“Who am I? Where do I find meaning? Who will love me? How do I find love in a world full of infidelity and false promises” (page 17)? We are familiar with these things.Ģ) Mature Discipleship: The struggle to give our lives away. It’s for when we are searching, “for an identity… for acceptance… for a circle of friends… for intimacy… for someone to marry… for a vocation… for a career… for the right place to live… for financial security… for something to give us substance and meaning – in a word, searching for a home” (page 16, emphasis mine). This is the youth-oriented form of discipleship with which we are familiar. He identifies three stages of discipleship in our walk through life:ġ) Essential Discipleship: The struggle to get our lives together. This is where we need the sort of wisdom Ronald Rolheiser offers in Sacred Fire. Our forms of discipleship are youth-shaped, even as we hit our middle age. And we do the same with our churches: we place our communities on an horizon of opportunities, articulate some mission action goals and motion for them to launch forth like the youth we once were. We take our sermons and channel our inner youth: fan your passion into flame, live life for Jesus! We mentor others by setting and pursuing goals, just like we did when the vista was young and wide. And the discipleship that once formed us no longer fits as easily. We all grow out of our youth and into our adult seasons. So push into Jesus, equip yourself with his Word, become familiar with his Spirit, find healing for childhood hurts, and launch forth! “I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:13). ![]() They don’t fully realise their sheer potential. Three of my four children are now, officially, young adults, and I want something similar for them. It was about learning our gifts, keeping pure, and pursuing Jesus for the life that lay stretched out before us. We wanted to know God’s plan for our life. I’m a bit of a cynic about much of the spirituality that appears in print now, but this one is genuinely worth a long, reflective stretch of time.Like many life-long Christians, my formative years were shaped by speakers and writers fanning the flames of zeal and purpose. No beach read, this is one to savor slowly, pausing often and relating it to personal experience. One final line I cherish: the holiest person you know is the most grateful person you know. Difficult as that is, it’s an opportunity for God to gently “widen again the scope of your heart and mind.” Rolheiser uses the lovely image of the wounded child climbing into the parent’s lap, simply content to be held. But the result will often be a greater obsession with “that from which you are trying to free yourself.” Instead, focus on God. ![]() Instead, our response should be like God’s, blessing: “In you I take delight.” I especially like his image of the “final picture of human and Christian development”: not the suffering martyr, but a blessing grandparent, beaming with pride and radiating the Creator’s energy, “Indeed, it is very good.”Ī practical tip I’ll remember for prayer, and include in my talks on prayer: when one prays with hurt, for instance about the death of a loved one, it’s tempting to focus on the loss. How often we squelch exuberance and deny joy: that’s Rolheiser’s definition of the curse (rather wittily contrasted to the abuse we heap on our computers when they have a meltdown). ![]() He explores many responses to that question, with one of the finest being the chapter on blessing. “When one reaches the highest degree of human maturity, one has only one question left: How can I be helpful?” He begins with the question Teresa of Avila posed to those approaching their later years: I’ll admit I haven’t always been the greatest Rolheiser fan, enjoying Holy Longing and his on-line columns, but finding him quite male, quite clerical. This is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a book for the website, but this book deserves high praise.
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