a balanced spirituality

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Dorr,,A Balanced Spirituality 267

important than ever in todays world. If I am not religiously converted,

or if this aspect of my conversion is inadequate, then I am allowing

false gods to rule my lifeambition, or greed, or anxiety. If my moral

conversion is absent or inadequate then I remain distrustful and

closed to others; or else I am unfaithful, unreliable, disloyal. If I am

not properly converted in the political sphere, then I will assume that

religion is just a private or interpersonal affair and so I will condone

the structural injustices of society.

Unfortunately, it frequently happens that different people

concentrate almost exclusively on one, or at most two, of the three

aspects of conversion. Many good people wake up to a deep sense of

Gods providence and this leads them to a prayerful and enthusiastic

spirituality; but they may remain quite insensitive in their human

relations and may lack all sense of the political dimensions of the

Christian faith. Other people build their spirituality around openness

to others; but they may be lacking in depth because they give littletime to prayer and reflection; and they may imagine that the world

can be changed without major structural changes in society. Finally,

there are some deeply committed Christians who are so intent on

changing the social, economic, and political order that they sacrifice

their own peace of spirit and their human relationships in a frenzy

of quasi-political activity.

Our spirituality must be rooted not in just one or two aspects

of conversion but in all threethe religious, the moral and the

political. It is a distortion of Christian faith to neglect any of them

or to fail to work for a full integration of the three.

This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this:

That you act justly,That you love tenderly,

That you walk humbly with your God.

In closing this series of reflections on the hungers of the human

family, I suggest that we should, each of us, put to ourselves one

urgent question: Where I walk and work, where I play and pray, in

the little acre of God I till, is there anyone who is less hungry because

I am there?

a balanced spirituality

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