Communion, Community and Ministry
By: Luz Marina Díaz
The first part of this three-part series ends with the following questions: How can we be aware of and cultivate our original identity? How can we listen to God’s voice saying, you are my beloved children? How do we respond to a loving relationship with God? What is the most effective way to resolve the tension between our original identity and false identities? Inspired by the writings of spiritual author Henri Nouwen, I suggested communion, community, and ministry as the pathways to respond to them. This article will concentrate on Communion, reserving the topics of Community and Ministry for a final article on reclaiming our original identity.
Communion
One way of entering into communion with God is by praying, and by using contemplative and spiritual practices. All religions have a set of such practices to help believers connect with the Ultimate Reality and live based on that connection. Contemplative and spiritual practices enkindle the desire for personal and social change. They are far from being merely techniques that make us feel good but isolate us in individualistic ways of living—‘spiritual jacuzzies’ as Joan Chittister puts it.[1] They are intended to help us know ourselves and our relationship with the sacred. They are meant to open the heart, dissolve anger and fear, reduce greed and jealousy, increase joy and happiness, deepen and spread love, diminish anxiety and maintain peace. They also nurture our care for others, encourage us to grow in wisdom and discern more wisely, and sharpen and open our minds to see different perspectives. In sum, they help us to live and die well.
Henry Nouwen writes that a contemplative or spiritual practice ‘is the discipline by which we begin to see God in our heart …. The great mystery of the contemplative life is not that we see God in the world but that God within us recognizes God in the world.’[2] According to the Contemplative Outreach organisation, ‘contemplative practices facilitate and deepen one’s relationship with God. They are an opportunity to invite the Indwelling Presence into everything we do.’[3]
In the First Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius Loyola describes ‘spiritual exercises’ as the name given to various activities such as meditation, contemplation and examination of conscience, among others, which we perform to contact God in our lives. To explain the importance of spiritual exercises, Ignatius presents an analogy with physical exercises. Since Ignatius was a soldier, bodily activity was significant to him. Physical exercises such as running, walking and swimming, are effective for toning muscles, improving breathing and circulation, and promoting overall physical health. Similarly, Ignatius affirms that spiritual exercises are beneficial in increasing awareness of the Holy Spirit’s movement in our lives. They help us to discover the distorted tendencies or habits that hurt ourselves and others, and to strengthen our efforts to respond in thought, word and deed to God’s love.[4]
By practising such exercises, we start living religiously or contemplatively. Nouwen explains that the quality of three fundamental relationships mainly characterizes a contemplative or religious life. He refers to the relationships we establish with nature, time and people.[5]
Nature
For a person living contemplatively, nature is a gift received with gratitude for which one should care and from which one can learn. Plants and animals, Nouwen affirms, ‘… teach us about birth, growth, maturation, and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope’.[6]
Time
In our postmodern age, the concept of time has become a sworn enemy for most people. They live with the strange feeling of always being rushed. Critical decisions are made while sharing a quick lunch. Many families no longer have time to sit together to enjoy a meal. There is no time to engage in authentic conversations with family, friends and colleagues. The constant use of technology leaves no time for silence. This comes from what Nouwen calls experiencing time as chronos: ‘a chronology, a randomly collected series of incidents and accidents over which we have no control’. In a contemplative life, by contrast, time is experienced as kairos, which means ‘opportunity’. Nouwen explains that time spent as kairos provides options for changing one’s heart and opportunities to learn, improve, and help others.[7]
Today’s technology can be used positively or negatively. During the pandemic lockdown, parishes were able to continue religious education programmes, spiritual retreats and social gatherings using virtual platforms. Many people turn to the internet to pray with websites such as Pray as You Go and Sacred Space.[8] Time spent online is not always chronos time; people can go to the internet for the kairos experiences it sometimes makes possible. At the same time it can overshadow communication between people. Young people are constantly connected to electronic devices and social media in harmful as well as beneficial ways.
People
One of the biggest temptations for human beings, Nouwen states, is interacting with others merely because they are interesting characters. The word person, he maintains, comes from per-sonare, which means ‘sounding through’. According to Nouwen, our vocation is to ‘sound through’ to each other a more extensive and profound reality than the apparent one. A contemplative life helps us discover the gifts others have and express to others the love, truth, and beauty they reveal to us. A contemplative life is a life of love and compassion for others, including those who harm us.[9]
Poverty, racism, exclusion, hunger, wars, ageism, sexism, nationalism, individualism, deforestation, contamination of the air and water and all the actions that aggravate global warming result from ignoring our original identity. Contemplative and spiritual practices can help us to be aware of these problems and to take action to solve them. When the people-nature-time relationship is improved, we are more inclined to take steps that benefit ourselves and others (human, nonhuman, nature). This can result in an overall improvement in the economic, social, political and ecological aspects of life. In the next instalment of The Weekly Word, we will review the ways in which Nouwen’s concepts of community and ministry can also help us to hear God’s voice calling us as beloved children.
[1] Joan Chittister, New Designs: An Anthology of Spiritual Vision (Pennsylvania: Benetvision, 2002), 85.
[2] Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation rev. edn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2001), 103–104.
[3] See https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/practice/.
[4] See David L. Fleming, Draw Me into your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises, a Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (Saint Louis: Institute of Jesuits Sources, 1996), 5.
[5] Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 86.
[6] Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 88.
[7] Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 90–91.
[8] See https://pray-as-you-go.org/home/ and https://www.sacredspace.ie/, accessed 1 February 2023.
[9] Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 94–95. According to the OED, person and its Latin etymon persona are ultimately of unknown origin.[/two_third_last]
The author will continue to explore Nouwen’s recommendations for communion, community, and ministry as pathways to reclaiming our original identity as beloved children of God in the next issue of The Weekly Word. This article is a section from a longer article published in The Way (63/1, pp 45-57; https://www.theway.org.uk/).