March 2007 Christian Spirituality By George A Lane SJ

. Spirituality for our time Continue from ...... Charismatic spirituality has been accused of neglecting political action for justice, and liberation spirituality has been accused of neglecting prayer. The more recent trend is to unite both prayer and action. Liberation theologians are now advocating a firm grounding in spirituality to support enduring social action against seemingly immovable obstacles. Henri Nouwen has written persuasively of the need first world ministers have of "desert spirituality" if they are not to be coopted into the attitudes of success, popularity, and self-help that pervade our culture. This need for a spiritual ground in our confusing world is one reason for the popularity of "centrering prayer" which christianizes Eastern forms of meditation and retrieves the Orthodox prayer of the heart. By contacting the "still point" within, where one's heart meets God, a person is revivified for liberating work in the world. Besides these forms of spirituality, two further dimensions now colour our understanding of spirituality today: development and healing reconciliation. Traditional spirituality has always implied development: there are the three ways of purgative, illuminative, and unitive prayer that mark progress in the mystical tradition, Teresa of Avila's seven mansions, and Ignatius Loyola's four "weeks" of the Spiritual Exercises. Recent work in developmental psychology and its counterpart in faith development has shown how both social psychology and faith progress from conventional stages, through crises and individual spiritual experiences, to committed creative action. Conventional stages rely on the authority of traditional understandings and traditional role models of spirituality. The individual stage is based on personal experience and it often evolves into a prophetic challenge to one's tradition, as it did with Jesus. It is this rooting in a personal experience of God that empowers individuals and communities to become committed, creative forces for the transformation of society. It is a vision of God's ongoing creativity that underlies this development view of spirituality. Healing and reconciliation is the second awareness that is becoming clearer in our day. We now see more clearly that it is not just sin that blocks growth in love, but also unconscious wounds received from wounded parents or from personal failures turn us in on ourselves and prevent us from loving. Whereas before we might have considered these wounds a cross we had to live with, experience is now showing that much can be healed. Since God's eternity transcends time, he can touch past wounds of rejection or failure and reveal his loving presence there and draw us into a healing relationship with Jesus and Mary as God's new family. God can also heal divided histories and broken relationships in order to free reconciling love. This healing is precisely why Jesus came in John's view (Jn. 20:21), and this was his commission to his followers; (see also Jn. 17:20-21). by Robert T Sears, SJ