In the Jewish Christian understanding of the person, we have the body, soul, mind, and heart."Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind."
With efforts at integration and harmony of these four, we walk the path of spirituality. Sadly, the Church is not seen as a path to a deep spirituality. Writing in a bulletin for priests the writer mentions that scholars of the religious life see humankind interested in the spiritual— a deep concern and desire for the spiritual.
Materialism and liberalism is doing well but in the gaps we find many looking for the spiritual often in faulty manners but the desire is strong and healthy. Many are leaving the establish churches for they do not find a response to their thirst for the spiritual. A sign churches have lost the spiritual vitality they once had.
One priest expressed the problem as one in which the church with the great changes taking place in society is in crisis, fearful of the future like "scared dogs who put their tails between their legs, bark, and walk backwards."
He wonders whether the reason is the loss of prestige the pastoral workers had in the past when the country was attempting to bring itself out of the difficulties of the war and the poverty of the times. The church was active in feeding the poor and bringing to the aid of the citizens what we received from the west. We benefitted from the influence of Christianity and the culture of the west as a church with class.
In the process, we forgot the role of our ancestors in the faith who gave their lives for what they believed. We benefited from their lives and sacrifices but have done little to prepare for the future church with the examples they gave us.
We are coming close to a century of being a divided country. Hope abounds for a time of peace and we as a church need to participate in the attainment of this peace. We have to get over a feeling of fear and trepidation and remember the strength that comes from the fortress of spirituality we possess. We have to bring this traditional spirituality to the fore and deepen it among the faithful and those who approach the church. This is what the world is waiting for.
