Much of the
present day spiritual discipline and practice owes its foundations to the early
mystical fathers and mothers and their developments over more than a thousand
years (from Origen [c. 180-254] to Catherine of Siena [1347-1389]). The single
common practice was to seek a state of prayer without ceasing—to bring
themselves into intimate communion and union with God.[1]
There are, now, active monasteries and various religious orders that continue
this goal, along with other practices, with strict adherence to their
predecessors’ ways of life. In fact, there is an evident need for a
reapplication or regaining of the early practices, many associated with
mysticism. The shallow living of most Christians and the church at large give
no alternative to a world’s increasing desire for the spiritual. Spirituality
is an increasing awareness and growing industry among the Western satiates and
the world’s never-ending have-nots.[2]
The Catholic,
Protestant, and various Orthodox churches all have many religious orders,
teachers, and practitioners of the mystical ways. Yet there seems to be a
dearth of evidence of any general or large examples of encounter with God and
subsequent kingdom of God living (Matthew 5-7). Such a living should result
from an encounter with the living God. Yet this testimony is lacking in this
dark and dieing world. The light and salt of the Christian testimony is too
often absent from the affairs of this world and rather supplanted by the
abusive and godless powers of this world.
To slake the
desires and needs of the multitudes, the church must first begin to answer the
departing call of the Lord Jesus Christ: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit, teaching them
to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to
the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20 [italics the author’s]). It is such a
discipled church—practicing the presence of God and living from the very being
of God—which they have experienced. It is such a church peopled with these
kinds of disciples that is equipped to make disciples and not simply converts.
Rowan Williams
speaks to a profound, but most often overlooked, need among the members of the
body of Christ. It is selfless, even self-humbling, and enabling discipline to
facilitate the opportunity for others to encounter the life-giving presence of
God. He is speaking of discipling.
What if the real criteria for a properly functioning common
life, for social existence in its fullness, had to do with this business of
connecting each other with life-giving reality, with the possibility of
reconciliation or wholeness? What if the deepest threat to life together were
standing in the way of another person’s discovery of wholeness by insistent
clinging to self-justification? Our success . . . would be measured only in the
degree to which those around us were discovering a way to truth and life. . . .[3]
It is a loving
of “your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39b) that is illustrated by Williams
in these questions. The mystic’s goal is not isolation and only self-serving
but rather to be equipped to love God and neighbor. Having missed this mark the
mystic’s efforts are simply self-aggrandizement. Facilitating and loving others
into the presence of God is being the good neighbor. This is loving “your neighbour as yourself.” Loving God and neighbor is to fulfill the law; it is the
disciple’s expression of spiritual
transformation.
[1]I
Rowan William, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another and Other Lessons
from the Desert Fathers (Boston, MA: New Seeds, 2005), p.160.
[2]Harvey
Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of
Pentecostal Spirituality And The Reshaping of Religion in The Twenty-First
Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), pp. 83, 146-147.
[3]Williams,
Where God Happens, p. 25.
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