Examining Our Lives and Our History

Over the past few weeks, we have been exploring diverse ways in which we as adults are being called to growth in faith and transformation in the Holy Spirit.  This week, I would like to highlight two programs that will begin here at St. Monica's this November.  Both are connected to being attentive to how the Spirit is at work in our lives: our personal lives as individuals and families, and our collective life as a church community.

Most of us would like to live a life more attuned to the presence of God’s Spirit, cooperating with the gentle movements the Spirit evokes in us.  But how exactly do I do this, in the midst of my hectic, busy, everyday life – with all its stresses and demands?  Cathie Macaulay, a gifted spiritual director and teacher, will be at St. Monica's this coming Saturday morning (Nov. 5^th) to present and help us experience “The Examen: Holding What Gives You Life.”  This spiritual practice, drawn from the deep wells of Ignatian spirituality, is a simple and remarkably effective tool that, when practiced faithfully, helps us become more attentive, more discerning and more in step with the Holy Spirit.  That’s good news for us – and the people all around us! 

The Spirit is also at work in our shared journey as a faith community.  Attempts to present the history of the Church typically go to one of two extremes: focusing only on the “nice parts” (missionary expansion, the witness of the saints, the “good Popes”, the smooth unfolding of doctrine) or alternately, looking only at the “scandals”: schisms, heresies, corruption, the Crusades, the Inquisition, intolerance.  Inspired by the BBC video series A History of Christianity, featuring Oxford Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, we will identify both the signs and counter-signs of the action of the Holy Spirit through two millennia of Church history.  We will explore how Christianity spread east and west from its origins in Jerusalem, trace the development of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, consider the impact of the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Evangelical Christianity, and discern how the Spirit is moving the Church to respond to a post-modern, secular age. I am grateful that Jennifer Dickson, professor of history at Marianopolis, and Robert Assaly, a patristics scholar, will be joining me to animate what promises to be a fascinating and intellectually stimulating program: “everything you wanted to know about the history of the Church, but were afraid (or didn’t know enough) to ask!”  Please join us for our first three sessions, which will be held Wednesday evenings Nov. 9, 16, and 23 – and bring a friend!