The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality

by Ronald Rolheiser

How do we develop the heart to sustain ourselves on the long road? How do we move beyond our fatigue, loneliness, laziness, bitterness, and bad habits so as to become gracious, happy, self-sacrificing, generative, adult Christians?

Generally, the following practices formed the core of a healthy Christian spirituality: Regular prayer (both private and communal), the practice of charity and self-sacrifice (both at home and in the wider world), some concrete involvement with the poor, involvement within some church community, and a willingness to be vulnerable for love (as Christ was vulnerable).

Commandments for the Long Haul 1. Be a Mystic … “The time is fast approaching when one will either be a mystic or an unbeliever.”4 a. THE NEED FOR A PERSONAL ACT OF FAITH

even within our churches, it is easier to have faith in Christianity, in a code of ethics, in Jesus’ moral teaching, in God’s call for justice, and in the human value of gathering as community, than it is to have personal faith in a living God.

antifaith forces?

all those things, good and bad, within us and around us that tempt us away from prayer, from self-sacrifice, from being more communal, from being willing to sweat blood in a garden in order to keep our integrity and commitments, and from mustering up the time and courage to enter deeply into our own souls.

private prayer.

In order to sustain yourself in faith you must regularly (most would say daily) spend an extended period of time in private prayer.

There is no way to stay in touch with one’s soul and to keep a balance there, outside of regular private prayer.

c. A MYSTICISM FOR OUR AGE—PRAYER AS PONDERING, CARRYING TENSION

Ultimately, mysticism and prayer are something we must do within all the activities of our lives and not just in certain formal moments set aside for them.

she is pondering in the biblical sense. She is carrying a great tension that she is helpless to resolve and must simply live with. That is what scripture refers to when it tells us that Mary “kept these things in her heart and pondered them.”10

We are better persons when we carry tension, as opposed to always looking for its easy resolution. To carry tension, especially great tension, is to ponder in the biblical sense.

After his resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, in trying to explain to his disciples (who had slept through the lesson in Gethsemane) the connection between carrying tension and remaining true to who we are and what is asked of us, Jesus asks them this question: “Wasn’t it necessary?” Isn’t there a necessary connection between carrying tension, sweating blood in a garden, and fidelity?

level, it is good to carry tension and not resolve it prematurely because, ultimately, that is what respect means. By not demanding that our tensions be resolved we let others be themselves, we let God be God, and gift be gift.

By pondering as Mary did, as she stood helplessly beneath the cross, and by enduring suffering as Jesus did in the garden at Gethsemane, we have the opportunity to turn hurt into forgiveness, anger into compassion, and hatred into love.

so many people of good will would become persons of noble soul, if only they would not panic and resolve the painful tensions within their lives too prematurely, but rather stay with them long enough, as one does in a dark night of the soul, until those tensions are transformed and help give birth to what is most noble inside of us—compassion, forgiveness, and love.

2. Sin Bravely … “You are as sick as your sickest secret!”14 a. HONESTY WITHIN OUR WEAKNESSES

That is the only sin that truly puts us outside of God’s mercy, not because God refuses to extend mercy further, but because you can look mercy in the eye and call it a lie.

The Gospels would essentially agree with that assessment, spiritual health is 90 percent about honesty.

3. Gather Ritually Around the Word and Break the Bread … “For where two or three gather in my name, I am there among them.”18 a. IN EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF LIFE, GATHER RITUALLY IN PRAYER

However, they had a simple formula for every occasion and difficulty, Jesus’ invitation to gather in his name: They would gather around the word and the breaking of the bread and, there, let Jesus make his presence felt and effect through them what they could not otherwise accomplish themselves.

Twice each day for a half hour, we would, all seventy of us, sit in chapel, in silent prayer, in Quaker silence. Oraison, we called this. We started and ended each of these sessions with a short common prayer but for the rest of the time we just sat together in silence.

But the rituals that are meant to sustain our daily lives do not work that way. In fact, they work the opposite way. They are not meant to be an experience of high energy and creativity, but are meant precisely to be predictable, repetitive, simple, straightforward, and brief.

Faith sustains itself through ritual gathering around the word of God and the breaking of the bread.

In an age when it is so difficult to sustain faith and to sustain community, there can be no better advice to us than that of Jesus himself: Gather around the word of God and break the bread together. We do not have to even understand what we are doing and we do not have to be brilliant, imaginative, or stimulating. We just have to gather in his name around the simple, clear rituals he gave us. He promised to do the rest.

Worship and Serve the Right God … A pattern that others have made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may both miss our star.19

One of the great Christian mystics, Julian of Norwich, once described God this way: “Completely relaxed and courteous, he was himself the happiness and peace of his dear friends, his beautiful face, radiating measureless love, like a marvellous symphony; and it was that wonderful face shining with the beauty of God that filled that heavenly place with joy and light.”

What we see outside of ourselves is very much colored by what is, first of all, inside of us. Thus, Jesus had within him a concept of a God who was relaxed, smiling, and blessing the earth. Hence, Jesus too looked out at us and saw, in us, something worth smiling at and blessing.

Thus, given that we live under a smiling, relaxed, all-forgiving, and all-powerful God, we too should relax and smile, at least once in a while, because, irrespective of anything that has ever happened or will ever happen, in the end, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of being shall be well.”24

b. Hans Urs von Balthasar defines spirituality as the way a person understands his or her own ethically and religiously committed existence, and the way he or she acts and reacts habitually to this understanding. c. John of the Cross, one of the great masters of the spiritual life, could, in a paraphrase, be said to define spirituality as follows: Spirituality is the attempt by an individual or a group to meet and undergo the presence of God, others, and the cosmic world in such a way so as to come into a community of life and celebration with them. The generic and specific patterns and habits of interaction that develop from this then form the basis of a spirituality.