Spirituality (Christianity)

Human beings are created such that they are incomplete when encapsulated in the self. There is a deep yearning for self-transcendence and surrender. Spirituality is the response to this yearning for surrender to something greater than one's self. When experienced, this surrender gives the feeling of having found one's place. Someone who is evidently spiritual is not necessarily religious but is directed from the inner person and the unseen, inner worlds are of great importance. When the focus of self-transcendence is seen as a power or being, and a relationship is made with this power or being, then this is a development from natural spirituality to religious spirituality.

The Christian develops this process of probings and response to spiritual longing in the context of Christian faith and community. He or she lives in the Spirit of God, and awareness of being in the presence of God increases and deepens. Spirituality thus begins and grows through the interior life, relating to God in the depths of the self. It is here that spiritual transformation takes place, a spiritual growth starting in the heart and working outwards so that eventually the whole of life is "shot through" with faith.

The leading of a spiritual life while remaining in the world is, to the Christian, a question of living integrally in the life of Christ, resulting finally in the soul's union with God. It may be attempted in many ways: through austerities (so long as the result of such deprivations is indifference to the inessential and liberation from worldly things); it may be sought in the monastic life, away from the direct influence of the world; through contemplation of creation, mysticism, devotion.

By whatever means it is approached, the spiritual life requires some intensity of purpose, and response to God's love by loving one's fellow men. It is the intellectual and affective realization of God through direct experience, and a personal response to God; a narrow path between acceptance of the means of achieving spirituality as ends in themselves, and rejection of the spiritual life altogether.