What can our forebears in the faith teach us?
Can spiritual practice from our Christian past help to revitalize the Church in our day? This is the question Dr. Bernard McGinn raises in an essay in the Spring 2015 issue of Spiritus (“The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions”).
Dr. McGinn gives an overview of the views of three recent thinkers on this question, whose conclusions he uses to express his own hope that past traditions will yet find a way into contemporary Christian practice with beneficial effects. It’s easy to lose sight of the great examples and works of Christian spirituality that our forebears have left for us. We can benefit, and so can the people around us, by learning from spiritual leaders of the past how to grow in our relationship with the Lord.
Unhappily, Dr. McGinn offers no specific guidance as to how this might come about. Instead, he merely raises the question, then expresses the hope that a conversation will continue and grow, a conversation he sees embodied in the work of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (which publishes Spiritus).
I agree with Dr. McGinn’s expressed hope concerning our Christian past, and I am almost daily encouraged at the evidence I see of openness to and interest in this project. At this time I’m involved in reading works by Jonathan Edwards and Thomas à Kempis with other believers, and I’m aware of others who are similarly involved in learning spiritual life from saints of the past.
“As for the saints who are in the earth” (Ps. 16.3), we may hope that contemporary and future generations will yet discover and profit from their many excellencies. But we shall have to work diligently in our own present if such is to be the case.
Our twice-weekly teaching letter, Crosfigell, is devoted to exploring and benefiting from the spiritual lives of our Celtic Christian forebears. Subscribe for free by updating your subscriptions (click here).