Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2020-07-14DOI: 10.6017/lv.v10i2.12493
Megan Heeder
{"title":"Seeking Grace in the Chasm:","authors":"Megan Heeder","doi":"10.6017/lv.v10i2.12493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v10i2.12493","url":null,"abstract":"A hermeneutic of unity between beauty and virtue, inspired by the work of Gregory of Nazianzus, offers a way to seek the Holy Spirit’s presence in the apparent chasm between the church and the secular realm. This paper describes beauty’s role in Gregory of Nazianzus’ poetry and orations and analyzes how adopting Gregory’s hermeneutic of unity between beauty and virtue can strengthen the church’s relationship with the secular sphere. The paper’s second part draws on Karl Rahner’s conception of the anonymous Christian to detail how a willingness to recognize virtue’s beauty in the public sphere can open the ecclesial community to the Holy Spirit’s movement both within and beyond the church.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"201 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122040053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-12-28DOI: 10.6017/lv.v10i1.11975
Michael Mookie C. Manalili
{"title":"Grounding to Giving:","authors":"Michael Mookie C. Manalili","doi":"10.6017/lv.v10i1.11975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v10i1.11975","url":null,"abstract":"Through its embodied systematic mysticism, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius has formed the Jesuit order and countless Ignatian educators. Upon analysis of the Principle and Foundation (§23) in the beginning and the Suscipe (§234) at the end, the movement from the philosophical universal to the particularity of 'this-ness' can be seen. The Principle and Foundation, both etymologically hinting at the prior [Latin: ‘principum’] and the ground [Latin: ‘fundare’], begins with a beautiful cosmology of how the world is oriented towards the return-gift back towards God. However, God is spoken of here in the third-person. Yet, by the time of the Suscipe [English: ‘receive’], the theme is still on the gifted-ness of life and world. However, God is addressed in the second-person here as if face-to-face – the Divine “You”. This movement from the universal to the particular invites the exercitant to gaze into the eyes of Christ Crucified. In doing so, particularly in the Third Week, the exercitant gazes into the iris of God who reflects back the gaze of Love - pointed at those Whom God loves, those in the margins. The Spiritual Exercises thus extends the invitation to incarnate the two-fold nature of the greatest commandment. As it is in the Second Ending of the Book of John, the invitation of gift is extended from the divine Vine to the branches: “Amas me? Pasce oveas meas. Sequere me. // Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Follow me.”","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"294 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132868738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-12-28DOI: 10.6017/lv.v10i1.11973
Michael Infantine
{"title":"Shattered Legs, Softened Hearts:","authors":"Michael Infantine","doi":"10.6017/lv.v10i1.11973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v10i1.11973","url":null,"abstract":"What does it look like to cooperate with God’s grace, and what does it look like to hide from it? In 1521, Ignatius of Loyola, an ambitious and promising young soldier in the Spanish army, is shot in the leg and suffers a career-ending injury that sparks his eventual conversion to Christianity. It would appear, looking back on this event, that grace came for Ignatius in a form that could only be recognized at the time as tragedy and senseless suffering. Four hundred thirty four years later, Flannery O’Connor, a young novelist from Georgia, writes the short story of a woman named Hulga who, after losing a leg in a shooting accident as a young girl, recedes into isolation and naked contempt for all those closest to her until one day a mysterious visitor knocks at the door of her family home. For Hulga too, grace may be out to find her in the place she might least expect. This paper will hold up the figures of St. Ignatius and Hulga as a comparative case study in which to examine the working out of God’s grace in the economy of a human life. Ignatius, through his humility and loyalty to Christ in the wake of his injury, is an icon of God’s grace and the conversion to which it calls him. Hulga, in her obstinate scorn and self-proclaimed superiority over all those who seek relationship with her, is the epitome of the one who resists the love of the Other. Even still, there may be hope for Hulga yet by the story’s end.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124682963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-12-28DOI: 10.6017/lv.v10i1.11971
Christian Lingner
{"title":"Toward a Holistic Contemplative Vision:","authors":"Christian Lingner","doi":"10.6017/lv.v10i1.11971","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v10i1.11971","url":null,"abstract":"Ignatian spirituality is characterized by an emphasis on contemplation as a means of discernment, an approach that highlights the unity of the interior and ethical dimensions of the Christian life. Yet Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises are also defined by the modus operandi of the contemplative method outlined therein, one that highlights the imagination’s role in a receptive and interactive engagement with the person of Christ as depicted in the Gospels. Though 20th century German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper is most commonly associated with his popular works on Aquinas and the cardinal virtues, there is a contemplative undercurrent throughout his writing that corresponds with the thought of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Pieper defines contemplation as “a visual perception prompted by loving acceptance,” stressing both the receptive posture of the individual but also the intrinsic pairing of contemplation and ethics in an active response of embracing existence. Much as Ignatius believes the imagination, the inner capacity that links creativity and memory in an individual, to be pertinent to spiritual development, so Pieper asserts that an imaginative representation of Being through the creation of art and participation in communal worship proceeds from love and cultivates the individual’s capacity to perceive lovingly.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130747834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/LV.V9I2.11129
Austin C. Kopack
{"title":"A Christian Habitus","authors":"Austin C. Kopack","doi":"10.6017/LV.V9I2.11129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/LV.V9I2.11129","url":null,"abstract":"What is the relationship between preaching and living the Gospel? It is within the daily habits of those attempting to live out the Gospel together that preaching becomes intelligible and applicable. Sound preaching alone will fail to produce a transformed people whose lives reflect the teachings of scripture. This paper brings together the linguistic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the theological anthropology of James K. A. Smith in order to develop an affective pedagogy that takes seriously the socially dependent nature of human persons. The social account of language proposed in the later Wittgenstein suggests that the meaning of concepts arises amongst pre-linguistic, embodied, communal practices. Theological language cannot be detached from its concrete expressions in the world because its meaning is dependent upon a communal form of life in which those concepts make sense. James K. A. Smith builds upon this pragmatist tradition to present a theory of doctrine and preaching grounded in liturgical practices that does justice to human physicality and characterizes all human practices, religious or otherwise, as structures of habitual formation with particular teloi. The Gospel, then, is not just a truth we learn to believe but a way of life that we come to embody contra competing “cultural liturgies.”","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130973728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/lv.v9i2.11127
Matthew S. Kershaw
{"title":"Poetry as Antidote to Toxic Certainty","authors":"Matthew S. Kershaw","doi":"10.6017/lv.v9i2.11127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v9i2.11127","url":null,"abstract":"In examining the discursive environment surrounding the Great War (1914-1918), one finds a familiar reduction of reality into flat and mutually exclusive binaries written in what Robert Graves called \"Newspaper Language.\" In this article, I suggest such discursive flattening to be both unproductive and dehumanizing, employing the term \"toxic certainty\" to refer to language used by a given partisan over and against the perceived other, where the rhetorical force of an assertion is taken to be the proof of that assertion. To counter dehumanizing discourse both in and out of the pulpit, I suggest a remedy in an alternate reading of James 1:22, where preachers can aspire to be \"poets of the word,\" rather than just self-deceiving hearers. This idea is developed through an examination of the poetic efforts to humanize the full reality of the Great War undertaken by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131743658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/lv.v9i2.11131
Kaylie Page
{"title":"Raised Imperishable","authors":"Kaylie Page","doi":"10.6017/lv.v9i2.11131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/lv.v9i2.11131","url":null,"abstract":"Christians live in light of eternity: we anticipate a future glory yet to be unveiled, but we also have some level of participation in that glory in the present. What shape should that anticipation and participation take? In other words, how does the resurrection influence ethical choices in the present? This paper draws on the work of historical and modern theologians to consider what effects the resurrection of the body has on Christian life in the present. It argues that the nature of embodied life in the resurrection affects our view of and our behavior towards our own bodies, the body of the church, and the bodies of other people in the world. While the paper sketches the outlines of an ethic based on the bodily resurrection in each of these areas, its main concern is with the spiritual attitude that informs and results from these ethical choices. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer observes, Christian ethics that focuses on the resurrection tends to fall into one of the two traps of otherworldliness or secularism. However, when attention is given to the spiritual effects of a resurrection-oriented ethic, both of these pitfalls can be avoided. Living in light of the resurrection sharpens our anticipation of heavenly glory, but it also proves our inability to attain that glory by our own power, forcing us to rely ever more on God as the source of our salvation. Thus, although living with reference to the resurrection of the body has positive influence on our ethical choices, the primary impact of such a life is to drive the Christian back to the Gospel.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131244854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/LV.V9I2.11133
Dominika Sieruta
{"title":"The Art of Dying Well according to Erasmus of Rotterdam and Teresa of Ávila","authors":"Dominika Sieruta","doi":"10.6017/LV.V9I2.11133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/LV.V9I2.11133","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary conversations about death and dying are lost and unsatisfying on many levels. This phenomenon subsists not only in fields like bioethics, but also in religion and spirituality. Modern culture is preoccupied with seeking ways to live a longer, youthful life, ignoring the inevitable forthcoming of death. One period during which the topic of death and dying was reflected upon by the common Christian was between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries, during which a specific genre of literature was formed: ars moriendi. This genre attempted to provide intellectual, cultural and religious answers as to how death should be understood and ritualized. Two spiritual writers who contributed to the understanding of ars moriendi are Desiderius Erasmus and Teresa of Ávila. What unites these figures of the Catholic tradition is their attempt to show that preparation for death is a lifelong process of cultivating appropriate virtues.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"31 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115709193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/LV.V9I2.11125
James E. Kelly
{"title":"“To Evangelize the Poor”","authors":"James E. Kelly","doi":"10.6017/LV.V9I2.11125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/LV.V9I2.11125","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I will examine the scriptural basis for Origen’s interpretation of Luke 4:18-19 as an allusion to Jesus’ identity as savior, not as a call to social justice. I argue that this interpretation is consistent with the intentions of the gospel writer. The essay begins with an analysis of the gospel writer’s redaction of Mark 1 in Luke 3-5. Based on that redaction, I hypothesize that Luke intends to emphasize Jesus’s identity with the anointed one mentioned in Isaiah 61:1-2. This excerpt from Isaiah not only gives Luke 4:18-19 its Christological significance but also clarifies Luke’s understanding of poverty in relation to the Gospel. I then examine Origen’s application of the Lucan passage for his pastoral purposes. To conclude, I suggest that we, like Luke and Origen, read Scripture Christocentrically in order to better facilitate the church’s encounter with Christ during the liturgy. \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130294215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lumen et VitaPub Date : 2019-05-18DOI: 10.6017/LV.V9I2.11123
C. Calleja
{"title":"The Orations of the Cappadocian Fathers on Lepers","authors":"C. Calleja","doi":"10.6017/LV.V9I2.11123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.6017/LV.V9I2.11123","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to understand what might effectively serve to exhort the practice of the virtue of solidarity with the socially alienated. Three orations on lepers: one by Gregory of Nazianzus, and two by Gregory of Nyssa, will be studied. The methods used to engender the virtue of solidarity with the lepers in these orations will be analyzed. Redefining classical Greek virtues in a Christian theological framework; sensitizing the listeners by appealing to emotions through the use of concrete examples; attempting to restore alienated kinship by retrieving kinship language; and encouraging a tangible encounter with lepers prove to be important elements. How the Gregorys appealed to non-Christians will also be considered. I conclude that through these three orations, the Gregorys teach us that the conviction to cultivate the virtue of solidarity is inculcated by engaging closely with those whose identity appears different from one’s own.","PeriodicalId":109688,"journal":{"name":"Lumen et Vita","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130196474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}