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PDF and .doc files of the overheads used for this presentation are available from the Christian Spirituality Home Page or from the download page.
Topics (These topics are from Chapter 5 in Christian Spirituality. An Introduction)
1. Introduction What is Christian Spirituality?
Christianity Spirituality is the quest for a fulfilled and authentic life, that involves
Biblically derived images that we will consider:
2. The Feast 2.1. Biblical Images Jesus compared Kingdom of God to a great banquet in celebration of a marriage (Luke 14:15-24) The Father of Prodigal son threw a feast when the Prodigal son returned (Luke 15:11-24)
2.2. Use in Spirituality Themes in the image of a feast
The human hunger for God and the Feast to come Augustine: “you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you”
Blaise Pascal (1623-62) on the inner human emptiness due to the absence of God: What else does this longing and helplessness proclaim, but that there was once in each person a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? We try to fill this in vain with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are there. Yet none can change things, because this infinite abyss can only be filled with something that is infinite and unchanging – in other words, by God himself. God alone is our true good.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963): The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited
3. The Journey 3.1. Biblical Images Biblical images of journey include:
Early Christians were called “followers of the way” (e.g. Acts 9:2, 24:14). Christian life was thought of as a journey of deliverance from bondage to sin before arriving in the heavenly city In the Letters, we find the comparison of Christian life to a race, arduous journey under pressure, with a crown at the end (Galatians 2:2; 2 Tim. 4:7; Hebrews 12:1-2)
3.2. Use in Spirituality Insights for spirituality in the image of Christian life as a Journey:
New Testament models of athlete and soldiers highlight importance of discipline in Christian Life: Asceticism (Greek askesis “discipline”) Self-discipline, training a means of eliminating barriers to spiritual growth, so we reach our goal of arriving safely in our heavenly homeland
Works of Spirituality with the theme of journeying include:
4. Exile 4.1. Biblical Images Jan. 586 BC: Babylon lay siege to the Jerusalem Jul. 586 BC: broke through the walls of Jerusalem
Interpreted as:
4.2. Use in Spirituality We are “citizens of heaven” (Paul), and our present life a period of exile from the heavenly Jerusalem where we belong
Peter Abelard (1079-1142): Now, in the meanwhile, with hearts raised on high We for that country must yearn and must sigh Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land, Through our long exile on Babylon’s strand
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) “Prayer to Christ” All this I hold with unwavering faith And weep over the hardship of exile. Hoping in the sole consolation of your coming Ardently longing for the glorious contemplation of your face
5. The Struggle 5.1. Biblical Images Paul talks of “putting on the full armor of God” to protect against spiritual attack (Ephesians 6:10-18) In 2 Tim. 2:3, Christians are compared to soldiers; that is, as those who need self-discipline to persevere in the struggles ahead
In the Old Testament, we have the image of Jacob’s struggle with an unidentified man (God) by the River Jabbok (Genesis 32:22-32)
5.2. Use in Spirituality Contexts in which the image of Christian life as a struggle has been used in spirituality:
Examples of spiritual works on the internal struggle against temptation:
The image of struggle with God is found in both Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, who both wrote of prayer as a struggle with God in order to gain insights into God’s will and purpose
6. Purification 6.1. Biblical Images The Day of Atonement ritual (Leviticus 16) was the preparation required for high priest before entering into the presence of God Psalm 51 has the theme of “cleansing from sin:”
Wash away all my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. . . Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
In the Letter to the Hebrews:
In the Book of Revelation: Cleansing as being “washed in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14)
6.2. Use in Spirituality Sin is like contamination or stain within us, and a goal of our life is to purify and cleanse ourselves through discipline and the grace of God Sin has distorted the “image and likeness of God” within us
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) Sermon on the Song of Songs: “We are repairing the image of God within us, and the way is being prepared, by the grace of God, for the retrieval of that honor which we once possessed, but which we forfeited on account of sin”
Hugh of Balma (13th Century) and the 3 “ways” or “paths” in Christian spirituality
7. The Desert 7.1. Biblical Images Biblical images of the desert and wilderness include:
7.2. Use in Spirituality The desert is a lonely place. The individual is alone with God, able to reflect, mediate, pray without distraction. This has been taken both literally and allegorically in Christian spirituality
8. Ascent 8.1. Biblical Images Moses ascended Sinai to receive the Commandments Jesus ascended a mountain to be transfigured Jacob dreams of a ladder between heaven and earth (Genesis 28:12)
Images of ascent bring to the mind and heart a sense of:
8.2. Use in Spirituality Our Christian life involves ascent, progressive spiritual growth bringing us closer to God and to the transcendence of heaven
Dante in Divine Comedy climbs Mount Purgatory to get closer to God
Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain (1946): writes of his own spiritual growth in terms of 7 mountains
9.1. Biblical Images God is often described in images of illumination:
God is also sometimes associated with images of darkness
9.2. Use in Spirituality Themes of “darkness” in Christian Spirituality:
Cloud of Unknowing (perhaps by Walter Hilton, 1343-96): there is a cloud of unknowing lies between God and the believer, so we can never see, understand, or experience God clearly. Our lives are a dark road of unknowing and inner suffering with only occasional moments of rapture in partial and temporary glimpses of God
John of the Cross (1542-91) wrote of the “dark night of the soul:” the way the soul is stripped of self-assurance to open a path to a closer relationship to God. It has two aspects:
10. Silence 10.1. Biblical Images Habakkuk: the earth should be silent in the presence of God in the temple (Habakkuk 2:20)
Job reduced to silence at the end, aware of his foolishness in the sight of God (Job 40:1-3)
Revelation 8:1: silence in heaven from human awe in the presence of God
10.2. Use in Spirituality Human words can never articulate the full wonder of God, and the only appropriate response when confronted with that wonder is silence
Silence liberates the mind and imagination to focus on God
Arthur Michael Ramsey (1904-88), Archbishop of Canterbury “Silence enable us to be aware of God, to let mind and imagination dwell upon his truth, to let prayer to be listening before it is talking, and to discover our own selves in a way that is not always possible when we are making or listening to noise. There comes sometimes an inner silence in which the soul discovers itself in a new dimension of energy and peace, a dimension which the restless life can miss. . . Into the Christian’s use of silence there may flow the wonder of God the creator, the recollection of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the recalling of scenes in his life, often a passage of the Bible, the glories of nature in which the finger of God is present, gratitude for personal blessings or the words of poets who tell of wonder and beauty”
Hesychasm (hesychia: Greek for silence or stillness)
Christian Spirituality. An Introduction. Alister E. McGrath. Blackwell Publishers, 1999. ISBN: 0631212817 (Chapter 5: Biblical Images and Spirituality)
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