Jean Khoury
Summary: Christian spiritual life is not simply a matter of possessing faith, practising religious duties or having occasional experiences of God. The Christian is called to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and a personal relationship must progressively become conscious, understood and responsibly lived. A relationship involves both giving and receiving; it therefore necessarily involves communication. And communication requires a common language. If we are to enter into a genuine relationship with Christ, we must therefore learn to recognise, understand and speak the language in which He communicates Himself to us. Just as human beings need language in order to distinguish, organise and communicate what they experience, Christians need the language of spiritual life in order to recognise, understand and discern what is happening in their relationship with Christ. This is why a course such as Solid Foundations is not a luxury, nor a pedantic exercise in terminology. It “sets the language” of spiritual life. It begins to lift the veil from what may otherwise remain a blurred and confused understanding of Christian life. It gives names and distinctions to realities that may already be present but remain unrecognised. It helps the Christian become, not merely an adult in his faith, but an adult in his relationship with Jesus. But this is only the beginning. Through a properly transformative practice of Lectio Divina, the Christian enters God’s own school. Under the light of faith and the action of the Holy Spirit, he learns God’s language directly from God Himself. The Word received, consented to and put into practice progressively becomes life in him. In this way, the Christian does not merely learn words about God; he is transformed by God’s Word into the New Man, with Christ increasingly being formed in him.
Introduction: We Cannot Live Without a Language
Human thought is not strictly proportional to the number of words we possess, but language has a considerable influence on our capacity to form, distinguish, organise and communicate our thoughts. There is an important distinction between the capacity to think and the capacity to put a thought into words. A person can have an intuition, perception, emotion or even a complex understanding without immediately possessing the vocabulary necessary to express it. Yet the richer and more precise our conceptual vocabulary becomes, the more capable we are of distinguishing and articulating what is taking place within us. This is why Ludwig Wittgenstein could write in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The statement should not be understood as meaning that everything we can think is reducible to words. Thought exceeds language. We can often know something before we know how to say it. But language gives us the capacity to make realities distinct, conscious and communicable.
The same principle applies, with particular force, to spiritual life. A Christian may genuinely love Jesus without possessing a developed spiritual vocabulary. He may pray, receive the sacraments, read Scripture, desire holiness and sincerely seek God without being able to explain precisely what is happening within him. The reality of grace does not depend upon his vocabulary. But something changes when he begins to grow. He begins to need words. He needs to distinguish grace from emotion, God’s action from his own psychological reactions, temptation from inspiration, consolation from mere pleasure, spiritual aridity from discouragement, God’s voice from the voice of the world, the devil or the flesh. He needs to understand conversion, purification, surrender, consent, charity, contemplation, discernment, union and the progressive action of the Holy Spirit. He needs to understand where God is taking him and what God is asking of him. At this point, learning the language of spiritual life ceases to be an intellectual luxury. It becomes part of learning how to live.
The Movement of Grace: From Spirit to Consciousness and Communication
St Teresa of Ávila recalls a common theological understanding when she speaks of three graces that can be received in the spiritual life. The first and fundamental grace is sanctifying grace itself: the grace by which God gives us a share in His own life and sanctifies us. This is the essential grace, without which there is no Christian spiritual life. But Teresa points to two further graces. The second is the grace to understand, or to become aware of, the sanctifying grace we have received: to be able to put words to it for ourselves, so that we can recognise it, discern it and appreciate what God is doing in us. The third is the grace to put words to that experience in such a way that we can express it and communicate it to others.
This distinction is important for understanding the nature of spiritual life. The grace itself is received in the depths of our spirit. Our first perception of it may be general and intuitive, rather like an interior awareness that something is taking place within us. Yet God can give us a deeper understanding of the grace He has given us. He enables us to recognise it, appreciate it, collaborate more consciously with it and give Him praise for it. Grace is therefore not only something we receive; it can also become something we progressively recognise and understand.
We can see here a remarkable movement: grace descends from the deepest, superconscious level of our spirit into the soul and becomes progressively conscious in the mind; from there, it can find expression in words, language and communication. What is first received silently and mysteriously in the depths of the person can become consciously understood, articulated and shared. In this sense, there is almost a movement of incarnation within us: the grace received in the depths of the spirit takes flesh, so to speak, in consciousness, understanding, language and relationship. And when that grace is communicated to another person, it can enter into the life of the community. What has been received interiorly becomes something that can be shared, received and lived together.
The third grace therefore concerns communication. Christ does not call us to keep the life He gives us entirely to ourselves. He calls us to be His witnesses and to love one another. The grace received and recognised within us therefore seeks expression. We need to be able to speak about what God is doing in us, to share it with others and, through that sharing, to encourage and help them in their own relationship with God.
The first grace, sanctifying grace, remains the essential one. Yet we are human beings: embodied, relational and social beings. For this reason, the other two graces are not insignificant additions to spiritual life. They belong to the very way in which grace becomes consciously lived within the Christian community. We need to recognise and understand what God is doing in us, and we need to be able to communicate it to one another. In this way, the spiritual life becomes a shared life: a life of communication, mutual help, encouragement, discernment and praise. What God gives to one person can thus become, when recognised and communicated, a grace that also serves the growth of others.
The Christian Is Called to an Adult Relationship with Christ
A Christian is not merely someone who possesses certain beliefs about Jesus Christ. Christianity is a personal relationship with the living Christ. The Christian is called to know Christ, to hear Him, to recognise His voice, to respond to Him and to allow His life to develop within him. This means that the Christian must progressively become capable of taking responsibility for this relationship. The word “manage” can be useful here, provided it is properly understood. To “manage” one’s relationship with Christ does not mean controlling God’s action or reducing spiritual life to a technique. It means learning to care for the relationship responsibly. It means becoming capable of understanding what is happening, recognising God’s action, responding to grace, identifying obstacles and making appropriate choices. How could we responsibly care for a relationship whose language we have never learned?
A Christian needs to become capable of hearing Jesus and identifying His word. He needs to learn to distinguish His voice from other voices: from the words and values of the world, from the suggestions of the devil and from what Scripture and the spiritual tradition call the flesh. This discernment cannot remain at the level of vague religious instinct. It requires formation. Consider only one example. We need to distinguish between grace itself and some possible repercussion or “echo” of grace in the conscious soul. God’s grace works deeply in the human person, at a level that is not simply identical with what we perceive psychologically. Something of this action may, at times, reverberate in the mind, the will, the emotions or the senses. But the grace itself and its psychological or affective manifestations are not the same thing. Without such distinctions, the Christian can easily mistake an emotion for grace, a psychological state for God’s action, or the absence of conscious feeling for the absence of grace. These are not pedantic distinctions. They affect how a person understands his relationship with God.
The Christian also needs to know what God is ultimately doing in him. What is the final goal pursued by the Father and the Holy Spirit during this earthly life? What is spiritual growth? What is the direction of transformation? What are the decisive turning points? What changes in the life of prayer? What does purification mean? What happens as charity becomes increasingly the principle of one’s life? If the Christian does not know the goal, how will he understand the journey?
“Setting the Language”
This is what we mean when we say at the School of Mary that Solid Foundations “sets the language”. The expression is deliberately stronger than saying that the course provides information about spirituality. It gives the Christian a language with which spiritual reality can become intelligible. It establishes a common vocabulary. It clarifies the elements which compose and constitute spiritual life. It introduces distinctions. It identifies the different persons involved and their respective actions. It helps the Christian understand who God is, who Christ is, who the Holy Spirit is, who the human person is, what God wants to do and what He asks the Christian to do. It begins to answer questions which are fundamental to the personal relationship between Christ and the Christian: What is God doing? What is my response? What is grace? How does grace act? What belongs to God’s action and what belongs to mine? What is happening in my spirit? What is happening in my conscious faculties? What is prayer? How does prayer develop? What is conversion? What is purification? What is the goal of the journey? What are the signs of genuine growth? What must I learn to recognise?
These questions are not peripheral to Christianity. They concern the Christian’s actual relationship with God. And therefore “setting the language” begins to lift the veil from what may previously have been a blurry vision of spiritual life, or even of Christian life tout court. Something begins to come into focus. The Christian starts to see that spiritual life has a structure, a logic and a development. He begins to recognise realities which may have been present in his life for some time but for which he had no names, no distinctions and therefore no adequate means of understanding them.
He begins to become an adult. But here an important distinction must be made. I am not merely saying that he becomes an “adult in his faith”. I am saying something further: he begins to become an adult in his relationship with Jesus. A person may possess a sound and even sophisticated intellectual knowledge of Catholic doctrine and yet remain relatively immature in his capacity to recognise, interpret and respond to the personal action of Christ and the Holy Spirit within his own life. Knowledge of the faith and maturity in one’s relationship with Christ are intimately connected, but they are not identical. The Christian vocation is not simply to know truths about Jesus. It is to know Jesus.
Language That Makes Communion Possible
Setting the language makes communication possible. Since we are called to love God and to love our neighbour, and since we are called to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, this relationship necessarily implies communication: receiving and giving, listening and speaking, asking and responding, praying and hearing. Language is therefore one of the essential means by which relationship becomes possible. If the language is vague, imprecise or unstable, communication is inevitably lessened. It can become diminished, reduced, diverted or even damaged and interrupted. The quality of a relationship is therefore profoundly affected by the language through which it is expressed and understood. This is why giving the Christian a language adequate to God’s action is so essential. We need to learn God’s language if we are to communicate responsibly with Him.
This helps us to understand something fundamental about the ministry of Jesus. Jesus did not merely give us an example of how to live; He sat down, opened His mouth and spoke words. The Evangelist deliberately draws our attention to this at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “He opened his mouth and taught them” (Mt 5:2). The words that came from His mouth are unique. They are “spirit and life” (Jn 6:63); they communicate life because they come from the One who is Life. We therefore need to learn these words. We need to receive the vocabulary of Jesus, because His words do not merely describe spiritual reality from the outside: they communicate and disclose the reality of the life He has come to give us.
This is particularly evident in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus repeatedly says, “You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…” (Mt 5). He is not simply adding a few new rules to an existing moral vocabulary. He is introducing a new language, or rather bringing the language of God’s Kingdom to its fullness. His words reach further and deeper than external behaviour. They reach the heart, the conscience, the intentions and the hidden movements of the person. Jesus gives us words capable of reaching the interior place where spiritual life is received, discerned and lived.
Here we begin to see why the language of spiritual life cannot be left to chance. The Holy Spirit takes the words of Christ and uses them to reach into the depths of the human person. The new language given by Christ—the language of the New Law, written not merely on tablets of stone but upon the heart—reaches towards that profound junction between spirit and soul, between what is first perceived as a deep intuition beyond ordinary consciousness and what can subsequently become understood, consciously recognised and expressed. The language of Christ allows what God communicates in the depths of the spirit to cross into consciousness, understanding and eventually into words that can be shared with another.
Learning God’s language, therefore, is not merely learning a religious vocabulary. It is learning how to recognise what God is doing, how to understand it, how to respond to it and how to communicate it. It is learning the words through which the Holy Spirit can illuminate the depths of the person and bring what is mysteriously received in the spirit into conscious relationship with God and with others. In this sense, the language of Jesus becomes an instrument of communion: it enables the grace received within us to become understood, expressed and communicated, so that the relationship with Christ can become increasingly conscious, responsible and fruitful.
Spiritual Formation Is Not a Luxury
This is why a proper formation in spiritual life is a right and a genuine need. It is not a luxury reserved for priests, religious, mystics or specialists. It is not a pedantic caprice. It is not an unnecessary complication imposed upon a supposedly simple Christian life. There is certainly a simplicity that belongs to the Gospel. But simplicity must not become an excuse for spiritual ignorance. It is possible to invoke “simplicity” precisely in order to avoid learning. Someone may say, “I just love Jesus; I don’t need all these distinctions.” But genuine simplicity does not mean remaining incapable of making distinctions. A mature simplicity is not the absence of understanding. It is the fruit of a reality that has become sufficiently assimilated that it can be lived simply.
A child can speak a language without knowing its grammar. That does not mean that grammar is useless. If the child wants to understand the structure of the language, communicate with greater precision or teach it to someone else, the grammar eventually becomes necessary. The same is true of spiritual life. We are not born knowing how to pray. We are not born knowing how to discern God’s action. We are not born knowing how grace operates. We are not born knowing the stages of spiritual growth. We are not born knowing how to distinguish what comes from God from what comes from elsewhere. There is therefore a learning curve in spiritual life.
Catechesis, Mystagogy and the Depth of the Living Tradition
This also explains why ordinary adult catechesis, essential as it is, cannot be expected to provide the whole richness of spiritual formation. Catechesis gives us the foundations of Christian faith and life. It tells us who God is, who Christ is, what the Church is, what the sacraments are, what Christian morality is and what we believe. But the living Tradition of the Church goes deeper. Mystagogy goes deeper into the mysteries that the Christian has received. Spiritual theology seeks to understand the dynamics of Christian life. Mystical theology examines the development and transformation of the person under the action of grace. The great spiritual writers describe realities, stages, turning points and experiences that ordinary catechesis does not normally have the space or purpose to explore.
This does not mean that mystagogy or mystical theology offer something different from Christianity. They offer something deeper. They penetrate further into the same mystery. The Christian has received Baptism, the Eucharist, the gift of the Holy Spirit, divine grace and the call to holiness. Spiritual formation seeks to help him understand what these realities mean dynamically within his actual life. This depth has frequently been neglected. Too often, spiritual formation is left to randomness: a devotional book here, a retreat there, a personal experience, a favourite spiritual author, an internet video, a private interpretation of Scripture. The result can be sincere but fragmented and sometimes profoundly confused. A Christian should not have to discover the basic grammar of spiritual life accidentally.
The Holy Spirit Is Not an Optional Subject
At the heart of all this is the Holy Spirit. Our knowledge of the Holy Spirit, including an experiential knowledge of His action, is not a luxury. The Catechism states: “to be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit” (CCC 683). It also teaches that the Holy Spirit communicates to us “intimately and personally” the life offered to us in the Son. The Christian life is therefore intrinsically pneumatic: it is life in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
To speak of experiential knowledge of the Holy Spirit does not mean seeking extraordinary phenomena, private revelations or emotional intensity. It means learning, within faith and within the Church, to recognise His action in the actual life of the Christian. The Spirit teaches, moves, enlightens, purifies, prompts, strengthens and transforms. The Christian therefore needs to become increasingly familiar with His action. This is why spiritual anthropology, the theology of grace, discernment, prayer and the stages of spiritual growth are not peripheral subjects. They are part of learning how the relationship with Christ actually works.
Lectio Divina: Entering More Deeply into God’s Own School
But there is a still deeper dimension. Solid Foundations sets the language. Lectio Divina takes the Christian into God’s own school. A properly transformative practice of Lectio Divina is a true school of learning God’s language directly from Him, within the faith and under the light of the Holy Spirit.
Here the distinction between merely reading Scripture and practising Lectio Divina becomes crucial. The Word of God is objectively given to us in Scripture. We do not manufacture God’s word from our feelings. We do not turn Scripture into a mirror of whatever we happen to want to hear. We receive the Word within the faith of the Church and under the action of the Holy Spirit. As the Catechism teaches, “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written” (CCC 111). But something happens when the Word is received personally and put into practice: The Word is heard. It is received. It is understood. It is consented to. It is put into practice. And then it begins to become life in us.
This is where the process becomes transformative. Suppose that, in prayer, the Word that becomes particularly alive today is “forgive”. I can understand the meaning of forgiveness intellectually. I can study what Scripture says about it. But when, under the movement of grace, I actually forgive someone who has wounded me, something has happened within me. The Word has become operative. The Word has entered into my existence. The old man, structured in this particular place by resentment, self-defence or refusal to forgive, begins to be overcome. Something corresponding to the New Man begins to emerge. The Word has, so to speak, become “incarnate” in me—not in the unique and unrepeatable sense in which the eternal Word became flesh in Jesus Christ, but in the sense that the Word received has become embodied in my life. It has become an action, a disposition, a new capacity, a new way of relating. The same can happen with “trust”, “surrender”, “remain in me”, “do not be afraid”, “love your enemies”, “follow me”. The Christian does not merely learn what these words mean. He learns them by living them.
From the Word Received to the New Man
This is one of the most beautiful dimensions of Lectio Divina: the Word does not remain outside us. A word from Scripture can enter into the concrete circumstances of our life, be received under the light of faith, become the object of our prayer, be consented to by our freedom and then become embodied through obedience.
The process might be expressed simply as: Word received → Word understood → Word consented to → Word practised → Word embodied → transformation in Christ. The movement is not merely intellectual. It is transformative. Benedict XVI speaks of the Word as transforming us and describes Lectio Divina as leading towards a reception of “the mind of Christ”. The process ultimately reaches actio: the Word becomes life expressed in charity (Verbum Domini).
This is why the Pauline language of the “old man” and the “new man” is so illuminating. The purpose is not simply that I should become someone who knows more biblical verses. It is that Christ should increasingly be formed in me. I do not merely learn the word “forgiveness”; I become more capable of forgiving. I do not merely learn the word “trust”; I become more capable of trusting. I do not merely learn the word “surrender”; surrender becomes increasingly possible within me. I do not merely learn the word “charity”; charity becomes progressively the principle of my actions. Thus God’s language becomes written into the person.
“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”
This gives a particularly beautiful meaning to the daily character of Lectio Divina. “Give us this day our daily bread.” The Christian needs God’s Word as daily nourishment. Today, the Holy Spirit may bring one word into particular prominence in the concrete circumstances of my life. Tomorrow there may be another. The biblical Word remains the Word of God, but the Spirit causes it to become living and personally operative within the particular moment of my journey.
Each day, therefore, can become another lesson in God’s school. Each day, another word. Each day, another invitation. Each day, another opportunity for consent. Each day, another occasion in which something of the old man can be overcome and something of the New Man can emerge. Each day, Christ can be formed a little more deeply in us. This is a learning process unlike ordinary intellectual learning. We learn by being transformed. God teaches us His vocabulary by making His Word operative in us. He teaches us His grammar by teaching us how His words relate to one another in the concrete logic of Christian life. He teaches us His way of seeing by transforming our judgement. He teaches us His way of loving by transforming our capacity to love. He teaches us His way of living by forming Christ in us.
Practical Consequences
If this is true, spiritual formation cannot be left to chance. A Christian should not have to assemble his understanding of spiritual life randomly from disconnected sources. There needs to be a progressive formation that establishes the vocabulary and grammar necessary for mature Christian living.
This means that the beginning of serious spiritual formation should include a clear spiritual anthropology, a sound understanding of grace, a theology of the Holy Spirit, an understanding of the goal of spiritual life, the dynamics of conversion and purification, the development of prayer, the principles of discernment and the major turning points of spiritual growth. It also means that the Christian should learn to distinguish what God is doing from what he is experiencing psychologically. He should learn that the absence of a particular feeling does not necessarily mean the absence of grace, just as the presence of a powerful feeling does not necessarily mean the presence of a particular divine action.
It means that Christians should be taught how to pray progressively rather than simply being told to “pray more”. There is a learning curve in prayer. There are different ways of praying, different stages of growth and different forms of purification. These realities need to be taught before they are encountered, so that when they are encountered they can be recognised rather than misunderstood. It also means that Lectio Divina should not be reduced to a technique of biblical reflection. If it is to become transformative, the Christian must learn to receive the Word, remain under the action of the Holy Spirit, discern what God is asking, consent to it and put it into practice. The decisive question is not merely, “What did I understand today?” but also, “What Word is God giving me to live today?” The objective is not to create spiritual specialists. It is to form Christians who can responsibly live their relationship with Christ.
Conclusion: From Learning the Language to Becoming the Word We Have Received
The Christian life begins with a gift. God speaks first. He gives Himself first. He gives His grace first. He gives His Word first. The Christian response is to receive, listen, consent and cooperate. But to respond maturely, we need to learn the language of the relationship.
This is why spiritual formation is necessary. Solid Foundations “sets the language”. It begins to lift the veil from a previously blurred understanding of Christian and spiritual life. It gives names to realities, establishes distinctions, clarifies the structure and goal of the journey and enables the Christian progressively to become an adult—not merely in his faith, but in his relationship with Jesus. Then Lectio Divina takes him further. He enters God’s school. There he learns God’s language directly from God Himself, within the faith and under the light of the Holy Spirit. He learns not simply by accumulating information but by receiving the Word and putting it into practice. The Word becomes operative in him. It becomes embodied in his life. Something of the old man is transformed, and something of the New Man emerges. Christ is progressively formed in him.
The Christian therefore moves from knowing about God’s language, to learning God’s language, to living God’s language, until God’s Word increasingly becomes the form of his own life. This is why experiential knowledge of the Holy Spirit is not a luxury. This is why spiritual theology is not a luxury. This is why mystagogy and mystical theology are not unnecessary refinements. This is why learning how to pray is not a trivial matter. This is why understanding grace, discernment, purification and the stages of spiritual growth matters. And this is why Solid Foundations is not simply an introductory course. It is an invitation to enter the language of the relationship.
For ultimately, the Christian vocation is not merely to know that God has spoken. It is to learn to recognise His voice, to receive His Word, to live according to it and to allow that Word, through the Holy Spirit, to transform us into Christ. We cannot live a normal human life without language. Neither can we expect to live a mature and responsible relationship with Jesus without progressively learning the language of the spiritual life. And perhaps this is the deepest meaning of Lectio Divina: God does not merely give us His Word to understand. He gives us His Word to become life in us.
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