There needs to be a Biblical and Doctrinal spirituality, if the Christian Church in both East and West is going to affect this world and effect the different peoples and culture. Sadly the spirituality of the Western Church is perhaps inches deep, to use a metaphor. And before the Church can effect the culture, it must affect itself. And this comes down to each member of that body, and the real life of each member in the Church of that Body. The Church lives in a time really of an information glut! So just information, DVD’s, UTube…etc., etc. Though helpful is not the answer. But just what is the answer for this time of the postmodern, postchristian era? Again, and always Christ! But Christ known and lived, within, without, and the living challenge to a fallen and lost world. We must remember that Christianity…the Crucified, Risen and Ascended Christ make claims that no other spiritual or religious group can make! We can simply see this in the Biblical Revelation itself (John 14: 6 / Acts 4:12).
The Church of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory & the people of that glory is always a mystical reality. And in the words of Pope John Paul the II: “The mystery of the Church”, its “invisible dimension”, is “larger than the structure and organization of the Church”, which are “at the service of the mystery.” We can see this as the Church lives within this fallen world. But the Church is also the People of God, so the Church is only as strong and healthy as are the “people” and that Body-Catholic.
Finally to use a spiritual and mystical witness, a person of the Churches history, I will turn to Julian of Norwich, a women and soul.. an anchoress in postmodernity. She who from the 14th century, can capture our imagination, as both a Mystic and Theologian as she can tell us again about the Trinity of God, and therein the attributes of Love! But she also always stands in the framework of the teachings of Holy Church, and squarely in the Augustinian tradition of the Catholic Church. “And our substance is in our Father, God almighty, and our substance is in our Mother, God all wisdom, and our substance is in our Lord God, the Holy Spirit, all goodness, for our substance is the whole in each person of the Trinity, who is one God.” (LT. Long Text) And for Julian, she loves to call ‘Jesus our Mother’. As she sees St. Paul with Gal. 4: 26, 31. So Julian brings together both the doctrine of God (biblical & trinitarian) unto this place of doctrinal but certain spirituality. And she challenges us to a Christian witness that can always be contemporary, relevant but always biblical and theological in the Church Catholic, and the Church Body alive in our God Triune – who is Himself the life of every human person (John 1:4 ; 9), but redeems those alone who will “come within”, and love and follow HIM!
Posted in Christology, Church, Revelation, Theology
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