Day 48: Spiritual and Religious

I have little patience with confessors who try to convince penitents not to feel bad because what they’ve done isn’t really a sin.  In making such comments they think they are offering comfort, but truly I feel that they are denying their penitents the experience of God’s forgiveness and mercy, which is far greater comfort than any false sense of our own innocence can give.

I do not understand the distinction between spiritual and religious.  For me religion has always been the mode of accessing the spiritual – that is what religion is about.  But without the support of religion, spirituality becomes paralyzed, like an engine with no car to run. 

I think when people try to access the spiritual without the structure of religion, the spiritual simply becomes therapeutic, serving only our need to feel good about ourselves, even if this “good feeling” does happen to include a sense of communion with and love for others. 

Religion, however, reminds us that the spiritual also entails real, concrete, and often difficult obligations to others and to God: obligations to be at a certain place at a certain time, obligations to behave in a certain way towards others, even an obligation to ourselves – to go to church even when we don’t feel like it, to feed our souls even when we don’t feel like eating. 

Spirituality turns us inward and lifts our souls to heaven; religion grounds the spiritual and reminds us of our responsibilities here on earth.  Religion without spirituality is dead, but spirituality without religion is impotent.