DOMINICAN SPIRITUALITY AND DIRECTION

Donagh OShea, OP Et in ista formosa quae formasti, deformis irruebam. wrote St. Augustine 1 . "In my deformity / fell upon those beautiful things of your creation." Augustine delighted to play with words, and his was always a kind of play that lit up whatever subject he was addressing. In using the same root-word, forma, three times in one sentence (formosa: beautiful things, formasti: you created, deformis: deformed) he helps us to make connections we might not tend to make: between formation and beauty (and at the other extreme, deformity!). In modern English the word 'formation' suggests a rather impersonal, and even mechanical, process: and the word 'formator' probably makes you imagine a foundry rather than a religious community! But Augustine 's cri de coeur suggests that there is a vital connection between formation and beauty. At the beginning of The Dialogue, St. Catherine of Siena wrote: "Open your mind's eye and look within me [God], and you will see the dignity and beauty of my rational creature." 22 It is her constant theme throughout the work. These two saints, separated by a thousand years, are laying an emphasis that has often been neglected in the work of formation. They sug gest that grace has already been at work before human beings even begin to try to improve one another. I remember a formator of old who used to say, "Get 'em young, treat 'em rough, and tell 'em nothing!" Even if spoken partly in jest, it evoked a world in which novices were seen as raw material, unformed, passive to the shaping they were about to undergo at the hands of a formator. And the formator himself, in his time, had also been made to a formula. Dominican spirituality is haunted by a sense of grace. This was made fully explicit in the long controversies with Jesuit theologians in the 17 `" and 18m centuries. But whatever is made explicit was implicit before, and that is where we ought to look for a Dominican sense of grace in every aspect of the Christian life, and in spiritual direction and formation work in particular. It is no surprise that grace,' in popular usage, means 'beauty': a graceful person is one whose presence and movement have a certain dignity and beauty. My first job was teaching philosophy in a seminary for diocesan clergy in England. I was the only Dominican on the staff at that time, but there was one the previous year, and another two years before. By my time they were beginning to compare us! During the course of the year several people staff and students remarked to me how alike we were! This surprised me greatly, because I was more conscious of the differences between us; and I had
1

Confessions, X 27. 'Classics of Western Spirituality. translation and introduction b y Suzanne,n'offke. London, 1980. p. 26.

heard it said that while Jesuit formation produced character, Dominican formation produced characters! When I enquired of those priests and students why they thought us alike, the answers boiled down to two things: "You have the same kind of God!" they said, "and you have the same attitude when things go wrong!" One could hardly imagine two more significant headings: God and providence. In fact these probably simplify themselves in the end to just one heading: God. The creature is seen as being already in some sense "in God" as St. Catherine put it, and therefore participating in God's beauty. Of course the creature is also still in via," weary from travelling the long road of life, not looking his or her best, and not yet "in patria." But these angles of view are valid together. The grace of the Order is that we have not lost sight of the first, even when the second is more evident. It was something of this that those priests and students intuited about Dominicans. Within the Order we are likely to be more conscious of the differences between us. But it takes an outsider to see the similarities: the things we have in common that go deeper than words and ideas (even theological ones). These are the things that are deepest in us. This is the level at which we have been most profoundly 'spiritually directed' and 'formed' during our life in the Order. It may be useful to reflect on these things, provided we don't become too self-conscious about them. One of the elderly members of my Province speaks about "the paralysis of analysis." You can dissect a corpse, he says, but not a living body. In the pages that follow, there is no dissection but (I hope) a loving appreciation of the treasures that have been handed down the generations of our Dominican Family. 1. ABOUT SPIRITUAL DIRECTION There is a strong temptation to treat our material as if it were a conjunction of two different subjects: (a) Dominican spirituality, and (b).spiritual direction. In reality it is only one subject. When a Dominican is involved in spiritual direction there is no distinction between Dominican spirituality and spiritual direction. We see spiritual direction through our own eyes and we practise it our own way. To begin, let me make a provocative statement: spiritual direction is not really a Dominican thing at all....! But of course I will add very many qualifications to that! And I will begin to do so immediately! People who are members of a medieval religious Order, as we are, often feel less need of individual spiritual direction, less urgency about it, than do people who belong to Orders and congregations founded since the Reformation. It may be useful to try and see, however sketchily, why. The Reformation period was the time . of birth of the individual, though the gestation had been a long one. Martin Luther stressed the individual conscience as against community, and private_ as against authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. Though this was certainly an innovation in the religious sphere, he was being entirely a man of his age in

making this kind of emphasis. Less than fifty years after his death, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, accepting a radical individualism, made the strongest case for the absolute supremacy of the state. Human beings, he said, are radically self-centered (homo homini lupus: "everyone is a wolf to everyone else") and the only way in which society can hold together is by the absolute power of the sovereign. This is often seen in history: individualism and absolutism go together. Religious Congregations founded in the post-Reformation period tended to accept the deep-rooted premises of the Reformers and the counter-Reformation alike. It may be better not to refer to premises at all, because this suggests conscious reasoning: it was rather the atmosphere of the age, it was what went without question. Something subtle was evaporating: the sense of community, the awareness that we are part of one another. Soon, the ideal was the self-sufficient individual: going out to others, certainly, but not because they were part of his identity: he was already somehow complete in himself, and as such he would come to the assistance of others. But all cultural (and religious) forms are a balancing: all life is a balancing. And to balance such an emphasis on the individual there had to be an equivalent emphasis on strong centralised authority. Individualism and absolutism go together. In the light of the above I want to enter a caution about individual spiritual direction: it does not, I hope, betray a negative attitude: it comes from a certain concern for the individual. Dominican obedience never required a "manifestation of conscience" on the part of the subject: this would have been seen as wiping out the distinction between the 'internal forum' and the external. God alone can span that divide. To allow a superior or indeed a spiritual director, if one is obliged to have one to do so is to give him or her absolute power. This has always been repugnant to the spirit of our Order; it is our instinct to protect the integrity and the ultimate mystery of the person. But without going so far, I fear that we may have followed the practices of more recent Orders and placed almost total reliance on individual spiritual direction. Objection! If I am to bring the internal and the external sides of my life together, if I am to be one person rather than two 'fora,' must I not bridge the gap between them? And when I use the Sacrament of Penance do' l not do just this? Of course. But the sacramental moment is carefully protected and hedged about with great caution: the confessor's role is carefully circumscribed, and he is solemnly bound by the seal of confession. I fear that when we give a 'spiritual director' a role that exceeds even that of a confessor, and require that all individuals have one, we are putting the integrity of the individual at some risk. In the latter days we are aware of the existence of gurus and Zen masters, and there is a danger that we might project their role onto a spiritual director who is totally unqualified to bear it.

Having made the unguarded statement that individual spiritual direction is not really a Dominican thing, I now want to say that if an individual chooses in freedom to ask another fallible human being to accompany him or her on the journey, it is their perfect right to do so, and it can be very helpful. One might want such accompaniment for the duration of some crisis, or during a time of uncertainty, or even, in special cases, indefinitely. The other too (unless he or she is a Zen master) has blind spots, but at least there is a chance that they don't coincide with one's own! Even if a spiritual: director were to give no direction at all (which might well be the best!), the fact of talking something out with another can be very helpful. It is a kind of journalling in three dimensions: the presence of a 'director' is more challenging than the appearance of a blank page! Speaking as one who has frequently been asked to be a 'spiritual director,' I can say that the most effective moments seem to have been when I could listen with perfect attention, and perhaps make cross-references to things the person said earlier, but obtrude nothing of my own. Another objection! Isn't it sometimes necessary to confront a person in spiritual direction? Yes, but we should be sure that we are confronting them with the word of God, and not with one's own ideas and conclusions. We are not invited to intrude into the psychological depth of the other person, but (as St. Paul said) to "speak the truth with love." One has to have experienced this in another person, whether or not a spiritual director, to know what it is. One thinks of the woman at the well in John 4, who said to the village people, with enthusiasm, "Come and meet someone who told me everything I ever did." But I have emphasised that what I was talking about was individual spiritual direction. In our Dominican tradition and in the monastic tradition generally, which we have inherited in part there is a multitude of sources of spiritual direction. We have a more communitarian experience of religious life, and so the tradition and life of the Order to which we belong are our authentic spiritual directors. I once heard a Dominican being asked what Dominican spirituality was, and he replied: "It's the way we elect our superiors." His point was that our democratic ways are an expression of our belief in: (a) the integrity of each individual, and (b) the collective wisdom of a community. Constitutions and Acts of Chapters might seem unlikely places to look for spiritual direction, but they are the most detailed expression of the kind of people we are and the way we do things: and they are meant, if anything ever was, to give direction to our life. In that sense they could be said to be one of our sources of spiritual direction. And they are that as legal documents: they don't need, therefore, to be peppered with quotations from Scripture and Council documents.

The traditions we read about in the history of the Order, the traditions that still shape the way we live, the lives and writings of our holy men and women, even stories from the generation before us, and the example of many brothers and sisters: all constitute a kind of spiritual direction. It is not something that exists only in the conscious mind: it is in the deeply-layered memories of all that we have seen and heard and lived in the Order; it is in our tradition of study and prayer; it is in our very bones. The Liturgy, in a central way, is our spiritual director. It is our daily companion, keeping us close to the word of God, bringing to the surface many kinds of feelings and hopes that we might otherwise never have. I will speak about this again later. After all this, if a person still needs someone to accompany them for some distance along the spiritual path, there is every possibility of doing so. One remembers, for example Henry Suso, tortured by an over-sensitive conscience, going to speak with Meister Eckhart and finding complete relief. And the earlier Desert spirituality has a beautiful literature of such brief encounters between a monk and an Abba or Amma. Such brotherly support is a staple of religious life. The point I am making is that it is one element in a rich variety of ways of spiritual direction, and there is no necessity to make individual and long-term spiritual direction the central part of the spiritual life. As Anthony of the Desert said, when he was asked to preach, "The Scriptures are sufficient for instruction, but it is good for us to encourage one another in the faith. Now you, saying what you know, bring this to the father like children, and I, as your elder, will share what I know and the fruits of my experience." 33 I promised many qualifications, and here is another. Time does not stand still, and a living tradition does not stop developing and changing. We should not imagine that Dominican spirituality is anything defined or finished. We learn from what others do, as well as from our own traditions. There is no doubt, for example, that Jesuit spirituality answers to the needs of many people in our age. In the West, at any rate, however we might lament it, we live in an age of individualism, and it may take a spirituality that is slanted towards the individual to reach us. Ignatian spirituality has been immensely influential and fruitful in our time. The 'Directed Retreat' has challenged people to come to personal grips with the word of God, and the emphasis on 'spiritual direction' (meaning individual spiritual direction) has enabled countless people to face the reality of their own lives in a way that straight preaching often signally failed to do. But as I said at the beginning of this section, we need to see things in our own perspective. We need to take on board whatever is good, and integrate it with our way. Meister Eckhart wrote: "Whatever good God has done and given in one way, can be found in all good ways. For in one way one should take all good ways and not cling to the peculiarities of the way... Choose a good way and keep to it, introducing all good ways into
3

Athanasius. Life of.-lnthony. Classics of Western Mysticism, translation and introduction by R.C. Gregg Paulist Press: N.Y. 1980. no. 16. p. 43

it and bearing in mind that it comes from God, instead of starting one thing today and something else tomorrow: you need not worry that you are missing anything. For with God one can miss nothing. 4 A very good instance of this is the "Parable Retreat," adapted by U.S. Dominicans from the `directed retreat.' What Dominicans miss in the directed retreat is any emphasis on: (a) community, and (b) Liturgy. The directed retreat seemed such an individual matter, and the Liturgy was downplayed: the central focus was the individual's prayer effort. Parable adjusted this by giving all the participants the same Scriptural texts to pray with during the day, and these were always the readings of the day's Mass. In some variations of it they also made a concession to preaching by having one lecture during the day! This seems to me a very open and enlightened approach, and a model for all adaptation of other methods. In particular, it could be a model for the adaptation of `spiritual direction.' In my own experience of retreat-giving, times out of mind I have found that the topics we were considering were providentially in tune with the readings of the day, even when we had not planned it in that way. This happens so often and to so many people that I am left in no doubt that the Liturgy is our principal spiritual director. A Dominican use of spiritual direction is not grafted onto Ignatian spirituality nor onto the particular method of prayer that enjoins on its followers, the Spiritual Exercises. Instead it has the unmistakable, though not clearly defined, characteristics of Dominican spirituality. This requires us to consider now what those characteristics might be. 2 Dominican Spirituality It is extremely difficult to put experience into words: this is why good writing is so difficult: it is a real translation. It is easy, on the other hand, to put theoretical positions on paper: in fact nothing is easier, because they already exist principally on paper. Dominicans have not `packaged' their spirituality as many other Orders have: Franciscans, Carmelites, Jesuits... What do you say when someone asks you what Dominican spirituality is? If you are like the rest of us you begin to mutter a few generalities that leave you and the other person equally unsatisfied. We tend to experience this as a deficiency, and we tend to envy other groups who always have the ready word when asked to give an account of themselves. I would like to make two points here. First: I would think that such difficulty may be a sign that we are dealing with a spirituality rather than an ideology. We may be flattering ourselves here, but it would certainly be a great tragedy if we were not more than we can say. I want to labour this point a bit, because I believe it is of great importance. We may be living far too much in our heads: in our mouths in
4 '

"The Talks of Instruction. " Vo _?.:n Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, Vol. 1[l, trans. and ed.. M. O'C. Walshe. London. 1987.

particular! Spirituality is nothing if not practical. Our Faith was known as "the Way' before it was known as Christianity. Likewise Dominican spirituality is a way, not a theory. You could think about a way forever and not advance a single step. Language plays games with us and tries to satisfy us with words and images. I want to play an opposite game now for a moment. What do you make of the following statement? What I do is the way l do it. It is very easy to see this in some instances: talking to my friends, for example, is nothing other than the way I talk to them. But take another example: fixing a window. It is not so easy to realise that fixing that window is the way I fix it. Language is able to lead us by the nose. Because there is a noun we think there must be a thing. I call it a job,' and so I imagine it as a grammarian would: a noun, a sort of 'thing' really. But it is in no sense a 'thing': it is an activity. It is my activity, and my activity is just me: it is my life taking place. What was really happening was a moment of my life. It will never come back, even though I may have to fix that same window again tomorrow. What I do is the way I do it. Dominican spirituality is nothing but the way we do it! Second: I think that St. D o m i n i c would be very surprised at the expression: 'Dominican spirituality'! His passion was to preach the Gospel and to establish an evangelical way of life for preachers. Very much later, in the 19t century the age of nationalism with the restoration of religious Orders in France, each religious Order seems to have become obsessed with having its own spirituality; it was a kind of nationalism on a small scale. This self-conscious slant continues in our own time, and is even accentuated in ways that remind one of nothing so much as the 'branding' of products in the commercial world. There are books in which each chapter is a study of a particular brand: and the brand-names are still those of religious Orders: Benedictine, Carmelite, Dominican, Jesuit... That must leave diocesan clergy and lay people wondering if they have missed the last bus! But there is often a special one put on at the end for their benefit: the Spirituality of the Secular Priest, the Spirituality of the Laity! In my opinion it is safe to leave aside this self-conscious slant and to concentrate on preaching the Gospel to the people of our age. I'm not saying that there is no such thing as Dominican spirituality: I'm suggesting that it is most evident when we_are not thinking about it but doing it: doing what the Church calls us to do. (Golfers, its like your golf-swing!) A few times I have heard people say, after hearing a sermon by a Dominican. "So that's why they're called the Order of preachers!" There could be no better affirmation of Dominican spirituality: precisely because it was not sought but spontaneous, not affirmed by ourselves but perceived by others who have no part in our collective ego. Still, we have to be prepared to give some account of ourselves. We have existed as a distinct (even distinctively-dressed) Brother- and Sisterhood for almost eight centuries: it would be very surprising if we didn't have certain family traits, certain distinctive ways of doing things. All families have them. We would have them even if we didn't want to have them. All the more do we have them when we embrace our history with a certain satisfaction: with the knowledge that our way of life has proved a direct "way within the Way', a way that has produced many great saints and mystics and theologians. In the following, my hope is that you will recognise something of your own experience

in the Dominican way of life especially in relation to the giving and receiving of spiritual direction (since that is our topic). This is meant to be an exploration, and there is no sense in which it could be called exhaustive. It is a kind of sounding of our own instincts, and as I said at the very beginning, others may well be clearer on i t than we ourselves can be. With the above qualifications in mind, I want to point out some features that I think are prominent in Dominican spirituality. 2.1 GOD-CENTRED The first (with apologies!) seems very general. Our spirituality is particularly Godcentred. Of course all spiritualities have to be God-centred, but I think our instinct (as evidenced, for example, in the great debate de auxiliis) is to stress it relentlessly. No doubt, St. Thomas's theology had a vast influence in this matter, but he too was living out of a spirituality that found this emphasis quite natural. It was natural for him to begin his Summa Theologiae with the question of God, and not with Christ or with human consciousness, as we would do today. Thomas's was not yet the age of the great turning towards human consciousness that began in the 16' century and has continued ever since. The West lives in a mental world shaped by Descartes and Kant. Kant made contemplation impossible in principle. All knowledge, he said, is discursive: the work of reason lies in deducing, demonstrating, distinguishing, comparing, relating, abstracting. "Reason acquires its possessions through work," he announced. He identified reason with what the mediaevals called ratio, and rejected the function they knew as intellectus: the receptive or contemplative side. Knowledge, he said, is work, "a herculean labour.5 Dominican roots, however, go further back than the modern era, and we are still able, by some instinct, to breathe the air of a less introverted world. There is a contemplative, a mystical, core to Dominican theology: it is rooted in a sense of the transcendence of God. "This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God," wrote ST Thomas.6 And the following statements are all his. "From creation we know that God exists, that He is the cause of other things, and that He excels everything else... That is the final perfection of our knowledge in this life7' "Neither Christian nor pagan knows the nature of God as He is in Himself." 8 "We
5 '

See Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture. trans. A. Dru. Mentor Books. N.Y. 1952: and by the same author. Happiness and Contemplation, trans. by R. and C. Winston. F & F. London, 1958.
6

De Pot., 7.5 ad 14 Summa contra Gentiles. 3. 49.

1n Trill., 2.1 ad 6.

only know God truly when we believe that He is above all that we can think about God." 9 Clearly, this is like a prologue to Eckhart's famous statement, "It appeared to a man as in a dream it was a waking dream that he became pregnant with Nothing like a woman with child, and in that Nothing God was born. God was the fruit of Nothing. God was born in the Nothing." 10 When I discussed this with a confrere his comment was: "I think this fits in very well with the fact that our spirituality is fundamentally a liturgical spirituality. Not only is our ultimate focus not on ourselves, but neither is it on Jesus exclusively nor on the Spirit, but on God, Three and One." He added that just as liturgical prayer is addressed "to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit," not selecting one of them, so to speak, so does the entire structure of our spirituality reflect the full mystery of God. Even when we focus on Jesus, it is on him as the one who draws us to the Father. What difference, you might ask, does all this make to 'spiritual direction'? There is always, I believe, a spiritual 'backdrop' to all our relationships with one another, and especially of course when we are consciously engaged in a spiritual search. That backdrop had better be as large as the Faith itself! It is quite possible (and even common, I would say) to be engaged in spiritual direction and to be in reality only promoting one's own brand of piety. It is not I who am the director but God. This is a premise of such generality that it is easily lost sight of, but it is of the first importance. 2.2 RESPECT FOR THE CREATURE A second feature of Dominican spirituality that I would call attention to is: that it has a profound respect for the creature, in this case the human individual sitting beside you for spiritual direction. We have no examples of Dominic's preaching, but from studying Albigensianism we can deduce that his sermons must have been powerful statements of the goodness of God's creation. This was seminal experience from which our Order sprang, and it is still essential to our identity. One of our missionaries in Argentina told about a scrupulous person who kept coming to him year after year, deeply troubled by a sense of the evil in himself: "I am evil!" he would repeat. "On the contrary," the Dominican would tell him every time, you are good. God made you and you are therefore fundamentally good! In the Scriptures it says that God saw all He had made and pronounced it very good." After seven years of this conversation, suddenly one day the man said: You really believe in me, don't you?" It may take seven years or more for some to believe that God believes in them; and it is a great privilege, in spiritual direction, to be the mouthpiece for this reassurance. People desperately need to know that they are not entirely corrupt, that their human nature still holds
9

Summa contra Gentiles, I. 5.

10

Meister Eckhart. Sermons & Treatises, translator and editor, ;M.O'C. Wa/she, Vol. 1, p. 157. 1 will look at this text in a later section: 6.21.

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the capacity to receive grace and be raised by it. This is no false optimism, or making light of sin, but a fundamental affirmation of the Catholic faith. Luther taught that human nature was totally corrupted by original sin. Many Counter-Reformation theologians, while denying this position explicitly, went along with it emotionally, one might say. There is frequently a vein of pessimism running below the surface in Christian spirituality, and sometimes it reaches the surface. Dominic's characteristic joyful spirituality is possible when one believes in the ultimate harmony of nature and grace rather than in an incessant conflict between them. 11 Dominic would have agreed with St. Bonaventure, who said that God wrote three books: the book of nature, the Scriptures, and the book of one's daily life. It is an axiom of Dominican theology that grace perfects nature: there is no contradiction between nature and grace, because both are revelations of God. On one occasion Henry Suso, Eckhart's disciple, said (the reference escapes me at present). What does it matter that something is said to be natural or supernatural? Both come equally from God.12 We inherited this broad and joyful spirit from the countless brothers and sisters who went before us. What is 'nature' in a human being? It is not only the physical body, but the-- world of thought, emotions, feelings, instincts... All of this is affirmed as fundamentally good, though flawed through sin. Ours is an integral spirituality: it has a profound respect for every aspect of the human being. It is notable that when Eckhart and Tauter make lists of human faculties, they include bodily faculties too: not just intellect and will. "It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul," said Tauler, "it must... concentrate all its faculties within itself, the lowest as well as the highest. 13 We have not always lived out of our inheritance: in doctrine we largely took on board the rationalism of the 19 0 century and prolonged it in a theological version into the 20'; and in morals we took on board the Puritanism all around us, and later perhaps the "lapsed Puritanism" of the secular world. In our time, one of the most urgent needs is a redemption of the body, or rather of the integral human being. In spiritual direction, consequently, there is a
11

In this connection it is very instructive to look at Richard :Viehuhr's typology of spirituality in its relation to culture: his hive types. I. Christ against culture'_. The Christ of culture 3. Christ above culture 4. Christ and culture in paradox 5. Christ the transformer of culture. I mention it. hot so much to agree with it the classifies Si. Thomas in the 3 r1 type. and St. Augustine in the.5 'h. not everyone would agree with these placings/. but as a suggestive scheme against which to measure one's own outlook. Like many schemes. it is ap plicable at many levels: it has been applied to liturgy. and it can be very useful in thinking about different spiritualities.
12

It is good to see these ancient instincts finding expression in a new way in a modern Dominican. Fergus Kerr of the English Province wrote an important book called Theology after Wittgenstein, in which he commends Wittgenstein enthusiastically for reclaiming the place of: (I) the body, and (2) community in human life. And he adds: "Wittgenstein's later writings are key texts in subverting the entire metaphysical tradition which is constituted by rancour against the physical and historical conditions of human life. " (Oxford: Blackwell l 986. p. 188.) 13 Spiritual Conferences. trans. and ed. by E. Colledge and M. Jane. Illinois: Tan Books, 1978, p. 156.

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need to be aware of the whole lifestyle of a person, and not lust the state of their soul as expressed verbally. Manv of our ills originate not in the mind or the soul, but in sloppy ways of living.14 In latter section (GOD AND CREATION: A DOMINICAN PERSPECTIVE) I will try to go a little more deeply into these two features and to show they are vitally one in our theology. 2.3 GRACE A third feature of Dominican spirituality that I would like to underline is the constant insistence on the central place of grace. "Preacher of grace," we call St. Dominic in the O Lumen. The word 'grace' means 'gift,' something freely given, as in the phrase, 'free, gratis, and for nothing.' God gives gifts in utter freedom, not in proportion to our merits. Even if human beings gave "all they have and have the power to do, for God's sake," said Meister Eckhart, "and exhausted themselves purely for God's sake. God would not have to give them anything or do anything for them, unless He did it freely and for nothing."15 On the law of the Gospel, St.Thomas wrote, "It is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given through faith in Christ, that is predominant (potissimum) in the law of the New Covenant, and in which its whole power consists." 16 It is given freely, and its effect is to set us free. God is experienced as the One Who sets us free. This is a fundamental theme in both the Old and New Testaments. As the people of Israel were led out of Egypt, "the house of slavery," so are we set free by the grace of Christ from our many-sided slavery to sin. Jesus knew Himself as the One Who was sent "to set prisoners free." From everything that held people captive he freed them. Possession by evil spirits was a form of imprisonment, from which He set them free; sickness held the man by the pool bound for thirty-eight years; He healed "this daughter of Abraham whom Satan has held bound these eighteen years." 17 This must surely be the basic experience of spiritual direction. It is not about being instructed or corrected or exhorted or controlled, but about being set free by God's gift, by grace. This is a kind of healing, as appears in the many healing-miracles of Jesus. I think we tend to shy away from being characterized as 'healers': it is an area that is wide open to quackery, an embarrassing thing when we meet it. But there is a sense in which we are
14

In this connection, the books of Thomas Moore are useful: Care of the Soul, London: Piatkus Ltd., 1992. and especially The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
15 '' 16

0 'C . Walshe, op. cit., V o l I, p . 56. Italics mine

S u m m a T h e o l o g i a e . I a 2 a e . 106. I Luke 13:16

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healers; every Christian is a healer, a reconciler, a peacemaker... There are slow miracles of healing as well as fast! In fact these usually 'take' better: sudden healing are often temporary. Why should a healing be considered less 'miraculous' (if we have to use that word) for being slow? I'm sure we have all been part of many slow miracles of healing in the course of our lives! It is God Who does this work through us, so there is no quarter for false humility, and none for pride. It is the Father, living in us too, Who is doing this work. 3. GOD AND CREATION: A DOMINICAN PERSPECTIVE In this section I would like to go a little more deeply into a matter I mentioned in the last section (p. 16): seeing the deep unity that exists between the different features of Dominican spirituality. It is not possible to make a real distinction between spirituality and theology if by spirituality you mean talking about spirituality! Therefore Dominican spirituality is not a different field from Dominican theology. There is a theme I consider so central to everything we do that it is impossible to talk with any kind of depth about our spirituality without going into it. It is already implied in everything I have said so far, but it is good to go into it explicitly. It is the theme of the transcendence and immanence of God. The most compact expression of it that I have ever seen is in a paragraph of one of Eckhart's sermons. 3.1 MEISTER ECKHART: SERMON 1818 We read a text today and tomorrow for my lord St. Dominic, which St. Paul writes in the epistle, and in German it means: `Speak the Word, publish it, proclaim it, bring it forth and propagate it.' It is a remarkable thing. That the Word should pour forth and still remain within is very wonderful; that all creatures should pour forth and remain within is very wonderful; what God has given and has promised to give is most wonderful, incomprehensible, incredible. And that is right so, for if it were comprehensible and credible, it would not be fitting. God is in all things. The more He is in things, the more He is out of things: the more in, the more out, and the more out, the more in. This short passage is even more than usually packed with significance. How are we to approach such a difficult text? It seems far removed from experience, but on the contrary it is about experience. Imagine water in a jug. When it is poured out it is no longer within. Yes, it is a remarkable thing that anything should pour forth and still remain within. In a poetic manner of speaking, all creation was "poured forth" from God: yet, Eckhart wants to say, it is still somehow 'within' God. Is this just a contradiction? No, we have human analogies that are more to the point than a jug of water could be. Imagine that you have some knowledge or information in
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your mind, and you pour it out to a few friends, to the whole world! It is poured out and still it remains within (it hasn't been erased from your mind:: you still know it). In some such way (only more so!) the Word was poured forth from the Father and yet remained within; the Spirit was poured forth from them both, and yet remained within. Eckhart applies the image then to God's act of creation. Creatures pour forth from the mind of God, and yet remain within. As a child I used to think (with every child) that God was 'up there,' and we were 'down here,' that creation was finished and that God had gone away. It is very wonderful to hear it affirmed that we are still within God's being. We are born of God, yet we are not cast out from God. There is no post-natal depression for God! We are not exiles, but God's beloved children. Then Eckhart approaches the mystery in another way: from the human angle, so to speak. God is within every creature, and also beyond. In the theologians' phrase, God is immanent and transcendent to creation. These may seem to contradict each other; but there is no contradiction between them: on the contrary they need each other: the more immanent God is, the more transcendent, and vice versa. In Eckhart's almost algebraically phrase, "the more in the more out, and the more out, the more in." Imagine a nurse in a hospital ward with, say, ten patients. She is aware of all of them and busily attending to their needs. It is because she is not herself a patient that she can be so present to all ten patients. In other words, it is because she is

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