5th Sunday after Easter: One Way To Understand "Spirituality"

 On this 5th Sunday after Easter, we'll take a look at one way to understand what we mean by "spirituality." Before we start, a quick observation to avoid any potential confusion about "5th Sunday after Easter."

If you guessed this potential confusion has something to with a variance between the traditional Liturgical calendar and the Novus Ordo/newfangled calendar, you get gold star. 

In the newfangled we get the 6th Sunday of Easter rather than the 5th Sunday after Easter. So it's that thing where the new uses "of" and the old uses "after." 

Given the fact that life is short, we'll leave it at that. Back to spirituality.

As with last Sunday's discussion of how we should understand the idea that we should imitate the life of Christ, we'll turn to the same reliable and thoughtful source: Rev. George Zimpfer. In similar fashion he will help us to better understand the concept of "spirituality" along with some concrete specifics on just what we need to do with that understanding.  

    “Familiarity, then, with the events of our Savior’s life is of immense value to anyone who desires spirituality. But a mere knowledge of the events alone would be sterile. Just as history is the study of motives rather than of movements, so knowledge of the Gospel events must always be less important than a true knowledge of the spirit back of the events. To be more specific, we must strive to live and fight for truth as Jesus lived and fought for it; we must attack ignorance and sham as he attacked it, with no complacence in our own superiority, clearly seeing the difference between the sinner and the sin. We must develop courage and fearlessness in facing the harshness of men and their deep selfishness, preferring to see them as ignorant rather than as malicious. We must seek to acquire some of our Lord’s patience and kindness, His charity and tolerance, His understanding and gentleness. These qualities and many others are what we mean by the ‘spirit’ of Jesus. They do not come to us magically by conformity to some religious Rule or by set forms of prayer and practices, however good these may be in themselves. The spirit of Jesus comes only as our own personality merges, as it were, with that of Jesus, as we reflect in our daily conduct His ideal of living. When this desire to mold our exterior and interior living on the example of Jesus colors our day’s activities, we call the result virtue – or spirituality.” (Rev. George Zimpfer)

Of course, "spirituality" can encompass more than Rev. Zimpfer's brief outline here. So many good and equally reliable Catholic writers have opined on the matter. But there's nothing here that seems to contradict the ideas of other writers.

Let's give credit to Rev. Zimpfer for explaining things in his own way - better still in a way that won't escape the grasp of the vast majority of us, if not all of us.

With that, we can all read, ideally re-read several times, this good outline and advice to the benefit of our spiritual lives. All the better if we manage to set aside a worthy chunk of time to study and think about/meditate on what should be one of our focused priorities for our Sundays: the advancement and/or enhancement of our spiritual lives.

Perfect for a Sunday spiritual brunch!

 

Happy Easter!