My five and four year olds have been running through the house with their race cars recently shouting, “Rampage!” It’s been consistent enough, and loud enough, both Ben and I have been wondering where it came from. Ben recalled it as a quote from a TV show, but not one for kids, so it obviously wasn’t that. He asked them, “Where is the whole ‘Rampage!’ thing from?” They both blankly looked back, unable to tell him. Ben was telling me about this and I asked if he had tried phrasing the question differently. “Which character says it?” or “What was happening in the show or book when you heard it?” Eventually we settled on the recent race car show after trying a few different questions to help jog their memories.
This whole experience got me thinking about the importance of how we phrase questions. We’ve all had a hard time accessing a memory until someone says just the right phrase, we smell the right smell, or are able to back track through a series of memories to get to the one we want. It’s like getting the right key in the lock, once we get the right key the memory opens. It doesn’t matter how we got there, just that it makes sense in our mind.
I experience this same kind of thing when doing math with my kids, especially when they are first learning the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. 8+4 can be looked at a few ways. You can start at 8 and count up 4. You can start at 4 and count up 8. You can borrow 2 from the 4 to get to 10, then add the extra 2 that are left. 8×4 is 4 8’s, or 8 4’s, or it’s 8×2 twice, 4×4 twice, etc. No matter how we get there, 8+4 =12 and 8×4 = 32. I’ve learned that each kid has their own preferences for how to break down numbers and put them back together again. It’s important to learn all the ways of course, but it’s also good to learn that this one prefers doubling while another prefers counting up or back, etc.
This is also a great way to think about the different spiritualities and movements in the Church. All the spiritualities of the Church have the same goal – holiness and intimacy with Christ. But how they get there is different, and that’s great! Let’s look at a few (there are so very many, it would be quite challenging to list them all) and see the wonderful diversity open to our spiritual journeys.
Focolare
You had to know I’d start with the Focolare. This is the lay ecclesial movement our family is a part of. In the spirituality of the Focolare, the main focus is unity. The way unity is achieved is by following the two Great Commandments of Jesus – love of God and love of neighbor. Unity can be achieved when we recognize in every person we meet Jesus alive and present before us. In this way, we can go to God together, two (or more) people loving to their fullest capability Jesus in the other person. We become a participation in the life of the Trinity: God, myself, and the person I love.
Benedictine
One of the earliest formal spiritualities in the Church is the Benedictine Order. Founded by St. Benedict in the early 500s A.D., the Benedictines follow the Rule of St. Benedict, the first of its kind. Benedictine spirituality places great emphasis on balance in life, especially between work and prayer. The community of monks come together at regular intervals throughout the day to pray, and then go out into the community (or elsewhere in the monastery) to work and serve in all areas of life. Benedictine spirituality is therefore deeply communal. Rather than moving from place to place, Benedict wished, as much as possible, for the members of the order to remain stable so they could fully invest in their community.
Franciscan
The Franciscan spirituality was founded by St. Francis of Assisi and is one of the largest religious communities, present in nearly every country across the world. Franciscan spirituality highlights both deep contemplation as well as intentional action with special focus on evangelical poverty and care of creation. For St. Francis, and by extension St. Clare who helped found the Poor Clares, the women’s branch of the Franciscan order, all of creation is an opportunity to witness and participate in the goodness of God. This included everything from beautiful sunsets to worms and dirt, from the immense joy of a newborn baby to the suffering and sorrow of a painful death.
Carmelites
Carmelites have a fascinating history as there is no single person we can trace as their founder. The Carmel refers to Mt. Carmel where the prophet Elijah settled, as we can read about in 1 Kings. In 1155 we find the first recorded references to hermit monks living in the caves on Mt. Carmel, dedicating themselves to penance and prayer. They built a church and in the 1200s St. Albert of Jerusalem wrote a Rule for them to follow. The goal of the rule was for the hermit monks to live with greater intensity their faith through lives dedicated to prayer, silence, and solitude. Today, Carmelites continue in this tradition. While many Carmels are cloistered, there are some active communities that live and work within the wider community. Carmelites strive for intimacy with God, recognizing the incredible gift of God’s entrance into human history in the Incarnation. This intimacy is especially sought after in contemplation, stillness, and solitude.
I could, of course, go on and on. There are so many beautiful spiritualities in the Church that offer unique and practical ways of journeying through this life towards heaven. There are the Marianists, the order who ran my college and sparked my interest in the importance of community. The Lasallian priests and brothers founded my high school and impressed upon me the importance of a Catholic education where all the subjects can be connected, faith interwoven even in math. There is the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an old order founded in 1609 during the height of the Protestant Reformation in England by a woman, Mary Ward, who wished for her companions to be uncloistered – a revolution within a revolution and a fascinating study (as I did in my undergraduate thesis). There are the Dominicans, the preaching order, the Jesuits (Pope Francis!), the Augustinians (Pope Leo!), and so very many, many more.
I hope that this post has inspired you to consider learning more about one or two of these spiritualities. Look around your local community. Do you have a monastery nearby, a cloister? Does your parish or diocese have a certain spirituality that meets regularly? Is your parish or one in your area run by an ordered priest? What about the local Catholic schools or universities?
No matter the spirituality, the goal of them all is to bring us closer to Jesus. I heard it explained like this once. The whole of the Gospels brings us to Jesus. But, we read them usually in short snippets, focusing on one or two aspects of Jesus at a time. Just as the smallest particle of Eucharist is still the whole Eucharist, so too these shorter sections still contain all of Jesus. So perhaps I read about one of the healing miracles and feel drawn to a spirituality that has special focus on healthcare, poverty, and service. Someone else may read about Jesus moving away from the crowd to spend time in silence and prayer and feel called to a contemplative life, one that focuses on intense prayer for the whole world and a life detached from the things of the world. Another could read the Sermon on the Mount and be drawn to a life of teaching and preaching, dedicating themselves to the spiritual works of mercy such as “instruct the ignorant,” “counsel the doubtful,” and “admonish the sinner.” Each of these biblical moments tells us something about Jesus and is a way to be close to Jesus. Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus, in his humanity, shows us such a myriad of ways to follow after him!
Daily Graces 