In last week’s Catholic Sentinel Fr. Ron Rolheiser wrote an article on the need for every Catholic to develop a mystical spirituality. We often relegate mysticism to the isolation of a mountain monastery or to a very few saint-like people who have the time and energy to climb, let alone read, Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain. Quoting Karl Rahner he made the point that “there would soon come a time when each of us will either be a mystic or a non-believer.”
Those of us who grew up in the 1950’s, and maybe early 1960’s make up the last generation who’s faith was supported by family, neighborhood and the local parish church and school. We can all hearken back, remembering our favorite aspect of that era of our faith lives. There are a few diehards who muse that we can somehow turn back the clock to the ‘good old days,” or at least pretend by resuscitating old rites, sodalities and other once flourishing parish groups. The reality is that our society, as we know it today, will not and cannot support such wishful -- whimsical thinking.
There is a game going on whose goal is to try and fit our faith into our society, to fit our faith values into the values of our society; to demand that our culture exhibit our faith values. The truth is that our society, as complex and complicated as it is, is far too small to contain the Wisdom of the Scriptures, and the traditions of our faith communities. Truth is we cannot legislate morality, justice, equality, peace, justice or care for the environment. Society at large, and especially society at the local and individual level, must be converted toward and into these qualities that will insure a future for us all.
This does not mean that we should not work, labor and pray for legislative justice for all or work to reform and renew institutions, governmental and Church policies that simply don’t work or are unjust and injurious to our life on this planet; it means that something much more transformative is needed. Each and everyone one of us must be converted from the inside out, we must anchor our lives in God’s divine and unbounded love for us so that we can love others, even those who wish us harm. In other words we each need to have a mystical conversion, steeped in prayer, the ingestion of the Holy Wisdom of Scripture, and grounded in communities of faith whose aim in nothing less than the renewal of the face of the earth and the implementation of the living Realm of God in our midst.
We can no long afford to simply go through the motions, say our prayers or satisfy ourselves with perfectly executed liturgies and feel good about ourselves. Our prayer must come from a deep inner groaning that results in a new birth of active involvement in what needs to be done to transform the face of the earth. It means that we need to take inventory; to cease participating in unjust institutions, cease doing harm to planet earth or any person or creature under Heaven in thought word or deed. We need to cease reading the Scriptures and begin living them, to cease just going to Mass and become what we celebrate – bread for the world in thought, word and deed. Nothing less than the Gospel is required of us.
For this task we need each other more than ever before we need to become mystics, we need to pray and be transfigured -- converted together into the very Realm of God alive in our midst.
Peace, Michael E. Evernden, CSP
Those of us who grew up in the 1950’s, and maybe early 1960’s make up the last generation who’s faith was supported by family, neighborhood and the local parish church and school. We can all hearken back, remembering our favorite aspect of that era of our faith lives. There are a few diehards who muse that we can somehow turn back the clock to the ‘good old days,” or at least pretend by resuscitating old rites, sodalities and other once flourishing parish groups. The reality is that our society, as we know it today, will not and cannot support such wishful -- whimsical thinking.
There is a game going on whose goal is to try and fit our faith into our society, to fit our faith values into the values of our society; to demand that our culture exhibit our faith values. The truth is that our society, as complex and complicated as it is, is far too small to contain the Wisdom of the Scriptures, and the traditions of our faith communities. Truth is we cannot legislate morality, justice, equality, peace, justice or care for the environment. Society at large, and especially society at the local and individual level, must be converted toward and into these qualities that will insure a future for us all.
This does not mean that we should not work, labor and pray for legislative justice for all or work to reform and renew institutions, governmental and Church policies that simply don’t work or are unjust and injurious to our life on this planet; it means that something much more transformative is needed. Each and everyone one of us must be converted from the inside out, we must anchor our lives in God’s divine and unbounded love for us so that we can love others, even those who wish us harm. In other words we each need to have a mystical conversion, steeped in prayer, the ingestion of the Holy Wisdom of Scripture, and grounded in communities of faith whose aim in nothing less than the renewal of the face of the earth and the implementation of the living Realm of God in our midst.
We can no long afford to simply go through the motions, say our prayers or satisfy ourselves with perfectly executed liturgies and feel good about ourselves. Our prayer must come from a deep inner groaning that results in a new birth of active involvement in what needs to be done to transform the face of the earth. It means that we need to take inventory; to cease participating in unjust institutions, cease doing harm to planet earth or any person or creature under Heaven in thought word or deed. We need to cease reading the Scriptures and begin living them, to cease just going to Mass and become what we celebrate – bread for the world in thought, word and deed. Nothing less than the Gospel is required of us.
For this task we need each other more than ever before we need to become mystics, we need to pray and be transfigured -- converted together into the very Realm of God alive in our midst.
Peace, Michael E. Evernden, CSP
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