The traditional spiritualities such as the Carmelite, Jesuit, Franciscan, Benedictine and others have been challenged to adjust to some of the fundamental changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council. The insights of this historic event unleashed the power of the social message of the gospel. The final document of Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World had this to say on that topic: “A new humanism is emerging in the world in which man and woman are primarily defined by their responsibility toward their brothers and sisters and toward history.”
Basically, this call for a new humanism is a summons to adjust our religion, to refocus how we understand where we experience God. It is a call to direct our attention to this world. Many of us were raised to understand our central faith project as saving our souls. Our attention was focused on “the spiritual”, “the other worldly.” Events in this world formed the context for this spiritual endeavor. Carmelite spirituality, like all other traditional spiritualities, had been distorted over time to exaggerate the personal and private to the neglect of the wider picture of the social and historical, including the actual experience of our daily lives.
Slowly, we have come to realize that Jesus did not preach a message of just saving one’s soul. He proclaimed the coming of the kingdom. His message includes saving one’s soul but also concern for this world, its history and the struggle for a just society.
In The Joy of the Gospel, the Pope stresses that the gospel message, while deeply personal, is also call for a social concern. It calls us into the bigger picture.
The gospel is about the kingdom of God (Lk 4:43); it is about loving God who reigns in our world. To the extent that He reigns within us, the life of society will be a setting for universal fraternity, justice, peace and dignity. Both Christian preaching and life and our way of praying are meant to have an impact on society. We are seeking God’s kingdom: “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6:33) Jesus’ mssion is to inaugurate the kingdom of his Father; he commands his disciples to proclaim the good news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Mt 10:7)
Kingdom as Transforming
Jesus proclaimed the Good News of the coming-to-be of the long-awaited Promise made to Abraham. This was the source of hope throughout the Hebrew Bible. Jesus acted out in his miracles the signs of this New Day. The blind were given sight. The lepers cleansed. The lame walked. The poor had the Good News preached to them. Through his words, deeds and life, Jesus showed that reality was impregnated with the graciousness of God in history. He showed that this day is indeed the day of salvation, that death gives way to life. The kingdom was preached to destroy sin in the hearts of people and the injustices present in their institutions. The kingdom was, and is, a call to transformation of individuals and of the world.Through the symbol of the kingdom people are able to interpret their experience in the struggle for justice, to accept responsibility for history, to search for a more authentic and realistic spirituality and to discover a new way to experience God. Concern for the poor everywhere, a willingness to confront systemic racism and sexism, adopting a simpler lifestyle, a feeling of urgency about climate change, the growing gap between the rich and poor, the rapid deterioration of the middle class and the ever-expanding violations of the environment – all these can be the stuff of a gospel life for those who see the world as the coming-to-be of the reign of God, no matter how hidden this movement of grace and love may be. A sense of Christian hope nourished by a longing for the kingdom helps us to see that the final success of the human venture does not lie “above us” but “before us”. Any authentic prayer life will need this justice perspective as an integral component.
The Promise that Jesus spoke about affects us both personally in the depths of our being and in the social world of our economics and politics and culture. The Promise of the kingdom is not divided between the spiritual and the material, or even between this world and the world to come. We must begin to see that the kingdom has begun already in the risen Lord and continues to grow wherever there is love, wherever there is justice, wherever people live the true message of the gospel. More and more, we are coming to see the kingdom as our gradual humanization in history.
In our understanding of the idea of the kingdom, we begin to discern God acting in history and God calling us to join in building a just world. We have a powerful source of bringing together the comfort and challenge components of our faith. Any integration of the personal and the social and, likewise, prayer and action for justice are rooted in the concept of the kingdom.
