I've spent a significant portion of my life in and around churches. In fact, all of it.
And one thing I've come to recognize is that it is entirely possible to be deeply involved in religious life and still have significant parts of our spiritual lives remain untouched.We can know the Scriptures, attend worship faithfully, serve on committees and team, and have strong opinions about theology while still struggling to forgive someone who hurt us.
We can care passionately about justice while becoming increasingly angry and exhausted. We can have a rich personal prayer life while remaining disconnected from the needs of our neighbors. And we can spend decades in Christian community without ever developing the capacity to love people who see the world differently than we do.
This is one of the reasons I loved Ronald Rolheiser's book The Holy Longing. Rolheiser asks a question I think the church needs to ask again and again. What actually makes a spirituality Christian?
He recognizes that Christians have spent centuries debating the details. We've argued over theology, worship styles, religious practices, sacraments, and institutional structures. Some of those conversations are important. But somewhere in all of that complexity, we can lose sight of the foundations.
Rolheiser identifies four essential pillars of Christian spirituality, and I think they offer an extraordinary framework for understanding what it means to live a deeply formed life.
The first is personal prayer and an integrated moral life. There is something deeply important about developing an honest interior life. We need space to listen, to reflect, to acknowledge what is happening within us, and to become aware of God's presence. We need the courage to examine our motives, our fears, our choices, and the ways we sometimes live out of alignment with our deepest values. Prayer can help us become more honest and available to God's transforming love. And that honesty matters because it is possible to spend an enormous amount of energy managing how others perceive us while never quite being truthful with ourselves.
The second pillar is social justice. For Rolheiser, Christian spirituality requires a commitment to the well-being of others, particularly people who are vulnerable, excluded, or suffering. I love that he places justice alongside prayer as an essential component of Christian life. Jesus consistently drew people's attention toward those who had been forgotten or pushed to the margins. His vision of God's kingdom invited people into a different way of organizing life together. A spirituality shaped by Jesus must eventually influence how we understand poverty, inequality, suffering, power, and our responsibilities to one another. The movement of God's love is always drawing us toward a larger world.
The third pillar is community. This one might be the most challenging. We live in a culture that has made personal preference enormously important. We are accustomed to choosing our experiences, curating our relationships, and surrounding ourselves with people who affirm the way we see the world.
Christian community asks something deeper of us. It invites us into relationships with people we might never have chosen on our own. People with different personalities, different experiences, different politics, different struggles, and different understandings of faith.
At Saint Matthew, we often say that belonging precedes belief. For me, this means we are creating a community where people can bring their whole selves, including their questions and uncertainties, into genuine relationships. But belonging also asks us to grow. It stretches our capacity for patience, forgiveness, generosity, and curiosity. It teaches us how to remain connected when relationships become complicated. Some of the most important spiritual formation happens in those moments.
And the fourth pillar is what Rolheiser calls mellowness of heart. Of all four, this might be my favorite. Mellowness of heart. What an extraordinary phrase. Rolheiser is describing a life increasingly marked by gratitude, compassion, generosity, and joy. A person who has developed a mellow heart has learned something important about being human. They have become less consumed by resentment, less threatened by difference, less desperate to control everything around them. There is a spaciousness to the way they live. They can recognize goodness. They can celebrate someone else's joy. They can acknowledge suffering without allowing it to consume their entire understanding of the world.
I think most of us know someone like this. Someone whose presence makes a room feel lighter. Who has experienced real suffering and somehow emerged with an even greater capacity for compassion. Who makes you feel that you are safe, welcomed, and genuinely loved. That's spiritual maturity.
And here's what strikes me about these four pillars.
They belong together. Prayer helps cultivate the inner life from which justice and compassion emerge. Justice keeps our spirituality attentive to the suffering of the world. Community provides the relationships in which love becomes real. And gratitude gives the entire journey a spirit of grace. When one is missing, something important is diminished.
As I think about our vision at Saint Matthew to develop deeply formed lives, Rolheiser's framework gives me an important question.
Are we creating opportunities for people to grow in all four dimensions?
Are we helping people cultivate a meaningful inner life? Are we forming people who care about the suffering of their neighbors? Are we creating communities where relationships deepen across difference? Are we nurturing the kind of gratitude and joy that makes life more beautiful?
And perhaps the more personal question is this.
Which of these four dimensions has received the least attention in my own life?
I suspect most of us can identify one. The invitation of Christian spirituality is to keep growing toward wholeness. And I find it wonderfully hopeful that, wherever we are in life, there is still room to grow. There is always another opportunity to become more loving. That, I believe, is the work of a deeply formed life.
