Christianity, to a belief that the purpose of interreligious<br />
dialogue is not to convert but to understand the other. Thus Christians<br />
must be open to listen to the Word that is present in other<br />
faiths. He claims: ‘It would seem that in time to come it will<br />
become impossible to be Christian in any complete sense, if<br />
one is ignorant of the measure of wisdom and knowledge to<br />
be found in the traditions of other religions’. 16<br />
Accordingly<br />
interreligious dialogue must play a significant role in Christian<br />
mission. In our effort to foster an ‘integral Catholicism’, Griffiths insists<br />
that Christianity must integrate the insights of all religions into a<br />
comprehensive vision of Christ. This final integration, however, will only<br />
take place in the parousia when we will realise God as God is.<br />
In dialogue the differences between religions can be explored more<br />
deeply. Griffiths insists that dialogue is not a compromise but a common<br />
search for the truth that revealed itself in different religions:<br />
Each religion has to hold the fundamental truth in its own tradition<br />
and at the same time to allow that tradition to grow, as it is exposed<br />
to other aspects of the truth. Thus we begin to realize that truth is<br />
one, but that it has many faces, and each religion is, as it were, a face<br />
of the one Truth, which manifests itself under different signs and<br />
symbols in the different historical traditions. 17<br />
Griffiths asserts that, at the deepest level of religious experience, there is<br />
nothing incompatible among the different religious traditions. The deeper<br />
you go into Buddhism and Hinduism, the more you will realise their<br />
Not to<br />
convert but to<br />
understand<br />
the other<br />
15 Griffiths, Vedanta and Christian Faith, 162–163.<br />
16 Bede Griffiths, ‘Where World Religions Meet’, The Tablet (1 April 1972), 315, quoted in Pandikattu,<br />
Religious Dialogue as Hermeneutics, 167.<br />
17 Griffiths, Marriage of East and West, 25.
52 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
fundamental unity with the Christian faith. In this comparative study of<br />
religion, Griffiths gains further insights into the non-dual nature of the<br />
divine reality. He stresses the need to understand the passing forms of this<br />
world through the transformation of our present mode of consciousness<br />
into a deeper level of consciousness: to transcend,<br />
… the dualities external and internal, subject and object, conscious and<br />
unconscious, and become one with the non-dual Reality, the Brahman,<br />
and the tman, the Tao, the Void, the Word, the Truth, whatever<br />
name we give to that which cannot be named. It is this alone that<br />
gives reality to our lives and a meaning to our human existence. 18<br />
Griffiths advocates cooperation and dialogue, which he understands<br />
as mutual enlightenment rather than compromise, as it is no longer<br />
possible for religions to exist in<br />
isolation. He warns against the<br />
danger of an exclusivism that<br />
neglects the unifying foundation of<br />
all faiths. Recognising the relative<br />
values of rites and dogmas, Griffiths<br />
holds that each religion springs<br />
from a profound experience of the<br />
Spirit, which is expressed differently<br />
in each tradition. We seek dialogue<br />
with other religions in order to<br />
recover this original inspiration<br />
of the Spirit. It is by returning to<br />
the source that different religions<br />
can find their unity. 19 This meeting<br />
of religions cannot even be based<br />
on a shared belief in God, since<br />
in Buddhism and some other faiths<br />
there is no such concept. It can<br />
only take place on the basis of<br />
advaita.<br />
Christ the Saviour, Mughal, c.1630–1640<br />
18 Bede Griffiths, A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith, edited<br />
by Felicity Edwards (Springfield: Templegate, 1990), 226.<br />
19 Griffiths, New Vision of Reality, 103–104.
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 53<br />
Unsurprisingly, this complementarity of religions has not been<br />
generally accepted in the Roman Catholic Church, and thus Griffiths<br />
has received widespread criticism. He was accused of uniting incompatible<br />
teachings regarding Christian theology, Indian mysticism, philosophy<br />
and monasticism without any systematization. Some accused him of<br />
fostering syncretism, but he vehemently denied this:<br />
We are not seeking a syncretism in which each religion will lose its<br />
own individuality, but an organic growth in which each religion has<br />
to purify itself and discover its own inmost depth and significance and<br />
then relate itself to the inner depth of the other traditions. Perhaps<br />
it will never be finally achieved in this world, but it is the one way in<br />
which we can advance today towards that unity in truth, which is<br />
the ultimate goal of mankind. 20<br />
Against syncretism, Griffith’s theological approach stresses convergence,<br />
which is based on openness to various traditions. It is an openness that<br />
allows ‘an organic, natural assimilation of all that is of value in other<br />
traditions and that somehow enriches and illumines the Christian mystery<br />
without contradicting its essential meaning and value’. 21<br />
In Griffiths’s<br />
advaitic approach to religious experience, both differences and similarities<br />
between various faiths are clearly maintained. And he tries to create a<br />
distinction between the original experience and the effect of its historical<br />
conditions.<br />
Thus, as we have observed, Griffiths’s understanding of other religions<br />
is characterized by complementarity, avoidance of syncretism, and dialogue<br />
based on contemplation which springs from his advaitic approach.<br />
Nonetheless, his preference for Christianity is obvious. Griffiths appreciated<br />
the importance of creation and the notion of the person taught in<br />
Christianity, which he found lacking in Eastern religions. He hoped that<br />
in the future all religions would converge on their source, returning to<br />
the original mystical vision that they have lost through modernisation<br />
and secularisation.<br />
Criticisms<br />
There are critics who dismiss ‘ashramic spirituality’ of the kind that<br />
Griffiths promoted as an ‘irrelevant bit of religious colonialism’ packaged<br />
20 Bede Griffiths, ‘The One Mystery’, The Tablet (9 March 1974), 7.<br />
21 Teasdale, Bede Griffiths, 70.
54 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
for middle-class Western tourists. 22 The Hindu swami Devandanda asks<br />
by what authority Christian priests wear the robe of the sannyasin and<br />
celebrate Mass using Hindu symbols and customs. Devandanda thinks<br />
that Griffiths had no real grasp of Indian mentality and was meddling<br />
with the souls of the people by his experiments at Shantivanam. Calling<br />
him a ‘spiritual colonialist’, the swami accuses Griffiths of perverting<br />
Hindu symbols and traditions for the purpose of converting the local<br />
people to Christianity. Griffiths defends himself by asserting that great<br />
individuals such as Gandhi and Ramakrishna appreciated Christianity<br />
without changing their own faith. He also claims that his religion is<br />
Christian but his spirit is Hindu. 23<br />
Griffiths has been accused of ‘dubious integration’. If his spirit is<br />
truly Hindu, he cannot be considered a Christian in the orthodox sense:<br />
he seems to be opposing religion and the spirit. Griffiths ‘constantly uses<br />
Christian language to interpret Hindu concepts and Hindu language to<br />
interpret Christian concepts’. 24<br />
To his critics, he is creating a hybrid<br />
that is neither Christian nor Hindu, and his interpretation of the Trinity<br />
in terms of Hindu categories is distorted and misleading. In addition,<br />
his understanding of Hinduism is limited, because he read the Vedas,<br />
Upanishad and the Gita in English translations by Vivekananda and<br />
Ramakrishna, who were influenced by Western philosophy. Shaped by<br />
neo-Hinduism and Western scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth<br />
centuries, Griffiths’s understanding of Indian tradition is bound to be<br />
one-sided. There seem to be some similarities between the Christian<br />
logos and Hindu consciousness, between Christian agape and Hindu<br />
bliss, but these are not exactly the same, they loosely correspond with<br />
each other. In the end, for some, Griffiths only succeeds in distorting<br />
both Hinduism and Christianity, and his spirituality is theosophical<br />
rather than Christian. 25 According to his opponents, Griffiths’s writings<br />
lack the rigour demanded by serious theological study; the critical<br />
mind needed to analyze religious theories is absent. For them, his<br />
approach to Christianity and Hinduism is indeed merely syncretic.<br />
22 Michael Barnes, ‘From Ashrams to Dalits: The Four Seasons of Inculturation’, The Way, 41/1<br />
(January 2001), 62.<br />
23 Victor M. Parachin, ‘Bede Griffiths: Christian Guru’, Spiritual Life, 56/4 (Winter 2010), 227.<br />
24 José Pereira and Robert Fastiggi, ‘The Swami from Oxford: Bede Griffiths Wants to Integrate<br />
Catholicism and Hinduism’, Crisis, 9 (March 1991), 24.<br />
25 Pereira and Fastiggi, ‘Swami from Oxford’, 25.
Bede Griffiths’s Advaitic Approach to Religion 55<br />
Another criticism of ‘ashramic<br />
spirituality’ is that it is addressed<br />
only to the Brahminic culture. It is<br />
elitist and ignores the social reality<br />
of India. The Sri Lankan Jesuit<br />
Aloysius Pieris, for example, takes<br />
a quite different approach to<br />
interreligious dialogue by focusing<br />
on the ethical basis of Buddhism. 26<br />
Critical of Western obsessions with<br />
Eastern mysticism, which is actually<br />
foreign to the indigenous religious<br />
experience of the people, Pieris insists<br />
that theology must take into account<br />
poverty and religious pluralism, two<br />
dominant characteristics of the Asian<br />
landscape. Not denying the value<br />
of contemplative theology, he argues<br />
Crucifixion, Rural Theological Institute,<br />
Tamil Nadu<br />
that the shift in Indian Christian theology should be towards dialogue<br />
with the non-Sanskritic religion of the dalits, the broken and poor<br />
people who live on the margins of India’s caste system. The focus<br />
should be on the liberating praxis of the gospel, which is relevant to<br />
these people.<br />
© Matteo @ Flickr<br />
Liberating Openness<br />
There are those, however, who think that the experience of the Christian<br />
ashram has also been a liberating one. Bede Griffiths impressed people<br />
by his humility, warmth and hospitality. His success in his attempt to<br />
assimilate Indian culture into his spirituality was due to his gracious<br />
nature and openness to others. Griffiths understood that the Christian<br />
faith could not be explained in the language of another culture without<br />
being deeply rooted in human relationship. 27 Griffiths possesses experiential<br />
depth and what emerges in his writings is a refreshing view of the<br />
world. He is able to capture and convey the enchantment that is missing<br />
in our daily existence, providing his readers with an inspiring vision<br />
26 See Aloysius Pieris, Love Meets Wisdom (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990).<br />
27 Barnes, ‘From Ashrams to Dalits’, 62.
56 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong<br />
and a new orientation through his ability to adapt, absorb and integrate<br />
ideas from Christianity and Hinduism.<br />
With the hindsight of Vatican II and new insights into missiology,<br />
it is easy to criticize Griffiths’s attempt at inculturation. But this is not<br />
fair. Griffiths was among the first to attempt to bring Hinduism and<br />
Christianity together, in the 1950s, and we should look at his sincere<br />
effort to make the gospel relevant to people in India. Impressed by<br />
Griffiths’s holiness and honesty, many followers and admirers, Christians<br />
and non-Christians alike, from India and all over the world, flocked to<br />
his Shantivanam Ashram to learn from him.<br />
Long before Vatican II, Griffiths understood that the future of the<br />
Church in India lies not in the exclusive claims of its beliefs but in the<br />
dialogue with other religions. Thus the Church cannot isolate itself or<br />
remain ignorant of the faiths and cultures of other people. It has to<br />
appreciate and respect the validity of other religious systems without<br />
sacrificing the truth of Christianity. Griffiths remained faithful to the<br />
belief in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God, the Trinity, sacraments and<br />
the historical importance of the Church. At the same time, he sought<br />
change and adaptation in the liturgy, ecclesial structures and theology<br />
by incorporating Hindu customs and categories so that Christianity<br />
would not be an alien religion in India. Like the early fathers of the<br />
Church, Griffiths, in his advaitic approach to religion, was a pioneer in<br />
inculturation and accommodation in modern times.<br />
Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong, a Dominican priest, is also a research associate at the<br />
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Spirituality and Living<br />
PRAY ANYWHERE<br />
Matt Kappadakunnel<br />
W<br />
ITH NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS being pronounced and attempted,<br />
many people are looking to bring about a change within themselves<br />
through diet plans and exercise regimes. While these goals certainly have<br />
merit, a more important resolution would be one to bring about interior<br />
change in the form of metanoia, or conversion. In the coming year we<br />
should consider placing greater emphasis on fostering (and continuing<br />
to foster) a daily prayer life.<br />
Choosing to follow through on this resolution might appear daunting.<br />
When would I have time to pray? Where would I pray? How would I pray?<br />
Also, words such as those of from St Paul instructing us to ‘pray always’<br />
(1 Thessalonians 5:17) might be discouraging. Without discussing, or<br />
dismissing, Paul’s words, we may find greater ease with this New Year’s<br />
resolution by making one change in his exhortation—from pray always<br />
to pray anywhere.<br />
Anywhere?<br />
Anywhere. We should pray on our commute to and from work or school;<br />
on a park bench during our lunch break; at the beach, standing on the<br />
shoreline; on a mountain cycle path; out shopping while resting our feet.<br />
Whether in nature, in the city or indoors, God is with us and is eagerly<br />
awaiting our response to the invitation to allow God’s love to enter into<br />
our lives. God will most surely meet us wherever we are.<br />
What is being suggested is not novel. Finding God’s active love in<br />
daily life has been promoted by a variety of saints, including Francis of<br />
Assisi, Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal and Ignatius of Loyola. Jerónimo<br />
Nadal called the spirituality of Ignatius contemplative likewise in action.<br />
Prayer does not need to be limited to churches, readings and devotions<br />
(while noting that these are all wonderful in themselves). We therefore<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 57–59
58 Matt Kappadakunnel<br />
cannot use the excuse that we cannot pray because we need to be in a<br />
conventional place to do so.<br />
The freedom to pray anywhere helps us with another common<br />
impediment to prayer—time. Finding time to pray is possible when we<br />
allow ourselves to be flexible about our place of prayer. It will be the most<br />
suitable to each person, according to his or her schedule and individuality.<br />
But this place of prayer is most assuredly holy ground.<br />
For several years I had a morning commute that could vary from<br />
thirty minutes to an hour and thirty minutes. I began to discover the<br />
Spirit’s presence with me most particularly during these mornings. Perhaps<br />
it was the time of day and the regularity of the route, but that became holy<br />
ground for me. Amid the lane-changing and stop-and-go, I became greatly<br />
aware of the movements within my heart as well as God offering me<br />
peace, comfort and love that morning—all while I was driving to work.<br />
I would often experience God’s voice as readily as if I had been praying<br />
in a conventionally religious place. On several occasions I experienced<br />
the gift of the Spirit in the form of tears, which brought much healing<br />
and consolation. The place I chose to pray did not inhibit God from<br />
doing a mighty work within me.<br />
How can we find our best place to pray? One suggestion is to use the<br />
Ignatian Examen (which, in itself, is an excellent form of prayer). During<br />
the evening, we can spend ten to fifteen minutes reflecting on that<br />
day—hour by hour, location to location—with the aid of and the eyes<br />
© Jay Parker @ Flickr
Pray Anywhere 59<br />
of the Spirit. We can ask the Spirit for the grace to discover not only<br />
how God was communicating throughout the day and how we responded<br />
to God’s invitation, but also what particular place in our day is being<br />
set aside by God as holy ground. The burning bush was holy ground only<br />
because God spoke to Moses there; otherwise it was just a bush in the<br />
desert. When that particular place becomes revealed in our prayer, we<br />
can test that place, trusting that God will truly meet us where we are.<br />
St Ignatius describes God as labouring on our behalf in and through<br />
the elements and our surroundings (Exx 236). God can and will do a<br />
mighty work within us wherever we discern where it would be best to<br />
pray. The freedom to pray anywhere allows us to pray more regularly,<br />
which will lead to a change that is far more lasting than any diet plan<br />
or exercise regime. This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us in this<br />
new year. The practice of daily prayer will better dispose us to become<br />
‘contemplatives in action’ as well as to live St Paul’s command to ‘pray<br />
always’.<br />
Matt Kappadakunnel is an investment management professional who graduated<br />
from Creighton University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. He was a Jesuit<br />
scholastic for more than three years, and studied graduate philosophy at Fordham<br />
University. Matt currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Bryana.
A REFLECTION ON THE<br />
CHARISM OF<br />
RELIGIOUS LIFE<br />
Loan Le<br />
I<br />
N HIS APOSTOLIC LETTER to ‘all Consecrated People on the occasion<br />
of the Year of Consecrated Life’, Pope Francis invited religious to reflect<br />
on the life they have been given to live. 1 In response to this invitation I<br />
would like to explore the thought of the Dominican theologian Jean-Marie<br />
Roger Tillard on charism in relation to religious life. Tillard was a<br />
significant participant in the developing theological conversation, before<br />
and after Vatican II, about questions relating to the nature and function<br />
of religious life in the life of the Church. His contribution, as he said,<br />
was not ‘to say anything new, but rather to emphasize one essential<br />
aspect: how religious life exists at the very heart of the mystery of the<br />
Church’. 2<br />
For Tillard, the nature of religious life cannot be studied outside<br />
the context of Church. Therefore I shall start from his ecclesiology. As<br />
he wrote,<br />
When the Holy Spirit quickens religious families and personal<br />
vocations, he makes them all part of his general aim for God’s People.<br />
Their charism is a charism of the Church, given by the Church, for<br />
the Church. Their specific mission represents, in fact, but one facet<br />
of the mission of the whole Church. And since the Church is born of<br />
the communion of various local churches, each retaining its specific<br />
features and having its own particular needs, the charism and mission<br />
1<br />
Available at https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco_<br />
lettera-ap_20141121_lettera-consacrati.html, n. 1.<br />
2<br />
Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, in The Mystery of Religious<br />
Life, edited by R. F. Smith (St Louis: Herder, 1967), 3. This article first appeared in French as ‘La Vie<br />
religieuse dans le mystère de l’église’, Sciences Ecclésiastiques, 14 (1962), 89–107. It was then translated<br />
into English by M. Susanna and published in Review for Religious, 22/6 (November 1963), 613–633.<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 61–77
62 Loan Le<br />
of religious cannot find their fulfilment elsewhere than in the tasks<br />
and undertaking of the very concrete Christian environments in which<br />
these communities choose to implant themselves. 3<br />
Given that Tillard believed the charism of religious institutes to be<br />
granted for the Church, how does he understand that charism? I shall<br />
begin by outlining Tillard’s thought on charism generally and move on to<br />
how Tillard relates the concept of charism to religious life in particular.<br />
Tillard’s Notion of the Term ‘Charism’<br />
Tillard acknowledges that the term ‘charism’ has provoked some<br />
confusion. In his book There Are Charisms and Charisms, he briefly clarifies<br />
that the adjective ‘charismatic’ relates to grace and spiritual experience:<br />
the Greek prefix charis signifies grace. With reference to the writings of<br />
Paul the Apostle, he adds that ‘charisms’ denote the gratuitous gifts of the<br />
Spirit. 4<br />
For Tillard, the term encompasses a broad range of personal<br />
spiritual experiences, as well as states of life: as he says, ‘Paul has given to<br />
the married state the name of charism, just as he does for the celibate<br />
state’. 5<br />
Moreover, particularly in his examination of Paul’s writings,<br />
Tillard discovers that charism is not just a gift for the benefit of the<br />
community but also a gift for the believer’s personal relationship with<br />
the Lord:<br />
Paul does use the word charism in a way that instantly evokes a pause<br />
to contemplate the inner experience. In particular, he does so in 1<br />
Corinthians 7. There the fact of being agamos (unmarried) is indicated<br />
as a charism (1 Corinthians 7:7). The context shows that what<br />
makes this gift of the Spirit meaningful is not primarily its usefulness<br />
to the community but the believer’s personal relationship with his<br />
Lord (see also 7:32–34). 6<br />
When commenting on the so-called charismatic renewal movement<br />
of his time, Tillard affirmed that ‘for the great majority of its followers,<br />
the charismatic movement simply expresses a sincere desire to renew the<br />
inner life, and more particularly the experience of God’. 7 But when ‘the<br />
3<br />
4<br />
Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘The Paths of Obedience’, Lumen Vitae, 31/3–4 (1976), 282.<br />
Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms: The Religious Life, translated by Olga<br />
Prendergast (Brussels: Lumen Vitae, 1977), 12 .<br />
5<br />
Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde: le projet des religieux (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 147.<br />
6<br />
7<br />
Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 67.<br />
Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 16.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 63<br />
© David Butcher @ Flickr<br />
charismatic renewal movement presents itself as an absolute’, its followers<br />
might involve themselves in a kind of experience of spiritual enthusiasm<br />
to which everything else had become subordinated. 8 In their desire to<br />
highlight the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s life, certain groups<br />
within the movement introduced confusion and even misrepresentation<br />
in relation to the terms ‘charismatic’ and ‘charism’.<br />
Among such groups, these terms were essentially ‘linked with an<br />
extraordinary manifestation of gifts, attributed to the outpouring of the<br />
Spirit: glossolalia, interpretation, prophecy, healing’ and miraculous<br />
phenomena. Tillard objected to this orientation. Associating charismatic<br />
experience only with such manifestations was, for him, ‘an extraordinarily<br />
myopic view’. 9 If the terms were given their true meaning, the charismatic<br />
life and the experience of the Spirit were considerably broader than<br />
the usage of these groups implied. 10 Tillard was firmly convinced that<br />
charisms do not just consist of extraordinary experience, nor are they<br />
necessarily exclusive or astonishing. Rather, they are all the gifts of the<br />
Holy Spirit that are bountifully given to all the baptized. As he states,<br />
8<br />
9<br />
Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 17.<br />
Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 13.<br />
10 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 13–15.
64 Loan Le<br />
Every authentic Christian life is a life in the Spirit and fully charismatic,<br />
even without glossolalia, prophecy, interpretation or any other<br />
extraordinary gift. Every Christian eucharistic assembly is charismatic,<br />
even when there is no external manifestation of the outpouring of the<br />
Spirit. Every Christian prayer is a prayer in the Spirit, even without<br />
the enthusiasm of a communicative experience. And I venture to<br />
add that every Christian suffering lived in Christ is charismatic,<br />
even if it is not the object of healing. 11<br />
However, Tillard did believe that there was a valid role for enthusiasm<br />
in the domain of spiritual experience. He proposed two ways of<br />
interpreting enthusiasm in relation to religious matters. On the one hand,<br />
‘like artistic enthusiasm—which has been compared to an intoxication<br />
that carries man far away from the rational and the normal—religious<br />
enthusiasm, if not kept under control, can lead to the worst excesses’.<br />
This kind of enthusiasm is associated with fanaticism and all kinds of<br />
illuminism, and at times borders on insanity. On the other hand, when<br />
rooted in a genuine experience of the divine, religious enthusiasm is<br />
‘the mainspring of those bursts of inspiration which restore to mankind<br />
its sense of the transcendent and its thirst for God’. 12<br />
This is ‘the<br />
enthusiasm born of an experience of the Spirit’. 13<br />
Concerning this latter enthusiasm, Tillard distinguished between<br />
two levels. The first level is what he called a ‘wholly personal and inward’<br />
experience, that is, ‘the person experiences God’s power filling him, he<br />
feels that he is being seized by the Spirit and urged to place his living<br />
strength under the power of the Spirit’. It is an experience of faith, for an<br />
enthusiasm that comes from the Spirit must needs be one that is<br />
grounded in faith. This is the sense in which Tillard applies the term<br />
‘enthusiasm’ when developing his argument on the charism of religious life.<br />
The second level is ‘more external’. That is, the person feels an encounter<br />
with the Spirit through extraordinary phenomena and gestures such as<br />
glossolalia, prophecy, ecstasy, thaumaturgy and the gift of healing. Tillard<br />
observes that these phenomena, which are found in all religions, are not<br />
in themselves typically ‘evangelical’. 14 In some excessive cases they may<br />
11 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 15.<br />
12 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 36.<br />
13 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 37.<br />
14 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 37.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 65<br />
even demonstrate traces of an extreme trust in the value of human effort<br />
or self-satisfaction. 15<br />
For Tillard, genuine charisms need to be recognised and discerned.<br />
He considers love to be an essential characteristic. Reflecting on St<br />
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13, he writes,<br />
The Christian criterion in this domain is neither the quantity nor<br />
the extraordinariness of the individual or collective experience, but<br />
the quality of the love of God and mankind that surrounds the<br />
experience. 16<br />
Supernatural phenomena and spiritual gifts cannot be acknowledged<br />
as genuine charisms unless they actualise love for God and neighbour.<br />
Furthermore, a genuine charism will lead people to praise and service.<br />
As Tillard says, ‘the charism has to transcend the level of experience<br />
confined to the person or the group—including all the joy and peace one<br />
may derive from it—and lead on to the service of the Lord’s glory’. He<br />
emphasizes that charisms are not predominantly ecstatic but doxological—<br />
giving praise to God. ‘They are not primarily a privilege but a service<br />
(1 Corinthians 12:5–7).’ 17 Praising God and serving God and God’s<br />
people are the expression of authentic charisms.<br />
Significantly, Tillard believes that love, praise and service will find<br />
their expression in the result of koinonia (communion) which is ‘the<br />
essential fruit of the Spirit’. 18 According to him, the desire to praise God<br />
and serve others cannot find itself in exclusiveness. He observes that<br />
those who form coteries that are more fascinated by the ecstatic experience<br />
than by love can cause unease and a disturbed atmosphere<br />
in the community, and where such coteries exist in a<br />
community the Lord’s Spirit is not at work. Attitudes that<br />
undermine the spirit of koinonia do not come from the Spirit<br />
of God. Tillard’s concept of charism can be interpreted as a<br />
gratuitous gift of the Spirit given for the benefit of the community but<br />
also, and above all, for the believer’s personal relationship with the<br />
Lord. Born of an experience of the Spirit, charisms are seen as spiritually<br />
linked to an enthusiasm grounded in faith. They are the gifts of the Holy<br />
The kind of<br />
love that<br />
leads to praise<br />
and service<br />
15 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 37–41.<br />
16 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 25.<br />
17 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 25.<br />
18 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 25.
66 Loan Le<br />
Spirit bountifully given to all the baptized according to their state of<br />
life. Genuine charisms will be signified by the kind of love that leads to<br />
praise and service expressed in koinonia, an essential fruit of the Spirit.<br />
Tillard on Charism of Religious Life<br />
Tillard believed that the Christian life is innately related to the Spirit<br />
and that ‘every authentic Christian life is a life in the Spirit and fully<br />
charismatic’, whether it be lived in the single, married or religious state. 19<br />
The question then arises as to what distinguishes the charism of religious<br />
life from other charisms in the Christian community. Tillard starts from<br />
the premise that religious life is a state of life within the Church whose<br />
primary component is a relationship built on faith and expressed in a<br />
charismatic call and a charismatic response. I will look more closely at<br />
the three elements making up this premise: religious life as a state of life<br />
in the Church; charismatic call as a primary component of religious<br />
life; and charismatic response as a primary component of religious life.<br />
Religious Life as a State of Life<br />
Tillard centres his teaching on religious life in the theology of koinonia.<br />
Through baptism, believers are initiated sacramentally into communion<br />
with God and, at the same time, into the life of the Church—sharing<br />
© Dmitry Boyarin @ Flickr<br />
19 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 15–16; Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, Religieux aujourd’hui<br />
(Brussels: Lumen Vitae, 1972), 55; Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 21–25.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 67<br />
in the mystery of the ‘communion of life’ with the Father and with others<br />
in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. 20 Although it is made<br />
up of sinners, the Church is always holy, because it belongs to God, who<br />
alone is holy. This is ‘where the drama of the Church is situated’: it is<br />
holy in God’s love, but sinful through human weakness. 21 The reality is<br />
that Christians live in a state of tension as they follow the call to ‘the<br />
perfection of charity and hence of communion’ in the midst of the<br />
demands and responsibilities of their state of life. 22<br />
It is through its sacraments and different states of life that the Church<br />
offers its members the means of responding to their particular call. 23<br />
For each and every person, this call ‘consists in living according to the<br />
charism’ they have received. 24 While none of the states of life constitutes<br />
perfection, they provide a pathway to evangelical perfection in whatever<br />
way the Spirit leads a person to that goal. 25 Tillard defines religious life<br />
as ‘the tending towards perfection’. 26 He writes,<br />
But the perfection of what? Quite simply, of the Christian life. Because<br />
he wants to realize the mystery of charity perfectly, that is to say in the<br />
terms we have been using the mystery of communion of life with God<br />
and with one’s fellow men, the religious is not content merely to<br />
observe the precepts; he freely and generously binds himself to the<br />
narrow way which leads to the keeping of the evangelical counsels;<br />
for the sake of this he cuts himself off from everything that could<br />
place an obstacle between himself and God … he binds himself to a<br />
state of perfection. The word ‘state’ implies stability and in this case<br />
stability that implies an entire lifetime. 27<br />
For Tillard, religious life does not belong to the hierarchical structure<br />
of the Church but takes its source directly from the Holy Spirit. The<br />
initiative for this life does not normally come from within the hierarchy<br />
20 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 4–5.<br />
21 Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Religious Life, Sign of the Eschatological Church’, in The Mystery of<br />
Religious Life, 61–63. This article was also published in Review for Religious, 23/2 (March 1964), 197–<br />
206.<br />
22 Tillard, ‘Religious Life, Sign of the Eschatological Church’, 63–66; Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the<br />
Mystery of the Church’, 15.<br />
23 Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 23.<br />
24 Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, A Gospel Path: The Religious Life, translated by Olga Prendergast (Brussels:<br />
Lumen Vitae, 1977), 17.<br />
25 Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde, 147.<br />
26 Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 8.<br />
27 Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 8–9.
68 Loan Le<br />
but from the faithful, the People of God. This point, Tillard insists, is<br />
fundamental. Here, the action of the Holy Spirit is not confined to the<br />
domain of the sacramental and hierarchical. It is essential to emphasize<br />
this. 28<br />
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, religious life is a particular way of<br />
living the communal experience of grace in the kind of generous response<br />
that is never satisfied with itself. Rather, it aims to move the heart to a<br />
more solid commitment in a special and vigorous way, in light of the<br />
totally mysterious dimension of the Christian experience. Normally it<br />
appears because a person, seized by the Holy Spirit, joins with other<br />
brothers and sisters to seek the Lord together in a particular state of life. 29<br />
Tillard finds this state of life is essentially ‘characterized by the<br />
three vows … and the practice of common life’. 30 However, he cautions<br />
that its members do not ‘make vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity<br />
to add new dignity or to graft a new function upon what Christian<br />
initiation has written in the very depths of [their] being’. 31<br />
The vows<br />
are merely a means to permit the baptismal life to reach its full flowering. 32<br />
One becomes a religious not for the sake of the vows, but for the sake<br />
of the gospel. He writes,<br />
Although the vows represent elements that are specific to the religious<br />
life, and therefore indispensable to whoever feels called to that life<br />
by the Holy Spirit, they are not the primary elements in the concrete<br />
life of grace of the religious. They aim to liberate the Christian in<br />
order to lead him gradually to the heart of the Gospel’s demands.<br />
The vows and common life are thus ‘specific elements’, but not ‘primary<br />
elements’, of religious life. Regrettably, says Tillard, ‘people tend to<br />
confuse specific elements with primary elements’. 33<br />
This raises the question of what the primary elements of religious<br />
life are. After thoroughly researching its history, Tillard found that,<br />
whatever form it has taken, religious life has always had ‘a special<br />
28 Tillard, Religieux aujourd’hui, 56–58; see also Tillard, ‘Religious Life, Sign of the Eschatological Church’,<br />
64; Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Are Teaching Brothers Still Needed?’ Review for Religious, 25/6<br />
(November 1966), 1019–1022; Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Religious Women and Pastoral Work’, Review<br />
for Religious, 25/1 (January 1966), 6.<br />
29 Tillard, Religieux aujourd’hui, 56–57.<br />
30 Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 21.<br />
31 Tillard, ‘Are Teaching Brothers still Needed?’, 1020.<br />
32 From his research Tillard discovered that the three vows did not exist at the beginning of religious<br />
life. They appeared in the twelfth century, long after the religious state of life had been well<br />
established. See Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde, 121; Tillard, Gospel Path, 85, 94.<br />
33 Tillard, Gospel Path, 101.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 69<br />
feature’. 34 For Tillard it is no longer acceptable to say that this special<br />
feature is ‘a higher degree of perfection or a more genuine “imitation”<br />
of Christ’. 35 Every baptized person is called to be perfect. 36 The special<br />
feature, he emphasizes, ‘does not stem from a moral or ethical hierarchy<br />
but from an existential way of appropriating and living our common<br />
kinship with Christ’. 37 In other words, this is a question of living a special<br />
style of existence that enables one to embrace the whole of the gospel. 38<br />
From the gospel, Tillard distinguishes between two ways in which<br />
people may attach themselves to Jesus. The first is what he calls ‘the usual<br />
way’: they are called to live the evangelical life without abandoning their<br />
everyday life. The second is ‘a special way’, leaving their customary lifestyle<br />
in order to live the evangelical life in a more concrete and public manner. 39<br />
Donald Maldari observes that ‘without disparaging the “normal vocation”,<br />
Tillard claims that the “special way” to follow Jesus literally required<br />
those disciples to adopt a radical attitude which the others did not’. 40<br />
For religious, this ‘special way’ seeks ‘the one thing necessary’, Jesus<br />
Christ—‘he who suffices to fulfil what their whole life desires and yearns<br />
for’. 41 Compared with ‘the one thing necessary’, all the other things that<br />
a person might strive to obtain are relativised. Tillard emphasizes that,<br />
in choosing religious life, people no longer base their lives on what is<br />
relative, but on ‘the one thing necessary’. 42<br />
The foundation of this<br />
existence is the whole of the gospel charter seen from a radical perspective.<br />
Tillard likens the gospel to an isosceles triangle whose inverted apex<br />
represents the demands of the Sermon on the Mount. Not all Christians<br />
base their existence on those absolute demands. 43 While every Christian<br />
34 Tillard, ‘Religious Life in the Mystery of the Church’, 21. Tillard describes the various forms and<br />
the evolution of this state of life: ‘the cenobitical life of St Pachomius in the fourth century, the<br />
monastic institution of St Benedict around the sixth century, mendicant orders in the twelfth century,<br />
congregations of clerks regular in the sixteenth century, institutes of simple vows in the following<br />
centuries. All of these show that diversity is no stranger to the religious state’ (22).<br />
35 Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Religious in the Workyards of Men’, Lumen Vitae, 31/1 (1976), 85.<br />
36 Tillard, Gospel Path, 24.<br />
37 Tillard, ‘Religious in the Workyards of Men’, 86.<br />
38 Tillard, Gospel Path, 24.<br />
39 Tillard, Gospel Path, 21.<br />
40 Donald C. Maldari, ‘The Identity of Religious Life: The Contributions of Jean-Marie Tillard Critically<br />
Examined’, Louvain Studies, 14 (Winter 1989), 329; see Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, Les Religieux aux coeur<br />
de l’église (Montreal: Institut de Pastorale, 1967), 11; Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Sequela Christi’, Spiritual<br />
Life, 18 (1972), 76–80; Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde, 153–169 ; Tillard, Gospel Path, 19–26.<br />
41 Tillard, Gospel Path, 22; see also Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde, 193.<br />
42 Tillard, Gospel Path, 24.<br />
43 Tillard, Gospel Path, 24–25; see also Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘Le Fondement évangélique de la vie<br />
religieuse’, Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 91 (1969), 933–953.
70 Loan Le<br />
is called by the Spirit to witness to the Kingdom and to serve it in<br />
various ways, religious locate their life<br />
… in a state where everything that can be required of every baptized<br />
person on certain occasions, becomes for [them] the daily norm,<br />
and [they centre their] entire existence on the perception of this<br />
transcendent and demanding value of the Kingdom. 44<br />
For Tillard, the religious state of life is initially a gift of God given to<br />
the Church by the Spirit. Born of the Holy Spirit of God, it shares in the<br />
mystery of God’s communion with all people. Since it stems from divine<br />
generosity, the primary concern of this state of life is the commitment<br />
to the person of Jesus Christ, ‘the one thing necessary’, expressed in a<br />
relationship built on faith. This faith is not the one conceived in a dogma<br />
to be believed, but is an affirmation, a ‘yes’, embracing one’s heart and the<br />
whole of one’s existence—‘Just like the bride’s “I do” to her husband’. 45<br />
This relationship is constituted by a charismatic call and a charismatic<br />
response of which the Spirit is the source.<br />
© Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston<br />
44 Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, ‘The Theological Viewpoint: Religious Life, a Choice Rooted in Faith’, in<br />
Faith and Religious Life, edited by Jean-Marie Roger Tillard and others (Ottawa: Canadian Religious<br />
Conference, 1971), 28; see also Tillard, Gospel Path, 2425; Tillard, ‘Le Fondement évangélique de la vie<br />
religieuse’.<br />
45 Tillard, Gospel Path, 20.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 71<br />
A Charismatic Call<br />
In Tillard’s view, religious life is charismatic from its deepest source,<br />
beginning with a ‘charismatic call’. It is charismatic in the sense that ‘it is<br />
the Spirit alone who takes the initiative in the experience that leads a<br />
Christian to choose this type of life, and also that such an experience lies<br />
beyond the rational’. 46 To clarify the meaning of this charismatic call,<br />
Tillard turns to the experience of the Apostles, and links the very beginning<br />
of religious life to the first apostolic call. 47 For him, this call was mysterious,<br />
elusive and very demanding, as we see in the words of Scripture:<br />
And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for<br />
people’. And immediately they left their nets and followed him.<br />
(Mark 1:17–18; also Matthew 4:19–20)<br />
Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in<br />
the boat with the hired men, and followed him. (Mark 1:20; also<br />
Matthew 4:22)<br />
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at<br />
the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me’. And he got up, left<br />
everything, and followed him. (Luke 5:27–28)<br />
Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my<br />
father’. But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their<br />
own dead’. (Matthew 8:21–22; also Luke 9:59–60)<br />
Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will<br />
have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. (Mark 10:21; also<br />
Matthew 19:21; Luke 18:22).<br />
For Tillard, this call has ‘the extraordinary, abnormal and irrational traits<br />
which characterize the irruption of the world of the Spirit’. 48<br />
It is Jesus who initiates this call. That is, the chosen persons do not<br />
ask to be chosen; rather it is Jesus himself who takes the initiative.<br />
Moreover, those who receive the call are not necessarily perfect; they are<br />
not necessarily better than others and may even be scandalous sinners.<br />
It is Jesus who suddenly invades the life of a person. Such an encounter<br />
challenges the whole of that person’s being, leading him or her to follow<br />
46 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 35–36.<br />
47 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 45.<br />
48 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 43–44.
72 Loan Le<br />
An experience<br />
arising from a<br />
deep encounter<br />
with God<br />
Jesus in the service of the Kingdom. It is only through his Spirit that Jesus<br />
intervenes in the form of a charismatic event. 49 As Tillard explains,<br />
If we all agree that the word ‘charism’ signifies an activity of the Spirit<br />
and not of man, that it is a humanly perceptible manifestation of God’s<br />
grace, a gift presupposing no previous merit on the part of the receiver,<br />
the experience of being seized by the Lord’s power, the consciousness<br />
of thus entering into the mysterious economy of the eschatological<br />
times, then we must admit that the calling of the apostles—including<br />
Paul’s vocation—can be understood only in the perspective of God’s<br />
charismatic realm. 50<br />
For Tillard, the apostolic call in which the Lord, through his Spirit,<br />
asked the Apostles to live as witnesses to the gospel, was a charismatic<br />
call. A vocation to religious life is linked with this apostolic call. 51<br />
A Charismatic Response<br />
A religious vocation involves a free response to being called. Tillard<br />
often describes this response as an act of faith coming from a charismatic<br />
encounter with Christ. Through such an experience, God’s call<br />
to leave everything and follow Christ awakens an initial reaction<br />
that then becomes the soil in which a person’s decisions take<br />
root. This reaction is not essentially of a moral and practical<br />
order; it is primarily related to enthusiasm—an experience<br />
arising from a deep encounter with God within the soul of<br />
the person. For Tillard, the underlying ‘enthusiasm is fundamentally<br />
doxological, adoring’ and empowers the person to respond in faith. 52<br />
In order to discover how enthusiasm leads the person to decide to<br />
respond to such a call, Tillard examines two New Testament passages:<br />
the parables of the treasure and of the fine pearl (Matthew 13:44–46)<br />
which ‘shed light on man’s attitude in the encounter with Christ which<br />
reorients his life’. 53 Reflecting on the works of some exegetes on these<br />
parables, Tillard concludes that, ‘because of the attraction of the Kingdom<br />
and the joy it awakens’ everything else is relegated to the background. 54<br />
49 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 41–43.<br />
50 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 43.<br />
51 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 44–46.<br />
52 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 46.<br />
53 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 47.<br />
54 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 49.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 73<br />
There is a mysterious enthusiasm created by discovering the inestimable<br />
value of the Kingdom that brings joy to the person, and leads him or<br />
her to leave everything else behind to follow Christ. To put it quite<br />
simply, the radical decision the person makes at such a moment is akin to<br />
discovering the Kingdom and to the joy of the discovery. 55 He quoted<br />
Joachim Jeremias to support this point,<br />
When that great joy, beyond all measure, seizes a man, it carries him<br />
away, penetrates his inmost being, subjugates his mind. All else seems<br />
valueless compared with that surpassing worth; no price is too high,<br />
and the unreserved surrender of what is most valuable becomes a matter<br />
of course. The decisive thing in the double parable is not what the two<br />
men give up, but the reason for their doing so: the overwhelming<br />
experience of the greatness of their discovery. So it is with the<br />
Kingdom of God. The effect of the joyful news is overpowering; it fills<br />
the heart with gladness, making life’s whole aim the consummation<br />
of the divine community, and producing the most whole-hearted<br />
self-sacrifice. 56<br />
For Tillard, the enthusiasm created by the attraction of the Kingdom<br />
and the joy that accompanies the call help us to understand Jesus’<br />
apparently abnormal and irrational demand: ‘Whoever comes to me and<br />
does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,<br />
yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26). The<br />
mysterious enthusiasm and joy produced by their encounter with Jesus<br />
can alone explain the actions of the Apostles when they left everything<br />
and followed Jesus. Even when they would rather not follow him, as in<br />
the case of Peter on the shore of the lake (John 21:18), or when they<br />
rejected and excluded Jesus from their lives, as in the case of Paul, the<br />
experience of their encounter with Jesus turned their lives upside down. 57<br />
Such joy, Tillard emphasizes, is not to be equated with the kind of<br />
excitement we associate with pleasure, but it is the ‘joy en kuriô’ (in<br />
Christ); it is ‘not simply a joy whose object is Christ, but one that finds its<br />
whole source and raison d’être in the dead and risen Christ’. Moreover,<br />
this joy does not come from an experience of piety or inner delight. As<br />
‘a manifestation of the Spirit’, it is:<br />
55 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 47–48; see also Tillard, Devant Dieu et pour le monde, 61–67.<br />
56 Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables (London: SCM, 1963), 158, quoted in Tillard, There<br />
Are Charisms and Charisms, 48.<br />
57 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 49–50.
74 Loan Le<br />
… a realistic enthusiasm, if ever there was one; the enthusiasm<br />
associated not with a lighthearted, youthful joy just brushing life with<br />
its wings, but with a joy which—despite sufferings, failures and<br />
disappointments—springs from communion with the Lord Jesus.<br />
This communion in faith is attained through the experience of a new<br />
life that springs from the paschal of Christ, ‘otherwise it would not be<br />
the unquestionably triumphant joy which resounds here’. 58<br />
Religious who are seized by Christ in a mysterious moment that<br />
determines their life, immediately or gradually, in their ‘following of Christ’<br />
will be embedded in a charismatic experience analogous to that of the<br />
Apostles. It is perhaps difficult for religious to say what initially attracted<br />
them to choose their state of life. The reasons may be different from<br />
person to person, depending on individual backgrounds and cultures. 59<br />
Whatever the reason may be, it is their experience of enthusiasm for<br />
Christ which leads religious to put aside other realities and make a<br />
decision to follow him. 60 This experience is ‘a moment of wonder before<br />
Christ’ which inspires them to discover the key and compelling motivation<br />
for making such a choice. This motivation must be,<br />
… not a for … but a because of … and the object of this because of is<br />
none other than Jesus Christ. One does not become a religious for<br />
something, with a view to something; one enters the religious life<br />
because of Jesus Christ and his ascendency. The for will come later,<br />
© St Joseph @ Flickr<br />
58 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 50–51.<br />
59 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 29.<br />
60 Tillard, Gospel Path, 34.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 75<br />
necessarily, but in the radiance and as the evangelical fruit of the<br />
because of. 61<br />
For Tillard, the moment of wonder before Christ also inspires the<br />
person’s choice of a particular religious institute or a particular form of<br />
evangelical service of humanity that furthers a founder’s vision. 62 It is<br />
through their understanding of the charism of a particular institute that<br />
believers usually recognise their personal call and realise that the Spirit<br />
is urging them to avail themselves of that grace to the best of their<br />
ability. 63<br />
If religious are not aware of this, they will never grasp the<br />
raison d’être of religious life and, having made a merely external act of<br />
profession, they will drag themselves through life in a meaningless way. 64<br />
The sense of wonder before Christ in unquestionably bound up with<br />
a significant aspect of the act of faith—that of contemplation; it is a<br />
charismatic experience. 65<br />
For Tillard, this ‘contemplative moment in<br />
which the “following of Christ” is grounded leans more towards pure<br />
faith’ and differs totally from ‘the tranquil, intellectual contemplation’<br />
which ‘belongs to man’s efforts to penetrate more deeply into the mystery<br />
of God’. 66 He sees the former as a charismatic event:<br />
The encounter, possibly initiated in a group experience or in the<br />
collective enthusiasm of a ‘charismatic’ event, will be sealed as a<br />
profoundly genuine experience only in the silence, the joyful but<br />
secret silence, of the I-Thou relationship. And it is this moment of<br />
acknowledgement, of opening to the divine life, which is the<br />
contemplative moment …. A moment so essential to faith that,<br />
without it, faith becomes meaningless. 67<br />
For Tillard, the vocation to live the religious life belongs to this level of<br />
experience, an experience of faith. The nature of this experience, the<br />
quality of the religious life, depends upon the gaze of the heart ‘that<br />
contemplates God because the person has been “seized by Christ”’.<br />
61 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 56.<br />
62 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 56–57.<br />
63 Tillard, Gospel Path, 162.<br />
64 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 56–57.<br />
65 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 57. Contemplation is not ‘interpreted as a kind of secret<br />
attempt to remonasticize the religious life, ... not the level of rites, of forms of prayer; it is of a wholly<br />
different level of existence ... that is, “the gaze of the heart, the mysterious presence of Christ in thick<br />
of action” ’ (65).<br />
66 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 91–92.<br />
67 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 58.
76 Loan Le<br />
This gaze ‘belongs to a depth of the human mind that transcends the<br />
habitual level of the reasoning intelligence’. 68 It belongs to the field of<br />
intuition and, being bestowed by the Spirit, is entirely charismatic.<br />
Therefore, the life of religious must be centred on faith; that is, faith<br />
must underpin their total adherence to God. 69 In Tillard’s judgment, the<br />
life of lay Christians, irrespective of any reference to faith, is orientated<br />
towards the human adventure of marriage and of a profession or trade<br />
through which they can live generous and upright lives. 70<br />
By way of<br />
contrast, religious life is centred on the core of faith; that is, faith must<br />
come first. Faith must be seen as ‘the warp into which all the other<br />
threads are woven .… The threads, which are celibacy, poverty, community,<br />
obedience and austere living, presuppose that warp and cannot hold<br />
together without it’. If the warp is cut off, the whole meaning of existence<br />
for religious is lost. 71 Significantly, ‘faith must entail praxis and cannot<br />
do otherwise; praxis is the sphere in which it unfolds and deepens’. 72<br />
In short, the charism of religious life in Tillard’s teaching can be<br />
interpreted as a charismatic experience in faith. It is God’s special gift<br />
given, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to certain members of the<br />
faithful. It is a gift of a contemplative moment between a person and<br />
the Lord—‘an I-thou relationship’, calling that person to follow Christ<br />
absolutely in a special way for the glory of God and the good of others,<br />
while at the same time enabling the person to respond to the call<br />
throughout his or her entire life.<br />
‘Come, Follow Me!’<br />
Every authentic charism implies a certain combination of genuine<br />
originality and special initiative for the spiritual life of the Church. An<br />
authentic following of Christ, for religious, must be continuously rooted<br />
in the contemplative moment that is grounded in faith, not just in the<br />
early days of living the religious life, but when, like Simon Peter, they<br />
repeat with tears and in sufferings the initial ‘yes’ that determined the<br />
course of their life. This is an experience of the enthusiasm of the mystic,<br />
thirsting for the Lord even when frightened by the dark of doubt and<br />
68 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 71.<br />
69 Tillard, ‘Theological Viewpoint’, 36.<br />
70 Tillard, ‘Theological Viewpoint’, 21.<br />
71 Tillard, ‘Theological Viewpoint’, 22; see Tillard, Gospel Path, 26.<br />
72 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 71; see Tillard, Gospel Path, 49–73.
A Reflection on the Charism of Religious Life 77<br />
uncertainty. 73<br />
‘Their enthusiasm has calmed down and become more<br />
sober. It has matured. And at the same time it has endured …. There<br />
has been a conversion, a deepening of enthusiasm for Jesus.’ 74 Religious<br />
life ‘is not simply a matter of making each of its days harmonize with a<br />
model outlined in advance, “once and for all”, on the day of profession’.<br />
The Christ whom religious desire to follow cannot be immobilised in a<br />
prearranged moment of time. Today is not simply an encore of yesterday,<br />
although the latter unavoidably leaves its mark upon it. By deciding to<br />
follow Christ, religious must continuously recreate themselves in their<br />
unconditional attachment to the Lord. 75<br />
Springing from a contemplative moment, the initial enthusiasm for<br />
following Christ must perforce mature over time. Religious, for Tillard,<br />
will need to return again and again to that initial ‘Come, follow me!’<br />
which has determined their life commitment. Like Peter on the shore of<br />
the lake, religious will thus rediscover themselves as they learn to discard<br />
their illusions. In the end, the one thing that remains and matters is their<br />
enthusiasm, which now rises from the deepest recesses of a genuine<br />
poverty of heart. From the ground of this radical poverty, their enthusiasm<br />
for Christ gradually becomes a mature faith. 76<br />
Irrespective of whether<br />
they belong to a contemplative order or to an apostolic congregation,<br />
religious continually have ‘to honour and to observe that pause for the<br />
contemplative moment, the moment when Christ’s call found an echo<br />
in [them]’. 77<br />
Loan Le is a sister of the Mary Queen of Peace Congregation in Vietnam, who has<br />
recently completed a doctorate in theology at Sydney College of Divinity, Australia.<br />
73 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 60.<br />
74 Tillard, Gospel Path, 43.<br />
75 Tillard, Gospel Path, 44.<br />
76 Tillard, Gospel Path, 44.<br />
77 Tillard, There Are Charisms and Charisms, 65.
A place of peace, prayer and beauty in North Wales<br />
Away in the loveable west,<br />
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,<br />
I was under a roof here, I was at rest<br />
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit poet<br />
St Beunos is a Jesuit retreat house offering the Spiritual<br />
Exercises of St Ignatius, silent individually guided retreats<br />
and various themed retreats. We also provide courses<br />
and training in spiritual accompaniment.<br />
For the full programme of retreats and courses, see<br />
www.beunos.com<br />
Contact: The Secretary, St Beuno’s, St Asaph,<br />
Denbighshire, N. Wales, LL17 0AS<br />
Tel: +44 (0)1745 583444<br />
secretary@beunos.com
PAYING ATTENTION TO<br />
THE WISDOM OF OUR<br />
SORROWS<br />
Peter Wilcox<br />
T<br />
HE WELL-KNOWN AUSTRIAN lyric poet and noted spiritual writer<br />
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a collection of ten reflective poems between<br />
1912 and 1922 entitled Duino Elegies. These are intensely religious,<br />
mystical poems that weigh beauty and existential suffering. At one point<br />
in this poem sequence, he encourages the reader not to be a ‘waster of<br />
sorrows’. 1 And in his more popular work Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke<br />
encourages his young friend to use his sorrows in a positive way as a<br />
means to help him grow in holiness. 2<br />
Is this not the challenge for all of us? It is not a gentle world. Everyone<br />
has sorrows in life of one kind or another. The important question is<br />
not whether we have sorrows or not, but what can we do with them so<br />
that we do not waste them? The reality is that what we do with our<br />
sorrows can have a tremendous impact on our growth as a person, both<br />
psychologically, emotionally and spiritually.<br />
In over thirty years as a psychotherapist, I have listened to people’s<br />
stories about their lives. Often, a part of the story involve sorrows of<br />
one kind or another. How people handle them has truly been inspiring<br />
and in some cases amazing to me. Listening to my clients over the years,<br />
I have often wondered why some people become overwhelmed by their<br />
sorrows and seem to buckle beneath them while others learn to integrate<br />
them into their lives in a way that leads to growth. For each of us, the<br />
real question and challenge is—how do we do this? How do we use our<br />
suffering and sorrows in life to be a positive, growthful force so that we<br />
do not end up wasting them?<br />
1<br />
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (New York:<br />
Norton, 1963), 79.<br />
2<br />
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by M. D. Herter Norton (New York: Norton,<br />
1934), 63–67.<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 79–88
80 Peter Wilcox<br />
Jesus and His Sorrows<br />
Jesus certainly experienced sorrows in his life. He wept on at least two<br />
occasions in the New Testament. We know that he cried when Lazarus<br />
died:<br />
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet<br />
and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not<br />
have died’. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with<br />
her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.<br />
He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and<br />
see’. Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’<br />
(John 11:32–37)<br />
© Ron Doke @ Flickr<br />
Jesus allowed himself to cry over the loss of a good friend. He also<br />
experienced great sorrow in his agony in the garden. Luke says in his<br />
Gospel, ‘In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like<br />
great drops of blood falling down on the ground’. (Luke 22:44) All of<br />
us experience personal sorrows<br />
in life and sometimes we have<br />
to struggle not to allow those<br />
And Jesus Wept, statue at the Oklahoma City<br />
National Memorial<br />
sorrows to cause something<br />
inside us to die. Our sorrow<br />
might be the death of a family<br />
member or friend, like Jesus’<br />
sorrow for Lazarus. It might<br />
be the failure of a relationship<br />
or the loss of a job. For others, it<br />
might be fighting an addiction<br />
or struggling with a physical,<br />
mental or emotional problem.<br />
No matter what the source of<br />
our sorrow, we certainly do not<br />
want to waste it.<br />
There are also other kinds<br />
of sorrows that are larger than<br />
our own personal ones. These<br />
are rooted in communities, in<br />
societies, in countries, in the<br />
human condition. Sometimes,<br />
they are so overwhelming that
Paying Attention to the Wisdom of Our Sorrows 81<br />
they are difficult to fathom. How do we understand the immense suffering<br />
of people in whole countries, in cities, in nations? And yet, these kinds of<br />
problems also created a great sorrow in Jesus and caused him to cry. In<br />
Luke’s Gospel, we read that Jesus actually wept over the immense suffering<br />
in the city of Jerusalem. ‘As he came near and saw the city, he wept<br />
over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the<br />
things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”’<br />
(Luke 19:41–42) How can we respond to this kind of suffering? How do<br />
we react when we learn about the poverty of nations, children not having<br />
enough to eat, hurricanes and tornadoes killing thousands of people and<br />
destroying vast areas of land?<br />
Pain in Things<br />
In his 1943 novel The Human Comedy, William Saroyan tells the story<br />
of a teenager growing up in poverty in an inner city with crime all around<br />
him. He just cannot understand why life had to be so difficult. Why do<br />
people have to struggle so much? Why is there so much suffering and<br />
sorrow and violence all around him? As he ponders these questions, he<br />
gets on a bus and rides all night around the city, crying. His mother is<br />
panicking because he has not come home. Finally, in the morning, he<br />
returns home and begins talking to his mother about his feelings. After<br />
patiently listening to his questions, she responded with these words<br />
that I have never forgotten after all these years:<br />
It was pity that made you cry—pity not just for this person or that<br />
person who is suffering, but for all things, for the very nature of<br />
things. Unless a person has pity, he is inhuman and not yet truly a<br />
person; for out of pity comes a bond that heals. Only good people<br />
weep …. There will always be pain in things, she said. Knowing this<br />
does not mean that a person shall despair. The good person will seek<br />
to take the pain out of things. The foolish person will not notice it<br />
except in himself and the evil person will drive the pain even deeper<br />
into things and spread it about wherever he goes. 3<br />
There is a great sadness in life when we ponder the immense tragedies<br />
that occur in the lives of other people every day. They appear to be so<br />
overwhelming that they can almost make us numb. Often, we are afraid<br />
to stay with these thoughts, wondering how these situations are ever<br />
3<br />
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (New York: Dell, 1971 [1943]), 131.
82 Peter Wilcox<br />
going to change and become better. What can we do? How can we help?<br />
How can we ‘seek to take the pain out of things’? How can we allow<br />
these realities not to kill our dreams about life? Can we do anything to<br />
avoid becoming a ‘waster of sorrows’?<br />
Finding Meaning<br />
The struggle to find meaning in our sorrows can be very challenging.<br />
Usually, it does not require us to live differently; it requires us to see<br />
our lives differently. Many of us already live far more meaningful lives<br />
than we know. When we go beyond the superficial to the essential,<br />
things that are familiar and even commonplace are revealed in new ways.<br />
But discovering this takes time and patience. It requires a wisdom that<br />
often comes from living and struggling with our sorrows. If we can learn<br />
this wisdom about life, it will allow us never to waste those sorrows.<br />
Finding meaning in our sorrows changes the way we see ourselves and<br />
the world. Through sorrows, people come to know themselves for the first<br />
time and recognise not only who they genuinely are but also what truly<br />
matters to them. As a psychotherapist, I have accompanied many people<br />
as they have discovered in themselves an unexpected strength, a courage<br />
beyond what they would have thought possible, an unsuspected sense of<br />
compassion or a capacity for love deeper than they had ever dreamed. I<br />
have watched people abandon values that they never questioned before<br />
and find courage to live in new ways.<br />
Being Yourself<br />
When I first met Kathy, her psychology practice was barely surviving. She<br />
shared offices with a group of physicians and, desperate to be accepted<br />
and to work under what she perceived as the umbrella of their credibility,<br />
she took whatever crumbs fell from their professional table. Hers was the<br />
smallest office in the complex and hers was the only name not listed on<br />
the office door. It was obvious from the beginning how dedicated and gifted<br />
she was as a therapist. Her lack of confidence troubled me, although I<br />
did not say anything about it at the time. But Kathy felt validated by the<br />
association and she was convinced that she needed referrals from the<br />
doctors in order to have patients.<br />
Kathy was a shy person, a little apologetic and sometimes hesitant<br />
in trying to find the right words in a conversation. She was also just the<br />
slightest bit clumsy. However, all this actually made her very endearing.<br />
You felt somehow at home with her and safe. Her patients loved her.
Paying Attention to the Wisdom of Our Sorrows 83<br />
One day she told me she was moving from her present office.<br />
Although I was pleased, I asked her why she had decided to leave. ‘They<br />
don’t have wheelchair access’, she said. I guess I looked surprised, so she<br />
went on to say that she had not told me everything about herself. She said<br />
that years ago when she was young, she had a very serious stroke and was<br />
not expected to recover. I was astonished. ‘I had no idea’, I said. She<br />
replied, ‘Nobody does’. I went on to ask her why she had kept this part<br />
of her life a secret. Almost in tears, she said that for years she had felt<br />
damaged and ashamed. ‘I wanted to put it behind me’, she said. ‘I<br />
thought if I could be seen as normal I would be more than I was’. And<br />
so she had guarded her secret closely. Neither her colleagues nor her<br />
patients knew. She had felt certain that others would not refer to her<br />
or want to come to her for help if they knew. However, now she was no<br />
longer sure this was true.<br />
‘So, what do you plan to do now?’, I asked her. She looked down at<br />
her hands in her lap. ‘I think I will just be myself’, she told me. ‘I will<br />
see people like myself. People who are not like others. People who have<br />
had strokes and other brain injuries. People who can never be normal<br />
again. I think I can help them to be whole.’ Over the past five years,<br />
Kathy has become widely known for her work. She has been honoured<br />
by several community groups and interviewed in newspapers. She often<br />
speaks on these kinds of topics and consults for businesses and hospitals.<br />
The many people she has helped refer others to her. Her practice is<br />
thriving. Her own name is on the door. All Kathy needed in order to be<br />
whole was the courage to face her own vulnerability. She had gradually<br />
learnt to pay attention to the wisdom of her sorrow.<br />
Life offers its wisdom generously to each of us. Everything in life<br />
teaches, but not everyone learns. Life invites us to stay awake, pay<br />
attention. But for most of us, paying attention is no simple<br />
matter. It requires us not to be distracted by expectations,<br />
past experiences, labels and masks. It asks that we not allow<br />
ourselves to draw conclusions too early and that we remain<br />
open to surprise. In fact, wisdom comes most easily to those<br />
who have the courage to embrace life without judgment. Sometimes, it<br />
will require us not to know, even for a long time. Moreover, it will also<br />
require us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to<br />
be. It may often require us to suffer. But ultimately it will lead to wisdom<br />
and growth.<br />
The courage<br />
to embrace<br />
life without<br />
judgment
84 Peter Wilcox<br />
The Seed of God<br />
There is a ‘seed’ of greater wholeness in everyone. The great Christian<br />
mystic Meister Eckhart called this the ‘seed of God’. 4 Buddhists call it<br />
the Buddha seed. It is that part of everyone that has the capacity for<br />
wisdom. Wisdom is not simply something that we acquire; it is something<br />
that we may become over time. It involves a change in our basic nature,<br />
a deepening of our capacity for compassion, loving-kindness, forgiveness,<br />
and service. Life itself waters this seed within us.<br />
Knowing that a God seed is present in everyone<br />
changes the way you see things. Many things<br />
are more than they seem. Many things do not<br />
show their true nature on the surface. For example,<br />
what you can see and touch about an acorn, its<br />
colour, its weight and its hardness, will never hint<br />
at the secret of its potential. This secret is not<br />
directly measurable, but given the proper conditions<br />
over time, it will become visible. Within an acorn,<br />
there is something waiting to unfold that will become<br />
an oak tree. An acorn is defined by this capacity. Something<br />
can be the size, shape, weight, texture and colour of an acorn,<br />
but without this hidden power to become an oak tree, it is not<br />
an acorn. In the same way, our essential humanity is defined by<br />
this God seed in us, this capacity to grow in wisdom. Every acorn<br />
yearns towards the full expression of its nature and uses every<br />
opportunity to realise its capacity to become an oak tree. Similarly,<br />
there is a natural yearning towards wholeness and wisdom in us<br />
all as well. This varies in strength from person to person. It may<br />
be quite conscious in some people and deeply buried in others. It<br />
may form the focus of one life and lie on the periphery of another, but<br />
it is always there. Wholeness is a basic human need.<br />
Growing in Wisdom<br />
None of us is born wise. Rather, becoming wise is a process and a struggle.<br />
Everyone and everything are caught up in this process of growing in<br />
4<br />
See Meister Eckhart, ‘The Book of “Benedictus” ’, in The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises<br />
and Defense, translated by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn (Mahwah: Paulist, 1981), 241:<br />
‘The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, the seed of a nut tree grows to be a nut tree, the seed of<br />
God grows to be God’.
Paying Attention to the Wisdom of Our Sorrows 85<br />
wisdom, of becoming more transparent to what is going on within us<br />
and all around us. The struggle is to become free from our illusions. This<br />
is not usually a graceful or a deliberate process. We stumble forward—<br />
often in the dark, like the acorn planted in the earth—to become more<br />
of who we are. In others it is clearly an effort worthy of our patience,<br />
our support, our compassion and our attention.<br />
Possessing wisdom is very different from just having knowledge.<br />
Our life experiences can teach us this. When I was a graduate student,<br />
I studied very hard and learnt how to be a therapist. Although it might<br />
sound simplistic, I truly wanted to help people and be the best therapist<br />
I could possibly be. In class, I learnt many theories of counselling and<br />
even had the opportunity of practising them during my internships. I<br />
would meet clients, listen to them, establish a rapport, diagnose them,<br />
decide what counselling strategy would be most beneficial, and go to<br />
work. I was putting my knowledge to work. The model I was taught<br />
focused on what I as a therapist had learnt about the particular problem a<br />
person was experiencing, and supposedly gave me the tools, the strategies,<br />
to help that person. I was implementing my knowledge. But I did not<br />
have much wisdom then. I was young and did not have much life<br />
experience. What gave me some wisdom was the death of my son and my<br />
struggle through the years of trying to make sense of that reality. This<br />
experience enabled me gradually to understand so many things about<br />
loss, sorrow, life and healing. In the final analysis, I believe this type of<br />
struggle enabled me to become a wise and helpful grief counsellor for<br />
others. Even back then, I did not want to be a ‘waster of sorrows’.<br />
Presence and Listening<br />
Over the years, I have discovered that basically I do not know what is<br />
needed much of the time and, even more surprisingly, I do not need to<br />
know. But now I also know that if I listen attentively to people, to their<br />
essential self, their soul, as it were, I often find that at their deepest<br />
level, they can sense the direction of their own healing and wholeness.<br />
If I can remain open to that, without expectations about what someone<br />
is ‘supposed to do’, how he or she is supposed to change in order to ‘get<br />
better’, or even what that person’s wholeness looks like, what can happen<br />
is amazing. For me, this approach is much wiser and healthier than any<br />
way of fixing a person’s situation or easing pain and sorrow that I might<br />
devise on my own.
86 Peter Wilcox<br />
So, I no longer have many theories about people. I do not simply<br />
diagnose them or decide what their problem is. I do not even believe that<br />
I have to fix them. I simply meet them and listen. As we sit together, I do<br />
not have an agenda, but I know that something will emerge from our<br />
conversation over time that is a part of a larger coherent pattern that<br />
neither of us can fully see at this moment. So, I sit with them and wait.<br />
James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy offers a simple and helpful<br />
description of the possibility within all human relationships. It says that<br />
there is a way of relating to others that encourages a person deliberately to<br />
listen to the hidden beauty in themselves. 5 The place of their beauty is<br />
often the place of their greatest integrity. When you listen, the integrity<br />
and wholeness in others move closer together. Your presence and attention<br />
strengthen that integrity and wholeness, and helps them to hear it in<br />
themselves. It has been my experience that presence and listening are a<br />
more powerful catalyst for change than analysis, and that we can know<br />
beyond doubt things we can never fully understand.<br />
Many years ago, when I prepared for the final session with a client,<br />
I used to review in my mind the milestones and turning points in our work<br />
together that had led to that person’s healing. I would come up with a<br />
list of these, in which I played a rather central role. Carefully, I would<br />
go through my notes and document the insightful interventions I had<br />
made. But when I asked my clients themselves to talk about their own<br />
experience of healing, they would rarely come up with more than half of<br />
my list. The rest of the time, they would share things that surprised me—<br />
chance remarks and facial expressions of mine that they had interpreted<br />
in ways that evoked in them some important and liberating insight.<br />
Then, they would give me examples of how they were able to use this<br />
insight to change their lives. Nodding sagely, I would often have no<br />
recollection of the event at all! Clearly, I had been used to delivering a<br />
message of healing to them that I did not fully understand at the time.<br />
Turning Sorrow into Wisdom<br />
Learning from life takes time. Becoming wise usually takes a lot of time.<br />
Most of us rarely recognise life’s wisdom at the time it is given. Sometimes,<br />
5<br />
James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy (London: Bantam, 1994), 232: ‘Of course, the first step is to<br />
keep our own energy high, then we can start the flow of energy coming into us, through us, and into<br />
the other person. The more we appredate their wholeness, their inner beauty, the more the energy flows<br />
into them, and naturally, the more that flows into us.’
Paying Attention to the Wisdom of Our Sorrows 87<br />
we are too distracted by something else that has caught our wandering<br />
eye, and not every gift of wisdom comes nicely wrapped. I have often<br />
received such a gift only many years after it was offered. Sometimes, I<br />
needed to receive other things first, to live through other experiences<br />
in order to be ready. Much wisdom is like a hand-me-down … it may be<br />
too big at the time it is given.<br />
Similarly, gaining wisdom from our sorrows takes time. The writer and<br />
physician Rachel Remen invites us to look closely at the example of the<br />
oyster as a guide to seeking wisdom from hardships:<br />
An oyster is soft, tender, and vulnerable. Without the sanctuary of its<br />
shell, it could not survive. But oysters must open their shells in order<br />
to ‘breathe’ water. Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain<br />
of sand will enter its shell and become a part of its life from then on.<br />
Such grains of sand cause pain, but an oyster does not alter its soft<br />
nature because of this. It does not become hard and leathery in order<br />
not to feel. It continues to entrust itself to the ocean, to open and<br />
breathe in order to live. But it does respond. Slowly and patiently, the<br />
oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until, over<br />
time, it creates something of great value in the place where it was most<br />
vulnerable to its pain. A pearl might be thought of as an oyster’s<br />
response to its pain and suffering. But not every oyster can do this.<br />
Oysters that do are far more valuable to people than oysters that do<br />
not. Sand is a way of life for an oyster. If you are soft and tender and<br />
must live on the sandy floor of the ocean, learning to make pearls<br />
becomes a necessity if you are to survive and live well. 6<br />
We are all invited to grow in wisdom and learn how to integrate our<br />
sorrows. As we each do this in our own way, we slowly become a blessing<br />
to those around us and a light in our world. We will not become a ‘waster<br />
of sorrows’. Perhaps the final step in the healing of our sorrows is<br />
wisdom. Perhaps no sorrow really heals completely until the wisdom of<br />
its experience has been found and appreciated. We will not return from<br />
the journey into sorrow to the same house that we left. Like the oyster,<br />
something in us has changed and the house that we return to and live<br />
in will be different as well.<br />
Disappointment, loss and sorrow were a part of the life of Jesus. They<br />
are a part of everyone’s life. Sometimes, we can put these things behind<br />
us and get on with the rest of our lives. But not everything is amenable<br />
6<br />
Rachel Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings (New York: Riverhead, 2000), 139–140.
88 Peter Wilcox<br />
to this approach. Some things are too big or buried too deep within us to<br />
do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind<br />
if we treat them in this way. This is where wisdom begins to grow in us.<br />
It begins with the suffering and sorrow that we do not avoid or<br />
rationalise or put behind us. It continues with the realisation that our<br />
loss, our sorrow, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered<br />
our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.<br />
Just as an oyster turns a grain of sand into a pearl, something in us can<br />
transform such loss and sorrow into wisdom. This process of turning sorrow<br />
into wisdom often looks like a sorting process. First, we experience<br />
everything. Then, one by one we let things go, the anger, the blame, the<br />
sense of injustice, and finally even the pain itself, until all we have left<br />
is a deeper sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.<br />
The grain of sand has become a pearl in us.<br />
After thirty years of accompanying people as they deal with their<br />
sorrows, I would say that the experience of sorrow and the wisdom we<br />
find there will belong completely to each person in their own way.<br />
Often, it will help us to live better. Sometimes, it may help us to die<br />
better as well.<br />
Peter Wilcox has been a psychotherapist and spiritual director for over thirty years.<br />
He holds a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of America and<br />
has taught at the Washington Theological Union, Loyola University Maryland and<br />
St Bonaventure University. For many years he has directed retreats and conducted<br />
seminars on personality development and spiritual growth.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE<br />
ABSENCE OF GOD<br />
ACCORDING TO JOHN OF<br />
THE CROSS<br />
Louis Roy<br />
T<br />
HROUGHOUT SACRED HISTORY, Jews and Christians have addressed<br />
the experience of ‘the absence of God’ or ‘the silence of God’ as<br />
they endured periods of adversity: the painful sense that God is absent or<br />
silent just at the time when believers most long for God’s consolation.<br />
The words ‘absence’ and ‘silence’ seem negative, at least initially: they<br />
give rise to disappointment, scandal, perhaps even to revolt. They hint<br />
that God may not even exist. But there are many people who have<br />
maintained their relationship with God while daring to question God’s<br />
incomprehensible silence. Their audacity is striking. The authors of the<br />
Psalms come to mind, along with Jeremiah, Job and other biblical figures.<br />
Beyond these, we think of John Tauler, John of the Cross, Madame<br />
Guyon, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta—and, above all,<br />
the Jewish victims of Nazi extermination camps during World War II.<br />
Here I would like to focus on the sixteenth-century Carmelite John<br />
of the Cross (1542–1591), a great mystic and doctor of the Church who<br />
gave us poems that are among the treasures of Spanish literature and,<br />
formed by systematic theology, who teaches us the deepest principles of<br />
the mystical life. He experienced the absence of God in the most<br />
profound way and accepted this affliction. It was his acceptance that<br />
enabled him to grow in faith and love.<br />
An Unwelcome Reformer<br />
When he joined the Carmelites in 1563, John took the religious name<br />
‘John of Saint Matthias’, but after meeting Teresa of Ávila and becoming<br />
involved in the movement for reform of his Order he adopted instead<br />
the name ‘John of the Cross’. In so doing he was already preparing himself<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 89–98
90 Louis Roy<br />
St John of the Cross, by Francisco de Zurburán, 1656<br />
to confront the sufferings that the struggle for reform would bring. His<br />
non-reformed Carmelite brothers violently opposed the movement and<br />
persecuted him, imprisoning him in a tiny cell without light or ventilation,<br />
hot in summer and freezing in winter, where he was whipped, starved,<br />
forced to wear filthy rags and to endure lice, kept in almost total isolation<br />
and deprived of books apart from his breviary. After eight-and-a-half<br />
months of such captivity he managed to escape.<br />
It was in the context of this persecution that he lived the experience<br />
of the absence of God, and the following year he began to write his<br />
great poems. He used the phrase ‘dark night’ (noche oscura) in referring<br />
to this absence, and he subdivided the dark night into three phases: the<br />
‘night of the senses’, the ‘night of the spirit’ and the ‘night of pre-dawn’.<br />
The first of these three phases, which corresponds to the early hours of<br />
darkness, purifies the senses, the imagination and the understanding—<br />
by which John means the part of the understanding that depends on<br />
corporeal sense and imagination. The second night is utterly black: the
The Experience of the Absence of God 91<br />
deep night, the heart of darkness. It purifies the spirit, which includes the<br />
understanding, the memory and the will. In the third night, the darkness<br />
is lessened by the first hints of dawn. To quote the saint himself:<br />
The third part, that period before dawn [el antelucano], approximates<br />
the light of day. The darkness is not like that of midnight, since in<br />
this period of the night we approach the illumination of day …. God<br />
supernaturally illumines the soul with the ray of his divine light.<br />
This light is the principle of the perfect union that follows after the<br />
third night. 1<br />
In this third (and final) night, the darkness is attenuated: dawn is near.<br />
The Great Trial<br />
John tells us that, even in the first night, ‘the memory ordinarily turns<br />
to God solicitously and with painful care, and the soul thinks it is not<br />
serving God but turning back, because it is aware of this distaste for<br />
the things of God’. 2 He adds:<br />
Spiritual persons suffer considerable affliction in this night, owing not<br />
so much to the aridities they undergo as to their fear of having gone<br />
astray. Since they do not find any support or satisfaction in good<br />
things, they believe there will be no more spiritual blessings for them<br />
and that God has abandoned them. (1.10.1)<br />
The second night turns out to be even more painful than the first. John<br />
uses the most dramatic terms to convey what one experiences:<br />
[God] so disentangles and dissolves the spiritual substance—absorbing<br />
it in a profound darkness—that the soul at the sight of its miseries<br />
feels that it is melting away and being undone by a cruel spiritual<br />
death. It feels as if it were swallowed by a beast and being digested<br />
in the dark belly, and it suffers an anguish comparable to Jonah’s in<br />
the belly of the whale. (2.6.1)<br />
He explains: ‘What the sorrowing soul feels most is the conviction that<br />
God has rejected [desechado] it, and with abhorrence cast it into darkness.<br />
1<br />
‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’, 2. 2. 1, in The Collected Works of St John of the Cross, translated by<br />
Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, rev. edn (Washington, DC: ICS, 1991). The translation has<br />
sometimes been modified here, after checking the Spanish text in San Juan de la Cruz, Obras completas<br />
(Madrid: Editorial Apostolado de la Prensa, 1966).<br />
2<br />
‘The Dark Night’, 1. 9. 3, in Collected Works of St John of the Cross (subsequent references in the text).
92 Louis Roy<br />
The thought that God has abandoned [dejado] it is a piteous and heavy<br />
affliction for the soul.’ (2.6.2)<br />
We can observe here the theme of abandonment by God, with<br />
which that of emptiness is intertwined:<br />
The soul experiences an emptiness [vaco] and poverty in regard to<br />
three classes of goods (temporal, natural, and spiritual) which are<br />
directed toward pleasing it, and is conscious of being placed in the<br />
midst of the contrary evils (the miseries of imperfections, aridities<br />
and voids [vacíos] in the apprehensions of the faculties, and an<br />
abandonment of the spirit in darkness). (2.6.4)<br />
John speaks of an ‘oppressive undoing’ (grave deshacimiento), and he asserts<br />
that ‘the soul must, as it were, be annihilated and undone [se aniquele y<br />
deshaga]’ (2.6.5). Readers with some knowledge of Buddhism will be<br />
struck by this language of the void, annihilation and undoing.<br />
In the same chapter, John offers a reflection of extreme importance<br />
that touches on the role of other humans in the soul’s conviction of<br />
being abandoned: ‘Such persons also feel forsaken and despised by<br />
creatures, particularly by their friends’ (2.6.3). The loss of the support<br />
and comfort of friends intensifies the soul’s distress; I would insist even<br />
more than the saint does on rejection by other people as a factor either<br />
causing or accompanying that distress.<br />
Does God Reject Anyone?<br />
A tricky question poses itself: did John of the Cross actually believe<br />
that he was, in fact, rejected by God? If we examine his language closely,<br />
the answer to this question must be ‘no’. He speaks of the feeling of<br />
being without God and of being rejected:<br />
When this purgative contemplation oppresses a soul, it feels very<br />
vividly indeed [muy a lo vivo] the shadow of death, the sighs of death,<br />
and the sorrows of hell, all of which reflect the feeling of being without<br />
God [sentirse sin Dios], of being chastised and rejected [arrojada] by<br />
him, and of being unworthy of him, as well as the object of his anger.<br />
The soul experiences all this and even more, for now it seems [le<br />
parece] that this affliction will last forever. (2.6.2)<br />
What John talks about is a powerful impression, but not an affirmation<br />
of rejection. Such an affirmation would mean that John had lost his<br />
faith in a God who is wholly faithful. What he appears, rather, to have<br />
lived through was uncertainty, a piercing doubt accompanied by fear
The Experience of the Absence of God 93<br />
that God had rejected him. He mentions ‘doubts and fears’ (dudas y<br />
recelos). 3 His faith was certainly shaken, but it did not fail. Elsewhere,<br />
John associates this direly tried faith with the second night, the darkest<br />
and most difficult—that of the spirit: ‘Faith, the middle [medio] [of the<br />
night], is comparable to midnight’. 4 We find ourselves here face-to-face<br />
with a struggle of faith—but not with the loss of faith. John asked<br />
himself if God had rejected him; but there is no indication, in any of<br />
his descriptions of the dark night, that he wanted to teach that God<br />
had in fact done so.<br />
This interpretation is corroborated by a passage where John stresses<br />
that God is offended by people who, through curiosity and presumption,<br />
seek to know the future by supernatural means. Speaking of ‘those who<br />
were desirous of knowing what was naturally unattainable’, he states:<br />
Provoked by this, God allowed [dejó] them to go astray and gave no<br />
enlightenment concerning this matter in which he did not want them<br />
to meddle. Thus Isaiah proclaims that by way of privation God<br />
commingled in their midst that spirit of dissension. Accordingly,<br />
God is the cause of that harm; that is, the privative cause [causa<br />
privativa] which consists in his withdrawing [quitar] his light and favor<br />
to such an extent that they necessarily fall into error. 5<br />
It is evident that the sin John exposes here is entirely different from<br />
the dark night, since in this case there is culpability on the part of the<br />
presumptuous seeker, whereas in the dark night the contemplative soul is<br />
innocent in face of the scourge that strikes and crushes it. In both cases<br />
John, always the student of Augustine and Thomas, remains convinced<br />
that God is never the direct cause of evil, but permits it—he uses the<br />
verb dejar, ‘to allow’—in the hope that the person thus afflicted may<br />
profit from it. Further, towards the end of his life, probably in 1590, he<br />
wrote to a Carmelite nun:<br />
Live in faith and hope, even though you are in darkness, because it<br />
is in these darknesses that God protects the soul. Cast your care on<br />
God, for he watches over you and will not forget you. Do not think<br />
that he leaves you alone; that would be an affront to him. 6<br />
3<br />
4<br />
5<br />
6<br />
‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’, 2. 11. 6.<br />
‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’, 2. 2. 1.<br />
‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’, 2. 21. 11.<br />
Letter 20, to an unknown Carmelite nun, shortly before Pentecost, 1590, in The Collected Works of<br />
St John of the Cross.
94 Louis Roy<br />
Towards the End of the Night<br />
The idea that God could abandon or reject someone was terrifying, and<br />
John lived through that painful experience during the second phase of the<br />
dark night. However, it was also the sign of a closely related phenomenon:<br />
an increase in light and love. This began with a supernatural illumination,<br />
received as a major insight: those who accept trials with joy are able to do<br />
so thanks to the discovery that, far from displeasing God, this suffering,<br />
fully accepted, pleases God, who uses it as an instrument for their<br />
spiritual progress (2.13.5). An increase in supernatural love follows: those<br />
who allow God to purify their motivation perceive that their natural<br />
desires cease to distract and divide their souls, leaving them free to focus<br />
their desire entirely on God, with an intense longing (2.11.3). God strips<br />
away every natural attachment from the soul, ‘that they may reach out<br />
divinely to the enjoyment of all earthly and heavenly things, with a<br />
general freedom of spirit<br />
in them all’ (2.9.1).<br />
But what does the<br />
third part of the dark<br />
night bring, when the first<br />
hint of dawn begins to<br />
break? John distinguishes<br />
between three states. The<br />
first state is called the<br />
purgative way; for the<br />
most part, it is described<br />
in The Ascent of Mount<br />
Carmel and in The Dark<br />
Night. The second state,<br />
which he calls the spiritual<br />
betrothal (desposorio), is<br />
obtained in ‘the tranquil<br />
night at the time of the<br />
rising dawn’. 7<br />
The third<br />
state is called the spiritual<br />
marriage (matrimonio). The<br />
Sunrise in Winter, by Ludwig Munthe,<br />
mid-nineteenth century<br />
7<br />
‘The Spiritual Canticle’, commentary on stanzas 14 and 15, n. 1, in The Collected Works of St John of<br />
the Cross; see n. 2.
The Experience of the Absence of God 95<br />
betrothal and marriage are described in The Spiritual Canticle and in<br />
The Living Flame of Love.<br />
In The Spiritual Canticle, John shows us that the great affliction of the<br />
dark night opens into an overwhelmingly joyous love, filled with peace<br />
and light:<br />
She [the soul] does not say that the tranquil night is equivalent to<br />
a dark night, but rather that it is like the night that has reached the<br />
time of the rising dawn. This quietude and tranquility in God is not<br />
entirely obscure to the soul as is a dark night; but it is a tranquility<br />
and quietude in divine light, in the new knowledge of God, in<br />
which the spirit elevated to the divine light is in quiet. 8<br />
In The Living Flame of Love, the light is even brighter: ‘The soul with its<br />
faculties is illumined within the splendors of God’. 9 Accordingly, Edith<br />
Stein comments: ‘The union [marriage] seemed to be achieved in the<br />
night, indeed on the Cross. Only later, it seems, did the saint have the<br />
happy experience of just how wide heaven opens itself even in this life.’ 10<br />
She uses the verb ‘to seem’ twice, probably because John remained<br />
imprecise about that subject matter.<br />
Two Objections<br />
It could be asked whether, in dwelling on his afflictions, John of the Cross<br />
falls into masochism. Twentieth-century thinkers, under the influence<br />
of contemporary psychology, distrust any tendency to take pleasure in<br />
suffering. This danger was not, however, invented in our time. In a letter<br />
written in 1536, Ignatius of Loyola warns a Benedictine religious to be<br />
on her guard against this very temptation:<br />
When the enemy [the devil] has produced in us a fear through a<br />
semblance of humility (a humility that is spurious), and has gotten us<br />
not to speak even of things that are good, holy, and profitable, he<br />
then inspires an even worse fear, namely, that we are separated,<br />
estranged, and alienated from our Lord. 11<br />
8<br />
‘The Spiritual Canticle’, commentary on stanzas 14 and 15, n. 23, in The Collected Works of St John<br />
of the Cross.<br />
9<br />
‘The Living Flame of Love’, commentary on stanza 3, n. 10, in The Collected Works of St John of the Cross.<br />
10 Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), The Science of the Cross, translated by Josephine<br />
Koeppel (Washington, DC: ICS, 2002), 217.<br />
11 Ignatius to Teresa Rejadell, 18 June 1536, in Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected<br />
Works, ed. George E. Ganss (New York: Paulist, 1991), 335.
96 Louis Roy<br />
So there is a spiritual danger in every trial: it may turn us towards<br />
ourselves, in making us too focused on what is negative in our own lives.<br />
However, there is no evidence that John of the Cross desired to remain<br />
in darkness. Certainly, he accepted his tribulations, in union with the<br />
passion of Jesus; but he did not actively entertain morose thoughts. His<br />
balance and his deep joy are impressive.<br />
The second objection applies directly to John’s teaching that the<br />
dark night is something temporary, and is followed by the light of dawn.<br />
In contrast to Thérèse of Lisieux and Mother Teresa, who entered the<br />
dark night and remained there for the remainder of their lives, John lets<br />
it be understood that it is normal to emerge from it. Is their experience,<br />
therefore, inconsistent with his?<br />
Consider the last months of John’s life. With Teresa of Ávila, he had<br />
been the soul of the Carmelite reform movement, and he was removed<br />
from any responsibility within it. Given his acute sensitivity, he suffered<br />
greatly, both psychologically and spiritually. Marginalised and calumniated,<br />
he felt abandoned by his own; he was incurably ill, and was to die of<br />
erysipelas, an infectious skin condition. Consequently, he experienced a<br />
second great trial: at the beginning of his religious life, John was rejected by<br />
the non-reformed Carmelites; but at the end of his life he was rejected<br />
by his own reformed brethren. What a devastating disappointment this<br />
must have been!<br />
Is it not possible that, during the last months of his life, as he was<br />
set aside by his reformed Carmelite brothers and had become a prey to<br />
a painful illness, John underwent once more certain aspects of the dark<br />
night? In fact, four months before his death, he confessed to his<br />
confidante, Doña Ana: ‘The soul [my soul] fares very poorly. The Lord<br />
must be desiring that it have its spiritual desert.’ 12 We can say, nevertheless,<br />
that this ‘spiritual desert’ is compatible with the deep peace brought by<br />
the third night, at the coming of dawn. His acceptance of the will of God<br />
is further illustrated in a letter to a Carmelite nun, where he wrote:<br />
Do not let what is happening to me, daughter, cause you any grief,<br />
for it does not cause me any. What greatly grieves me is that the one<br />
who is not at fault [a reforming Carmelite friar, Jerónimo Gracián]<br />
is blamed. Men do not do these things, but God, who knows what is<br />
12 Letter 28, to Doña Ana del Mercado y Peñalosa, 19 August 1591, in The Collected Works of St John<br />
of the Cross.
The Experience of the Absence of God 97<br />
suitable for us and arranges things for our good. Think nothing else<br />
but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and<br />
you will draw out love. 13<br />
Complete acceptance of what God wills here coincides with lasting peace<br />
and love for one’s enemies.<br />
The Trial of Faith<br />
In conclusion, I propose three observations.<br />
First, as a man of the Renaissance, John concentrated on the<br />
individual. He does not refer to the collective tragedies of the Spain of<br />
his day—for example, Philip II’s repression of Protestants in Flanders,<br />
or the oppression of indigenous peoples by the Conquistadors, which<br />
was denounced by Bartolomé de las Casas. There were certainly many<br />
instances of spiritual darkness in those situations.<br />
Secondly, from this brief discussion, we can extrapolate some<br />
characteristics of the experience of God’s silence. In the beginning, it is<br />
triggered by a negative event: adversity assails us. The trial also takes us<br />
by surprise, so that we lose our normal means of coping with adversity.<br />
Then comes acceptance of the idea that God alone can enable us to<br />
overcome the trial. Finally, we discover the peace and the joy of being<br />
united to the passion and death of Jesus, who also lost everything to find<br />
everything. So the silence of God is lived in four stages: the encounter<br />
with misfortune; disarray as an initial reaction; the complete giving over<br />
of the self to God; and resurrection with Christ. These stages can overlap:<br />
they are not always sequential.<br />
My third observation is more general. John of the Cross took it for<br />
granted that the experience of the absence of God was typical of mystics.<br />
However, if by ‘mystics’ we mean those who cultivate, on a<br />
daily basis, the continual or almost continual presence of<br />
God, we have to distinguish mysticism from the sense of God’s<br />
absence, which touches anyone who must live through an<br />
experience of faith that comes up against wrenching questioning.<br />
In my view, we can be holy without being mystics, but we<br />
cannot be holy without experiencing, because of painful events, the trials<br />
of faith that involve anxious questioning with respect to the silence of<br />
We cannot be<br />
holy without<br />
experiencing<br />
… the trials<br />
of faith<br />
13 Letter 26, to Mara de la Encarnación, 6 July 1591, in The Collected Works of St John of the Cross.
98 Louis Roy<br />
God. This leads me to my final conclusion: this terrible—and beautiful—<br />
challenge of faith is addressed, not just to mystics, but to all believers.<br />
Louis Roy OP holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. After teaching for<br />
twenty years at the Jesuit university of Boston College, he is now professor of<br />
theology at the Dominican University College in Ottawa. He has published books in<br />
English, French and Spanish. He is interested in intellectual, affective and mystical<br />
approaches to God, in religious experience and revelation, and in interreligious<br />
dialogue.<br />
translated by Jeremiah Bartram, with a few changes and additions by the<br />
author and by the editors of The Way
The Spirit in Contemporary Culture<br />
THE ‘ORDINARY’<br />
CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE AND<br />
THE ‘LITTLE WAY’ OF<br />
SOCIAL JUSTICE<br />
Meredith Secomb<br />
I<br />
HAVE BEEN REFLECTING for some time now on an inspiring seminar I<br />
attended in 2014, describing groundbreaking work at the interface of<br />
the arts and public health. The presenter, an ethnomusicologist, human<br />
rights activist and professor of music, is engaged, among many other<br />
things, in taking the arts to a Peruvian slum and a US prison. His work<br />
is focused on the deeply impoverished people of our world, impoverished<br />
both materially and spiritually. It is work that transforms people’s lives,<br />
their sense of self and their feeling of significance and value. It is work<br />
that contributes to social justice.<br />
The seminar unsettled me, leading me to wonder what commensurate<br />
work I now do, as one who identifies herself as a contemplative, to<br />
contribute to alleviating the world’s desperate inequities and pain. 2 While<br />
I had in the past sought to relieve the suffering of others, in both formal<br />
and informal ways, when these particular activities came to an end so,<br />
too, it seemed, did the fulfilment derived from the effort to integrate my<br />
contemplative prayer life with loving concern for the suffering of others. 3<br />
1<br />
André de Quadros, ‘From American Prisons to Peruvian Shantytowns: Rescuing the Arts from the<br />
Realm of the Elite’, The Victoria Institute, Melbourne, 21 May 2014.<br />
2<br />
Note that The Way recently published a paper which nicely situates the historical background for<br />
those pursuing contemporary contemplative lives: see Carol McDonough, ‘Christian Hermits and<br />
Solitaries: Tracing the Antonian Hermit Traditions’, The Way, 54/1 (January 2015), 76–89.<br />
3<br />
My formal activities comprised working in a private psychological practice and writing theological<br />
papers that sought always to address the heart even while being presented in an academic context. In<br />
both cases I was aware, however, that these were merely stages on the contemplative journey. My<br />
subsequent informal exercise of being a ‘cycling missionary’ in the Australian countryside seemed best<br />
The Way, 55/1 (January 2016), 99–109
100 Meredith Secomb<br />
© auntjojo @ Flickr<br />
Hence my present question: how can I live authentically as a<br />
contemplative open to God and to the suffering of my neighbour in the<br />
comfort of Western suburbia? A number of assumptions are implicit in<br />
this question. The first, which I accept, is that we are called to love and<br />
to serve others; the second, which I investigate, is that a life that prioritises<br />
contemplative prayer in the ordinary circumstances of the ordinary world<br />
is a valid one; the third, which I reject, is that we all have to do ‘big’<br />
things to fulfil the call to social justice and loving our neighbour.<br />
I shall begin by considering the emphasis on social justice within the<br />
Christian tradition, referring briefly to scripture and then to the work of<br />
theologians who have considered the significance for Christian living of the<br />
most marginalised in our world. Their call has been to action, including<br />
action that challenges the social structures that sustain inequities. Set<br />
against this activist engagement is the seemingly incompatible life of the<br />
ordinary contemplative living an ordinary life in suburbia. I then propose<br />
a rapprochement between the urgent need for all Christians to exercise<br />
active compassion in the face of the suffering of others and the genuine<br />
limitations of people living ordinary, if prayer-filled, lives in developedworld<br />
circumstances. I propose, in ways consistent with the contemplative<br />
tradition, that this rapprochement is found in valuing the little ways in<br />
which love can be expressed to the needy around us.<br />
to ‘fit’ the foundational contemplative call to love of God and neighbour, as remarkable encounters<br />
on the roads and in the caravan parks testified. It was the ending of this period that most exposed me<br />
to the self-questioning I explore here.
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life 101<br />
The Christian Imperative for Social Justice<br />
The theme of social justice is an integral part of the Christian tradition.<br />
In the Old Testament it is perhaps summarised most beautifully by Micah,<br />
who unequivocally states that the Lord requires us to ‘do justice, to love<br />
kindness, and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8). In the New<br />
Testament, Jesus is even more forthright when he insists that we will<br />
not enter the Kingdom of God unless we have fed the hungry, given<br />
drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and visited<br />
the sick or imprisoned (Matthew 25:31–40). Christ commands us to love<br />
our neighbour (Mark 12:30–31); and the parable of the Good Samaritan<br />
(Luke 10:30–37) shows us that our neighbour appears in all guises. As<br />
Christians, indeed as human beings, we are all called to reveal in some<br />
way God’s love for the poor and the needy, the sick and the wounded.<br />
Moreover, relieving our neighbour’s pain and the development of our<br />
own authentic humanity are intrinsically entwined, for we are to love our<br />
neighbour as ourselves (Mark 12:31). As Jon Sobrino insists, human<br />
beings only come to be fully human by facilitating the liberation of<br />
those who suffer oppression and defeat. <br />
The many theologians who have explored how our love of God must<br />
have a demonstrable impact on the needs of our neighbour all insist that<br />
contemplative or mystical prayer must have a compassionate and merciful<br />
expression in prophetic or political or economic action. Often it is a<br />
personal encounter with extremes of suffering that generates such<br />
theological reflection. So it was for Johann Baptist Metz and Jon Sobrino,<br />
both of whom were confronted by devastating examples of suffering and<br />
oppression. For Metz it was the Holocaust; for Sobrino, the appalling<br />
poverty in South America. These personal experiences heightened their<br />
sensitivity to the world’s shocking history of violence and oppression,<br />
leading them to insist that we must take greater cognisance of the suffering<br />
of innocent victims of oppression and injustice.<br />
Yet, sadly—grievously—so many of us are asleep to their plight.<br />
Although scripture calls us in so many places to awake, we are often too<br />
complacently comfortable to respond to Christ’s call to love others as<br />
4<br />
Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll: Orbis,<br />
1994), 1.<br />
5<br />
For the list of Edward Schillebeeckx, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Dorothee Soelle, David Tracy, Leonardo Boff,<br />
Ignacio Ellacuría, Johann Baptist Metz and Jon Sobrino, see Matthew T. Eggemeier, ‘A Mysticism of<br />
Open Eyes: Compassion for a Suffering World and the Askesis of Contemplative Prayer’, Spiritus, 12/1<br />
(2012), 43.
102 Meredith Secomb<br />
ourselves. Given the imperative for all Christians to be alert to the<br />
demands of social justice, how can we responsibly follow a call to a<br />
relatively simple life which gives priority to prayer? Do we not run the<br />
risk of camouflaging an essentially egocentric existence with the label<br />
‘contemplative’? Could this not be, rather, merely a ‘cop-out’, avoiding<br />
the ‘real’ concerns of Christian living?<br />
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life: Call or Cop-Out?<br />
Early in his account of life in a Cistercian monastery, Thomas Merton<br />
addresses the commonplace, but mistaken, view that the contemplative<br />
life is merely a strategy for avoiding the mundane and often burdensome<br />
reality of ordinary, everyday life. Forcefully, he asserts,<br />
Let no one justify the monastery as a place from which anguish is<br />
utterly absent and in which men ‘have no problems’. This is a myth,<br />
closely related to the other myth that religion itself disposes of all<br />
man’s anxieties. 6<br />
He goes on to indicate something of the nature of the struggles<br />
encountered by one pursuing a contemplative life:<br />
Faith itself implies a certain anguish, and it is a way of confronting<br />
inner suffering, not a magic formula for making all problems vanish. It<br />
is not by extraordinary spiritual adventures or by dramatic and heroic<br />
exploits that the monk comes to terms with life. The monastery teaches<br />
men to take their own measure and to accept their ordinariness; in<br />
a word, it teaches them that truth about themselves which is known<br />
as ‘humility’. 7<br />
Another mistaken notion about the contemplative life is that it is<br />
self-focused and individualistic. Elsewhere Merton opposes this idea,<br />
noting that prayer exposes its practitioner to self-searching and to the<br />
‘sham and indignity of the false self that seeks to live for itself alone and<br />
to enjoy the “consolation of prayer” for its own sake’. 8 Those called to<br />
such a way of living are responding to a vocation to journey inwards, to<br />
encounter the self in the demands of intimate engagement with God.<br />
They are responding to an internal imperative which calls them to carve<br />
out a contemplative life.<br />
6<br />
7<br />
8<br />
Thomas Merton, Cistercian Life (Spencer: Cistercian, 1974), 2–3.<br />
Merton, Cistercian Life, 3.<br />
Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1969), 25–26.
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life 103<br />
As Mary Frohlich observes, the authenticity of that imperative will<br />
be determined by its outcome, by the extent to which it ultimately issues<br />
in a life expressive of God’s love. 9 Onlookers need to be patient as they<br />
wait to assess that outcome, always remembering that the contemplative<br />
life is a demanding one in which people of prayer are exposed to<br />
interior pressures not known by those preoccupied and distracted by<br />
more mundane concerns. Whether the contemplative life is lived in a<br />
monastery or in the ordinariness outside monastic enclosures, it is not<br />
a ‘cop-out’. It is a call. There can be ‘a sense of divine immediacy, a<br />
call to live out of that immediacy and a sense of all things and events<br />
as transparencies for divine presence’. 10<br />
Just as the physical reality of<br />
the world can be a ‘glasshouse, transparent and translucent to God's<br />
grace’, so too the spiritual reality of the contemplative’s life can be<br />
experienced as transparent to God’s gracious intervention. 11<br />
Those within monastic enclosure, or within active communities that<br />
prioritise the contemplative life, have the support of a community, a rule<br />
of life that gives structure and a socially recognisable label. These things<br />
provide an institutional body that supports self-identity. In contrast,<br />
people who live as contemplatives ‘in the world’ often need courage to<br />
pursue a pattern of life that is usually at odds with that of those around<br />
them. There are numerous factors that lead people to consider that they<br />
have a contemplative call when they live in the ordinary circumstances<br />
of the world outside an institutional setting. Some point to their<br />
contemplative experience, others to their contemplative practices, yet<br />
others to their contemplative lifestyle. Some only have an awareness<br />
that calling themselves ‘contemplatives’ is the most coherent way to<br />
articulate their self-understanding. 12<br />
Kathryn Damiano characterizes the experience of living a contemplative<br />
life as a solitary person as one of ‘relevant irrelevancy’. 13 Pursuing the<br />
contemplative life in the context of marriage creates yet other challenges. 14<br />
9<br />
Mary Frohlich, ‘A Roman Catholic Theology of Lay Contemplation’, in The Lay Contemplative:<br />
Testimonies, Perspectives, Resources, edited by Virginia Manss and Mary Frohlich (Cincinnati: St Anthony<br />
Messenger, 2000), 50.<br />
10 Tilden Edwards, ‘Foreword’, in The Lay Contemplative, edited by Manss and Frohlich, v.<br />
11 Johann Roten, ‘The Two Halves of the Moon: Marian Anthropological Dimensions in the Common<br />
Mission of Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Communio, 16 (Fall, 1989), 443.<br />
12 Frohlich, ‘A Roman Catholic Theology of Lay Contemplation’, 45.<br />
13 Kathryn Damiano, ‘The Call to Life “on the Margins” ’, in The Lay Contemplative, edited by Manss<br />
and Frohlich, 25.<br />
14 See Ann G. Denham, ‘God in Flesh and Spirit’, in The Lay Contemplative, edited by Manss and<br />
Frohlich, 33–36.
104 Meredith Secomb<br />
The contemplative dimension of living in a L’Arche community reveals<br />
more of the multifaceted wonder of this way of life: ‘From the slow<br />
lane, one is encouraged to take another look, to seek out the details,<br />
delicacy and even beauty of what we thought was ugly’. 15 Only a heart<br />
sensitised to compassion and alert to beauty in the ordinary details of<br />
daily living can ‘look’ in this way. Ann Denham describes her initial<br />
misunderstanding of a life devoted to intense prayer, expecting ‘some<br />
cosy chats with the Lord’. She vividly depicts her actual experience of<br />
opening up to the depths within: ‘thrust into light and a landscape out<br />
of Vincent Van Gogh; a strong visual sense of multilayered reality and<br />
a howling fear-storm straight from a dank, black hole’. 16 Denham reveals<br />
the fear that often goes with surrendering familiar ego-based strategies<br />
for engaging with the world and taking the risk of opening up to a larger<br />
self of which the ego is merely a part. Like Thomas Merton, Denham<br />
confronted her inner suffering and anguish with faith.<br />
As Mary Frohlich notes, there is such a rich variety in the ‘raw<br />
material of gifts, opportunities and choices’ for contemplative expression<br />
that there is no ready way to account for a person’s choice of the<br />
primary self-identification as ‘contemplative’. 17 Whatever leads to this<br />
identification, its expression is not world-denying; the spirituality that<br />
emerges from the authentic contemplative life lived in the world is still<br />
‘for others’. 18 It can take many forms for the ordinary person living an<br />
ordinary life in the ordinary circumstances of home and work.<br />
Transforming Prayer and the ‘Little Way’ of Social Justice<br />
The tendency to think that we are of value only if we do big things to<br />
help others is everywhere. Those living in developed countries whose lives<br />
have kept them insulated from extremes of suffering often find that a<br />
subtle guilt is at work, a guilt which undermines the joy of the call to a<br />
contemplative life, a guilt which insinuates they are not doing enough<br />
to relieve the burden of the less fortunate. The implicit, unconscious<br />
assumption is that we only have value if we are seen by others to be<br />
making a big contribution to a needy world. For those with the gifts and<br />
15 Robert A. Jonas, ‘Daybreak’, in The Lay Contemplative, edited by Manss and Frohlich, 37.<br />
16 Denham, ‘God in Flesh and Spirit’, 33.<br />
17 Frohlich, ‘Roman Catholic Theology of Lay Contemplation’, 45.<br />
18 Edward P. Hahnenberg, Awakening Vocation: A Theology of Christian Call (Collegeville: Liturgical,<br />
2010).
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life 105<br />
capacities, and with the power to effect structural change, such actions<br />
are indeed just and appropriate. For those less gifted, however, demands<br />
of this kind hide the value before God of the little that they are called to<br />
do and can do. Even for those more gifted it can take courage to stand<br />
up to a community’s criticism for valuing the ‘little’ rather than the<br />
‘big’ social needs—as Mother Teresa of Calcutta demonstrated when she<br />
was criticized for not adequately challenging India’s social structures in<br />
her focus on the needs of the individual.<br />
For many the journey to self-acceptance for the little they are able<br />
to do can be long. Parker Palmer at one time thought that he had to<br />
live ‘a life like that of Martin Luther King Jr or Rosa Parks or Mahatma<br />
Gandhi or Dorothy Day’ to fulfil the exigence of ‘high purpose’. 19 As St<br />
John of the Cross reflects, we can find it a special suffering to find that<br />
we do not suffer. 20 What can be done to sensitise people to the value of<br />
the ‘little’ needs before them? While there is indeed a genuine risk that<br />
the comforts of a Western way of life can blind us to the pain suffered<br />
19 Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,<br />
2000), 3.<br />
20 St John of the Cross, ‘The Ascent of Mt. Carmel’, in The Collected Works of St John of the Cross,<br />
edited by Kieran Kavanagh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS, 1979), 2. 26. 7.
106 Meredith Secomb<br />
The Good Samaritan, by the Master of the Good Samaritan, 1537<br />
by the less fortunate, those same comforts, and the often unconscious<br />
guilt accompanying them, can also blind us to the value of the ‘little’<br />
ways in which we can lovingly serve those around us.<br />
The problem of sensitising ourselves to the needs of others is, for Metz<br />
and Sobrino, a question that reaches to the depths of our relationship<br />
with God. It is a question that challenges the nature of our spirituality.<br />
Our spirituality is only authentic if we are awake, alert and responsive<br />
to the reality of suffering. Yet how are we to awaken? For Metz and<br />
Sobrino, and also for Simone Weil, we can find answers to this question<br />
in the parable of the Good Samaritan. For them this parable is the<br />
‘foundational biblical narrative’ for an authentic spirituality which is<br />
compassionately responsive to the suffering of others. 21<br />
Metz and Sobrino see the priest and the Levite as so preoccupied<br />
with apparently weighty matters of the Law that they passed by the needy<br />
person. 22 In contrast, they argue that the Samaritan responded with a<br />
viscerally felt compassion which motivated him to act. His action entailed<br />
21 Eggemeier, ‘Mysticism of Open Eyes’, 49.<br />
22 Eggemeier, ‘Mysticism of Open Eyes’, 49–52.
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life 107<br />
a kenotic abandonment of egocentric attachments to comfort and security.<br />
Yet such an embodied sense of compassion, experienced in a way that<br />
impels us action, is unfortunately all too rare. Self-interest and distractions<br />
so readily leave us in a complacent slumber which prevents us from<br />
seeing the suffering of others. 23 Eggemeier argues that an ascetic practice<br />
of contemplative prayer is required to open the eyes of the heart and to<br />
develop the accompanying embodied sensitivities to the needs of others. 24<br />
He cites the work of Sarah Coakley and Simone Weil as pointing towards<br />
ways in which such sensitivity can be developed.<br />
Coakley has written powerfully about the transformative effects of a<br />
discipline of contemplative prayer and its capacity to generate a prophetic<br />
dynamic of compassionate action. 25 Her work with prisoners, for example,<br />
revealed that regular periods of silence can transform their experience of<br />
self as well as providing a healing, alternative ‘space’ to the oppressive<br />
regime around them. Simone Weil observes that a contemplative discipline<br />
was very necessary for the focused attention which enabled the Good<br />
Samaritan to perceive the plight of the man by the road. She describes<br />
such attention as knowing how to look at a person in a particular way:<br />
This look is first of all an attentive look, when the soul empties itself<br />
of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being that<br />
it is looking at, just as it is, in all its truth. It is only capable of this if it<br />
is capable of attention. 26<br />
Weil goes on to observe, ‘Love for our neighbour, being made of creative<br />
attention, is analogous to genius’. 27 So it may well be, for without practices<br />
to stimulate the abandonment of egocentric attachments we do not<br />
naturally drift into self-sacrificial awareness. Another testimony to the<br />
transformative value of prayer comes from the theologian Sebastian<br />
Moore who insists, ‘Prayer is the most radical therapy for our culture’. 28<br />
Eggemeier, Coakley, Weil and Moore are just some of the many voices<br />
that point to the benefits of silent prayer for making us alert to the need<br />
23 Eggemeier, ‘Mysticism of Open Eyes’, 52.<br />
24 Eggemeier, ‘Mysticism of Open Eyes’, 52–57.<br />
25 See Sarah Coakley, ‘Jail Break: Meditation as a Subversive Activity’, The Christian Century, 121/13<br />
(2004), 18–21; Sarah Coakley, ‘Prayer as Crucible: How My Mind Has Changed’, The Christian Century<br />
128/6 (2011). See also Religion and the Body, edited by Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).<br />
26 Simone Weil, Waiting on God, translated by Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), 63.<br />
27 Weil, Waiting for God, 90.<br />
28 Sebastian Moore, ‘The Universe at Prayer: What does It Mean to Pray?’, in A Hunger for God: Ten<br />
Approaches to Prayer, edited by William A. Barry and Kerry A. Maloney (Kansas City: Sheed and<br />
Ward, 1991), 1.
108 Meredith Secomb<br />
for compassionate and loving action in the pursuit of justice. There is,<br />
moreover, much evidence-based literature to support the understanding<br />
shared by these thinkers that meditative practices are needed to effect<br />
the neurophysiological changes that enable heightened, embodied,<br />
intersubjective sensitivity. 29 The question now arises as to the form that<br />
action might take in the life circumstances of those of us who are less<br />
gifted and empowered to make ‘big’ differences, but nevertheless called<br />
by God to make our ‘little’ difference.<br />
An important premise for understanding how we can serve others in<br />
our humble and homely circumstances is the insight that love and justice<br />
are synonymous. Often the term ‘social justice’ can be intimidating. If,<br />
with Simone Weil, we reframe Christ’s call to justice as one of a call to<br />
love, then the perceived possibilities for justice and social action multiply<br />
under the widened horizon generated by contemplative prayer. Weil<br />
insists,<br />
Christ does not call his benefactors loving’ or ‘charitable. He calls<br />
them just. The Gospel makes no distinction between the love of our<br />
neighbor and justice …. We have invented the distinction between<br />
justice and charity. 30<br />
Augustine also challenges the notion that we must travel far to serve<br />
our needy neighbour: ‘All people should be loved equally. But you cannot<br />
do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for<br />
those who, as if by lot, happen to he particularly close to you in terms of<br />
place, time, or any other circumstances.’ 31<br />
The teaching of Brother<br />
Lawrence, Pierre de Caussade and Thérèse of Lisieux, to name just a<br />
few in the contemplative tradition, also alerts us to the need to recognise<br />
God’s providence and calling in the little opportunities before us. 32 Our<br />
29 Cristina Gonzalez-Liencres, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory and Martin Martin Brüne, ‘Towards a<br />
Neuroscience of Empathy: Ontogeny, Phylogeny, Brain Mechanisms, Context and Psychopathology’,<br />
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 37/8 (2013), 1537–1548; Giorgia Silani and others, ‘Right<br />
Supramarginal Gyrus Is Crucial to Overcome Emotional Egocentricity Bias in Social Judgments’, The<br />
Journal of Neuroscience, 33/39 (2013), 15466–15476. See also Christopher Bergland, ‘The Neuroscience<br />
of Empathy’, Psychology Today (10 October 2013), available at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/<br />
the-athletes-way/201310/ the-neuroscience-empathy, accessed 6 June 2014.<br />
30 Weil, Waiting for God, 83.<br />
31 Augustine, On Christian Teaching, translated by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: OUP, 1997), 1.29.29.<br />
32 See Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence, translated by John Beevers (New<br />
York: Image, 1966); Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (London: Burns and Oates,<br />
1977); St Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux (Washington: ICS,<br />
1976).
The ‘Ordinary’ Contemplative Life 109<br />
needy neighbour is there beside us, perhaps conversing with us, if only<br />
we have eyes to see.<br />
It is important to draw actively on faith to experience our lives as<br />
channels for God’s grace and to understand that others can be touched<br />
by love and blessedness as we pursue our contemplative calling. While<br />
the greatest of the theological virtues is love (1 Corinthians 13:13), yet<br />
without faith we cannot please God and fulfil God’s will for our lives<br />
(Hebrews 11:6). It is imperative that we have faith that God’s grace<br />
can flow through us to others in ways that are loving, healing and<br />
freeing.<br />
Foundationally I have sought here to encourage those who live a<br />
contemplative life in the pursuit of their calling. Recognising that many<br />
feel unable validly to contribute in major ways to the pressing needs of<br />
the world around them, I have sought to heighten their awareness of the<br />
value of the smallest opportunities for bringing good news to the oppressed,<br />
for binding up the broken-hearted, for proclaiming liberty to captives and<br />
release to the prisoners (Luke 4:18). A haiku nicely expresses this vision:<br />
To see small matters<br />
And to see that small matters<br />
Are not small matters. 33<br />
Meredith Secomb has worked as a clinical psychologist in both the public and<br />
private sectors, in the latter specialising in the interface of psychology and spirituality.<br />
She has a PhD in theology from the Australian Catholic University, has published<br />
in the fields of spirituality, psychology and theology, and has presented papers at<br />
conferences on Bernard Lonergan and on psychology in Australia and overseas. After<br />
completing her doctorate Meredith travelled into various parts of rural Australia<br />
as a missionary on a bicycle with a particular concern for the ‘little ones’ she met<br />
along the way. Meredith now lives a simple life as a contemplative in suburbia<br />
and serves in her local parish.<br />
33 This haiku was heard on an ABC programme some years ago. I would appreciate knowing the<br />
author.
The Furrow, founded in 1950, is a pastoral journal which<br />
publishes articles on:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Liturgy, prayer and spirituality<br />
Sexuality and social justice<br />
Reform of Church structures, including the role of<br />
women<br />
Contemporary dialogue between faith and culture<br />
Features include: Notes for preaching; Chronicle of current<br />
events; serious book reviews<br />
Editor: Ronan Drury, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, to whom editorial correspondence<br />
should be addressed.<br />
Rates: Single copy: €2.75 (£1.90) (+ VAT €.37), postage €0.95; Annual Subscription:<br />
Republic of Ireland €50.00. Northern Ireland £35.00. Great Britain €58.00/£38.00.<br />
Foreign €65.00/$75.00/Stg£45.00; Student rate: €33.00/$43.00/£28.00<br />
Subscriptions are payable in advance to:<br />
The Secretary, The Furrow, St Patrick’s College,<br />
Maynooth, co. Kildare, Republic of Ireland.<br />
Telephone: 7083741, fax: 7083908 (national code 01,<br />
international code +353-1).<br />
E-mail: furrow.office¤may.ie<br />
Back numbers and advertising rates are available from the Secretary.
RECENT BOOKS<br />
Luke Larson, Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius: Walking the Camino<br />
de Santiago de Compostela (Brewster: Paraclete, 2014). 978 1 6126 1519 6,<br />
pp.196, $19.99.<br />
Brendan McManus, Redemption Road: Grieving on the Camino (Dublin:<br />
Orpen, 2014). 978 1 9098 9539 3, pp.170, £12.95.<br />
St Ignatius considered himself nothing if not a pilgrim. It is unmistakable<br />
from his Autobiography that, after his conversion, Ignatius viewed the rest<br />
of his life both as an actual and as a spiritual pilgrimage. The idea of<br />
pilgrimage was so central to the spiritual experience of Ignatius, and so<br />
much at the core of his own spirituality, that he mandated an experience of<br />
pilgrimage for all novices of the Society of Jesus. His travels to visit the<br />
shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat, his journey to Jerusalem, and the<br />
original desire of the early Jesuits to return to the Holy Land all attest to<br />
this root principle of the spirituality of Ignatius. Around Europe, from<br />
Aranzazu to Loreto, Marian shrines bear markers attesting to the fact that<br />
the pilgrim Ignatius once visited. When he finally took up residence in<br />
Rome he would often still visit the tombs of the saints and martyrs,<br />
choosing to celebrate his first Mass in front of what is believed to be the<br />
original crèche where the infant Christ rested at St Mary Major, and taking<br />
the original companions to the tomb of St Paul, as a newly formed<br />
missionary order, to pronounce their vows before the great missionary of<br />
early Christianity. He often crossed paths with the great pilgrim trails of<br />
Europe in his travels and, on at least one occasion between the towns of<br />
Navarette and Logroño in Spain, Ignatius crossed paths with the Camino<br />
de Santiago as well.<br />
It is precisely because pilgrimage was so central to the life of Ignatius<br />
that it serves as a fruitful means of understanding his spirituality. Two<br />
recent books, Keeping Company with St Ignatius by Luke Larson and<br />
Redemption Road by Brendan McManus, describe how the experience of<br />
pilgrimage, especially on the pilgrim paths of Saint James, can put us in<br />
touch with the spirituality of Ignatius in a profoundly rich manner. Larson<br />
recounts a trek on the more popular French way, while McManus<br />
chronicles walking along the less populous, though starkly beautiful,<br />
Primitive and Northern paths. The experiences of pilgrimage offered by
112 Recent Books<br />
both authors, with all of the attached challenges, simplicity, silence and<br />
contemplation, offer perspectives which can both introduce the casual<br />
reader into the life of Ignatian spirituality and take that reader deep into<br />
the fiercely compelling personal nature of the pilgrim path.<br />
In Keeping Company with Saint Ignatius, Luke Larson details his journey<br />
down the most popular of the pilgrim ways, the Camino Francés, along<br />
with his wife, in the autumn of 2010. Larson points out from the beginning<br />
that the invitation to take a walk with someone is an invitation to a certain<br />
intimacy in conversation. Thinking of his pilgrimage as a walk and<br />
conversation with God, Larson provides his reader with various anecdotes<br />
from his experience, the better to illustrate various points of Ignatian<br />
spirituality. Embracing the concept that Ignatius himself was walking the<br />
pilgrim path along with him, Larson treats Ignatius as one of his<br />
interlocutors in the prolonged conversation of the pilgrimage. Larson’s<br />
book is an enjoyable read, easily accessible, and a wonderful introduction<br />
to both the Camino Frances and Ignatian spirituality. He uses his<br />
experiences on the Camino and at the Ignatian sites that he visits<br />
afterwards, as a sort of contemplation of space and as an attempt to draw<br />
close to Ignatius by understanding him through travelling in his homeland<br />
and through the experience of pilgrimage. Larson fruitfully uses his own<br />
experiences on the Camino to consider what Ignatius might have been<br />
thinking or feeling at various points in his life and to invite us into just that<br />
type of consideration as well.<br />
Where Larson offers us a wonderful introduction to the concepts of<br />
pilgrimage and Ignatian spirituality, in Redemption Road Brendan McManus<br />
involves us in the drama of the lived reality of that spirituality, particularly<br />
in the face of adversity. With unflinching honesty, McManus recounts the<br />
times when he felt discouraged along the pilgrim trail, whether because of<br />
the physical or the emotional weight of what he was carrying with him.<br />
Often enough, his recounting of the daily practice of the Examen carries<br />
him forward in gratitude, despite the numerous physical struggles that he<br />
encounters and his own experience of processing his brother’s suicide. The<br />
great beauty of McManus’saccount of his pilgrimage is not in his struggle,<br />
but resides, perhaps, in how he is borne up along the way by his fellow<br />
Jesuits, by other pilgrims and by the memory of his brother. It is clear that<br />
the struggles he encounters along the way open him up to healing from the<br />
loss of his brother, and also deepen his own lived experience of his Ignatian<br />
charism, as at each step people open their lives to him to support him as he<br />
treks his pilgrim path.<br />
Each of these works provide excellent windows to understanding the<br />
spirituality of St Ignatius through the experience of pilgrimage—which
Recent Books 113<br />
was, after all, a primary way in which Ignatius himself first understood his<br />
own spirituality. Both Larson and McManus invite us into the path of the<br />
pilgrim as that of St Ignatius who, in keeping company with others, in<br />
listening to God’s voice along the way and in daring to live through the<br />
struggles of everyday life, became the person we know him to be today. In<br />
that light, the works of McManus and Larson stand as an invitation to<br />
walk with them and to understand the spirituality of Ignatius with each<br />
step along the well-worn path that leads to Compostela.<br />
Michael Rogers SJ<br />
Antonio Spadaro, Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the<br />
Internet, translated by Maria Way (New York: Fordham UP, 2014).<br />
978 0 8232 5700 3, pp.172, £16.99.<br />
Carolyn Reinhart, A Fruit-Bearing Spirituality (Alresford: Circle Books,<br />
2013). 978 1 7809 9441 3, pp.179, £11.99.<br />
Ever since the historic and fascinating interview he conducted with Pope<br />
Francis in the late summer of 2013, Antonio Spadaro has been a familiar<br />
media figure. He is director of La civiltà cattolica, which serves both as the<br />
Italian Jesuits’ cultural review, and also as a semi-official organ for the Holy<br />
See. His intellectual background is in literature and theology—he is the<br />
author, for example, of a work on the theology of Karl Rahner and its<br />
implications for our reading of poetry.<br />
Cybertheology is a short book, originally published in 2011. Synthesizing<br />
Spadaro’s more recent academic work, it explores the new questions raised<br />
for Christianity by the transformations in telecommunication that have<br />
gathered such pace following the invention of the World Wide Web in the<br />
late 1980s.<br />
Correctly, Spadaro sees that we are not dealing here simply with a new<br />
field of concern for moral or pastoral theology. More is at stake than<br />
working out how Christianity can best use Facebook and Twitter as means<br />
through which to communicate the message, and how the Internet can be<br />
used ‘as an instrument of evangelization’ (viii). The new technology, rather,<br />
is transforming the lived reality of Christianity itself. We now live in digital<br />
as well as physical space, and our understanding of the Word dwelling<br />
among us needs to be adapted accordingly. ‘The technologies are new, not<br />
simply because they are different from those that preceded them, but<br />
because they profoundly change the very concept of having an experience.’
114 Recent Books<br />
(xii–xiii) Presence and communication are essential to Christianity; if<br />
those human realities change, then Christianity must change as well.<br />
After introducing the general problem, Spadaro offers chapters on the<br />
theology of grace, on ‘the mystical and connective body’, on ethics and on<br />
liturgy, concluding with some reflections in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin.<br />
Spadaro’s book highlights, in quite disconcerting fashion, the close<br />
connections between the gospel’s promise of universal communion and<br />
changing technologies of communication. A clear example, now historical,<br />
that he gives is Marshall McLuhan’s account of how the invention of the<br />
microphone drastically simplified the experience of liturgy. Previously, the<br />
priest’s voice was one element among many in ‘a context made up of<br />
sounds, colours, scents, orientation, objects and movements’, only<br />
discernible by those who were near; the microphone creates ‘a direct<br />
relationship between the celebrating the individual, between the centre<br />
and a point in the congregation’, diminishing the importance of space, and<br />
creating ‘a sound bubble’ that overpowers the other senses (p.72). The<br />
official theology was unchanged, but the lived reality became radically<br />
different.<br />
More contemporary examples, from technologies still in development,<br />
are properly tentative, but no less provocative. The Christian concept of<br />
being saved is often linked with the idea of sin being effaced. How is this to<br />
sound in a world where no information, once it has been posted, can ever<br />
be definitively and securely removed from the web? ‘Save’, moreover, is not<br />
the only example; ‘sharing’, ‘community’ and ‘conversion’ are also concepts<br />
with a rich theological heritage that are now being unpredictably modified<br />
as a result of new usages in a digital context.<br />
It has to be said that Spadaro’s book does not effectively address the<br />
questions he evokes so provocatively. Such answers as he gives are<br />
defensively conventional. Can we participate in a liturgy transmitted to us?<br />
No, says a document from the US bishops’ conference: to celebrate<br />
sacraments requires ‘physical’ and ‘geographical’ presence, contact with the<br />
reality rather than ‘an image or an idea’ of Christ’s saving presence (p.79).<br />
Spadaro is content simply to mention that ‘many affective relationships,<br />
even the most ordinary ones, are mediated by machines’ (p.80), leaving<br />
unresolved, and even unspoken, the implication that the conventional<br />
episcopal position just ignores the new question about what, in a digital<br />
world, can count as real and personal participation.<br />
Such indirectness can only be frustrating to the Anglo-Saxon mind,<br />
but, particularly in a theological context, it has its place. Faithful Christian<br />
theology cannot but be conservative in the root sense, even when we are
Recent Books 115<br />
often in a situation where we can only preserve the tradition by changing<br />
it. To ask the hot questions too directly merely cuts a brutta figura.<br />
Spadaro’s allusions, by contrast, open them up through a kind of moodmusic<br />
that might presage some future change or development.<br />
Spadaro’s Italian academic style, rich in abstractions, well suits this<br />
human reality. Unfortunately, a translator into English has an impossible<br />
task in reproducing such thought forms for a different intellectual culture.<br />
Maria Way’s option in handling Spadaro’s prose remains close to the<br />
original style, with results that are often obscure. A bolder approach, and<br />
also some competent editing, might have yielded something more intelligible.<br />
Carolyn Reinhart’s A Fruit-Bearing Spirituality resembles Spadaro’s work<br />
in its conviction that new cultural developments necessitate drastic reform<br />
in Christianity’s self-understanding. The book comes across as a passionate<br />
plea for a spiritual understanding rooted in human embodiment, in<br />
ecological thinking, in quantum physics and in the overcoming of patterns<br />
of mutual oppression. The narrowness of denominational Christianity is to<br />
be overcome by a shared praxis, with inclusivity a watchword.<br />
Readers of Reinhart’s book trained in conventional theology and in<br />
churchy ways of doing things will probably find it exasperating in its<br />
frequent oversimplifications of the tradition, and its uncritical use of buzz<br />
words. But that is probably an unworthy response. The fact that there are<br />
intelligent and committed people who write in this way, and that they can<br />
find publishers who think the book will sell, says something important<br />
about how conventional Christianity is failing to communicate to at least<br />
some people of palpable good will. Though neither of these books is a<br />
wholly satisfactory piece of work, both raise questions worth pondering.<br />
Philip Endean SJ<br />
Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare, edited by Mark Cobb,<br />
Christina M. Puchalski and Bruce Rumbold (Oxford: OUP, 2012).<br />
97 8 0199 5713 90, pp.512, £125.00.<br />
This astonishing book provides a comprehensive introduction to so many<br />
issues concerning spirituality and healthcare that any attempt at listing<br />
them all would be counterproductive. Basic concepts of health and of<br />
spirituality, the relationships between spirituality and religion, the ways in<br />
which different religious and non-religious traditions respond to those<br />
needing healthcare: this list does not begin to span the range of topics<br />
dealt with in the seven sections of the book.
116 Recent Books<br />
It is important to note that ‘spirituality’, as used here, has a much wider<br />
reference than traditional Christian usage: indeed, while some authors do<br />
attempt to provide inclusive meanings for the word itself, other authors<br />
welcome the fact that the term ‘spirituality’ has no one agreed meaning,<br />
seeing this is mirroring the varied ways in which individuals relate to the<br />
‘spiritual’ as they understand it and encounter it in their particular lives.<br />
The book has six sections: the first two, ‘Traditions’ and ‘Concepts’,<br />
explore the ways in which different traditions of belief (ranging from<br />
Buddhism to Judaism) have related to healthcare, and the different<br />
concepts that have emerged as significant in these aspects of human<br />
concern (such as personhood, hope and suffering). This provides a very<br />
helpful way into the third section, which looks at different aspects of<br />
‘Practice’. This section explores how different models of healthcare take<br />
account of the spiritual, as well as examining different dimensions of<br />
healthcare such as nursing, the care of children, palliative care and<br />
counselling (to name but a few), and discussing how each of these<br />
encounters the spiritual dimension of human experience and behaviour.<br />
The fourth section deals with ‘Research’, with sensitive evaluations of<br />
the impact of religion and spirituality on healthcare outcomes, and wellargued<br />
critiques of studies which are too simplistic in their reductionist<br />
approaches to, for example, the measurable consequences of being prayed<br />
for. Section five looks at ‘Policy and Education’, while section six, headed<br />
‘Challenges’, is almost worth the price of the book by itself. Its first two<br />
chapters explore ‘Contemporary Spirituality’ and ‘The Future of Religion’,<br />
presenting the magisterial discussions one might expect from David Tacey,<br />
Grace Davie and Martyn Percy. The third and final chapter sets out its<br />
approach clearly:<br />
The discourse of spirituality and healthcare is open at the edges, orientated<br />
around core organizing principles, but containing levels of disorder,<br />
indeterminacy and tension that provide meaningful interactions and suggest<br />
creative opportunities. This chapter looks forward and suggests points for future<br />
development, rather than issues brought to closure; questions rather than<br />
conclusions. (p.487)<br />
This book is remarkable in its range and in its depth. The contributors<br />
are all leading experts in their particular fields, and anyone who masters<br />
the richness and detail of the 64 chapters will have acquired a genuinely<br />
comprehensive knowledge of the increasingly important area of<br />
intersection between spirituality and healthcare. While the book provides<br />
an all-inclusive survey of the field (as a good textbook should), it is also<br />
possible simply to take one section or one chapter, and learn from its<br />
precision and focus.
Recent Books 117<br />
Who should read it? Certainly anyone involved in spirituality and<br />
healthcare, whether directly or (by proxy, as it were) in a retreat or<br />
spiritual-direction setting. But its relevance reaches beyond that more<br />
particular area to anyone thinking about how to articulate what spirituality<br />
has to offer in an increasingly ‘materialised’ world. As a resource for training<br />
in spiritual direction, it will be the benchmark for many years to come.<br />
Brendan Callaghan SJ<br />
Graeme Watson, The Song of Songs: A Contemplative Guide (London:<br />
SPCK, 2014). 97 8 0281 066902, pp.156, £12.99.<br />
The point must be made that it is possible to enjoy and appreciate the<br />
Song of Songs without the benefit of any introduction or commentary. Your<br />
reviewer recalls reading the Song aloud to a group of sixth-form students<br />
none of whom had heard—or indeed heard of—the text before. They were<br />
thrilled by it. The poetry of the Song set their pulses racing. And that is<br />
what this extraordinary text does to you. The Song may indeed mean<br />
much more than it meant to my enraptured teenagers—and for that ‘much<br />
more’ we need wise guides such as Graeme Watson—but no amount of<br />
instruction would have made the response of those young people to the<br />
Song more authentic.<br />
Graeme Watson—an Anglican priest—recognises that my sixthformers<br />
were not mistaken: that the Song of Songs is about erotic love and<br />
sexual desire. But the view that the poem is about sex and nothing else is<br />
relatively modern. Watson is a courteous writer. He does not point out that<br />
the assumption that we moderns know much more about sex than the<br />
ancients and so do not need to spiritualise the Song’s literal language is<br />
really very conceited.<br />
Watson believes that the Song is open to a diversity of interpretations.<br />
He holds—as Jews and Christians from antiquity have held—that the Song<br />
‘is as much about divine love as it is about human love’ (p.7). Drawing on<br />
the work of Margaret Barker (The Gate of Heaven, 2011), he sees much of<br />
the language of love in the Song as relating to the Temple understood as a<br />
symbol of God’s love for Israel and of Israel’s love for God.<br />
This illuminating study is informed by his wide-ranging reading of<br />
mystical writers who have seen the Song as a depiction of the spiritual<br />
marriage between God and the Church, or between God and the<br />
individual soul. Watson warms to Origen, for example, welcoming his<br />
reading of the Song as an account of the interior life of the Christian.
118 Recent Books<br />
However he does not remind us of Origen’s act of self-castration, a proceeding<br />
suggesting that this Father’s efforts to hold together the sexual and the<br />
spiritual were not entirely successful. Others in the same Christian mystical<br />
tradition have been inspired by the Song without recourse to the knife,<br />
most notably St John of the Cross, whose own Spiritual Canticle, Watson<br />
suggests, comes closest in its literary and spiritual mastery to the Song itself.<br />
Most of these pages are devoted to an extended devotional<br />
commentary on the text of the Song. These lovely lyrics forbid a plodding<br />
verse-by-verse exposition. Instead Watson divides the Song into fifty<br />
sections and, on each, offers a searching reflection on one or more of the<br />
text’s images, suggesting what they might mean to the Christian reader. A<br />
particularly happy feature of these reflections is the frequent choice of a<br />
pertinent hymn or poem—more than once from the works of George<br />
Herbert—to illuminate one or other of the Song’s great themes.<br />
The songs of the Song of Songs, like the parables of Jesus, are<br />
mysterious and, again like the parables of Jesus, they leave the last word on<br />
what they mean to those who read them. ‘Those who have ears to hear, let<br />
them hear.’ Watson does not try to banish the book’s many mysteries. He<br />
makes his own suggestions and he will not mind if we do not always follow<br />
him. A mention in the Song of an ‘orchard of pomegranates’ (4:13), for<br />
example, sets Watson off on a treasure hunt through the scriptural<br />
references to pomegranates. Moses, we are reminded, ordered Aaron to adorn<br />
the hem of his ephod with woven pomegranates. Ephods call to mind—at<br />
least to Watson’s mind—‘garments such as the surplice, stole and vestments’<br />
(p.100) and the worthiness or otherwise of the minister of the sacraments.<br />
We have come a long way from the lady whose ‘lips distil nectar’ (4:11).<br />
Graeme Watson recognises that the Song of Songs celebrates both<br />
divine and human love. The question—there is no harder one—is how<br />
these loves relate. The Song is about the relationship between the soul—and<br />
the fellowship of souls—and the love that hung the stars. It is also about<br />
the love between a boy and the girl next door. It was Dante who taught us<br />
that—the source of all our loves being a single fountain—the latter love is<br />
in principle no less lofty than the former. Watson robustly affirms that a<br />
literal reading of the Song is an entirely proper one. He insists, however,<br />
that, if read exclusively as a paean in praise of human love, it becomes<br />
almost impossible to make sense of much of the Song’s language. (But is<br />
not most pillow-talk gobbledegook?) For Watson the Song’s ‘less obvious<br />
meanings … can transcend even the finest and deepest of human<br />
relationships’ (p.5) and so it is on these obscurer connotations he broods.<br />
There is much, much, for our profit in his reflections. But the commentary
Recent Books 119<br />
on the Song of Songs that pays equal attention to its obvious and its less<br />
obvious meanings has yet to be written.<br />
John Pridmore<br />
Dominic White, The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Contemporary Spiritualities,<br />
Christian Cosmology, and the Arts (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2015).<br />
978 0 8146 8269 2, pp.234, £18.99.<br />
This is a beautiful and timely book. As his subtitle suggests, the Dominican<br />
priest Dominic White has a profound conviction that contemporary spiritual<br />
movements (which may owe little or nothing to traditional Christianity),<br />
and the performing arts find a meeting point in the neglected insights of<br />
ancient Christian cosmology. This cosmology, which was largely lost in the<br />
rise of scientific knowledge about the universe after the end of the Middle<br />
Ages, was a body of highly developed spiritual knowledge about a cosmic<br />
Christ, perhaps most familiar to us now in the awe-inspiring images of<br />
Christ ‘Pantokrator’ (‘ruler of all’) to be found in so many Greek Orthodox<br />
churches. Having given an account of the theology of this cosmic Christ,<br />
which includes a powerful set of beliefs about the cosmos—hence, ‘Christian<br />
cosmology’—White then considers a number of aspects of present-day<br />
spirituality, such as belief in angels, heavenly ascents or journeys, the chakras,<br />
the zodiac, musical sound and bodily movement, and, in each case, suggests<br />
fascinating and compelling connections with this ancient cosmology.<br />
Clearly this is a huge undertaking and, by his own admission, the author<br />
can do no more than sketch out a few areas for further investigation and<br />
reflection. This does not mean, however, that his grasp of this very diverse<br />
subject matter is at all sketchy. In terms of scholarship, research and spiritual<br />
insight, this is a genuinely impressive book, which consistently draws the<br />
reader into further exploration, both through the copious references and<br />
the visual and aural examples available on the accompanying website.<br />
At the same time, it is true that the thesis advanced in the book will<br />
challenge many readers. Uncovering the ‘lost knowledge of Christ’ is a<br />
complex and delicate matter, often involving arguments from silence, which<br />
are always hard to evaluate; and it has to be said that some of Fr White’s<br />
convictions seem open to question. Especially when dealing with the<br />
accounts of heavenly or astral ascents and the origin and meaning of the<br />
astrological knowledge of the zodiac, the fluidity and obscurity of the beliefs<br />
involved seem ultimately to defy any convincing explanation. Furthermore,<br />
the shift away from the ancient focus on the cosmic Christ was also
120 Recent Books<br />
accompanied by a shift towards the quest for the historical Jesus that has<br />
so dominated Christian thought in more recent times, and many Christians<br />
will feel that this latter quest constitutes a more meaningful approach for<br />
them. It is worth pointing out, though, that this book is not necessarily<br />
directed at the mainstream Christian believer. Those who describe themselves<br />
as ‘spiritual but not religious’ will find much that is intriguing and<br />
challenging here—precisely because of the even-handed and sympathetic<br />
way in which various alternative beliefs and therapies are considered.<br />
Speaking personally, I find the author most illuminating in the areas of<br />
music, dance and liturgy, for here one can really appreciate the power of<br />
an analysis that is centred on a cosmic cross, stretching out in six, rather<br />
than four, directions: past and future, above and below, in the dimensions<br />
of the earth itself, and in the network of human societies. The symbolism<br />
of musical tones and ritual movement really does take on a new<br />
significance when seen in this light, and one feels that the author is<br />
correct in characterizing the loss of this cosmic knowledge as a loss of<br />
Wisdom. One tiny, but telling, example of such a loss is the way that the<br />
boy-dancers of the Blessed Sacrament in Seville (the so-called ‘Seises’)<br />
exchanged the angel costumes that they wore in medieval times for the<br />
garb of conquistadors at the start of the seventeenth century. A whole<br />
cosmological, spiritual and even ecological shift is implied in this change.<br />
This is a timely book because, confronted by what many mainstream<br />
Christians might see as an infuriating syncretism in contemporary spiritualities,<br />
Dominic White plunges in with infectious enthusiasm, dismissing nothing<br />
out of hand, but seeking to understand and integrate them within a wider<br />
Christian knowledge. Such enthusiasm bears two fruits in particular: a<br />
more serious consideration of the arts at the centre of Christian life and<br />
worship, and a deeper engagement with what it is really to know Christ.<br />
Ian Coleman<br />
William James and the Transatlantic Conversation: Pragmatism, Pluralism,<br />
and Philosophy of Religion, edited by Martin Halliwell and Joel D. S.<br />
Rasmussen (Oxford: OUP, 2014). 978 0 1996 8751 0, pp.256, £69.00.<br />
William James was the first professor of psychology at Harvard University<br />
and is widely credited with taking an innovative approach to religion—in<br />
particular in his landmark study The Varieties of Religions Experience, which<br />
offered a systematic but non-reductive examination of religious experience.
Recent Books 121<br />
Reflecting the wide reach of James’s work, this twelve-essay volume includes<br />
a variety of approaches to James from authors with diverse disciplinary<br />
backgrounds. It is divided into two parts, the first of which treats James’s<br />
intellectual contexts and the second of which is dedicated to the<br />
philosophy of pluralism.<br />
Both parts are likely to interest readers of The Way, albeit for different<br />
reasons. Although all twelve chapters offer reflections on the ways James<br />
engaged (personally and philosophically) with European intellectuals<br />
during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, the first part of the book is<br />
more historical in character, with chapters on the reception of James’s<br />
work in Europe, his relationship to ecumenical Protestantism, and ‘the<br />
woman question’. Several of these chapters offer family portraits of the<br />
Jameses—a transatlantic family with a dominant and tormented paternal<br />
figure in Henry James, Sr, and two offspring of genius in William and<br />
Henry Jr (the novelist who wrote Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians,<br />
among other works). Henry Sr is portrayed as a ‘theological eccentric’<br />
(p.81), whose focus on death cast lasting shadows over his children’s lives.<br />
The second part, on the philosophy of pluralism, gives more focus to<br />
James’s ideas themselves, and their applicability to debates today, than to<br />
setting them in biographical or historical context. As someone who teaches<br />
James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience to undergraduates, this part was<br />
especially interesting and useful to me for, as the editors state in the<br />
introduction, James ‘did not just speak to the late nineteenth century’ (p.11).<br />
That his insights are still worthy of study is attested by the range and<br />
quality of approaches taken in this latter part. David C. Lamberth’s chapter<br />
‘A Pluralistic Universe a Century Later: Rationalism, Pluralism, and<br />
Religion’ discusses James’s objections to ‘vicious intellectualism’—a<br />
‘philosophic sin’, as Lamberth calls it, that preferred concepts (as products<br />
of the intellect) to percepts (products of sensation or experience).<br />
Thinking of this kind prioritises ‘knowledge about’ over ‘direct<br />
acquaintance’. For James, as Lamberth writes,<br />
Thinking is not generally best understood along the traditional lines of<br />
contemplation or theoria. Rather, thinking is a form of adaptive behaviour<br />
oriented most basically to action in and on a relatively stable but also<br />
continuously evolving environment. (p.135)<br />
The implications of James’ rejection of ‘vicious intellectualism’ for the<br />
philosophy of religion—especially for current debates about atheism and<br />
theism—are developed in Sami Pihlström’s excellent essay ‘Jamesian<br />
Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God’. Pihlström argues that ‘we
122 Recent Books<br />
need Jamesian insights in order to argue that the issue of God’s reality is<br />
not exhausted by the narrowly intellectual (evidentialist) considerations<br />
one might advance in favour of either theism or atheism’ (p.191).<br />
This tension between the intellectual and experiential is also evident in<br />
the chapter by Joel Rasmussen on the old ‘quarrel between philosophy and<br />
poetry’. James acknowledges that life in many ways ‘exceeds conceptual<br />
logic and often obliges us to proceed with hypotheses rather than strictly<br />
logical syllogisms’ (p.161). The line between philosophy and poetry is thin<br />
under his gaze: ‘Philosophers are after all like poets’ (James, cited p.166).<br />
In sum, James—whose prose is poetic and whose philosophy permits<br />
percepts—is a fascinating thinker, and any reader wishing to be better<br />
acquainted with him would be well advised to consult this book.<br />
Kate Kirkpatrick<br />
Felix Burda-Stengel, Andrea Pozzo and Video Art (Philadelphia: Saint<br />
Joseph's UP, 2013). 978 0 9161 0178 7, pp.177, $70.00.<br />
This work was first published in German in 2001; the author, Felix Burda-<br />
Stengel, did not live to see the publication of this translation. This was<br />
championed by John O’Malley, editor of the Early Modern Catholicism<br />
and the Visual Arts series produced by St Joseph’s University Press. It richly<br />
deserves the wider audience which, it is hoped, will arise from the English<br />
version.<br />
The book provides a unique perspective on a remarkable man and his<br />
largely overlooked work, simultaneously bringing him out of the shadows<br />
and placing him in an entirely contemporary and unexpected context.<br />
I must admit that my immediate reaction on being asked to review the<br />
title was mixed. I am an admirer of Andrea Pozzo’s work, and have taken<br />
many groups of students to S. Ignazio and the Rooms of St Ignatius, and<br />
enjoyed their unfailing surprise and wonder at his technical ability and<br />
vision. I am not a great fan of contemporary video installations, on the<br />
whole finding them to be, perhaps, more flash than substance. It is challenging<br />
to suspend pre-existing judgements, but I find myself acknowledging the<br />
power and validity of Burda-Stengel’s argument—namely that the need for<br />
illusion is a timeless phenomenon, and that the moving observer of Pozzo’s<br />
day was faced with the same questions as to the nature of art and reality<br />
that the present day gallery visitor encounters.<br />
The early chapters of the book place Pozzo firmly in his historic and<br />
cultural milieu, examining the optical, perspectival and scientific work of
Recent Books 123<br />
Galileo, Leon Battista Alberti and Athanasius Kircher; the latter had a<br />
particular influence on his fellow Jesuit. Kircher and Pozzo shared the view<br />
that human ingenuity and intelligence were a divine gift, to be exercised<br />
for the greater glory of God. Kircher’s famous museum at the Collegio<br />
Romano was one of the wonders of Rome in his day, and Pozzo was<br />
intimately familiar with the optical machinery and illusionistic effects<br />
created there. Chapter six is particularly significant, concentrating on<br />
Pozzo’s work Prospettiva de pittori e architetti, which provides a close insight<br />
into how the artist worked. In a humble acknowledgement that his work<br />
deals with complex mathematical theories, Pozzo pleaded with the reader<br />
to experience his work in practice: ‘Just try it, for understanding is<br />
achieved perhaps more easily in practice than in lengthy speculation’.<br />
In addition to its mathematical and optical observations, the Prospettiva<br />
reproduced many engravings of Pozzo’s now-lost stage designs, demonstrating<br />
how familiar the artist was with the world of theatre and scene painting.<br />
The association between the Spiritual Exercises and Jesuit drama has been<br />
commented on before; both encourage a mental suspension of place and<br />
time, allowing the individual to experience a deeper connection with the<br />
gospel. Pozzo’s illusionistic stage designs added a further layer of complexity<br />
to the effects achieved by music, costume, lighting and pyrotechnics.<br />
The key to understanding Pozzo’s art, according to Burda-Stengel, lies<br />
in the fact that the illusion is perfect from one particular standpoint. In the<br />
floor of S. Ignazio the artist placed an orange marble disc, so that the<br />
viewer could experience the full effect of the magnificent ceiling, apparently<br />
open to the heavens, and the coffered ‘dome’ which is, in fact, a flat canvas<br />
stretched across the crossing point of the nave and transepts. It has been a<br />
constant criticism of commentators, even in Pozzo’s own lifetime, that his<br />
art only ‘works’ from a single point of view. Burda-Stengel argues, and I think,<br />
convincingly, that this is intentional. The experience of physical space is<br />
enhanced as the observer moves through the church, now seeing the painted<br />
anamorphic illusion for what it is, and now suddenly convinced that it is reality.<br />
The author argues that Pozzo was not only painting for the general public, but<br />
particularly for an educated Jesuit audience who understood the spiritual<br />
nuances raised by experiencing illusion and reality, namely that where the<br />
senses are deceived then certain knowledge can be found only in God.<br />
The book takes an unexpected turn in chapter ten, when the issue of<br />
time and place is addressed, examining the extent to which historical<br />
reflection on past eras is always bound up with the observer’s own time. At<br />
this point, Burda-Stengel invites the reader to contemplate the essence of<br />
Pozzo’s art, and its influence on video installation art of the twentieth and
124 Recent Books<br />
twenty-first centuries. Pozzo’s observers could ‘see’ the illusion at certain<br />
points and not at others, in effect giving them the sense that the illusion<br />
was switched on and off, depending on the viewer’s position in the church.<br />
This idea of transitional illusion is central to the art of video installation, in<br />
which a moving image is installed by an artist in a public space. The<br />
modern artist relies on current technology, which allows projection of<br />
moving images on walls, ceiling and floor—unlike Pozzo, who was<br />
restricted to the painted surface—but in both cases the observer enters<br />
into the space, moves through it and becomes part of it. Burda-Stengel’s<br />
theory is that video art transgresses boundaries between the art space and<br />
the observer in the same way that Pozzo’s painted surfaces did.<br />
This is a complex and challenging book, which intelligently and<br />
thoroughly makes the case for a link between the Jesuit artist of the<br />
seventeenth century and the installation artist of the twenty-first century. I<br />
recently visited Bishop Auckland Castle where a powerful installation by<br />
Bill Viola, Earth Martyr, Air Martyr, Fire Martyr, Water Martyr, had been<br />
placed in the bishop’s chapel. With the arguments of this book clear in my<br />
mind, the conjunction of image, movement, illusion and holy space<br />
suddenly worked for me. I left wondering what further marvels Pozzo could<br />
have achieved with a video camera.<br />
Jan Graffius<br />
Claire E. Wolfteich, Invitation to Practical Theology: Catholic Visions and<br />
Voices (Mahwah: Paulist, 2014). 978 0 8091 4890 5, pp.352, $29.95.<br />
What is ‘practical’ theology? The question has recurred ever since<br />
Schleiermacher coined the term, and this volume aims to shed some<br />
Catholic light on it. It enters a much needed conversation with the more<br />
dominant Protestant practical theology tradition, in the same spirit as the<br />
book edited by Heythrop College staff, Keeping Faith in Practice (2010).<br />
Claire Wolfteich has assembled an impressive line-up of North American<br />
authors (and a single European), some of them very well known, such as<br />
David Tracy and Thomas Groome. The fourteen chapters and editorial<br />
introduction and conclusion explore two dimensions of practical theology:<br />
the practical fields of theological enquiry (liturgy, work for justice and<br />
social solidarity, spirituality, mission and so on); and the fundamental<br />
underlying topic of practical theology ‘in itself’.<br />
Given how largely ‘context’ figures in practical theology, it would be<br />
surprising were this volume not to reflect the particularities of the United<br />
States. It has important chapters drawn from Black Catholic Studies
Recent Books 125<br />
(Copeland) and on the increasing presence of Latino/a religiosity (Goizueta<br />
and Cervantes, Deck and Johnson-Mondragón) which open up both the<br />
practices of popular religiosity and theoretical issues of cultural aesthetics.<br />
Bradford Hinze, on practices of dialogue, reflects Saul Alinsky-inspired<br />
community organizing; while Julie Rubio, writing on family ethics (the one<br />
ethics-based chapter), deals with the familiar challenges of modern family<br />
life and the bewilderment, so typical in postmodernity, of finding one’s<br />
children’s religious choices to be non-religious. Janet Ruffing situates the<br />
practices of spiritual direction firmly within the challenge of making sense<br />
of oneself (as ‘ego-driven’) and the world at large (coping with events such<br />
as Hurricane Sandy). These chapters set description of direct practical<br />
matters within theological themes typical of Catholicism such as<br />
Trinitarian theology and the operation and experience of grace.<br />
The chapters on practices can only provide, in a volume such as this, a<br />
snapshot of the diverse practical fields of theology. The central point here<br />
is to emphasize the grounding of theology in the varied ways of everyday<br />
life and service in the Christian community, and more broadly its<br />
grounding in the actual business of human living. These are so many<br />
practical theologies. Edward Foley’s liturgical chapter, spanning from<br />
patristic times to de Lubac’s groundbreaking work in the twentieth century,<br />
charts the various evolutions of eucharistic theology within different<br />
culturally situated and socially rooted historical practices. These have<br />
expressed quite different eucharistic attitudes, each with its own<br />
theological significance which is to be taken seriously; but as Terrence<br />
Tilley explains, they sit within, and are part of, the unfolding of the great<br />
Christian tradition. Coming from another perspective, Stephen Bevans<br />
situates today’s much-transformed ecclesial practice of mission squarely<br />
within the transcendent perspective of God’s practice, the missio Dei, in<br />
which all ecclesial practices participate. By situating theology contextually<br />
and historically, and thereby giving insight into the historicity and the<br />
actual dynamics of the evolution of the tradition, practical theologies make<br />
a central and crucial contribution to theology as a whole.<br />
The second set of issues is about practical theology ‘itself’. Put bluntly,<br />
the question is whether such a thing exists. Is there a practical theology<br />
over and above the practical theologies? Several chapters make important<br />
contributions to this vexed debate. David Tracy, in a typically impressive,<br />
wide-ranging essay, reaffirms his original co-relational definition of theology,<br />
adapted by Don Browning for practical theology, but sees the need now to<br />
extend the range of conversational partners beyond ethics and politics and<br />
social science to embrace art (here focusing on poetry) and mysticism.
126 Recent Books<br />
Wolfteich picks this up in her concluding section, but insists on a critique<br />
of mysticism, especially from a feminist perspective. Even though Tracy was<br />
himself unable fully to develop a practical theology in his own substantive<br />
theological writings, he still affirms it as truly ‘the apex of all theology’.<br />
Plunging further into the issues, Annemie Dillen, Robert Mager and<br />
Thomas Groome examine the intricate questions of methodology and pedagogy<br />
that are central to the practical theology enterprise, while Colleen Griffith<br />
carries the discussion into its epistemological status—the kind of ‘knowing’<br />
we achieve via practical theology (on which Groome is also very helpful).<br />
These essays go much of the way in drilling down to the essential<br />
elements of practical theology in itself; but then … the picture somehow<br />
loses focus and blurs against the whole luxuriant array of the practical<br />
fields of theological enquiry. The enterprise seems to be covering too<br />
much. What then is ‘practical theology’? Simply metadisciplinary enquiry<br />
into the over-arching goals and methodologies of the practical theologies?<br />
Or itself a focused enquiry into ‘practice and practices’—those key<br />
practices that embody Christian existence and are constitutive of the<br />
Church? Would it then be more properly pastoral theology than practical?<br />
Should it in fact be looking further and envisioning all the practices of the<br />
humanum within its theological lens?<br />
This book does not make any such claim. Rather, as indicated by<br />
Kathleen Cahalan’s and Bryan Froehle’s long historical sweep in the<br />
opening chapter—from the eleventh-century foundation of the universities<br />
to the transformative event of Vatican II, which enshrined a historical<br />
theological method—practical theology is today still a ‘developing<br />
discipline’, still malleable. These essays suggest an emerging turn to the<br />
aesthetic and the mystical as among its primary means of expression, and<br />
to spirituality as its key field. Others may wish to lean in a more political<br />
direction, more focused on critique of contemporary economic practices<br />
and their global and environmental impact. At any rate, this publication<br />
reveals practical theology as an enterprise replete with energy.<br />
James Sweeney CP<br />
Music as Cultural Mission: Explorations of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North<br />
America, edited by Anna Harwell Celenza and Anthony B. DelDonna<br />
(Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's UP, 2014). 978 0 9161 0180 0, pp.229, $65.00.<br />
For the reader interested in Ignatian spirituality this volume, Music as<br />
Cultural Mission: Exploration of Jesuit Practices in Italy and North America,
Recent Books 127<br />
will provide interesting historical and scholarly details concerning Jesuit<br />
history and spirituality, enriching the understanding of the global Jesuit<br />
enterprise. While this book focuses on elements of Jesuit history from a<br />
musicological perspective, it certainly reflects the historiographical change<br />
that the study of Jesuit history and spirituality have undergone in the last<br />
25 years. Scholars are now asking: what were the Jesuits like? How were<br />
they similar or dissimilar to their contemporaries? One could describe<br />
contemporary Jesuit historiographical method as vertical rather than<br />
horizontal. For example, instead of looking at the Jesuits vis-à-vis the<br />
papacy, the Counter-Reformation or ecclesiastical institutions, recent<br />
studies—including this one—focus more on Jesuits as part of movements<br />
associated with popular religion, confraternities and missions. Included are<br />
the pious practices of the various localities Jesuits inhabited.<br />
As more and more scholars who are not Jesuits write about the Society<br />
of Jesus, these scholars are shaping Jesuit historiography. Scholars far from<br />
traditional Jesuit disciplines such as theology, philosophy and spirituality<br />
are now writing about Jesuits because they cannot help but encounter<br />
them in researching the early modern period. These scholars now include<br />
musicologists. In Music as Cultural Mission, Anna Harwell Celenza and<br />
Anthony R. DelDonna are typical of the present trends in Jesuit<br />
historiography. Their book is divided into two distinct parts. The first<br />
consists of an introduction to the Jesuit mission in early modern Italy, while<br />
the second shifts the focus of the study to North America. It also forms a<br />
bridge from the pre-suppression, North American Jesuit missions outside<br />
Europe to the restored Society of 1814 by means of exploring the musical<br />
traditions of Georgetown University, founded in 1789.<br />
The general reader, and especially someone interested in the history of<br />
Western culture, may enjoy the studies of part 1. While it is not<br />
kaleidoscopic in its presentation of music in the European context of this<br />
cultural mission, several of the articles are thought-provoking and reflect<br />
the depth of Ignatian spirituality underpinning the infrastructure of the<br />
Jesuit missions. DelDonna’s text, especially, ‘The Society of Jesus and<br />
Neapolitan Culture’, also reveals the many possibilities for rich<br />
interdisciplinary work which the mission archives not only promise, but<br />
indeed invite. Two other chapters in part 1 deserve mention, ‘The Musical<br />
and Theatrical Activities of the Jesuits in the Kingdom of Naples:<br />
Accounts from the Gazzetta di Napoli (1675–1768)’ by Ausilia Magaudda<br />
and Danilo Costantini, and Emmanuele Colombo’s ‘“The Music Must<br />
Serve the Poetry”: The Jesuit Oratorio in Eighteenth-Century Milan’. The<br />
Gazzetta di Napoli is one of the few extant documentary sources in Naples
128 Recent Books<br />
that describes musical events at the seven Jesuit institutions in the city.<br />
Beautiful plates accompany a richly woven text that brings to life again the<br />
musical events of eighteenth-century Jesuit Naples. Not surprisingly, the<br />
text in Jesuit oratorios, operas and cantatas was important in the apostolic<br />
outlook of the Jesuits. Milan offers a paradigmatic outline for Jesuit musical<br />
culture in general. Arguments stemming from the regole of the<br />
confraternities echo other contemporaneous European Jesuit sources.<br />
Problems abound around utilising music but not disturbing devotion,<br />
controlling the noise of the musicians and, of course, the costs of the<br />
musical enterprise. ‘Who will pay?’ was often a key question.<br />
Anna Harwell Celenza’s introduction to part 2 briefly reviews concepts<br />
of Jesuit mission in the context of teaching (as evangelization) and<br />
consequently addresses the approach to missions outside Europe,<br />
particularly in New France (Canada) and Maryland, and most particularly<br />
the history of music at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The<br />
musical tradition of Georgetown in the early years reflected the tradition of<br />
the pre-suppression colleges (sung catechism, drama, academic defences,<br />
with serious theory and instrumental teaching) and in its passage to the<br />
restored Society one can trace the shifting of music towards a more<br />
extracurricular position, as humanistic subjects, especially the sciences,<br />
came to the fore. Finally Michael Zampelli’s excellent paper, ‘Bridging the<br />
Distance: Jesuit Performance Transposed to a Contemporary Key’, is<br />
another paradigmatic essay linking early performance of Jesuit music and<br />
theatre to its contemporary revival. Those readers who are especially<br />
interested in the fine arts may find the various studies in Music as Cultural<br />
Mission a new doorway to the myriad expressions of Ignatian spirituality<br />
summed up in the phrase, ‘Finding God in all things’.<br />
T. Frank Kennedy SJ