Lecturer suggests self-evaluation
Kimberly Springer
News Writer
Developing the spirit is first and foremost the most important process in a person's life when striving to expand and enrich the relationship with God as well as with others according to Sister Barbara Fiand in her lecture entitled "Spirituality: Our Quest for God.".
"Spirituality precedes religion and theology. It's the root of our quest for meaning when religion runs dry… and theology gets boring. Spirituality always remains because our inner hunger [for God] never goes away," said Fiand, research professor of spirituality at the Institute of Pastoral Studies Loyola University .
According to Fiand, "Spirituality encompasses our relationship to everything… [it] permeates our life, even unconsciously." In addition, "we all live our personal story that is part of a wider familial, cultural, and sexual myth, which when made conscious, we can either accept or reject them…we can critique them," said Fiand.
Open criticism and open dialogue is necessary for a deep and functional spirituality. Because of the level of education that Notre Dame students have been afforded since Vatican II, the level of thinking and scholarship enables students to explore personal spirituality inquisitively.
"Critique is the way in which we challenge each other to grow… [and] we live in an age where critique is not only possible but mandatory for the intellectual spiritual life," Fiand said.
Due to the mandatory need for critique, the necessity to understand our spirituality follows. Fiand outlined two paradigms used to explain four questions either directly or indirectly related to spirituality. First, who is my God, the source of my existence? Second, who am I? Next, how am I related to God, what is the source of evil and sin, and how am I to understand virtue? And last, how can I be liberated from evil and sin and escape from this alienation?
The first paradigm and most accepted, is based on Neo-Platonic Augustinianism and is a model of military obedience.
"The language of redemption is that of paying the price for our sins, restoring us to grace," said Fiand of this first model.
The second paradigm focuses on God as love in which Fiand said this love comes from a deliberate effort of the individual to examine his or her own life and to then compare it to the life of Christ.
"God breaks out in diversity and creation and the human being is the image and beloved of God," she said.
To reach redemption through this model of thought, one must walk the road Jesus walked.
The key according to Fiand is to bring the two paradigms together to reap the benefits of a healthy spirit in contemporary society.
"We often live in one paradigm but desire the other. We need to align the two… [and] claim out spirituality for the 21st century," said Fiand.
All News Stories for Tuesday, February 27, 2001
