A spiritual journey through life&rsquo;s final years and its &ldquo;mellowing of souls&rdquo;&mdash;the long-awaited conclusion of Father Rolheiser&rsquo;s trilogy of modern spiritual classics, following <The Holy Longing< and <Sacred Fire<

As the shadows lengthen and we find ourselves no longer in the morning or noon of life but rather face its approaching dusk, we uncover a new spiritual task: to give away the final years of our lives and, ultimately, our deaths. So argues beloved author Ronald Rolheiser. During life&rsquo;s first years, we embark on a search for meaning and discover in ourselves a profound, unquenchable thirst for the Divine. And when we reach adulthood, we realize that we are called to give our lives away&#8213;to our spouses, children, careers, friends, and neighbors in need. But in the end, we must learn to let it all go.

In this highly anticipated conclusion to Father Rolheiser&rsquo;s spiritual classics, <The Holy Longing <and< Sacred Fire,< and with characteristic attentiveness and care, Rolheiser accompanies readers on a spiritual journey through life&rsquo;s final years and the mellowing of our souls. In these years, bitterness can give way to forgiveness, mere imagination to profound and subtle faith, wishful optimism to virtuous hope, and control to surrender. Readers will learn to see in Jesus a model for a spirituality of holy passivity rather than activity and find in him the courage to overcome the darkest nights of faith.

Drawing on the work of John of the Cross and Henri Nouwen, Rolheiser outlines a spirituality capable of giving away one&rsquo;s death&#8213;and by that a spirituality of truly living.

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Ronald Rolheiser is a specialist in the fields of spirituality and systematic theology. He is president emeritus of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, and a professor of spirituality there. His books, notably The Restless Heart, The Holy Longing, and Sacred Fire, are popular throughout the English-speaking world and have now been translated into many languages. His weekly column is carried by more than eighty newspapers worldwide.

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A spiritual journey through life’s final years and its “mellowing of souls”—the long-awaited conclusion of Father Rolheiser’s trilogy of modern spiritual classics, following The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire

“Ronald Rolheiser is one of the great Christian spiritual writers of our time, as well as one of my own personal favorites.”—James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage

Each phase of life presents us with its own unique opportunity to connect with God and to bless those around us—even and perhaps especially in those later decades when careers, raising kids, and mortgage payments are behind us. So argues beloved author Ronald Rolheiser. During life’s first years, we embark on a search for meaning and discover in ourselves a profound, unquenchable thirst for the Divine. And when we reach adulthood, we realize that we are called to give our lives away―to our spouses, children, careers, friends, and neighbors in need. But in the end, we must learn to let it all go.

In this highly anticipated conclusion to Father Rolheiser’s spiritual classics, The Holy Longing and Sacred Fire, and with characteristic attentiveness and care, Rolheiser accompanies readers on a spiritual journey through life’s final years and the mellowing of our souls. In these years, bitterness can give way to forgiveness, mere imagination to profound and subtle faith, wishful optimism to virtuous hope, and control to surrender. Readers will learn to see in Jesus a model for a spirituality of holy passivity rather than activity and find in him the courage to overcome the darkest nights of faith.

Drawing on the work of John of the Cross and Henri Nouwen, Rolheiser outlines a spirituality capable of giving away one’s death―and by that a spirituality of truly living.

Leseprobe
Part One

The Seasons of Our Lives

That is why I have decided to stand up and open my eyes. I have decided to eat and drink in moderation, to sleep as necessary, to write only what contributes toward improving those who read me, to abstain from greed, and never compare myself to my fellows. I have also decided to water my plants and care for an animal. I will visit the sick, I will converse with the lonely, and I will not let much time go by before playing with a child. . . .

I will live for those things according to an ethics of attention and care. And this is how I will arrive at a happy old age, when I will contemplate, humble and proud at the same time, the small but grand orchard that I have cultivated. Life as cult, culture, and cultivation.

One

Spirituality and the Seasons of Our Lives

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

Life has its seasons. So do we. We cry as infants, stagger as toddlers, soak up learning from kindergarten to puberty, become painfully restless as our hormones awaken in adolescence, make choices and settle into life as young adults, carry the burdens of duty and mortgages as we mature, retire in late midlife, and then, finally mature, face diminishment and death.

All of this, of course, has been endlessly diagnosed, analyzed, and studied from medical, psychological, sociological, mythical, and religious perspectives. As well, artists, poets, photographers, and biographers have created an aesthetics around it through pictures and stories that highlight the joy, the pathos, and sometimes the mind-numbing ordinariness of the different seasons of our lives. And all of this is helpful. The studies feed the intellect; the aesthetics touch the heart. A healthy Christian discipleship.

Leaning on both the intellect and the heart, we ask this question: How might we distinguish, define, and understand the various seasons of our lives in a way that helps us grow in self-understanding and Christian discipleship?

Following the renowned Spanish mystic John of the Cross, it can be helpful to distinguish three major seasons or stages within our lives. John of the Cross, using medieval and mystical terminology, calls these three seasons the dark night of the senses, proficiency, and the dark night of the spirit. In today’s language, we might more aptly call them the struggle to get our lives together, the struggle to give our lives away, and the struggle to age with grace and give our deaths away.

Admittedly, these stages or seasons of life are fairly obvious. Unless one dies young, everyone has to undergo these three struggles. Each of these struggles involves our whole person: Our spiritual struggle is not separate from our human struggle. Our faith journey and our human journey are one and the same, even if they may seem separate. For all of us, the deeper truth is that the anthropological, the spiritual, the psychological, the emotional, the moral, the sexual, the vocational, and the physical are all part of one and the same person, struggle, and journey. We struggle as human beings, pure and simple. Hence, everyone who reaches full adulthood undergoes these struggles, regardless of whether she senses them as a spiritual struggle.

The First Season: The Struggle to Get Our Lives Together

The struggle to get our lives together might be best illustrated by the commonplace journey most of us make from youth to adulthood, from immaturity to initial maturity. What, in essence, is this initial struggle?

Home is where we start from. We are either born in a home or taken home soon afterward. Then, unless we are scarred by some trauma in our childhood, the next ten to twelve years are normally good, stabilizing, happy, comfortable years. We …