Defining "Spiritual Life"

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered how you define "the spiritual life". Did you become a hermit so you could live a spiritual life when it was not possible otherwise? I know you are asked to embrace "stricter separation from the world" so I wondered if a spiritual life is not possible in the world. Though I have that question I also wonder if that isn't elitist because it seems to say ordinary people can't live spiritual lives. Does your definition of spiritual life accept that ordinary people in the world can live spiritual lives or is that ruled out? How do we recognize that? One final question, and I don't mean any insult, but do you think you are at a higher level of spiritual growth than those who are out and about in the world? Are you more spiritual than others you know?]]

Important questions, so thank you for asking. One of the real strengths of Vatican II was its recognition that every person is called to holiness, no matter their state of life. Of course, this is rooted in Scripture. Every person is called to (learn to) abide in God and allow God to abide in them. Every person is made for this. It is actually what it means to be truly human. This "abiding in God/Love-in-act and letting God/Love-in-act abide in us" is what holiness is all about. We sometimes speak of wholeness and being made true and the way this all happens is in the power of the Holy Spirit. All of this points to the fact that we are essentially spiritual beings. That is our truest nature. What we often live are wounded and even distorted versions of our truest selves.

With all of that said, I am in a position to answer your first question and probably a couple of the others as well. I define spiritual life or spirituality in terms of "living, and learning to be, our truest selves in the power of the Holy Spirit." To be a truly spiritual person means to live an authentically human life in the power of the Spirit of God. It is nothing more nor less than that. Spirituality or "the spiritual life" does not refer to the life of the human spirit disembodied or otherwise divorced from the rest of the person, but rather to the life of the whole person under the power of the Holy Spirit. That means that I obviously believe that any person in any state of life, can, especially if sufficiently loved and supported in this journey, learn to allow God to love them "into" their own deepest truth and potential.

This is also the profoundly Pauline meaning of the term "spiritual life" just as "life of the flesh" means the life of the whole person under the sway (or suasion) of the powers and principalities of this world. Folks reading Scripture often fail to understand what Paul means by terms like person of the flesh or person of the spirit, or even just references flesh vs spirit. It is important to remember that most of the time Paul is speaking of the whole person, and then, under what power or spirit they live their lives, either that of the flesh or the Holy Spirit.  When hermits speak of "the world" they are to be more strictly separated from, the meaning is similar. I am called to stricter separation from the world that is under the sway of the powers and principalities that are resistant to Christ, or resistant to truth, life, and wholeness. I am not called to be more strictly separated from the world that is God's good creation except to the extent my time learning to abide in God and allow God to abide in me is better spent in my hermitage.

I became a hermit because I felt called to spend my time in prayer, study, silence, and solitude in order to truly allow myself to become my truest and best self with and in God. Others are called to do this in more active, and less introverted ways, and while I consider hermitage a great gift of God. I recognize others paths to wholeness are an equally great gift. The key to understanding what constitutes a spiritual life is that it is always a life empowered by the Holy Spirit, God's own Spirit of love, truth, and wholeness. That means that, in light of the crucified and risen Christ, there is no place or reality from which God's Spirit is now cut off, no godless place or realm, no part of ourselves the Holy Spirit does not and cannot embrace and transfigure with her presence. In Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection, the whole world is transformed with God's personal presence and there is no longer any place we can call godless or even profane. Learning to see reality in this new way, however, requires practice and conversion of mind and heart. This is what Jesus' called learning "to see with new eyes" and it is the mark of the truly spiritual person, a person empowered by and able to recognize the Holy Spirit wherever and in whatever surprising way that Spirit shows up in our world.

How then, you ask, do we recognize this? (I think this is what you are asking!) Chapter 5 of Galatians has Paul reminding the Church in Galatia of the answer to this same question: the fruit of the Spirit (meaning the Holy Spirit) is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22-23) What Paul is describing here is not only the way those empowered by the Spirit behave, but those who have "crucified the flesh". It is not the case that these persons are disembodied or have left their materiality behind somehow. It is that they no longer live under the spirit of the world or of the flesh. They are no longer marked and marred by the fruit of this spirit, things like enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and envy, etc. (Gal 5:19-21) A "spiritual person" is marked by the fruit of the Holy Spirit. A "worldly person" is marked by the fruits of the spirit of the flesh.

Regarding your last question and what I believe about myself, first off, I don't tend to compare myself to others in that way. Secondly, I have no way of knowing how spiritual anyone is (myself included) unless I can see the fruits of the spirit of their lives and even then, it is impossible to compare in the way you describe. The ability to "see with new eyes" is the ability to see someone's deepest potential, to see God in them. At the same time, when I listen to or watch the news, I do see people today who yet leave wreckage and ruination (enmity, strife, dissensions, idolatry, divisions, and rivalries) in their wake, and who appear to be motivated by the spirit of this world (fits of anger, rivalries, jealousy, envy, drunkenness, (sexual) immorality, etc.). More and more, I see these persons as "unanswered questions" (where God is the answer they call for and need so desperately, or as people who are tortured by homesickness (as in my last post), and who hurt others as a result. My prayer for these persons is the same as Paul's was when he spoke to the Galatians regarding those disrupting their faith community: [may they] live by and keep step with the Spirit. [May their flesh] with its passions and desires be crucified in Christ, and, as persons of the Spirit, "Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another."

I do know people who are profoundly loving, and are marked by the other fruits of the Spirit. They are deeply committed to this world and seek to be those who mediate God's presence to it in Christ. Like any expression of the Eucharist or the Body of Christ, they allow themselves to be broken open and poured out for the life of this world just as Jesus did and as baptism calls us all to do. As they live their lives in this way, the world is gradually transfigured and transformed. They work with a great "cloud of witnesses" (the communion of saints) just as all Christians do on the way to God's still (relatively) incipient or nascent new creation, what the New Testament calls a "new heaven and new earth". While they do not focus on their own holiness, their commitment to this world as God's own and on God's will to be Emmanuel, implies that, in and with God, they do work towards being themselves more and more fully, more and more authentically and exhaustively. These are people I recognize as profoundly Spiritual.