Can people be religious and not spiritual? The answer, of course, is yes. “I’m spiritual, not religious” is a common response. Many people’s definition of religion is simply “not hurting anyone.” Many people who leave the Church say they want more from religion that rules. Pope Francis warned against defining holiness simply as strictly following specific laws. The truth of the matter is that religion is not the point, spirituality is.
The religion of my youth involved an occupation with saving one’s soul, avoiding hell, shortening purgatory. However, with time, I recognized that ordinary life was full of grace and mercy and there were “God Sightings”, times and ways in ordinary events of our daily lives when we were aware that God was making himself known. We can identify God’s loving interventions in our lives. There is a transcendent reality behind ordinary events. God speaks to us through events. Luke describes Mary “pondering all these things in her heart.”
Also with time, I developed, with many others, a consciousness that we were made for something more than we were now experiencing. There’s an emptiness ready to be filled. There’s something Simone Weil said: we are in danger of starving to death, not because there is no bread, but because we think we are not hungry. Close contact with the worldly usually arouses in me a longing for the spiritual. A writer named Selma Lager was right in warning that the soul cannot live on fun alone.
God has various ways to draw us to himself. In George’s Herbert’s poem (“The Pulley”), God says that if a human being can’t come to him through goodness, “weariness may bring him.” At this time, many feel a certain weariness with the world.
Then we are told that God expects something more from us than submission and reverence. He wants us to love him. Deut. 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” And there’s Jn. 14:21: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
God wants us to love him! I’ve been trying to figure out what loving God is all about. Soren Kierkegaard said “it is God’s passion to love and to be loved.” God’s love is not a general love. It is a love addressed to each one personally. And God’s love is to the utmost: Mt. 10:34-36: “Anyone who loves father or mother move than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”
Thomas Aquinas said we are Capax Dei—capable of God. We are creatures with a capacity to have a direct relationship with God, with the Infinite, with the One sustaining the universe.
Karl Rahner stated it is natural for humans to seek God we have an inherent orientation for Him, and it is possible to have a loving relationship with the Creator. Indeed, there is Rahner’s famous statement: “The devout Christian of the future will either be a mystic, one who has experienced something, or he will cease to be anything at all. For devout Christians will no longer be sustained by the religious customs” (Theological Investigations, NY: Herder & Herder, 1971).
I’m fascinated with Moses’ relationship with God. Moses, slow of speech and slow of tongue (Ex. 4:10) ends up speaking to God “face to face,” and one speaks to a friend (Ex. 33:11). God declares something like love for Moses – “you have found favor in my sight, and I know your name.”
I’ve been trying to figure out what loving God is all about. Spiritual writers speak of how we develop a relationship through prayer and reading; one must pray regularly and read regularly. In prayer, we speak to God; in reading, God speaks to us. Spiritual development requires time and effort.
The early Christian scholar and theologian, Origin of Alexandria (185-253), said loving God consists in becoming as much like God as possible; there is a configuration to God. This would involve taking on God’s qualities of love, compassion, understanding, hospitality, forgiveness, reconciliation, mercy, less inclined to judge others. Christian writers in general speak of love, humility, and detachment as indispensable in a love of God. One enjoys solitude more.
I’ve experienced moments of unusual closeness with God. These occurred at distant intervals; they were only passing visits. But I have never fallen in love with God. I haven’t had this kind of emotional connection. There have been some brief glimpses from time to time. Lately, I feel God closing in again, and I long to call out to him.
I’m convinced there are people who suddenly or gradually fall in love with God. One encounters this among the elderly who live lives of peaceful gratitude to God.
However, saints like Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux assert that the friends of God are few. Therese of Lisieux goes so far as to say: “Oh, how little God is loved on this earth, even by priests and religious! No, God isn’t loved very much.” Julian of Norwich (d. 1413) said: “Most people are spiritual babies.”
A book by Diana Bass gives a reason why so many people leave the Church. She notes that people will go where they are fed, and if they are not fed at church, they leave. (Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as friend and teacher)
