The Transforming Presence of Mystery: A Perspective of Spiritual Theology (Studies in Spirituality Supplements) 9789042939400, 9789042939417, 9042939400

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STUDIES IN SPIRITUALITY SUPPLEMENT 32

Titus Brandsma Institute

THE TRANSFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY A Perspective of Spiritual Theology

by Rossano ZAS FRIZ

PEETERS

DE

COL

THE TRANFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY

STUDIES IN SPIRITUALITY SUPPLEMENTS Edited by Kees Waaijman – Marc De Kesel – Inigo Bocken Titus Brandsma Institute – Nijmegen – The Netherlands

TITUS BRANDSMA INSTITUTE STUDIES IN SPIRITUALITY Supplement 32

THE TRANSFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY A Perspective of Spiritual Theology by Rossano Zas Friz de Col

PEETERS LEUVEN - PARIS - BRISTOL, CT 2019

Translated from: La presenza trasformante del Mistero. Prospettiva di teologia spirituale, Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2015, by Susan Dawson Vásquez.

© 2019, Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3 Leuven ISBN 978-90-429-3940-0 eISBN 978-90-429-3941-7 D/2019/0602/51 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

General Introduction 1. MYSTERY,

THE

SOURCE

1 OF

CHRISTIAN LIFE

3

Introduction

3

1. Mystery and Transcendence 2. A Secular Phenomenology of the Mystery of Transcendence: The Poetry of Octavio Paz (1914-1998) 2.1 Word, Rhythm, and Image 2.2 The Act of Reading as Poetic-Transcendental Experience 2.3 ‘The Other Shore’: The Horizon of Poetic Transcendence 2.4 Poetic Transcendence and Religious Transcendence 2.5 Conclusion 3. Phenomenology of Mystery 3.1 Experience of Self and of Life as Mystery: The ‘Need for Spirituality’ 3.2 The Experience of the Presence of Mystery 3.3 Religious Experience 3.4 Christian Theological Attitude as Personal Relationship with Holy Mystery 4. Conclusion

5

2. LATIN-EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP (1954-2013)

IN

8 9 11 12 14 15 15 16 17 19 21 25

SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY

1. The Pre-Conciliar Period: 1954-1965 2. The Post-Conciliar Period: 1966-1989 2.1 The Early Post-Conciliar Period: 1966-1979 2.2 The Later Post-Conciliar Period: 1980-1989 3. After the Post-Conciliar Period: 1990-2010 3.1 The Ripening Decade: 1990-1999 3.2 The Harvesting Decade: 2000-2013 4. Conclusion

27 28 30 30 33 34 35 37 45

VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3. THE SEARCH FOR THE TRIPLE UNITY  DISCIPLINARY, INTRA-DISCIPLINARY, AND INTER-DISCIPLINARY 1. Towards a Minimum Definition of Spiritual Theology 1.1 The Problem with the Idea of Experience 1.2 Experience or Lived Experience? 1.3 The Lived Experience of Transformation 1.4 Conclusion 2. The Lived Experience of Inner Transformation and the Non-Theological Disciplines 3. ‘Spirituality as Theology’: The Unity of Theology and Theological Pluralism 3.1 Spirituality as Theology 3.1.1 The Triple Form of Theology According to Dionysius the Areopagite in the Interpretation of Charles-André Bernard 3.1.2 The Tripartite Theology of Classical Antiquity in Waaijman’s Interpretation 3.1.3 Convergences and Divergences of the Two Approaches 3.1.4 Spirituality: Theology, Contemplation, Transformation 3.2 The Unity of Theology Proceeds from Faith 3.3 Theological Pluralism and Spiritual Theology 3.4 Spiritual Theology: Specialization or Fragment of Systematic Theology? 4. Conclusion

47 47 47 51 53 54 54 57 58

58 60 61 62 63 66 68 70

4. A COGNITIVE-PHENOMENAL METHOD FOR UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIAN LIFE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

71

1. The Fundamental Problem 2. The Theoretical Presuppositions of the Method 3. Method: The Synchronic Dimension 3.1 A First Step 3.2 A Second Step 3.3 Further Analysis of the Method 3.3.1 Bernhard Welte 3.3.2 Louis Roy 3.4 An Example 3.5 Summary

72 74 76 76 79 80 81 83 86 88

VII

TABLE OF CONTENTS

4. Method: The Diachronic Dimension 4.1 The Six Stages of the Development of Christian Life 4.2 Illustration of the Method Applied to a Specific Case: The Christian Experience of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) 4.2.1 Initiation 4.2.2 Personalization 4.2.3 Interiorization 4.2.4 Crisis-Purification 4.2.5 Maturing and Glorification 4.3 Summary 5. This Method’s Contribution to Understanding Christian Life and its Development in Relation to Spiritual Theology 5. INITIATION

TO THE

TRANSFORMATIVE PRESENCE

OF

MYSTERY

1. The Current Socio-Religious Context as seen by the Magisterium 2. The Lived Experience of the Transcendent Presence of Mystery is Transformative 3. The Knowledge of Not-Knowing 4. Initiation to Mystery 5. Interpreting the Mystery 6. Initiation to Christian Mystery 7. Ecclesial Initiation through the Sacraments: The Catechumenate 7.1 Developing the Theological Attitude in Light of Transformative Mystery 7.2 The Catechumenate 7.3 The Proposal of Initiation according to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults 8. Conclusion General Conclusion

89 90 96 97 99 100 101 102 103 103 105 105 109 112 115 120 125 133 134 135 136 137 139

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

In 1977, just twelve years after the closing of the Second Vatican Council, spiritual theologians agreed that a theology that prepares to communicate with new generations also needs an evermore global synthesis of its decades of research. Today, it seems to us that there is need of a summary of the great discoveries made before and immediately after the council so as to prepare the terrain for the work of the following decades. 1

Thirty-seven years after these words were written, fifty years after the Council, their importance remains unchanged, not only for Systematic and Fundamental Theology, but also for Spiritual Theology. This book seeks to communicate with the current generation presenting, not exactly a summary of spirituality, but a perspective that gathers the most recent research in order to prepare the terrain for further developments that are in tune with the signs of our times. They are signs that point to, on one hand, a militant secularism and, on the other, a widespread, concrete resurgence of experiences of transcendence that need to be embraced and interpreted in view of the new evangelization. Along these lines, I am presenting a path of study organized in five chapters and hinging upon five ideas: presence, mystery, transcendence, lived experience, and transformation. The presence of Mystery in the everyday lived experience of transcendence can lead a person to an effective inner transformation. This sentence sums up the new perspective I am proposing here. However, an adequate phenomenological and interpretive preparation to it needs to be clearly outlined. It is, therefore, helpful to present phenomenology, which can be used today to perceive the presence of Mystery in people’s daily experience, both from a secular as well as a religious point of view. The first chapter shows how these five ideas can be adapted as a perspective for approaching the historic circumstances in which the phenomenon of the presence of transformative Mystery reveals itself. The reason why I say ‘Mystery’ and not ‘mysticism’ reflects the perspective I have chosen: it privileges the objective aspect, that of the presence of Mystery through which God’s revelation is expressed, instead of emphasizing the subjective ‘mystic’ of lived experience in 1

Rino Fisichella, Guido Pozzo & Ghislain Lafont, La teologia tra rivelazione e storia: Introduzione alla teologia sistematica, Bologna: Edizione Dehoniane Bologna, 1999, 153.

2

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

which transcendence and the believer’s inner transformation operate. Clearly, both dimensions are inseparable. Once the phenomenological basis is established in the first chapter, the following chapters offer a theoretical approach that interprets a phenomenology of the lived experience of Mystery. The second chapter then offers an explanation of the development of Spiritual Theology after the last council, which decided on the necessity of finding a ‘minimal’ agreement between experts in the material so as to arrive at an agreement regarding elements that are indispensable for defining Spiritual Theology. The task of chapter three will be to show that such a basis can facilitate not just unity among the experts in the field but also dialogue with other disciplines. The fourth chapter, continuing along the lines of the previous one that formulates the basis for a ‘minimal’ agreement, presents a method of synchronic analysis of the experience of Mystery that, paired with a precise conception of the development of Christian life, allows for a diachronic approach to it. The final chapter is presented in a non-traditional format for a simple reason: it aims at presenting an initial journey toward transformative Mystery with the conviction that the perspective of Spiritual Theology cannot overlook the mystagogical dimension that is proper to the discipline. For such a theology, ‘presenting’ and ‘interpreting’ also means ‘initiating into’. An initial version of the first chapter was published in the open access web journal Ignaziana (www.ignaziana.org, 17 [2014], 47-57). Additionally, the successive chapters appeared in Studies in Spirituality and/or in the open access web journal Mysterion (www.mysterion.it) in the issues indicated: Chapter 2 as ‘Latin-European Scholarship in Spiritual Theology’, Studies in Spirituality 25 (2015), 1-19; and as ‘La teologia spirituale dopo il Concilio Vaticano II (1965-2010): Interpretazione di uno sviluppo’, Myaterion 5 (2012/2), 158-192. Chapter 3 as ‘Spirituality and the Search for a Triple Unity: Disciplinary, Intra-disciplinary, and Inter-Disciplinary’, Studies in Spirituality 24 (2014), 1-23; and as ‘La teologia spirituale e la ricerca della triplice unità: Disciplinare, intradisciplinare e interdisciplinare’, Mysterion 6 (2013/1]), 65-85. Chapter 4 as ‘Un metodo fenomenico-cognitivo per comprendere la vita cristiana e il suo sviluppo’, Mysterion 6 (2013/2), 191-219. Chapter 5 as ‘Iniziazione alla Presenza trasformante del Mistero’, Mysterion 7 (2014/1), 57-81. This book was originally published as: Rossano Zas Friz De Col, La presenza trasformante del Mistero. Prospettiva di teologia spirituale, Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2015. I would especially like to thank Mrs. Susan Dawson Vásquez for her work on the translation and her help during the book’s editing process. I also want to thank Mrs. Wendy Litjens for all her efficiency, patience, and hard work that went into making this book a reality.

CHAPTER 1 MYSTERY, THE SOURCE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

Introduction Over 20 years ago, the Carmelite Spiritual Theologian Ciro García asserted that the problem at the root of our discipline lies in the fact that experts in the field are starting with a model of theology that has already been surpassed. In response, he proposed a project for Spiritual Theology that develops a model for life in the Spirit, in the Bible, in the Church Fathers, and in tradition, which is interwoven with the ‘source mysteries’ of (doctrinal) Christianity. If such a project could reference the human, the world, and history (theological anthropology) within the dynamic of mystery, it would help Christian life grow towards holiness and union with God (morality and the humanities). It would be a concrete historical development of the experience of the Spirit that would give space to schools of spirituality (pastoral theology and the history of spirituality).1 Finally, according to García, Spiritual Theology’s relationship with the other theological disciplines – especially systematic theology and morality – depends upon its identity being well-defined.2 This is precisely why I hope to deal, even if indirectly, with Spiritual Theology’s identity; in order to clarify the process within the discipline, its relationship with the other theological disciplines, as well as its interdisciplinary relationships with non-theological disciplines. In order to more clearly define its identity, in this chapter I am again returning to experience and the lived experience of mystery as the source of theological reflection, which precedes as well as transcends reflection itself. This happens through faith, by which one believes what cannot be seen. In this sense, the link between faith and mystery is the basis of the possibility of faith itself. In fact, mystery is the source from which emerges every question that transcends the purely worldly horizon. It is the origin of the fundamental questions of the meaning of life and death. Today, these questions 1

2

Cfr. Ciro García, ‘¿Qué es la “teología espiritual?” Intentos de nueva recalificación’, in: Burgense 34 (1993), 303-319, here 318-319. Ibid., 307.

4

THE TRANSFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY

and answers may grow in the soil of secularized and post-Christian reason, but we still feel the need of a comprehensive and absolute answer. In the words of Paul Gilbert: Our contemporaries, like those of every age, know that our questions outnumber our answers, know that academic results are not up to the level of our radical questioning. Moreover, this gives rise to a widespread feeling today: no one expects the exact sciences to completely save humanity anymore. Today we take advantage of science to improve specific aspects of our lives but we seek elsewhere for the meaning of our lives. The current attitude is not to trust too much in science despite the positivist ideology that still holds reign and which is sustained by our desire for instant gratification. Our contemporaries are content to take advantage of laboratory results in order to better profit from the present but they also demand something else, something more. Contemporary thought is no longer bound up in scientific explanations but looks for some wisdom that can make space for a simple yet radical seeking. The specialization of the sciences has not succeeded in wiping out the substitute of religion that the positivist philosophers thought they could impose on our cultures.3

From the viewpoint of fundamental and systematic theology, Rino Fisichella claims that it will be: contemporary persons and their circumstances to call out the systematic in its task of re-reading and updating the information revealed in order to give every person of every age a more effective presentation of the face of God. Systematic theology therefore represents the attempt to structure the mysteries of the Christian faith around the center of revelation thus making tradition and the spiritual and liturgical life of the Church an indispensable reference point and renewing the believer’s role to be played alongside God in salvation today. It is an organized attempt at a synthesis that can respond to the demands coming from the community of believers and the world’s cultures today.4

From the viewpoint of Spiritual Theology, being aware of ‘contemporary persons and their situations’ certainly does not demand a rereading or updating of what has been revealed, but rather a rereading of the phenomenology of the lived daily experience of transcendence. It needs to be updated, relating it to the lived experience of the tradition of Christian revelation in order to offer a structured idea of that relationship.

3

4

Paul Gilbert, ‘La veritá frammentata e l’atto di filosofare’, in: G. Lorizio and S. Muratore (Eds.), La frammentazione del sapere teologico, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1998, 67-87, here 81. Fisichella, Pozzo, & Lafont, La teologia tra rivelazione e storia, 138.

MYSTERY, THE SOURCE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

5

1. Mystery and Transcendence At the end of an essay on the concept of ‘mystery’ in Catholic theology,5 Karl Rahner affirmed that only in the experience of the Incarnation and of Grace could the absolute nearness to God’s self-communication as Holy Mystery be reached, transcending logical-conceptual thought. This means, in the argument developed in the essay, that strictly speaking, only the Trinity, the Incarnation, and sanctifying Grace can be called ‘mystery’. He distinguishes between the mystery of the Trinity, which refers to God himself, that is, the relationship ad intra the divine persons on one hand, and on the other, the Incarnation and sanctifying Grace, that is, the divine relationship ad extra, with that which is not God. In the Incarnation and through Grace, God gives of himself personally to creation, his handiwork, in such a way as to make himself truly accessible in the world. It is only through their mediation that revelation and his reception is possible. The Incarnation and Grace are the giving of the infinite and uncreated God to the finite and created world. The Trinity remains a Holy Mystery radically present and absent in human history. Karl Rahner, therefore, sustains that – to truly be a communication of self – God’s self-communication to creatures cannot produce a solution of continuity between God ad intra and God ad extra, between the imminent Trinity and the economic-salvific Trinity. What follows for Christian life is decisive: the experience of Jesus and his Grace is the experience of the Triune God. In the faith encounter, the Triune God makes himself truly present in the second person of Jesus Christ – that is, also as Father and, when received, as divinizing Spirit. Each person of the Trinity has a distinct relationship with the believer and, if the believer can make the distinction and address them separately, it is because the one God has revealed himself as He is, that is, as one-and-three. Moreover, it is the hypostatic union of the Son that makes the invisible Trinitarian mystery visible in history. It is his Spirit that allows him to be seen and received by the believer. Strictly speaking, this is the only ‘mystery’. But how is it possible to become aware of such mystery? Through the essential constitution of the human spirit, which is transcendent. The human spirit, as such, has a natural ability to athematically understand a priori the essence of being and love, which are presented to categorical awareness not as independent guidelines, but as dimensions of the single, intrinsic movement of the person’s acting in knowledge and love. Today, in fact, the spiritual act and the spirit itself, as the ability to implement a spiritual act, are aimed at and drawn as 5

Karl Rahner, ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’, in: Theological Investigations IV, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1996, 36-73.

6

THE TRANSFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY

a unity towards that acategorical a priori understanding of being and love. This is established as the horizon of transcendental reference in that it precedes and transforms the human spirit. This is why it is called transcendental, because it is given as fact prior to its categorical knowing and loving. It is what makes categorical knowing and loving possible. This transcendental a priori understanding is given the name ‘mystery’; not because the spirit does not know itself but because its not-knowing is based on knowledge of that a priori understanding that makes its categorical knowing possible. That is why it can be said that persons – when reflecting on their ability to question and love – perceive themselves as pre-established by that ability through which they establish themselves as persons by questioning and loving. In this sense, it can be said that mystery dwells in us, in that the transcendental constitution of our being precedes us and lays the foundations of our knowing and loving being. As mystery dwells within us, we are oriented toward it. When someone reflects on their origin and destiny, they are unable, by themselves, to arrive at the knowledge that they do not know where they come from or where they are going. The awareness of this lack of an answer opens an unlimited, infinite, and unavailable horizon. Such a realization is the experience of the mystery that dwells within. It is an indwelling that reveals, in the depth of our knowing and loving, that we are a mystery oriented toward a mystery. Nevertheless, this knowing does not give a categorical answer of meaning regarding its being mystery or its orientation toward mystery. This is not simply a not-knowing, but a knowing that one does not know, a questioning that opens us up to the why of our questioning. Experience of this not-knowing, therefore, is the positive experience of mystery. That is why it can be said that persons, as such, are beings oriented toward mystery and that only in mystery can they define themselves. So, the boundless and infinite horizon of human transcendence is nothing other than the presence of an absence, the drawing near of distance, a word of silence. Thanks to this horizon it is possible to perceive and learn what the finite is and, at the same time, perceive the infinite without grasping it. Such a horizon empowers knowing and loving in the world, precisely in its radical orientation toward Being and Loving made manifest as what is hidden, because its knowing in the world is possible because of its radical transcendental capacity. Thus outlined in its radical asynchronicity, this horizon can be defined as mystery because the very word ‘mystery’ is a transcendental concept. In fact, from a cognitive-existential point of view, it can be said that mystery is selfevident, or rather that it does not need an explanation in order to be understood. Its meaning is not to inform us that there is something that has not been understood, but rather lies in the understanding that it cannot be understood. The term ‘mystery’ is a mystery, because it makes it possible to know that one

MYSTERY, THE SOURCE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

7

cannot know, thus making it possible to know everything, even that one does not know since it is known that we do not know. It is like light, which allows us to see but that cannot itself be seen. This is why, on arriving at the concept of mystery, we cannot go beyond, since we have already arrived at the edge of the limit of what is rationally intelligible and there is nothing left but to open ourselves to the expectations of listening. ‘Being-in-listening’ is the, anthropologically fundamental, transcendental openness that is that is rooted in each human being as such. The ‘not-knowing’ of this knowing is the transcendental knowing of God. The knowing and not-knowing of God, therefore, are one and the same. There is no higher knowledge than this. Continuing along this line of reasoning, it is possible to take a step forward. Because it is ‘mystery’ that makes knowing and loving possible as the transcendental horizon of being, such mystery must also know and love, making all knowledge and love possible as their source and condition of possibility. In this case, this ‘mystery’ is nothing other than Holy Mystery. As a result, human persons, because our personal spiritual essence is that of a transcendence radically oriented toward Holy Mystery, can ourselves be considered as holy mystery in the sense that He dwells within us as our most radical and hidden identity. If it were otherwise, we would not be able to know or love. This radical identity allows us to speak to Holy Mystery. This is the idea of the image of God that was so dear to the first Fathers of the Church. Additionally, if human persons are a holy mystery oriented toward Holy Mystery because of our transcendental anthropological dimension, that is, because our history has been blessed by the Incarnation and by Grace and not just by the grace of creation, then we are elevated by Grace and guided by Jesus Christ to union with God, to the beatific vision, to the unmediated knowledge of God in love. Although this knowing love is made eschatologically real in eternal life, it does not unveil Mystery, does not empty it, as happens when one knows the answer to a mathematical question. Rather, the beatific vision unveils not the content of Mystery, but the full understanding of its incomprehensibility. Such an understanding ineffably unites us to God because it is the full understanding of the incomprehensible personal love that Holy Mystery addresses to each person and which individuals direct, beyond themselves, to that love that shows itself hidden as eternal beatitude. Human persons, in themselves, are a mystery because Holy Mystery transcendentally dwells within us and because Revelation reveals this reality as a call to the fullness of union with the One who draws us to himself in order to make us blessed. Nevertheless, since this is a transcendental acategorical experience, it is only later, when related to the Revelation of Jesus Christ, that it can become conscious Christian experience. There are, however, also transcendental experiences that relate to secular or non-Christian experience. This next section will focus on those aspects.

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2. A Secular Phenomenology of the Mystery of Transcendence: The Poetry of Octavio Paz (1914-1998) The experience of transcendence, as a fundamental human mystery, depends on personal and socio-cultural factors in order to be expressed and understood. Someone who is aware of their transcendental being – but within a secular frame of reference instead of a religious one – interprets it differently than someone whose awareness is rooted in a Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian interpretive context. Transcendental experience has always occurred and been interpreted within the context of a tradition. In this sense, it is possible to identify, in an initial attempt at clarification, experiences of transcendence that are secular as well as religious ones. I would like to propose a summary of Octavio Paz’s6 poetry as an example of the ‘secular’ or ‘profane’ experience. In 1956, Paz published The Bow and the Lyre,7 an essay in which he reflects on the infrastructure of his poetry. For Paz, poetry is: knowledge, salvation, power, abandonment. An operation capable of changing the world, poetic activity is revolutionary by nature; a spiritual exercise, it is a means of interior liberation. Poetry reveals this world; it creates another. Bread of the chosen; accursed food. It isolates; it unites. Invitation to the journey; return to the homeland. Inspiration, respiration, muscular exercise. Prayer to the void, dialogue with absence: tedium, anguish and despair nourish it. Prayer, litany, epiphany, presence. Exorcism, conjuration, magic. Sublimation, compensation, condensation of the unconscious. Historic expression of races, nations, classes (BL 3).

Penetrating this complex, apparently contradictory tapestry of terms will be the aim of this section, which focuses on clarifying the movement proper to poetry, that is, of transcending the poem toward what Paz terms ‘the other shore’ of the act of reading.8 6

7

8

Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City on 31 March 1914. When he was 17 years old (1931), he began his prolific career as a writer and essayist. In 1941, he joined the Mexican diplomatic corps and was sent on missions to France, India, and Japan for several years. At the end of 1968, he renounced his position as Mexico’s ambassador to India because of the events that took place in Tlatelolco Square in October of that year. He then began his teaching career in several universities in the United States and England while taking up more stable residence in Mexico City. In 1980, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University and, the following year, was awarded the Cervantes Prize. In 1990, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died on 19 April 1998, in Mexico City. Octavio Paz, The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, the Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009. Hereinafter the text will be referred to as BL. For a more detailed treatment see: A. Alcantara Arcos, ‘La trascendenza della poesia: Studio teologico sul concetto di “poesia” in Octavio Paz (1914-1998)’, in: Mysterion (www.mysterion.it) 3 (2019) no.2, 13-48.

MYSTERY, THE SOURCE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

9

2.1 Word, Rhythm, and Image First of all, Paz distinguishes between poem and poetry, between the mediation of the word – poem – and the transcendence of the word – poetry. The poem’s mediation cannot be overlooked because it condenses the poetry and makes it real. The poetic is poetry in an amorphous state: the poem is creation, poetry standing erect. Poetry is isolated and revealed completely only in the poem. It is licit to question the poem about the existence of poetry if one ceases to conceive the poem as a form capable of being filled with any content. The poem is not a literary form but the meeting place between poetry and man. A poem is a verbal organism that contains, stimulates, or emits poetry. The form and the substance are the same (BL 5).

The poetic nature of the poem is revealed to the reader in the act of reading. The poet, on the one hand, and the reader, on the other, transcend the visible reality of the words to reach the invisible through the mediation of the poem. Reading a poem is, in a certain sense, the same as writing it, or rather, re-writing it, because it inserts the reader into the poem, ‘poetizing’ them to the poem’s time. Different from chronological time, poetic time is always alive, surpassing history in the story itself (see BL 171). When readers relive the poem, coming to a ‘poetic state’, they experience poetry, which is ‘always a going beyond oneself, a breaking of the temporal walls, to be another’ (BL 14). The poetic word and Being become one; the poet is his word, is his poem. On the contrary, when the word is an instrument of abstract thought, the meaning devours everything: listener and verbal pleasure. A vehicle of exchange, it is degraded. (…) Each time we are served by words, we mutilate them. But the poet is not served by words. He is their servant. In serving them, he returns them to the plenitude of their nature, makes them recover their being. Thanks to poetry, language reconquers its original state. First, its plastic and sonorous values, generally disdained by thought; next, the affective values; and, finally the expressive ones. To purify language, the poet’s task, means to give it back its original nature (BL 36-37).

Placing words in a certain order, the poet creates ‘rhythm’, that is, a movement in which both the poet and the reader transcend the poem. It creates expectations, nourishes the desire for the ‘something more’ that the words hint at but do not make explicit. Rhythm engenders in us a state of mind that will only be calmed when ‘something’ happens. It puts us in an attitude of waiting. We feel that the rhythm is a moving toward something, even though we may not know what that something

10

THE TRANSFORMING PRESENCE OF MYSTERY

is. Every rhythm is a sense of something. So then, rhythm is not exclusively a measure devoid of content but a direction, a sense. Rhythm is not measure, but original time (BL 45-46).

Rhythm goes beyond time. It cannot be measured chronologically but must rather be related to original time: ‘In the rhythm there is a “going toward”, which can only be elucidated if, at the same time, what we are is elucidated. Rhythm is not measure, or something that is outside us, but we ourselves are the ones who flow in the rhythm and rush headlong toward “something”’ (BL 46).9 According to Paz, a poem is constructed not just with words and rhythm but also with images. They are ‘every verbal form, phrase, or group of phrases that the poet says and that together compose a poem’ (BL 56). Using images, the poet makes a type of magic, capable of reconciling opposites: The poet names things: these are feathers, these are stones. And suddenly he affirms: stones are feathers, this is that. The elements of the image do not lose their concrete and singular character: stones continue to be stones, rough, hard, impenetrable, yellow with sun or green with moss: heavy stones. And feathers, feathers: light. The image shocks because it defies the principle of contradiction: the heavy is the light. When it enunciates the identity of opposites, it attacks the foundations of our thinking. Therefore the poetic reality of the image cannot aspire to truth. The poem does not say what it is, but what could be. Its realm is not the realm of being, but that of Aristotle’s ‘likely impossible’ (BL 85).

The realm of the poet is that of transcendence. In transcending, the poet discovers and uncovers ‘something’ with the rhythm of words that weave hidden but real images of being, which are only revealed to poets and mystics. Redefining being with words/images, the poet speaks truth. The verse, the rhythm-phrase, evokes, resuscitates, awakens, re-creates. Or as Machado said: it does not represent, it presents. It re-creates, relives our experience of the real. It seems useless to point out that such resurrections are not only those or our everyday experience, but also those of our most obscure and remote life. The poem makes us remember that which we have forgotten: this that we really are (BL 94).

9

‘Poetic rhythm is the bringing immediacy to that past that is a future that is a present: we ourselves. The poetic phrase is living, concrete time: it is rhythm, original time, perpetually recreating itself. Continual rebirth and re-death and rebirth again. The unity of the phrase, which in prose is given by the sense or meaning, is achieved in the poem by the rhythm. Poetic coherence, therefore, must be of a different order from prose. The rhythmic phrase thus brings us to the examination of its meaning’ (BL 54-55).

MYSTERY, THE SOURCE OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

11

In this way, the poetic image is revealed as a bridge and a path of reconciliation between the visible and invisible worlds, both of which are real. The poetic experience cannot be reduced to the word and, nevertheless, only the word expresses it. The image reconciles opposites, but this reconciliation cannot be explained by words – except by those of the image, which have now ceased to be what they were. Thus, the image is a desperate measure against the silence that invades us each time we try to express the terrible experience of that which surrounds us and of ourselves (BL 96).

2.2 The Act of Reading as Poetic-Transcendental Experience On one hand, the poem, made up of words, rhythm, and images, is the act of reading. On the other, these three constitute the mediation that makes poetry. Reading alone is not enough. The reading has to become an experience of the poem – in this lies poetry. In reading the poem, the reader is transported by the rhythm of the words and images. It is a direct participation in poetic inspiration that it is, above all, experienced, not understood or explained. The revelation of poetry is not conceptual knowledge or else it ‘would be philosophy’ (BL 174). It does not explain the human condition but rather ‘reveals’ it. [It is] an experience in which our condition, itself, is revealed or manifested. And therefore it is also indissolubly linked to a concrete utterance about this or that. The poetic experience – original or derived from reading – does not teach us or tell us anything about freedom: it is freedom itself, unfurling itself to achieve something and thus, for an instant, to realize man’ (BL 174-175).

The poetic nature of a poem is determined by the experience of transcendence. The poet is the one who manages to capture and reveal a surplus of invisible meaning where ‘only’ sensible reality can be seen. A poet’s history and biography cannot explain the poetry of a poem. They ‘cannot tell us what a poem is. The only note that is common to all poems is that they are works, human products, like the paintings of artists and the chairs of carpenters’ (BL 7). We name being in the poetic experience of transcendence because we are aware that it is missing. In this sense, though, our original condition is not a lack but the possibility of Being. Poetry creates meaning because it reveals Being. And in revealing it, it collaborates in the fullness of what we realize to be fundamentally missing in us. That is why Paz can state that the poet ‘reveals man by creating him’ (BL 138). thus giving us the possibility of conquering ourselves. By virtue of our birth, we can all accede to that vision and thus transcend our condition. Because our condition demands to be transcended and we only live by transcending ourselves. The poetic act shows that being mortal is merely one side

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of our condition. The other is: being alive. Being born contains dying. But being born ceases to be a synonym for lack and condemnation as soon as we stop perceiving death and life as opposites. This is the ultimate meaning of all poetizing (BL 138).

2.3 ‘The Other Shore’: The Horizon of Poetic Transcendence Poetry is a means of transcending interiority through the poem, with its words, its rhythm, and its images. It is a transcendence that highlights that a poem has two realities: what is and that which transcends it. In other words, ‘transcendence’ is the movement that carries us from the shore of visible reality to the other of invisible reality. Paz calls the ‘other shore’ the goal toward which the movement of transcendence directs humanity. Transcendence presents itself this way, as the mystery of a dual reality: the visible and the invisible. Visible reality is commonly called ‘profane’ and invisible reality ‘sacred’. Whoever participates in one does not participate in the other. If the sacred is a world apart, how can we penetrate it? By means of what Kierkegaard calls the ‘leap of faith’ and we, in the Spanish way, call the ‘leap’ [salto mortal]. Hui-neng, the seventh-century Chinese patriarch, explains the central experience of Buddhism as follows: ‘Mahaprajna-paramita is a Sanskrit term of the western country; in the T’ang language it means: great-wisdom-other-shore-reached. What is Maha? Maha is great. What is Prajna? Prajna is wisdom. What is Para-mita? The other shore reached. (…) To be attached to the objective world is to be attached to the cycle of living and dying, which is like the waves that rise in the sea; this is called: this shore. When we detach ourselves from the objective world, there is neither death nor life and one is like water flowing incessantly; this is called: the other shore (BL 106).

Thrown apart from oneself, within oneself, by means of a great wind that pushes us toward ‘the other shore’ within oneself: ‘motionless, still, we feel ourselves being drawn, stirred by a great wind that casts us out of ourselves. It casts us out and, at the same time pushes us into ourselves. The metaphor of the gust of wind presents itself again and again in the great religious texts of all cultures…’ (BL 106-107). A ‘strange power’ exerts its influence on us, one that makes a hidden level of reality emerge, which disrupts the level that is perceived by the senses. As an example, Paz notes Francisco de Quevedo’s 34th sonnet, on the martyrdom of St. Lawrence:

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Arde Lorenzo y goza en las parrillas; el tirano en Lorenzo arde y padece, viendo que su valor constante crece cuanto crecen las llamas amarillas.

Lawrence burns and rejoices on the grill; in Lawrence, the tyrant burns and suffers, seeing that his valor constantly grows as grow the yellow flames.

Las brasas multiplica en maravillas y el sol entre carbones amanece y en alimento a su verdugo ofrece guisadas del martirio sus costillas.

The embers multiply in wonders, and the sun dawns among the coals and offers his executioner nourishment from the stewed ribs of his martyrdom.

A Cristo imita en darse en alimento a su enemigo, esfuerzo soberano y ardiente imitación del Sacramento.

He imitates Christ offering himself as nourishment to his enemy, extreme effort and ardent imitation of the Sacrament.

Mírale el cielo eternizar lo humano, y viendo victorioso el vencimiento menos abrasa que arde el vil tirano. (BL 109)

Heaven looks to him immortalizing humanity, seeing victorious the defeat, less burnt than the vile tyrant who burns.

Lawrence’s apparent defeat, seen through the eyes of ‘heaven’, is transformed into victory while the tyrant’s sure victory, in reality, is defeat (see BL 110). The perception of what is immediately apparent to the senses, the basic level, is actually overwhelmed by another reality that is found on another, hidden, level. The element that overwhelms the scene is the strength of the ‘great wind’ that makes it possible to exchange today with yesterday and yesterday with today (see BL 110). It is a great wind, ‘a kind of rhythm [that] weaves together time and space, thoughts and feelings, acts and judgements, and makes a single fabric of yesterday and tomorrow, here and there, disgust and delight’ (BL 110). For Paz, poetry is the privileged ‘place’ of transcendence because it comes, like love and the sacred, from the same source. The first to perceive that love, religion, and poetry have a common origin were the poets. (…) The truth is that in the experience of the supernatural, as in that of love and in that of poetry, man feels uprooted or separated from himself. And this initial sensation of rupture is followed by another of total identification with that which seemed alien to us and with which we have become so closely entwined that it is now indistinguishable and inseparable from our own being (BL 118-119).

The attraction toward transcendence is also experienced as ‘nostalgia’, a longing for something earlier, something different from what has already been experienced, something that awaits us in a future of which we already have some inkling, in short, ‘the other side’. It is a past and a future outside of time but appearing in the present of the Self, which is.

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In the sacred, in love, and in poetry beat the nostalgia for a former state. And that state of primordial unity, from which we were previously separated, from which we are constantly being separated, constitutes our original condition, to which we return again and again. We scarcely know what it is that calls to us from the depths of our being. We glimpse its dialectic and we know that the antagonistic movements in which it expresses itself – strangeness and recognition, rise and fall, horror and devotion, repulsion and fascination – tend to be resolved into unity. (…) Nostalgia for the former life is presentiment of the future life. But a former life and a future life that are here and now and are resolved in a lightening flash. That nostalgia and that presentiment are the substance of all great human endeavors, whether poems or religious myths, social utopias or heroic undertakings (BL 119).

Additionally, we have to realize that nostalgia is also desire, the desire of being, desire of the future, because it is aware of not fully being, of being an incomplete past and present. [P]erhaps man’s real name, the emblem of his being, is Desire. For what is Heidegger’s temporality or Machado’s ‘otherness’, what is man’s continuous casting himself toward that which is not he himself, if not Desire? If man is a being who is not, but who is being himself, a being who never finishes being himself, is he not a being of desires as much as a desire for being (BL 119)?

The transcendence that appears in poetic experience reveals the human condition as a ‘transcending oneself unceasingly in which, precisely one’s essential freedom lies’ (BL 173). 2.4 Poetic Transcendence and Religious Transcendence In this context of poetic transcendence Paz does not silence a relationship with religion. He believes that religion is an interpretation of reality while poetic experience is a revelation of the human condition, creating the human with an image. He asserts that both, however, have a common origin. Revelation is creation. Poetic language reveals man’s paradoxical condition, his ‘otherness’ and thus leads him to realize that which he is. (…) The act by which man grounds and reveals himself is poetry. In sum, the religious experience and the poetic one have a common origin; their historical expressions – poems, myths, prayers, exorcisms, hymns, theatrical performances, rites, and so on – are sometime indistinguishable; in short, both are experiences of our constitutive ‘otherness’. (…) Poetry opens up to us the possibility of being that is intrinsic in every birth; it re-creates man and makes him assume his true condition, which is not the dilemma: life or death, but a totality: life and death in a single instant of incandescence (BL 139).

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The poetic experience of transcendence shows that the human condition is not just mortal but is also life. Even if death is already contained within birth, nevertheless poetry shows that being born is not just a shortcoming but is also possibility. Death and life, along with being considered ‘the ultimate meaning of all poetizing’, (BL 138) are not perceived as contradictory. Between being born and dying, poetry opens up to us a possibility, which is not the eternal life of religions or the eternal death of philosophies, but rather a living that implies and contains dying, a being this is also a being that. The poetic antinomy, the image, does not conceal our condition from us: it reveals it and invites us to realize it completely. The possibility of being is given to all men. Poetic creation is one form of that possibility (BL 138).

2.5 Conclusion The upheaval created by the transcendence worked by that ‘great wind’ is not foreign to daily life. In this regard, Paz cites Lewis Carroll and his Alice in Wonderland: Alice’s doubts show us to what extent the ground of so-called certainties can sink beneath our feet: ‘I’m sure I’m not Ada, for her hair goes in such long ringlets and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all, and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel. (…) Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and – oh dear, how puzzling it all is!’ Alice’s doubts are not very different from those of the poets and mystics. Like them, Alice is astonished. But what is she astonished at? At herself, her own reality, yes, but also at something that casts doubt on her reality, the identity of her very being. This thing that is before us – tree, mountain, image of stone or of wood, I myself who contemplate myself – is not a natural presence. It is another. It is inhabited by the Other. The experience of the supernatural is the experience of the Other (BL 112).

Poetic experience, as Octavio Paz presents it here, has all the characteristics of an experience of transcendence that has the act of reading as its ‘place’. The following section will identify the three forms in which the lived experience of mystery is normally understood in religious growth. 3. Phenomenology of Mystery The transcendental experience that Rahner described shows how the innate dynamism proper to human Being is found through Octavio Paz’s poetry; ‘secular’, it is still open to transcendence toward the ‘other shore’ even if it is distinct from religious transcendence. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the transcendental experience as a fundamental anthropological

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condition and the various forms that the experience of transcendence can take. It is precisely in order to delve into this difference that this section will follow the approach of anthropologists and phenomenologists of religion. 3.1 Experience of Self and of Life as Mystery: The ‘Need for Spirituality’ The human experience revealed in many circles today as a ‘need for spirituality’ is rooted in the first level of the lived experience of transcendence. It is an experience common to all persons, which can take many forms. In it, we become aware of being a mystery to ourselves within an existence that seems mysterious, in the sense that the self and the life that is lived do not give spontaneous meaning to living, but the opposite – they appear senseless. Nevertheless, such experience is still not experience that transcends toward mystery. It is at this beginning level that the New Age movement appears, a part of the fundamental anthropological condition in which each person knows that they do not know where they come from or where they are going. This ignorance compels us to seek meaning, compels us toward ‘spirituality’. We become aware of an inner pressure to ‘make sense’ of life’s non-sense, using rational criteria. Paradoxically, it is only upon failing to find a rational meaning that we enter into the dimension of transcendent mystery. That is when we experience an unknown awareness – of recognizing oneself as mystery, of being mystery. We become aware that the ‘self’ that seeks is mystery, a mystery of the mystery of being, precisely because no reason can satisfy the desire for meaning. At that moment, the doors of mystery can be opened. In fact, failing in the attempt to give an answer to the question of the meaning of life opens the possibility for mystery to make itself present as an unembraceable, infinite, limitless presence. It is impossible to establish a subjectobject relationship with it. It immediately places one in a subject-subject relationship, of mystery to mystery, enveloped in a knowing of not-knowing that touches the roots of our most personal identity. This is the first level of the human experience of transcendence. According to José Severino Croatto, it is an experience of mystery or of profane ‘mysticism’ when we experience absence, existential emptiness, which is a fundamental human experience, that of being anthropologically related in the emptiness.10 It can, therefore, be argued that the point of departure of the daily experience of mystery is the experience of oneself as mystery. In fact, mystery constitutes the true horizon of understanding within which persons can understand themselves. Inserting mystery into transcendence and limitlessness amounts 10

José Severino Croatto, Experiencia de lo sagrado y tradiciones religiosas: Estudio de fenomenología de la religión, Estella (Navarra), Spain: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2002.

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to making it the constitutive, non-marginal experience of human existence. It should be said, then, that we do not live any moments in which we discover mystery. Rather, we are constantly within it as the normal situation of our life in which we are nourished and guided by mystery. In a word, we are mystery.11

3.2 The Experience of the Presence of Mystery The lived experience of a presence, mystery that gives inner consolation, a ‘something’ that escapes reason and that arises from the non-sense of personal emptiness is a second layer of the lived experience of transcendence. Such awareness is not without a trace of reverential fear. What is it that consoles me beyond my sensible perception? It is the experience of the presence of mystery that offers an awareness of direct contact with ‘the real’, lived as a rupture from ordinary everyday awareness. In it, our cognitive and affective capacities intensify and expand. This produces a sharper perception of things and a widening of the existential horizon thanks to various insights that allow us to see the same old things in a new light. Such awareness is accompanied by feelings of consolation as well as joysuffering, exaltation-serenity, enthusiasm-reconciliation, stupor-fascination, respect-intimacy, safety-risk, fullness-emptiness, and unworthiness-esteem. The perception/awareness is overwhelming. It is neither expected nor induced by the subject and normally it produces an inner transformation that renews existence, giving birth to a new stage of life.12 Within this narrative I would like to highlight a few aspects that have already been mentioned. In a totally unexpected way (since I had never dreamt of such a thing), my eyes were opened and, for the first time in my life, I had a fleeting intuition of the ecstatic beauty of the real (…) I didn’t see anything new, but I saw all the usual things in a new and miraculous light, their true light I believe. I felt the strange wandering splendor, the indescribably joy of this life in its entirety. Every human being that crossed the veranda, every sparrow in its flight, every branch blowing in the wind was an integral part of everything caught up in this mad ecstasy of joy, of meaning, of intoxicating life. I saw this beauty everywhere. My heart melted and left me, so to speak, in a rapture of love and delight. (…) For once at least, in the grayness of the days of my life, I have looked into the heart of reality, I have been witness to the truth.13

11 12

13

Fisichella, Pozzo, & Lafont, La teologia tra rivelazione e storia, 101-102. See Juan Martín Velasco, Mística y humanismo, Madrid: Promoción Popular Cristiana, 2007, 103-104, as well as the same author’s El fenómeno místico: Estudio comparado, Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2013 (Il fenomeno mistico: Struttura del fenomeno e contemporaneità II, trans. Maria Giulia Telaro, Milan: Jaca Book, 2003, 105). Michel Hulin, Misticismo selvaggio, Como: Red, 2000, 45.

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This story also expresses a profound, entirely unexpected, experience of mystery, which allows a clear penetration of the mystery of reality. It was as if I had never realized, before that moment, the extent of the world’s beauty. I was lying on the warm, dry moss and listening to the larks singing as they rose up from the fields by the sea into the clear sky. No music ever brought me the same pleasure as their passionately happy song. It was like bounding, exultant rapture (…) a crackling sound, like flames. It was then that a strange feeling came over me. Everything that surrounded me seemed, suddenly, to be found within me. The entire universe seemed to dwell within me. The trees were moving their green foliage within me. The lark sang within me. Within me the warm sun shone and the cool shade extended. I felt that freshness expand within my soul and felt in my entire being the sweet smell of the grass, the plants, the rich brown earth. I could have wept for joy.14

Here is another experience that lasted just a few seconds, but which, according to the witness who lived it, has endured through the course of years. Suddenly, without any kind of warning, I found myself wrapped in a vividly flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, a huge fire, in the neighboring town but then I realized that the fire was within myself. I was then filled with a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an indescribable intellectual illumination. Among other things, I not only came to believe but I saw that the universe is not made up of dead matter but, on the contrary, of a living Presence. I took within myself the awareness of eternal life. I saw that all persons are immortal, that the cosmic order is structured in such a way that everything works together for the good of self and others, that the fundamental principle of the world, of all worlds, is what we call love, and that the good of each and all is, in the long run, absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few seconds, then disappeared. But the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it warned have persisted for the twenty-five years that have passed since that day.15

Finally, a very simple experience, like that of being in one’s own room and watching the sunlight fall through it, can suddenly reveal a completely unexpected weight in our perception of the moment. The road is silent. A ray of sunlight penetrates my room making a path of profound meditation within me. I feel my heart beating and the life that is passing through it. (…) The tranquil immensity, the infinite stillness of rest pervades me, penetrates me, subjugates me. I seem to have become a statue on the shores of the river of time. (…) In these moments it seems that my conscience withdraws into its own eternity. It contemplates within the movement of its own stars and its 14 15

Ibid., 47. Ibid., 51.

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own nature with its seasons and its myriad individual things. It grasps its own substance, superior to all forms, containing its own past, its own present, and its own future. An emptiness that envelops everything, an invisible and fertile center, the virtuality of a world that frees itself of its own existence so as to reclaim pure intimacy. In these sublime moments, the body has vanished, the spirit is simplified, unified. Passions, suffering, will, ideas, are all reabsorbed in being, like drops of rain into the ocean that generates them. This state is contemplation, not stupor. It is not pain or joy or sorrow; it is beyond every particular feeling, beyond every finite thought. It is the consciousness of being and the awareness of unlimited possibilities present in the depths of this being. It is the sensation of the infinite spiritual. It is the essence of freedom.16

The experience of mystery can be summed up, in Velasco’s words, as ‘a reality that transcends the order of the realities by which persons come into contact with the sphere of everyday life’.17 3.3 Religious Experience When the experience of transcendence is mediated by the experience of the presence of mystery, it is lived as a Presence that bears salvation in the sense that it saves us from the nothing, from death, from impotence, chaos, and ignorance and makes it possible to fulfill our great existential aspirations: being, life, strength, order, knowledge. When it is coupled to places, situations, days, and seasons, it is called hierophany, that is, a manifestation of the sacred in the sense that things, time, and situations become mediations of the transcendent mystery, become sacred. The Presence of Sacred Mystery encompasses everything to which we aspire.18 It reveals the emptiness of humanity and, at the same time, fills it, saving us. It therefore implies a conscious and free response to a determined event that emphasizes the unavailability of our own life, which, nevertheless, we must take responsibility for through a rebirth, being ‘born anew’ in the Presence of Mystery. Existence is made clear beyond itself, in the transcendence of Presence, which answers the question of meaning. Religion, as an experience of transcendence is a universal cultural fact, or rather, it is a transcultural and intercultural fact.19 In the experience of religious transcendence, we recognize mystery as a real presence, as ‘something’ that transcends the subject, ‘something’ that generates its 16 17 18 19

Ibid., 53-54. Velasco, Il fenomeno mistico, 183. José María Barrio, Antropología del hecho religioso, Madrid: Rialp, 2006. See Julien Ries, Il sacro nella storia religiosa dell’umanità, trans. Franco Marano and Luigi Saibene, Milan: Jaca Book, 1995, 217-228.

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doctrinal frame of reference, a religious cosmology, within which it is interpreted and in light of which meaning is given to existence. As previously mentioned, in the experience of transcendence it goes beyond the conscious awareness that discursive and rational knowledge uses in everyday life, perceiving a totality in which it takes part. The novelty is that, at this level, a relationship is established with the Presence of Mystery, which presents itself in different ways, as an immersing of self in the sacred or of joining with or identifying with it.20 Below are two examples taken from the Upanishads, which Velasco reports in his Il fenomeno mistico, I. Verily, this whole world is Brahma. Tranquil, let one worship It as that from which he came forth, as that into which he will be dissolved, as that in which he breathes. (…) He who consists of mind, whose body is life (prana), whose form is light, whose conception is truth, whose soul (Atman) is space, containing all works, containing all desires, containing all odor, containing all tastes, encompassing this whole world, the unspeaking, the unconcerned – this Soul of mine within the heart is smaller than a grain of rice, or a barley corn, or a mustard-seed, or a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet; this Soul of mine within the heart is greater than the earth, greater than the atmosphere, greater than the sky, greater than these worlds. Containing all works, containing all desires, containing all odors, containing all tastes, encompassing this whole world, the unspeaking, the unconcerned – this is the Soul of mine within the heart, this is Brahman. Into him I shall enter on departing hence. If one would believe this, he would have no more doubt.21 He who, dwelling in the fire, yet is other than the fire, whom the fire does not know, whose body the fire is, who controls the fire from within – He is your Soul (Atman), the Inner Controller, the Immortal. He who, dwelling in the atmosphere, (…) in the wind, (…) in the sky, (…) in the sun, (…) in the quarters of heaven, (…) in the moon and stars, (…) in space, (…) in the darkness, (…) in the light, (…) in all things, (…) in breath (prana), (…) in speech, (…) in the eye, (…) in the ear, (…) in the mind, (…) in the skin, (…) in the understanding, (…) in the semen, (…) He is your Soul (Atman), the Inner Controller, the Immortal. He is the unseen Seer, the unheard Hearer, the unthought Thinker, the ununderstood Understander. Other than He there is no seer. Other than He there is no hearer. Other than He there is no thinker. Other than He there is no understander. He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal. [Everything else but Him is mortal.]22

20 21

22

See Velasco, Il fenomeno mistico II, 184. The Thirteen Principal Upanishads translated from the Sanskrit by Robert Ernest Hume, London: Oxford University Press, 1921, Chandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1-4, 209-210. Ibid., Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 3.7.5-23, 115-117.

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Velasco also cites two examples of mystical experience from Sufi Islam. The first comes from Tayfur Abu Yazid al-Bistami (804-874): I made four mistakes in my preliminary steps in this way: I thought that I remember Him, that I know Him, that I love Him, and that I seek Him; but when I reached Him, I saw that His remembering of me preceded my remembrance of Him, that His knowledge about me preceded my knowledge of Him, that His love towards me was more ancient than my love towards Him, and that He sought me in order that I would begin to seek Him.23

The second is from Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273): ‘Your cry of “Allah” (God says) is itself My “Here I am” (…) Under each “Allah” of yours whispers many a “Here I am”’.24 The difference between the experience of religious transcendence and the two preceding experiences (sections 3.1 and 3.2), however, does not lie in the subjective interpretation constructed by the one living the experience but in the fact that the mystery presents itself in different ways. The experience of the spontaneous non-sense of the self and of life triggers a search for meaning, but does not lead to transcendence because it remains within a horizon of worldly meaning. Nevertheless, the search’s failure can give way to an opening toward mystery. Instead, in the experience of the Presence of Mystery, we come in contact with reality in a way that disrupts our usual way of relating to it. We clearly perceive, even if only briefly, the reality of reality, so to speak. In religious experience, the meaning of self and of life is coupled with the experience of the Presence of Mystery, which is perceived as real and salvific and therefore ‘sacred’. We still cannot speak of the revelation of a divinity to which we are personally related, but only of the experience of the sacred dimension of reality in the sense that it connects, it reconnects, persons to their transcendental roots. 3.4 Christian Theological Attitude as Personal Relationship with Holy Mystery In the Christian theological attitude, believers go outside of themselves to meet God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. This revelation gives us the possibility of establishing a personal relationship with him. In this case, the Mystery has revealed himself first through messengers (angels, prophets), then through his Word, the Word made flesh. This is no longer the realm of the sacred but of the divine because a personal relationship between the faithful and Jesus

23

24

Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, Classical Islam and the Naqshbandi Sufi Tradition, Fenton, MI: Islamic Supreme Council of America, 2003, 129. Arthur John Arberry, Tales from the Masnavi, London: Allen and Unwin, 1993, 186. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi.

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Christ is established, that is, a relationship between believer and God, precisely as happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. The dimension of the sacred is surpassed because the transcendental selfperception of self as mystery is enveloped in the revelation of the personal Mystery of God as Jesus Christ, who calls every single one of the faithful to a mutual relationship of love, that is, of sanctification, or better yet, of deification.25 A historical immanent-transcendent relationship – an unmediated and direct relationship – is established with God, who leads us to understand how, in reality, the only ‘place’ where God dwells in the worlds is in the human person’s interiority, in the heart that receives Him. This is because, in such a reception, persons welcome themselves as they truly are: the image and likeness of God.26 The acceptance of Jesus Christ as the revelation of the Father in the Spirit transforms into a trustful giving over to Him and his salvific promises. That is why the lived experience of faith cannot be separated from the experience of transcendence. Faith is the experience of transcendence in which the anonymous mystery of transcendence, religious transcendence as well, is personalized as an experience of the encounter with Jesus Christ that leads one to accept a particular lifestyle based on that encounter, giving shape to the theological attitude. In fact, the believer’s response to the Presence of the Trinitarian Mystery originates in this attitude. It is revealed as a transcendent foundation that precedes everything and as an eschatological future, the horizon of reality. At the same time, however, it reveals itself as an inner, immanent support that makes a response to revealed Mystery – in its triple dimension of faith, hope, and love – subjectively possible. It is a Mystery located within the event of the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, revealed in the mystery of his life, death, and resurrection, interpreted in light of his words and deeds. It is a knowledge that is anamnesis, the memory of the presence of Jesus Christ, to whom is bound the discourse on truth that ‘before being objectified in the conceptuality of being

25

26

A distinction is made between God, the only one who is Holy, the sanctifying action of Christ and the Spirit, who through grace sanctifies/deifies the believer, and the profane, which is everything that is not God. A person’s holiness is the effect of the mediation of divine grace. In the case of the believer, this is a personal transformation that, from ‘profane’ transforms us to ‘holy’ through Christ’s grace but also through our decision to conform to it. As Congar affirmed, ‘the ‘sacred’ is what we discern in things, distinguishing them from what is ordinary, by formally referring them to our final end of union with God’. Yves Congar, ‘Where does the sacred fit into a Christian worldview?’ in: At the Heart of Christian Worship: Liturgical Essays of Yves Congar, trans. Paul Philibert, OP, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010, 109, cited in Ries, Il sacro, 224. See Luigi Borriello, Esperienza mistica e teologia mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2009, 57-79.

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is focused in the historical event of a person who bears within himself the unique characteristic of universality’.27 Understanding the mystery of Jesus means ‘understanding’ that which is revealed in light of the logic of that very revelation, that is, in the light of faith, the light of belief. It is a faith that is not the fruit of speculative reason, but of relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, which is why it has its origin in him, not in the believer. In Scripture, the mystery, mystérion, has to do with the Father’s salvific action in history until its eschatological fulfillment. If we are a mystery to ourselves, just like divine salvific action, then Mystery operates in us, at our center, in our heart. ‘Perceived reality and incomprehensible reality become one. We know the mystery, love it, and in it we feel safe because we identify it with the Non-Other of our every possible knowing and personal achievement’.28 The lived experience of Holy Mystery finds its fullness in the increasing awareness of the gratuity of divine love that is personally addressed to the believer. Therefore, it is an integral lived experience, embracing the whole person who cannot be reduced to just the cognitive and rational dimension of their incomprehensibility. Moreover, the increasing development of Christian life in all its stages – including the more advanced ones that are usually defined as ‘mystical’ – belongs to the theological attitude. In fact, just as you cannot separate the experience of transcendence from the theological lived experience, it also cannot be separated from the so-called ‘mystical’ experiences in which an interior transformation is carried out by the Trinitarian Presence of Mystery. A mystic is a faithful person who lives, thanks to the theological virtues, not based on what they know about God but based in God himself, far beyond any of his human representations. Mystics live in Mystery, with Mystery, and by Mystery. Mystics insist on the fact that the only way to arrive at union with God is through a theological attitude. Mystics ‘see’ in faith because they believe, they hope, and they love. This is the common root to all of the diversifications of mysticism. John of the Cross very clearly expresses this theological attitude: Passing beyond all that is naturally and spiritually intelligible or comprehensible, souls ought to desire with all their might to attain what in this life is unknowable and unimaginable. And parting company with all they can do or taste and feel, temporally and spiritually, they must ardently long to acquire what surpasses all taste and feeling. To be empty and free for the achievement of this, they should by no means seize on what they receive spiritually or sensitively (as we shall explain in our 27 28

Fisichella, Pozzo, & Lafont, La teologia tra rivelazione e storia, 73. Ibid., 103.

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particular discussion of this matter), but consider it of little import. The higher rank and esteem they give to all this knowledge, experience, and imagining (whether spiritual or not), the more they subtract from the Supreme Good and the more they delay in their journey toward Him. And the less they esteem what they can possess – however estimable it may be relative to the Supreme Good – the more they value and prize Him, and, consequently, the closer they come to Him. In this way, in obscurity, souls approach union swiftly by means of faith, which is also dark. And in this way faith gives them wondrous light. Obviously, if they should desire to see, they would be in darkness as regards God more quickly than if they opened their eyes to the blinding brightness of the sun.29

The Christian mystical experience represents the most intense and pure relationship with God, in which cultural religious aspects are purified and practically absent. However, within Christianity, particularly in Catholicism, there exists a way of relating to the revealed God that instead reflects an attitude that is closer to the sacred than the divine: popular devotion. As an example, let me recount the origin of a pilgrimage that takes place in the Peruvian Andes, simply noting its existence, without commenting upon it. Quyllur Rit’i means ‘Snow Star’. The very name emphasizes that this is a cosmic sanctuary. It is situated at the foot of perpetual snows at about 4,700 meters altitude among the giants of the Ausangate mountain range (the mountain has an elevation of 6384 meters and is a little more than 60 miles southeast of Cuzco). Painted on the rock of the sanctuary’s chapel is a venerated Christ crucified. (…) Catholicism prospers in the highlands in the presence of pre-Colombian elements: [masked] characters, dancers, pututos [a musical instrument] used during the consecration at Mass (…) There was a true and actual fusion of the two cultures in which the dominant culture became permeated by the one dominated. (…) The Catholic shrine’s origins are rooted in an experience that happened around 1780. One day, Mariano Mayta, a young Quechua shepherd, was in Rinconada di Sinaqara grazing his flock. Another boy, a mestizo of his same age, appeared and they became friends, spending hours playing together. Time passed without them noticing and Mariano did not head toward his home in the valley. Worried, his father went up to see what was going on and found his son playing with this other boy of mixed race while the flock had mysteriously increased. He asked his son what they had eaten and the boy answered that his friend, Manuel, had brought them food. The father thanked the boy, who said he lived in Tayankani. The good peasant decided to buy an outfit for the child and took a piece of the material of his clothing as an example to show in town. In Cuzco, it was impossible to find similar fabric because it was ‘holy cloth’.

29

John of the Cross, Selected Writings, ed. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1987, ‘The Ascent of Mt. Carmel’, Bk. 2, ch. 4.6, 87.

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Surprised he went to ask the bishop’s help and told him what had happened in the Sinqara heights. Taken by the story, the bishop told the farmer to retell the story to the pastor of Ccatcca and the assistant pastor of Ocongate. Large groups from both villages, guided by their respective pastors, then went to where Mariano had been. Both groups recounted, at different times, that on reaching the place they saw the two boys playing and that from Manuel’s tunic radiated a blinding light. The priest from Ccatcca tried to grab little Manuel but found himself holding a crucifix carved from tayanka wood. According to the traditional version instead, Christ appeared in the rocks near where the children were playing when the priest from Ccatcca showed up. Manuel, thinking that all these people had killed his friend, died suddenly. According to popular legend, his heart gave out. He is buried at the root of the rocks where the image of Jesus crucified appeared. For the farmers, the Lord of Quyllur Rit’i is present in the rock, is manifest through it, dwells in it. It seems this stone had been an Incan shrine before the Spanish conquest. If this is true, we are once again faced with a religious mix that is illuminated by the Cross and its presence that is respectful of cultural expressions while simultaneously transformative of profound religious experiences. Every year a crowd of peasants and mestizos goes up to the shrine in the days preceding the feast of Corpus Christi. Sunday and Monday before the feastday, the religious celebration reaches its climax after a long preparation with pilgrims arriving from all around the surrounding countryside. The pilgrimage is characteristic of the religiosity of the Andean world. Between June and October each year, thousands of pilgrims from the Southern Andes converge upon one or another of the many shrines scattered throughout the region. The peasants cannot conceive of a religious feast without a procession or pilgrimage.30

4. Conclusion Karl Rahner’s philosophical interpretation gives an explanation of that movement of transcendence that, in Octavio Paz’s poetic treatment, presents itself as the passage to the other shore, symbolically represented by the act of reading in which one goes beyond the reading, beyond the poem, toward poetry, that is, toward mystery. It is a mystery that presents itself anonymously, in the case of the experience of secular transcendence, or religiously, when its relationship is found within the personal dynamics of daily life. It instead acquires the characteristic of a face-to-face, personal relationship when, as in the case with Christianity, it presents itself as the subject of a revelation in which we discover 30

Rodrigo Sánchez-Arjona Halcón, S.J., La religiosidad popular católica en el Perú, Lima, 1981, 151-153. This ritual can be seen in a number of Youtube videos with a simple search for ‘Quyllur Rit’i’.

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ourselves as the expression of a choice. Biblically, such a choice is expressed as the manifestation of a loving communication of self with the goal of inviting humanity to correspond in a covenant of eternal life. Such a Christian conception of relationship with the mystery that transforms the life of those who accept it is not the traditional object of study of the theological disciplines. They are, however, increasingly aware of the dimension of mystery in people’s lives and are trying to treat of it. This is why it is important to delve into the topic from the point of view of Spiritual Theology. But first, it is worth considering the journey that the discipline has made in the decades since Vatican Council II.

CHAPTER 2 LATIN-EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP IN SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY (1954-2013)

In 2011, Spiritus dedicated its spring issue to ‘European Spirituality’. Its editor, Douglas Burton-Christie, asserted in his presentation that it is no longer possible – as was natural until recently – to identify Europe with a Christian spirituality. This is not only because of the growing presence of other Christian denominations, which were previously in the minority, and other religions, which were practically non-existent until a few decades ago, but is also due to an ever-widening, secularized view of existence. It is precisely this ongoing change that intrigues Burton-Christie and, given that the journal he edits is published in the United States, it raises the question ‘what does it mean to think about Christian spirituality in the European context today’?1 Certainly, he does not think that a single issue can exhaust the understanding of Euro-spirituality. Rather he sees it as a first step to be followed up with deeper study and exchange of opinion. This article is intended to participate in that dialogue. Inspired by Philip Sheldrake’s presentation of European spirituality, which focuses on work produced in the English-speaking world, this chapter seeks to present the Latin-European context. It is represented mainly by work in Italian and Spanish but also keeps French as well as Latin American (written in both Spanish and Portuguese), scholarship in mind.2 The first and, perhaps, most widespread and popular difference between how the discipline is seen in English-speaking European and North American circles and in Latin-European circles regards its title: is it ‘spiritual theology’ or ‘spirituality’? At first glance, and considering the tradition developed by the 1

2

Douglas Burton-Christie, ‘Europe’, in: Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 11 (2011) no.1, ix-x, here x. The topic matter of this article was part of my presentation at the conference organized by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical University Antonianum in celebration of the 40th anniversary of its foundation. The article was later published as ‘Identità e missione della teologia spirituale. Bilancio e prospettiva dal Vaticano II ad oggi’, in: Paolo Martinelli (Ed.), La teologia spirituale oggi: Identità e missione, Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 2012, 16-34. See also: Mysterion (www.mysterion.it) 5 (2012) no.2, 158-192.

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discipline in the two different contexts, one might think that the difference it points to persists even today. Undoubtedly, the lack of communication between the two sides, due primarily to linguistic reasons, contributes to maintaining this prejudice. The aim of this chapter is to present the English-speaking audience with a brief overview of the work carried out in Spiritual Theology from before and after the Second Vatican Council. Further work I have published – referenced here below in footnote 141 – demonstrates how current developments in the ‘spirituality’ of the English-speaking world are not so very different from those being made in the ‘spiritual theology’ of the Latin-European world. I have divided the path to follow here into three moments: the pre-Conciliar period 1954-1965; the post-Conciliar period, with two stages, 1966-1979 and 1980-1989; and then the post-Conciliar period, which I also cover in two stages, 1990-1999 and 2000-2013. 1. The Pre-Conciliar Period: 1954-1965 In 1954, papers given at the First Week of Spirituality organized two years earlier by the Center of Spirituality Studies at the Pontifical University of Salamanca were published.3 In the table of contents, the pieces are clearly divided into two areas: Christian Perfection in Itself and The Perfection of Various States and Conditions. An article by Jesús Olazarán looked at the characteristics of contemporary spirituality as life.4 That same year, Isidoro de San José published an article on the academic definition of ‘Spiritual Studies’ in the Revista de Espiritualidad.5 Three years later, in 1957, Teófilo Urdánoz published an article on the status of studies in Spiritual Theology.6

3

4

5

6

Luis Sala Balust (Ed.), Sobre la perfección cristiana (papers given at the First Week of Spirituality, held 21-26 April 1952, organized by the Center for the Study of Spirituality at the Pontifical University of Salamanca), Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1954. Jesús Olazarán, ‘Características de la espiritualidad contemporánea’, in: Sobre la perfección cristiana, 209-260. Isidoro de San José, ‘Hacia una definición científica adecuada de la ciencia espiritual’, in: Revista de Espiritualidad 13 (1954), 329-345. Teófilo Urdánoz, ‘Estados actuales de los estudios de teología espiritual: Teología dogmática y teología espiritual’, in: Estado actual de los estudios de teología espiritual (papers given at the First Conference on Spirituality at the Pontifical University of Salamanca), Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1957, 137-186.

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Two important texts were published in 1960: Amato Dagnino’s La vita interiore secondo la Rivelazione, studiata dalla Teologia e insegnata dalla Chiesa7 and Louis Bouyer’s Introduction to the Spiritual Life.8 Felipe García Llamera’s article on Spiritual Theology as an academic discipline9 also appeared that year. The following year, 1961, Gustavo Vinay, in an article examining the word ‘spirituality’,10 initiated a debate with Jean Leclercq, whose reply11 clarified the historic development of the word. This period can be identified as the moment when scholars began to take an interest in what would become the major developments in the discipline before and after the Council. Giovanni Moioli published one of his first articles in 1963.12 Two years later, in 1965, a lengthy edition of the Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica introduced Spiritual Theology for study and teaching.13 It revealed a Thomist tone to the discipline, presenting articles by: Innocenzo Colosio ‘Le caratteristiche positive e negative della Spiritualità odierna’ (311-362); Fabio Giardini, ‘La natura della teologia spirituale’ (363-415); Luigi Bono, ‘La Sacra Scrittura come fonte di Teologia Spirituale’ (417-442); Giovanni Colombo, ‘La storia della Spiritualità e le scuole di Spiritualità’ (443-462); and Raimondo Spiazzi, ‘Il Metodo della Teologia Spirituale e i suoi rapporti con la Teologia Pastorale’ (463-476). Innocenzo Colosio also contributed: ‘Come insegnare la Teologia Spirituale’ (477-491); ‘Suggerimenti metodologici per ricerche storiche nel campo della Spiritualità’ (492-508); and the final piece, ‘Il ‘problemismo spirituale’ come grave insidia alla vita interiore’ (509-531).

7

8

9

10 11 12

13

Amato Dagnino, La vita interiore secondo la rivelazione, studiata dalla teologia e insegnata dalla Chiesa, Milan: Paoline, 1960. From its fourth edition in 1968, the title becomes: La vita cristiana o il mistero pasquale del Cristo mistico secondo la rivelazione, studiata dalla teologia e insegnata dalla Chiesa. Louis Bouyer, Introduction à la vie spirituelle: Précis de théologie ascétique et mystique, Paris: Desclée, 1960. Translated by Mary Perkins Ryan as Introduction to the Spiritual Life, New York: Desclee Co., 1961. Felipe García Llamera, ‘La Teología Espiritual como ciencia’, in: Teología Espiritual 4 (1960), 483-492. Gustavo Vinay, ‘Spiritualità’, in: Studi Medievali 2 (1961), 705-709. Jean Leclercq, ‘Spiritualitas’, in: Studi Medievali 3 (1962), 279-296. Giovanni Moioli, ‘La vita cristiana come oggetto della teologia spirituale’, in: Scuola Cattolica 91 (1963), 101-116. ‘Saggi introduttivi allo studio ed all’insegnamento della teologia spirituale’, in: Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica 10 (1965) nos 4-5..

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2. The Post-Conciliar Period: 1966-1989 The post-Conciliar Period for Spiritual Theology as a discipline can be divided into two parts. The first period lasting from immediately after the Council finished up to the publication of Antonio Queralt’s article on Spirituality as a theological discipline14 in 1979. The beginning of the second post-Conciliar period, in 1980, starts with Augusto Guerra’s article on Spiritual Theology as an academic discipline that had not been identified at the time.15 Its end can be marked by the publication of Sandra Schneiders’s article, ‘Spirituality in the Academy’.16 During these years many studies appeared in support of a proper identify for Spiritual Theology and the life of the Church was distinguished, during the second half of the period, by the beginning of John Paul II’s pontificate. 2.1 The Early Post-Conciliar Period: 1966-1979 The year following the Council’s conclusion, 1966, saw the inauguration of the bibliographic service Bibliographia Internationalis Spiritualitatis from the Discalced Carmelite Fathers of Rome’s Pontifical Theological Faculty Teresianum and the first edition of the international journal Concilium, which has dedicated a volume to Spirituality every year since. The first steps towards a foundational and methodological development of the discipline were taken during the second half of the 70’s. An article by Roberto Moretti, significantly entitled ‘Tempi maturi per un insegnamento scientifico della teologia spirituale’ (The Time is Ripe for an Academic Approach to Spiritual Theology),17 reflected the attitude then emerging among scholars. In German, Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote on the relationship between theology and spirituality.18 In French, Louis Cognet

14

15

16 17

18

Antonio Queralt, ‘La “Espiritualidad” como disciplina teológica’, in: Gregorianum 60 (1979), 321-376. Augusto Guerra Sancho, ‘Teología espiritual, una ciencia no identificada’, in: Revista de Espiritualidad 39 (1980), 335-414. Sandra Schneiders, ‘Spirituality in the Academy’, in: Theological Studies 50 (1989), 676-697. Roberto Moretti, ‘Tempi maturi per un insegnamento scientifico della teologia spirituale’, in: Seminarium 18 (1966), 116-139. Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Theologie und Spiritualität’, in: Gregorianum 50 (1969), 51-580. See also the essay on spirituality in his Explorations in theology I: The word made flesh, trans. A.V. Littledale & Alexander Dru, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989, 211-226. Originally published as Verbum caro (Skizzen zum Theologie), Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1960. Previously published in English as Word and revelation: Essays in theology 1, trans. A.V. Littledale & Alexander Dru, New York: Herder and Herder, 1964; and Word and redemption: Essays in theology 2, trans. A.V. Littledale & Alexander Dru, New York: Herder and Herder, 1965.

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published an introduction to the spiritual life.19 In Spanish, Juan Zaragüeta presented a text on Christian spirituality20 and Francisco Juberías a treatise on the deification of man.21 In Italian, Albino del Bambino Gesù Marchetti published his compendium of Spiritual Theology.22 Giovanni Moioli, who died at a relatively young age (1931-1984), was without a doubt one of the authors who contributed most to giving a face to the discipline during this period, especially from a methodological perspective, in light of his position at the Theology Faculty of Northern Italy in Milan.23 Charles-André Bernard (1923-2001), professor at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University for 37 years (1961-1998), was another of the authors who made significant contributions to the development of the discipline during the period after the Council, especially with the perspective on the theological consideration of symbol and affectivity that he initiated.24 In 1974, an issue of the journal Seminarium entitled ‘On Teaching Spiritual Theology’25 came out. It included a variety of contributions from the authoritative thinkers in the discipline from those years including: Roberto Moretti, ‘L’unità della conoscenza teologica e il compito della teologia spiritual’ (41-60); Federico Ruiz Salvador, ‘Temática de la teología espiritual’ (191-202); Ermanno Ancilli, ‘Orientamenti di spiritualità contemporanea’ (203-230); Alvaro Huerga, ‘El método de la teología espiritual’ (231-249); Roberto Zavalloni, ‘L’apporto delle scienze dell’uomo alla vita spirituale’ (250-265); and Simeone della Santa 19 20 21

22 23

24

25

Louis Cognet, Introduction a la vie chrétienne, Paris: Flammarion, 1967. Juan Zaragüeta, Espiritualidad cristiana, Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1967. Francisco Juberías, La divinización del hombre: Tratado teológico de la perfección cristiana, Madrid: Coculsa, 1972. Albino del Bambino Gesù Marchetti, Compendio di teologia spirituale, Turin: Marietti, 1966. Giovanni Moioli, ‘Il problema della teologia spirituale’, in: Scuola Cattolica 94 (1966), 3*-26*; ‘Teologia spirituale’, in: Dizionario teologico interdisciplinare, Turin: Marietti, 1977, 36-66; ‘“Sapere teologico” e “sapere” proprio del cristiano: Note per un capitolo di storia della letteratura spirituale e della teologia’, in: Scuola Cattolica 106 (1978), 569-596; ‘Teologia spirituale’, in: Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1979, 1597-1609; ‘Esperienza cristiana’, in: Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, 536-542; ‘L’acquisizione del tema dell’esperienza da parte della teologia, e la teologia della ‘spiritualità’ cristiana’, in: Teologia 6 (1981), 145-153; Guida allo studio teologico della spiritualità cristiana: Promanuscripto. Vol. I, Lecco: Grafiche Stefanoni, 1983; ‘Spiritualità, fede, teologia’, in: Teologia 9 (1984), 117-129. See also: Franco Gallivanone, ‘Bibliografia di Giovanni Moioli’, in: Teologia 10 (1985), 15-22; and Claudio Stercal, ‘Storia e teologia della spiritualità nella riflessione di Giovanni Moioli’, in: Teologia 24 (1999), 72, n.2. Charles-André Bernard, Le projet spirituel, Rome: PUG, 1970; Compendio di teologia spirituale (class notes), Rome: PUG, 1973; Teologia spirituale, Milan: Paoline, 1982, the sixth revised edition of which was published, posthumously, in 2002; Théologie symbolique, Paris: Téqui, 1978; Théologie affective, Paris: Cerf, 1984. ‘De theologia spirituali docenda’, in: Seminarium 26 (1974).

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Famiglia, ‘Per lo studio della teologia spirituale’ (266-291). It was a remarkable contribution following the trail laid by the issue of Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica nine years earlier. Ciro García and Federico Ruiz were very significant in the writing and teaching of the Spanish Discalced Carmelites at the time as well as for successive generations. In 1971, García published his Corrientes nuevas, which he later reworked as Teologia spiritual contemporánea: Corrientes y perspectivas26 in 2002. In 1974, Ruiz originally published his compendium of Spiritual Theology in Spanish, then in Italian, with many successive editions following in later years.27 As for the Latin-Americans, Victor Codina analyzed the relationship between theology and spiritual experience28 and the Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira dedicated an issue to the relationship between Liberation Theology and Spirituality.29 That issue included the following articles: Leonard Boff, ‘Contemplativus in liberazione: Da espiritualidade da libertação à prática da libertação’ (562-570); Segundo Galilea, ‘O Rosto Latino-Americano da Espiritualidade: Onde se encontra o Espírito na América Latina? As fontes histórico-sociais da espiritualidade’ (562-570); and Pedro Trigo, ‘Espiritualidade e Cultura: Diante do Impacto da Modernização’ (632-643). The 70’s came to an end with two important articles in Spanish. The first was from the Gregorian University professor, Antonio Queralt, ‘La ‘Espiritualidad’ como disciplina teológica’.30 The second was from professor of Spiritual Theology at Lima’s Pontifical and Civil Faculty of Theology, Juan Ignacio Ugarte Grijalba, who wrote on the relationship between ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual theology’ for the faculty’s journal.31 That same year, 1979, in French, Yves Raguin’s book, L’attention au mystère,32 was also published.

26

27

28 29 30 31

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Ciro García Fernández, Corrientes nuevas de teología espiritual, Madrid: Studium, 1971; revised as García Fernández, Teología espiritual contemporánea: Corrientes y perspectivas, Burgos: Editorial Monte Carmelo, 2002. Federico Ruiz Salvador, Caminos del Espíritu: Compendio di teología espiritual, Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1974. Victor Codina, Teología y experiencia espiritual, Santander: Sal Terrae, 1977. ‘Espiritualidade de encarnação’, in: Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira 39 (1979), no.4. Queralt, ‘La “Espiritualidad” como disciplina teológica’. Juan Ignacio Ugarte Grijalba, ‘Espiritualidad y teología espiritual’, in: Revista Teológica Limense 13 (1979), 133-142. Yves Raguin, L’attention au mystère: Une entrée dans la vie spirituelle, Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1979.

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2.2 The Later Post-Conciliar Period: 1980-1989 At the beginning of the 80’s, Augusto Guerra published a study in which he defined Spiritual Theology as an unidentified area of research.33 In the following years, from various points of view, there was an enrichment in the concept of experience34 and in the foundations and method of Spiritual Theology.35 There were notable developments in the English-speaking world36 and Sandra Schneiders’s article ‘Spirituality in the Academy’37 marked the end of a journey. Work in Italy undertaken by Benedetto Calati, Bruno Secondin, Tito Paolo Zecca, Tullo Goffi, Bruno Secondin, Jos Janssens, and Pier Luigi Boracco38 merits particular attention because it shows the direction that the discipline was taking. This is also true of Giorgio Gozzelino’s essay on the elements of the spiritual life.39 During the 80’s, work in Spanish flourished with Mauricio Braña Arrese’s Suma de la vida spiritual,40 Segundo Galilea’s El camino de la Espiritualidad,41

33 34

35

36

37 38

39 40

41

Augusto Guerra Sancho, ‘Teología espiritual, una ciencia no identificada’. Angelo Bertuletti, ‘Il concetto di ‘esperienza’ e la teologia’, in: Teologia 6 (1981), 85-116; Pier Angelo Sequeri, ‘Esperienza della fede e testimonianza della rivelazione’, in: Teologia 6 (1981), 117-131. Vladimir Truhlar, I concetti fondamentali della teologia spirituale, Brescia: Queriniana, 1981; Josef Weismayer, Leben in Fülle: Zur Geschichte und Theologie christlicher Spiritualität, Innsbruck: Tyrolia 1983; Casiano Floristán Samanes, ‘La espiritualidad en la teología’, in: Revista de Espiritualidad 170 (1984), 555-569; Guillermo Rodríguez Melgarejo, ‘¿Qué se entiende por teología espiritual sistemática?’, in: Teología (Buenos Aires) 22 (1985), 78-87; Pier Luigi Boracco, Il problema della spiritualità cristiana, Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1986; Giorgio Gozzelino, Al cospetto di Dio: Elementi di teologia della vita spirituale, Turin: LDC, 1989. Edward Kinerk, ‘Toward a Method for the Study of Spirituality’, in: Review for Religious 40 (1981), 3-19; Eugene Megyer, ‘Theological Trends: Spiritual Theology Today’, in: The Way 21 (1981), 55-67. Schneiders, ‘Spirituality in the Academy’. Benedetto Calati, Bruno Secondin & Tito Paolo Zecca (Eds.), Spiritualità: Fisionomia e compiti (First National Conference of the Italian Association of Spirituality), Rome: LAS, 1981; Tullo Goffi & Bruno Secondin (Eds.), Corso di spiritualità: Esperienza, sistematica, proiezioni, Brescia: Queriniana, 1979; Bruno Secondin & Jos Janssens (Eds.), La spiritualità: Ispirazione, ricerca, formazione, Rome: Borla, 1984; Bruno Secondin, Tito Paolo Zecca & Benedetto Calati (Eds.), Parola di Dio e spiritualità (Second Conference of the Italian National Association of Spirituality), Rome: LAS, 1986; Pier Luigi Boracco & Bruno Secondin, L’uomo spirituale, Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1986; Bruno Secondin & Tullo Goffi (Eds.), Corso di spiritualità: Esperienza-sistematica-proiezioni, Brescia: Queriniana, 1989. Gozzelino, Al cospetto di Dio. Mauricio Braña Arrese, Suma de la vida espiritual: Ascética y mística práctica, Salamanca: San Esteban, 1982. Segundo Galilea, El camino de la Espiritualidad, Bogotà: Ediciones Paulinas, 1982.

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José Rivera and José Maria Iraburu’s Espiritualidad católica,42 Jon Sobrino’s Liberación con Espíritu,43 and Santiago G. Arzubialde’s Theologia spiritualis.44 In the French-speaking world, texts on the Christian spiritual life appeared from Marc Trémeau45 and Philippe Ferlay.46 Beginning in 1983, studies started to appear surveying the developments in Spiritual Theology and Spirituality.47 These were very important for assessing the progress that had been made, even if they only dealt with work published in Italian and Spanish. 3. After the Post-Conciliar Period: 1990-2010 The end of the post-conciliar period can be dated to 1989, the year in which – besides the Berlin Wall being torn down, an event that led to the redefinition of ideologies and world politics that were strongly echoed in the ecclesial sphere – the work that was carried out demonstrated a consolidation of the discipline. In fact, the end of the 80’s can be given as the conclusive end of that period: the problems raised by Guerra at the beginning of the decade having been satisfactorily responded to in Schneiders’s article. From this moment on, the discipline seemed to take on a strong momentum that would lead to a period of development in the 90’s that only became evident after the beginning of the new millennium.

42

43

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45 46 47

José Rivera & José María Iraburu, Espiritualidad católica, Madrid: Centro de Estudios de Teología Espiritual, 1982. Jon Sobrino, Liberación con Espíritu: Apuntes para una nueva espiritualidad, Maliaño: Sal Terrae, 1986. Santiago G. Arzubialde, Theologia spiritualis: El camino espiritual del seguimiento a Jesús, Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 1989. Marc Trémeau, Eléments de spiritualitè chrétienne, Chambray: CLD, 1982. Philippe Ferlay, Abrégé de la vie spirituelle: Le chemin des chrétiens (Paris: Desclée, 1986). Casiano Floristàn, ‘Spiritualità: Bilancio e prospettive’, in: Concilium 19 (1983), 1627-1640; Luigi Borriello, ‘La teologia spirituale: Linee tematiche emergenti nel suo recente sviluppo bibliografico’, in: Teresianum 36 (1985), 189-202; Giovanna Della Croce, ‘Linee di forza della spiritualità contemporanea’, in: Rivista di Vita Spirituale 39 (1985), 547-559; Jesús Castellano Cervera, ‘Linee emergente della spiritualità oggi’, in: Rivista di Vita Spirituale 43 (1989), 5-31; Augusto Guerra Sancho, ‘Una espiritualidad para nuestros días’, in: CONFER 28 (1989), 207-231; Daniel de Pablo Maroto, ‘La espiritualidad emergente del concilio Vaticano II’, in: Analecta Calansiana 31 (1989), 295-343.

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3.1 The Ripening Decade: 1990-1999 I refer to the years between 1990 and 1999 as the ‘Ripening Decade’ because during this time the discipline was growing and deepening. In 1990, the identity of the discipline was reinforced with the publication of Atanasio Matanic’s La spiritualità come scienza48 and the appearance of Aimé Solignac and Michel Dupuy’s article ‘Spiritualité’49 in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. It is important to remember that, during these years, the great development in new technologies was being applied to the collection and compilation of data and the means of communication. At the same time, there was a revolution in the means of air transport, which produced an added transformation in the daily life and relationships between persons and peoples (fostering globalization, multiculturalism, pluri-religiosity, etc.). From the perspective of Spiritual Theology, in addition to the two aforementioned pieces, other works published in the 90’s can be cited, including: the articles by Agostino Favale50 and Servais Pinckaers,51 and the book by Bernard Peyrous and Raymond Darricau.52 Of particular importance for reflection on the method of the discipline are the proceedings, published in 1991, of CharlesAndré Bernard’s conference with the professors of the San Luigi Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy.53 From this moment on through the rest of the decade, the topics touching upon the fundamental dimension of Spiritual Theology multiply quickly.54 48

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Atanasio G. Matanič, La spiritualità come scienza: Introduzione metodologica allo studio della vita spirituale cristiana, Milan: Paoline, 1990. Aimé Solignac & Michel Dupuy, ‘Spiritualité’, in: M. Viller, F. Cavallera & J. de Guibert (Eds.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, Doctrine et histoire. Vol. XIV, Paris: Beauchesne, 1989-1990, 1142-1173. Agostino Favale, ‘Spiritualità e scuole di spiritualità’, in: Salesianum 52 (1990), 819-856. Servais Pinckaers, ‘Qu’est-ce que la spiritualité?’, in: Nova et Vetera 65 (1990) no.1, 7-19. Bernard Peyrous & Raymond Darricau, La spiritualité, Paris: PUF, 1990. Mario Gioia (Ed.), Teologia spirituale: Temi e problemi. In dialogo con Charles-André Bernard, Rome: Edizioni AVE, 1991. See also the book’s review by Annamaria Valli, ‘A proposito di esperienza in “Teologia spirituale”’, in: Teologia 17 (1992), 281-302. Manuel Belda, ‘Lo statuto epistemologico della teologia spirituale nei manuali recenti (19781989)’, in: Annales Teologici 6 (1992), 431-457; Alvaro Huerga, ‘El carácter científico de la teología espiritual’, in: Teología Espiritual 36 (1992), 41-63; Charles-André Bernard (Ed.), La spiritualità come teologia. Symposium organized by the Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome 25-28 April, 1991, Cinisello Balsamo: Paoline, 1993; Ciro García Fernández, ‘¿Qué es la “teología spiritual”? Intentos de nueva recalificación’, in: Burgense 34 (1993), 303-319; Eulogio Pacho, ‘Definición de la “espiritualidad”: Respuestas y tratamientos’, in: Burgense 34 (1993), 281-302; Charles-André Bernard, Introduzione alla teologia spirituale (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1994); Domenico Sorrentino, ‘Sul rinnovamento della teologia spirituale’, in: Asprenas 41 (1994), 511-532; Christoph Theobald, ‘La “théologie spirituelle”: Point critique pour la théologie dogmatique’, in: Nouvelle Revue

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This is seen in the textbooks, treatises, and studies published in those years, which are written by authors including: Emeterio De Cea,55 Giovanni Moioli,56 Jesús Espeja,57 Tomáš Špidlík,58 Giuseppe Pollano,59 Jean-Claude Sagne,60 Saturnino Gamarra,61 Augusto Guerra,62 Luciano Fanin,63 Daniel de Pablo Maroto,64 Servais Pinckaers,65 Javier Garrido,66 Pierre Philippe,67 and Antonio M. Sicari.68 Not to be overlooked are also the proceedings published from the 1991 symposium on Spirituality as Theology organized by the Institute of Spirituality at the Gregorian University69 and from the 1995 conference organized by the Canadian Theological Society on the cultural and theological challenges to

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Théologique 117 (1995), 178-198; Herbert Alphonso, Esperienza e spiritualità: Miscellanea in onore del R. P. Charles André Bernard, Rome: Pomel, 1995; Guillermo Randle, ‘Hacia una teología más espiritual y una espiritualidad más teológica’, in: Theologica Xaveriana 48 (1998), 335-350; Angelo Bertuletti, Luca Ezio Bolis & Claudio Stercal, L’idea di spiritualità, Milan: Glossa, 1999; Luca Ezio Bolis, ‘La teologia spirituale nel “900”‘, in: Servitium 3 (1999), 627-632; José Damián Gaitán, ‘La espiritualidad como camino y el camino de la espiritualidad: Reflexiones sobre la segunda mitad del siglo XX’, in: Revista de Espiritualidad 58 (1999), 421-440; Alberto Echeverri Guzmán, ‘Docencia de la teología espiritual en la Facultad de Teología (1937-1997)’, in: Theologica Xaveriana 47 (1997) no.3, 353-364; Bruno Secondin, ‘Tendenze e urgenze della spiritualità’, in: Rivista di Pastorale 37 (1999), 12-18. Emeterio G. De Cea (Ed.), Compendio di teologia spiritual, Rome: PUST, 1992. Giovanni Moioli, L’esperienza spirituale: Lezione introduttive (ed. Claudio Stercal), Milan: Glossa, 1992. Jesús Espeja Pardo, La espiritualidad cristiana, Estella: Verbo Divino, 1992. Tomáš Špidlík, Manuale fondamentale di spiritualità, Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1993. Giuseppe Pollano, Dio presente e trasformante: Saggio di teologia spirituale, Turin: LDC, 1993. Jean Claude Sagne, Il segreto del cuore: Trattato di teologia spirituale, Padua: Messaggero, 1994. French original, Traité de théologie spiritelle: le secet du coeur (Paris: Èditions du Chalet, 1992). Saturnino Gamarra, Teología espiritual, Madrid: BAC, 1994. Augusto Guerra Sancho, Introducción a la teología espiritual, Santo Domingo: EDECA, 1994. Luciano Fanin, La crescita nello Spirito: Lineamenti di teologia spirituale (strumenti di scienze religiose), Padua: Messaggero, 1995. Daniel De Pablo Maroto, El camino cristiano: Manual de teología espiritual, Salamanca: Caja Salamanca y Soria, 1996. Servais Pinckaers, La vie selon l’Esprit: Essai de théologie spirituelle selon saint Paul et saint Thomas d’Aquin, Luxembourg: Saint-Paul, 1996. Javier Garrido, Proceso humano y desarrollo humano: Apuntes de espiritualidad cristiana, Santander: Sal Terrae 1996. Pierre P. Philippe, La vita di preghiera: Saggio di teologia spirituale, Vatican City: LEV, 1997. French original: La vie de prière: essai di théologie spirituelle (Paris: Mame, 1993). Antonio M. Sicari, La vita spirituale del cristiano, Milan: Jaca Book, 1997. Charles-André Bernard (Ed.), La spiritualità come teologia (papers given at the symposium organized by the Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome 25-28 April, 1991), Cinisello Balsamo: Paoline, 1993.

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contemporary spirituality.70 Reviews of published works also play an important role in locating authors within the discipline as well as in fostering the exchange of opinions.71 3.2 The Harvesting Decade: 2000-2013 The year 2000 was a very important moment in the development of Spiritual Theology after the Council. It can be considered a watershed in the LatinEuropean sphere thanks to the International Conference on Spiritual Theology organized by the Pontifical Institute of Spirituality of the Teresianum, the proceedings of which were published the following year.72 In a certain sense, it can be said that the conference initiated a new ‘season’ in the discipline because it offered an evaluation of what had been achieved and presented perspectives for future development. The table of contents of the text, divided into five main areas, is very significant: (I) The Long History of Spiritual Theology,73 (II) Towards the Renewal of Spiritual Theology,74 (III) Fundamental Principles

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Camil Ménard & Florent Villeneuve (Eds.), Spiritualité contemporaine: Défis culturels et théologiques (papers given at the Canadian Theological Society’s 1995 conference), Montreal: Fides, 1996. Ernesto Julià, ‘Recenti studi di spiritualità (I)’, in: Annales Teologici 5 (1991), 387-403; Julià, ‘Recenti studi di spiritualità (II)’, in: Annales Teologici 6 (1992), 113-133; Ciro García Fernández, ‘Tres manuales de Teología espiritual’, in: Burgense 38 (1997), 295-311. La teologia spirituale (papers given at the OCD international conference held in Rome from 24-29 April 2000), Rome: Edizioni del Teresianum, 2001. Augusto Guerra Sancho, ‘Proceso histórico en la formación de la teología espiritual’ (23-68); Emanuele Boaga, ‘Dal secolo XII al secolo XVI: La teologia spirituale alle origini della tradizione carmelitana’ (69-94); Eulogio Pacho, ‘Del siglo XVI al siglo XIX: Místicos y teología mística’ (95-111); Daniel De Pablo Maroto, ‘Siglo XX: De la teología ascética y mística a la teología espiritual’ (113-140); Ciro García Fernández, ‘La cuestión mística y la escuela carmelitana’ (141-168); Johannes Schiettecatte, ‘Teologia spirituale e psicologia: La controversia fra Anselmo Stolz e Gabriele di Santa Maria Maddalena’ (169-182); Jerzy Gogola, ‘Primi manuali del secolo XX: A. Tanquerey, J. Brenninger, J. De Guibert’ (183-190); Jesús Castellano Cervera, ‘Intentos de renovación en la teología espiritual antes del Concilio Vaticano II: L. Bouyer, G. Thils, H. Urs von Balthasar’ (191-202). Jesús Manuel García, ‘La teologia spirituale oggi: Verso una descrizione del suo statuto epistemologico’ (205-238); Giuseppe Furioni, ‘Manuali in lingua italiana: Dagnino, Moioli e Gozzelino’ (239-358); Aniano Alvarez Suárez ‘Manuales de teología espiritual en español’ (259-278); Stephan M. Morgain, ‘Le traité de théologie spirituelle de Charles-André Bernard’ (279-288); Reinhard Körner, ‘Geistliche Theologie’ (289-302); Salvador Ros, ‘Definiciones de la teología espiritual en el siglo XX’ (303-317); Steven Payne, ‘The Teaching of Spiritual Theology in the United States of America’ (319-329); José Miranda & Patricio Sciadini, ‘La enseñanza de la teología espiritual en Latinoamérica’ (331-356); Gregory D’Souza, ‘Spiritual Theology in Indian Thought’ (357-379); Antoine Marie Zacharie Igirukwayo,

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of Spiritual Theology,75 (IV) The Thematic Structure of Spiritual Theology,76 and (V) The Future of Spiritual Theology: The Free Action and Living Science of the Spirit.77 From 2000 onward, the specialized scholarship in the discipline can be divided into two areas: research articles and manuals, the latter including volumes that – even without claiming to be textbooks – presented deeper insights and meaningful points of view for the discipline’s development. During this period, the first group was not as large as the second. It did, however, include Bruno Secondin’s piece on the possibility and the task of spirituality in the modern age,78 Claudio Stercal’s piece that enriched thought on the relationship between spirituality, experience, and mysticism,79 and Francesco Asti’s piece on the place of Spiritual Theology within the context of conciliar renewal.80 Other important articles included Carlos Larrainzar’s research on the concept of Spiritual Theology81 and Vittorina Marini’s study on contemporary spirituality.82

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‘L’enseignement de la théologie spirituelle en Afrique’ (381-444); Roland Tria Tirona, ‘Christianity and the Challenge of the Modernization in the Philippines’ (445-456). Ciro García Fernández, ‘La teologia espiritual: Autonomía e interdisciplinariedad’ (459-487); Virgilio Pasquetto, ‘Fonti della teologia spirituale: Il criterio normativo della S. Scrittura’ (489500); Saverio Cannistra, ‘Teologia spirituale e teologia dogmatica’ (501-512); Jésus Castellano Cervera, ‘Liturgia, teologia spirituale e spiritualità’ (513-533); Marciano Vidal, ‘Teología espiritual y teología moral’ (535-562); Rafael Checa, ‘Teología espiritual y teología pastoral’ (563-592); Luigi Borriello, ‘L’esperienza’ (593-611); Francois-Marie Léthel, ‘I santi come teologi’ (613-621); Jakov Mamić, ‘Il metodo induttivo e deduttivo nella teologia spirituale’ (623-638); José Humberto Flores Bustamante, ‘La investigación de la espiritualidad pilar indispensable de la acción pastoral’ (639-653). Federico Ruiz Salvador, ‘Funciones y dinámica de la teología espiritual’ (657-694); Santiago Guerra Sancho, ‘El misterio trinitario’ (695-712); Carlo Laudazi, ‘L’uomo in via di trasformazione’ (713-734); Tomás Álvarez, ‘Mística y mistagogía’ (795-743); Maximiliano Herráiz García, ‘Oración - Contemplación’ (745-769); José-Damián Gaitán, ‘Crecimiento espiritual y ascesis’ (771-787); Luis Jorge González, ‘Acompañamiento espiritual’ (789-807). Jesús Castellano Cervera, ‘La teologia spirituale nella Chiesa e nel mondo di oggi’ (811-869); Aldino Cazzago, ‘Spiritualità ed ecumenismo’ (871-886); Agostino Okumura, ‘Il pluralismo nella società moderna e le religioni’ (887-900); Bruno Secondin, ‘Teologia spirituale e culture’ (901-911); Camilo Maccise, ‘Teología espiritual y liberación’ (913-920); Antonio M. Sicari, ‘Il teologo spirituale’ (921-925). Bruno Secondin, ‘Possibilità e compiti della spiritualità nell’epoca moderna’, in: Credere Oggi 20 (2000), 91-104. Claudio Stercal, ‘Spiritualità, esperienza e mistica’, in: Teologia 26 (2001), 428-439. Francesco Asti, ‘La teologia spirituale nel contesto del rinnovamento conciliare’, in: Asprenas 50 (2003), 229-260. Carlos Larrainzar, ‘Sobre la noción de teología espiritual’, in: Salmanticensis 54 (2007), 585-615. Vittorina Marini, ‘Orizzonti, percorsi e testimoni della spiritualità contemporanea’, in: Antonianum 83 (2008), 469-490.

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As noted, many rich and far-reaching manuals and studies were also being published. These included Charles-André Bernard’s text on mystical theology,83 which came out simultaneously in French and Italian, and Michel Rondet’s short treatise on Spiritual Theology.84 At the international conference organized by the Teresianum in 2000, Ciro García sided with the definition of Spiritual Theology as a theological discipline of experience, affectivity (holiness), and inner transformation. That is, a discipline ‘sensitive not only to the great systems of life in the Spirit, but also to the needs of modern persons who want to base their faith in their own experience and to concretely contribute to renewal of Church teaching’.85 Although he reaffirmed the unity between spirituality and theology, he nevertheless advanced the proposal of distinguishing one path for Spiritual Theology and another for Mystical Theology. The plan for the first path would be rooted in the ‘experiential dimension’ and would seek to harmonize the research in this area with that of moral as well as systematic theology. The path of ‘mystical’ theology, on the other hand, would not be thought of as an appendix to spirituality but as an enrichment of the lived experience of the mystery of God, effectively proposing its detachment from the disciplines of Spiritual Theology, Systematic Theology, and Moral Theology. It would have a mystagogic approach because of its appeal to the experiential and mystical dimension of lived Christian experience, without overlooking what is dogmatically held. It would move from the experience of the truth of faith (fides quae) to the lived experience of the faith (fides qua): ‘This is the perspective advanced by the great mystics of Christian spirituality such as John of the Cross. They started with Church teaching, without developing it conceptually. Their original contribution consisted in pointing out the path for arriving at the experience of mystery, in explaining it theologically’.86 Such a formulation makes it possible to ‘rethink’ the nature and the task of Spiritual Theology, fostering dialogue with the other theological disciplines. Two years later, in 2002, Fr. García published his book on the trends and perspectives of contemporary Spiritual Theology, which updated a version he had included in a previous text.87 He returned to the discussion of a separate 83

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Charles-André Bernard, Théologie mystique, Paris: Cerf, 2005 (Teologia mistica, ed. Maria Giovanna Muzj, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2005). Michel Rondet, Laissez-vous guider par l’Esprit: Petit traité de théologie spirituelle, Paris: Bayard, 2005. García Fernández, ‘La teología espiritual’, 478. Ibid., 484. See note 26 above: García Fernández, Teología espiritual contemporánea. The chapter titles are: (I) The ‘Mystical Movement’; (II) Spiritual Theology; (III) The Sources and Method of Spiritual Theology; (IV) Spiritual and Thematic Itinerary of Spiritual Theology; (V) New

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pathway for the discipline, asserting that Spiritual Theology – given that it presents a wide and interdisciplinary horizon – has more difficulty in defining its identity in comparison to systematic or moral theology. Mystical Theology, on the other hand, does not present this difficulty because it includes an area that is more limited and easier to identify within the framework of the theological disciplines, with a better-defined autonomy and, at the same time, greater consistency for the dialogue between Theology and mysticism, the fundamental postulate of the ‘to-do’ in Theology today. In any case, Spiritual Theology must reevaluate ‘experience’, taking into consideration the process of its development over the last decades as a movement ‘from Spiritual Theology to Christian spiritual experience’.88

Fr. García returned to this discussion two more times. First, at an International conference on mysticism, he asserted the need to reread Christian mysticism and to rework theology from a perspective of mystical wisdom: ‘An inversion of the anthropological perspective in Theology is needed. It is not the person who seeks or thinks God but, on the contrary, God who seeks and thinks in the person’.89 The second time he brings it up is at the opening of the academic year at the Theological Faculty of Northern Spain in Burgos, where he goes more fully into (I) the status of Christian mysticism, (II) the relationship between mysticism and spirituality, and (III) the relationship between mysticism and theology.90 Two texts come out in Argentina, one on incarnate Spiritual Theology91 and a study by various authors that relates spirituality to the other theological disciplines. In 2006, Pablo Marti published a manual of initiation to Spiritual Theology92 as did José Luis Illanes the following year.93 In 2007, an interna-

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Trends in Spirituality and the Issues of Spiritual Theology; (VI) Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Spirituality of Vatican Council II; (VII) New Viewpoints for Spiritual Theology. García Fernández, Teología espiritual contemporánea, 371. Ciro García Fernández, ‘Escuelas místicas y principales corrientes’, in: Sentieri illuminati dallo Spirito (papers given at the OCD international conference on mysticism held 3-10 September 2003 at Münsterschwarzach Abbey, Germany), Rome: OCD, 2006, 199-217, here 213-214. There is also an abbreviated Spanish version of the proceedings: Ciro García Fernández, Mística en diálogo. Congreso Internacional de Mística: Selección y síntesis, Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 2004. Ciro García Fernández, Mística, misterio y teologia: Historiografía y criteriología de la mística (inaugural lesson of the 2003-2004 academic year), Burgos: Faculty of Theology of Northern Spain, 2003. Victor Manuel Fernández, Teología espiritual encarnada, Buenos Aires: San Pablo, 2004; Victor Manuel Fernández & Carlos María Galli (Eds.), Teología y espiritualidad: La dimensión espiritual de las diversas disciplinas teológicas, Buenos Aires: San Pablo, 2005. Pablo Marti del Moral, Teología espiritual: Manual de iniciación, Madrid: Rialp, 2006. José Luis Illanes, Tratado de teología spiritual (rev. ed.), Pamplona: EUNSA, 2007.

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tional conference was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Institute of Spirituality at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University.94 During these same years – just to mention some of the work published in English – there appeared: ‘The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality’ edited by Arthur Holder;95 a study on Christian Spirituality;96 another on the theology of spirituality;97 a volume in honor of Sandra Schneiders;98 and a report giving an overview of the relationship between spirituality and mysticism.99 In 2008, a volume commemorating the 65th birthday of Kees Waaijman100 came out. The following year, the proceedings of an international seminar on the experience of God today in relationship to Carmelite mysticism101 were published. In Italy, Francesco Asti dedicated two volumes to the relationship between spirituality and mysticism, and he also reflected on the mystical life.102 The locus theologicus was proposed, first, as mysticism103 by Grzegorz Strzelczyk and then, the following year, as lived holiness104 by Giovanni Lombarda. Luigi Borriello wrote on the relationship between mystical experience and mystical theology.105 Daniele Bertini, Giovanni Salmeri, and Paolo Trianni wrote a

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Pascual Cebollada Silvestre (Ed.), Experiencia y misterio de Dios (papers from the international conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Institute of Spirituality at the Comillas Pontifical University held in Madrid, 24-27 October 2007), Madrid: Comillas, 2009. Arthur Holder (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2005. Elizabeth A. Dreyer & Mark S. Burrows (Eds.), Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005. Samuel M. Powell, A Theology of Christian Spirituality, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005. Bruce H. Lescher & Elizabeth Liebert (Eds.), Exploring Christian Spirituality: Essays in Honor of Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press 2006. James A. Wiseman, Spirituality and Mysticism: A Global View, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006. Hein Blommestijn et al., Seeing the Seeker: Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality. A Festschrift for Kees Waaijman on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2008. Bonita Kovačić et al., The Experience of God Today and Carmelite Mysticism: Mystagogy and Inter-Religious and Cultural Dialog (papers given at the international seminar on held 17-22 September 2007 in Zidine, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zagreb: Karmelska Izdanja, 2009. Francesco Asti, Spiritualità e mistica: Questioni metodologiche, Vatican City: LEV, 2003; Idem, Dalla spiritualità alla mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2005; Idem, Teologia della vita mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2009. Grzegorz Strzelczyk, L’esperienza mistica come locus theologicus: Status questionis, Lugano: Eupress, 2005. Giovanni Lombarda, La santità vissuta come locus theologicus, Milan: Glossa, 2006. Luigi Borriello, Esperienza mistica e teologia mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2009.

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book on the theology of experience.106 Antonio Staglianò placed Christian experience in relationship to critical thought.107 My book was a reflection on Christian life.108 There was a real boom in Italian textbooks during this period. The sixth edition of Charles-André Bernard’s Teologia spirituale109 appeared posthumously but he had revised it before his death. Also in 2002, Eva Rava published her notes on Spiritual Theology,110 which Arnaldo Pigna111 also did two years later. In 2006, Carlo Laudazi presented his research on the fundamental themes of Spiritual Theology112 and the following year, Domenico Sorrentino published his plan of Spiritual Theology.113 In 2009, Manuel Belda came out with an entire course of Spiritual Theology.114 Particularly noteworthy are the publications of the proceedings of various events that were being held. In 2006, the papers given at the international conference on mysticism that had been held at the Abbey of Münsterschwarzach three years prior were published.115 In 2007, the papers from the symposium on Christian contemplation organized by Rome’s Santa Croce University two years earlier came out.116 In 2009, the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality at the Pontifical University Antonianum held a seminar on Spiritual Theology117 and the proceedings of the symposium organized by the Gregorian University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its Institute of Spirituality were 106

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Daniele Bertini, Giovanni Salmeri & Paolo Trianni, Teologia dell’esperienza, Rome: Nuova Cultura, 2010. Antonio Staglianò, Teologia e spiritualità: Pensiero critico ed esperienza cristiana, Rome: Studium, 2006. Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Teologia della vita cristiana: Contemplazione, vissuto teologale e trasformazione interiore, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010. See note 24 above. Eva C. Rava, La grazia di Dio che è con me: Libertà e grazia nella vita spirituale, Rome: PUL, 2002. Arnaldo Pigna, La vita spirituale: Contenuti, itinerario, pienezza, Rome: OCD, 2004. Carlo Laudazi, L’uomo chiamato all’unione con Dio in Cristo: Temi fondamentali di teologia spirituale, Rome: OCD, 2006. Domenico Sorrentino, L’esperienza di Dio: Disegno di teologia spirituale, Assisi: Cittadella, 2007. Manuel Belda, Guidati dallo spirito di Dio: Corso di teologia spirituale, Rome: EDUSC, 2009. See note 89 above: Sentieri illuminati dallo Spirito. Laurent Touze (Ed.), La contemplazione cristiana: esperienza e dottrina, Vatican City: LEV, 2007. Paolo Martinelli (Ed.), ‘Esperienza, teologie e spiritualità: Relazioni al Seminario di studio sulla teologia spirituale promosso dall’Istituto di Spiritualità della Pontificia Università Antonianum di Roma e dalla Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule di Münster’, supplement, in: Italia Francescana: Rivista della conferenza Italiana dei Ministri Provinciali Cappuccini 3 (2009).

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published.118 Franco Fabbro’s interesting work on the ‘Neuropsicologia dell’esperienza religiosa’119 also bears mentioning. In 2012, Josep M. Rambla and Víctor Codina offered a synthesis of fifty years of the development of Spiritual Theology, focusing on the Spanish and Latin American contexts.120 In an article from that same year, Virginia R. Azcuy, an Argentinian who works in her own country and in Chile, concentrated on the development of Spiritual Theology as an academic discipline in the three periods of the twentieth century: from its beginning until the time before Vatican II, the period during the Council, and that of after it.121 As for the last period studied (‘The Future of Spirituality as a Theological Discipline’), it is noteworthy how for the future of the discipline she gives prominence to a Spanish author, who writes in Italian (Jesús M. Garcia), as well as to two others, who belong more to the English-speaking world than to the Latin-European one, both of whom are associated with the journal Studies in Spirituality: Sandra Schneiders and Kees Waaijman. That being the case, it is worthwhile to recognize that some of the conclusions, at which she arrives, are entirely applicable across cultures. For example: the importance today of the connection of Spiritual Theology, or Spirituality, with other theological disciplines (the intradisciplinary level) as well as with other non-theological disciplines (the interdisciplinary level); the centrality of spiritual experience and its development for a current understanding of the discipline; the concern with seeking openings into ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue; and the necessity of mystagogy and the cultivation of the discipline’s practical dimension. Nevertheless, the task remains of overcoming the distinction between ‘spiritual theology’ and ‘spirituality’ in order to provide greater unity to the discipline as well as to diminish the distance between the English-speaking and Latin-European worlds. 118

119 120

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Mihály Szentmártoni & Fabrizio Pieri (Eds.), Spiritualità e teologia. Simposio in occasione del 50º anniversario dell’Istituto di Spiritualità della Pontificia Università Gregoriana (1958-2008) (papers given at the symposium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Gregorian’s Insitute of Spirituality held 12-13 November 2008 in Rome), Rome: GBP, 2010. Franco Fabbro, Neuropsicologia dell’esperienza religiosa, Rome: Astrolabio, 2010. Víctor Codina & Josep M. Rambla, ‘Cincuenta años de teología espiritual’, in: Selecciones de Teología 200 (2011) 286-298. They divide their presentation in two parts: Spiritual Theology of the period leading up to Vatican II and that of the period after the Council. In the second part, they identify many areas of interest: dialogue with secularized society; the spirituality of social, political and liberation engagement, in Europe but also in the Third World; the rediscovery of religion, fiesta and spiritual experience; new ecclesial movements; fascination with the Orient; Interreligious dialogue; Pneumatology; women; esoteric and agnostic tendencies; the aspect of search of in spiritual testimonies; spirituality without faith; and the relation between spirituality and psychology. Virginia R. Azcuy, ‘La espiritualidad como disciplina teológica: Panorama histórico, consensos y perspectivas actuales’, in: Teología (Bs. As.) 47 (2011), 251-280.

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Also in 2012, the Antonianum’s Institute of Spirituality published the papers from the day of study on Spiritual Theology that they had held the previous year for their 40th anniversary.122 That same year Bruno Secondin published his Inquieti desideri di spiritualità123 and the Institute of Spirituality at Rome’s Salesian Pontifical University held a Simposium on ‘Teologia e spiritualità oggi’.124 Angela Tagliafico also published a short compendium of Spiritual Theology.125 In September 2012, the first annual National Forum for Professors of Spiritual Theology in Italy took place. Its eighth edition is scheduled to be held 25-28 September 2019, at the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome. The papers from the first seven symposia are available from the online journal of Spiritual Theology Mysterion (www.mysterion.it),126 which was founded in 2008 to further work being carried out within the discipline. In 2013, Jesús Manuel García published an extensive study regarding the epistemology and interdisciplinary status of Spiritual Theology.127 Last but not least at the end of this long list are the dictionaries. As they have very particular characteristics I thought it best to include them – without claiming this list to be exhaustive – in a separate paragraph rather than in the above chronological presentation of studies and textbooks. The Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique was begun in 1932 and finished in 1995 with its 16th volume.128 In the second half of the 70’s, the Dizionario enciclopedico di spiritualità129 and the Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità130 both came out. In the 80’s, a Dizionario di spiritualità dei laici was published.131 In the 90’s, the Dizionario enciclopedico di spiritualità, today in its third edition, was expanded 122 123

124

125

126

127 128

129

130

131

See note 2 above: Martinelli, La teologia spirituale oggi. Bruno Secondin, Inquieti desideri di spiritualità (introd. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi), Bologna: EDB, 2012. Jesús Manuel García (Ed.), Teologia e spiritualità: Un approccio intradisciplinare. Proceedings of the Symposium organized by the Institute of Spiritual Theology of the Salesian Pontifical University, Rome: LAS, 2012. Angela Tagliafico, Breve compendio di Teologia Spirituale. Intelligenza credente dell’esperienza cristiana, Rome: ταυ editrice, 2012. Mysterion: Rivista di Ricerca in Teologia Spirituale 5 (2012) no.2; 6 (2013) no.2; and 7 (2014) no.2. Jesús Manuel García, Teologia spirituale: Epistemologia e interdisciplinarità, Rome: LAS, 2013. Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: Doctrine et histoire (16 vols.), Paris: Beauchesne, 1932-1995. Ermanno Ancilli (Ed.), Dizionario enciclopedico di spiritualità (2 vols.), Rome: Studium, 1975. Spanish translation: Diccionario de espiritualidad, 2nd ed. (3 vols.), Barcelona: Herder, 2013. Stefano De Fiores & Tullo Goffi (Eds.), Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, Rome: Paoline, 1979. Spanish translation: Augusto Guerra Sancho, Stefano De Fiores & Tullo Goffi (Eds.), Nuevo diccionario de espiritualidad, 6th ed., Madrid: Paulinas, 2012. Ermanno Ancilli (Ed.), Dizionario di spiritualità dei laici, Milan: Opera della Regalità, 1981.

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to three volumes132 and the Dizionario di spiritualità biblico-patristica,133 which is still in the process of being published, was begun. There are also several dictionaries covering particular branches of Spirituality: Franciscan,134 Montfortian,135 Ignatian,136 Carmelite,137 and ecological.138 And, even if not exactly related, the Dizionario di Mistica139 and the Enciclopedia della preghiera140 bear mentioning. 4. Conclusion As can be appreciated, the development of the discipline within Latin-European scholarship – that is, work in Spanish, Italian, and French with references to Latin American work in Spanish and Portuguese – has been consistent and continuous since the Second Vatican Council. It is a tradition that extends from before the Council to the present and has been continually evolving. In a world that is always more connected and with the increasing ease that previous barriers owing to distance are being overcome, it does not seem sensible to remain mutually isolated because of linguistic obstacles. In further explorations along this line of thought,141 I hope to have demonstrated how the development of Latin-European Spiritual Theology has not really been as distant from the work done in Anglo-American spirituality as might be thought.

132

133

134

135 136

137 138

139 140

141

Ermanno Ancilli (Ed.), Dizionario enciclopedico di spiritualità (3 vols.), Rome: Città Nuova, 1990. Salvatore Alberto Panimolle (Ed.), Dizionario di spiritualità biblico-patristica (64 vols.), Rome: Borla, 1992-present. Ernesto Caroli (Ed.), Dizionario francescano: Spiritualità, Padua: Messaggero, 1984; a second edition was published in 1995. Stefano De Fiores (Ed.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité montfortaine, Quebec: Novalis, 1994. José García de Castro et al., Diccionario de espiritualidad ignaciana (2 vols.), 2nd ed., Santander: Sal Terrae, 2007. Emanuele Boaga & Luigi Borriello (Eds.), Dizionario carmelitano, Rome: Città Nuova, 2008. Michael Rosenberger, Im Zeichen des Lebensbaumes: Ein theologisches Lexikon der christlichen Schöpfungsspiritualität, Würzburg: Echter, 2001, a second edition was published in 2008. Luigi Borriello et al. (Eds.), Dizionario di mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 1998. Luigi Borriello, Edmund A. Caruana & Maria Rosaria Del Genio (Eds.), Enciclopedia della preghiera, Vatican City: LEV, 2007. Rossano Zas Friz De Col, ‘Christian Spirituality and Spiritual Theology in a Globalized World’, in: Spiritus 16 (2016) no.2A, 118-135; Idem, ‘The Future of the Study of Spirituality’, in: Studies in Spirituality 28 (2018), 5-18.

CHAPTER 3 THE SEARCH FOR THE TRIPLE UNITY Disciplinary, Intra-Disciplinary, and Inter-Disciplinary

This chapter has a threefold task. First, I would like to propose a common reference horizon within Spiritual Theology in order to permit a basic agreement among spiritual theologians that will establish a shared common landmark from which personal points of view can be further developed. Second, to compare that horizon to non-theological disciplines and thus to suggest a link from which to establish fundamental relationships with them. Third, to also compare that horizon with the traditional theological method in order, simultaneously, to clarify the meaning of both the unity and the plurality of theology.

1. Towards a Minimum Definition of Spiritual Theology In the long list of works of the authors presented in the previous chapter, the role of experience and lived experience within Spiritual Theology emerges clearly. This chapter will make the important step of delving deeper into the issue in order to show that there is something missing, which the concept of transformation can resolve. 1.1 The Problem with the Idea of Experience From 1965 to 2010, there have been 45 years of research within the field of Spiritual Theology. Much of the work identified in the previous chapter presents the idea of experience as the discipline’s key notion. It is true, as we will see below, that some authors have not explicitly asserted this reality, but that does not present a problem. Here it is important to ask how experience has been characterized in the majority of those authors. We can summarize the answers to that question as follows: spiritual experience means making faith subjective and is different from the knowledge of faith

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(Moioli,1 Gozzelino,2 Valli,3 and J. M. García),4 therefore becoming a critical point for dogmatics (Theobald)5 because it unites opposites (Secondin).6 Naturally, it is a matter of Christian life (Sorrentino),7 with some arguing that there is an important distinction to be made between experience (Erfahrung/esperienza) and lived experience (Erlebnis/vissuto, Dienberg),8 which must in any case be integrated with the gradual process of reaching Christian maturity (Moretti,9 Ruiz,10 and Belda)11 in order to be fruitful. It is generally held to be holistic 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

See Giovanni Moioli, ‘Il problema della teologia spirituale’, in: La Scuola Cattolica (Bibliographic Supplement) 94 (1966), 3*-26*; Moioli, ‘A proposito di “teologia spirituale” e del suo insegnamento’, in: Scuola Cattolica 102 (1974), 624-634; Moioli, ‘“Sapere teologico” e “sapere” proprio del cristiano: Note per un capitolo di storia della letteratura spirituale e della teologia’, in: Scuola Cattolica 106 (1978), 569-596; and Moioli, ‘Teologia spirituale’ and ‘Esperienza cristiana’, in: Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, Rome: Paoline, 1979. See Giorgio Gozzelino, Al cospetto di Dio: Elementi di teologia della vita spirituale, Leuman, Torino: LDC, 1989. See Annamaria Valli, ‘A proposito di esperienza in “Teologia spirituale”‘, in: Teologia 17 (1992), 281-302. See Jesús Manuel García, ‘La teologia spirituale oggi: Verso una descrizione del suo statuto epistemologico’, in La teologia spirituale: Acts from the International OCD Conference, Rome: Edizioni OCD-Edizioni del Teresianum, 2001, 205-238. See Christoph Theobald, ‘La “théologie spirituelle”: Point critique pour la théologie dogmatique’, in: Nouvelle Revue Théologique 117 (1995), 178-198; the same article is also published in Theobald, Le christianisme comme style: Une manière de faire de la théologie en postmodernité. Vol. I, Paris: Cerf, 2007, 389-411. See Bruno Secondin, ‘Tendenze e urgenze della spiritualità’, in: Rivista di Pastorale 37 (1999), 12-18; Secondin, Per una fedeltà creativa, Rome: Paoline, 1995; Secondin, La spiritualità nei ritmi del tempo, Rome: Borla, 1997; and Secondin, Spiritualità in dialogo, Rome: Paoline, 1997. See Domenico Sorrentino, ‘Sul rinnovamento della teologia spirituale’, in: Asprenas 41 (1995), 511-532; and Sorrentino, L’esperienza di Dio: Disegno di teologia spirituale, Assisi: Cittadella, 2007. See Thomas Dienberg, ‘Vivere la vita spiritualmente: Trasformare la vita per vivere in pienezza’, in: Corso fondamentale di spiritualità (Münster Spirituality Institute), Brescia: Queriniana, 2006, 13-101. See Roberto Moretti, ‘Tempi maturi per un insegnamento scientifico della teologia spirituale’, in: Seminarium 18 (1966), 116-139; Moretti., ‘L’unità della conoscenza teologica e il compito della teologia spirituale’, in: Seminarium 26 (1974), 41-59; and Moretti, ‘Natura e compito della teologia spirituale’, in: Benedetto Calati, Bruno Secondin, & Tito Paolo Zecca (Eds.), Spiritualità: Fisionomia e compiti (First National Conference of the Italian Association of Spirituality), Rome: LAS, 1981, 15-36. See Federico Ruiz Salvador, ‘Temática de la Teología Espiritual’, in: Seminarium 26 (1974), 191-202; and Ruiz Salvador, Le vie dello Spirito: Sintesi di teologia spirituale, Bologna: EDB, 1999. See Manuel Belda, ‘Lo statuto epistemologico della teologia spirituale nei manuali recenti (1978-1989)’, in: Annales Teologici 6 (1992), 431-457; and Belda, Guidati dallo Spirito: Corso di teologia spirituale, Rome: EDUSC, 2009.

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(Pacho),12 with some focusing on its origins and developments (Queralt),13 as its object is to study the subject of life in the Spirit (Ugarte).14 Others remind us that its ecclesial and cultural aspects cannot be overlooked (Goffi and Secondin),15 especially as regards the young, popular culture, the world, the poor, etc. (De Fiores,16 De Pablo Maroto17 and Castellano).18 Experience certainly implies the dimension of transcendence (Schneiders)19 and of interdisciplinarity (Matanić).20 Some make a distinction between the expression of lived experience (vissuto), or ‘spirituality’, and reflection upon that, or ‘spiritual theology’ (Dupuy).21 Many of these authors consider the transformative, mystical, and loving dimensions of experience to be fundamental, not to mention the mysteric* one (Bernard).22

See Eulogio Pacho, ‘Definición de la “espiritualidad”: Respuestas y tratamientos’, in: Burgense 34 (1993), 281-302. 13 See Antonio Queralt, ‘La “Espiritualidad” como disciplina teológica’, in: Gregorianum 60 (1979), 321-376. 14 See Juan Ignacio Ugarte Grijalba, ‘Espiritualidad y teología espiritual’, in: Revista Teológica Limense 13 (1979), 133-142. 15 See Tullo Goffi & Bruno Secondin (Eds.), Corso di spiritualità: Esperienza, sistematica, proiezioni, Brescia: Queriniana, 1979. 16 See Stefano De Fiores, ‘Conclusione: dati emergenti del 1º Congresso Nazionale di Spiritualità’, in: Spiritualità, 247-252. 17 See Daniel de Pablo Maroto, ‘La espiritualidad emergente del Concilio Vaticano II’, in: Analecta Calansiana 31 (1989), 295-343; De Pablo Maroto., ‘Evolución de la teología espiritual. Siglo XX: De la teología ascética y mística a la teología espiritual’, in: La teologia spirituale, 113-140. 18 See Jesús Castellano Cervera, ‘Linee emergenti della spiritualità oggi’, in: Rivista di Vita Spirituale 43 (1989), 5-31; Castellano Cervera., ‘La Teologia Spirituale nella Chiesa e nel mondo di oggi’, in: La teologia spirituale, 811-869. 19 See Sandra Schneiders, ‘Spirituality in the Academy’, in: Theological Studies 50 (1989), 676697. 20 See Atanasio G. Matanić, La spiritualità come scienza: Introduzione metodologica allo studio della vita spirituale cristiana, Alba-Rome: Paoline, 1990. 21 See Michel Dupuy, ‘La notion di spiritualité’, in: André Derville, Paul Lamarche, & Aimé Solignac (Eds.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, Doctrine et histoire. Vol. XIV, Paris: Beauchesne, 1988, 1160-1173, here 1169. * Translator’s note: Throughout the text, Fr. Rossano uses the word ‘mysteric’ to denote the sense of wonder that should be cultivated in everyday experience. He has chosen it in the hopes of avoiding a sense of the extraordinary, which is expressed by the word ‘mystical’, as well as an intellectual judgement, which can be expressed in the term ‘mysterious’. 22 See Charles-André Bernard (Ed.), La spiritualità come teologia (Symposium organized by the Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome 25-28 April 1991), Rome: Paoline, 1991; and Bernard, Teologia spirituale, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2002. 12

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The relation among spiritual experience, mystic experience (García,23 Borriello,24 and Asti)25 and that of a Christian life (Zas Friz De Col),26 generally speaking, presents no difficulty as regards the role of experience or lived experience (vissuto). However, for certain Thomist authors the notion of experience is only just tolerated (Giardini,27 Pinckaers,28 and Huerga).29 Waaijman,30 considers it, but it is of secondary importance to his choice of focusing the idea of spirituality upon the notion of transformation. This notion is deemed pivotal for the discipline, even if often only implicitly, as it is acknowledged that spiritual life develops, progresses, and matures and is thus transformed. The issue with the notion of experience lies in the fact that it continues in time; experiences follow one another and every experience modifies the previous one. This is why the notion of transformation, which has a long tradition in Spiritual Theology starting from St. John of the Cross, seems to account for experience continuing in time and gradually causing the change that transforms persons who, in spite of this, maintain their identity. We may state that experience is the reasoned awareness we gain in a single case, while lived experience is the critical awareness of an entirety of experiences.

23

24

25

26 27

28

29

30

See Ciro García Fernández, ‘¿Qué es la “teología espiritual”? Intentos de nueva recalificación’, in: Burgense 34 (1993), 303-319; Idem, ‘La Teologia Espiritual: Autonomía e interdisciplinariedad’, in: La teología spirituale, 459-487; Idem, Teología espiritual contemporánea: Corrientes y perspectivas, Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 2002; Idem, ‘Escuelas místicas y principales corrientes’, in: Sentieri illuminati dallo Spirito. Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Mistica, Rome: OCD, 2006, 199-217; Idem, Mística, Misterio y Teología: Historiografía y criteriología de la mística (Opening class of the 2003-2004 academic course), Burgos: Faculty of Theology of North Spain, 2003. Luigi Borriello, ‘L’esperienza’, in: La teología spirituale, 593-611. See also idem, Esperienza mistica e teologia mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2009. Francesco Asti, Spiritualità e mistica: Questioni metodologiche, Vatican City: LEV, 2003; see also idem, Dalla Spiritualità alla mistica: Percorsi storici e nessi interdisciplinari, Vatican City: LEV, 2005; and his Teologia della vita mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2010. See Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Teologia della vita cristiana, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010. See Fabio Giardini, ‘La natura della teologia spirituale’, in: Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica 10 (1965), 363-415. See Théodore Pinckaers, ‘Qu’est-ce que la spiritualité?’, in: Nova et Vetera 65 (1990) no.1, 7-19. See Alvaro Huerga, ‘Il carattere scientifico della teologia spirituale’, in: Bernard, La spiritualità come teologia, 273-295; Idem, ‘El carácter científico de la teología espiritual’, in  : Teología Espiritual 36 (1992), 41-63 (Spanish version of the previous article); Idem, ‘El método de la teología espiritual’, in: Seminarium 26 (1974), 231-249. See Kees Waaijman, La spiritualità: Forme, fondamenti, metodi, trans. John Vriend, Brescia: Queriniana, 2007.

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1.2 Experience or Lived Experience? Thomas Dienberg makes an important distinction between Erfahrung (experience) and Erlebnis (the act of living, or lived experience).31 He presents experience (Erfahrung) as a perceptive and thoughtful process, the purpose of which is to arrive at the dimension of meaning: one analyzes experience in order to find meaning. In contrast, he presents lived experience (Erlebnis), as perception that is not captured in explicit thought. His distinction is based on the work of another German theologian, Georg Bernhard Langemeyer, who affirms the common usage in German of Erlebnis being something one has while Erfahrung is something one does. Erlebnis is fleeting. It cannot be shared or divulged. It is passive, momentary, and, in a sense, blind. Experiences, however, can be shared, transmitted, grounded, and imply conscious reflection for making sense of life.32 There is no experience without it first being lived experience but the reverse is not true.33 Experience, in fact, is analogical and has a plurality of meanings. A more specialized point of view, which is relevant in this context, can be found in the work of Rafael Martínez, a philosopher of science.34 He points out some characteristics that can be recognized as common to all experiences and that are found in every usage of the term ‘experience’. For instance, it always refers to an unshared personal dimension that is the result of immediate, un-mediated, contact with something concrete, singular, and external, which does not leave any objective content in the mind of the person experiencing it.35 However, there is a problem that arises with translating Erlebnis as ‘lived experience’, which raises an important question. ‘Lived experience’ means the entirety of experiences, as in the lived experience of a life meaning the complexity of experiences that have been lived and integrated into a greater unity, that is, precisely a life. It is not, therefore, unreflected experience. This is why translating Erlebnis as (unreflected) lived experience does not do justice to the term; its meaning has been moved in an important direction. Instead, the term ‘lived 31

32

33

34

35

Thomas Dienberg, ‘Vivere la vita spiritualmente: Trasformare la vita per vivere in pienezza’, in: Corso fondamentale di spiritualità, 26-30. ‘Man hat Erlebnisse, aber man macht Erfahrungen’, Georg Bernhard Langemeyer, ‘Gotteserfahrung und religiöses Erleben’, in: Seminar für Spiritualität. Vol. I, in: A. Rotzetter (Ed.), Geist wird Leib, Zurich-Einsiedeln-Cologne: Benziger Verlag, 1979, 113-126, here 113. ‘Bei genauer Analyse des Phänomens Erfahrung stellt sich heraus, dass es zwar Erlebnisse gibt, die nicht zur Erfahrung führen, aber keine Erfahrung ohne Erlebnis-Momente’, ibid., 115. Rafael Martínez, ‘Esperienza’, in: Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti & Alberto Strumia (Eds.), Dizionario interdisciplinare di scienza e fede. Vol. I, Rome: Urbaniana University Press-Città Nuova, 2002, 536-537. From a theological point of view, Luigi Borriello’s work on experience is helpful in avoiding misunderstandings on the issue. See footnote 24 above.

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experience’, for Spirituality, gathers together a group of experiences within a shared horizon of shared meaning. Thus, it can be affirmed that a person’s religious experiences can be expressed in their ‘lived’ religious experience. The ‘lived’ in ‘lived experience’ is a past participle but it also functions as an adjective. Someone who ‘has lived’ is expert, seasoned, tried, cunning, shrewd, quick, the opposite of someone naïve, inexperienced, incompetent, or unprepared. It is synonymous with having experience, a past, a life.36 Someone who has lived has had a long and intense experience of life that comes from profound and direct experience. [It gathers] the entirety of events that represent an individual’s, or a collective’s, history taken in its immediacy, without conditioning of a conceptual or moral nature. By extension: it is what has been experienced in the past that still maintains important relevance in memory or awareness.37

Here are two other examples confirming this usage,which contradict the German sense of Erlebnis in a theological context. First, under ‘Experience’ in the dictionary Teologia, Nunzio Galantino uses ‘lived experience’ as a synonym of experience (Erfahrung): Experience thus is made up as the ‘absolute horizon of mediation’ in which mediation is not a technical-objective process but is always a lived experience through which pass the impressions that generate sensations of organized knowledge.38

Further, Federico Ruiz, in his presentation of Spiritual Theology not only mentions lived experience as a synonym of experience but as a term that better expresses what experience means. Experience means a communicated and personally grasped reality and the lived experience of mystery rather than the ‘experience’ of mystery. The difference is clear. Reality itself prevails, the content of faith that is communicated and, through assimilation, produces the awareness of personal encounter. God’s communication to and welcoming by persons with faith, hope, and love as what gives root and strength to grace and to life.39

36

37

38

39

Tullio de Mauro (Ed.), Grande dizionario Italiano di sinonimi e contrari. Vol. II, Turin: UTET, 2010, s.v. ‘vissuto’, 1451 Tullio de Mauro (Ed.), Il dizionario della lingua italiana, Turin: Paravia, 2000, s.v. ‘vissuto’, 2908. Nunzio Galantino, ‘Esperienza’, in: Giuseppe Barbaglio, Giampiero Bof & Severino Diamnich (Eds.), Teologia, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2002, 596. Ruiz Salvador, Le vie dello Spirito, 20.

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Clarifying this translation is important because it allows for a wider usage of the concept of ‘lived experience’ than can be expressed with Erlebnis. For example, in the field of psychology, lived experience refers to that which has been experienced in the past that maintains a current presence in one’s memory and awareness; in particular, as has been suggested by analytic psychology, the totality of events that constitute an individual’s (or even a collective’s) history inasmuch as it is susceptible to being immediately recognized, as concrete images or symbolic representations, without conditioning of a conceptual or moral nature.40

This meaning would be impossible if ‘lived experience’ had the German characteristics of Erlebnis. The difference between ‘experience’ and ‘lived experience’ does not lie in the former’s awareness or in the latter’s unreflectedness, but in the fact that ‘experience’ refers to a singular fact while ‘lived experience’ embraces a spectrum of experiences. This difference can be seen in a simple example: ‘experience of life’ does not say the same thing as ‘life experience’. The first refers to the experience of being alive while the second collects and embraces the totality of a person’s experiences during their life. Experience points to individual episodes while lived experience captures them all. In conclusion, we can say that ‘experience’ is the reasoned awareness acquired in a single case while ‘lived experience’ is the critical awareness of a totality of experiences. 1.3 The Lived Experience of Transformation Having clarified the relationship between experience and lived experience, we can return to the discussion on transformation. It will be helpful to consider the link between the two trends presented in recent studies. The first trend is that of the Latin-European theologians who identify Spiritual Theology as its approach towards experience. The second instead, is emblematically – and, in a sense, characteristically of Anglo-Saxon work in the area – represented by Kees Waaijman, according to whom the identity of spirituality is based on the notion of ‘transformation’. The Dutch author does not deprive experience of its importance, indeed, he acknowledges recent developments within the discipline, but in his definition of spirituality he does not mention it explicitly, even if we can take for granted the fact that he does not conceive transformation without experience, or better still, without lived experience.

40

Enciclopedia Treccani. Vol. X, Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2010, s.v. ‘vissuto’, 730.

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However, it would actually seem for the identity of Spiritual Theology, that ‘experience’ and ‘transformation’ proceed along parallel paths. Here I am proposing to identify Spiritual Theology not with ‘experience’, but with lived experience, which gathers together a constellation of experiences, and to link this term with ‘transformation’. In this way, Spiritual Theology can be defined, generally speaking, as the lived experience of an inner transformation. 1.4 Conclusion This section seeks a minimum definition of Spiritual Theology that cannot be refused by any spiritual theologian; one with an indisputable core upon which every theologian could add whatever they consider absolutely necessary from their own personal perspective. This core is formed by the terms ‘lived experience’ (vissuto) and ‘inner transformation’, within which the faithful become aware of their gradual inner transformation, due to the relationship experienced with God. Upon reflection, the faithful become aware of their gradual inner transformation, which can be attributed to the lived experience of God. The core of Spiritual Theology, therefore, is constituted by the faithful’s lived experience of inner transformation, with the holy and transcendent Mystery revealed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moreover, and hinting in passing at a development of this line of thought, it is possible to apply the same definition to the study of any human relationship with that which transcends the human, regardless of whether it is conceived of as a personal being or not. It is therefore a case of the study of the process of human inner transformation as the result of a personal relationship with transcendent Mystery. 2. The Lived Experience of Inner Transformation and the Non-Theological Disciplines Having identified the core of Spiritual Theology as the ‘lived experience of inner transformation’, and presupposing that it is the ‘consequence of a relationship with the holy and transcendent Mystery of the Christian God’, at this second stage of our study it becomes helpful to compare this basic definition to some of the non-theological sciences. In this way, we can articulate a minimum interdisciplinary framework to facilitate true relationships between interior transformative lived experience and various non-theological disciplines. In an extensive and detailed study, Waaijman discusses the way in which twelve disciplines regard ‘spirituality’. In the order they are discussed, these disciplines are theology, religious studies, philosophy, literary studies, history,

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anthropology, psychology, sociology, education, management sciences, medicine, and the natural sciences. ‘Each of these disciplines defines the phenomenon [of spirituality] from its own perspective and develops specific research strategies’.41 To explain these perspectives, Waaijman applies ten research criteria to each one, thus highlighting the way in which the content of ‘spirituality’ is developed from the particular standpoint of each. Concretely speaking, it is a matter of seeing which words each discipline uses to refer to spirituality, what things it points out, what images it uses, what texts it refers to, what stories it tells, how it notices processes of transformation and relationships with others, what professions practice it, what disciplinary relationships are established and, lastly, what particular theories it formulates on spirituality.42 He reaches the conclusion that it is necessary to move from a multi-disciplinary approach to spirituality – where every single discipline develops its own understanding of spirituality with its own methods independently of one another – to an ‘interdisciplinary network’. According to Waaijman, this is a matter of constructing a network where theology43 lies at the center, engaging with three clusters of disciplines.44 The first of these clusters includes theology’s relationships with anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies. According to Waaijman, they ensure a large and comprehensive study on the relationship between the human and the divine along with, contemporaneously, an approach to the fundamental epistemological questions that are so important for interdisciplinary studies. The second type of disciplines includes theology, religious studies, history and literary studies, which ‘develop the critical tools to describe, interpret, and understand the texts and histories of spirituality’.45 The third and last type includes the human dimension of spirituality, connecting theology to anthropology and the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology and, more specifically, pedagogy, medicine, and management sciences. Waaijman has not overlooked the natural sciences but, beyond listing them, he does not establish any sort of relationship between these and theology.

41

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43

44 45

Kees Waaijman, ‘Spirituality: A Multifaceted Phenomenon. Interdisciplinary Explorations’, in: Studies in Spirituality 17 (2007), 1-113, here 3. For a detailed presentation of the ten dimensions, see Kees Waaijman, ‘SPIRIN Encyclopedia of Spirituality’, in: Studies in Spirituality 16 (2006), 287-326. As we shall see further on, what he refers to as ‘theology’ will be clarified as ‘spirituality as theology’. See Kees Waaijman, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods, Leuven: Peeters, 2002, 103-104. Ibid., 104.

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In a second article, which appeared in 2011 and was entitled ‘Spirituality as Theology’, Waaijman took a further step in his reflections, identifying the three areas he had previously categorized, now not only in relationship to theology but as three different forms of ‘spirituality as theology’. He identified fundamental, biblical, and practical spirituality as constituting together ‘an intradisciplinary triangle: spirituality as theology’.46 Waaijman identified the first type as ‘fundamental spirituality’, relating it to philosophy, anthropology, metaphysics, ethics, and cosmology. There are two observations to be made in respect to his previous arrangement. Here Waaijman includes the natural sciences that, in the first framework, had remained isolated, without any connection to theology. Moreover, in his new arrangement he does not mention religious studies, which were previously related with the first and second clusters. ‘Biblical spirituality’ – which takes a part (the Bible) for the whole (Judeo-Christian revelation) – includes historical-literary studies and art. The third dimension of spirituality as theology is ‘practical spirituality’, which corresponds to the third type of the previous arrangement and includes the same disciplines in the new formulation (psychology, sociology, pedagogy, medicine, and the management sciences). With this fundamental, biblical, and practical ‘triangle’ the author hopes to respond to four questions that he puts to each of the three dimensions of spirituality: one regarding the epistemology and methodology of spirituality; one regarding the inter-disciplinary approach in respect to sense experience; one regarding the dimension of meaning; and one regarding their connection with religious tradition, bearing in mind the present individualistic and antiinstitutional culture. According to Waaijman, if we wish to answer these questions we need to consider the relationship of the three dimensions of ‘Spirituality as Theology’ at both an intra-disciplinary and an inter-disciplinary level with the various nontheological disciplines. This means that, in the Christian tradition, ‘Spirituality as Theology’ is formulated through intra-disciplinary dialogue, frequently enriched by inter-disciplinary dialogue with the non-theological disciplines. In any case, ‘Spirituality as Theology’ serves as a reference point for all the nontheological disciplines mentioned and arranges them within a unified vision, thus avoiding a disjointed dispersion of knowledge, in this case, of the knowledge of spirituality.47 By applying Waaijman’s framework of ‘Theology as Spirituality’ to the ‘lived experience of inner transformation’ we can affirm that, both as regards intradisciplinary and inter-disciplinary dialogue between the three dimensions, the issue is not only of the utmost importance for the development of the discipline, 46 47

Kees Waaijman, ‘Spirituality as Theology’, in: Studies in Spirituality 21 (2011), 1-43, here 34. See ibid., 37.

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but can also serve as a concrete thematic reference for the dialogue with nontheological disciplines. In fact, Waaijman speaks of ‘transformation’ when he explains processes in theology’s relationship with non-theological disciplines. From this, we can understand that the issue of the lived experience of inner transformation may be studied at an inter-disciplinary level in order to enrich intra-disciplinary dialogue. The fact that Waaijman includes it among his ten criteria means, for our aims, that it may be used as the criterion for a ‘minimum’ definition of spirituality. In 1965, Fabio Giardini48 had already proposed three dimensions of spirituality: the experimental/descriptive, the doctrinal/explanatory, and the prudential/ behavioral dimensions, which for Antonio Queralt are three aspects of the same reality.49 We cannot forget that Sandra Schneiders also proposed a division into three dimensions: descriptive, critical-analytical, and constructiveappropriative.50 It follows easily, therefore, that the proposals just mentioned coincide with Waaijman’s division, assimilating his fundamental dimension to the doctrinal/explanatory and critical-analytical, his biblical dimension to the experimental/descriptive and descriptive, and his practical dimension to the prudential/behavioral and constructive-appropriative. This harmony more strongly confirms the project of ‘Spirituality as Theology’, in which it is important to understand two dimensions that need to be given more attention and that are the subject of the following section: the unity of theology and theological pluralism. 3. ‘Spirituality as Theology’: The Unity of Theology and Theological Pluralism The reason for the controversy between Spiritual Theology (the preferred European term for the discipline) and Spirituality (the preferred term in Englishspeaking circles) is debate over what position theology should occupy in the discipline. Spiritual theologians, arguing for a traditional position, though with various nuances, take the study of Christian lived experience as their motivation. That is, their fundamental presupposition is that the discipline is theological, that it is achieved in light of the tradition of Christian revelation. Scholars in spirituality do not deny the traditional theological dimension out of hand, but approach the phenomenon of inner transformation from a point of view that is similar to that of the non-theological disciplines. Waaijman’s previously mentioned case is a clear example of this.

48 49 50

Giardini, ‘La natura della teologia spirituale’. Queralt, ‘La “Espiritualidad” como disciplina teológica’. Schneiders, ‘Spirituality in the Academy’.

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In order to avoid giving the impression of having to deal with two parallel paths, we must emphasize that Christian scholars cannot ignore their personal faith when analyzing the phenomenon of inner transformation. It is obvious that a ‘scholarly’ neutrality is impossible and thus it is better to methodologically acknowledge one’s personal starting point, which implies an awareness of one’s presuppositions. Such a position can greatly contribute to methodological control over procedures and, especially, conclusions. Of course, it needs to be considered that, starting from a standpoint of faith, understanding inner transformation with inter-disciplinary assistance within a framework of ‘Spirituality as Theology’, is not the same as studying the issue from the viewpoint of systematic theology or moral theology. Nevertheless, it would not be beneficial to cut off all relations with the theological disciplines. So then, how can we deal with the lived experience of inner transformation in relation to theology alone? 3.1 Spirituality as Theology Waaijman’s proposal has undergone a transformation from its first to its second formulation. In effect, in his first article he puts theology at the center of interdisciplinary dialogue whereas in the second one he formulates his idea of ‘Spirituality as Theology’. But the three dimensions of ‘Spirituality as Theology’ in his second article correspond to the three areas to which theology was related in the first article mentioned. Can the tri-partition he applies to spirituality as theology simply be applied to theology? In other words, is saying ‘Spirituality as Theology’ the same as saying ‘Theology as Spirituality’? 3.1.1 The Triple Form of Theology According to Dionysius the Areopagite in the Interpretation of Charles-André Bernard To explain the meaning of Dionysian pluralism, Charles-André Bernard maintains that we have to interpret Dionysius’s sense of God starting from his spirituality, that is, ‘we must accept that Dionysius’s language is, in the common meaning of the term, a spiritual language’.51 This means that at the heart of his theology lies the contemplation nourished by Scripture and the liturgy.52 In that contemplation, Dionysius discovers a triple movement of the person of faith – 51

52

See Charles-André Bernard, ‘Les formes de la Théologie chez Denys l’Aréopagite’, in: Gregorianum 50 (1978), 39-69, here 44. ‘Le centre de gravité de la doctrine dionysienne se situe dans cette activité contemplative. Denys est une âme sacerdotale; double est la source de son inspiration l’Ecriture, lue dans l’Eglise, et le monde liturgique auquel il participe et qui lui fait rejoindre Dieu’ (ibid.).

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circular, spiral, and rectilinear – which leads directly to the object, God. In this way, he establishes a correspondence between the triple movement of the ascent to God and theology, identifying three paths: The soul too has movement. First it moves in a circle, that is, it turns within itself and away from what is outside and there is an inner concentration of its intellectual powers. A sort of fixed revolution causes it to return from the multiplicity of externals, to gather in upon itself and then, in this undispersed condition, to join those who are themselves in a powerful union. From there the revolution brings the soul to the Beautiful and the Good, which is beyond all things, is one and the same, and has neither beginning nor end. But whenever the soul receives, in accordance with its capacities, the enlightenment of divine knowledge and does so not by way of the mind nor in some mode arising out of its identity, but rather through discursive reasoning, in mixed and changeable activities, then it moves in a spiral fashion. And its movement is in a straight line when, instead of circling in upon its own intelligent unity (for this is the circular), it proceeds to the things around it, and is uplifted from external things, as from certain variegated and pluralized symbols, to the simple and united contemplations.53

Mystical theology is represented by the circular movement because it has an unlimited transcendental movement. The rectilinear movement, on the other hand, represents symbolic theology for it starts from the surrounding multiplicity of external objects and then rises towards the contemplation of unity. Lastly, discursive theology is identified with the spiral movement because it understands concepts, such as the names of God, rationally and discursively but not intuitively. According to Bernard, the three paths have the same object, thearchy, and the same starting point, sensed reality, but their methods differ.54 Symbolic theology goes directly from sensation to intelligible perception. Discursive theology starts with sensation, but moves to the concept and then, in a second moment, to 53

54

Dionysius the Areopagite, The divine names, 4.9 (705 A-B), in: Pseudo-Dionysius: The complete works, trans. Colm Luibheid, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987, 78. See Bernard, ‘Les formes de la Théologie’, 47. See also the comment by René Roques: ‘La matérialité des symboles et la fragmentation du discours dans le temps sont pour Denys comme pour ses émules néoplatoniciens des moyens de mettre l’Un à la portée de nos intelligences limitées: l’inexprimable est exprimé; celui qui échappe à toute forme prend une forme sensible; l’éternel entre dans le temps. Par cette condescendance, le Transcendant nous devient accessible, mais à la condition que, dans un mouvement inverse, nos intelligences se convertissent en se haussant du plan spatio-temporel de la connaissance discursive à la contemplation purement intelligible et à l’union parfaite. L’anagogie de notre hiérarchie humaine ne s’opère pas dans une durée purement spirituelle. Elle doit vaincre les résistances de l’espace inhérent au “schématisme” symbolique et les résistances d’un temps spatialisé inséparable de la fragmentation successive du discours’. René Roques, L’univers Dionysien: Structure hiérarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys, Paris: Cerf, 1983, 337-338 (emphasis mine).

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signified reality. Mystical theology, instead, expresses itself in negation55 and is open to experience, in the sense of experiencing the divine.56 In conclusion, contemplation is the source of theology that is nourished, positively, by concepts (discursive theology) and symbols (symbolic theology), as well as by remaining in a holy fast of the negation of both (mystical theology). In the words of Piero Scazzoso: The unquestionable merit of the Areopagite’s theology lies in the unfailing consistency with which the two complementary themes of the cataphatic and the apophatic proceed towards an equally unutterable convergence that leaves faith – without thereby suppressing reason however – its fertile soil and endless creative space.57

According to Bernard, the Areopagite’s formulation is an invitation, especially today when the need is felt for a unity of theology and Christian life, ‘to integrate all the dimensions of theology, bearing in mind the different forms it may assume’.58 As we will see below, Kees Waaijman advances a similar idea. 3.1.2 The Tripartite Theology of Classical Antiquity in Waaijman’s Interpretation The triple approach that Waaijman applies to theology is based on the way in which classical antiquity related to divinity, that is, through poets, pious persons, and philosophers. ‘They differ according to the way in which they develop in the element of the mythos, the praxis, or the logos. They are one, in so far as they are directed towards divine reality’.59 Moreover, they have a continuous and uninterrupted relationship. ‘The pious praxis is nourished through myths; the mythoi search for their public in the city-states; and, without the language of the poets, the philosophers are unable to pursue the pious praxis which they criticize. In effect, the three forms hang mutually together’.60 55

56

‘Timothy, my friend, my advice to you as you look for a sight of the mysterious things, is to leave behind you everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable, all that is not and all that is, and, with your understanding laid aside, to strive upward as much as you can toward union with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. By an undivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything, shedding all and freed from all, you will be uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything that is’. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology, 1.1 (997B-1000A), in: The Complete Works, 135. See Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, 2.9 (648 B), ), in: The Complete Works, 65.

57

Piero Scazzoso, ‘La teologia antinomica dello Pseudo-Dionigi (II)’, in: Aevum 50 (1976), 234.

58

Bernard, ‘Les formes de la Théologie’, 68. Waaijman, ‘Spirituality as Theology’, 5. Ibid., 8.

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Waaijman’s analysis of Paul’s speech in Athens (Acts 17:22-29) goes in that direction, confirming his triple perspective. The pious are mentioned,61 as are the philosophers,62 and the poets.63 According to Waaijman, the harmony between classical theology and Paul’s arguments indicates that primitive Christianity used the classical tripartite system as a missionary approach to link ancient Greek wisdom to Christian revelation following a method that was familiar to listeners. The importance of applying the ‘pagan’ framework of knowledge of God to the Christian revelation indicates that it ‘worked’ for expressing Christian lived experience, even though the announcement of Christ’s resurrection remains unheard. As already mentioned, Waaijman applies this tripartite division to his understanding of spirituality as theology. 3.1.3 Convergences and Divergences of the Two Approaches The difference between the two approaches lies in the content while the convergence lies in their method. In fact, the starting point of tripartite theology is the anthropological experience of transcendence, while Dionysius’s point of departure is thearchy. It is the faithful contemplation of Christian revelation that makes the difference, as evidenced by Paul’s audience at the Areopagus in Athens refusing to hear of Jesus’ resurrection. The fact that the classic approach can also be found in Paul, who uses it to present his experience of the Resurrected One, makes it possible – without forcing either position – to relate poets to symbolic theology, philosophers to discursive theology, and the pious to mystic theology. This is possible because there are three ways of expressing relationship with God. Indeed, it can also be presupposed that the starting point in both cases is a shared experience with mystery, though at different levels as will be seen in the following chapter. For the moment, suffice it to state that 61

62

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Acts 17:22-23, NABRE. ‘Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said: “You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God’. What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you”’. Acts 17:24-27. ‘The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything. He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us’. Acts 17:28-29. ‘For “In him we live and move and have our being”, as even some of your poets have said, “For we too are his offspring”. Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination’.

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Bernard’s and Waaijman’s positions converge. In other words, even if classical tripartite theology and Dionysius’s threefold approach to theology correspond to two different experiences, they share the same means of expression. 3.1.4 Spirituality: Theology, Contemplation, Transformation Starting from this last distinction between ancient wisdom and Christian revelation, we can answer this section’s initial question on whether it is possible to identify ‘Spirituality as Theology’ with ‘Theology as Spirituality’. The difference between Paul’s experience and that of his listeners at the Areopagus lies in the fact that Paul starts from the lived experience of faith and reflects on it, while those who listen to him start from a lived experience that he does not share. In this sense, the step taken by Waaijman from the classic approach to ‘Spirituality as Theology’ is pertinent in that the lived experience of faith can be effectively expressed in those three dimensions, even though the content differs. There is no difficulty in accepting Waaijman’s proposal to move from tripartite classical theology to a triple distinction of fundamental (logos), biblical (mythos), and practical (praxis) dimensions of spirituality as theology. There is a correspondence with the Dionysian trilogy; in fact, we have systematic, poetic, and mystical theology respectively. It seems pertinent to return to this distinction. The Christian starting point can never be the rational reflection of the classic framework of antiquity, even if that was the fruit of a contemplative attitude towards reality. From a Christian point of view, we start from the lived experience of the contemplation of thearchy, in the Dionysian sense, which implies faith. In this way, the lived experience of the faith upon which we reflect becomes spirituality. In spite of this, there is a certain confusion among theologians that has become consolidated: pious reflection on the content of faith is now taken for ‘Spirituality’. The misunderstanding lies in the fact that they do not distinguish between reflection on the content of revelation and reflection on the lived experience of faith. Systematic theology, which proposes the truth of faith for the faithful to consider, falls under the first category. Without a doubt, these formulations nourish the lived experience of faith, but the lived experience of revelation cannot but be identified with their discursive formulations. Paul’s lived experience on the way to Damascus cannot be identified from a dogmatic formulation of the dual nature of Christ in one person. Formulations may nourish lived experience, but they are only meaningful in reference to the lived experience that is their basis. In other words, theological reflection on the lived experience of faith, that is, ‘Spirituality as Theology’, is not the same as reflection on the content of lived experience, which could be called ‘Theology as Spirituality’. That which

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systematic theologians dismissively refer to as ‘Spiritual Theology’ is actually nothing other than pious reflection on the discursive content of revelation. They create theological formulas of ‘Spirituality’, thus confusing the lived experience of faith with the lived experiences of their formulations. Actually, these are two different dynamics that depend on each other, but that cannot be identified in the dynamics of the expression of the Christian revelation. In the present post-modern and post-Christian context, it could be claimed that Paul’s and Dionysius’s starting point for a ‘Spirituality as Theology’ is the lived experience of transformation brought about through contemplation of Christian revelation, considered from an inter-disciplinary approach. However, if the transcendental openness of the pious attitude of classical antiquity is expressed in being God-fearing and adoring that which is unknown (see Acts 17:22-23), a point of view that sustains poets and philosophers, it is in no way comparable to the transcendental openness of Paul or Dionysius. In the Christian case, the object contemplated and the subjective effects of such contemplation differ. Their difference arises from the object contemplated, not from a shared anthropological condition, even if it is necessary to consider the fact that, in the Christian context, the assistance of the Holy Spirit can be counted upon. The grace of faith serves to help us accept objective and transcendent divine revelation in our human condition. Outside of Christianity, this arrangement is not explicitly reproduced for it only occurs where the Christian message, revealing how God relates to humanity in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is announced. Fortunately, the tripartite articulation of theology (Bernard and Waaijman), together with the starting point that has been established – the lived experience of inner transformation as the result of contemplation – offer a renewed minimum concept of spirituality within its recent tradition. However, if this ‘renewed minimum concept’ is to have a stronger basis it needs to be compared with two issues: the unity of theology and theological pluralism. 3.2 The Unity of Theology Proceeds from Faith In what has become a classical text on how to ‘do’ theology, Zoltan Alszeghy and Maurizio Flick state that (dogmatic) theology is an activity of faith. It is generally held that persons who study the Christian religion are ‘theologians’ only if they have the faith, and if they study the Christian religion with a prior understanding of faith. (…) We will merely note an expression of the Church’s understanding of what she considers ‘theology’: theology is an activity of faith, the theologian is a believer, one who has the faith, or rather, is possessed by faith.64 64

Zoltan Alszeghy & Maurizio Flick, Introductory Theology, trans. Donald W. Wuerl, London: Sheed & Ward, 1982, 13, emphasis in the original.

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The authors warn us against the intellectual distortion that consists in thinking that believing means accepting a series of assertions on divine authority. Without denying the intellectual aspect of faith, we must remember that faith is an existential attitude based on dialogue and rooted in a fundamental option, which permeates the believer’s whole existence, in response to the call of a personal being.65

The intellectual aspect of faith is not the only one, nor the main one, but it ‘is indispensable for Christian existence and is the horizon of all theological study,’66 if it is not isolated from the wider context of Christian life. How can we understand faith from this point of view? By listening to and embracing the message that comes from God himself. ‘Such an immediate and intuitive recognition, though not the fruit of explicit reasoning, may be resolved and justified by means of reasoning’.67 This is in no way the result of academic research. Such a ‘pre-judice’ causes theology to operate like an activity of the very faith that it is trying to understand, but faith itself is neither knowledge nor a vision, but something that transports us beyond sensible experience and rational evidence.68 Theology, as an activity of faith, is a source of knowledge. It tries to understand He in whom it believes. The study of theology is justified not by the desire to know some object (even if in the light of the word of God), but by the aspiration to listen to the divine message of salvation (even if in relation to the empirically known cultural environment in which we must operate).69

In an initial, general attempt, Archbishop Rino Fisichella defines theology as ‘an understanding of Christian teaching in order to lead a meaningful life’.70 He continues, from an initial event, further growth – already present in it – develops, allowing for a historical understanding of past and present. This opens us up to the discovery and expression of truth for the future as well. Our understanding of the event must refer to it as our formal and causal beginning because there is no other possibility of knowing the foundation outside of the foundation itself.71

65 66 67 68 69 70

71

Ibid., 14. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 17, first emphasis in the original, the second emphasis is my own. See ibid., 18. Ibid., 19-20. Rino Fisichella, Guido Pozzo & Ghislain Lafont, La teologia tra rivelazione e storia: Introduzione alla teologia sistematica, Bologna: Dehoniane, 1977 (Corso di teologia sistematica 1), 41. Ibid., 45.

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This initial event must be a new, pre-critical element, not a previously deduced one but the basis for all deductions. It is thus revelation approached by faith, the proper form of theological knowledge.72 Revelation is the foundation but also the horizon and goal of reflection upon the faith as well as its center. There are two clear reasons revelation must be the central focus of theological reflection: First of all, to highlight that there is just one formal principle uniting the different disciplines that make up theological study. The complementarity of perspectives cannot overshadow the singular principle from which they draw their origin. Second, to allow communication and understanding of the contents of [theological] investigation within academic research. Scholarly study must have a structure that organizes the variety of knowledge that comprises it around a recognizable and defined center.73

Even if a theologian is operating from the standpoint of faith, that is not enough for ‘doing’ theology. A method is needed. Trying to avoid polemics regarding notions such as ‘discipline’ and ‘academics’, suffice it to state this has to do with ‘study’ that, according to Alszeghy and Flick, in order ‘to be called theological (…) must refer to given sources, it must use a method of exact communicability, and it must present verification principles with regards to its own affirmations’.74 These criteria are in harmony with Walter Kern and Franz-Josef Niemann’s ‘four minimum demands’: the absence of contradictions, correct deductions, linguistic accuracy, and intelligibility on an intersubjective level.75 In line with the above, Fisichella affirms that a shared conception of academic rigor implies a system of general knowledge that is coherently and logically organized. Knowledge that forms an unfragmented, uncontradictory whole and is therefore intelligible and communicable has its own method for analyzing its object of study, and thus obtains certain and accurate results. It does not espouse absolutism, but neither does it claim academic neutrality. If this idea is applied to theology then, it is a matter of establishing the conditions of possibility, the procedural methods, and the rules for verifying the theological process in how it expresses concepts and languages within an academic horizon. (…) It is upon this basis, in fact, that a correct way of thinking is constructed from which to organize theological content and to adopt a proper method for it to be coherently known and communicated.76 72

73 74 75

76

‘The revealed content that gives rise to theology is by the latter considered and believed as a truth that need not be proved, but only understood intellectually and made communicable’. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 46. Alszeghy & Flick, Introductory Theology, 20-21, emphasis in the original. Walter Kern & Franz-Josef Niemann, Theologische Erkenntnislehre, Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1981, 31-32. Fisichella, Pozzo & Lafont, La teologia, 57.

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Theology cannot be critical understanding in the same way as philosophy, which seeks rational certainty, because its source is revelation and its object is the mystery of God.77 On the contrary, Fisichella maintains that faith is not expressed in just one way, but has different forms. Given the supremacy of grace, which acts within the believer and enables the gift of faith, it is possible to determine that it has a triple structure: the intelligence of the mystery, liturgy, and witness.78 Within the sphere of mystery, belief and believing in the faith are ways of knowing that are determined by their object, the mystery of God, which goes beyond all critical knowledge. ‘The act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing’.79 In conclusion, faith gives unity to the knowledge that is earned from and with it, a knowledge that has a tripartite structure. In light of the above, we may now introduce the issue of the plurality of theology. 3.3 Theological Pluralism and Spiritual Theology Waaijman’s proposal that divides ‘Spirituality as Theology’ into fundamental, biblical, and practical dimensions on the basis of tripartite classical theology (logos, mythos, and praxis), corresponds to Dionysius’s threefold approach to theology, which takes the form of systematic, poetic, and mystical theology. Faith thrives on faith, but it expresses itself in different manners that are not all mediated the same way. In fundamental/systematic theology, faith is expressed through discourse (logos). In biblical/poetic theology, it is expressed through symbol (mythos). In practical/mystical theology, faith is expressed through the adoring silence of the transcendent anagogy (praxis). This highlights why Spiritual Theology sees itself as the heir to the mystical/pious dimension of theology, distanced from its sister disciplines, in just the same way that hope can be understood in relation to faith and love, but also with its own specificity. If we accept the following three premises that: 1) Theology is not (…) the search for conclusions that follow from clearly and distinctly formulated assertions, but rather the tendency ‘to explain’ the faith, which is already accepted implicitly and globally, in a way that unfolds its richness; 77

78 79

‘Knowledge that considers the relationship between the content of personal knowledge and the known object – reached through a conclusive judgment – is critical. (…) This means that true critical judgment becomes possible only in so far as it reaches the essence of the known object and not just its personal representation’. Ibid., 66, emphasis in the original. Ibid., 68. ‘Actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem’. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 1, a. 2, rep. obj. 2, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981, 3.1164.

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2) Christian existence is not a premise of theology, but theology in germ; 3) The professional theologian expresses clearly and examines reflectively a set of assertions preconsciously present in every Christian life;80

then it follows that spirituality ‘explains’ the lived experience of inner transformation within the perspective of Christian existence that progresses towards its fullness, union with God, that is, holiness. Theological discourse on holiness is not the same as the concretely lived experience of holiness. Studying the faithful’s lived experience of inner transformation in light of the tradition of Christian revelation means having faith, which enlightens the mind that interprets the lived experience. Generally, such a lived experience is found in a written source where the different stages of inner transformation are then communicated in a language common to the community of scholars. In this way, its results may be judged from the outside to verify that there are no internal contradictions and that its deductions are logically correct and well grounded. Recalling Fisichella’s definition of theology81 and applying it to Spiritual Theology, we can paraphrase it as follows: it is the understanding of the Christian lived experience for a mature Christian life. In this case, the initial event from which everything develops is the work of the Holy Spirit that acts as the sanctifying memory towards an eschatological future, both personal and ecclesial. The Spirit’s transformative action in the faithful is the unfounded foundation. In knowing his sanctifying work, we get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity who, as the initial, pre-critical, and undeduced event, is the basis of all faith claims that bear witness to his transforming action in the life of the faithful. Dealing with the same issue from another point of view, we must consider the fact that, generally speaking, a ‘theologian’ is identified as a specialist in the area of revelation. The paradox is that the lived experience of inner transformation is not normally considered within this area since it is left to the realm of spirituality, entirely excluded from theology. When speaking of the action of the Holy Spirit, however, the systematic theologian – in dealing with the theological content found in the writings (spiritual diaries, autobiographies, letters, etc.) of acknowledged believers such as martyrs, saints, founders, and so forth – becomes a spiritual theologian. On the one hand, the specific nature of spirituality is recognized by theologians. On the other hand, it is denied in practice because its approach is considered the same as that of the systematic theologian who takes lived experience for its 80 81

Alszeghy & Flick, Introductory Theology, 25. See sec. 3.2, referenced in footnotes 70-71 in this chapter.

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content to reflect upon instead of as a reflection on the phenomenology of the Holy Spirit’s action. The specific nature of lived experience that transforms faith is thus dealt with as an ecstatic theological fact, which does not do justice to its inner dynamic. In other words, there is a clear difference between the spiritual theologian and the systematic one presupposed by Alszeghy and Flick as well as by Fisichella. While the former studies the lived experience of inner transformation that the Spirit produces in the faithful (who incorporate and preserve the message of Revelation), the latter studies the content of the message of salvation. For this reason, the sources of their respective approaches cannot be exactly the same, even if they share the same faith. Herein lies is the reason why it is proper to speak of theological pluralism, in the sense that spirituality has a different approach from that of systematic theology. In effect, the spiritual theologian studies the concrete lived experience of Christian life in the search for an ever-fuller relationship with God. It is an investigation that begins with individual cases that, when compared at a later moment, allow one to seek constants that favor a better understanding of the actual relationship that is established between the Holy Spirit and the faithful. On the one hand, it is good to point out that this is a matter of ‘constants’ and not ‘laws’, seeing that they have a regularity that has not yet been found in the development of the transformation of the interior life. On the other hand, however, it is always preferable to speak of ‘rules’, instead of ‘norms’ or ‘laws’, which can be followed in the style of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (rules for discerning, for eating, for scruples, etc. as appear in the Spiritual Exercises). 3.4 Spiritual Theology: Specialization or Fragment of Systematic Theology? Spirituality studies the lived experience of inner transformation starting from a source that systematic theology does not acknowledge: the lived experience of Christian life. It draws near to lived experience by following the rules of hermeneutics and the interpretation of texts, trying to avoid inconsistencies and ensuring the accuracy of its assertions by using a language capable of communicating its results to the community of believers and scholars. A serious problem arises when using the lived experience of inner transformation as a source in the study of the concrete development of Christian life. It is no secret that systematic theology is the dominant theological mentality of the Christian and Catholic West. It is also well known that, when speaking of the fragmentation of theology nowadays, we actually refer to systematic theology as various ‘theologies’. From the unreflected perspective of systematic theology, spirituality is considered merely a fragmented part of theology. So we must ask, should spirituality really be classified that way?

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Experience, as the source of reflection and study, would seem to indicate that this is not the case. In this way we raise, not the problem of the unity of systematic theology, in the face of its fragmentation, but rather the question of theological pluralism. The difference lies in recognizing that it is a reflection upon systematic theology, not an alternative to it but different from it, where lived experience makes the difference. For the same reason, it is certainly not a question of a specialization within systematic theology. Spirituality is another way of conceiving and doing theology.82 Christoph Theobald seems to be of the same opinion when he states: When we ask the central question of theology, ‘Who is God?’, systematic theology answers: ‘It is God himself whom speak of’. By that it refers to Revelation of the ‘name’ in Exodus and the New Testament, making the acceptance of this name from Christ and in the Spirit the ultimate criterion of an authentic experience of God. Now, it seems to me that ‘spiritual theology’ follows precisely the opposite course. Given its acute awareness of the impossibility of naming God, it starts (if I may say so) with the subject’s experience and their ‘sea of emotion’ to give meaning to the same word for God and to acknowledge, in the language of spirituality, the struggle of what goes infinitely beyond us.83

Once again, it can be asked if the three dimensions of ‘Spirituality as Theology’ that Waaijman has developed – fundamental, biblical, and practical – coincide with his triple division of theology’s interdisciplinary relationships: epistemological (anthropology, philosophy, religious studies), biblical (religious studies, history, literary studies), and sociological (anthropology, psychology, sociology, pedagogy, medicine, management sciences). This being the case, theology could be divided into three different approaches: fundamental/systematic, biblical/ exegetical and moral/pastoral/canonical. However, is it possible to compare theology with ‘Spirituality as Theology’? It seems unlikely because it is not clear how the ‘lived experience of inner transformation’ can fit into the methodology of systematic theology since the starting point of spirituality is not considered among systematic theology’s loci theologici. For this reason, I would argue that spirituality, in the sense of ‘Spirituality as Theology’ cannot be identified with ‘Theology as Spirituality’. The unexpressed fact is that, by ‘Theology’, we normally mean the theology and theological method of systematic reflection on faith. ‘Spirituality as Theology’ is no less theology, but simply, theology done in a different manner. It is not a specialization in or a fragment of systematic theology, but a way of meditating 82

83

See Giuseppe Ferretti, ‘La frammentazione della Teologia all’interno dell’attuale situazione di frammentazione del sapere’, in: Giuseppe Lorizio & Saturnino Muratore (Eds.), La frammentazione del sapere teologico, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1998, 15-51, here 15-16. Theobald, ‘La “théologie spirituelle”’, 186.

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on Christian revelation from a different frame of reference. The lived experience of inner transformation of the faithful makes all the difference. The conclusion to be drawn from the ideas developed here is that it is possible to speak of theological pluralism just as was maintained by Paul at the Areopagus and by Dionysius. Both of these present a triple approach as regards the one theology, a threefold approach that is defended today by Bernard and Waaijman as well, it might be added, as by common sense regarding faith. 4. Conclusion In this chapter, I have proposed a minimum common horizon for theologians to use as a point of reference in our discipline. It consists in considering spirituality as the study of the lived experience of transformation. Upon this shared and indispensable minimum horizon, other dimensions or dynamics can be added according to the needs of each individual theologian. Just as in the relationship between spirituality and systematic theology, pluralism is desirable here, a pluralism that would be comparable to that found in the various spiritual traditions of religious orders or in the particular charisms of local churches. After arriving at this minimum common horizon, I first related it to various non-theological disciplines, in order to see how they approach spirituality, with the aim of incorporating their contributions regarding the lived experience of inner transformation into how theology is done. In this way, it is easier for the results of their research to benefit spirituality. I then related the minimum common horizon to theology, particularly systematic theology, with the intention of better defining the common basis that unites it to spirituality while highlighting their fundamental difference, the lived experience of inner transformation. My findings have arrived at the conclusion that we should consider the benefit, in the case of spirituality, of speaking of and working from a basis of theological pluralism rather than considering it as a specialization of or a fragmentation in systematic theology.

CHAPTER 4 A COGNITIVE-PHENOMENAL METHOD FOR UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIAN LIFE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

The first chapter of this book presented a multi-disciplinary approach to the dimension of the lived experience of Mystery. The second chapter showed how Spiritual Theology, in its development after Vatican Council II, is the proper framework for studying such lived experience. The third chapter then established the relationship of Spiritual Theology to theological as well as non-theological disciplines. The aim of this current chapter is to present a method whose application justifies Spiritual Theology’s disciplinary perspective as different from the other theological disciplines thus ensuring the foundations of a theological pluralism. In a previous publication,1 I laid the groundwork for a theological approach to Christian life, which I then expanded on and developed in a second publication.2 The theoretical framework presented, however, was lacking a diachronic dimension. This current treatment includes that dimension in order to offer a model that recognizes the evolution of Christian life in its various phases.3 The itinerary to be covered has five steps. First, I will present the problem that needs to be addressed. Second, I will express the method’s theoretical assumptions in order to explain – in the third step – its synchronic dimension and – in the fourth – its diachronic one by applying the method to a concrete case in the two dimensions. I will then finish with a theoretical consideration of this method’s contribution to Christian life as well as its development in relation to Spiritual Theology. 1

2

3

Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Teologia della vita cristiana: Contemplazione, vissuto teologale e trasformazione interiore, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010, 69-128. Rossano Zas Friz De Col, ‘Teologia spirituale e vita cristiana’, in: Teologia e spiritualità oggi: Un approccio interdisciplinare. Acts from the symposium organized by the Institute of Spiritual Theology of the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome: 9-10 December 2011, Rome: LAS: 2012, 77-96. Rossano Zas Friz De Col, ‘Un metodo fenomenico-cognitivo per comprendere la vita cristiana e il suo sviluppo’, in: Mysterion 6 (2013) no.2, 191-219 (www.mysterion.it).

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Before developing these arguments, I would like to include a word on the title: cognitive-phenomenal. It is ‘cognitive’ because a process of analysis is applied to lived experience, a process that has been developed along the lines of recent philosophical progress, as will be seen. It is ‘phenomenal’ because it begins from a phenomenon – the encounter with Mystery, which makes no assumptions regarding and is independent of the subject who experiences it, that is, the one to whom it happens, who is touched by it, as shown in the phenomenology of religion.4 1. The Fundamental Problem The triple distinction that Jean Mouroux5 makes in the concept of experience has become a classic in Spiritual Theology. He identifies three levels: unreflected experience, that is, the empirical level; scientific experimentation, the experimental level; and conscious experience, the experiential level. Christian and religious experience properly belong to this third level. The sign by which God is grasped is the religious act itself.6 (…) Religious experience is precisely the consciousness of the mediation realized in this act, the consciousness of the relationship it establishes between man and God, and hence the consciousness of God as the posited and positing end of the relationship.7

Mouroux, however, establishes another distinction within the religious act itself. He differentiates faith life from mystical experience because he considers the latter more intense than faith life and unlimited by discursive reasoning. He does not separate them but rather asserts their continuity: Faith appears in two different states of purity, strength, and fervor – in one case as a living faith and in the other as a lively faith – but in each case the faith is the same, and therefore throughout the discontinuity, which may be very deeply felt, there must run an extremely profound continuity, a radical homogeneity in the aspiration towards God, a similarity of life in the two different growths.8

In reality, however, he considers the two experiences as distinct: mystical experience, which occurs at the empirical level, completes the Christian experience, 4

5

6 7 8

See Juan Martín Velasco, Introducción a la fenomenología de la religión, Madrid: Trotta, 2007, 87-159. See Jean Mouroux, The Christian experience: An introduction to theology, trans. George Lamb, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1955. Ibid., 21, emphasis added. Ibid., 22, emphasis added. Ibid., 45, emphasis added.

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which is lived at the experiential level. This distinction creates a problem because, like it or not, Mouroux asserts that the Christian experience is reflected (experiential) while mystical experience is not because it remains within the empirical sphere. Years later, Giovanni Moioli took up the same framework, but in another language. He stated that: ‘Theology has unduly limited the area of what faith can understand to a mere objective goal, disregarding that the entire faith is instead aimed at the Christian lived experience’,9 sustaining that the act of faith – with its interconnected knowledge – is prior to reflection on its content. Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that mystical experience might be a special kind of religious experience, characterized by the immediacy of a ‘uniquecommunion-presence’,10 and thus different from the knowing of faith experience as well as from reflection upon its content. Charles André Bernard, in turn, makes the same distinction between experience and spiritual awareness and experience and mystical awareness. The first has to do with the conscious development of the relationship between the believer and God.11 The second has to do with becoming aware of an unexpected presence that breaks down ordinary ways of thinking because it presents itself as mysterious and holy.12 The three authors separate spiritual experience from mystical experience even though they insist that the two are not discontinuous. To summarize, spirituality belongs to the experiential dimension of faith while mystical experience belongs to the empirical dimension. This again highlights the idea that the mystical is reserved to extraordinary experiences (not to phenomena), while spirituality deals with ordinary experiences, belonging to life’s routine and daily administration. The experience of Christian faith seems to have two registers – a spiritual one and a mystical one – where the experience of the mystical is different from what is experienced in the spiritual. This seems to be not just a difference of ‘intensity’, which would explain the distinction, but rather an indirect suggestion that precisely highlights the theological problem. The distinction implicitly affirms that the spiritual experience, despite being ‘experiential’, is not necessarily anchored to the ‘empirical’ level. We must overcome this construct.

9

10 11

12

Giovanni Moioli, ‘Teologia spirituale’ in: Stefano De Fiores & Tullo Goffi (Eds.), Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, Rome: Paoline, 1979, 1599. Giovanni Moioli, ‘Mistica cristiana’ in Nuovo dizionario di spiritualità, 985-1001, here 985. See Charles André Bernard, ‘La conscience spirituelle’, in: Revue d’Ascétique et Mystique 41 (1965), 465-466. See Charles André Bernard, ‘La conscience mystique’, in: Studia Missionalia 26 (1977), 87-115, here 90.

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2. The Theoretical Presuppositions of the Method Karl Rahner offers one way to overcome the rift between the experiential/ spiritual dimension and the empirical/mystical one. He holds that it is artificial to treat the two dimensions as two different experiences. An alternative is offered in considering fundamental anthropological experience – the ‘transcendental’ in Rahner’s terminology – as having two dimensions: an acategorical and a categorical one. In the experience of Christian revelation, the acategorical dimension makes the categorical one possible. That is, the experience of the revelation of the Christian mystery of the Presence of God presupposes the appropriate anthropological constitution for receiving it (the acategorical dimension), which makes awareness possible in a later moment (categorical dimension). It is clear that this approach shows the bright side of the moon (categorical dimension) while the other side remains hidden (acategorical dimension). The moon, however, cannot be imagined without its dark side, even if that is not visible. The same applies to the experience of revelation: experience can be expressed categorically, however, experience is also acategorical. On this basis, with the help of the philosopher David Chalmers, we can formulate a ‘cognitive’ account of experience. Chalmers distinguishes a double consciousness in every conscious experience – a phenomenal one and a psychological one. While the latter is awareness of experiencing something, phenomenal consciousness is the awareness of being the ‘I’ who psychologically experiences something. ‘The phenomenal and psychological properties in the vicinity of these notions tend to occur together but, as with other mental concepts, they should not be conflated. We should also be careful not to conflate the phenomenal senses of these terms with phenomenal consciousness in general’.13 The psychological awareness of something is different from the consciousness of being the ‘I’ who is aware. Judgments that emerge from the experience of phenomenal consciousness – which are not conceptual – are expressed through psychological consciousness.14 According to Chalmers, the phenomenal dimension of consciousness – which cannot be conceptual – makes it possible to record experience that is expressed through psychological consciousness by three different orders of judgment. The first is the verbal and objective verification of the perception of something: ‘I see a full glass’. The second is the subjective awareness of the perception that is manifest in a judgment like, ‘I want to drink’, which implies the affective resonance of the recorded phenomenon. The third is a critical judgment that 13

14

David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 28. See ibid., 176.

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goes beyond the two preceding judgments: ‘Why, seeing the full glass, did I want to drink?’15 For Chalmers: We make third-order judgments when we reflect on the fact that we have conscious experiences in the first place, and when we reflect on their nature. (…) Third order judgments are particularly common among philosophers, and among those with a tendency to speculate on the mysteries of existence.16

Applying these distinctions to spiritual existence, we see that it can also be formulated as three levels of judgment. ‘I’ve had a strange experience, which has never happened before, that has left me with a strong sense of inner peace. Could it be an experience of God?’ The subject of the experience is aware of being the one who has had the experience (phenomenal consciousness) and to have had the experience of something (psychological consciousness), and expresses it by affirming the experience (‘I’ve had a strange experience, which has never happened before’), noting its emotional resonance (‘that has left me with a strong sense of inner peace’), and questioning its meaning (‘Could it be an experience of God?’). Certainly, the greater or lesser ability to report the various levels of the experience depends on the subject’s level of cultural development. At this point, comparing Rahner and Chalmers, we can associate phenomenal consciousness to Rahner’s acategorical dimension and psychological consciousness to his categorical dimension. In this way, if a rift opens between the two, for example, if judgments do not correspond to experience, to life, it means that they have no resonance, no reflection in phenomenal consciousness, and can follow their own logic without reference to lived experience. In other words, the categorical dimension can build mental structures without reference to any real structures. In such cases, it means awareness without reference to the reality of lived experience. The opposite is also possible. An experience that is not associated with a tradition or culture becomes a loose cannon without historical connection. The danger in the first case is intellectualism and, in the second, fideism. Systematic theology is not exempt from the possibility of sliding into the first case when it loses its relationship with lived experience and Spiritual Theology can always slip into the second when it does not relate lived experience to its own tradition.

15 16

See ibidem. Ibidem.

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3. Method: The Synchronic Dimension Applying the framework developed in the previous section, we can state that the first, basic level corresponds to the acategorical dimension of experience that escapes psychological consciousness and that always remains a mystery. It can also be called ‘phenomenal/mysteric’. The following level, the categorical one, splits into a second and third level. The second expresses the immediate awareness of the experience and also includes the emotional aspect. It can be called the ‘phenomenological/hermeneutical’. The third level is rational processing in dialogue with a cultural tradition. It is the ‘critical/cultural’ level. Two important considerations remain to be accounted for. The first is how to conceive of the relationship between transcendent divine mystery and the historical, categorical human condition and the second, having to do with language, is how to express or formulate such a relationship. 3.1 A First Step In regard to the first question, Domenico Sorrentino’s book, L’Esperienza di Dio, is helpful because the author tries to identify ‘a method to explore spiritual experience in an orderly way so as to allow critical and comparative observations’.17 In effect, he advances an interesting perspective for ‘understanding the fundamental dynamics of the experience of God’.18 He proposes four polarities that interact with one another (see Diagram 1).

Diagram 1: Sorrentino’s original formulation (see L’Esperienza di Dio, 138).

17

18

Domenico Sorrentino, L’esperienza di Dio. Disegno di teologia spirituale, Assisi: Cittadella, 2007, 117. Ibid. 118. ‘The “axes” therefore are the load-bearing structure, the vital coordinates upon which Christian existence assumes its entire meaning. The analysis of lived spiritual experience must begin from these and, what is more, it is by carefully measuring against them that one can understand and discern the Christian character of an existence’. Ibid., 129-130.

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The first is the dynamic that develops between history and the eschaton, presenting the human condition in its temporality but eschatologically projected toward the beyond, toward eternal life. Within that dynamic develop the unitive relationship between God-Trinity and the human person (second polarity), which involves the action of Divine Grace and a human response (third polarity: grace – nature), as well as that of the Church that interacts with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit (fourth polarity). As regards the second question (How can a relationship with God be expressed?), Sorrentino proposes a list of six ‘registers’, that is, six types of discourse, that express the categorical relationship with God that takes place through the fourth polarity identified in the phenomenal/mysteric dimension. The registers are: historical-narrative, eucological, aesthetic, affective, dialogical, and practical.19 Here is where the dynamic that Louis Roy establishes (see section 3.3.2 below) between experience and its expression can be located. Unifying Chalmers’ chart with Sorrentino’s gives us the information arranged as seen here in Diagram 2.

Diagram 2: Visualization of a unification of Sorrentino’s and Chalmers’ frameworks.

19

‘From this fundamental and substantial point of view, the picture of “registers” is less important. It actually draws upon the anthropological “modality” in which the “axes”, in their theological-spiritual content, are expressed. We are therefore in the order of language and expression rather than that of the reality of self’. Ibid., 130.

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The arrow symbolizing the historical-eschatological dynamic, which represents the phenomenal/mysteric level, is the ‘place’ of lived experience. It is where the Holy Mystery of God-Trinity revealed by Jesus Christ, together with the mystery of Divine Grace and the action of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Word, interact with the person, transforming them, sanctifying them in their human nature and in the body of the Church. The expression of the experience of relationship with God constitutes the phenomenological/hermeneutical level in which the discernment of spirits is practiced. Afterward, when critically reflecting on the awareness of the experience, we access a third level, the critical/ cultural one.20 Between Holy Mystery and the human historical dimension there is no continuity, given that divine transcendence is absolute. However, God communicates himself so as to sanctify humanity. In history, oriented toward the eschaton, the transition from the visible world to the invisible one is made. It is a transition expressed, as I have noted above, in various registers and within which operates the sanctification/divinization of the person. The third level, the critical/cultural one, needs clarifying. Two types of reflection can take place within it. The first, which always occurs, is reflection on the awareness of the experience aimed at finding meaning for one’s life. It is expressed, more or less well, in the questions: ‘What does this experience mean in my life? What does it mean for me?’ Its purpose is to integrate lived experience with one’s self-awareness, to give meaning to one’s life, and to build a meaningful personal identity. However, a second type of reflection is also possible even if it is not necessary to the dynamic of lived experience. Depending on the person, this second type of reflection, relating the experience to the person’s cultural and religious tradition, can be made. It is possible to ask oneself: ‘In Christian history, have there been others who have had the same experience? How have they lived it and how have they interpreted it?’ Obviously, this second type of reflection will not matter to someone without a religious or theological culture. It may, however, occur indirectly when they ask for advice regarding their experience, for example, if meeting with a spiritual director, which presupposes not only the experience, but also theological knowledge of a tradition. Having taken the first step, it is then necessary to take another. For example, from the critical/cultural level in which one becomes critically aware of the lived experience of the sense and meaning the experience has for one’s life, a decision is normally made to take a stand, however small it might be. This leads to the creation or consolidation of an attitude that constitutes a way of thinking, of affectively reacting, and of behaving.21 20

21

For a detailed development of these levels, as for the theoretical justification of this approach, see Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Teologia della vita cristiana, 69-128. This attitude is defined as: ‘the overall assessment of an object’ and has three components. The cognitive one ‘covers the information and beliefs that individuals possess about the object

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3.2 A Second Step In the new diagram presented here (see Diagram 3), there are two columns above the history-eschaton axis. The first, on the left, shows the various levels of Christian lived experience. The second, to the right, shows the various stages of the development of Christian life according to the divisions established by Federico Ruiz (see section 4.1 below).

Diagram 3: Interpretive Synchronic Framework of the Five Levels of Christian Life

The arrow of the phenomenological/hermeneutical level points beyond history to eternal life. In the diagram, eternal life and Holy Mystery are the same and there is no communication with history except through the operation of Holy Mystery through the influence of the revelation of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit and Divine Grace. that they are concerned with. The affective component has to do with the emotional response that the object elicits, that is, the nervous system’s corresponding activity. And finally, the behavioral response concerning the actions of approach or avoidance in respect of the given object’. Nicoletta Cavazza, Psicologia degli atteggiamenti e delle opinioni, Bologna: Mulino, 2005, 21-22.

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Two more levels need to be added to the three that were explained in the previous section. The fourth level is one in which a decision or a choice is made. It is a natural continuation of the third level, that of reflection on the lived experience, in the sense that every critical consideration concerning the awareness of an experience should lead to making a decision, making a choice. As regards spiritual experience, the choice touches upon relationship with God. For example, in talking about conversion to God we talk about a life-changing choice, a meaningful and challenging change of direction. That is what happens when you mention an act of faith. One arrives at an act of faith after an experience of becoming aware of something. Having worked out its meaning, you can make a decision based upon it that will transform your existence. The act of faith, implying a radical choice, constitutes the fifth level, which gives access to the theological attitude22 and presupposes the preceding levels. The lived experience of Holy Mystery (first level) that you become aware of (second level) and upon which you critically reflect in order to assimilate and accommodate it in your life, which can be accomplished by – although not necessarily so – reflection that locates it within your religious tradition (third level). This reflection normally concludes with a judgment that blossoms into a choice directing the person toward a deeper lived experience of Holy Mystery (fourth level), a choice that increasingly establishes an ever-greater and engaging relationship with Holy Mystery itself (fifth level). Christian witness and the spread of the theological attitude have their roots in this last level where the believer cannot express their lived experience of Holy Mystery but can extend the invitation to personal experience with their life’s witness of lived experience. Such witness is nothing other than the public manifestation of a private journey in which the believer has been transformed in light of their relationship with Holy Mystery. It is a journey marked by personal choices, a journey that has led to radical transformation. This is not possible without a first choice that guides the following ones in a way that marks the path of a growing maturity in their relationship with God. Discerning and making decisions on the basis of consciously lived experiences that one has critically reflected upon is a dynamic process that is carried out throughout an entire lifetime, opening the path to eternity. 3.3 Further Analysis of the Method Here I want to present two authors whose research offers a certain parallel with the above-presented method. The first is Bernhard Welte whose book The Light of Nothing: On the Possibility of a New Religious Experience was originally 22

See Juan Alfaro, ‘Atteggiamenti fondamentali dell’esistenza cristiana’, in: Cristologia e antropologia, Assisi: Cittadella, 1973, 553.

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published in Germany in 1980.23 The second is Louis Roy, some of whose work has been translated into English and who presents an interesting approach, as will be seen. 3.3.1 Bernhard Welte Welte developed the idea of experience in the first chapter of his aforementioned book. It contains some interesting considerations. For example, he notes the fact that ‘experience must be fundamentally understood as the immediately given of what can be experienced. That which is experienced shows itself directly to the one who has the experience. Such immediacy can naturally have various degrees and modifications’24 but ‘it immediately involves the whole living person’25 and excludes reflection ‘because through reflection we try to mediate precisely what has not been given to us immediately’.26 He distinguishes two types of reflection: one that by universal laws, by means of logic, arrives at a conceptual result that is complete in itself. That is, if the reflection forms a type of conceptual construction, then we find ourselves faced with a reflective mediation. ‘This can and should be examined in regard to its meaning and its scope. But then we are no longer talking about immediacy nor therefore experience in the sense in which it is understood here.27 The other type of reflection ‘is that of not logically establishing a result but, on the contrary, of distinguishing an already given original experience in its givenness, and thus in its immediacy, from its hiddenness and repression, and of distinguishing it from a more or less formal use of the language in which it is conceived’. He adds that ‘if the term “reflection” is understood in this way, then reflection is precisely the revelation and illumination of possible immediate experiences’.28 It is important to consider the fact that, in the second case he presents, the mediation of language does not cancel out the immediacy of experience, as could easily be supposed. For Welte, language – when it refers to an experience, whatever it might be – never speaks of itself but speaks of something, of objects, of relationships, of connections. It speaks of the experience. In this sense,

23

24 25 26 27 28

Bernhard Welte, Das Licht des Nichts: Von der Möglichkeit neuer religiöser Erfahrung, Kevelaer (Germany): Topos, 2015. Ibid., 13. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 16. Ibidem. Ibidem.

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as a self-contained intermediary, language disappears entirely. It becomes completely transparent in the immediate given of the world’s material relationships. In this case, the mediation worked by language becomes part of the immediacy of what is given, which only becomes possible precisely through language.29

He concludes that ‘the immediacy of experience is therefore tied to reflection if it is understood as phenomenological discovery. It finds itself in opposition to reflection, however, if reflection is understood as a construction’.30 The final element of experience that Welte mentions is that of transformation, that is, when the experience produces change. Someone who has had such an experience becomes different than who they were before. How they see the world and how they act in it changes. This transformation of their way of being in the world, therefore, is negative in respect of their prior state. After this transformation, things are no longer the way they were before. What was before has been surpassed. But from this negativity emerges a new positivity: everything is new and different in a, perhaps, unexpected way.31

The transformation can occur after a long time or even just a short period depending, in each case, on different factors. It needs to be noted that the transformative dynamic of experience presented here is not considered in the same way as in the field of the objective sciences. Here, the results can have an influence on the scientist’s life, but as an effect of the experiment not the experiencing. ‘The barrier between subject and object stands out starkly and distances the object, in its objectivity, from the subject’.32 Comparing the characteristics that Welte assigns to the notion of experience with the framework of the five levels, it is easy to find a correspondence between the immediacy of experience (the phenomenal/mysteric level) and its continuity in the following level (the phenomenological/hermeneutical level) thanks to language, and then with the third (the critical/cultural level), the level of reflection in which a distinction is made between reflection on the experience and the articulation of one’s own experience within a system. Finally, when Welte mentions the transformative characteristic of experience it certainly cannot occur without a decision by the subject (the decisional/ practical level) because, without that, it is impossible to formulate a theological attitude (the fifth level).

29 30 31 32

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

14. 17. 17-18. 19.

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3.3.2 Louis Roy Roy notes that, in Russia after liberation from the Communist regime, people turned to religion as a result of a ‘spiritual’ type of personal experience, not out of a nostalgia for religious tradition given that there was neither traditional religious experience nor formation under the Soviet regime. Roy does not hesitate to call them ‘experiences of transcendence’ even if they are not necessarily religious and he notes that they are actually very wide-spread in secular Western society today. He writes that these experiences consist in a brief episode in which a person experiences something that entirely surpasses them. They feel open to the infinite. In such experiences, they perceive a new dimension, different from the three – or four, if you include the dimension of time – that structure physical space. They have the impression of being in contact with something that escapes their power and their control, something they cannot fully understand or define.33 It is an experience that erupts into the everyday, in which one suddenly becomes aware of that which is not finite. As mentioned, these are not traditional religious experiences. Instead, Roy presents a wide variety of secular experiences and differentiates between four types: aesthetic, ontological, ethical, and interpersonal experiences.34 How can we consider them theologically? Roy believes that Catholic theology, following in the footsteps of St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist, teaches that we have contact with God only when He makes himself present, makes himself felt, through grace. This sense of gratuity is found not only in the great monotheistic religions but also among philosophers such as Plotinus and in Indian scriptures. In effect, the inaccessible God makes himself accessible. Such experience does not eliminate the negative, ‘sinful’ aspect of the person but, through it, presents the gift of something unique that goes beyond life’s negativity. It is, therefore, conceptualized as an ‘experience of God’. It goes beyond the created, surpasses it and, at the 33

34

Louis Roy, Le sentiment de transcendance: Expérience de Dieu?, Paris: Cerf, 2000, 26. ‘The problem with transcendent experience is that, although it is usually occasioned by perception, it is not in itself a perceptual event and has no perceivable object. Philosophers of mysticism who draw too close a parallel between sense perception and so-called mystical perception are misguided. Intimations of transcendence involve a kind of consciousness that is non-objectal, non-conceptual, and non-verbal. Hence, they do not belong in “the world mediated by meaning”, to use the category by which Lonergan characterizes the finite world as we make sense of it. Of course, at the very outset cognitive elements play a role in that they prepare the ground for the occurrence of any transcendent experience. Depending on the concerns (inseparably intellectual and affective) of the person or the group, the central feeling-discovery will acquire a particular tonality and be expressed through particular meanings’. Louis Roy, Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, 173. Roy, Transcendent Experiences, 14-24.

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same time, awakens a feeling of wholeness in our consciousness. It is the touch of the Holy Spirit cognitively and affectively permeating the consciousness.35 This is why, according to Roy, the experience of transcendence is often an experience of God.36 Interpreting these experiences as ‘transcendence’ depends on the subject’s mental state as well as intentionality, that is, on one’s personal disposition of openness toward the other.37 In effect, intentionality is characterized as openness and a ‘tendency toward the other’, a movement that is completely different from projecting upon oneself because it opens up an encounter with that which is different from self and therefore also opens an encounter with the infinite. In this way, through encounter with the infinite, we become aware of our own finitude, our own constitutive inability to project beyond ourselves that which is beyond us. Additionally, it is important to understand the relationship these experiences have to the data reported by the senses in order to better characterize their uniqueness. The senses remain locked in the circumstance of the experience, foreign to the experience itself. The relationship between the subject and the Presence of what presents itself is not established through the senses but through intentionality, which makes the subject directly aware of their actions and feelings. This is not a being conscious of certain facts but an awareness that is offered directly to one’s intentionality as an openness to mystery. In Roy’s words, ‘intentionality is that by which we come to know transcendence, while transcendence is the ontological grounding of intentionality’.38 And the transcendent is ‘that which absolutely surpasses the universe of finite beings, not in terms of size or power, but in terms of meaningfulness, truth, and worth – in a word, in terms of being’.39

35

36

37 38 39

‘Phenomenological reports and analyses of transcendent experience may be seen by many Christians and non-Christians alike as fleshing out their intimations of the Spirit’s action in our contemporary world’. Roy, Transcendent Experiences, xiii. Roy, Le sentiment de transcendance, 115. ‘Quand l’intentionnalité humaine éprouve le sentiment de quelque chose qui la dépasse absolument, elle sent qu’elle se porte vers une totalité cosmique, un sens global, une valeur illimitée, ou un amour inconditionnel. Pourtant, sur le plan philosophique, on ne peut dire plus que ceci: ce qui est en quelque sorte vu, c’est le reflet de l’Infini dans l’âme humaine; ce qui es en quelque sorte entendu, c’est un écho unique dans le dynamisme intentionnel. Si, à travers l’attrait qui s’y laisse percevoir, elles impliquent bel et bien un élan vers Dieu, les expériences de transcendance demeurent en elles-mêmes incapables de l’atteindre. D’où la réflexion apophatique, qui parle de leur terme comme de ‘ni ceci ni cela’, car ce terme reste toujours au-delà de nos idées et de nos sentiments’. Ibid., 114. See ibid., 119. Roy, Transcendent Experiences, 153. Ibid., 156.

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In regard to the problem of the relationship between experience and its interpretation through language and concepts, Roy is of the opinion that these condition but do not determine it.40 The cultural and linguistic context influences how the experience is referred to and its use of concepts but it cannot be said to produce the experience.41 The relationship can be understood in these terms: Given the nature of human intentionality, our outreach to reality is not a matter of experience alone but a conjunction of experience, understanding, and judgment. Accordingly, although there is a component of knowledge called experience, we find no experience that would be knowable in itself, independent of interpretation. Moreover, the hermeneutical activity is not static: it progresses to the extent that understanding goes back to experience and culminates in revised judgments. In this unfolding we observe a dialectic of experience and interpretation in continuing interaction.42

In the experiences of transcendence that he studies, Roy, from a phenomenological point of view, identifies six elements.43 Firstly ‘preparation’: the personal situation that chronologically precedes the experience of transcendence, the ‘primal broth’ of the preceding culture that permits of the experience at all. Next is the ‘occasion’: the context immediately prior to experience and in which it occurs.44 Here desire plays an essentially important role: Whenever people have room exclusively for finite cravings, they are unlikely to intensify desire in its wider scope. But why, it must be asked, ought we to heighten this more fundamental desire? The answer is simply because of the unique joy that doing so produces. Inasmuch as the fruit of transcendent experience consists in a ‘yes’ to an incomparable presence apprehended as beauty, meaning, truth, or goodness, this consent brings about joy, peace, detachment, and freedom.45

The third element that Roy lists is ‘feeling’: the perception of having a vital exchange with a presence. It is a feeling similar to what occurs when contemplating a beautiful thing or person. The fourth element is ‘discovery’, which corresponds to the noetic function of feeling, that is, not just the perception of 40

41 42 43 44

45

Here we can recall Sorrentino’s six ‘registers’, according to which the experience of God can be expressed. See section 3.1 above. See Roy, Transcendent Experiences, 173. Ibid., 172-173. Roy, Le sentiment de transcendance, 34-43. ‘[W]hat we ought to stand for is a transcendent experience whose “objective” can be glimpsed as real since it is the term of a human intentionality naturally intending reality. By rising above itself, the human mind acknowledges transcendent experiences that are similar and different at the same time. Their commonality has to do with the openness to the infinite, whereas their particularity depends on the concern and the occasion that trigger them in each case’. Roy, Transcendent Experiences, 175. Ibid., 186.

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an emotion that ‘resounds’ internally, but the awareness of grasping some content – something that surpasses the world and oneself, the infinite. It grasps an infinite presence.46 From ‘discovery’ he moves to the fifth element, ‘interpretation’: experience is thought about, reflected upon, distinguishing between the reflection associated with the experience (reflection of the experience) and reflection on the experience, which is systematic, philosophic, etc. Roy is careful to note that: In us, feeling and knowing are contemporaneous and yet distinct. As an affective tendency towards beings that interact with us, feeling is not in itself a form of cognition but a parallel inclination or aversion which accompanies and goads on our intellectual intentionality. Whenever coupled, however, our informal knowledge and emotional thrust set up a relationship with reality that is richer than mere thinking.47

Finally, Roy identifies a final element, the ‘fruit’ by which he characterizes the consequences of experience. Here too there is a distinction to be made between the immediate fruits of the experience that are the affective resonance at the moment of the experience, and the fruits that ripen after the experience but which are connected to it as a consequence of extended personal commitment over time, in tune with the original experience. The brief encounter of the experience of transcendence must always be cultivated at a second, later moment. If a possible experience of transcendence does not bear fruit then it could be a psychological illness instead. Religious conversion, therefore, cannot be identified with the simple type of experience mentioned below. People who have the strong impression that they have been touched by the infinite are right; they can trust their own interpretation provided they are willing to deepen it and, if necessary, allow it to redirect their life; philosophy and world religions do offer them frames of reference in which transcendent experience and the transformation that ensues both make sense.48

3.4 An Example The British journalist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) voluntarily enlisted with the Republican troops during the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, he found himself sentenced to prison in Seville, awaiting his, probable, death sentence. He recorded his experience at the time. In it we can identify the elements of preparation 46

47 48

The discovery he is referring to here is not that of ordinary knowledge. ‘Instead, it is the awareness of a relationship with a unique unknown pronounced to be non-finite, in-finite’. Ibid., 166. Ibid., 162. Ibid., 187.

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and occasion, as well as the phenomenal/mysteric, the phenomenological/ hermeneutical, and the critical/cultural moments. The decisional moment does not appear and it is known that Koestler did not develop any particular religious attitude. Nevertheless, the example is very clear in characterizing the dynamic of the movement of transcendence. I was standing at the recessed window of cell No. 40 and, with a piece of ironspring that I had extracted from the wire mattress, was scratching mathematical formulae on the wall. Mathematics, in particular analytical geometry, had been the favorite hobby of my youth, neglected later on for many years. I was trying to remember how to derive the formula of the hyperbola, and was stumped; then I tried the ellipse and parabola, and to my delight succeeded. Next I went on to recall Euclid’s proof that the number of primes is infinite (…) [moment of preparation] Since I had become acquainted with Euclid’s proof at school, it had always filled me with a deep satisfaction that was aesthetic rather than intellectual. Now, as I recalled the method and scratched the symbols on the wall, I felt the same enchantment. [moment of occasion] And then, for the first time, I suddenly understood the reason for this enchantment: the scribbled symbols on the wall represented one of the rare cases where a meaningful and comprehensive statement about the infinite is arrived at by precise and finite means. The infinite is a mystical mass shrouded in a haze; and yet it was possible to gain some knowledge of it without losing oneself in treacly ambiguities. The significance of this swept over me like a wave. The wave had originated in an articulate verbal insight; but this evaporated at once, leaving in its wake only a wordless essence, a fragrance of eternity, a quiver of the arrow in the blue. I must have stood there for some minutes, entranced, with a wordless awareness that ‘this is perfect, perfect’; until I noticed some slight mental discomfort nagging at the back of my mind – some trivial circumstance that marred the perfection of the moment. Then I remembered the nature of that irrelevant annoyance: I was, of course, in prison and might be shot. But this was immediately answered by a feeling whose verbal translation would be: ‘So what? is that all? have you got nothing more serious to worry about?’ – an answer so spontaneous, fresh and amused as if the intruding annoyance had been the loss of a collar-stud. Then I was floating on my back in a river of peace, under bridges of silence. It came from nowhere and flowed nowhere. Then there was no river and no I. The I had ceased to exist. [phenomenological/hermeneutical moment] When I say, ‘the I had ceased to exist’, I refer to a concrete experience that is verbally as incommunicable as the feeling aroused by a piano concerto, yet just as real – only much more real. In fact, its primary mark is the sensation that this state is more real than any other one has experienced before – that for the first time the veil has fallen and one is in touch with ‘real reality’, the hidden order of things, the X-ray texture of the world, normally obscured by layers of irrelevancy.

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What distinguishes this type of experience from the emotional entrancements of music, landscapes or love is that the former has a definitely intellectual, or rather noumenal, content. It is meaningful, though not in verbal terms. Verbal transcriptions that come nearest to it are: the unity and interlocking of everything that exists, an interdependence like that of gravitational fields or communicating vessels. The ‘I’ ceases to exist because it has, by a kind of mental osmosis, established communication with, and been dissolved in, the universal pool. It is the process of dissolution and limitless expansion which is sensed as the ‘oceanic feeling’, as the draining of all tension, the absolute catharsis, the peace that passeth all understanding. The coming-back to the lower order of reality I found to be gradual, like waking up from anesthesia. There was the equation of the parabola scratched on the dirty wall, the iron bed and the iron table and the strip of blue Andalusian sky. But there was no unpleasant hangover as from other modes of intoxication. On the contrary: there remained a sustained and invigorating, serene and feardispelling after-effect that lasted for hours and days. It was as if a massive dose of vitamins had been injected into the veins. Or, to change the metaphor, I resumed my travels through my cell like an old car with its batteries freshly recharged. Whether the experience had lasted for a few minutes or an hour, I never knew. In the beginning, it occurred two or even three times a week, then the intervals became longer. It could never be voluntarily induced. After my liberation, it recurred at even longer intervals, perhaps once or twice in a year. But by that time the groundwork for a change or personality was completed. I shall henceforth refer to these experiences as ‘the hours by the window’. [moment of critical/ cultural reflection]49

3.5 Summary The method outlined in this section gathers together the various contributions of authors of different viewpoints, mostly unrelated to one another, like a mosaic that places distinct pieces side by side that together present a whole. This is why I think it is helpful to offer a brief concluding summary here. The five levels we have studied here, which I chose from elements found in Rahner, Chalmers, Sorrentino, ethics (decision), and theology (theological attitude), can be further enhanced with the first two steps of Roy’s analysis of the experience of transcendence: preparation and occasion. These can be inserted in the first level of the diagram, the phenomenal/mysteric, which corresponds to the history-eschaton axis. Even if the experience of Christian transcendence is not produced by the believer, it is nevertheless produced ‘with’ them and thus it is important to be aware both of what goes before, on a subjective level, the moment of the experience, the person’s active participation, as well as the 49

Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing, New York: Macmillan, 1954, 350-354.

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moment and the precise context that produces it (the here and now). The other four elements (feeling, discovery, interpretation, and the fruit) are incorporated in the other levels: feeling and discovery in the second, phenomenological/ hermeneutical; what Roy calls ‘interpretation’ corresponds to the third, critical/ cultural level; and the fruit simultaneously pertains to the fourth, decisional, and the fifth, theological attitude, levels. Additionally, Welte’s approach to the experience of the ‘nothing’ as a meaningful experience, which is not without a profoundly positive effect that needs to be noted, also helps to take the sensation of ‘emptiness’ – common in Western, first world societies – seriously. These experiences constitute a special kind of experience of transcendence, which could be added to those listed by Roy. 4. Method: The Diachronic Dimension The synchronic dimension of the method highlights how the various levels can be helpful in more deeply studying a particular experience. The synchronic structure can be applied to various experiences at different moments of the faith life thus making it possible to follow the course of development of one’s lived experience. In fact, a believer’s inner transformation progresses to the extent that their relationship with Holy Mystery becomes more solid and more mature, without necessarily interfering with their natural psychological development (the first, phenomenal/mysteric level). The awareness of that relationship (the second, phenomenological/hermeneutical level) leads to reflection that is increasingly tied to experience (the third, critical/cultural level) and to making decisions for one’s life on the basis of that reflection (the fourth, decisional/practical level) and thus of transforming oneself in the Holy Mystery by means of the theological attitude. It is an attitude that makes the believer ever-more ‘one in being’ with the Mystery of God and with the phenomenology by which it presents itself, also because it requires a constant, responsible, and increasingly involved response. As the relationship with Holy Mystery progresses, the believer is enriched by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which further enhance lived experience. The Holy Spirit’s gifts fortify our awareness of what we are living, making us, at the same time, more critical of self and of society so as to compel us to make choices that are more rooted in the Gospel message. Little by little, as the relationship grows, the entire dynamic of the experience of the five levels is strengthened. A decision that runs counter to this development stops the movement’s feedback and creates confusion in the system. It is important to note that such contrary decisions

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(sin) grow out of the basic human situation that the ecclesial tradition calls ‘concupiscence’. It is a reality inherent to the human condition that spontaneously obstructs the development of our relationship with Holy Mystery. However, the Divine Grace received in the sacrament of Baptism gives us the possibility of breaking that vicious cycle so that we might enter into a relationship with the Mystery of God. The synchronic structure of experience – divided into five levels and applied to the progressive diachronic development of lived experience – constitutes the basis of a theoretical approach and a concrete analysis that can sustain the study of the various moments that occur over the course of the evolution of the overall lived experience of relationship with God. In the following section, I will explain what formulates the development of Christian life. 4.1 The Six Stages of the Development of Christian Life In section 3.2 above, I mentioned Federico Ruiz’s proposal as a reference point illustrating the dynamic of the development of Christian life. He holds that it is a dynamic that has become the perspective from which spirituality contemplates the totality of the Christian mystery. In recent decades, the development of Christian life and the human person have taken on special meaning because of a greater awareness of history, or temporality, and of the gradual nature of life processes.50

Ruiz has reinterpreted the classical depiction of the development of Christian life (the beginner who is purified, the progressive illumination, and the perfected one who is united to God), which was sometimes perceived as rigid and unconnected to personal psychological development.51 A spiritual Christian does not feel comfortable with the old formats of the spiritual life’s process, mainly because of their rigidity and segmentation. They are rigid because they do not take certain aspects that are fundamental in real life into account, a life that is both Christian and social. They are segmented because they assume partial aspects of growth – almost all of which are taken from the ‘interior’ life – as the sole criterion of growth.52

50

51

52

Federico Ruiz Salvador, ‘L’uomo adulto in Cristo’, in: B. Morricone (Ed.), Anthropologia Crisitana, Rome: Città Nuova, 2001, 509-560, here 509. Ruiz argues that the model proposed by past theology ‘is no longer suitable for integrating the information offered by the new synthesis of psychological maturity: growth in grace by merit and good deeds, growth in virtue, and progress in the prayer journey’. Ibid., 526. Federico Ruiz Salvador, ‘Diventare personalmente adulti in Cristo’, in: T. Goffi & B. Secondin (Eds.), Problemi e prospettive di Spiritualità, Brescia: Queriniana, 1983, 277-301, here 291.

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Being an adult, a mature Christian, means the assimilation and coherent development of grace and the Gospel teaching within one’s deepest convictions and in the relationships characterizing human and Christian life: a) before God: as creature, child, servant, and free and responsible subject, b) within the Church community in which one lives and witnesses, c) as a believer, consistently throughout one’s entire existence, and d) in life and in the face of the problems of society.53

One becomes a Christian adult in exercising one’s personal freedom within which Divine Grace interacts. These are the reasons why Ruiz proposes a holistic and comprehensive approach to personal development that also integrates the path of spiritual progress toward a mature relationship with Mystery. The various theological, moral, ecclesial, and psychological aspects grow in the measure in which they are vitally incorporated in the person, and not limited to separated activities or services. Certain exercises can be practiced frequently without achieving personal improvement precisely because they have been disconnected from their central dynamism. [That is why] we need a new formula for collecting, organizing, and energizing the reality of Christian mystery in the believer’s experience.54

Ruiz’s proposal applies the same terminology used in exemplifying psychological development to the development of Christian life. In order to grow, the body eliminates, goes through various stages, and undergoes a variety of ever-different crises, all the while staying the same. Growth does not occur through simple accumulation but by a process of losses and acquisitions. The same thing happens in the spiritual process. It is not gradual or smooth. It is made up of contradictions, conflicts, tension, upsets, all of which open the horizon to richer syntheses.55

There is a very widespread belief, motivated by the speed of today’s lifestyle and by scientific and technological progress that personal changes can be made at will through sudden leaps in quality or as the result of applying some special technique. We unconsciously apply these patterns of thought to the spiritual world and the time in-between seems to be an obstacle that paralyzes the will’s rhythm. It is difficult to admit that many monotonous acts, many useless deeds of generosity, and a lot of unanswered loyalty is necessary in expectation of the day that some substantial breakthrough might strike. It takes ‘years’ of constant and 53 54 55

Ruiz Salvador, ‘L’uomo adulto in Cristo’, 512. Ibid., 526. Ruiz Salvador, ‘Diventare personalmente adulti in Cristo’, 292.

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tested exercise for solid virtue to be built. It takes wisdom and prudence to discern and to learn how to control ‘haste’.56 Ruiz lists six stages: initiation, personalization, interiorization, crisis, maturity, and old age/death/glory. Christian initiation begins with Baptism, even if it truly starts with conversion (see Diagram 4). This stage could be compared to the catechumenate for non-believers who are looking to enter the faith, or to catechism for the faithful who were baptized as children. In the following stage of personalization, the conversion solidifies and the believer begins to consciously organize their life according to the theological attitude. Particular personal Christian vocation can already be noted here (see Diagram 5). ‘The commitment

Diagram 4: Visualization of Stage 1: Initiation to Christian Life

56

Ruiz Salvador, Le vie dello Spirito: Sintesi di teologia spirituale, Bologna: EDB, 1999, 415.

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Diagram 5: Visualization of Stage 2: Personalization in Christian Life

typical of this spiritual stage lies in integrating the subjective and objective content of Christian life in the process of affirming human personality and the entirety of an existence, both individual and social’.57 57

Ruiz Salvador, ‘L’uomo adulto in Cristo’, 538.

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The third stage is that of theological interiorization (see Diagram 6). The believer gets used to making their maturing theological attitude more explicit and conscious in their everyday life. Some characteristics of this moment are docility to the Holy Spirit, contemplative adoration accompanied by an interior illumination of the truths of faith, and a special fortitude in adverse or unfavorable situations. But this must be paired with a reduction of peripheral activities and the external senses, imagination, intellectual discourse and the corresponding emotional activities. It is an intensification of

Diagram 6: Visualization of Stage 3: Theological Interiorization

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the non-sensorial and non-discursive activities, that is, an intensive development and exercise of the so-called ‘passive energies’, applying these passive energies to one’s vocation or to one’s more challenging activities.58

The fourth stage corresponds to crisis or the dark night. ‘At certain moments, the development process takes – both from a psychological as well as from a spiritual point of view – an unexpected turn that might seem to be paralysis or even a step backward’ (see Diagram 7).59 Crisis occurs when a situation loses its balance and becomes unstable, in need of an intervention to reestablish the lost equilibrium. In a positive light, overcoming the crisis means the believer has grown stronger both psychologically as well as spiritually. Thus, just as normal psychological development involves going through various stages of crisis, generally during the transition from one stage to the next, normal development in the spiritual life makes certain steps necessary. Following the Carmelite school, we call these moments ‘nights’. Overcoming crises means progressing in maturity, which is the fifth stage. Maturity is that ‘holiness’, that provisional ‘perfection’ that is achievable before dying (see Diagram 8). The lived experience of the theological virtues redimensions this stage, giving a realistic picture of the Mystery of God and the believer that is very different from one of extraordinary phenomena being the criteria of Christian maturity. A mature theological attitude means maturity in faith, hope, and love for the believer, who is gradually answered by God. It is a development that can be understood from the point of view of the passage of time. All this leads to the believer’s inner transformation, which makes them like God and thus recovers the original unity that was lost in the Garden of Eden. Ruiz defines the last stage as ‘death/glorification’ (see Diagram 9), which includes old age and should be incorporated in the discussion of the normal development of Christian life preceding death and glorification. We cannot overlook those stages of ‘decline’ such as illness, accident, the ‘misfortunes’ that happen unexpectedly and that, not infrequently, precede death or a more or less permanent state of physical or mental decline. Generally, those who write on spirituality finish their description of the development of Cristian life at the maturity of union with God, ‘de-eschatologizing’ it. Certainly, nothing can be said of life after death, which is when the state of ‘glory’ is supposed to occur, but that is not reason enough to overlook it, seeing as how, in any case, it means the attainment of the fullness of the progression of Christian development. Without this stage, all the others lose their meaning. 58 59

Ibid., 541. Ibid., 441.

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Diagram 7: Visualization of Stage 4: Crises that Arise as the Christian Life Develops

4.2 Illustration of the Method Applied to a Specific Case: The Christian Experience of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) This section will apply the synchronic framework of the five levels to the development of the Christian life of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In particular, it will focus on the gradual development of Ignatius’ historical relationship with God. Additionally, the framework is completed with two elements taken from the analysis of the transcendental experiences reported by Roy: preparation and occasion (see 3.4 above). In this way, the presentation of each stage becomes more clear and precise.

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Diagram 8: Visualization of Stage 5: Maturity of Christian Life

4.2.1 Initiation Ignatius was baptized as a child but his conscious initiation to Christian life began, by chance, when he was 26 and recovering from a war wound. The preparation of the experience by which he was initiated into spiritual things happened through reading pious books: a life of Christ and a life of the saints. Slowly, as he read, he let himself be swept away by the desire to imitate the saints and follow the Lord. He imagined adopting a very austere and penitent

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Diagram 9: Visualization of Stage 6: Death and Glorification

lifestyle as well as dedicating himself fervently to personal and liturgical prayer. He also, however, fantasized performing heroic deeds out of love for a noble lady. He spent his convalescence this way, animated by various thoughts until a moment in which he sensed the difference between the feelings that these thoughts left him with. This succession of such different thoughts, either the worldly deeds he wished to achieve or the holy deeds that came to his imagination, lasted for a long time, and he always dwelt at length on the thought before him, until he tired of it and put it aside to turn to other matters. 8. Yet there was this difference. When he was thinking about those things of the world, he took much delight in them but, afterwards, when he was tired and put

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them aside, he found that he was dry and discontented. But when he thought of going to Jerusalem, barefoot and eating nothing but herbs and undergoing all the other rigors that he saw the saints had endured, not only was he consoled when he had these thoughts, but even after putting them aside, he remained content and happy. He did not wonder, however, at this; nor did he stop to ponder the difference until one time his eyes were opened a little, and he bagan to marvel at the difference and to reflect upon it, realizing from experience that some thoughts left him sad and others happy. Little by little he came to recognize the difference between the spirits that agitated him, one from the demon, the other from God. [Marginal note of Câmara]: This was his first reflection on the things of God; and later, when he composed the Exercises, this was his starting point in clarifying the matter of diversity of spirits.60

The result of this experience was that he decided to travel to the Holy Land to imitate the saints and there carry out his apostolate. Applying the framework of the five levels we can say that the experience of the variety of thoughts (phenomenal/mysteric level) that he was conscious of (phenomenological/ hermeneutical level) and the meaning of which he reflected upon (critical/ cultural level) led him to make the decision to go to the Holy Land (decisional/ practical level) and this decision highlights his fundamental option of following the Lord (theological attitude level). The period of his Christian initiation lasted from when he decided to go to the Holy Land until he had to renounce that decision and leave, constrained by the Franciscan provincial father who forbade him to remain (see Autobiography, 46-47). 4.2.2 Personalization The stage of personalization began when Ignatius had to abandon his original personal project, based on the lives of the saints, to go and live in the Holy Land. In this case, the occasion (the provincial’s negative answer) prepared the next stage. In effect, ‘After the pilgrim realized that it was not God’s will that he remain in Jerusalem, he continually pondered within himself what he ought to do. Eventually he was rather inclined to study for some time so he would be able to help souls, and he decided to go to Barcelona. So he set out from Venice for Genoa’.61 Ignatius’ experience of the frustration of his desire to stay in the Holy Land (phenomenal/mysteric level) disoriented him (phenomenological/hermeneutical 60

61

Ignatius of Loyola, ‘The Autobiography’, in: Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, ed. George E. Ganss, Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1991, 71. Ignatius, ‘Autobiography’, 89, § 50.

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level) and caused him to reflect on what he should do with his life (critical/ cultural level). He decided to study in Barcelona (decisional/practical level), a decision that meant entrusting himself confidently to Divine Providence (theological attitude level). The new phase that began with Latin lessons in Barcelona in Lent of 1524 lasted until he decided to go to study in Paris (see Autobiography, 54-70). Meanwhile, he was studying in Alcalá de Henares, where he was unable to stay because of a run-in with the Inquisition. This situation led him to the University of Salamanca where he continued his studies. Again, he had problems with the religious authorities who were suspicious of his methods and imprisoned him. After some time in prison, they granted him his freedom on the condition that he not speak about mortal and venial sin – at least, not before he had studied for another four years. The obstacles that Ignatius faced from the religious authorities for attempting to put his plan of helping ‘souls’ into practice prepared him for the next situation, when he was prohibited from ministering. The fact (phenomenal/ mysteric level) caused him great unease (phenomenological/hermeneutical level) since it was such a large obstacle to his pastoral plans for helping souls. He therefore made the decision (decisional/practical level) to leave Salamanca and to travel to Paris. It was a decision that again led him to entrust himself to Divine Providence and thus to a deepening in his theological attitude. 4.2.3 Interiorization When Ignatius arrived in Paris in 1528, he was a poor student and was older than most of his fellow students. He stayed there for almost seven years, a time that can be described as interiorization. During this time, he carried out his original desire to study ‘for the good of souls’ and prepared for pastoral work, as well as for priestly ordination. Having obtained the title of magister artium and started his theological studies, he decided to leave Paris in 1535 to return to the Holy Land. This time he was accompanied by a group of loyal friends who decided to follow him to Jerusalem to better imitate the Lord. In Paris, Ignatius prepared the chosen community for their apostolic work. He focused on his ‘person to person’ apostolate with each of his companions, which bore fruit on the occasion of the vows taken by the group on 15 August 1534 in Montmartre. Already by this time they had all determined what they would do, namely, go to Venice and Jerusalem and spend their lives for the good of souls; and if they were not given permission to remain in Jerusalem, then return to Rome and present themselves to the Vicar of Christ, so that he could make use of them wherever he

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thought it would be more for the glory of God and the good of souls. They also planned to wait a year in Venice for passage; but if there was no passage for the East that year, they would be free of their vow about Jerusalem and approach the pope, and so forth.62

The experience of the years lived in Paris and Ignatius’ apostolate that brought together a group of determined companions (phenomenal/mysteric level) made them aware of a new situation for all of them (phenomenological/hermeneutical level) upon which they reflected (critical/cultural level), arriving together at the decision to live in the Holy Land and, if after a year, that were not possible, to go to the pope (decisional/practical level) in order to offer their lives to the service of souls in Jesus’ land or wherever the Holy Father would send them (theological attitude). 4.2.4 Crisis-Purification Having made the decision to go to the Holy Land, the company met in Venice in 1537 to set sail. 94. In that year, no ships sailed for the East because the Venetians had broken with the Turks. So, seeing that their hope of sailing was put off, they dispersed within the Venetian region, with the intention of waiting the year they had decided upon, and if it expired without possibility of travel, they would go to Rome. (…) 96. Then, the year being over and no passage available, they decided to go to Rome – even the pilgrim… 63

The situation threw the group’s plan into crisis since it meant giving up on fulfilling their desires to crown their studies by putting themselves at the service of souls. It was a circumstance that, foreseen in some way in Montmartre, created favorable conditions for the next step. In fact, the material impossibility of travelling (phenomenal/mysteric level) made them aware of the vow they had taken in Montmartre that – on failure to exercise the apostolate in Jerusalem – they were to go to Rome to put themselves at the disposition of the pope (phenomenological/hermeneutical level), forcing them to reflect on how to organize themselves in the new circumstances (critical/cultural level) and to decide to make the vow taken real (decisional/practical level). It was a situation that, even if foreseen, was not desired and it forced the whole group to again entrust themselves to Providence because their future seemed very uncertain (theological attitude).

62 63

Ibid., 104, § 85. Ibid., 108, 109.

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4.2.5 Maturing and Glorification St. Ignatius arrived in Rome in November of 1537 and remained there until his death in 1556. It was a time not just of organization for the nascent Company of Jesus, but also of maturing in relationship with God. His Spiritual Diary bears witness that, compared to his initial experience of discernment noted above (sec. 4.2.1), gives a clear idea of his spiritual progress. The paragraph of his Diary recalled below highlights the Founder’s inner turmoil. He had to make a decision regarding the new foundation’s statue on poverty, that is, on whether the Society’s professed houses should or should not make an income. Ignatius tries to make the decision by ‘feeling’ the interior movements that arise in him during and after celebrating Mass. The text reads: Friday, 8 February 1544. After notable devotion and tears during prayer, from the preparation for Mass and during it, much abundance of devotion and tears also, I refrained from speech when I could, and stood fast in the intention of no fixed income. Then, after Mass with devotion and not without tears, I went over the elections for an hour and a half or more, reflecting on that which appeared to me to have the stronger reasons and that to which my will was more moved, that is, not to have any fixed income. Wishing to present this to the Father, through the mediation and prayers of the Mother and the Son, and first praying to her to help me in approaching her Son and the Father, and then praying to the Son to help me in approaching the Father in the company of the Mother, I felt in myself a motion toward the Father or that I was being lifted up before him. As I advanced, the hairs on my head stood up and I experienced a movement like an extraordinary warmth in my whole body. Following this, tears and very intense devotion. Reading this later on and judging that it was well thought out, I experienced fresh devotion not without my eyes filling with tears; then, remembering these graces I had received, a fresh devotion.64

At this point, it can be affirmed that Ignatius’ entire life had prepared him for mystical friendship with the Lord, a friendship that was communicated through interior movements. Indeed, the action of the inner movements (phenomenal/ mysteric level) that he was aware of (phenomenological/hermeneutical level) made him reflect on the decision to be made (critical/cultural level), leading him to think that the houses should not have an income (decisional/practical level). This inclination seems to have been confirmed, with abundant tears, by his theological attitude. We cannot say much about glorification beyond the fact that it was always the final goal that Ignatius aspired to. However, we can add, since he has been canonized, that he is in God’s presence. 64

Ignatius of Loyola, ‘The Spiritual Diary’, in: Ignatius of Loyola: Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, 239-240.

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4.3 Summary As can be seen from the phenomenal-cognitive analysis of St. Ignatius’ life, it is possible to analyze individual experiences to get a coherent idea of their preparation, implementation, development, and consequences. In fact, it is possible to follow Ignatius’ journey through the ‘mysterious’ historical events of his life that constantly led him to make decisions by which to fulfill God’s will and thus establish a solid relationship of union with Him. In this way, analyzing his individual experiences offers not only an itinerary of his most important lived experiences, but also that of the development of his Christian life. 5. This Method’s Contribution to Understanding Christian Life and its Development in Relation to Spiritual Theology As has been shown, this method offers a comprehensive view of the development of Christian life as a maturing in the believer’s relationship with the Holy Mystery of God. Every lived ‘experience’ can be analyzed through the method’s five levels and thus lived experience – as a succession of experiences – can be understood in its stages of transformation that span a believer’s entire ‘Christian life’, as exemplified in St. Ignatius’ case. The contribution of the method of Spiritual Theology presented here lies in the fact that it is proposed as an instrument for studying the concrete development of Christian life through the synchronic analysis of personal witness, but in its diachronic development. Considering that the point of departure of every lived Christian experience is the encounter with Holy Mystery, the believer becomes aware and formulates that encounter in their own words through which they reflect and make decisions that lead them to take on a certain attitude with a precise way of thinking, feeling, and acting. Thus, the evolution of a believer’s personal journey can be followed in order to take note of this process of inner transformation.

CHAPTER 5 INITIATION TO THE TRANSFORMATIVE PRESENCE OF MYSTERY

The preceding chapter outlined a method by which to approach lived experience with a certain orderliness. It is a significant step, even if it certainly does not exhaust the possibilities of Spiritual Theology. As the discipline that studies the lived experience of a believer’s interior transformation, in light of their relationship with the Presence of the Mystery of Christian revelation, Spiritual Theology undoubtedly has a pedagogical task. That is, it should introduce not only content but also provide an initiation to its lived experience. On the basis of such conviction, which is certainly shared by all the authorities in the field, this chapter will address the issue of initiation from a ‘mystagogical’ point of view. This means that the development of the treatment will begin from the sociological contextualization of the actual moment formulated by the Magisterium to then explain the reason of the choice of five notions (lived experience, presence, mystery, transcendence, and transformation) as key concepts for focusing on mystagogical initiation in such a socio-cultural context. In the third to the sixth sections, I will use a literary-narrative style to illustrate some paths of initiation to the lived experience of the Presence of transformative Mystery. Finally, the importance of the catechumenate in the ecclesial sphere for initiation and Christian development through ‘mysteries’, that is, the sacraments, will be noted. 1. The Current Socio-Religious Context as seen by the Magisterium In Ad Gentes (1965), the document on the Church’s missionary activity, there is no reference to socio-religious conditions, as instead is made in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975). For example, Pope Paul VI affirmed: ‘[T]he effort to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today, who are buoyed up by hope but at the same time often oppressed by fear and distress, is a service rendered to the Christian community and also to the whole of humanity’ (EN, 1). Referencing his address to the College of Cardinals on 22 June 1973, he continued:

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The conditions of the society in which we live oblige all of us therefore to revise methods, to seek by every means to study how we can bring the Christian message to modern man. For it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity (EN, 3).

According to the Holy Father: The split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore, every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed (EN, 20).

The importance of ‘how to evangelize’, therefore, is permanently relevant, because the methods of evangelizing vary according to the different circumstances of time, place and culture, and because they thereby present a certain challenge to our capacity for discovery and adaptation. On us particularly, the pastors of the Church, rests the responsibility for reshaping with boldness and wisdom, but in complete fidelity to the content of evangelization, the means that are most suitable and effective for communicating the Gospel message to the men and women of our times. (EN, 40)

Sixteen years after his predecessor’s encyclical, Pope St. John Paul II continued along the same lines in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio from 1990: Today we face a religious situation which is extremely varied and changing. Peoples are on the move; social and religious realities which were once clear and well defined are today increasingly complex. We need only think of certain phenomena such as urbanization, mass migration, the flood of refugees, the de-Christianization of countries with ancient Christian traditions, the increasing influence of the Gospel and its values in overwhelmingly non-Christian countries, and the proliferation of messianic cults and religious sects. Religious and social upheaval makes it difficult to apply in practice certain ecclesial distinctions and categories to which we have become accustomed. (RM 32)

He also adds: ‘The rapid and profound transformations which characterize today’s world, especially in the southern hemisphere, are having a powerful effect on the overall missionary picture. Where before there were stable human and social situations, today everything is in flux’ (RM 37). The Pope was aware of the difficulties within the Church. As the first of these difficulties Pope Paul VI pointed to ‘the lack of fervor [which] is all the more serious because it comes from within. It is manifested in fatigue, disenchantment, compromise, lack of interest, and above all lack of joy and hope’. Other great obstacles to the Church’s missionary work include past and present

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divisions among Christians, de-Christianization within Christian countries, the decrease of vocations to the apostolate, and the counterwitness of believers and Christian communities failing to follow the model of Christ in their lives. But one of the most serious reasons for the lack of interest in the missionary task is a widespread indifferentism, which, sad to say, is found also among Christians. It is based on incorrect theological perspectives and is characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another’. (RM 36)

John Paul II saw that: Our times are both momentous and fascinating. While on the one hand people seem to be pursuing material prosperity and to be sinking ever deeper into consumerism and materialism, on the other hand we are witnessing a desperate search for meaning, the need for an inner life, and a desire to learn new forms and methods of meditation and prayer. Not only in cultures with strong religious elements, but also in secularized societies, the spiritual dimension of life is being sought after as an antidote to dehumanization. This phenomenon – the so-called ‘religious revival’ – is not without ambiguity, but it also represents an opportunity. The Church has an immense spiritual patrimony to offer humankind, a heritage in Christ, who called himself ‘the way, and the truth, and the life’ (Jn 14:6): it is the Christian path to meeting God, to prayer, to asceticism, and to the search for life’s meaning. (RM 38)

In line with these precedents, the Lineamenta (issues for discussion) and the Instrumentum Laboris (working document) of the 13th Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith in 2012 – twenty-two years after John Paul II’s encyclical – offer a more specific reading. In fact, paragraph 6 of the Lineamenta describes six areas that frame the new evangelization: cultural, social, communicative, economic, scientifictechnological, and political. The Instrumentum Laboris adds a seventh sphere, the religious. The Instrumentum Laboris, which collects the answers that arose from the Lineamenta and is therefore a reworking of those, starts from the reactions that emerged in the discussion sessions. The new sphere that emerged in the Instrumentum Laboris is the religious one – becoming aware of the influences that the previously listed spheres excite in the religious sense of life, and thereby providing the means to more thoroughly understand, in many different cultures, the return of a religious sense and the need for various forms of spirituality, especially among the young. Even though the present process of secularization is leading to a weakened sense of the spiritual in many persons and an emptiness of heart, many regions of the world are showing signs of a significant religious revival. This phenomenon has an impact on the Catholic Church herself in providing resources and opportunities for evangelization which were not present a few decades ago. (IL, 63)

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It is a situation, a scenario that ‘fosters religious experience and re-establishes its centrality in people’s minds, in history, and in the meaning of life itself and the search for truth’ (IL, 64). It is not, however, unambiguous, since such experience is often promoted by an almost exclusively emotional point of view, risking the bias of a fundamentalist attitude, instead of favoring the slow process of religious maturation. Interreligious dialogue finds its meaning and best context here (see IL, 65-67). In conclusion, we can affirm that: Examining these sectors permits a critical reading of the way of life, the thinking and the discourses which they espouse and can serve as a self-examination which Christians are called upon to do, to see if the manner of life and the pastoral activity of Christian communities are, in fact, suited to the task and avoiding inactivity by attentively considering the future. (IL, 68)

‘The new evangelization should seek to orientate every man and woman’s human freedom towards God, who is the source of truth, goodness and beauty’ (IL, 69). This is a context in which ‘traditional, established concepts – formally denoted by the terms ‘countries of ancient Christianity’ and ‘mission lands’ – are no longer suitable. At present, these terms seem overly simplified and referring to outdated situations; they fail to provide useful models for Christian communities today’ (IL, 76). ‘New evangelization’, therefore, is not meant ‘as simply replacing older forms of pastoral activity (the first evangelization, pastoral care) with newer forms, but rather as initiating a process of renewal in the Church’s fundamental mission’ (IL, 77). In the second chapter of the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (52-75), Pope Francis notes some of the challenges of today’s world: an economy of exclusion; the idolatry of money that rules instead of serves; violence that bears the fruit of various forms of inequality; religious persecution; social life that is based on appearance rather than what is real; fundamentalism; the process of secularization; the crisis of the family; postmodern, globalized egoism; the absence of an inculturation of faith because of a lack of an evangelization of culture; the manipulation of popular piety; and the human complexities of cities. He also makes a list of the temptations facing pastoral workers: an exaggerated concern for personal space; the temptation of selfish laziness or sterile pessimism; spiritual worldliness; ‘wars’ between God’s people; and ecclesial challenges that the Church still has not sufficiently dealt with (such as issues concerning the laity, women, and youth). Given this socio-cultural and religious context, which surrounds the development of civil and ecclesial society, what could an adequate setting today be for discussion centered on Spiritual Theology as a reflection of the Christian lived experience?

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2. The Lived Experience of the Transcendent Presence of Mystery is Transformative To tell the truth, this entire book’s work is aimed at showing how the lived experience of transcendence comes from the presence of Mystery, which works an inner transformation in us. I prefer to use the word presence in the sense used by Bernard McGinn who, after having studied the classical mystics of the East and West, considers it a more central and useful notion for uniting the variety of Christian mysticism in a single world. McGinn considers mysticism to be that dimension of Christianity ‘that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to what can be described as the immediate or direct presence of God’.1 In his essay ‘On the Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’,2 Karl Rahner clarifies the Christian sense of the word. It is the self-communication of God who makes himself present in history as Holy Mystery in a double sense: in one way, in the historical presence of Jesus of Nazareth and, in another, as the presence within persons that is the gift of his Grace. More precisely, it is the interaction between these two constitutive aspects that constitutes the subjective and objective elements that make Christian revelation possible. Holy Mystery is a historical presence that can be perceived in its entirety and fullness because it not only appears to the eyes and makes itself heard by the ears, but is capable of touching the core of the human person with an unknown authority. The ‘touch’ of the presence of Holy Mystery transforms the person from within. It can be said that we can ‘tell’ the presence of ‘Holy Mystery because of the effects it causes, that is, because of the transformation it produces. This highlights the importance of the second concept, that of “transformation”’.3 Inner transformation occurs as the interaction between divine grace and the believer’s active collaboration with it. It is, therefore, both active and passive at the same time. St. John of the Cross defines this transformative dynamic as ‘participant transformation’: And God will so communicate His supernatural being to [the soul] that it will appear to be God Himself and will possess what God Himself possesses. When God grants this supernatural favor to the soul, so great a union is caused that all the things of both God and the soul become one in participant 1

2

3

Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, New York: Crossroad, 1999, xvii. Karl Rahner, ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’, in: Idem, Theological Investigations. Vol. 4, trans. Kevin Smyth, Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1966, 36-73. See Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Teologia della vita cristiana: Contemplazione, vissuto teologale e trasformazione interiore, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010, 129-182.

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transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul. Indeed, it is God by participation. Yet truly, its being (even though transformed) is naturally as distinct from God’s as it was before, just as the window, although illumined by the ray, has being distinct from the ray’s.4

St. John also distinguishes between essential (or substantial) transformation and transformation of likeness. This latter corresponds to the soul’s union with and transformation in God. This union is not always existing, but we find it only where there is likeness of love. We will call it ‘the union of likeness’; and the former, ‘the essential or substantial union’. The union of likeness is supernatural; the other, natural.5

The notion of transformation acquires its importance when it is conceived of as the protagonist of the believer’s Christian renewal/rebirth, a renewal that leads to the perfection of love because it is a complete transformation into the Beloved in which each surrenders the entire possession of self to the other with a certain consummation of the union of love. The soul thereby becomes divine, becomes God through participation, insofar as is possible in this life.6

Such a formulation may seem exaggerated, but the saint reiterates: One should not think it impossible that the soul be capable of so sublime an activity as this breathing in God, through participation, as God breathes in her. For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes deiform and God through participation, how could it be incredible that she also understand, know, and love – or, better, that this be done in her – in the Trinity, together with it, as does the Trinity itself! Yet God accomplishes this in the soul through communication and participation. This is transformation in the three Persons in power and wisdom and love, and thus the soul is like God through this transformation. He created her in His image and likeness that she might attain such resemblance [Gn 1:26–27]…7

4

5

6 7

John of the Cross, ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’, in: Idem, Selected Writings, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988, 91, §§ 2, 5, 7. Ibid., ‘The supernatural union [union of likeness] exists when God’s will and the soul’s are in conformity, so that nothing in the one is repugnant to the other. When the soul rids itself completely of what is repugnant and unconfirmed to the divine will, it rests transformed in God through love’, 89, § 3. Ibid., ‘The Spiritual Canticle’, 257, stanza 22 § 3. Ibid., 280-281, stanza 39 § 4.

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Recently, Spiritual Theology has embraced more and more decisively the idea of ‘transformation’, even if this is not always explicit, for example when speaking of perfection, sanctification, or becoming Christlike.8 There is no doubt that such terms refer, even if only implicitly, to a transformative process. It is not possible to speak of Christian life except from a transformative perspective in time. For example, the idea of transformation for Charles André Bernard constitutes ‘the leitmotif of writing on Christian mystical theology’.9 For his part, Carlo Laudazi frames the concept of transformation from the perspective of the anthropological shift in theology. He thus writes of humanity that is on the path of transformation10 and asserts that ‘in a much wider sense, the spiritual person is the one who, through the action of the Holy Spirit, is transformed and assimilated to Christ’.11 Among authors who have dealt with the issue of transformation, perhaps the one who has found a practical application for the concept was Kees Waaijman, who used it in relationship to his conception of spirituality.12 The great methodological advantage that the concept of ‘transformation’ offers is that it allows us to focus on one aspect of the spiritual life, for example, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and see how it manifests in different moments. This makes it possible to compare diverse moments and grasp what is different between them as indicators of transformation not just of a single experience, but also of the lived experience of one’s entire life.13 In this way, the ‘transformation’ can be more easily seen, overcoming some of the disadvantages presented by the idea of experience. Transformation compares experiences that mark the line of development in lived experience that, in the various dimensions in the life of an individual believer, constitutes the Christian life. Further, there is a quite decisive advantage brought about by the two ideas being discussed. It lies in the fact that, considering the socio-religious change that has taken place in the last few decades – which corresponds to a change that has also occurred in our way of perceiving the personal and social interchange of the dynamic of transcendence – the two concepts of mystery and 8

9 10

11

12 13

These concepts express the point that the transformation process tends to arrive at, but they are notions, such as ‘experience’, that need to be addressed as dynamic ideas. Charles André Bernard, Théologie mystique, Paris: Cerf, 2005, 86. See Carlo Laudazi, L’uomo in via di trasformazione’, in: La teologia spirituale. Papers given at the OCD international conference held in Rome from 24-29 April 2000, Rome: Edizioni del Teresianum, 2001, 713-734. Carlo Laudazi, L’uomo chiamato all’unione con Dio: Temi fondamentali di teologia spirituale, Rome: Edizioni OCD, 2006, 154. Kees Waaijman, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods, Leuven: Peeters, 2002. For example, see Rossano Zas Friz De Col, ‘Radicarsi in Dio: La trasformazione mistica di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola’, in Ignaziana 12 (2011) no.2, 162-302. (www. Ignaziana.org)

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transformation seem relevant and useful for expressing continuity with Roman Catholic spirituality, God’s revelatory and sanctifying self-communication as the transformative Mystery of the human condition. If current historical context is as I have described it in the preceding paragraph, then the categorical approach that gives continuity to the tradition needs a new language. Recourse to the terminology that Spiritual Theology has chosen, therefore, must first have a connection to persons’ immediate experience, regardless of their cultural condition. That is, it must be connected to the experience that is given in the very idea of mystery itself. From the experience of mystery, it becomes possible to move on to the Christian experience of Holy Mystery through evangelization, which is, by its inner dynamic, a radical transformer of the human condition. The language of evangelization, however, has to become part of cultural language, a mediation that seems more feasible today if we use the term ‘mystery’ in place of others. It is precisely because of the step from mystery to the presence of Christian Holy Mystery that experience is transformative by the very virtue of lived Mystery. Evangelization, from this perspective of Spiritual Theology, would then become a ‘means to experiencing’ transformative Holy Mystery. 3. The Knowledge of Not-Knowing ‘I’m sitting on a train, along with a lot of other people, and I’m thinking of Descartes’. I’m struck by the insight of being seated on the train, with a lot of other, people thinking about Descartes, the man who claimed to exist because he thought. Thinking of him, I instead find myself seated on a train, making a trip that I didn’t choose, without knowing either my station of departure or the one of arrival. This awareness is radical knowledge about myself that presents itself as radical ignorance, as an primordial ‘not-knowing’. Descartes helps me understand that I too exist because I think, but he doesn’t explain what I’m doing on this train! It’s useless asking my travelling companions where they got on or where they’re getting off because everyone is carrying their primordial ‘not-knowing’ with them. It’s also useless asking the ticket-taker because there isn’t one and, at this point, no one has a ticket. In effect, it’s a ticket-less trip. It’s free to get on this train so there’s no need of a ticket-taker. It’s always like this, for everyone. One fine day you realize that you’re on a journey without having asked to board the train. But, where is it headed? Everyone winds up formulating their own hypothesis. The fact is that you realize that you will die while the train is moving, before it stops. In fact, no one has ever seen the train stop at any station. Those who die are inexorably thrown out.

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The train is a river in flood and doesn’t accept corpses. The dead are mercilessly discarded. The train is always moving; only the passengers stop, when they die. But where is the train going? It’s a question a lot of the passengers don’t want to ask when they see others in their compartment die. They prefer to wait for their turn without wasting thought on it. Deep down they all hope to never stop moving, to just keep going with the train. But they know that’s impossible. They know that sooner or later they’re going to stop too and the train will continue its journey. Perhaps it would be better to ask the train’s designer where it’s heading, or to ask the engineer who planned the route. There must be someone who knows how to answer these questions! But where would we find them? The fact is that there are only travelers aboard the train. None of them is the designer or the engineer. This not-knowing is the arcane knowledge that opens into a transcendence of everything that thought touches upon when someone says: ‘I’m sitting on a train, along with a lot of other people, and I’m thinking about Descartes’. It’s a question that opens us up to listening to the silence that cancels everything out, leaving us alone with our questioning and with the emptiness of not-knowing. The encounter with one’s own emptiness also takes on less complex and troubling forms. We might have the immediate awareness of transcendence in experiencing a beyond that is not the result of deductive logic, but of an insight, the perception of ‘something’ that is beyond reality and that leaves an emotional resonance that is anything but negative. In fact, it is even joyful. This is what has happened to some passengers who state that they have understood where the train is headed and what the journey means, claiming to have had an illumination. Generally, such situations provoke a bit of turmoil in the compartment because some accept the given explanation while others refute it, creating division and, not infrequently, also serious conflicts and even fights. The fact is that no one can rationally demonstrate the reality of what they have perceived and, without concrete proof, these perceptions lose their strength and authority. It also often happens during the trip that someone chooses to concentrate, more or less consciously, on another person or on a particular job, a project, an ideology, or simply on some thing, only to then lose it. The experience of loss heightens the sense of being lost on the train even more. It can reach a point that some people cannot resist and they jump off. Loss makes us even more aware of our precariousness and reawakens the question of what it all means. It causes some persons to find themselves, all of a sudden, aware that what is happening to them is also happening to others and that everyone is united by the same loneliness.

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The awareness of the precariousness of the trip occasioned by loss is a thought that didn’t occur before, when everything was focused on the desired object that was then lost. Loneliness makes us feel it even more because the awareness bubbles up that we have spent a lot of time with our travelling companions and become attached to them. They cannot be substituted with someone new because, at this point, we are conscious of the fact that this journey is not going to last forever. Some of the passengers like stirring up trouble in the compartments. They want to move from second to first class. They look for any means possible to get into first class even if things aren’t bad in second. Or else there are some who have been downgraded from first who are, generally, quite unhappy and always have something to say about the second-class compartment – not to mention their new travelling companions. Those who are upgraded, on the other hand, are unrecognizable. They look down disdainfully on everyone. There are special types of travelers including those who, driven by an inner emptiness, set out to search the entire train for the designer, anxious to get an explanation for the trip out of him. They despair because they cannot find him. Others try to understand how the train is constructed and conduct careful scientific inquiries. Still others deal with those who are ill or have other problems. During the trip, many try to earn money, which they then invest. Busy this way, they no longer worry about the trip’s meaning, but use it to benefit their own personal purpose. They think that, anyhow, there is nothing else they can do. In one compartment are those who posit only metaphysical questions, asking themselves: ‘Why does this train exist? Why not nothing?’ Since silence reigns here and there does not seem to be anyone around, those who remain are few and the compartment always has empty seats. The metaphysicians remain still, seated, breathing and thinking. They live austerely here, without excess, unlike the passengers in many other compartments who only care about eating and drinking and such, and whose only goal is not to think about the trip. They only want to be distracted since they realize that, sooner or later, they will have to leave the train. In other compartments are those who are caught up in admiring the scenery from the windows or in filming everything that happens on or off the train in order to thus better understand the journey’s meaning, spending their time reviewing the clips. Unlike in the past, today there are fewer compartments where you will find those whom the other passengers would identify as ‘religious’. These latter say they know not only where the train started out from and where it will arrive, but that they can also explain who built it and why, what the trip’s route and meaning are. They are aware that they will have to leave the train before it arrives at its destination, yet they do not think that that is an obstacle to, in some way, getting ‘there’, even if they are not sure how.

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Among these there are also some who say that a traveler introduced himself as the son of the train’s designer. Then, they claim, he was killed for the things he said. In fact, a big ruckus broke out in one of the poorest compartments because of him. The strange thing is that some of his followers said that, after his corpse was thrown off the train, he came back, although the train hadn’t stopped moving, and he explained that he had conquered death. After breathing upon them, he got off the train – not dead, but very much alive. He lifted off of the ground, ascending into the sky. And that isn’t all. They tell that, one morning after that episode, in the compartment of his followers, such a strong wind began to blow that their car rattled on the tracks and small flames of fire appeared above each of their heads. They all started speaking and everyone understood everyone else even though they all came from different compartments and only spoke their mother tongue. Then they say that his disciples started visiting all the train’s compartments announcing that he had died and was resurrected and that that was the destiny of all the passengers. Some compartments are exclusive; they do not accept ‘different’ passengers. You can only stay if you share the ideas and opinions – whatever they are – of the majority of the travelers because they only want to travel with people who think the way they do. On the other hand, there are compartments where the exact opposite happens. They have passengers from all the comparments, religions, and languages who coexist peacefully. The description of the train, of its compartments and its travelers, although it may help in understanding what the train is like, does not give us answers regarding the meaning of the journey or the train. Nevertheless, ‘knowing’ that you do not know is still a knowing. Knowing that you do not know the how or why of finding yourself on this trip, being ignorant of the meaning, of the stations of departure or arrival, can hit you in the different ways mentioned above as well as in other ways that have not been described. The result, however, is always a ‘not-knowing’, that is, is always a mystery. It is precisely the awareness of this ‘not-knowing’ that starts our true journey and the possibility of making sense of it. The emptiness that comes from being lost can give rise to the greatest adventure. 4. Initiation to Mystery Christianity presents itself as the witness of a group of people who lived with Jesus and announced that he had died, risen, and ascended into heaven. Traditionally, the catechetical journey began by teaching Jesus’ words and deeds to then explain his death and resurrection. This highlighted the motivations by

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which everyone finds themselves on the journey of this train of life. The problem today is that that tradition has been broken and a new point of contact with people needs to be found, something different from the traditional method of doctrinal teaching about Jesus’ life. That is what we need to arrive at but perhaps it is not always the most convenient way to start out. The proposal highlighted here is to initiate persons, not to the concept of Christianity, but to the experience of their own inner mystery and, starting from there, to develop the Christian lived experience of knowing Jesus. This is the story of an initiation to the mystery of life that could serve as the first step towards considering it for use in a Christian context. * * * Many years later, he still remembered the sound of rapping on the door that morning in autumn. At the time, he was still young and Grandma watched him carefully. In his teenage eyes, she saw a light that she knew very well. Yes, she was very familiar with the tones of that inner light and she knew that the moment had come. He remembered that the knocking at the door made him think of her and the talk they had had the night before. ‘You look thoughtful’, she said. ‘Yes. It’s been a couple of months that I’ve felt this emptiness inside. It keeps me from enjoying anything’, he answered. ‘Well then, you have to go seek out the Wise Old Man of the mountain’, she told him. ‘But I’m not sick’. ‘I know’, she responded, ‘but the time has come for you to become a man’. ‘I already am a man’, he objected. ‘It’s true, you’re no weakling’, she agreed, ‘but to be a man you have to make yourself a man and that takes time and means making decisions. No one becomes a man here without talking to the Wise Old Man of the mountain’. ‘When should I go?’ he asked. ‘As soon as possible. Tomorrow, at dawn’. * * * By noon the next day, the boy had arrived at the Old Man’s cabin. He knocked but no one a nswered. The door remained shut and He did not hear any noise inside. It was a silence that made him shiver. He knocked again. Silence. Looking around he saw a tree stump and sat down. He waited. He did not really know why he was there. Once again, he keenly felt the emptiness that had crept up inside. The first time he had felt it, he thought it was hunger.

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He remembered that it had been about midday and that he hadn’t eaten anything that morning. He had gone out with Grandma to collect wood in the forest. They had found mushrooms and he was waiting for her to cook them. Oddly though, after having eaten he still felt empty inside. It was not the emptiness of death, which he knew well. He had felt that a few years before when his mother had died from a snake’s bite. It also was not the emptiness of absence that he had felt when his father had gone far away, leaving him at Grandma’s and without any brothers or sisters. Grandma had raised him and now he found himself sitting, waiting for the Old Man. He had only seen him once before when the Old Man had come down from the mountain to see after his mother. ‘There’s nothing to be done’, the Wise Old Man had said. He took a branch of leaves from his bag and Grandma had made a tea from them. His mother had drunk it and fallen asleep. The Old Man got up and Grandma walked him to the door. She took his hand and kissed it. The Old Man blessed her and, turning, walked away taking the path up to the forest. Now the boy found himself waiting for the Old Man’s cabin door to open. He got up and knocked again. Silence. Perhaps I should leave and come again another day, he thought. But going back to Grandma without having seen the Old Man did not seem like a good idea, so he sat down again. Suddenly he heard a noise from the path and lifting his eyes, he saw the Wise Old Man slowly approaching, a staff in his hand. He walked slowly. The boy stood and waited for him to come closer. ‘Good morning’, said the boy. The Old Man, who was walking carefully, lifted his eyes. ‘Good morning’, the boy repeated. The Old Man, who was almost in front of him, gave a big smile. Catching his gaze, the boy realized that he was blind. The only thing the Old Man said before opening the door was: ‘I’ve been expecting you’, Along the back wall was a simple stone fireplace with a few logs cut into seats in front of it. There were no inner walls. The Old Man spent his life in that room in the middle of the mountain forest. Finally, the boy heard him say, ‘Sit down’. Not knowing which log to choose, the boy remained standing. ‘Don’t you want to sit down?’ the Old Man asked. ‘Yes’, the boy answered, ‘but I don’t know where’. ‘Then stay standing until you’ve chosen’. Meanwhile, the Old Man moved to place his staff and the cloak he was wearing by the door. Then, taking some wood, he sat down to the side of the fireplace and got ready to light the fire. Embarrassed, the boy did not know whether or not to sit beside him. The Old Man lit a bit of straw that he had

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placed under the wood and, in a few minutes, a fire was crackling. The boy felt the air warming up and decided to sit in front of the fire. ‘You’re sitting beside me, aren’t you?’ the Old Man asked. ‘Yes’. ‘Are you hungry?’ the Old Man asked. ‘A little’. ‘Well then’, the Old Man responded, ‘please go get some water in the pot that’s behind you. The well is on the other side of the house’. He then continued to prepare a soup with some herbs and a few vegetables, adding a piece of stale bread that had been a gift from the Old Man’s last visitor. It was beginning to get dark. ‘You should prepare a place to sleep’, the Old Man said. ‘Look in the corner on your right and you’ll find a skin you can use as a blanket. If you go out behind the house you’ll find some boards that you can put in front of the fire to sleep on’. While the boy was getting ready to spend the night, the Old Man stayed close to the fire. Every now and then, he added some wood to the fire and watched it without seeing it. ‘I’m done’, the boy said. ‘Come sit down’, the Old Man told him. Having taken a seat, the Old Man asked him, ‘Did Grandma send you?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Are you ready?’ continued the Old Man. Silence. The boy didn’t know how to answer and the Old Man let him think. ‘Ready for what?’ he thought. After a long pause, the Old Man said, ‘OK, let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day’. Lying on the boards, the boy couldn’t sleep. He continued to ask himself, ‘Ready for what?’ He felt the emptiness keenly and Grandma and her words came to his mind: ‘To become a man’. Maybe that’s what the Wise Old Man of the mountain meant, if he were ready to become a man. He tried to imagine himself as a grown man but he couldn’t. The emptiness would not let him be. Instead, it tormented him. Finally, he started to relax and he fell asleep. * * * In the morning, even before the break of dawn, he heard a noise in the room. It was the Old Man lighting the fire. It was cold. The boy watched how he was able to do everything without seeing. The Old Man got up and, crossing the room, gathered everything he needed. He took the pot with the last night’s soup, added a bit of water, some herbs, and a piece of something that the boy couldn’t make out. Then he set it on the fire to reheat.

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‘Ah, are you up?’ asked the Old Man. ‘How can you see that my eyes are open?’ asked the boy. ‘I didn’t see them. I heard your breathing. The rhythm changes when you’re awake’. Then the boy also got up and went to sit by the Old Man, surprised at how sharp his hearing was. ‘Good morning’, said the boy. ‘Good morning’, answered the Old Man. Outside, the sun was beginning to rise. When the soup began to boil, the Old Man took it off the fire and poured a bit into his bowl and the boy’s. He worked in silence. As the light grew stronger, the boy saw how neat the room was, something he hadn’t noticed the night before. ‘How does he keep it so organized if he can’t see?’ he wondered. Having finished their sort of soup, they remained sitting in silence. The boy waited for him to speak but the Old Man said nothing. The sun had risen and light filled the silence. ‘Is the sun up?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Yes’. ‘Well then, let’s go out’. Without needing any help, the Old Man went to the front door and opened it. He was bathed in light. The expression on his face was delicate and, despite the neglected beard, his face was relaxed, clear, almost transparent. He took a couple of steps then stopped and said: ‘Come, sit there’, pointing to a large stone. He remained standing in front of the boy. It was the beginning. ‘What is a man?’ asked the Old Man. ‘I don’t know’. ‘But, aren’t you a man?’ continued the Old Man. ‘Yes, I am’. ‘Well, then’, said the Old Man, ‘how is it that you don’t know who you are?’ Silence. ‘I don’t know’. ‘Alright’, the Old Man conceded, ‘that is something. Tell me, does a hen know that she’s a hen?’ ‘I don’t think so’. ‘So’, the Old Man pressed, ‘if a man doesn’t know what a man is, then he’s like a hen that doesn’t know it’s a hen’. Silence. ‘I only know that Grandma told me that no one becomes a man without talking to the Wise Old Man of the mountain, that is, with you. I guess that you know what a man is otherwise she wouldn’t have sent me here’. Silence.

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‘It’s odd’, the Old Man mused. ‘You know that you’re not a hen, but you don’t know who you are’. Silence. ‘Perhaps’, said the Old Man, ‘you really are a hen and you don’t know it and that’s why Grandma sent you to me’. ‘In that case, you’d be an old rooster’. ‘Excellent answer’, smiled the Old Man. ‘Yes, I’m an old rooster and you aren’t a hen but a young rooster who doesn’t know it. For how long have you felt the emptiness inside?’ ‘What emptiness?’ asked the boy. ‘The emptiness that doesn’t go away even after you’ve eaten, drunk, slept… The emptiness that you always feel during the day and that never goes away’. ‘For a couple of months. Why?’ ‘Because’, answered the Old Man, ‘only if you dive into that emptiness will you become a man. Or, if you prefer, a rooster. Come on. Let’s take a walk in the woods’. The boy stood up and the blind Old Man guided him into the forest. ‘He knows the paths well’, thought the boy. After almost half an hour they stopped. ‘Do you hear the stream?’ the Old Man asked. ‘Yes’. ‘Good’, said the Old Man. ‘Let’s go sit beside it’. Helped by the boy, the Old Man sat down, then the boy did too. ‘What do you hear?’ he asked the boy. ‘The sound of water’. ‘And what does it say?’ the Old Man continued. ‘Nothing’. ‘What do you mean, ‘nothing’? Listen’, pressed the Old Man. Silence. The boy only heard the running water. They spent a long time listening to the water. At a certain point in the afternoon, the Old Man said that they had better return home. When they arrived, the sun had set and, going into the house they repeated the dinner ritual of the night before. At the end of the meal, the Old Man said: ‘Now, in the silence of the forest, listen to the sound of the stream again. ‘But I can’t’, replied the boy. ‘Of course you can’t because you’re not imagining that you are where we were this morning. Imagine that you are there and listen’. After a long silence the boy said: ‘It’s strange, I feel like I’m really there’. ‘Good’, the Old Man told him. ‘Go to sleep thinking that you’re there’. * * *

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The rushing river appeared in the boy’s dream. He tried to figure out where it came from and where it was going but he couldn’t. He could only see the part of the stream that was right in front of him. Suddenly, the emptiness struck him so forcefully that he doubled over clutching his stomach, but when he tried to cry out from the pain he saw that the stream had dried up. Then he found himself sitting with his arms around his stomach. The Old Man was already lighting the fire. ‘A nightmare?’ he asked the boy. ‘Yes. I was dreaming that I was back where we were yesterday, near the river. Suddenly I started to feel the emptiness very strongly until I was going to cry out in pain but at that moment I saw that the stream had dried up; there wasn’t any more water. I got scared and woke up’. ‘Good’, the Old Man said. ‘That is already something’. ‘What does it mean?’ the boy asked. ‘You’ll find out for yourself’. * * * Done with breakfast, they headed back to the stream again. On seeing it, the boy gave a sigh of relief. It was there. And like the day before, they sat for the rest of the day listening to the running water. At a certain point, the boy fell asleep. Again, he dreamed that he was there watching the rushing water, hearing its murmur. All of a sudden, the water’s level started to rise such that it jumped its banks. He heard a roar and was dragged away. Again, he woke up frightened. ‘Ah, another nightmare?’ asked the Old Man. ‘This time I dreamed that so much water was coming out of the river that it carried me away’. ‘Good’, the Old Man said. ‘We’re making progress’. The boy didn’t feel like asking him anything else. They returned to the house in silence. They ate what someone had left for the Old Man and went to sleep after exchanging only a few words. * * * A few weeks passed this way. Now the boy heard the stream all day long. ‘Do you always hear it?’ the Old Man asked him. ‘Yes’, the boy answered. ‘Then it’s time to walk’. The next week was spent on long treks through the forest, always taking the usual path. There came a time that the boy knew the way so well he was able to follow it with his eyes closed. ‘Well then, it’s time to sit’, said the Old Man. And for many weeks they sat outside the house with their eyes shut, travelling the path and hearing the river in their imagination, without seeing them. * * *

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It was late in the spring when the Old Man said: ‘Now go to your Grandma and give her my greetings then come back’. And so, at that very moment, the boy left to see his grandmother. Returning home, he found out that she had died a few days earlier. Grief-stricken, he returned to the Old Man the same day. ‘Well, why are you back so soon?’ the Old Man asked. ‘Grandma is dead’, the boy responded sadly. ‘Then you are all alone. What do you think you will do?’ ‘I don’t know’, the boy said despondently. * * * The next morning, the Old Man asked him again what he was going to do and the boy answered that he wanted to stay because he wanted to become a man. ‘Then go to the river and listen’, the Old Man told him. The boy went. When he came back, he said: ‘I’ve realized that I have to stay here and live in the forest to listen to the river’. 5. Interpreting the Mystery What is interesting in this story is the way that the boy comes to make a choice. It is an understanding that arose from no other guidance than the contact with nature suggested by the Wise Old Man. It was not influenced by ideologies or cultural, religious, or social presuppositions. The Wise Old Man of the forest put the boy in contact with himself through contact with nature. The environment that gave rise to the decision was made up of the forest and trees and river, along with, obviously, the contribution of his relationship with the Wise Old Man. The boy was able to make a decision because he had confidence, first in his grandmother, then in the Wise Old Man, and finally in the method he had been taught for ‘listening’ to nature and himself. He did not give in to fear or impatience, or discouragement. With guidance, he persevered and so found his path. Listening to nature and himself revealed something to him that made him decide. The decision to stay and live in the forest with the Old Man grew out of awareness of a radical option for life. We can guess that the young man will take the Old Man’s place, offering the same service that the Wise Old Man gives the neighboring areas, that is, of helping the young find their path, healing the sick, in short, of offering wisdom. This is precisely the question: ‘Where can I learn the wisdom to know what to do with my life?’ One path comes from cultivating an awareness of mystery in order to discover the meaning of one’s own life.

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It is a meaning with various levels of understanding that embrace all of life’s dimensions. The first level is acquiring the awareness that the primordial ‘knowing’ is a ‘not-knowing’. Starting from this awareness, we take an initial step towards the search for meaning, which presupposes a given that is not explicit: the emptiness of ‘not-knowing’. This feeling of emptiness should not be attributed, as often happens today, to some psychological factor that was overlooked young in life or to some situation that damaged the person’s normal developmental process, causing irreparable damage. It is important to interpret it teleologically and not just psychologically. This emptiness, which also has all the characteristics of strong nostalgia, should be interpreted as the psychological reflex of an original historical condition that marks the fundamental human situation, that of the missing communion with the Holy Spirit. In the beginning, the human situation was ‘blessed’, that is, it was full communion with the Divine Spirit, a communion in which human persons found themselves full of grace through an immediate awareness of their life in God as mystery, which should not be confused with an understanding of the mystery of God. In the Christian tradition, we note the original historical condition of persons separated from God in the expression ‘original sin’. It indicates how, at a certain moment, the communion of life is broken and consequently human Being is left with just its own spirit but without the Spirit. All of salvation history is God’s repeated offer to reconnect his Spirit with humanity’s in order to mend the break. In this sense, there is a dimension to the current human situation that, from its origins, has been ‘missing’ and that the grace of the incarnation of the Divine Word has come to fill with his Spirit through the action of the Church in Baptism. Being aware of the human condition as mystery means having an essential understanding of life not only from a philosophical, psychological, and sociological point of view, but also from a spiritual perspective or, if you prefer, a mystical one, that is, as mystery.14 Such an understanding permeates the first kind of knowing without undermining the professional validity of those disciplines. This deeper understanding respects the holistic value of the theological/ spiritual viewpoint of an original historical understanding of human existence. Only from such a premise can we justify the fact that humanity’s search for meaning authentically responds to the human situation. Otherwise, it could simply be explained as an impulse motivated, more or less consciously, by the psychological perception of existential emptiness. 14

See Rossano Zas Friz De Col, Iniziazione alla vita eterna: Respirare, trascendere e vivere, Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni San Paolo, 2012.

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Returning to the subject of ‘not-knowing’, it is important to point out that the awareness of one’s life as mystery, that is, as the ‘knowing’ of ‘notknowing’, is the basis of the search for meaning that presupposes an inner absence – that of the Spirit. Existential emptiness, therefore, presents itself in various ways and persists, even despite attempts to ignore or fill it. This absence shows the lack of a presence, which is precisely what it seeks. Emptiness, therefore, becomes the absent Presence of the Spirit. It is a Presence that is felt by its absence. Since the human spirit was originally joined with the Spirit, we are currently living in an age of divorce. Christian life is the attempt to rejoin spirit with Spirit. Historically, this passage takes place in the individual’s encounter with the revelation of God in the incarnation of the Divine Word through which fulfillment of the divine promise is offered: the unificatory gift of the Spirit that joins what has been separated. Becoming aware of life as mystery is very important because it leads to a rational openness to all of life’s dimensions. Having such an attitude makes it easier to use methods of seeking that, from other perspectives, might not be taken into consideration. For example, an attitude that sees life as a ‘problem to solve’ means wanting to ‘solve life’ rationally. The human sciences instead show that ‘problem’ does not just entail the rational dimension but involves all the dimensions of the person, particularly the emotional one. This is why it is not enough to perceive one’s life as mystery, we must also choose that attitude by which to interpret it. Such a choice becomes a radical option for our lives, becomes the principle and basis for subsequent choices. It becomes necessary to make a choice, a decision regarding how to deal with personal mystery, whether to make it rationally, treating it as a problem to solve, or with a reasonable openness to all of life’s dimensions. This decision becomes a radical option because it involves including or excluding our fundamental spiritual interpretation, whether to exclude it, trying to ‘solve’ life rationally, or instead to include it, deciding to ‘live’ the mystery. The journey from the awareness of life as mystery to the lived Christian experience of mystery is always realized in a unique way because each of us does it in an intimately personal way that is unrepeatable. Nevertheless, some common traits can be seen: for example, the fact that encounter with Jesus Christ and its hermeneutical mediation for self-understanding are necessary. Even if such an encounter can occur in a million different ways, it is always true that it is an encounter with Him. In the example of the case of the boy who seeks out the Wise Old Man of the forest, how could the journey from his experience of mystery help in the transition to the lived Christian experience of mystery?

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6. Initiation to Christian Mystery Let us imagine that many years have passed in the life of the boy of our story. His master has died and he is now the Wise Old Man of the forest. One fine day, a Christian monk arrives at his cabin and knocks at the door. The Old Man, who had been seated, calmly gets up and opens the door. * * * ‘Good morning’, said the monk at the door. ‘Good morning’, responded the Wise Old Man. ‘My name is Albert and I am passing through on the way to my monastery. I think that I’m lost because I don’t recognize the path. I’ve taken the road to my monastery many times but I’ve never been through these parts before. Could you set me back on the right track?’ ‘Of course’, said the Old Man. ‘But first, come in and rest awhile’. After offering the visitor something to drink, he continued, ‘I’ve often heard talk of your monastery’. ‘It’s very old’, said the monk. ‘It dates back six centuries to when the country was still just a few farmhouses. Now we number around 120 monks. You should come to visit us sometime’. ‘Thank you’, the Old Man answered, ‘but I find it hard to leave this place’. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ asked the monk. Silence. ‘I could go with you’, the Old Man began, ‘but I have no reason to go. Going simply to know the monastery doesn’t seem sufficient reason to me’. ‘You don’t always need to have a good reason for something before you do it’, the monk pointed out. ‘Sometimes you can find one afterwards. If you come with me perhaps you will find a good reason for doing so’. ‘But that means that I should go for no reason, even if I found one there. Here, instead, I am at peace and I have a good reason for not going. Why don’t you stay a few days here with me? Perhaps you would find a good reason for staying even if you don’t have one now’. ‘Excellent point’, the monk smiled. ‘Indeed, I could stay. Just not now because they’re expecting me at the monastery. But I will be back in about a month’. Having finished his tea, the monk got up and the Old Man not only gave him directions but also accompanied him to the crossroads where the monk headed left instead of continuing along the right-hand path. ‘See you in a month’, the Old Man said, shaking the monk’s hand. ‘Yes. See you soon and many thanks’, the monk replied gratefully. * * *

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It was towards the end of the afternoon one day that a month had almost passed when the monk recognized the fork in the road where he had said goodbye to the Old Man. He took the path towards the Old Man’s cabin. The Old Man had been in his thoughts over the past few days as the time to meet him again drew near. He had asked about the Old Man around the monastery and the oldest monks had given him some specific details. He got the impression that the Old Man was practically a hermit, living a solitary life, but they said he wasn’t religious – at least not in the traditional sense of the term. Nevertheless, he was highly respected, not just for his lifestyle, but also for his medicinal expertise that he used to help the sick as well as for the fact that he was an excellent counselor. In fact, that was why he had come to be known as the Wise Old Man of the mountain. These things intrigued the monk. When he saw the cabin, he noticed that the Old Man was seated outside taking in the last rays of the day’s sunlight. They greeted one another cordially and sat down to chat, drinking the wine that the monk had brought. ‘Why have you returned?’ asked the Old Man. ‘I guess that if you didn’t have a good reason for coming, after our first meeting, you will at least hope to find one here’. ‘I have come because, after meeting you, I asked my brothers about you and your lifestyle and I was curious. That’s the reason for my visit’. ‘How could I possibly make a monk curious?’ mused the Old Man. ‘It seems more logical that I would be curious about the life of monks and not the other way around’. ‘I understand your surprise’, the monk assured him, ‘but look, everyone nowadays is looking for what could be called the things of this world. You instead aren’t a monk but you live like a hermit. You must have understood something that others haven’t, something that gives you a reason to live the way you do. Or am I wrong?’ ‘Actually, I made the decision to become the Wise Old Man of the mountain’s disciple many years ago. I had lost all my family, who were either dead or emigrated far from here. The Old Man became a good reason for living even if not my only one. He was like a father to me and made a man of me. After he died, I decided to stay to do for others what he had done for me. He left me everything you see here in the cabin but, above all, he left me his sense of joy. And I am content’. ‘His sense of joy?’ questioned the monk. ‘It seems to me that happiness doesn’t make any sense, but that it’s the expression of sense, an expression of meaning’. ‘Actually’, the Old Man corrected, ‘rather than expressing sense it expresses mystery, which makes sense even of joy’.

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‘Wonderful!’ the monk exclaimed. ‘When I was a novice, my novice master taught us to laugh in our cells in the dark. At first I didn’t understand, but I did it. One time, I realized that I had laughed even before I tried laughing. Then I realized that I was laughing at my attempts to find a reason for laughing. I was laughing because I was looking for a reason to laugh instead of just laughing happily for no reason. I confess that I was embarrassed to discover that I thought I had to have a reason for laughing. Instead – and this was my surprising discovery – I experienced that I spontaneously wanted to laugh at the thought that I had to have a reason for laughing. It seems absurd but it’s true. That was the beginning of a journey that led me to discover true joy, the joy that is beyond reason. From that moment on I always laugh when I’m alone, for no reason, and it’s wonderful!’ ‘Once, my old teacher, who was blind, asked me: ‘Tell me, how does a toad laugh?’ I answered that toads don’t laugh. Then he told me, ‘Go, spend some days in the forest beside a toad waiting for him to laugh’. I was furious but I did it. After many days of absurd waiting, I broke out laughing at the thought of waiting for the toad to laugh. I ran to my master and told him: ‘I am the toad who laughs!’ ‘Well done’, he told me and that day we celebrated’. ‘How beautiful’, the monk said. ‘What is absurd to reason can instead gladden the heart. Once I was chopping firewood and I marveled at the fact that the axe could cut a small trunk in two, splitting the wood with its blade and the force acquired as it fell. It struck me that I swung the axe from above my head while my eyes were focused on the wood. I had stopped to reflect on this fact when one of my brothers who was passing by asked me what I was doing there, frozen, looking at the axe. I told him that I was thinking. Then he told me this story: ‘Once upon a time, the best bowman of a certain country was participating in a famous archery competition. One by one the other archers were scoring well and, as the contest continued, he got discouraged and started feeling more and more nervous, which made his situation – trying to concentrate and keep his wrist steady – more and more difficult. Suddenly, he remembered what happened when he was cutting wood: he simply had to lift the axe for it to fall upon the wood. It was simply a question of letting go and accompanying it as it fell, not of forcing it. The axe had its own strength from falling that just needed to be accompanied. Thus, the bowman realized that he simply had to set the arrow free with a gentle release. But thinking about how he could aim it toward the bullseye he realized that the axe also had to be aimed, but that that was done with the hand while the eyes were looking at the wood. Then came the inspiration of what he had to do – look at the bullseye and wait for the moment when he knew that he should release the arrow, without forcing or pushing it. He simply had to wait for the right moment to free it and the arrow would reach its mark, just as the axe reaches the wood’.

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‘So’, interpreted the Old Man, ‘to reach certain goals we only need to free the energy that is within us. The problem is that we want to aim that energy, manipulate it, not set it free. My old master knew this very well. Regarding the archer and the arrow he told me that life isn’t a path to follow, but rather that the path to follow depends on where you want to get to. It’s the point of arrival that shows us which path to take. Just like an arrow nocked in a taut bow, our life has its own momentum, an energy waiting to blossom, but we don’t know how to be good archers because we don’t know where to aim. All the wisdom I have learned in these woods is simply that: knowing where to aim and releasing my inner strength’. ‘So, where should I aim?’ asked the monk. ‘You are the monk here. You should be the one telling me!’ the Old Man exclaimed. ‘Every morning in the monastery’, started the monk, ‘when I get up to pray in the dark of night, I get the impression that I’m doing something absurd. I willingly chant the psalms but I feel like an arrow in flight that, every day, finds its initial impulse is weakening. At any moment, I might fall into the void before I reach the mark’. ‘And what is this target you’re aiming at?’ wondered the Old Man. ‘It’s a mystery’, answered the monk, ‘a black target on a black wall that spans the horizon on a moonless night’. ‘Well then’, pressed the Old Man, ‘what is the void?’ ‘The fear of falling endlessly before I make it to the mark. The fear that my arrow might lose its momentum before reaching the target, and disappear completely’, responded the monk. ‘A river might dry up before reaching the sea, but there is always the chance that it might rain along the way’, explained the Old Man. ‘That’s exactly why I chose to be a monk. One day, when I was still young’, the monk continued, ‘as I was heading out to milk our one cow, I thought: “What would happen this morning if the cow doesn’t have any milk?” I told myself: “Today we wouldn’t drink milk and nothing would happen”. But then I thought: “And if the cow were to die? … Then we wouldn’t drink that cow’s milk even if we might drink the milk from another cow”. And that thought shocked me. I stopped short and imagined finding the cow I was going to milk dead. It was an unbearable thought. I hurriedly opened the stall door and, finding it there, – calmly turning to look at me like every other morning – I felt a great wave of relief. But the ever-lurking possibility of never drinking her milk again tortured me. ‘Then, one late summer’s day, I went into town. There was a monk there looking for laborers to bring in the monastery lands’ harvest. After telling my family, I went to work for them for three weeks. At night, they had us sleep in

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a large hall and every morning before dawn I heard the monks singing. A couple of days before the job finished, I found the monk who had hired me and asked him why they sang at night. He explained that they did it at night to praise the Lord of light so that light might shine in the midst of darkness. I liked that answer a lot and asked him if I could join them. That night, I didn’t close an eye waiting for the time when I would go into the church with the monks. I liked the experience so much that I joined them for the rest of the few nights I had left. ‘After the harvest was brought in, I went home and returned to my regular life. One day, our cow died. A that moment I realized that her milk didn’t have to be lost and I decided to enter the monastery. At first, I didn’t quite understand how the cow, the milk, and my decision to be a monk were related, but I felt that I was doing the right thing. ‘As the years passed, I realized that the cow’s milk represented my life and that she was the source from which I received life, and thus also, the fear of death. When the cow actually died, I realized that the monastery gave me a sense of security against death, as if it were a cow that gave the milk of true life. Time passed and I began to understand more, even if only mysteriously, about the source of that security that, at first, I only felt instinctively. In the monastery, I discovered the strength to keep my arrow in the air, even if I’m always afraid that one day I might fall into nothingness. That strength is like the rain falling on the river, encouraging it against the fear of drying up before reaching the sea’. The Old Man responded thoughtfully, ‘In the forest, I too have found a strength that is like the breath of life permeating everything. Day after day, it spurs the life of the woods onwards and upwards. The forest is like a seed that, from within, develops its own force to make itself grow. It is like an arrow. Nevertheless, every day I also witness the omnipresent spectacle of death here and there: trees, animals, plants. There are a thousand dangers threatening life. But it is also true that I have always had the impression that the life of the forest is stronger than death. ‘Oftentimes, in the evening’, the Old Man continued, ‘when I light the fire in the cabin, I get to thinking of a fire that never dies. I imagine a fire that is always burning but, unfortunately, that isn’t possible, and I think that even life ends one day and that my fire will be extinguished. For years now I have seen how the forest’s life cycles are renewed just like the seasons. But more often I notice that, as the seasons pass, instead of being physically renewed, I am growing older. Oddly enough though, I feel happier, more tender inside, and have an ever-greater compassion towards everything and everyone. I also find that strength, that rain that replenishes my river as it makes its way towards the sea and that comforts me. How do you explain that strength, that rain?’

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The monk thought before responding. ‘In the monastery, I have been with several brothers at the moment of their death. Usually they die old men, after having lived the same daily routine for many years. And yet, it is a different experience in every single case. I have seen monks who have died in despair, clinging to life, not at all resigned to the natural time of passing even though they were aware that their time was up. At the moment when the candle’s wick gave off its last gleam of light and the bit of wax remaining grew cold, they rebelled, screaming that they didn’t want to die. With others, you weren’t sure if they had died or were merely sleeping. I’ve seen some die smiling and others’ faces light up and become more beautiful at the moment of their last breath after a long illness and much suffering. I have come to the conclusion that entering into communion with that strength depends on a personal decision, radically entrusting oneself to mystery’. ‘I also think that we are surrounded by a great mystery’, nodded the Old Man, ‘and that we can communicate with it only if we give ourselves up to its incomprehensibility. It is a not-knowing’. ‘That’s true’, agreed the monk. ‘It took me many years to understand that the “not-knowing” is the most important “knowing”. But to understand something so simple takes breaking out of your rational mindset. That’s the only way that the meaning of “not-knowing” – a very reasonable even if not a rational meaning – can become clear’. ‘The contemplation of nature has been my teacher’, the Old Man said. ‘It has helped me so much, along with the teachings of my master. But how are you initiated into mystery at the monastery?’ ‘That depends on whom you choose as a teacher’, answered the monk. ‘There are many ways and you are free to choose in the monastery. For example, I entrusted myself to a guide who had deeply studied and practiced the art of breathing. There is some prejudice against it but I am convinced that the method is good’. ‘And what does this method consist in?’ questioned the Old Man. ‘It starts from the experience of the mystery of one’s own life’, began the monk, ‘and then it focuses on the mystery of breathing and its relationship with life and daily living. From there you contemplate how, in the Bible, “breath” has an essential role in the relationship between God and humans and then between Jesus, the believer, and the Church. Breathing thus serves as a pedagogical meditation for living one’s personal mystery in communion with the mystery of God and Christ. It is the mystery of the Holy Spirit. The master I chose said that, starting from that point, one could properly speak of a “Christian” spirituality because you consciously come to breathe with the Spirit, aware of the fact that the air you are breathing is both the source of biological and of divine life, of temporal life and of the beginning of eternity’.

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‘All of this is new to me’, said the Old Man with interest. ‘Actually, it’s not complicated’, the monk smiled. ‘Being aware of “not-knowing”, that is, of living in mystery, opens the door to a knowing that isn’t, at the outset, rational or categorical or discursive but rather existential, sapiential. That is why it is absolutely important to realize that the approach to the method and the technique cannot be the rational kind that seeks at all costs to understand and constantly evaluates what you’re doing. The method’s reasonableness – if you can talk about it in terms of reasonableness – is understood in its practice, not before. You need to learn that it isn’t the understanding that satisfies but the inner appreciation of mystery that appeases the spirit. Even if it means suffering before coming to this realization’. ‘Suffering?’ asked the Old Man. ‘You suffer a lot in two senses’, the monk replied. ‘First of all, physically, because you have to get used to sitting for a long time with your spine at a right-angle to the floor. With a little practice, however, you can do it. Second, there’s a type of moral suffering: trusting in the method without rational or immediately verifiable results can be disheartening and drive one to abandon the whole practice. In my experience, the hardest part was persevering in the beginning stages. You can be tormented by a lack of trust in the master, doubting that he is able to guide you, or by the uncertainty of not knowing where the method might lead, or by impatience because you want immediate results toward a goal that you set at the beginning, before starting the practice, or just because it seems like nothing “important” is happening’. ‘Why is posture so important?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Because it expresses our inner disposition to listening’, answered the monk. ‘That is why it is essential to keep your spine at a right angle to the floor while you are seated in a vigilant position. To keep your back straight you have to keep the lower back taut while the shoulders are relaxed. It’s a position that promotes deep rather than shallow breathing, with the belly relaxed and the breath passing through the nose. With continual practice, you can learn to maintain this position – breathing rhythmically and deeply – for a long time without getting tired. ‘Another suggestion’, the monk continued, ‘is, when you are seated in a chair, to keep your feet parallel and your calves at a 90-degree angle to the floor, making a right angle that mirrors the one formed by your back. Some who practice this method prefer a more Eastern position like the Lotus or Half-Lotus, but the position I’ve just described definitely works. Another point is to not overlook the importance of the time spent before contemplating. It helps to prepare the body and still the mind and you can do it with a short series of exercises that are useful both in increasing bodily awareness as well as in preparing to contemplate because it keeps the mind from wandering and unites mind, spirit, and body’.

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‘You make it sound like a gymnastics lesson’, pointed out the Old Man. ‘There was a monk who started to train with my master’, said the monk, ‘and at the end of the first session he angrily said: “I’m not here to do gymnastics, I’ve come to learn how to pray!” and he left. It happened because of a widespread attitude about prayer that my master describes as “rational”. It’s an attitude that arises from thinking of prayer, meditation, or contemplation as an exclusively mental activity that has nothing to do with the body or the imagination’. The monk continued, ‘people usually think that physical posture, nutrition, and life’s pace are independent from our relationship with God’s mystery, that you can communicate with it simply through thought. They reduce the life of the spirit to just thinking and reasoning but the path to take is the complete opposite. It puts aside thinking to make space for seeing without thinking, like when you’re listening to music. It’s a method that takes time and I admit that it’s not for everyone’. ‘How long does a session take and what happens during that time?’ asked the Old Man. ‘To start off, 10 or 15 minutes would be enough. After a while you can gradually increase up to 40 minutes, some even practice it for an hour, but never more. It’s important that you don’t stretch out or cut short the time you have set aside. That way you aren’t influenced by the sensations that you feel during the session, which could either cause you to abandon the practice because of boredom or physical discomfort or else to prolong it because of the comfort you’ve found. ‘Generally, a session starts with some exercises to help develop a contemplative attitude. How long that stage lasts depends on the individual’s practice. It could last weeks or months. After exercises, it moves on to contemplating Jesus’ life in order to commune with the mystery of his life, death, and resurrection. After that experience, it moves on. Some spend years contemplating Jesus. Others go in search of God the Father or turn towards the Holy Spirit. What is always essential is the breathing because it serves as mediation with God’. ‘Mediation?’ asked the Old Man. ‘Yes’, answered the monk. ‘In the Book of Genesis, humans are created through the act of God breathing into the man’s nostrils, communicating divine life, not just biological life. At the beginning of creation, God’s breath nourished biological and divine life contemporaneously. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Creator, they refused communion with the Spirit and He abandoned them. That was the moment that breathing lost its divine dimension and the two began to breathe only to meet their biological needs. As a consequence, of losing the Spirit, they felt an inner emptiness and a great longing for something that wasn’t exactly clear but that was very profound. The history of the people of Israel is

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the story of repeated unsuccessful attempts, on God’s part, of re-breathing his Spirit into humanity. This continued until Jesus, the Word of God, breathed upon some of his disciples before ascending into heaven and then the Spirit blew through them. ‘In this method’, the monk continued, ‘inner transformation consists in becoming aware that the act of breathing is not just a biological function that allows us to live in a bodily sense, but is also a symbolic and mystical act, in the sense that it is wrapped in mystery. It is an act in which the Holy Spirit, the source of life in all its dimensions, physical and divine, reveals himself. The Spirit is the Original Mystery that is symbolically portrayed by the mystery of breathing, but He is also the Mystery that sustains life and constantly renews it’. ‘Yes, okay, very good’, the Old Man smiled. ‘Let’s go in now. It’s starting to get chilly and you must be hungry after your journey. Come in and let me offer you something to eat’. 7. Ecclesial Initiation through the Sacraments: The Catechumenate The story I have just told shows a manner of initiation to the experience of Mystery that can be called non-traditional, even if it is fully ecclesial. Traditionally, the Church has privileged the practice of the catechumenate as the path of introducing people to its ‘mysteries’. In fact, the Greek noun mystêrion that appears in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s writings (Rm 11:25, 16:25; 1 Cor 15:51; Eph 1:9, 3:3–5, 3:9, 5:32, 6:19; Col 1:26–27, 2:2, 4:3; 2 Thess 2:7; 1 Tim 1:12, 3:9, 3:16), is translated in the Vulgate as sacramentum. Mystêrion comes from the verb myô (from the root my-) that is translated as the action of closing one’s eyes in order to see, secretly, and of closing one’s mouth, to keep from revealing what is seen in secret. For Christians in the first century then, translating mystêrion with sacramentum establishes ‘not only a lexical identity but a theological one between the mystical and the sacramental: the totality of what pertains to God and his salvific plan is known precisely through the sacraments that are celebrated in the Christian community’.16 Following Origen’s thought, Bernard explains that the mystical is ‘the sense of Scriptures as mysticism is their substance. The path that leads to understanding them is also mysticism. Finally, the spiritual action by which the Word 15

15 16

See Luigi Borriello, Esperienza mistica e teologia mistica, Vatican City: LEV, 2009, 21-25. Ermanno Ancilli, ‘La mistica alla ricerca di una definizione’, in: E. Ancilli & M. Paparozzi (Eds.), La mistica. Fenomenologia e riflessione teologica. Vol. I, Rome: Città Nuova, 1984, 19.

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makes itself present is also mysticism’.17 This explains why the Church has maintained the catechumenate tradition, because introducing persons to the ‘sacraments’ introduces them to the Christian ‘mysteries’. 7.1 Developing the Theological Attitude in Light of Transformative Mystery This chapter’s content revolves around the transformative Presence of Mystery, as I stated in the introduction. It emphasizes that the catechumenate cannot just be an introduction to the notion of Christianity, but must be a true initiation to the experience of Christianity. A Christianity that is the historical Presence of the transformative Mystery of the human condition also needs to be presented as an initiation to the experience of that mystery so as to accompany initiates, helping them mature through that experience. Growing as a Christian is conceived of as a process of development that takes place in the Presence of Holy Mystery, which leads to emotional stability, to a self-sufficiency that is not selfishness but personal and social responsibility. It implies a gradual adjustment to surrounding reality that is expressed as a balance between personal desires and transcendent values establishing a basis for making objective decisions with self-control and self-mastery. A mature person is an adult, aware of the fact that their personal identity is constructed over time and that they themselves will evolve with age without, however, losing the core of who they are. In this regard, I have already explained how the spiritual life follows a course that, once embarked upon, leads to the personalization and interiorization of Christian mystery. This path is not without its crises but it certainly leads to a maturity that portends eternal life. To be an adult, having a mature theological attitude, means living and interpreting the course of one’s personal life within a perspective that develops historically and is only achieved relative to time because it is reached eschatologically after death.18 This theological understanding does not run counter, for example, to the stages of development recognized by psychologists. Indeed, its dynamic is particularly consonant with psychological principles. One becomes an adult through the constant construction and reconstruction of self, of one’s life. Becoming an adult, therefore, is a process rather than a state. Such a process, contemporaneously, integrates both a certain predominant stability as well as constant change. This is the consequence 17

18

Charles Andrè Bernard, Il Dio dei mistici. Vol. I: Le vie dell’interiorità, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 1996, 98. Jerome Vallabaraj, Educazione catechetica degli adulti: Un approccio multidimensionale, Rome: LAS, 2009, 23-43.

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of the triple interaction between the body that is constantly growing, the individual self with its representations value systems, etc., and the specific social, cultural, and historical situation that one finds oneself within.19

7.2 The Catechumenate The practice of introducing adults to the Christian faith through proper preparation has a history as old as Christianity itself. This is not the place to cover its historical development but simply to note the fact that, since its beginnings, the catechumenate has transformed over the centuries into the ecclesial practice of catechism. With the Council of Trent, that practice was institutionalized within the Church’s ordinary life, presupposing a homogenous socio-religious, Christian context and having a significant and effective social influence. The Second Vatican Council took note of the fact that that homogenous context was starting to change due to the phenomenon of secularization, an influence that necessitated a renewal of the catechism (see the dogmatic constitution Christus Dominus, 14) and a reestablishment of the catechumenate (see the dogmatic constitution Sancrosanctum Concilium, 64, and the decree Ad Gentes, 14).20 The catechumenate is conceived of as the initiatory instruction of catechetical-liturgical-moral character established by the Church from its first centuries, with the aim of preparing and guiding adult converts through a process of stages, to fully encounter the mystery of Christ and the life of ecclesial community expressed in its culmination by the baptismal rites of initiation: Baptism, the post-Baptismal rites, and the Eucharist that are normally presided over by the bishop at the celebration of the Easter Vigil.21

The purpose of the catechumenate is to initiate the person to the path of Christian maturity through following Christ ever more fully by stages and rites that carry a change in lifestyle and a new emotional and moral order (conversion). The catechumen, thus, is progressively introduced to the mystery of the Spirit and the Father, through the revelation of Christ in the Church and within the sphere of a concrete ecclesial community.

19 20

21

Ibid., 42, emphasis added. For a history of the catechumenate, see André Laurentin & Michel Dujarier, Il catecumenato: Fonti neotestamentarie e patristiche. Le riforma del Vaticano II, Rome: Dehoniane, 1995; and Giuseppe Cavallotto, Iniziazione cristiana e catecumenato: Diventare cristiani per essere battezzati, Bologna: Dehoniane, 1996. For a current geographical perspective of how the catechumenate is practiced in different parts of the Church, see Dionisio Borobio Garcia, Catecumenado para la evangelizacion, Madrid: San Paolo, 1997. Borobio Garcia, Catecumenado, 13.

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7.3 The Proposal of Initiation according to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults As a result of the conciliar desire to renew the catechumenate, on 6 January 1972, Pope Paul VI promulgated the new Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).22 For our purposes, we are particularly interested in the document’s first part, which is dedicated to the structure of the program of initiation of adults. The RCIA is presented as a dynamic process, marked by stages and rites that promote the development of the theological attitude. Its progressive process has three levels. The first step for those interested is when, having reached ‘the point of initial conversion and wishing to become Christians, they are accepted as catechumens by the Church’. The second step is when, ‘having progressed in faith and nearly completed the catechumenate, they are accepted into a more intense preparation for the sacraments of initiation’. The third and last step is, ‘having completed their spiritual preparation, they receive the sacraments of Christian initiation’.23 The steps through these stages are accomplished in three liturgical rites. Respectively they are: the rite of acceptance into the Order of Catechumens, the rite of Election or the Enrollment of Names, and the true and proper celebration of the Sacraments of Initiation. These three stages are divided into four moments. Initially, there is the precatechumenate, which is dedicated to a primary evangelization at the end of which the catechumenate begins. The catechumenate has no fixed time limitation and can last years. In this stage, the catechumens devote themselves to catechesis until the decision to be baptized is made. Having made that decision, there are two further moments that can coincide, although not necessarily, with the celebration of Lent and Easter. In effect, the third stage of ‘purification and inner illumination’ takes place during Lent while the fourth, ‘mystagogical’ stage indicates the reception of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist during the celebration of the Easter Vigil. This fourth stage ‘is a time for deepening the Christian experience, for spiritual growth, and for entering more fully into the life and unity of the community’.24 As can easily be seen, this is not just a doctrinal course, but also an experiential one, otherwise it would not be distinguished by one of the clearest signs of 22

23

24

In the ‘Premise’, signed by the Italian Episcopal Conference, we read: ‘This “Ordo”, rather than a ritual, contains more of a collection of theological reflections, pastoral guidelines, and liturgical acts that aim at supporting and guiding the course of initiation to Christian life in the Church for an adult or a group of adults’. Italian Episcopal Conference, Rito dell’iniziazione Cristiana degli adulti, Vatican City: LEV, 1980. National Council of Catholic Bishops, Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 1988, 6. Ibid., 7.

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our times, the need to ‘experience’. The new evangelization ‘arises from a careful attention to historical circumstances’ as ‘a response to the challenges stemming from a history in which the loss of faith or its privatization are now characteristic of a profoundly secularized society’.25 It is an evangelization that illuminates this context from within, through the experience of the Christian faith. That illumination could not exist except in light of the contextualized experience that embraces the whole person. 8. Conclusion In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis affirms that the danger of an orthodox language that does not correspond to the Gospel is ever present, running the risk of presenting ‘a false god or a human ideal which is not really Christian’ (EG, 41). It may be faithful to the formulation, but not the substance, of Christianity. Of course, it is a risk for new formulations as well, which can also have an attractive form but not transmit the substance of the Gospel. Nevertheless, seeking to be faithful to the context that Pope Francis is giving to the Church, this risk should not take away our courage to put forward different approaches.

25

Gianni Colzani, ‘Evangelizzazione’, in: Dizionario di Ecclesiologia, Rome: Città Nuova, 2010, 659-675, here 667.

GENERAL CONCLUSION

At the end of the path that has been drawn here, we have to ask ourselves: ‘Which perspective of Spiritual Theology should we take?’ Certainly, the one of becoming aware of the way in which the transformative lived experience of the Presence of Mystery is produced and developed. It begins with an experience of the Presence of Mystery that the subject becomes aware of and reflects upon in order to make decisions of establishing, deepening, or refusing a personal relationship with Mystery. Only when such a relationship is responsibly undertaken can it be called ‘Christian life’ because only then can a person’s life be consciously oriented in a Christian way, embracing all of their personal dimensions. It can, therefore, be said that Spiritual Theology is concerned with the transformative lived experience that the transcendent presence of Christian Mystery produces in a believer. Around this lived experience, the believer opens themselves up to a dimension of reality that escapes both space-time coordinates as well as the capacity to conceptualize, continuously starting and developing a dynamic process of inner transformation that blossoms into the theological attitude with its triple dimension: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. In effect, the inner transformation worked by the Presence of Mystery leaves a new knowing, in which the relationship with reality is renewed, since it has expanded and dilated beyond sensible perception, opening the subject up to an unlimited and real horizon. The awareness of perceiving a ‘greater reality’ within reality leaves an emotional resonance that teaches a new way of feeling and reacting in the face of sensibly perceived reality. Thus, starting from the awareness that reality also has an invisible dimension that interacts emotionally with believers, they must take the new way of perceiving and of feeling that the lived experience of living and holy Mystery offers them as the criteria of their personal choices. In conclusion, Spiritual Theology’s journey through these last decades shows an itinerary of development, the fruit of which is an ever more solid identity. It is different from the other theological disciplines and yet the perspective that it opens up is one that gathers them all at its heart, where Holy Mystery inspires and breathes.

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