Spirituality

    It’s outrageous that some popular, supposedly “spiritual,” devotional books have next to nothing in them about dealings with others. For the apostle Paul, though, his “spiritual life” started with dying daily for others (because there is a resurrection, see 1 Cor 15:31), a life which led him to a transcendent vision from the Lord (2 Cor 12).
Likewise John Paul II, a student of St John of the Cross’s form of mysticism (painting above), saw our unity with others as crucial to our ability to become one with God (see Man and Woman He Created Them, 23-34). A “sincere gift of self” is required for both unity with God and with others. In fact, being far away from others in heart or mind can correlate with being far away from God’s heart and mind as it says in John’s epistle—those who do not love a brother created in God’s image whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen (1John 4:20). Our love for others can work like a litmus test.

     Christ died so that he could say to us, “What’s mine is yours.”  As a result, now “in Him we live, move, and have our being.” (God is our source of life and power, Acts 17:28) Living into the life of Christ, Augustine’s spirituality also had this “what’s mine is yours” characteristic. His spiritual life was not divorced from love and attachment to others. In fact Augustine quotes Cicero saying, “What is a friend but a partner in love, to whom you conjoin and attach your soul, with whom you unite and desire to become one, to whom you commit yourself as to a second self”  (De Officiius III, 133). More specifically, in an unusual of letter of Augustine's we find him writing this to a friend:

When you have read this letter, use it as an invisible bridge to cross over and proceed in thought into my heart, and see what goes on there concerning you. There will be laid open to the eye of love the inner chamber of love, which we close against the troublesome trifles of the world when we adore the Lord. There you will see the ecstasy of my joy in that good deed of yours, which I cannot utter in my speech nor express with my pen, burning and glowing as it is in the sacrifice of praise of Him by whose help you carried it out. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gifts. (Ep. 58,2, in Fiske 2-5)

     As opposed to non-Christ-centered mystics, Augustine’s spirituality was deeply intertwined with others. This is because the substitutionary love of God transfers to His indwelled. For example, the Apostle Paul even says that he could wish himself accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his brethren (Rom 9:3). Moses also tells God, “Blot me out of your book” if He won’t forgive the Israelites’ sin (Ex 32:32).  God asks us, “How much do you love me in the form of your brother or sister?” Through the Holy Spirit we experience the purifying intensity of a love for another that is willing to even be blotted out or accused, which brings the Spirit’s sanctification to our selfish, wicked hearts and communion with the One who was blotted out and accursed.