Spirituality

In this booklet we will hear the voices of six people who generously offer us their testimony of faith, a faith that has grown strong during lives marked by suffering and resistance, exclusion and encounter, earnest  arguments with God and the discovery of God’s infinite love. This booklet is in some ways a continuation of Recognition of LGBTIQ+ Persons in the Church (Booklet CJ #185). It seeks to follow up on what James Martin SJ noted there: “Pastoral outreach to LGBTIQ+ Catholics is not simply a fad or a passing trend, or even something responding to cultural ‘pressures’; rather, it is a constitutive work of the Church and a mission that finds its ultimate roots in the Gospels.”
 

“Three vectors forming an intimate unity: studies and natural intermediate steps for the apostolate; human relationships and friends as a form of the apostolate; spirituality and the apostolate. All of this is the legacy left to us by Ignatius, the pilgrim, during his stay of two years in Barcelona, a stay that had been prepared by a shorter one that lasted only three weeks. For that reason, it seems that this legacy is a call to be thankful to God for how he molded the Ignatian charism in this city, and a testimony for us who are called to live it in a society that is very different 500 years afterwards. The work that we are presenting is a modest aid to assimilating the Ignatian legacy: to become more aware of the significance for Iñigo the pilgrim of his stay in the city and so to extend it into our lives.” (From the Prologue by Josep Mª. Rambla, SJ)

We live in societies that simultaneously spread us thin and overexert us. Byung Chul Han argues that our societies allow us to be hyper-connected and, at the same time, put pressure on us to be highly productive. Dispersion precipitates superficial relationships, and overexertion leads to unhealthy and damaging relationships. In this booklet we present meditation as a spiritual practice that helps us to focus on the present, lessening dispersion and enabling more profound relationships, reducing overexertion and engendering healthier relationships.

At the end of each year, at Cristianisme i Justicia we try to reflect on the present moment with the goal of pointing out some possible lines of thought that can act as suggestions for the construction of a new future. Along these lines, we propose today this exercise in sociopolitical imagination arises from the will to recover and rescue some words from being held hostage and from the twisted appropriation that is given to them by post-Fascism. Facing this affront, our little dictionary tries to drag into the light the feelings forgotten by those of us who serve everyone in our shared journey toward global justice.

This publication is about conversation, about its conditions of possibility in a world where distraction and dispersion have impoverished it to limits we could not even suspect. And the framework or tradition from which the author speaks to us is that of Ignatian spirituality, a spirituality whose central place is precisely in conversation. As the author says: “The first requirement for spiritual conversation is to listen. To listen deep down, to acknowledge the other and his presence, to show compassion and not just walk on by. And then ask. There is no interest in the other without good questions; there are no good questions without spiritual interest in the other. Talking and helping go together, they are inseparable”.

In this booklet you will find two contemporary views on Ignatius and his spirituality, both views founded on the conviction that every authentic and profound spirituality impels us to be always encountering God in the world. In opting for a spirituality that keeps our eyes wide open and our feet on the ground, Mariola and Javier offer us the gift of considering the figure of Ignatius Loyola and contemplating the good news of Jesus of Nazareth from his perspective. In so doing, they throw a little more light on the path ahead of us. (From the prologue by Pau Vidal)

Praying with the senses is a practice proposed by Saint Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises. The benefit of knowing, developing, and practicing this way of praying is evident from many centuries of Christian spiritual tradition. A great many authors have studied in depth the use of the senses in prayer, and they have discovered how the spiritual senses can be used in coordination with the bodily senses.

The word “reconciliation” is a word with a diverse set of meanings that can encompass many different perspectives: religious, ethical, political and juridical. The author concentrates in this text on the religious perspective and on its Christian version., placing himself clearly in the point of view of victims. From that come all of the questions that recur in these pages: Is there a God who reconciles and who reconciles us with so many victims in this world? If that is answered in the affirmative, what does that reconciliation look like? In what does it consist? How does it concern us Christians?

From a Christian and human perspective, all spiritual searching is something positive, but it requires a special effort of introspection and self-criticism. Some elements of Christian theology are indispensable and cannot be downplayed, since Christian theology must be done from the perspective of “the least and the last” of this world. It is to this debate that the present booklet seeks to make a contribution; it is the fruit of the reflection of a complete course in the theology seminar of Cristianisme i Justícia.

The pandemic has questioned the paradigm of self-sufficiency upon which our civilization is based and it has demonstrated the great limitations which our economic system has in order to guarantee the basic rights of all people, especially of those who find themselves in a situation of vulnerability. Flipping through pages in order to forget about this serious nightmare, in our opinion, is an error. Therefore, we propose ten lessons, ten key words that are signs of this time and which we should work at and examine, in a personal and communitarian way, so that all that we have lived during this last year and a half will not have been in vain.