The Exodus and the Christ story are the fundamental biblical [quest] stories which shape the Judeo-Christian community’s sense of reality both in expressing what the community is trying to do (be) and what it does (is) without trying. How dominant these stories are among others in the lives of individual members of the faith community is difficult to determine; nevertheless, they reflect that community’s heritage of religious experience and, like all stories that tell us about the world and how the self is situated in it, give its members a way of being in the world that is oriented towards action deriving from a basic trust in a loving God.
These stories articulate the meaning of a religious experience which involves knowing and doing. They attempt to lessen the distance between knowing and doing in such a way that the community’s knowing is conceived as a species of action. They are meant to help us become a certain type of person that is actively engaged in the creation of a certain type of society. The knowers and the doers of this community bring the meaning of these stories into the tangled texture of the world they are trying to shape in the spirit of justice and self-sacrificing love. They are acting out the meaning and value of these stories in a quest for the fulfillment of their promise…
The [Christ] story contained in the Gospels, according to Stanley Hauerwas, is not meant to provide a worldview, but rather to position the self (and the faith community) appropriately in relation to God.1 … The authentic Christian has [therefore] chosen the Gospel story of Jesus as his basic story because he believes that this is the most truthful and worthwhile story that our lives have been empowered to tell. It corresponds to his most deeply felt need for the honesty, courage, freedom and ability to accept himself, others and God in the ongoing quest and questioning of his examined life. He believes that the Church’s travel story of Jesus, the Gospel truth, discloses the true excellence of his ultimate possibilities, of his authentic destiny. The authentic Christian believes that this is available for him in the process of self-sacrificing love’s daily dying and rising or conversion, deepening and developing in other-centeredness the self-transcending exodus journey of agapic love disclosed in and empowered by the story which tells of God’s action in the words, deeds and destiny of Jesus….
The dramatic action of the story which Christ’s life told, and continues to tell, through the gift of his spirit in the Church is the story of God’s love for us. The life story of Jesus Christ communicates the Good News of God’s life-giving love for us. It specifies the Christian understanding of how God acts in relations with mankind. Especially important, therefore, is prayerful reflection on the life and teachings of Jesus and on the action of the Holy Spirit in him, in his saints, and in the historical development of the community of faith. Through the gift of his Holy Spirit, the Christian community learns the prayer which characterized his perfect responsiveness to his Father….
Through the same Holy spirit, we have the heartfelt realization that nothing can separate us from the love of God that summons us in Jesus Christ to the discovery of our true story…. Our commitment to God in Jesus Christ is a commitment to finding our true life story through our commitment to others and the world with the same love that was and is in Jesus himself; consequently, it involves our prayerful discernment of our authentic gifts for serving others, allowing God to shape our lives in accordance with the service-value of particular gifts with which he has endowed us.2.…
Prayer expresses an awareness of God’s reality which discloses itself in various ways throughout one’s life story…. Prayer is a particular way of being related to God in our search for fulfillment and renewal of life. Prayer is a way of seeking to live in accordance with God’s healing and enlightening will for our life story. If prayer expresses our need for help, it should also express our awareness that the help we receive may be other than what we had in mind; for God wills only what contributes to the discovery and realization of our true life story of filial communion with Himself and fraternal communion with others….
Prayer expresses our responsibility for our life stories in the presence of God, a responsibility that cares for one’s self and for one’s neighbor. Intercessory prayer implies our conviction that the Giver of life stories cares for them, a belief whose foundation is our present experience of God’s compassionate love enabling us to welcome the true meaning of Jesus Christ’s life story, death, and resurrection. Prayer, the dialogue in our ongoing life story of our relationship with the Other, expresses our reciprocity with the divine Love that is creating our true life story and self. Love of God creates and sustains and unites life stories, summoning them to their ultimate fulfillment and goodness.
JOHN NAVONE, S.J., is a professor of theology at the Gregorian University in Rome.
Selection from The Journey of Our Life Story in Christ. (Liturgical Press, 1990), 146–147, 150, 199–200, 201, 203–204. Reprinted with Author permission.
1Stanley Hauerwas, “The Ethicist as Theologian,” in The Christian Century (April 23, 1975), 409.
2Donald L. Gelpi, Experiencing God: A Theology of Human Experience (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 62.
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