However, those who have a Christian belief do not believe in fairy tales or make up their belief system but understand it to be based on historical fact and truth. This of course can be denied but it is not of the type of belief that those who prefer to make a spirituality from their inner feelings— Christians are beckoned by truth to the Jesus of history. They believe that truth will set them free (John 8:32).
The Catholic Times Light of the World columnist gives the readers some thoughts to consider in understanding Spirituality in the Catholic sense.
Spirituality is a word we hear often but one we don't understand well. Spirituality literally means a spiritual reality not visible to the eye, and spiritual life is interpreted as a life of faith that seeks God, beyond the sensible. Spirituality is the path and attitude of a believer in life, and it is also an inner gift that is formed in us as a result of the will and effort to believe and love God. Also, just as there are different ways of life, there are also different spiritualities.
But what is the essence of spirituality? It's the gospel. The good news and way of life God has revealed through Jesus Christ. Spirituality must bloom in each person's daily life and society. The social doctrines are also proclaimed based on the Gospel and spirituality. Consequently, human activity has a deeper meaning when united with spirituality and God.
Have you heard of Saint Benedict's famous saying, "Pray and work" (ora et labora)? Why were these two emphasized together?
This is because the spiritual element of prayer invigorates human activity and completes its deep meaning. Human work, directed to charity as its final goal, becomes an occasion for contemplation, it becomes devout prayer, vigilantly rising towards and in anxious hope of the day that will not end. “In this superior vision, work, a punishment and at the same time a reward of human activity, involves another relationship, the essentially religious one, which has been happily expressed in the Benedictine formula: ora et labora! The religious fact confers on human work an enlivening and redeeming spirituality. Such a connection between work and religion reflects the mysterious but real alliance, which intervenes between human action and the providential action of God (#266 A Brief Social Doctrine).
Pope St. John Paul II prepared a framework for a work ethic containing spirituality against the commodification of human beings and labor (Encyclical: Through Work). Pope Francis also wrote the Encyclical (Laudato Si) in which he urged overcoming the serious ecological environment crisis by restoring the creative order, and for this purpose, conservation of natural ecosystems and a spiritual and ecological conversion. The Catholic Church always puts the gospel at the center of life, not the secular standards of progressive or conservative, and strives to bring forth the fruit of the gospel in the world.
Spring and a new school year have begun and a new leader has been elected. All of us are desperately in need of future-oriented integration and cooperation beyond conflict and confrontation. For the sake of true coexistence and peace, the path of life that we should all remember is forgiveness and reconciliation, and that is the gospel and the practice of spirituality. We must imitate the forgiveness and reconciliation shown by Jesus Christ. Our small efforts become precious grains of wheat that change our lives and the world.
The lay faithful is called to cultivate an authentic lay spirituality by which they are reborn as new men and women, both sanctified and sanctifiers, immersed in the mystery of God and inserted in society. Such a spirituality will build up the world according to Jesus' Spirit. It will make people capable of looking beyond history, without separating themselves from it, of cultivating a passionate love for God without looking away from their bothers and sisters, whom they are able to see as the Lord sees them, and love as the Lord loves them. This spirituality precludes both an intimist spiritualism and social activism, expressing itself instead of in life-giving synthesis that bestows unity, meaning, and hope on an existence that for so many different reasons is contradictory and fragmented. Prompted by such a spirituality, the lay faithful are able to contribute “to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties. Thus, especially by the witness of their own life ... they must manifest Christ to others”( #545 A Brief Social Doctrine).
