A while ago I had to write a summary of a chapter from Michael Downey's book, Altogether Gift A Trinitarian Spirituality. The chapter is called Living Freely from the Gift: The Grammar of Spiritual Life. I know many of you are considering reading no further. However, I have been surprised at how often my thoughts have gone back to this article. Downey encourages us to rethink a more Trinitarian approach to holiness. See what you think.
Downey argues that understanding the Trinity helps us to live freely in and from the gift. In order to demonstrate this he attempts to compare and contrast previous understandings of the Trinity with this newer approach to the Trinity. For example, in the grammar of holiness God is often viewed as wholly different and separate; this is juxtaposed to a God who is seen as not far off, aloof and a self-subsistent self, but as one who has manifested himself in us as only a self-donating, self giving being can. Our task then is not in imaging a distant type of holiness, but a holiness of one who lives amidst us (the Holy Spirit) and embraces human reality (as Jesus did). Similarly, vocations that have traditionally been 'set apart' (i.e. monks, missionaries, or from sexual relations like priests) have been given a higher regard in Christian circles. The fact that Jesus came into humanity's midst and the Holy Spirit lives within a believer authenticates a variety of life forms. One can have a spiritual connection with God by appreciating one's life as a gift. Vocation consequently is a way of presencing Christ and the Spirit in a particular manner, rather than a puzzle to painstakingly figure out by searching for some abstract notion of God's will. Likewise, the eminence of Christ in the world and the Holy Spirit in human lives has not produced the same asceticism (or discipline by which one conforms to Christ) applicable to the laity and daily tasks like caring for children, complex decisions, struggles for subsistence and the uncertainties of agrarian life that traditional views of God have inspired for abstinence, sexual purity and the office of the clergy. While Downey goes on for a large part of the chapter drawing similar conclusions in the grammar of discernment, healing, social responsibility, prayer, contemplation, and mysticism he ultimately concludes that everything is related to everything else, "created in the image of a God who exists in the relations of interpersonal love." And everything is given as a gift. In this perspective nothing escapes value and importance in view of the presence of Christ in the world and the Spirit in humans. I leave you with his last paragraph:
Downey argues that understanding the Trinity helps us to live freely in and from the gift. In order to demonstrate this he attempts to compare and contrast previous understandings of the Trinity with this newer approach to the Trinity. For example, in the grammar of holiness God is often viewed as wholly different and separate; this is juxtaposed to a God who is seen as not far off, aloof and a self-subsistent self, but as one who has manifested himself in us as only a self-donating, self giving being can. Our task then is not in imaging a distant type of holiness, but a holiness of one who lives amidst us (the Holy Spirit) and embraces human reality (as Jesus did). Similarly, vocations that have traditionally been 'set apart' (i.e. monks, missionaries, or from sexual relations like priests) have been given a higher regard in Christian circles. The fact that Jesus came into humanity's midst and the Holy Spirit lives within a believer authenticates a variety of life forms. One can have a spiritual connection with God by appreciating one's life as a gift. Vocation consequently is a way of presencing Christ and the Spirit in a particular manner, rather than a puzzle to painstakingly figure out by searching for some abstract notion of God's will. Likewise, the eminence of Christ in the world and the Holy Spirit in human lives has not produced the same asceticism (or discipline by which one conforms to Christ) applicable to the laity and daily tasks like caring for children, complex decisions, struggles for subsistence and the uncertainties of agrarian life that traditional views of God have inspired for abstinence, sexual purity and the office of the clergy. While Downey goes on for a large part of the chapter drawing similar conclusions in the grammar of discernment, healing, social responsibility, prayer, contemplation, and mysticism he ultimately concludes that everything is related to everything else, "created in the image of a God who exists in the relations of interpersonal love." And everything is given as a gift. In this perspective nothing escapes value and importance in view of the presence of Christ in the world and the Spirit in humans. I leave you with his last paragraph:
The various disciplines of the Christian spiritual life are simply the means by which we seek to participate, more contemplatively, in the mystery of three in one Love. The various terms that have formed the nomenclature of spiritual life--holiness, vocation, asceticism, discernment, healing and wholeness, social responsibility, prayer, contemplation and action, mysticism--all bespeak the truth that learning to receive is a lifelong process, never an entirely accomplished fact. The Christian spiritual life entails the ongoing, rigorous discipline of receptivity, of cultivating, nurturing, and sustaining a grateful heart for what is. All is gift, ours to receive, even that which awaits us at the end of the one and only life we have to live--which is given as a gift.
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