- Each month the team working on this catechism presents you with two
texts, and we hope that with your help and cooperation they will improve.
Any suggestions you may have would be most welcome, as would ideas on subject
matter.
- We look forward to hearing from you.
The spiritual life
One characteristic feature of spiritual life during the last half of the twentieth century is to keep distance from religions. For many, spiritual life has become independent of religious practice which is understood as the practice of worship, rites, sacraments performed by a religious community. We all know people who keep going, searching for a meaning to their life, who are not confined to themselves, who can relate to others and who do not need to address to official members of a Church or a religion to be advised.
At some occasion we say that people of our time are superficial, materialist , that they surf on real problems..., but we speak too lightly and we are unfair with our time. One only has to listen to interviews of young people and specially to the words of the songs...
We like to meet people that we will call "wise" persons who have some experience in life. They are involved in the same matters as us but they are more advanced than we are and they can communicate to us some of their knowledge. For instance when suddenly a person dies and we mourn his death, we like to speak to those who have had the same ordeal, they can tell us how much they understand our suffering and how they have managed to stop dwelling on the death of that the person.
Spiritual life is a link between people. We cannot anymore look superficially at the others when we have shared with them some of our humanity. It is like that we find ourselves attending a demonstration to defend the rights of foreigners without legal permit, struggling against exclusion or accompanying a family in an ordeal, or commemorating a special event. After this experience, it is not the same as before. We become partners, somewhat belonging to the same family. We really feel that we are not alone. Many people in our days commit themselves according to a spiritual value. Whoever we are, believers, agnostics or atheists, this spiritual value has some thing to do with our life. It is mostly at the level of a desire, it allows us to be what we are, to go deeper in ourselves and to find the words which express our intimate thinking. In doing this, we feel a communion between what is essential in our different traditions, that history and fights for power between institutions have prevented to see. Consequently, a Christian will think about Jesus, to what he has brought to our humanity. Jesus of Nazareth, in deed was paying attention to every human being, living a privileged friendship for those who are excluded. Peter and James understood that well, when they met a paralytic at the pool of the Temple they told him: "We have no money but in the name of Jesus, stand up and walk"