Tag: Spirituality

5 min read

Spirituality

What is Carmelite Spirituality?

Father Nicholas Blackwell

December 14, 2022 8:07 am December 14, 2022

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5 min read

Early on in Carmelite Rule — as written by St. Albert of Jerusalem, the Lawgiver of Carmel — is found its purpose: “Many and varied are the ways …” Those…

Early on in Carmelite Rule — as written by St. Albert of Jerusalem, the Lawgiver of Carmel — is found its purpose: “Many and varied are the ways …” Those who seek Christ according to the life of Carmel are reminded it is one of various ways that lead to Christ. Are all people called to the Carmelite way in the life of the Church? No. Have many people been helped along Christ’s narrow way because of Carmel? Absolutely. Here are a few spiritual points from the Carmelite tradition that can help us along the pilgrim way that leads us to the narrow gate Christ invites us to enter.

Allegiance

Also early on in the rule is stated: “live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ — how, pure in heart and stout in conscience, he must be unswerving in the service of his Master.” The foundation of the Carmelite spiritual path is allegiance. The charism of Carmel does not exist outside the Church because it is a fruit of the Church whose life comes from Jesus Christ. The life of a Carmelite is one of a radical commitment to living out their baptism. That radical commitment to one’s baptism for a Carmelite revolves around the call to allegiance. Jesus is the Lord. He is the one to whom the baptized are bound and obligated to give everything in this life. Via the Carmelite path, this allegiance is shown through prayer, by which the poverty of spirit is gained so all may be given over to Christ in love. A loving allegiance is what fuses one’s heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. In his allegiance to Christ, the great Carmelite St. John of the Cross could write this maxim of love: “Live as though only God and yourself were in this world so that your heart may not be detained by anything human.”

Pure Hearts and Stout Consciences

Carmelite spirituality also addresses how this allegiance is lived out: by being “pure in heart and stout in conscience.” The Lord plays second fiddle to no one or anything. The Carmelites began at the prophet Elijah’s cave on Mount Carmel, so he is considered the order’s spiritual father. He taught us that a pure heart is one free from attachments and idols. Freedom’s purpose is for the sake of offering one’s heart entirely to the Lord. The Lord wants our whole heart, not just part of it. The call for a pure heart is why Carmelites are so focused on addressing attachments and calling out idols that steal the life of God from a Christian by defiling the heart and causing it to become confused. The freedom from confusion caused by attachments and idols is summarized beautifully by the great Carmelite St. Teresa of Ávila: “The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.”

Then there is the necessary stoutness that defines the conscience of a Carmelite. This stoutness is bravery, determination and strength. In other words, this means a life of virtue is necessary. The virtues form and shape one’s conscience. Stoutly living them means remaining in allegiance to Jesus Christ. Virtues are a constitutive element of Carmelite spirituality. Without them, there is no Carmelite. That does not mean a Carmelite always lives a perfectly virtuous life, but is called to strive for that kind of life. The Carmelite rule calls one to live according to common sense, which points to the virtue of prudence. As the Carmelite Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection wrote, “Lord of all pots and pans and things make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates!”

The Cell and Conversion

The Carmelite rule speaks a lot to the physical structure of Carmel. Thus, the order of the structure is essential. Significantly, St. Albert speaks to the need for each person to have a separate cell. This is important because it is from their cell that the Carmelite spirit is set on fire. The cell is like a forge, the place of private intimacy where one wrestles with the Lord like Jacob. In the cell, one is shaped to an image of the Christ that all Carmelites are called to be: the Christ who went into the wilderness to pray. It is in the cell where a Carmelite not only learns but understands how to pray. The cell is thus where a Carmelite flees to gain humility, because each Carmelite learns they cannot depend upon themselves. The intensity of the cell shows the Carmelite that there is no escaping oneself and God. It is through the cell that one begins to understand this Carmelite wisdom from St. John of the Cross: “He is humble who hides in his own nothingness and knows how to abandon himself to God.”

Carmel exists in the Church to help others learn how to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ. This is meant to be lived out on the pilgrimage of the baptized made during their life. If this pilgrimage seems too big, and the Carmelite path too grand, recall this message of Br. Lawrence, and be not afraid: “You need not cry very loud; He [the Lord] is nearer to us than we think.”

Father Nicholas Blackwell, O. Carm., writes from New York. Follow him on Twitter at @CarmeliteNick.

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Spirituality

What is Benedictine Spirituality?

Abbot James A. Wiseman

June 21, 2022 7:23 am June 21, 2022

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In place of having only a vague sense of what this or that word means, it is very helpful to know where a particular word came from and how it…

In place of having only a vague sense of what this or that word means, it is very helpful to know where a particular word came from and how it is best understood. “Spirituality” is one such word, directly related to the name we give to the third person of the blessed Trinity. While lengthy scholarly studies have been written about Christian spirituality in general, the term refers primarily to a life lived under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as sisters and brothers of Christ, daughters and sons of the Father. But this Gospel-inspired, Trinitarian way of life has branched into various forms over the centuries.

Service in Love

One of the more popular types today is the Benedictine, about which at least 20 books have been written in recent decades. What all of these books have in common is that they are rooted in the Rule for Monasteries that St. Benedict of Nursia composed in Italy in the middle of the sixth century. A traditional Benedictine motto is Ora et labora, “Pray and work,” which implies that this way of Christian living puts a premium on a community of persons coming together regularly for prayer and also working hard not just to earn their living but also, even mainly, to serve others, whether by teaching, giving spiritual direction, or producing things — whether books, foodstuffs or devotional objects, even works of art — that are of real service to others.

However, in this brief introduction, it will be best to concentrate not on the various kinds of work that persons do within the stream of Benedictine spirituality, but rather on the way they relate to one another. This is treated most succinctly in one particular chapter of St. Benedict’s Rule, a chapter that many consider the most inspiring description of how that saint taught we can best live as disciples of Jesus. The chapter deals with what St. Benedict calls “the good zeal that separates from evil and leads to God and everlasting life.” Throughout its mere 150 words, he writes about Benedictine life not in the sense of an individualistic relationship between oneself and God but rather about the way we deal with one another so that Christ may one day “bring us all together to everlasting life.” This means that Benedictine spirituality is marked by that most central of all Christian virtues: love, a word that appears four times in this short chapter.

Lest anyone conclude that St. Benedict is simply talking about loving feelings, he spells out the nitty-gritty nature of this love, and this holds true whether one finds oneself in a monastery, a family home or a workplace. For one thing, unlike many later religious orders or congregations that are highly centralized, with the members possibly being assigned to one place for a time and then to another part of the country or world a few years later, Benedictine spirituality is marked by what the Rule calls stabilitas, stability. Benedictine monks and nuns join a particular community, with the intention of making that their home for the rest of their life. While laypersons may frequently move from place to place during their lifetime, even then Benedictine spirituality will call them to loving relationships with those with whom they live or work, wherever that may be.

St. Benedict’s clearheaded understanding of human nature led him to pull no punches in discussing what building such relationships involves. For all of the joy and peace that can at times arise unexpectedly from living in any community, he knew that differences in personality, background and interests can prove challenging. Things will not always go just the way we would prefer. It is for this reason that St. Benedict urges us to “support with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior.”

Obedience

When he immediately adds that we are to “compete in obedience to one another,” this is not a matter of someone’s giving orders or directives that another person must follow. Rather, obedience here goes back to the root meaning of that word, coming from a Latin verb meaning “to hear.” The obedience that is most characteristic of Benedictine spirituality involves what the saint elsewhere calls listening “with the ear of the heart,” that is, being sensitive to the needs of another person, making oneself ready and willing to respond even if the other person has given no verbal request for help. It’s a matter of being available to others, putting up with their occasional bad moods or other personal deficiencies, even as we must humbly acknowledge similar limitations in ourselves.

In that chapter on good zeal, St. Benedict also mentions what might sometimes seem truly heroic but will ideally become almost second nature: pursuing not what you judge better for yourself but instead what seems better for someone else, above all for someone with whom you live or work. This might be especially called for if that other person is sick or elderly, for it is especially in such persons that one can live out what Jesus asks of each of his followers in the parable of the sheep and goats: visiting and caring for persons in need and finding that in so doing one is serving Christ himself.

To conclude, the monastic historian David Knowles once wrote the following memorable sentence that sums up this core aspect of Benedictine spirituality: “As a member of a family, the Benedictine comes to realize that charity is often better than zeal and sacrifice; that it is ill quarrelling in a small boat on a long voyage; that he must accept from his brothers what they have and not demand from them what they lack; and that many things are healed by time.”

Abbot James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. serves as fifth abbot of St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washington, D.C.

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4 min read

Spirituality

Spiritual, But Not Religious

Carl E. Olson

March 9, 2019 9:58 am March 9, 2019

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4 min read

I once wrote a column titled “I Believe in Seeking, Not Believing,” in which I expressed my frustration with the incoherent beliefs (though rarely expressed as “beliefs”) of people I…

I once wrote a column titled “I Believe in Seeking, Not Believing,” in which I expressed my frustration with the incoherent beliefs (though rarely expressed as “beliefs”) of people I termed “SNBers” — “seekers, not believers.”

One such SNBer had e-mailed me and explained, rather confidently and with obvious satisfaction, that he was not a narrow-minded believer (like me!), but an open-minded “seeker.” The journey and the seeking, he explained, is what life is really all about — not knowing, believing or finding. Just seeking. Seeking is open-minded, believing is close-minded. Seeking is intelligent, believing is silliness. Seeking is enlightened, believing is superstitious.

Ditto for those who say, “I’m spiritual, not religious.” A common variation is, “I’m into spirituality, not organized religion.” Twenty years ago, a book was published with the title “Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging.” Increasingly, however, there is neither belonging nor believing. A 2001 census in Britain found that 14.8 percent of the population said they adhered to no religion. By 2011, that number was higher than 25 percent.

What to make of those who claim to be spiritual but eschew what they label “religious”? First, I’d like to point out that Christianity agrees with the term “spiritual,” for the simple reason that man was created in the image and likeness of God so that he could have communion and fellowship with God. “A spiritual creature,” explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “man can live this friendship only in free submission to God” (No. 396). It is that latter part — the bit about free submission to God — that is the problem for many, for it brings into sharp relief three closely related issues: authority, truth and freedom.

The authority in question is not just any authority, but is almost always the authority of either the Church or the Bible. Everyone must eventually appeal to some source of authority. Yet some “spiritual” seekers want it both ways, such as when they appeal to reason — apparently a universally accessible and objective source of truth — while insisting that no one can really know or apprehend truth itself. Shortly before being elected to the papacy in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote a brilliant book, “Truth and Tolerance” (Ignatius Press), in which he observed: “To lay claim to truth for one religion’s particular expressions of faith appears today, not merely presumptuous, but an indication of insufficient enlightenment.” He described this prevailing disregard for truth as “the dogma of relativism,” a term that aptly captures the contradictory nature of relativism, which says there is not truth — and that’s the truth! Likewise, the spiritual but not religious person will eventually, if push comes to shove, express his spiritual views in doctrinal terms and with dogmatic certitude, even if he continues to deny the existence of any absolute, objective truth.

A related irony is that the spiritual seeker says, “It is too narrow and confining to follow a single religion.” And so, instead, he assuredly follows none — as if having nothing is somehow better than really having something! This, it seems, is a profound expression of his tremendous freedom. He is so free he need not choose anything at all. And freedom, it must be emphasized, is the essential point. The very concept of freedom, even poorly considered, hints at a deeper purpose and goal: the freedom to do this or to be that. But why? That’s a good question. The spiritual but not religious man denies authority through the exercise of his personal authority; he rejects truth in name of his personal “truth,” and he insists on freedom, but without a basis or a goal. This, Cardinal Ratzinger warned, will not suffice: “If there is no truth about man, then he has no freedom. Only the truth can make us free.”

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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