Spirituality

Holy Spirit is the source and sustainer of many patterns of sanctity and of 'spirituality', ways of direct approach to God and from God; in other words, of the great men and women of prayer, particularly of those who have been enabled to commit to writing their experience and its lessons and so have been able to act as guides to other individuals, and even to whole 'schools'. In looking for guidance from them and through them, each individual seeker after God must rely on the leadership of the Holy Spirit to discern what should be accepted and assimilated, or put aside and rejected, in the path towards consolidation in that distinctive and authentic personal love of God for which he or she was made and in which he or she can alone find progress and peace. If we are right in this, liturgy and spirituality are here contrasted; in spirituality, there are ultimately no 'rules of the game', even those laid down by the saints, but only 'tips of the trade', freely offered to be freely available, to those who need them, sometimes permanently and sometimes in a passing stage of development.

We have given these four illustrations of the theological principles behind common prayer and private prayer, liturgy and spirituality, in the hope of making clearer the area covered by the word 'spirituality'. These principles have been contrasted absolutely for the sake of clarity. But they are complementary and seldom does either exist in pure form; in fact they not only coexist, they interpenetrate each other. When as in individual Christian one goes to the liturgy, one does not go just because one is an individual but because one is a member of the Church; when one gets there, one does not leave one's individuality at the door and put on the impersonal cloak and role of a pure 'churchman'. One goes in as one is, and puts one's own contribution of prayer and praise, of offering and petition, into the common pool of the community's worship. The total offering of the Church is enriched, not distorted, by the individual contributions of her members. Similarly, the isolated Christian, separated from others by illness, accident or design, never prays as a purely solitary individual.

Such a one always prays as one of a countless number of invisible witnesses; and, wonder of wonders, their prayer is being expressed through that person.Finally, to exhaust and dismiss the subject of liturgy, it remains to say that liturgy itself can be a form of spirituality.

The highest and unique instance of God's self-giving is his entry into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. The highest and unique fulfillment of the human capacity for God is found in the life of Jesus Christ. But the incarnate divinity and the God-filled humanity of Jesus are not only for himself; they are 'for us and for our salvation'. In other words the grace which we have been discussing as the vital principle of all spirituality is the grace of Christ. This means not only that Christ won this grace for us by his death and resurrection, but also that it is a share in the life of the God-man himself.

The members of Christ's body, then, share the life of the Head, who bears a crown of glory which is still a crown of thorns. If both are seen in their full significance, there is no distinction between a spirituality of the cross and a spirituality of the resurrection.