La cotidianidad divina: a Latin@ Method for Spirituality

La cotidianidad divina: a Latin@ Method for Spirituality[1]

 

Gilberto Cavazos-González, OFM

Catholic Theological Union, Chicago IL

 

Every theologian is a product of her/his background and life experience. For Latin@ theologians, culture, social location, life and faith experiences are important components of how we theologize. For this reason, before writing about a Latin@ method for doing Spirituality, allow me to introduce myself. I am the eldest of four sons born to Gilberto Cavazos and María Emma González. I was raised in northern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. I became a Franciscan in the Mid-West and was ordained after going to school in Chicago. My experience as a pastor and youth evangelizer in South Texas, convinced me to go back to school. I got my license and doctoral degree from the Pontificio Ateneo Antonianum in Rome. I am an active member of ACHTUS, the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States.

 

Since 1999, I have been preparing people for ministry by teaching spirituality and working with Spiritual Classics, while at the same time directing the Hispanic Ministry Program at the Catholic Theological Union. Most of my teaching has been in the area of Franciscan spirituality, spiritual growth and formation, as well as Latin@ spirituality. After nine years of teaching spirituality and working for and with mi gente (my people), I find myself asking: “What does an Italian trained Latino have to offer the theological science of Spirituality in the United States?” Is there a particularly Latino theological approach to the doing spirituality?

 

The answer is simple... ¡Cotidianidad!. Lo cotidiano, which is to say the quotidian, or everyday, day in day out routine of life with all its ups and downs, is the locus for spirituality as ontological reality and existential experience. Cotidianidad is where spirituality is traditioned[2] in religious and cultural contexts. The concept of lo cotidiano as a theological reality is at the heart of mujerista and other liberation theologies[3]Cotidianidad is is part and parcel of the Latin@ method for doing Spirituality as a theological science. . Lo cotidiano is also the locus and hermeneutical tool for the academic study of the spiritual life. 

 

I will use my work on Francis and Clare of Assisi as an example. My own cotidianidad leads me to have a close connection to familia. As a Franciscan, I have a special devotion to Francis and Clare of Assisi. Consequently, I have done a lot of work on the family imagery found in the Opuscula (the writings and literary works) of both saints. These two medieval saints infused their spirituality with their own cotidiano, choosing to explain their concept of the Christian spiritual life with the ordinary roles of motherhood, sibling relationships, and paternity. This has led them to write about a spirituality that is defined by maternal-fraternal tension. In so doing they were acting not as Scholastic teachers but as vernacular theologians[4] and were, as Sixto García writes, allowing “themselves to be encountered, attracted, summoned, as it were, by the symbols of their communities”.[5] These symbols they in turn brought into their writing about the spiritual life of Franciscans and all Christians. 

 

Sixto also affirms that the “theologian finds him/herself involved in this world of symbol that will necessarily be above and beyond the understanding of the non-participant”.[6] In considering the use of family terminology in Francis and Clare’s Opuscula, I have to admit that I am the non-participant of their cotidiano. To fill this lacuna, I have done a religious, cultural and historical study of the medieval family, in order to discover in as much as possible the lived experience of the Italian famiglia of the early thirteenth century. I have turned to history, sociology, and other human sciences in order to enter as best I can into Francis and Clare’s understanding of kinship. 

 

I refer to my inter-disciplinary approach[7] as a socio-spiritual method. Some may complain that turning to sociology and psychology would turn my work into Religious Studies rather than Spirituality. However, I concur with Alejandro García-Rivera who reminds us that “Christian spirituality may be studied in terms of cultural, social, ritual, and linguistic categories but somewhere along the way its basis in the faith must be considered”[8]. Spirituality is not just a social or an anthropological reality it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the cotidiano of the believer in her/his social reality and cultural context. Therefore, I like to think of my method as both a social, faith-filled and spiritual look at la cotidianidad divina. So that while I admit to the need for studying a cultural and social-location I insist that the study of it must not sacrifice systematic and spiritual theology for the social sciences. Francis, Clare and other classic Christian spiritual writers wrote about the experience of faith not sociology.

 

The Socio-Spiritual method that I employ seeks to use la cotidianidad divina in which to quote Carmen Nanko-Fernández, I privilege “lo cotidiano in theologizing latinamente”[9]. It is based heavily but not exclusively on the method explained and used by Adriana Destro and Mauro Pesce, in Antropologia delle origini cristiane (Roma-Bari 1995)[10]. 

 

Today’s spiritualogians (theologians who research, teach and write about spirituality) seek to appropriate Christian Spiritual classics like Letters, Poems, Rules, Testaments, Prayers, and Vitae, which were produced by spiritual writers who wrote for the readers of their day, readers who shared their social, cultural, political, economic and religious milieu and who’s cotidiano would have given them the capability of understanding the material. In the case of my work on Francis and Clare, the Spiritual Classics I study come out of the High Middle Ages and speak of a world, a religion and a culture that as a Latino I can only vaguely relate to. 

 

Common Ground

 

Latin@ Catholicism was born at the end of the Middle Ages and as such it shares the medieval sacramental mindset that sees God at work in the cotidiano. A common ground of Christian belief and Gospel values unite the Latin@ Catholic to the medieval communion of saints. Still, we will forever remain the “non-participants” of their lived experience, a reality that we will never really know or completely understand. As a spiritualogian I have to peruse history, and read the spiritual classics in order to attempt to find the anthropological, cultural, social, religious and spiritual preconceptions, which influenced both the writers and readers of ages past.

 

Thus, for my work on Francis and Clare’s Opuscula, I begin with a historical socio-cultural study of the context in which they and the original readers were inserted. The work of Destro and Pesce, inspires me to read Francis and Clare’s vitae and opuscula within the social construct of the Italian famiglia of their time and place. So, I engage the Franciscan Sources with a socio-spiritual method of study that arises out of the fact that the message of any historical text (even a spiritual one) is socially, culturally and religiously determined by its cotidiano. This supposes that both the writer and the “intended readers” are immersed in a common religious, cultural and social process, which forms their “social imagination”. Social imagination (immaginazione sociale) refers to what a person believes that his/her society is and/or should be.

 

In the case of Francis and Clare’s Opuscula, where maternal language is tied to fraternal love, I need to consider that the Medieval Italian mother is not the Mexican-American mother I grew up with. The cotidianidad I share with mi madrecita will not be enough to understand the strange way in which these two saints use the role of mother. I must discover what their social imagination has to say about the maternal role in the cotidianidad of the famiglia of thirteenth century Assisi. 

 

Spiritual texts, like Francis and Clare’s Opuscula and Vitae, were not written simply to impart information but to provoke action and modification in the life of the reader. The writing and reading of the text takes place within a concrete operative process. Moreover, like all texts they continue to be read after the intended audience no longer exists. Spiritual in nature, they provoke religious transformation in new generations of readers who no longer share in the operative religious, cultural and social process of the writers. These new audiences can read the texts for information and/or hopefully for transformation. In either case they need to seek to understand something of the writer’s context and social imagination.

 

Franciscan and other Christian classics are religious texts, and as such they challenge us to discover the religious systems, cultural values, psycho-spiritual inclinations and social imagination of the writers within the text. These texts are presided over by a culturally determined conceptual system (concepts and categories) which, belonging to the writers, can be discovered within the structure of the texts. A cursory reading of Latin@ theologians reveals that the primary “text” for our theologizing is not the written word, but our peoples’ icons, songs, devociones, dichos, works of charity and la lucha (struggle) for justice. These I will call spiritual classics, and for practicality I refer to those who write, paint, sing, pray and do these things as authors and audience.

“Literarization”

 

Spiritual classics like religious texts, sacred imagery and devotional practices are conditioned by time, culture space and the personal experience of the writer, artist or practitioner. The authors of such spiritual classics produce a synthesis of their cultural system and all its dynamics and condense them into concrete forms by means of selection and translation that Destro and Pesce refer to as “literarization”, which is not to be confused “literaturization.”

 

Literaturization is the process by which a writer produces literature. Literarization on the other hand is the process by which the author takes material from his/her cotidianidad and/or research assimilating it into his/her knowledge. As previously noted, the process of assimilation creates a “social imagination” which is made up of categories-classifications and social, spatial-temporal realities (institutions, rites, practices, precepts, relationships, etc.). Once this has occurred authors can take from their own social-cultural imagination some of their knowledge and redact it within a unifying form. Clare and Francis did this in their letters and rules. Artists do this with a work of art and believers do this through spiritual exercises, devotional practices or works of charity and justice. In any case, this is the “literarization” of the socio-cultural imagination.

 

The text, icon, devotion and/or practice which is the outcome of this process contains several cultural levels that need to be considered. First is the implicit cultural presupposition or what the author and the intended audience participate in as common knowledge and experience because of a shared cotidiano. This is not elaborated on or explained within the text, but remains between the lines. Then there are the expressed and specific cultural factors of the group that the author and intended audience are a part of and are specifically dealt with in the classic. The third and final level that needs to be considered is the differentiation whereby authors express the principal explicit intention of their work, which helps the audience see things that, until then, their natural inclinations and social imagination had not allowed them to see.

 

Returning to the example of my work with Francis and Clare’s Opuscula their implicit cultural presupposition is that the reader understands the medieval Italian famiglia so they feel no need to explain what they mean by terms like mother, brother or sister. In writing about the maternal-fraternal tension of community life, the specific cultural factors that they specifically deal with are the roles of mother and siblings. Here is where I am at a disadvantage as the “non-participant” in the experiencia cotidiana of their family system. This is why I do the historical, social, psychological and cultural studies, so that somehow I can get to their cotidianidad and understand how they view the role of mothers, brothers and sisters. Doing so, helps me get at the principal explicit intention of their work which is to help the friars and sisters understand that they are to love each other in ways that go beyond maternal and fraternal love (RnB 6 and RegCl 8), and in the process give each other the freedom to do the Father’s will (Ep Leo).

 

Limitations of the method

I realize that there are those who question the validity of applying social sciences to spiritual classics. Truly, this method has its limitations. The first is the fact that the writers, artists and practitioners of the spiritual classics are often not writing, painting or practicing for specifically social or cultural reasons. Their focus is on life in the Spirit and its religious movements. Yet the Spirit dwells and acts in the cotidiano of the authors and their audiences. This cotidiano is often no longer available to the spiritualogian, who must accept his/her status as non-participant all the while researching the Sitz im Leben, social-location and especially the cotidiano of the spiritual authors and their original audiences.

 

Secondly, relying too much on the social and cultural factors of the author and audience could cause some to negate the movement of the Spirit and the influence of the Gospel on the authors, intended audience and successive audiences. To keep from falling into these traps one must truly believe that God’s Spirit can build on and enlighten human nature, that lo cotidiano can indeed be divino, which is to say infused with God’s continual presence. With this belief in mind, I emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit in and through social reality; in and through una cotidianidad divina.

 

Holy Spirit at Work

 

As previously stated, spiritual authors do not write, paint or practice for explicitly cultural or social reasons, however their workcannot be extraneous to the contexts from which they came. We should not be afraid to apply the social sciences to the academic discipline of spirituality. Nor should we forget or negate the movement of the Spirit and the influence of the Gospel on these authors and audiences.  

 

Spiritual classics, as I have already affirmed, are not just textual. For many Latin@s spiritual classics are the devotional practices, works of charity and la lucha that are part of our popular religiosity and daily life. Like spiritual texts, popular devotions in our cotidianidad or the sacramental and liturgical cycle of life, are meant to provoke action and modification in the life of the believer. 

 

Believing that God’s Spirit builds on and enlightens human nature, Latin@ theologians are explicit about the social and cultural factors of spirituality. We give special attention to the possible influence that the cotidiano Latino has on our peoples’ experience of life in the Spirit. The social imagination and implicit cultural presuppositions with which we do our theologizing are necessarily contextual and self-implicating. When we write our books, articles and presentations we tend to highlight the specific cultural factors, which we want to share with and break open for our audience. In doing so we transform these cultural factors into a way of expressing the principal explicit intention of our theology, that is reflection on the cotidianidad divina of our popular religiosity, relationships, fiestas and luchas, in a word our spirituality. 

 

Conclusion

 

As a Latino theologian, I understand that “secular” disciplines like cultural studies, psychology and sociology can and should be used to study how our spiritual ancestors lived the Gospel and followed Christ in the way of the Spirit. Finally, as a Franciscan theologian, I join St. Bonaventure in affirming that

 

the manifold Wisdom of God, which is clearly revealed in Sacred Scripture, lies hidden in all knowledge and in all nature. It is evident too how all divisions of knowledge are handmaids of theology, and it is for this reason that theology makes use of illustrations and terms pertaining to every branch of knowledge […] And this is the fruit of all sciences, that in all, faith may be strengthened, God may be honored, character may be formed and consolation may be derived from union of the Spouse and His beloved.[11]

Notes