As I suggested in the last issue of this article, the call to holiness is a “call” to become a “spiritual person” – to develop a Christ-focused spirituality. Spirituality has become linked in some minds with a positive emotional response to something divine, so if you get your response saying the Jesus Prayer and I get mine by whale watching, this is all right, because it all works on some level.  It is perhaps one    of the greatest spiritual tragedies of the last thirty years that many Christians have assumed that to become involved in real spirituality, to experience something authentic, they have to go outside their own religious tradition. In our modern world it seems that people are drawn to Eastern, non-Christian religions. One of the modern favorites is Buddhism. Why? Because they haven’t been taught that the Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western, have similar approaches to spirituality. Given the lack of a clear, coherent teaching on spirituality, is it no wonder many faithful find it confusing. The result has been a tendency to color outside the lines, even for those who claim the name Christian. That is one of the real reasons I have been attempting to share thoughts about the call to holiness that God has given us and that our Church openly proclaims. We have been called to be “spiritual” persons, that is people who are keenly aware of the spiritual dimension of their lives and who are committed to developing a personal spirituality.

Spirituality is the word that properly refers to the devotional practices that help us put the teachings of Jesus Christ into day-to-day use as we seek to learn God’s will and then do it. Spirituality has a very practical purpose that has nothing to do with releasing our inner mystic; spirituality means the hard work of saving our souls and transforming the world. Genuine Christian spirituality has the purpose of keeping us focused, rooting us in the kind of incarnational religion that so many believing Christians seem to have wandered away from.