II WAS FASCINATED as I read the Office of Readings for the feast of Pope Gregory the Great (ca.540 – 604), specifically the second reading in which the great pastor and administrator bared his soul on what being pope was doing to him. He laments: ‘When I lived in a monastic community I was able to keep my tongue from idle topics and to devote my mind almost continually to the discipline of prayer.’ Now his mind is distracted by many responsibilities—civil, ecclesiastical, political, the protection of his flock, confrontations with villains. His mind is torn. He must associate with men of the world and converse with them—if he preserved his normal mode of utterance weaker persons would recoil and he would never attract them to the goal he desires for them. He must listen patiently to aimless chatter, finding himself drawn gradually into idle talk.

The great and saintly pope struggled to be at once a contemplative and an active apostle, and he frankly admitted that he was not finding it easy. As I read I heard myself say: ‘Welcome to our world, Gregory!’

The focus of this issue of Compass is spirituality. We attend to our spiritual selves when we draw apart for a while from the busyness of our ‘normal’ lives and attend to God. Jesus did it, spending whole nights in prayer, and he invited his disciples: ‘Come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while’ (Mk 6:31).

We go, if we are fortunate, to a ‘Retreat House’ to draw back, to disengage. We hear the Almighty’s command: ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Ps 46:10). But this is a strategic retreat, not an escape. Any spirituality that is based on escape, is delusion.

We are in the midst of another election campaign. The challenges to our nation are daily paraded before us, so many pressing issues: poverty, education, health care, discrimination, indigenous Australians, the environment, rural Australia, housing and homelessness, asylum seekers and refugees, trade justice, truthfulness—just some of the more obvious challenges.

If our attention to things of the spirit were to draw us away from the demands of the world around us and the needs of our brothers and sisters, then we would be in serious error. The genuinely ‘spiritual’ person looks life in the face, with total realism. The ‘unspiritual’ person is the escapist, seeking happiness by avoidance and denial, and by concentrating only on the pleasures life can bring, be they bodily or ‘spiritual’ pleasures. The spiritual person is highly sensitized to the world. To follow Jesus is to come alive to the world around us and to all that drives it.

Spirituality addresses the nation’s challenges at the deepest level, that of conversion of heart, of radical change of life. The Eucharist, as Frank Andersen points out, breaks down individualism, brings us into the most profound communion in Christ, and then: ‘One washes feet, takes bread thankfully, breaks it and gives it to others’ (below).

Kerrie Hide ponders the mystery of transforming union, how God’s saving presence bestows the fullness of life, uniting divinity and humanity. The effects are experienced in the rest of creation: ‘Divine mercy gazes at the lowly with favour, scatters the proud, brings down those who abuse power, fills the lowly, empties the rich and becomes the servant to the servants (below). And the spiritual person is to ‘embrace the Poor Christ’, as Clare invited Agnes to do (below).

Tony Kelly reflects on the pitfall of ‘spirituality’ divorced from the Church (as Mystery). There are ‘huge, antagonistic forces’ to be confronted: ‘capitalism, Marxism, militarism, racism and institutional prejudices of all kinds … and commercial and advertising and institutional media’ (below). Spirituality needs an institutional component.
Finally, Liz and Andrew Chatelier give an account of their lived family spirituality, and Denis Uhr gives and instance of how religious congregations in Australia are striving to pass on a spiritual vision.

Attention to our spiritual lives is no luxury or self-indulgence. It is the only way to stay grounded as we deal with the unruliness of life and the menaces of our world. The spiritual quest, if it is genuine, enhances our action; it motivates us and impels us to work for a new world..

—Barry Brundell MSC, Editor.