LOVE LIFE
People don’t want to hear talk about spirituality, since they don’t know what the word means; they’re ignorant that it means more than religiosity, and that it’s not identified with what is traditionally understood as piety. «Spirituality» wants to talk about living a «life-giving relationship» with God’s Spirit, and this is only possible when you experience God as a «fount of life» in each human experience.
As Jurgen Moltmann has expressed: to live in contact with God’s Spirit «doesn’t lead to a spirituality that denies the senses, turns inward, is enemy of the body, separate from the world; but a new vitality of love for life». In the face of what’s dead, petrified, or senseless, the Spirit always awakens love for life. That’s why to live «spiritually» is «to live against death», to affirm life in spite of weakness, fear, sickness or guilt. Whoever lives open to God’s Spirit vibrates with all that makes life grow and rebels against what causes damage and kills.
This love for life generates a different joy and teaches us to live friendly and open, in peace with all, giving each other life, walking together in the task of making life more dignified and happy. This vital energy that the Spirit infuses in the person is daringly called by Jurgen Moltmann “erotic energy”, since it makes us live more joyfully, attractively and seductively.
This spiritual experience expands the heart: we begin to feel that our deepest expectations and yearnings are mixed with God’s promises, our finite and limited life gets opened to the infinite. Then we also discover that «making life holy» isn’t moralizing it, but living it from the Holy Spirit, that is to say, seeing and loving it as God sees and loves it: good, dignified, and beautiful, open to eternal happiness.
This is, according to the Baptist, the greatest mission of Christ, «to baptize us in the Holy Spirit», teaching us to live in contact with the Spirit. Only in this way can we be freed from a sad and stunted way of understanding and living our faith in God.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
