Author Description

What you will find within the pages of this book is a unified, organic theology of the spiritual life-a theology of the relationship of love and intimacy that the Trinity desires to have with each one of us, from the seed of baptism to the culmination of spiritual marriage tasted in this life and consummated in the everlasting glory of heaven. Spiritual theology is the disciplined exploration of the way in which the objective truth of God and his self-revelation in Scripture and the living tradition and life of the Church (which is explored by systematic theology) is made present and active-enfleshed-in the life of individual persons and the believing community. It is rooted in the objective, in the union of faith and reason, of heart and life, in obedience to the God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and who, by his gift of grace, seeks to graft us into himself and to grant us a participation in his own life, and to spread this very life in us and through us also into all the world. In this book have been gathered together substantial portions of my other writings exploring the many truths relating to the life of faith, prayer, and transformation in the love of God. And yet here they have been arranged in such a way-in a meaningful order and according to topic-such that hopefully the beauty of the reality of which they speak can radiate even more transparently and clearly than in their original context. These reflections deal with a range of topics from the most grounded of human experiences at the origin of our earthly existence to the highest of mystical transformation and union with the Trinity; they deal both with an exploration of the structure of our humanity and the inner faculties of our soul to an affirmation of the sacredness and sacramentality of our bodies; they deal with the ordering and healing of our emotions and the foundational "psychological" wholeness that is united to and a bedrock for spiritual wholen