I have, in this article, been sharing thoughts about the Spirituality of the Christian East. The difficulty that we must confront as Eastern Christians is threefold:
- the influence that Western Christianity has on our thinking;
- the influence the Roman Church has on our thoughts about spirituality since our Church is in union with Her; and
- the fact that we are not in union with the Eastern Orthodox Church which has the same liturgical tradition and theology as we do. (It is important to remember that there are other Eastern Christian Churches beside those typically designated as Orthodox because they use the Byzantine ritual and embrace Byzantine theology).
This raises important questions. Is there only one true theology? Is there only one true spirituality? Can we be in union with the Catholic Church and still have a different theology and spirituality? Does unity mean embracing a spirituality which does not find its genesis within the liturgical tradition of our Church?
One of the main tenets of any true spirituality is that it must find its origin within the liturgical tradition – the prayer life – of a Church. This, of course, tells us that it behooves us to have an intimate understanding of our liturgical tradition, especially our communal worship of God in the Divine Liturgy.
As I shared with you in the last issue of this article, a primary element of Eastern Spirituality is obedience to the will of God. You might ask, how does this find genesis in our liturgical tradition? It finds its genesis there because our tradition stresses the fact that Jesus voluntarily embraced the Cross that life presented to Him. We say of Jesus, in the prayer to the Father that we offer at the beginning of the Anaphora: Who, having come and having fulfilled the whole divine plan concerning us, on the night when He was betrayed, or rather, when He surrendered Himself for the life of the world. This voluntary obedience to the plan of the Father serves as a model for us on how to live life. It is part of our spirituality. We must embrace the life given and use all its vicissitudes to grow in our union with God.