The shocking experience of God's grace and our trusting surrender to it.

Karl Rahner (1904-1984) was one of the outstanding theologians of the twentieth century. He wrote profound works, not always so easy, but certainly focussed on practical matters that affected the life of the church. He stands in the tradition of Ignatian Spirituality, writing abouth the direct, unmediated experience of God.

His was a mysticism of the everyday life which represents a space where the mystical can be experienced. One of his best-known works is his Letter from Ignatius to modern day Jesuits in which he wrote in an Ignatian idiom to contemporary Jesuits.

In this letter Rahner represents Ignatius as saying that he wanted to speak to people about his encounter with God. He refers to the historical Ignatius' two transformative experiences of the divine. This encounter drives him to want to speak to people about God and especially God’s grace, to talk about Jesus as the crucified and risen One who would open up and redeem their freedom into God’s. He had a liberating encounter with God. He experienced the true and living God directly. He does not want to speculate about this encounter through impressive theological arguments or relate sensational, ecstatic experiences.

He simply experienced God, the nameless and unsearchable one, silent and yet so close, so overwhelmingly near. He experienced God in the Trinity that is His turning to me, the incomprehensible God who is yet so near and close. He experienced God-self, not merely human words about God.

This conviction that one had experienced God, may sound innocuous to many, but it is in fact outrageous and shocking in our times and even in our churches.

The church has become a place where we are activist, busy bees, singing with bands, shouting halleluja's and praise the Lords's, organising fetes and care groups and Bible Studies. The church has become a space which we fill with people who meet and greet, who sing and shout, who pray and praise (the church), who run all over the place and never arrive. As Rahner puts it, “people can no longer bear silent solitude before God and instead seek to flee into an eccelsiastical collectivity.” Some use the church “to have nothing to do with God and God’s incomprehensiblity.”

This must be countered by redirecting the Church;s focus. Everything the church teaches, the whole process of spiritual direction aims at drawing attention to the encounter with God. The most important thing that can happen is that God and human beings can really meet mutually.

This is an experience that Luther had (says Rahner, the catholic theologian). He encountered God directly with no intervention or intermediation through the church. He had the liberating experience of a God who loves, who fills one with joy, who releases one from anguish and suffering, who comes close, near and fills one with a glorious divine presence.

So Rahner appeals to the Church: remember to pursue this one task relentlessly: the aim of spiritual care is not to fill people with a theology that dumps endless words on others and make them obey the church. Help people to move beyond the visible, the tangible, the external matters or clever insights. Care for people should reflect the passion for their encounter with the divine who graciously spends immeasurable joy and love, not only in this desperate life, but also in death.

Where one stands before God in solitude, true life is imparted. This is what spirituality means. It is time for the Holy Spirit to empower the faithful to stand in the presence of God.