We are part of a living tradition of action and contemplation, people who have gone beyond the theoretical and are living out this wisdom in their daily lives. Truly, it will take a movement of such people to create a world where everything belongs.
—Richard Rohr
Father Richard Rohr shares his hope that the Holy Spirit will continue to shape the church into a living, evolving tradition:
Christianity isn’t done growing and changing. Jesus himself invites us to take things out of our faith-filled “storage room” and discern what is essential, saying, “Every disciple of the kingdom is like a householder who draws out from his storage room, things both old and new” (Matthew 13:52).
We don’t want the church or the Christian tradition to become an antique shop just preserving old things. We want to build on old things and allow them to be useful in different ages, vocabularies, and cultures. We want our faith to be ever new, so that it can speak to souls alive and in need right now! Otherwise, the faith we cherish so much stops working and it can’t do its job of turning our hearts toward God and toward one another. [1]
I believe it’s possible for Christianity to move toward a way of following Jesus that has much more to do with lifestyle than with belief. We don’t want to remain an institution focused on certain words and the writing of official documents. We can’t remain a church obsessed with maintaining power and illusions of innocence.
What is needed in Christianity today is far bigger than any mere structural re-arrangement. It’s a revolutionary change in Christian consciousness itself. It’s a change of mind and of heart through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Only such a sea-change of consciousness—drawing from the depths of the Great Ocean of Love—will bear fruits that will last.
I believe the teaching of contemplation is absolutely key to embracing Christianity as a living tradition. If we settle for old patterns of habitual and reactionary thought, any new phenomenon that emerges will be just one more of the many reformations in Christianity that have characterized our entire history. The movement will quickly and predictably subdivide into unhelpful dualisms that pit themselves against one another like Catholic or Protestant, intellectual or emotional, feminist or patriarchal, activist or contemplative—instead of the wonderful holism of Jesus, a fully contemplative way of being active and involved in our suffering world.
We can be grateful and content to let our historic churches and denominations take care of the substructures and the superstructures of Christianity. Some church communities are gifted and called to that, but most are not. Our churches have trained us, grounded us, and sent us on this radical mission. We will keep one happy foot in our mother churches, but we have something else that we must do and other places that we must also stand. We have no time to walk away from anything. We want to walk toward and alongside. [2]
References:
[1] Richard Rohr, “A Transcultural Teaching,” Daily Meditations, October 30, 2019.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Emerging Christianity: A Non-Dual Vision,” Radical Grace 23, no. 1 (2010): 3.
Image credit and inspiration: Jesús Boscán, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Venezuela, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Movement, like blood through our veins, carries us deeper into the mystery of God—ever flowing, expanding, and reshaping our understanding as we learn and embody the teachings—just like a living Christianity.
Story from Our Community:
I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. I attended a Roman Catholic elementary school and three different Catholic high schools, which included a two-year stint in a seminary. My wife and I were married in a Roman Catholic Church and raised our two boys in the tradition. At 73, I am in the last quarter of my life, and I have discarded a lot of what I consider religious baggage. I now tell people that I am a “follower of Jesus,” trying to live by the “terms and conditions” of the Sermon on the Mount.
—Eric F.
