What Spirituality Looks Like

“Spirituality is like that mortar in the fireplace. Just as the mortar makes the chimney a chimney, allowing it to stand up straight and tall, beautiful in its wholeness, ‘the spiritual’ is what makes us wholly human. It holds our experiences together, shapes them into a whole, gives them meaning, allows them – and us – to be whole.”

Gaps and Glimpses
Watch him, watch him, that man on a hill whose spirit
Is a wet sack flapping about the knees of time …
Yet sometimes when the sun comes through a gap
These men know God the Father in a tree:
The Holy Spirit is the rising sap,
And Christ will be the green leaves that will come
At Easter from the sealed and guarded tomb.
-Patrick Kavanagh, The Great Hunger

Definitions/ Descriptions

The term has traditionally designated that branch of theology which deals with the life of prayer, the Christian relationship with God and the affective states associated with these events. It may also refer to these events as spiritual realities in themselves.

Spirituality is a means by which we express the deepest of human values about ourselves, our communities, all other peoples, and the whole of creation.

Our spirituality expresses many ways in which we as individuals and as groups seek to live in conscious relationship with each other and God. It may include formal practices such as worship, ritual, prayer, liturgy, meditation and mysticism, as well as the complex dimensions of human living.

Spirituality is rooted in whatever we believe has ultimate or transcendent value. For Christians these values reside in God.

Christian spirituality is the living out of faith in the world by the Christian community.


The Dawn of Our Spirituality
Fathers and Mothers of the Desert

The desert Fathers and Mothers have much to teach us about what is called the ‘nomadism’ of Spirituality. It is a nomadism of the spirit which does not allow for any settling down. It is rather a search for fullness and liberation. It means embarking on a path in darkness and emptiness leading to a ‘new creation’ in the likeness of Jesus, a re-integration of love, freedom to do good, an anticipation of the happiness which the mastery of the world gives, as well as possession of evangelical wisdom for understanding events.

Segundo Galileo (The Dawn of Our Spirituality, Claretian Publications, 1990) looks at ‘mediations’ – the means taken to approach God - their value and their limitations. In this way the desert fathers/mothers introduced a permanent question: how to use the mediations in order to be united with the Invisible; and so how to leave behind everything in order to find His mystery in the emptiness of a loving faith. The way of purification of this faith and love is essential in the search to know God, and for it there are three requirements: renunciation, conversion and practice of mercy. Here we see the presence, spirit and importance of this group not only for the mystics but for ourselves too. A call that is constantly present in our lives.

Fathers/Mothers of the Desert is the title given to the early Christian ascetics who dwelt in the desert, most of whom were men. The movement began at he beginning of the 3rd century when these Christians abandoned the world of the city in order to consecrate themselves to God in the deserts of Syria and Egypt. Their lifestyle is known to have been extremely poor and austere, with most of their time given to prayer, silence, works of penance and fraternal charity.

Written records are called ‘apophthegmata’ or sayings which include the deeds of their lives accepted by their contemporaries as examples of Christian witnessing. These reveal to us a spirituality so radical, so strange and novel, so deeply influenced by the oriental Christianity of the period that we tend to regard them as mere objects of curiosity or matters of academic or historical interest only.

A Way of Being Christian
The great mystics in the Church in general and the Fathers of the Desert in particular cultivated a spirituality that is basically Christian. The revolutionized many virtues and values, but for them this was but a consequence of living up to their baptismal promises and not out of a desire to live a ‘superior’ Christian life. This way of being Christian was presented by the primitive patristic Church as a ‘second baptism’, that is, a second call and conversion to live according to the promises made in baptism.

The themes of the spirituality that motivated and inspired their lives are in fact the very basic themes of all Christian spirituality; they coincide with any contemporary spirituality leading to the path of Christian fulfillment: the following and imitation of Jesus Christ. An outstanding characteristic of their lives was the constant reading and praying of the Gospels. The root cause of their spiritual sojourn was their baptism which contained the catalyst of their transformation through renewal in Christ. Their ‘apostolic life’ consisted essentially in the constant practice of ‘double love’: of God above all and of neighbor for God’s sake which was expressed in their numerous works of mercy.

They did not think of themselves as ‘specialists’ in spirituality, not as superior to other Christians. Not did they choose this manner of life as a down-grading of the world out of any reactionary or eccentric spirit. They knew that no particular lifestyle was of itself the source of holiness, neither did they specify certain places to be linked with particular holiness, such as the desert or any other place. “To sanctify yourself, change your inner self and not the place,” is what we read in their apophthegmata.

The goals which they impose on themselves and their renunciation may seem excessive to us, but they also reveal great confidence in the ability of people to conquer themselves and eradicate evil. It is the power of grace rather than the power of sin that constitutes the center of their interest. They practice intuitively that old formula, that ‘the should is naturally Christian.’ They also realize that the evangelical counsels, although most radical, are also humanizing and liberating. They express the conviction that the human being, adequately developed by spirituality, will find that Christian practice, even that of renunciation, will not only be uplifting, but will also be in accord with human nature.

Forerunners of Spiritual Wisdom
The special interest of the Fathers of the Desert to Christian mysticism comes from the fact that they are forerunners of the expression and development of truly great themes in spirituality. If we exclude the NT itself, the first true synthesis or school of spirituality was that which was born of the experience of the desert. It is an accepted fact that this experience constituted also the first collective experience of religious life. And in later centuries religious life developed norms and institutions (with vows, communal structures, rules etc.) and this has continued to the present day

This kind of religious life did not yet exist among the hermits of the desert. We do encounter among them, however, the foundation of the spirituality found in all consecrated life: absolute dedication to God, practice of the evangelical counsels: celibacy, radical poverty and obedience to the spiritual master; fraternal charity, contemplation and reparation for sins – all these as lived through the collective experience of mutual assistance.

The first crucible of oriental mysticism, its cradle and origin, is the Desert Fathers and Mothers. When we read the apophthegmata and their teachings we come across concepts, analyses, syntheses, choices and treatments of themes, encountered repeatedly in all Christian spiritual literature. In many areas of spirituality, much of the essence has been gathered from them. We find their influence in matters of asceticism, in analyses of vices and virtues, temptations and crises, in their treatment of contemplative prayer and its conditions. In matters of fraternal correction their penetrating influence at times is unsurpassed, as is their deep psychological analysis when they saw the need for it.

A Prophetic Vision Within Our Reach

The mysticism of the desert has much to give; it is a reaction to the ecclesiastical and social crisis of its time. Like all mystical schools it is reformative. The Fathers/Mothers of the Desert constituted a movement of Christian and social reform, and this without founders or outstanding spiritual leaders, religious institution or even a clear notion of what they were initiating. The exodus to the desert of a significant number of believers was an affirmative movement, a movement of the Spirit. The factor of a response to a crisis in Christianity must not be dismissed; the living of the faith had been relaxed with the Church’s expansion through massive conversions. The lessening of persecution and martyrdom with the temporal triumph of Christianity, led to laxity. The radical following of Christ was endangered.

The exodus to the desert, then, for many Christians was a way of living for Christ; to tread such a path with Him through daily offering, prepared them for the heroic charity of ‘martyrdom’. This form of evangelical life came to accentuate the values lived by multitudes of Christians in Eastern cities: daily increasing conversion, voluntary poverty, humility, prayer and, above all, love of each other.

This spiritual tradition is known to us today through two sources: the ‘learned’ and the ‘unlettered’ fathers. The unlettered formed the vast majority. They did not write nor did they systematize their spiritual experience. The Bible was the sole read book. If they devoted time to studies they did so in the interest of simplicity of life, of spiritual practice and of wisdom. They transmitted this to disciples through living example strengthened by short teachings engraved on stones, and through symbols and parables communicated orally (the apophthegmata).

SPIRITUAL NOMADISM
Motives are a factor in all decisions. In spirituality these motives must be conscious and predominantly Christian and in the service of God and of others. The desert Christians were very conscious of this problem. The exodus they chose toward solitude was radical and heroic. The reasons: disillusionment, flight from decadent surroundings, dissatisfaction with the prevalent manner of life, and personal crisis. Nonetheless, all of them had the conviction of answering the call of God to follow Jesus, to serve Him and their neighbor, living no longer for themselves.

This calling brought them to the desert with the intent of finding God, since they knew that they had not yet found Him. They knew that every option in life is a turning aside to put oneself on the road in search of greater human fulfillment, which is to seek God. For them the desert was the place where this search for God became their fulfillment.


Spiritual searching is always marked by a path that becomes meaningful when its course is set, that is on the way to Jesus. The desert is a route and journey, but the traveler must know the way and also learn how to tread the way. For this reason it is necessary to listen to and learn from those who are more advanced. Entering the desert for these Christians meant being enrolled in a ‘school’ and they did so with the attitude of disciples. From then on, Christian spirituality also took on the characteristic of a school (school of perfection) and a continuous apprenticeship.

Voluntary Exile

The Fathers and Mothers of the Desert have taught us what Christian spirituality means in terms of exodus and pilgrimage, as well as constant searching, namely, ‘nomadism’ of spirituality, which does not tolerate any settling down. Just as spirituality represents the fullness of humanism, and the spiritual journey is none other than an image of life’s sojourn, they teach us what is implied in the life-journey of every person on earth: an exodus, a pilgrimage, a searching. Implicitly or explicitly, human beings are restless and dissatisfied creatures. They are in a constant search of a better life, of a better place to live, and of aspirations never attained; even in their vices they look for a happiness that constantly eludes them.

The vision of faith places this search in its total perspective: human life has a dimension of exodus and exile, or tireless searching and pilgrimage, a “night in a wretched inn” (St. Teresa).

Spirituality consists in living this human condition according to its true perspective. The mystics made this their radical choice by exiling themselves to the desert. If the human condition is both a search and a temporary exile, the spirituality of the desert accentuates these aspects and integrates them as experiences proper to the Christian life.

The monks of the desert embraced the mysticism of the impermanent doing away with every value that one might like to make absolute, including asceticism of the desert and the desert itself. For them the external was always related to an interior displacement, since the spiritual exodus and nomadism is of the heart and not of the body.

They introduced a permanent questioning of Christian spirituality: how to utilize visible mediations in order to be united to the Invisible.

The Value of Mediations

Communion is achieved through mediations, but exodus and poverty are there without mediation. This is the difficulty of Christian spirituality. God is seen as desert, as cloud, as darkness in the language of Eastern mysticism. But God is, in a certain manner, already present in all signs of life in the created world.

The desert Fathers remind us to utilize all those mediations which bring us to God. But these mediations are relative and quite insufficient to be experiences of God, since they are also capable of dimming and blurring the path to God. God is greater than all these. Since God can only be approached with loving faith, only through this spirit of faith can any recourse to mediations become valuable.
In the final analysis, the use of mediations is concerned with purification of faith and love. In due time, these same mediations may purify the loving faith, which is the decisive locus of the experience of God and the love of neighbor.

Intuitively, the Fathers exiled themselves in the desert to obtain this purification at that moment of their lives when the ambiguity of their Christian experience had become manifest with great intensity. The desert itself then became mediation so that those who understood this overcame the material place when they found their most important concern: the journey into an inner purification. Those who failed to do this became eccentrics and psychological wrecks.
The Way of Purification

For the Desert Fathers/Mothers the journey towards purification of the spirit had three requirements: renunciation, conversion and acts of mercy. Renunciation means they leave behind persons, things, work, lifestyles and plans incompatible with the will of God in their lives – even including their desire of seeking God with all their strength. This change of habits brought them to radical and permanent renunciation not only of what may be harmful, but also of what is unnecessary; thus they embraced a material poverty that was almost absolute. They came to understand the emptiness resulting from their renunciation so that they became filled with the experience of God and the freedom to love.

They understood that all renunciation is vain if not coupled with renunciation of self, of one’s pride and egotism; that is, if it is done without self-abnegation. Abnegation is the heart of renunciation.

For them – and in effect for the whole tradition of mysticism – abnegation is born of the forgetting of self. Abnegation is founded on a correct love of self, and on finding peace and reconciliation within oneself. There is no manner of self-depreciation that is compatible with Christianity.

Compunction of Heart

The first step towards a liberating purification is becoming reconciled with oneself and finding pardon, in the way God loves and pardons us as we are.

Conversion is due to love. For the Fathers this attitude is permanent, a state of the spirit that moves and accompanies a change of habits and renunciation. This is called compunction of heart. Compunction for sins, assumed in the goodness and mercy of God, is an ingredient that is always present in the prayer an in the aspiration toward conversion of the desert spirituality.

The Fathers are well-known for their conviction that this compunction of heart and permanent conversion are a gift from God, for which they must pray.

The Theory and the Practice of the Desert Fathers

By the practice of mercy is meant serving our neighbor in need. Since the NT it has constituted an essential ministry in the Church and a dimension of spirituality. Thus we find it in all movements of mysticism throughout history, even if it is practices differently. This practice of mercy was fundamental to the Desert Fathers/Mothers.

They were continually receiving the needy who sought them, and if necessary, they visited them.

They attended to the sick and they shared what little they had with the poor and beggars.

Aware of their way of life, sinners especially sought them, Aas well as those who had nowhere to go; so did the disturbed, who came to seek consolation and spiritual guidance.

The sayings of the Fathers imply that this ministry was at times taxing. From that time on there began what much later would be called ‘spiritual direction.’

Their practicing mercy toward the needy was profoundly a purifying of the heart. It verifies conversion as an eminent form of renunciation and feeds compunction of the heart.

They demonstrated in the early life of Christianity, what the Church continually proved in the course of history: that the poor evangelize us and provide an important place in spiritual experience through the practice of efficacious love. They called this simply praxis.