A Lay Woman’s Reflection on Marist Spirituality and the interface with Spiritual Direction by Bev McDonald, B.Theol.
A spirituality is a particular way of opening to the Divine and of incorporating that relationship and experience into our life and actions. Arguably every religious belief system is expressed through a spirituality so here I focus specifically on Christian spirituality which I suggest is a way of life marked by prayer and acceptance of the Revelation of God through Jesus Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit, which leads to a relationship with God expressed in a new way of relating with others and the world.
Even within Christianity there are nuances in the way individuals live the Gospel according to their personality and experience of life and over time these become recognizable as particular spiritualities which if authentic, are always expressions of the one Christian quest for Christ. So for example we can talk of a Franciscan spirituality, where Francis focused on Christ who was one with the poor, or the spirituality of John of the Cross who discovered Jesus as the Lover, drawing him to the peaks of contemplation and intimacy. Reflecting on and learning from these varied Christian strands of spirituality is like standing on the shoulders of our forefathers and finding hidden treasures in our whakapapa (genealogy or family history).
