THINGS OLD AND NEW
By Ruth Powers
The new year is the traditional time for taking stock and making resolutions for positive change. In addition to the usual things like lose weight, get more exercise, and the like, some of us may have made a decision to try to focus on improving the spiritual aspect of our lives. In this era when so many people say that they are “spiritual but not religious,” we may begin to wonder exactly what “spirituality” is, and furthermore, is there a specifically Catholic spirituality.

In its broadest definition spirituality is the combination of praying and living. It is the way in which our relationship with God plays out in our day to day lives and informs our life choices. Most people think of spirituality in terms of one’s private relationship with God, a view strongly influenced by Protestant ideas of spirituality. However, in Catholicism it also includes our acts of public group worship specifically the Mass and the Divine Office (Liturgy of Hours), both of which are meant to unite us in the worship of God.
Another thing to understand is that it isn’t correct to refer to spirituality as if it is a single approach to the Catholic relationship with God and prayer. Instead, it is more appropriate to speak of “spiritualities” – ways of relating to God that grew out of different communities at different periods of the church’s history. Some faded away or developed into other forms. Others have stood the test of time and continue to be important today. (More on this below.) They do all have one very important thing in common: Christ is the center and model of any true approach to spirituality.
Jesus is the focus of all true Christian Spirituality. Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son and second person of the Trinity, took on our humanity in order to redeem us from our fallen state caused by the disobedience of our first parents. As a result of this disobedience, we are born “good but wounded” (different from Protestant viewpoint that we are born depraved) and Jesus came to make it possible for us to be healed of this wound by God’s grace.
Throughout his ministry Jesus spoke about his mission being to accomplish the will of the Father. That was his sole focus. (John 5:19,30 and John 6:38) Since authentic Catholic spirituality also asks us to imitate Jesus, it centers on the process of surrendering one’s own will to the will of God, and daily seeking to know and accomplish God’s will rather than our own. In knowing and accomplishing God’s will, we find the ultimate source of purpose and life. (Matthew 7:21 and John 6:40) Any form of prayer or spiritual devotion that does not ultimately lead us to Christ, whether it be Marian devotion, devotion to one of the Saints, or whatever, is a false spirituality.
There are many approaches to spirituality accepted by the church. Different people may respond better to one approach or the other, or some combination of approaches. Below is an overview of just three examples of well-known spiritual schools within the broader range of Catholic spirituality.
Monastic/Ascetic Spirituality – This approach is most often associated with St. Benedict, but its roots actually go back into the early days of the church when the Desert Fathers removed themselves from the temptations of society in order to concentrate their whole lives on prayer, study of scripture and union with God. Some characteristics of monastic/ascetic spirituality include an emphasis on “getting away” from everyday life to spend time in quiet prayer and spiritual reading; contemplative prayer seeking union with God (strong in all Catholic spiritual traditions, “centering prayer” is a modern form of this); and disciplining the body through things like fasting and other forms of self-denial to focus on eliminating sinful impulses.
Incarnational Spirituality – This approach to spirituality is most often associated with St. Francis of Assisi and the great Franciscan scholars St. Bonaventure and Blessed John Duns Scotus, although aspects of it are part of other spiritual traditions as well. In Incarnational Spirituality the incarnation of Christ is not a “Plan B” which occurred in response to sin. Instead, the Incarnation was the plan for the beginning and represents the pinnacle of Creation, where God freely and out of supreme love takes on human nature: “the universe is for Christ and not Christ for the universe” and “He is the beginning, middle, and end of creation.” Love is the center of this spirituality. Duns Scotus and Bonaventure taught that the reason for the incarnation is love – Christ would still have come as the supreme manifestation of God’s love for the creation he freely brought about. Love is the center, not sin. Franciscans do not reject the theology of the atonement or the Cross. Rather, we seek to emphasize the aspect of the nature of God being love, but not to the point that we reject any theological teachings that are firmly rooted in the church, like the atonement. Our focus does not take away the role that the Cross played in redemption; rather, we focus on God’s love, rather than man’s sin. In addition, by seeing Christ as the center of all creation, Christ can be experienced in all of creation.
Spirituality of the Cross – This is the approach to spirituality that most Catholics probably know best. It says that the Cross is where we find the ultimate source of meaning and the explanation of God’s saving that “through suffering and death we come to new life.” The spirituality of the Cross centers on the reality of the redemptive value of suffering and the realization that moments of pain and death have been given meaning and transformed by the death of Christ into the means of our salvation. Out of this approach have come some of the greatest and best-known spiritual writers in the history of the church – Thomas Aquinas, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Ignatius of Loyola.

(Ruth Powers is the program coordinator for The Basilica of St. Mary in Natchez.)