SPIRITUALITY TAKES A U TURN AT THE CROSS

In Christianity, mystical union, the ultimate soul transformation, takes a surprising turn to come full circle and locate our fulfillment in our human compassion for each other and our lives authentically lived. It all depends on our view of who God is, what makes God God for us. This is Christianity's distinctive contribution to the spirituality of humankind. 

Not all great Christian thinkers agree. Some see God as so remote, so majestic, so terrifying that we can only relate to God in fear and trembling, our faces to the ground, berating ourselves for our moral and spiritual frailty. But others, particularly the giants of the Anglican tradition like William Temple and Rowan Williams focus on the Incarnation ultimately expressed in Jesus but holding that Incarnation is larger, that God is intimately involved in all our experience.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258174381_A_Sacramental_Universe_Some_Anglican_Thinking  Anglicans are by no means alone in holding this view. It appears in other branches of Christian faith as well, particularly Roman Catholicism. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “God has produced a work in which the divine likeness is clearly reflected – the universe.” 

The point which we accept and readily grasp is that God’s presence in our lives affects our experience in an intimate and gracious way. But there is more to it. The Cross, which will become the focus of our devotion in just a few weeks, means that God’s presence in the muddle of human experience affects God even more intimately. As I said in God Of Our Silent Tears, 

        God is so present with the hungry

        that (God’s) stomach cramps, God is

        so present with the lonely that (God’s)

        throat constricts and cannot call out

        for comfort. God is so present with the

        grief-stricken that God cannot move. 

Why would God, eternal in Being and infinite in glory, submit Godself to such a life as we experience? In a word, love. God is not defined principally by power and glory – though God’s power and glory are beyond our imagination – but by love. God is love. I John 4: 8 And love is a messy, costly, human thing. 

This understanding of God makes a lightning bolt of a difference for Christian spirituality. In the classic Christian tradition, our faith is not just about being forgiven and accepted. It is about being transformed. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds . . . . Romans 12: 2. We are God’s children now. It does not yet appear what we shall be. But when he appears, we shall be like him. I John 3: 2. Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2: 5. We understand our spiritual path in terms of words like theosis (becoming progressively more godly) and Christification (becoming more Christ-like). St. Athanasius famously said, God became what we are that we might become what God is.

The Christian life is meant to be one of ongoing mystical and moral transformation into the likeness of God. That make theology, how we imagine God, of vital practical importance. If we think of God as serenely ensconced in remote power, then spirituality becomes escapist and reinforces our will to power, our desire to get our way.

But what happens when a human being seeks to become like a God who in turn has chosen to be human, a God who chooses to go to the Cross in solidarity with and compassion for suffering humanity? Life gets hard. It gets unbearable. So it is natural we should want to find an opioid spirituality to take us away from all this. Perhaps that is where most of us begin our path. But before long we discover that the God with whom we seek union chooses to be right here in the mix and muddle of all too real, all too human life. 

The end result is that we don’t fly away, at least not just yet. Seeking God leads us back into ourselves, into the nitty gritty life we are already living. And it leads us back to each other for that is where God is best found – in both the beauty and the sorrow of our fellow human beings. But with the faith the God is here with us – Emmanuel, God is with us – we engage our own lives with faith, hope, and love. The presence of God makes all the difference. 

       We shall not cease from exploration

       And the end of all our exploring will be

       To arrive where we started

       And know the place for the first time. 

T. S. Eliot