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BY SISTER LOUISE HAGEMAN, O P.
“Why has my son turned away from the
church and embraced an Eastern religion?” a
mother filled with sorrow asked. This is a
question that more than one parent would like
an answer to. Yet, it is neither easily nor
quickly answered. And in attempting to answer
it, one cannot claim absolute authority.
Faith . . . Love . .. Hope . . . Counsel.
Parents love their children, guide them
toward faith, hope for their well being
and goodness, and counsel them countless
times during their growing-up years. But
faith is something each individual must
ultimately find for himself. When a son or
daughter turns away from Christian faith
and searches for spirituality in another
tradition, parents must not lose hope.
God works in ways which we, many
times, do not understand. Parents must
continue to love their children. Faith,
hope and love are the stuff of Christianity
and will not fail.
A mother watched her son hang upon
a cross. She stood by helplessly as life
flowed from him — an apparently
hopeless situation. And even when it was
over, she continued to hope. The event
changed the world because he was the son
ONE'S “ABANDONMENT OF
Christianity may be a search for deeper
prayer,” Sister Louise Hageman writes.
“The atmosphere in your home, which
apparently lias been one of great
respect for religion, may be that which
The intense world of Russian intelligence
and religion is not familiar to most of us. The
only names we are likely to know are those of
Tolstoi and Dostoevski. Vladimir Soloviev
(1853-1900), however, greatly influenced both
of these men. He once gave lectures in St.
Petersburg which they attended. Soloviev is
said to have been the model of Alyosha in “The
Brothers Karamazov,” perhaps the greatest of
the religious novels.
Nineteenth-century Russian writers are not
easy to read. Often they are complex,
metaphysical writers, often laden with terms
from German philosophy replete with several
hyphens, all quite unfamiliar. Soloviev was no
exception to this in his more erudite works.
In addition to the Russian and northern
European background, Soloviev was greatly
influenced, unlike most Russians, by Roman
Catholic thought. He saw the mystical function
of the papacy, which often set him at odds with
the official Russian Orthodox Church. He
seems even to have been formally an
Eastern-Rite Catholic for a time, though there
is controversy about how to understand this.
Soloviev was inspired by a vision of the
divine wisdom, even literally so in a vision in
Egypt, in which all society and the cosmos were
seen returning to God in Jesus. He stressed both
the personal and social sides of the faith and
felt that the Russian Orthodox Church had
neglected the meaning of religion in society. He
felt the division of East and West had harmed
both. He also appears > to have wanted a
universal society united under a pope for
spiritual affairs and a czar for temporal ones, all
in one Christian view of society and man.
However, in his later years, he grew more
pessimistic of the possibility of this because of
man’s sinful nature.
Soloviev was directly concerned with the
relation of each person to God and to all else.
He .was very clear that we ought first to know
A couple of years ago I visited the Blue
Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. At the door I
removed my shoes and entered the very
beautiful but simple rounded temple, walking
reverently among persons squatted on mats in
silent prayer. The experience evoked a real
longing in me for the same kind of prayer.
I recall my discomfort the previous Sunday
in an ornate Romanian Orthodox cathedral
of God. His resurrection from the dead
gave hope to all those who had been bom
and those to come. His passion and death
was the greatest act of love the world wiD
ever know. Jesus and Mary showed us
that sorrow can be endured, that hope is
not fruitless, and that love is the most
powerful force there is. As long as we
have faith, we need not be afraid to hope.
Vladimir Soloviev, a great Russian
mystic, theologian, philosopher, poet,
journalist and ecumenist, said that in each
soul, there is a “hunger for immortality
and a thirst for truth.” He said, too,
“God does not will to be an external fact
forcing himself upon us, but an interior
truth whom we are morally obliged to
recognize.” He stands for that strand of
Christian spirituality that feels that it
must account for everything because it
sees that, ultimately, God is all in all.
has evoked intense longing for God
within him.” A young boy on a Seattle
street stares at the unusual garb of a
group of Hare Krishna followers. (NC
Photo by Bob Strawn)
what was unique about the Christian God
whose basic message to us in the Gospels was
the good news of the kingdom. “True, genuine
Christianity,” he wrote, “is not a dogma, or
hierarchy, or liturgy, or morality, but the
life-giving spirit of Christ really, though
invisibly, present in humanity and acting in it.”
Soloviev, then, here wanted to insist that
Christianity is first about Christ and who he is
when he is encountered.
The most useful insight into Soloviev’s
spirituality comes from his “God, Man and the
Church: The Spiritual Foundations of Life.”
Here, Soloviev revealed his deep notion of
prayer, sacrifice, alms and fasting. What is
characteristic of Soloviev’s faith is his
unflinching belief that Christian grace alone
solves the basic, ultimate question each person
discovers himself asking. In each soul, there is a
“hunger for immortality and a thirst for truth.”
Both are necessary. This reveals our awareness
of our own destiny, yet we are unable to be
satisfied by anything less than God. And God
acts toward us as persons: “God does not will
to be an external fact forcing himself upon us,
but an interior truth whom we are morally
obliged to recognize.”
Prayer is seen by Soloviev in this Christian
context. Christ, truly active in his creation, first
seeks us. But we must recognize what we are
and what God is, that he wills to relate to us
freely as persons. Prayer is the response of our
freedom. And it is also a recognition that the
good of God exists and is worth having, worth
our choice, worth our realization that God is
the good of ourselves, the whole of creation,
and not something we make for ourselves.
Soloviev put it this way: “When we have
reached the stage of condemning the evil that
dominates us, when we have begun to try to
overcome it, when we have learned the
powerlessness of our good will, then we feel the
irresistible moral need of seeking another will,
one which not only desires but has the good,
where people were vocalizing many prayers and
frequently genuflecting, while others milled
around kissing the coffin of St. Dimitrie, the
church’s patron. I experienced some guilt in
feeling attracted to the quiet Moslem prayer
style in contrast to that prayer in the cathedral.
I began to ask myself serious questions about
present-day prayer in the Catholic Church.
Similarly, your son’s abandonment of
Christianity may be a search for deeper prayer.
The atmosphere in your home, which
apparently has been one of great respect for
religion, may be what has evoked intense
longing for God within him.
I share your concern for him, because as we
practice transcendental meditation or yoga or
any such prayer practices, we are opening
ourselves to the world of the spirit. This tuning
in to the spiritual may deepen our union with
God, or it may be devastating.
Unless we have proper guidance in the
spiritual realm, we can easily open ourselves to
the demonic as well.
Within society there are many voices that
claim to feed our hungry hearts. Some of these
merely meet security or pleasure needs and
leave us essentially loveless and empty. Yoga or
transcendental meditation may be helpful on
one level but can be lethal if used improperly.
But all is not lost. Eventually, your son’s
involvement in Eastern religion may enhance
his Christian faith. I just returned from a
month’s retreat at the Thomas Merton Center
in Magog, Quebec. It is an ecumenical center
that specializes in the integration of the
practice of Asian or Eastern meditation with
our Christian or Western tradition of mystical
contemplation.
A young man from California made the
retreat with us. Originally, he was a Christian
but had since left his church and become very
involved in an Eastern religion. While at the
center he was reconverted to Christ through
guided Christian contemplative prayer. Because
he had practiced yoga and was in touch with
the spiritual world, he made rapid progress in
Christian contemplation.
Westeners affirm and emphasize efficient
productivity and mastery in contrast to quiet
awareness and awesome receptivity in much of
life and this tends to influence our approach to
God. Here, we have something to learn from
the Eastern religions without, however,
abandoning Christianity or divorcing our prayer
from Christ.
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Contemplative prayer is part of our Christian
tradition. Scripture tells us in. Psalm 46, “Be
still and know that I am God.” Christ went off
to the desert to pray and Mary pondered in her
heart. Doctors of the church such as John of
the Cross and Teresa of Avila are great teachers
of this approach to God.
Perhaps individuals like your son are helping
us to question our modern emphasis on
discursive prayer and to reclaim a very essential
element of our Christian tradition, that of
contemplation.
So often we do not understand God’s ways.
There is much that we do not know, but of one
thing we can be certain: God never abandons
his children.
and communicates its own power to us. Such a
will there is, and it finds us before we begin to
look for it; it reveals itself to us in faith and we
are joined with it in prayer.”
Soloviev’s vivid sense of the reality of God’s
seeking us, of our free response, of the
returning of all creation back to God, such is
the unifying, mystical characteristic of his
spirituality. He wanted that the earth be
“oned,” as he put it, with heaven, yet freely,
one, yet not by one absorbing or destroying the
other. “Christianity has a content of its own,
and that content is solely and exclusively
Christ.”
His philosophy and religion were his way of
expressing the validity of the Pauline notion
of returning all things in Christ to the Father.
To Soloviev, all else was little or nothing. He
could not settle for anything less than the
complete Christian vision of man, cosmos and
God, together as God had promised they would
be. Soloviev stands for that strand of Christian
spirituality that feels that it must account for
everything because it sees that ultimately God
is all in all.
FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
quotes this passage from the fourth
Gospel: “Near the cross of Jesus stood
his mother . . . with the disciple whom
he loved. Jesus said to his mother,
‘Woman, there is your son.’ In turn he
said to the disciple, ‘There is your
j
Maty is mentioned in only two scenes in the
fourth Gospel: at the marriage feast in Cana
(Jn. 2, 1-12) and at the foot of the cross on
Calvary:
“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother,
his mother’s sister, Maty the wife of Clopas,
and Mary Magdalene. Seeing his mother there
with the disciple whom he loved, Jesus said to
his mother, ‘Woman there is your son.’ In turn
he said to the disciple, ‘There is your mother.’
From that hour onward, the disciple took her
into his care” (Jn. 9, 25-27).
Many similarities link the two scenes. In
both she is addressed as “woman”; at Cana her
intervention is put off because Jesus’ “hour”
has not yet come; on Calvary the hour has
arrived; in both instances disciples are
significantly present. Setting aside the historical
difficulties connected with the Calvary incident
and taking it as the evangelist has described it
for us, we must ask what meaning it had for
him — and, through him, for us.
As at Cana, Mary is presented as a real
historical person, the mother of Jesus.
Face-to-face with the tragic situation in which
we see her here, we can react only as one does
when contemplating Michelangelo’s poignant
“Pieta” or listening to Rossini’s “Stabat
Mater”: with speechless wonder.
It is futile to attempt to verbalize the
emotions which must have constricted their
hearts when their eyes met. How would any
mother feel, having to stand by helpless and
watch the bloodied body of her son hang
pinioned to a cross? And for a mother to see a
son as good and loving and gentle as hers die as
a criminal and. to make matters worse, if
possible, a criminal slave. And for a son to look
down and know her anguish and yearn to take
mother.’ From that hour onward, the
disciple took her into his care” (Jn. 19,
25-27). Mary grieves for her son in this
painting of “The Crucifixion” from the
school of Rogier Van Der Weyden. (NC
Photo)
her in his arms and comfort her - and to be
unable even to move those arms.
Still, he could speak, and we have his words,
words full of meaning. That meaning has been
variously understood throughout the centuries.
The most common interpretation, because
apparently the most obvious, has been that
Jesus was making provision for the care of his
mother, now a childless widow, after his death.
There is no denying this is a possible, not
unlikely meaning, but the fourth Gospel rarely
stops with the surface meaning of words or
events.
From what we know of this Gospel, it is
unlikely that Jesus’ concern for his mother was
uppermost in the mind of the evangelist. Not
just one, but several indications point to this
conclusion.
As in the Cana incident, Mary is addressed as
“woman.” This points to her being not just an
individual person, Jesus’ mother, but a symbol.
Here too, just as at Cana, she is a symbol of the
church. She is a symbol like “Lady Zion” of
the Old Testament (Is. 49, 20-22; 54, 1; 56,
7-11), giving birth in anguish to a new people,
an anguish soon to turn into joy (Jn. 16-21).
Now that Jesus’ “hour” has come, he will
“hand over his spirit” (Jn. 19, 30) and his
church will share in his mission of salvation. It
is rather generally recognized that the beloved
disciple, too, has symbolic value as
representative of the Christian.
In the present instance it is noteworthy that
Jesus speaks first to the “woman” (the church)
and entrusts the disciple (the Christian) to her
in the person of John. And the words with
which he entrusts him to her are not the
standard adoption formula: They are rather a
revelation formula. They point to a
relationship, but even more they reveal a
mystery', the mystery of the Christian’s being
engendered by and entrusted to the care of the
church.
The profound theological significance of this
is underscored by the immediately following
words: "After that. Jesus realizing that
everything was now finished . . .” (Jn. 19. 28).
He has completed the work his Father has given
him by seeing to the future carrying on of his
mission by the new people of God. It is likely
that in the original tradition this little story
told simply of Jesus’ concern for the well being
of his mother. But as it stands now, in the
context of the richly symbolic and avowedly
theological fourth Gospel, it has acquired an
even more profound significance. And it
illustrates in a singularly moving manner the
opening verse of the Book of Glory (Jn. 13,
20):
“Before the feast of Passover, Jesus realized
that the hour had come for him to pass from
this world to the Father. He had loved his own
in this world, and would show his love for them
to the end.”
KNOW
YOUR FAITH
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1978 By N.C. News Service) .
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The Spirituality Of Vladimir Soloviev
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BY FATHER JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
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