The rhythm of life and work in which we live immersed, and the culture that surrounds us, characterized by a secularism that considers the religious dimension of man as something secondary and accidental to his life, on the one hand hinders the development of the spiritual dimension of the human being and, on the other, generates in many people a deep dissatisfaction, an existential void and a loss of inner peace in the face of the stress that is imposed on us. This has provoked a desire to regain interiority and a "demand for spirituality" which is often filled with practices that have their origin in religious traditions foreign to Christianity.
This fact poses a twofold pastoral challenge to the Church: first, the need to rethink the place that the cultivation of spirituality should have in the pastoral life of the Church. The priority for the Church in its evangelizing mission must be to "show" to people the beauty of the face of God manifested in Christ, so that they may be attracted to him, and to offer them ways in which they can come to experience an encounter with God. Spirituality must now be a pastoral priority in the life of the Church.
Not everything is compatible with the Christian faith
Along with this challenge we have a second challenge: not everything that is offered as methods and techniques of spirituality is compatible with the Christian faith. Often certain paths of meditation start from a vision of man and his relationship with the cosmos that is not compatible with the Christian doctrine on creation; or presuppose an idea of the Absolute that does not coincide with the face of God revealed in Jesus Christ; or pretend to lead to a goal that is presented as authentic happiness and that does not correspond to the Christian idea of salvation. Recently the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its letter Placuit Deo and Pope Francis in the exhortation Gaudete et exultate have warned about the new forms of pelagianism and of gnosticism that distort the Christian message. Faced with this panorama, discernment is necessary.
To raise these questions is not to confront believers of other religions or to disregard interreligious dialogue. In the Doctrinal guidelines on Christian prayer published by the Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, we do not find a negative evaluation of other religions or an undervaluation of interreligious dialogue. There is, however, an implicit warning to understand and practice it correctly, since the purpose of the dialogue is to know better the other traditions, to listen to the reasons for believing that the believers of those religions have, to enrich each other by what we can learn from each other.
The filial prayer of the Lord, the Lord's Prayer, the Lord's Prayer
In order to face the pastoral challenge of the new evangelization and to make possible the experience of God as something prior to the understanding of Christian truths and the acceptance of moral demands, it is necessary to rediscover those essential elements of Christian prayer that cannot be missing in any initiation to prayer and that are inseparable from the content of faith, because for the Church faith and prayer are inseparable. In this regard, it should not be forgotten that a quarter of these Doctrinal guidelines is the most important and the one that should be taken into account by all those to whom the document is especially addressed: "priests, consecrated persons, catechists, Christian families, parish groups and apostolic movements, those in charge of pastoral ministry in educational centers, those in charge of cases and spirituality centers"..
This section IV of the note begins by presenting the Lord's prayer as a model of Christian prayer. Christ's prayer is nothing more than the expression of his filial relationship with the Father, a relationship that leads him to live his mission in such a way that in Him there is not the slightest dissociation between "love" y "obedience". The Christian prays because in Christ he has been made a "son of God". Your prayer is, like the Lord's, the expression of your filial relationship with God. That is why we also pray as Christ taught us. The Lord's Prayer is the criterion of all authentic Christian prayer. God is also the goal of prayer: we pray to reach God. While we walk in this world and do not yet see him face to face, the encounter with God is lived by growing in faith, hope and charity, which are the virtues by which our life is oriented towards him. Prayer, which is part of the life of those who are on the way to the definitive Homeland, keeps these virtues alive and helps us to grow in them. It is not a "being well with oneself" the goal of Christian prayer, but to grow in the virtues that lead us to God.
In the Church we have come to know Christ
In this section IV, it is important to note what is said about the ecclesial form of prayer. Ecclesiality is not a secondary element or an addition to the faith that we can do without: in the Church we have come to know Christ, we have learned to be Christians and thanks to her we remain in the faith. Nor can it be a marginal element in the initiation to the life of prayer. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, cited in no. 33, offers us the appropriate framework for understanding the following numbers. They recall the essential elements that the Church has developed over the centuries and that have made her a teacher of spirituality: Sacred Scripture, with special mention of the psalms; the liturgy, especially the Eucharist; the forms of piety and devotion that have taken root among the People of God; the various forms of prayer (vocal, meditation and contemplation); the tradition of the great masters of spirituality; the example of the Virgin Mary, mother and model of the Church.
The bishops of the Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the EEC, in publishing this note, "we want to help ecclesial institutions and groups to offer paths of spirituality with a well-defined Christian identity", responding to the pastoral challenges we mentioned at the beginning, "with creativity and, at the same time, with fidelity to the richness and depth of the Christian tradition".
Bishop of Tortosa. President of the Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith (CEE).
