 |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
| |  |
||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Editorial:
Nurturing spirituality From
the[acting] director: New Shoes Wholeness,
Holiness & Wholegrain Spirituality Comment:
Racehorses and Turtles A
Spirituality of Communion: The Benedictine Monks, Rostrevor Interview
with John Dickinson & Paul Symonds: The Shape of Spirituality Prayer
24-7 In
quest of living theology: A conversation piece on theological education
and Christian formation A
Spirituality of Welcome Bible
Study: Christian Spirituality Review:
How (Not) to Speak of God Review:
Spirituality and Transformation Difficult
Conversations |
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
DP: PAUL, WHAT ARE THE DEFINING ELEMENTS of spirituality within the Roman Catholic tradition? PS: Spirituality
is the way Christ is formed within an individual and within the
community. This is done through prayer disciplines and the discipline
of corporate worship. In our tradition the central act of worship
is the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper or the Mass. That is the
word most Roman Catholics use, it comes from the final words of
the liturgy, Ite missa est, which translated means “Go,
she is sent”, i.e. the congregation is sent. A lot of people
think that “Mass” refers to the actual liturgy, but it’s
not, it’s the command to mission that is the emphasis. You
come and you gather around the table of the Word, listen to the
Scriptures and partake of the sacrament. Then, having tasted God’s
love in that way and having literally incorporated it into yourself,
you are sent out into the world to share that love in the world
around you. In his book, Introduction to Christianity, Josef
Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict The central act of public worship is complemented by the Liturgy of the Hours, which was developed in the monastic tradition. Taking very literally what it says in Psalm 119, “Seven times a day will I worship you”, the Liturgy of the Hours is celebrated seven times in the day and is made up predominantly of Psalms. Here, not very many Roman Catholics, ordinary parish people, would actually pray the Liturgy of the Hours, it would tend to happen mainly in convents and monasteries. Another familiar way a lot of Roman Catholics pray is the Rosary. The idea is that you use the five decades of beads to occupy your body and say a repetitive prayer to occupy the mind, but with your heart focused on the central mysteries of salvation – the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. The danger of the Rosary is of course that it can become very mechanical, but I think the principle behind it is very sound. Lectio Divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture, has become very popular among Roman Catholics and is common now in most parishes. You take a passage of Scripture, maybe working your way through a particular book of the Bible, and read just a few verses, pause and let them sink in, let the Spirit of God speak to you. God has an individual word for each and every one of us through his universal Word. Lectio Divina helps the individual get in tune with God’s will for their life. I think corporately hearing the Word of God is something we really need to work on, rather than seeing Bible-reading as essentially individualistic. Any Roman Catholic faithfully going to church every Sunday gets a pretty big introduction to the Scriptures because we have a three-year cycle. Year One is the year of Matthew; we’re in Year Two at the moment, the year of Mark, and Year Three is the year of Luke. John’s gospel gets read every year during Lent and Easter. Each Sunday, a passage from the Old Testament is chosen that fits in with the gospel passage and then there’s a second reading, which is the continuous reading of all the other parts of the New Testament, so it is pretty comprehensive. DP: John, within the Reformed tradition, what would be a definition of spirituality and how would that be practised? JD: We would tend to think of spirituality more in terms of relationship with God. The formal distinctives of Reformed spirituality would probably revolve around four things. Number one is Scripture – the Reformation produced many commentary writings – and there is a great emphasis on biblical preaching, biblical theology that comes directly from the centrality of Scripture and sense of being a people before God, listening to his Word. Secondly, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Calvin says that all true knowledge comes from the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. So, in one sense, there is no distinction between theology and science. The understanding of God, the understanding of the world in which we live are two sides of the one coin. Thirdly, another emphasis is Luther’s classic doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. There are no distinctions between office holders, clergy, pastoral staff and ordinary members of the church. All christians are on the same footing before God, some have specific callings or functions, but they all stand before God as one people. The fourth area is the area of lifestyle – there is no distinction between sacred and secular. The whole of life, the whole of the world, everything that you are, is part of who you are as a person in a relationship with God. Those would be the formal distinctives. However, as a person who grew up within an evangelical branch of Protestantism, if I were to talk about the distinctives I would say that spirituality revolves around conversion – the need to come to a crisis point in your life when you choose Christ specifically and are transformed as a result of that choice. Also, personal piety – the call to have a life in which personal prayer and devotional Scripture reading is a key part of your psyche, informing who you are and how you live. Thirdly, worship and witness – belonging to a community within which you worship God, and also the call to share that faith with others, to be a witness in the world. That’s the kind of level of belonging, that’s how it feels. DP: Paul, could you say more about the disciplines that come from the monastic tradition – meditation, solitude, retreat – how do those practices work in spiritual formation in the Roman Catholic tradition? PS: I’ve been formed on both Ignatian and Benedictine spirituality. Ignatian spirituality is very evangelical, it’s totally scripturally focused, mainly on the gospels and on gospel contemplation. You don’t just bring your mind to it, you bring the whole of your body, the whole of your personality, to the contemplation, even to the point of trying to put yourself into the picture and see yourself as one of the characters or as somehow involved. In this way what was part of Jesus’ life story or Jesus’ history here on earth becomes a part of your own faith journey or your own faith history, part of the process of forming Christ within you. Benedictine spirituality focuses on the Liturgy of the Hours, on sanctifying the day by the praise of God through the Psalms and Lectio Divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture. The Psalms are very earthy, they are rooted in human experience and are packed full of human emotions. In most of our churches those verses which seem a bit violent or fierce, even whole Psalms, have been dropped out, but not in the monastery. I think that’s very healthy. Sometimes when people come to me for spiritual direction and talk about anger, I would refer them to maybe go and pray Psalm 108, one of the so-called “Cursing Psalms” and actually use the Word of God to work out a human emotion that we all know, but very often try to reject, because we think it’s not nice for Christians to feel like that. But we have to work through these emotions. The whole of life and all the emotions are in the Psalms. Visible, tangible things are very important in Roman Catholic spirituality. We recognise that we are not just pure spirits, we are body and spirit and God speaks to us through the visible and tangible – like church art. I’m not greatly into the statues but I am very fond of icons. Icons aren’t painted, they are “written” in a very hallowed and traditional way. Icons don’t aim to look like ordinary life; they’re meant to look like a different world. They are meant to lift the beholder onto a new plane of existence, not as an escape from this world, but as an incentive to live in a new way in this world. I nourish my spirit regularly at the Holy Cross Monastery in Rostrevor, which is a Benedictine monastery. The monks sing the Liturgy of the Hours very beautifully, it is very, very polished. When you sing, you are totally concentrated. And you see that – while the monks are singing the Psalms or involved in the Scriptures, their whole being, not just their attention, is wrapped up in what they are doing. Holy Cross Monastery also has a few, very tasteful icons. In some churches it’s a bit like going into a Victorian parlour, the ornaments are a bit overdone! I don’t like that, but I think there is a place for church art in moderation, as a means of bringing our whole being, not just our minds, but our body as well. DP: John, solitude, retreat and meditation have often been held with suspicion within the Reformed tradition. Would you like to say a little bit about that? Also, what practices within your tradition explore the kind of intimacy, and even the kind of mysticism, implicit in what Paul has just said? JD: The situation is changing and I think there has been much cross-fertilisation. Last August, we did a series of sermons, based on Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, and we’re currently doing a Willow Creek course called An Ordinary Day with Jesus, which looks at spiritual practices and disciplines that can enable you to live your life within the consciousness of Christ’s presence day by day. I’ve had a very positive reaction, which I actually didn’t expect, so that’s been quite interesting. But traditionally, I suppose, spiritual practices were probably misunderstood to be ends in themselves. Progressing in the Christian life is not something we do, it is something God does in us and that’s an immensely liberating discovery. Much Protestantism and Reformed spirituality labours under the impression that you have to screw yourself up for this, “I’ve gotta do this, I’ve gotta do that”. And the harder you try, the more you fail. Disciplines and practices in themselves don’t make you a better person but they put you in a place where God can work in your life. For me, personally, that was a real discovery, and I notice pastoring people now it’s a new idea for many of them as well. In the past, as Protestants, we were restricted to a small number of practices, most of which were individualistic and personal. As soon as you became a Christian, there were a couple of things you did. Number one was you started to have a quiet time, so you bought Bible-reading notes and sat down with a notebook and asked yourself the questions and filled it in. That was the practice of all practices. There were very few communal things. Perhaps the exception to that was the church prayer meeting, which you were expected to turn up to. There was a suspicion of anything beyond that because it might be thought to be salvation by works, instead of actually being a means of exploring obedience to Christ and of growing in faith. I think it’s changing now, but I came from that background. DP. Paul, has the Catholic Church learned anything from the Protestant tradition in terms of spiritual formation and development? PS: I think most of all a love for, and openness to, the Scriptures. It really struck me at the 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of the Second Vatican Council when Pope John Paul II walked solemnly through the whole of St Peter’s Basilica holding an open Bible in his hand and put it on a special stand in the sanctuary, making the point that the greatest gift of the Second Vatican Council to the whole church was the reopening of the Scriptures for everyone. So I think we have definitely learnt that from the Reformed tradition. John talked about commentaries. In my first Ignatian formation, not much, if anything, was said about reading commentaries, you just read the text. Now, I spend a lot of time every week reading through commentaries in preparing a sermon. We’ve gained that from the Reformed tradition. Also the whole concept of “fellowship”. While most Catholics would be very rigorous and strict about going to church every week, fulfilling their obligation perhaps, as they would see it, it tended to be isolated individuals who happened to be standing together, taking part in a common act of worship. Now, there is much more emphasis put on fellowship – for example, having a cup of tea or coffee in a hall after services on a Sunday, for people to get together. DP: John, what happens in your church collectively? What would you say is the collective expression of your spiritual formation as a community of faith? JD: I suppose the collective expression would revolve around the need to be at a service of worship. I remember Ken Newell once saying that the key thing the church has to offer to the world is the invitation to come to worship God. That gave me an insight which affects how I approach worship now. There’s something about being together in a situation where we hear God’s word corporately, where we join in praise and intercession for the world and seek to express something as a group. I think the Reformed Church is trying to work more at that. It’s very difficult to have fellowship in a Presbyterian church, which up until recent years didn’t even have a space for people to congregate either before or after the service and where people sat in boxed pews with doors on them! It’s really only more recently that we’ve actually started to think in terms of how we design the spaces in which we worship God and about how we relate to one another within the space as part of that activity. I think congregations now are much more intentional about how they use space and the time that they have together in worship. Another change for the better, in my view, is the relationship to Scripture. The Bible was obviously foundational in the Protestant Reformation itself. I think, though, there was a tendency for that emphasis to lean towards bibliolatry, towards making the Scriptures an end in themselves. So that, in Northern Ireland, if you were a minister, you tended to assume that people would just be interested in the Bible for its own sake, so you didn’t have to work too hard at applying the lesson. Fortunately, you can’t get away with that any more, which is a good thing. It also led to a cerebral relationship with “The Book”, where the understanding of the book almost stood in place of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, who is the Living Word about whom this book speaks. It’s central in the Alpha course – every lesson rotates around the issue of how this affects our relationship to Christ. For me that’s a better direction and, I sense, that is what people are really looking for. DP: Paul, I read a piece by the Franciscan writer Richard Rohr recently, saying that the great need at the moment in Western Christianity is what he called a “return to the heart”. What might that mean? PS: St Francis of Assisi first invented the crib as a means of seeing, with our being, the humility and simplicity of the birth of Christ, so I can see how a Franciscan would be focusing on the heart. I think in the Catholic tradition the heart has probably been there naturally, nourished by church art and different devotions that people have found helpful. We would maybe have the impression, more or less as John has said, that the Reformed tradition is more cerebral – Bible study, deep exegesis and so on. Maybe what we really need is balance. The space of a Catholic church, the numinous space – the art, the stained glass windows and the Sacrament which remains over after the Eucharist has been celebrated, reserved for the sick and for personal devotion (the little light burning to say it’s there) – there’s something about that which certainly nourishes the heart. So probably our need is being met to a great extent. Since the Second Vatican Council, more rigorous attention has been has been paid to exactly what we mean by certain doctrines and to seeing the essential link between Scripture and doctrine. Pope Benedict says that Scripture, the word of God, is ultimate and everything else, including the Pope, is under the word of God.I think we probably need more biblical scholars. I think it was John Stott, whose works are read by many Roman Catholics, who said, “The greatest enemy to the Church in this age is anti-intellectualism”. There was reference earlier to hymns with not much content and expressing a very personal piety, I think the real challenge is intellectualism at the service of the word, at the service of the people. DP: Traditionally, within the Reformed tradition, a Trinitarian spirituality expressed itself in the doctrines of creation, redemption and sanctification. What might a holistic spirituality look like in the Reformed Church? JD: I think we have honoured a spirituality which reflects a concern for creation. In some ways the Protestant attitude to the world was largely ethically based – the Christian life was about living in a moral way, perhaps more than it was about issues of social or environmental concern. I think, to be fair, through the centuries, key people in politics, economics and various areas of life from a Reformed background had a concern for creation, for the world. I think redemption is perhaps above all other things. The Reformed faith has always honoured who Jesus was, what he achieved at Calvary and its significance for us, both as individuals and, to some extent, corporately as well, seeing the churches redeeming or reconciling their community. It’s there, it might not be brilliant, but it’s there. I think emphasis on the Holy Spirit has been lacking. Len Sweet has an expression in his book Soul Tsunami, he says “Christians settle for making a difference in the world, when they should be looking to have a different world.” That means looking to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us and to change the world. Individually and corporately we can make a difference, because God the Holy Spirit is among us. It means being open to and embracing his work, being willing to allow God to lead you into places you don’t want to go, way out of your comfort zones and all the rest of it. In terms of Reformed spirituality, we do need to become much more welcoming to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit – finding the Lord in creation who is already there, already at work – trying to figure out what he is doing, then getting on board in what he’s doing. I think that’s where we may be weak and where we really need to be more open to God in our tradition. DP: With that Trinitarian formula in mind, how would that work out in the Catholic tradition? PS: I too think it’s very important that our spirituality should be Trinitarian. Somebody said the other day that most Christians are in fact binitarian, they know the Father and the Son, but they forget the Holy Spirit. In Ballymena at the moment, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches have come together and have put on the Alpha course. We’ve just reached the Holy Spirit in our last session and that is having a very, very powerful impact in creating what I’d call “communion”, rather than fellowship. It’s very obvious that people are not self-consciously aware of their own denomination or the denomination of others, but they are growing very, very conscious of the communion which is being created amongst them by the Holy Spirit and in view of worshipping the Father and rejoicing in the salvation won for us by the Son. That Trinitarian consciousness is very manifest in the Alpha course. In my preaching and when I’m asked to do spontaneous prayer, I would always try to be deliberately Trinitarian, to make reference to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because I think it’s absolutely key to walking in authentic faith. God has revealed himself as Trinity and we have to relate to God as Trinity. Question from floor: What is God doing in our churches at the moment? JD: Some of the older badges, barriers and concerns are dropping. Most of the people joining my church are not Presbyterians – they could be Baptist, Brethren, Pentecostal, anything really. I think people want to go to church and be part of a local Christian community because they feel they belong, they feel at home there. I think that’s a change. Also, the ability to borrow from one another. The ability for a Protestant congregation to say, “Yes, we can learn a lot from spiritual disciplines, that is good for us, we can be open to that,” and for Catholic traditions to be doing the same. There is much more openness to believing that God is at work in all sorts of places we didn’t think he was at work in before and there is a willingness to embrace that. DP: And for you, Paul, what is the Spirit saying to the church, or doing in the church? PS: During Lent last year Desi Maxwell, who teaches in Belfast Bible College, gave a series of talks on the Pentateuch. Initially, it was just for my congregation, then I thought why not open it up? Five churches came on board – Church of Ireland, Methodist and a couple of the Presbyterians. We held the talks in a hotel and the audience went from about 120 on the first night to about 300. It was from the communion, or the growing sense of fellowship, that the idea of the joint Alpha course came about and that has been deepening the process. There was a very tragic death in my parish in May – a young fellow was beaten up and subsequently died. But a lot of good has come from that, one of those is Prayer for Ballymena. The first meeting was in West Church Presbyterian, the next in St Patrick’s Church of Ireland and the next will be in the Catholic church. Some of my friends from High Kirk are organising the tea, coffee and traybakes, because Roman Catholics don’t make traybakes! DP: But you make a great sandwich! PS: Harryville Presbyterian Church, on the other side of the road, provides the cups, saucers and plates. I have a closer bond with High Kirk than with Harryville Presbyterian Church, so I was slightly apprehensive when I phoned the minister. But there wasn’t a moment of hesitation, he just said, “Of course! How many do you want? I’ll pack them up and bring them over. Tell me a time and I’ll be there.” I think that’s an example of how the Spirit is moving and that we’re beginning to recognise and respect each other as Christians from different backgrounds. I think this whole idea of being saved or coming to faith, or making your faith alive, is something that Catholics are also beginning to understand. One of the points made very clearly at the beginning of our Alpha course was, “If you belong to a particular church, we want you to stay there, but we hope that as a result of the course, you will be renewed and will make a difference to your local congregation”. I think we recognise that in all our denominations there are those who are just going through the motions. In every denomination there is a need, I would say, for people’s faith to come alive, which I think is what is meant by “being saved” or “giving your life to the Lord”. It’s not the practice or the fact you’ve been baptised that makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is when the Spirit really comes to life within you. Question from floor: What is the meaning of the Lord’s request that we “may all be one”? What in that resonates in your heart? JD: I sense that our understanding of what it means has changed to some extent. On my journey, through the years, God has brought me from believing that it would be a terribly bad thing – if not a complete denial of faith – to a position of having a hunger and a longing in my heart to be at one with all those who love the Lord in sincerity, whatever the badge happens to be above the door. I can’t talk denominationally, because my denomination is still as much at sea about this question as it’s ever been, and I don’t know if that will change substantially in my lifetime. But I think what has changed over the years for a lot of people, and I attribute this to the work of the Holy Spirit, is that God places in your heart a longing which says that you cannot be separate from people whom God loves. Once you feel that with other people you need to find some physical way of manifesting it. In our congregation we have a joint prayer group with members of a local church – it’s a very small, very tiny, expression of a sense of being together before God. But from that all sorts of interesting things have grown. That’s on one level. I don’t know how on earth you sort out the denominational difficulties in this part of the world. DP: Paul, as a Roman Catholic priest, what does that prayer mean? PS: Jesus’ prayer that they may all be one is something that is very deeply held in my heart. I would understand it as unity, not uniformity. It would be very dull if everything was just absolutely the same. I not only enjoy, I actually feel a spiritual need to worship in other churches from time to time, because it gives me something I don’t get in my own tradition. At the same time, if I were a Presbyterian, say, I think I would miss the sacramental side of my own tradition. So I think we’ve all got different gifts and insights. Ecumenism is about the sharing of gifts, not the denial of identity, and certainly not the watering down of doctrine. For me, unity is a communion in which we respect each other, we receive each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and yet we can also celebrate in different ways. There are many different ways of responding to the Gospel, but one of the things I would particularly like to see is what I call “the open table”. I would very dearly like when people from other traditions come to my church to be able to say openly, “if you feel drawn by the Spirit to come forward to partake of the elements of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, then feel free to do so.” And I would like to feel I had the blessing of my Church, which I don’t at the moment, to accept the invitation when I go to a Church of Ireland or Presbyterian or Methodist church. Just as we recognise one and the same baptism, so I would also like to see one table, albeit with differences in the way we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It’s still the Lord’s Supper, however you actually celebrate it. DP: Thank you, both of you, for speaking from the heart. REV PAUL SYMONDS and REV JOHN DICKINSON were interviewed by Derek Poole on 4 November 2006, in Armagh, at the Centre’s conference on Spirituality, entitled “From Here to Eternity”. |
|||
 |
|
