Sun, 18 Nov 2007
Basic Spirituality
St Paul says to us: "You know how you are supposed to imitate us: we weren't idle when we were with you. we worked night and day, slaving and straining, so as not to be a burden on anyone.......So we order and call on you to go on quietly working and earning the food you eat.
This is the most basic of all spiritualities. It is incumbent as much on the cloistered monk as on the busy housewife or the man in the office or on the factory floor.
In the history of Christian Spirituality there have been many "fashions" as it were: from the missionary zeal of the early Christians to the solitude and asceticism of the hermits of the desert. It is as though God is just too big and mankind just too small for each individual to show forth in his own little life what our debt to God is. Not only is each individual too small to express it all but even each age of humanities history is too small to express everything we owe to our God.
And so we have different accents, different emphases, of spirituality shown by each individual person or age of society. And this all adds up to the glory of God.
The Spirituality of the Contemplative, of those who are most intimate with God in prayer, may be the highest but it too must be firmly base on this basic spirituality of work and earning one's living. But really, who is to say that that this most basic and universal of spiritualities cannot reach to the highest heights of holiness? We need only think of Mary and Joseph living out their days in the simple village life of first century Palestine. And what about Jesus himself, he who came to be the Saviour of the world? Didn't he too live the first thirty years of his life in this very same simple style as Mary and Joseph. There must be a great lesson for all of us in this fact of those first simple, hidden, thirty years of Jesus life. It is a lesson that is so encouraging as well as inspiring for the very least of us.
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