A Spiritual Theology of the Conscience: An Extraordinary Force of Grace

Abstract

This article invites reflection upon the spiritual theological nature of the conscience as a means to discern God’s word in the depths of the soul. Coming from the depths of love and truth, the conscience is an extraordinary, demanding the force of grace. This is because God nurtures the formation of human conscience with the prevenience of grace to give light in darkness. This article explores the darkness and weariness of human existence in terms of self-interest, indolence, fatigue, and boredom, and then seeks to reflect upon how the conscience evidences the invincibility of goodness through blessing, humour, and prayer. This means that the conscience, pronouncing love in truth, and the nearness of the Kingdom of God, is called to be a “light” shining “out of darkness” (2 Cor 4:6). The conscience serves to animate a pastoral and spiritual life and testimony of faith, labour, responsibility, humility, and wisdom, as St. Paul relates: “we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” (2 Cor 4:2). Encountering “God’s mercy” (2 Cor 4:1), the conscience evidences a theophanic encounter of God’s grace that needs to be pronounced in the goodness of love in truth, of responsibility for-and-with-the-other.

1. Introduction: The Conscience as God’s Word of Grace

The “extraordinary power” (2 Cor 4:7) and force of God’s light is love itself. Such love is derived from the “truth” of “God’s mercy” that propels the person of faith in the momentum to hear God’s word in the depths of the conscience through service and “ministry” (2 Cor 4:1–2), the good of pastoral and spiritual care. Animating the force of love is the prevenience of grace and how it eternally creates the “light” (Gen 1:3) of faith. Pronouncing such mystery, St. Paul remarks, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). Accordingly, the light of God’s power and “word” informs the imagination of the soul to develop a vision “evidencing a sense of passing from decay to transformation” (Kelly 2008, p. 80), towards renouncing the strangling presence of “shameful things that one hides” in human existence, such as the “practice” of corruption (“cunning”) and lies (“to falsify God’s word”) (2 Cor 4:2). The imagination and vision of the soul gives being to the conscience to embody God’s word of grace through Christ. This does not mean that the content of the conscience resides solely in the soul. The conscience permeates the whole human person, body, including the emotions, mind, heart, and strength, to form the human person as an image of the Infinite God (Gen 1:26). The conscience therefore responds and opens to the mystery of God’s presence with us from the depths of the soul to forming our being of responsibility in the world. Here, we come to a basic working “description” of the conscience as the “human person making a judgment about a specific action” (O’Neil and Black 2003, p. 57). Such responsibility of judgment works through understanding, reflection, and discernment (O’Neil and Black 2003, p. 58). Hence Bernard Häring relates the following: “The word ‘conscience’ derives from the Latin cum (together) and scientia, scire (to know). Conscience is the person’s moral faculty, the inner core and sanctuary where one knows oneself in confrontation with God and with fellowmen. We can confront ourselves reflexively only to the extent that we genuinely encounter the Other and the others” (Häring 1978, p. 224). The conscience provides an opportunity to listen to God’s Spirit, to respond to the prevenience of grace, and to grow in holiness and responsibility for others to seek to be a person-in-Christ (Häring 1978, p. 224).

Looking at the prevenience of grace Christologically, the effect of Christ’s death on the world reveals the universal presence of grace: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32). The kenotic gift of Christ forging the prevenience or universalism of grace signifies the “economy of salvation” in ordinary life unveiling how “Grace is everywhere, and all is grace” (Purcell 2009, p. 968). God’s grace spreads even to the outer limits to pursue the forsaken ones (“spirits in prison”): “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…” (1 Pet 3:18–19). Such witness and movement, even towards the depths of hell, underlines the extraordinary reaches and force of heaven’s voice (Dan 4: 31, Mk 1:11, Jn 12:28). In a similar “economy of salvation”, God’s word of grace in and through Christ seeks out the conscience to awake the light of understanding, dialogue, and purpose. Yet, the challenge and struggle of discernment and interpretation remain (Matt 13:13). For the conscience must seek to allow the interior encounter of God’s word to overflow into the social world by pronouncing mercy, love, forgiveness, blessing, and responsibility. This relates to understanding the truth of our being in Christ and responding to his word.

Bringing Levinas’ thought into contact with Catholic theology, this article will mainly make use of the writings of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, as they provide and engage themes that enrich the domain of spiritual theology in an accessible, searching form, giving clarity, discernment, and appeal. Hence, they aid in responding to the struggle of discernment and interpretation. For example, reflecting on humility and grace in the context of service, Pope Benedict XVI writes, “Those who are in a position to help others will realize that in doing so they themselves receive help; being able to help others is no merit or achievement of their own. This duty is a grace” (Pope Benedict XVI 2005, p. 35). Through humility, the extraordinary force of grace puts the conscience into question to take up responsibility for the other. Such responsibility means attuning the self to “God’s patience and his timetable, which are never our own… This entails a readiness to make sacrifices, even to sacrificing everything… Once we enter into this dynamic, we will not let our consciences be numbed and we will open ourselves generously to discernment” (Pope Francis 2018, p. 174). The writings of the two popes provide a rich source of spirituality to animate the theological imagination of faith and to a provide a lens to approach the mystery of grace in the conscience.

Looking at the mystery of interpreting God’s word, Pope Francis writes as follows:

It is not easy to grasp the truth that we have received from the Lord. And it is even more difficult to express it. So we cannot claim that our way of understanding this truth authorizes us to exercise a strict supervision over others’ lives. Here I would note that in the Church there legitimately coexist different ways of interpreting many aspects of doctrine and Christian life; in their variety, they “help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word”.

(Pope Francis 2018, no. 43)

In terms, then, of approaching the “riches of God’s word”, a spiritual theology of the conscience seeks to be one of the “different ways” to interpret God’s inner word of Christ, of the Spirit, in the depths of the soul. A spiritual theology necessarily gives priority to the work of God in the soul (the life force within). As God’s word forms the soul (as much as the body, mind, and heart) with the language of faith and responsibility, the conscience is revealed as the self’s inner word and sanctuary of response to God’s presence and grace. Hence, the conscience, like the emotions, is on the near side of the soul to be formed interiorly and tested within a world of responsibility, purpose, and need. What then makes the conscience a place for God’s word of grace to resound, to disturb, or awake the mind, heart, and soul towards a new seeing and hearing (1 Cor 2:9–10)?

The conscience receives the inner voice of God through the mind, heart, soul, and strength of the body. The conscience therefore moves to direct thoughts, emotions, and energies towards an affectivity of goodness, of loving God and neighbour. Such affectivity finds its force and power through the search for truth and love in Christ to “Let light shine out of darkness” (2 Cor 4:6). Pope Paul VI writes as follows:

Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor. In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships.

(Pope Paul VI 1965, no. 16)

Spiritual theology brings to light the meaning of the conscience through seeking to find a time in which God’s words in the mind, heart, and soul translates as the practice of holiness, care, good leadership, guidance, nurturing, and hope amidst despair. Acknowledgment of the conscience fosters the spiritual practice and awakening of being “alone with God”. The conscience therefore finds nourishment, formation, and direction through solitude with God and, hence, “constant prayer” (Pope Francis 2018, no.’s 147–157). Pope Francis gives light to the example of the Saints as a way forward to exemplify the necessity of prayer as a pathway to the ideal of holiness. Giving voice to the testimony of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, he writes as follows:

Saint John of the Cross tells us: “Endeavour to remain always in the presence of God, either real, imaginative, or unitive, insofar as is permitted by your works”. In the end, our desire for God will surely find expression in our daily lives: “Try to be continuous in prayer, and in the midst of bodily exercises do not leave it. Whether you eat, drink, talk with others, or do anything, always go to God and attach your heart to him.

For this to happen, however, some moments spent alone with God are also necessary. For Saint Teresa of Avila, prayer “is nothing but friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with him who we know loves us”. I would insist that this is true not only for a privileged few, but for all of us, for “we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of him who is adored”. Trust-filled prayer is a response of a heart open to encountering God face to face, where all is peaceful and the quiet voice of the Lord can be heard in the midst of silence.

(Pope Francis 2018, no.’s 147–148)

In more simple terms, we can think of the conscience using St. John of the Cross’ analogy of “making room for God”, which demands the interior formation of “wiping away all the smudges and smears of creatures, by uniting its will perfectly to God’s; for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God” (St. John of the Cross [1991] 2017, p. 165). St. John of the Cross further notes, “When this is done the soul will be illumined by and transformed in God. And God will so communicate himself and will possess what God himself possesses” (St. John of the Cross [1991] 2017, p. 165). St. Teresa, on her part, will confess in an earthy way how the way of perfection towards God, prayer, and the life of the conscience faces turbulence and challenge:

I spent nearly twenty years on that stormy sea, often falling in this way and each time rising again, but to little purpose, as I would only fall once more. My life was so far from perfection that I took hardly any notice of venial sins; as to mortal sins, although afraid of them, I was not so much so as I ought to have been; for I did not keep free from the danger of falling into them. I can testify that this is one of the most grievous kinds of life which I think can be imagined, for I had neither any joy in God nor any pleasure in the world.

(St. Teresa of Avila [1946] 2002, p. 48)

Together, both Spanish mystics present the relation to God as one demanding conversion and confession, and openness and interior reflection to encounter and discern the movements of God in humility and purity of purpose.

To journey towards the conscience, blessing, and prayer, and even humour, are essentials steps to encountering God’s awakening word of grace in the conscience. This is because the conscience abides in the sacred and creative depths of the human person overflowing into everyday life. The conscience walks, as it were, on “holy ground” (Ex 3:5). To be in the presence of God’s grace cannot be disassociated from the “toil” of work (Gen 2:15 and 3:17) and “The ordinary, the average, the everyday” (Purcell 2009, p. 968). Here one learns that the everyday work of charity demands holiness to articulate truth.

Reflecting on holiness, Levinas states: “The liturgical expression hesed shel emet, the love of truth, is charity. What is entirely original with holiness—beyond its many other qualities—is also its greatest misery. It’s the strength to want what is good for the other in the misery that can come from him” (de Saint Cheron 2010, p. 24). Levinas’ words are compelling, and his philosophy and person provide a fitting starting point to develop a spiritual theology of the conscience. In the light of Auschwitz, in the wake of the near extinction of European Jewry from Hitlerism (1933–1945), de Saint Cheron writes as follows:

More than a philosopher, Levinas was a conscience and his discourse, heavily imbued with the spiritual and philosophical values of the West, carries within it, beyond the concepts of being and nothingness, time and death, even transcendence and metaphysics, the question of the justification for human life. Levinas will have taught us to recognize this “God who comes to mind”, even in agnosticism and atheism”.

(de Saint Cheron 2010, pp. 7–8)

Throughout this article, the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas will be pressed into service. Applicably, Levinas’ student, de Saint Cheron, points out that, “Levinas was a conscience” and his “discourse” gives testimony to this. Since the late twentieth century, there has been a growing tradition of using Levinas’ thought for Christian theology. Levinas’ Talmudic studies, ethical metaphysics, and biblical method provide Christian theologians with a pathway to “think otherwise” about the nature of theology and the danger of reducing it to a thematization of ideas, representations of personal experience, and objectivizations of facts that disturb truth, responsibility, and the sensibility of justice and mercy. Levinas develops a non-phenomenology of the face to describe the relationship with the other as one in which God’s word puts the conscience into question. Here Levinas’s writings make a stance against language and behaviour that reduces the other to the essence of self-interest, a state of evil in being, of anonymous, depersonalized existence.

One should not be ashamed to develop Christian theology by using Levinas’ corpus of writings. Levinas himself was open to Christian theologians using and developing his thought (Levinas 1998b, p. 54), and he himself found interest in Christian theology (de Saint Cheron 2010, pp. 13–14). The writings of Roger Burggraeve, Levinas’ friend, is testimony to how “God comes to mind” within theology. Burggraeve’ s decades of engaging with and developing Christian theology and the Bible with a Levinasian philosophical perspective (Burggraeve 2020b) pay witness also to the dramatic force of Levinas’ person, character, and writings. Burggraeve writes, “Reading the Bible through the thought of Levinas marked the origin of a kind of intellectual passion that has never subsided. That passion flows and culminates in this book concerned as it is with approaching the Bible philosophically” (Burggraeve 2020b, p. 2). In his book, To Love Otherwise: Essays in Bible Philosophy and Ethic, Burggraeve devotes a whole chapter to the conscience by reflecting on the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel (Burggraeve 2020b, pp. 107–40). He writes as follows:

The story of Cain and Abel (Gen 4,1–16), which will be given a philosophical reading in chapter three, provides a first insight into the origin and dynamics of violence. At the same time, conscience emerges as ‘crisis’ and ‘judgment’, and as a relational event in which the ‘voice of God’ resounds. Thus the story moves us towards the ‘divine soul’ of conscience whereby light is shed on ‘brotherhood’ in both its humane and divine aspects.

(Burggraeve 2020b, pp. 2–3)

Burggraeve’s corpus of writings are dedicated to the service of bringing Levinas’ writings into the realm of theology for which he is confident, adamant, and passionate they do provide much value. Accordingly, with Levinas, Burggraeve’ s writings will provide essential reference for this article.

To a lesser extent, another key contribution to engage Levinas and Christian theology regarding the conscience is Daniel Fleming’s article, “Primordial Moral Awareness: Levinas, Conscience, and the Unavoidable Call to Responsibility” (Fleming 2015, pp. 604–18). Here, he provides a Catholic moral theological discussion on truth and responsibility. For example, he points to the irony of Levinas’ emphasis on having a “bad conscience”, of having the disposition to put the conscience into question to awake moral consciousness and responsibility before the other (Fleming 2015, p. 608). Further, a fragment of Christian theological development of Levinas’ notion of the conscience is found in Michael Purcell’s article, “The Prevenience and Phenomenality of Grace, Or, the Anteriority of the Posterior” (Purcell 2009, pp. 966–81). Purcell writes: “Confronted by another, the self is provoked into consciousness both of self as separated and of other. The subject is constituted as a moral consciousness, or conscience, and is summoned to respond” (Purcell 2009, p. 978).

Finally, Marie Baird’s article, “Eric Voegelin’s Vision of Personalism and Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethics of Responsibility: Toward a Post-Holocaust Spiritual Theology?”, provides a fascinating use of Levinas’ ethical metaphysics to deconstruct Voegelin’s use of ontology in his discourse on Israel’s experience of divine revelation in the Old Testament. In conclusion, Baird writes, “A post-Holocaust Spiritual Theology that is capable of confronting the violence done to the neighbour with something more concrete than promises of otherworldly redemption could hardly do better than to begin by stressing the incarnated transcendence and destitution of the other-as-theophany—the other in whom I am infinitely responsible” (Baird 1999, p. 403). In contrast to Baird, this article, in the conclusion, gives value to Voegelin’s appreciation of the supernatural (in the case of St. Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ) to situate the meaning of theophany into an ethical metaphysical domain. Levinas’ thought helps to bring out the extraordinary force and value of the conscience in the theophanic encounter of God’s word. In a remark, Baird does, however, acknowledge and appreciate Voegelin’s biblical analysis of divine revelation, noting, “On a more positive note, Voegelin quotes Jer. 9:24 to demonstrate that the prophets indeed had succeeded in identifying the ‘desired traits of the soul’ such as mercy (hesed), justice (mishpat), and righteousness (zedakah), which could be acquired if we ‘understand and know’ God” (Baird 1999, p. 391).

Levinas’ writings help to show that the prevenience of grace and the work of God’s word forges itself in the ordinary and the everyday, mundane encounters of the life of responsibility for the other. However, notwithstanding, Levinas’ philosophy evidences that there are days, times, and years which continue to disturb the mundane to cause horror and evoke the burden and misery of carrying a catastrophe or crisis or trauma which endures a lifetime and beyond. He knew this intimately and firsthand in the encounter of the Nazi horror. Developing a portrait of Levinas, de Saint Cheron points out the reality and difficulty of encountering the excess of evil:

As a Jew after Auschwitz, conscious of this nontransferable responsibility for having survived six million of his brothers and sisters, his ceaseless metaphysical questioning of humanity’s relationship with God, took on a paradigmatic dimension. There are no sermons possible after Auschwitz, he thought, while warning against conserving “Revelation [as] the love of the other man” as “new proof of the existence of God (GCM [Of God Who Comes to Mind] 168)”.

(de Saint Cheron 2010, pp. 7–8)

Hence, to “Endeavour to remain always in the presence of God” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 147) is demanding of one’s freedom and is, in Levinasian terms, a “difficult freedom” and liturgy of responsibility to respond to “The Other’s hunger” (Levinas 1990, pp. xiv, 272). “Desire for God” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 147) is related to prayer as much as ethics. To “attach” one’s heart to God speaks more of passivity, of entering the relationship of responsibility for-the-other, of the encountering of attending to the other’s suffering, outrage, and need, which is “The exceptional, extra-ordinary, transcendent character of goodness” and is otherwise than the “calculations” of “being and history”, of self-interest and mere “good intentions” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 18).

From the mundane to the turmoil of life, to encounter holiness, the self must practice the prayer of solitude, of spending time with God. In such “Trust-filled prayer … the quiet voice of the Lord” is encountered in “silence” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 148). The nature of such silence is beyond being, transcendent to the point of absence, and even subject to confusion with nothingness, an anonymous existence. This is because transcendence takes place after the event. One is late to understand the movement of God’s word, especially in the other’s face. Through silence, the affectivity of God’s word transcends “immanence” and “knowledge” (Levinas 1998a, p. 166). Levinas gives some insight into the difficulty of approaching God through his reflection on the enigma of ethical discourse, which he also equates with prayer and religion (Levinas 1998b, p. 7). He calls this a “diachronic truth” or a “passivity more passive still than any passivity” (Levinas 1998b, p. 166), a tragedy–comedy and “trauma that cannot be assumed” in which as one realizes the “comedy” of being late in giving responsibility (Levinas 1998a, p. 166). The “tragedy” reveals itself as being all too late as “the laughter sticks to one’s throat when the neighbour approaches—that is, when his face, or his forsakenness, draws near” (Levinas 1998a, p. 166). The spiritual nature of the conscience brings together prayer and ethics into a dialogical and affective event of encountering God’s word and proclamation of the danger of not considering what is at the heart of the Kingdom of God: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40).

Altogether the conscience signifies a “search for truth”. The conscience is guided by the light of love, guided by talking to God in silence so that God’s word resounds as “truth in love” (Eph 4:15): “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” (Lk 14:21). Accordingly, the world of the conscience is a spiritual activity in which the Holy Spirit guides the responsible self (for-the-other) towards an appreciation of God’s will to discover, and learn to pronounce the meaning of love in truth: to be a person in Christ, a disciple willing to follow Christ, listening to his teaching: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31–32). Inherently, the conscience is called to form towards a state of being of holiness: being wise, “mature” (Col 1:28), merciful, just, and righteous. The conscience, enthused by the extraordinary force of grace, is called to imagine and see the world anew so that “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). The conscience orients then the spiritual life so that “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt 7:12).

Following the spiritual formation of the Golden Rule, to possess a conscience speaks intimately of not letting oneself be contaminated by self-interest, self-care, and self-reward. Walter Kasper writes as follows:

In practice, however, human beings have separated themselves from the love of God by sin and put themselves at the service of egotism, self-seeking, self-will, self-advantage and self-importance. Everything falls apart in meaningless isolation and a general battle of all against all. In place of unity come loneliness and isolation, and the isolated individual or entity inevitably falls victim to meaninglessness.

(Kasper 1977, p. 86)

The unity of goodness and holiness comes to mind through a chiastic perspective where we may utter “truth in love” (Eph 4:15) to arrive at “love in truth” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 2), or by way of another example, to pronounce “ethics in grace” to understand the force of “grace in ethics”. Jesus gives a pertinent example of the reversal (chiasmus) where he proclaims, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Matt 19:30). Repeating words in reverse becomes a persuasive way to encouraging listening (Matt 13:13), to animate the spiritual theological imagination of faith, and hence, to move from mere hearing to a deeper listening of encountering God’s word. Therefore, to listen to the sufferings of “meaningless isolation” is not to reduce an idea about suffering to an impersonal theme in consciousness, but as a form (truth in love) of the face of the other (ethics in grace) signifying a moment of command (love in truth) in the conscience to respond (grace in ethics) to the other’s depth of “desolation”, “loneliness”, and “loss of self” (Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 168). The desolation of loneliness in everyday life can lead to a nausea of indolence, fatigue, and boredom, to attempts to escape from the weight of existence to personhood, and to hearing the voice of the conscience. This article will seek now to engage with these themes and then move to discuss how the goodness of blessing, humour, and the theophanic encounter of God in prayer orient a spiritual theological articulation of the conscience as an extraordinary force of grace.

2. Indolence, Fatigue and Boredom: “Shameful Things That One Hides”

The conscience, nurtured by discernment and humility, reveals itself as a “turbulent fertility” (Kelly 2008, p. 82) in the “extraordinary force” of the grace of love (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1). The conscience helps to animate and create “a time to love” (Eccles 3:8) beyond the alienating weariness of life and pain of human existence. The conscience propels the self towards the Kingdom of God “to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1). This means, in terms of facilitating love in the turbulence and truth of integral human development, learning to be attentive to how the self falls into the temptations of the totality of being. In Levinasian terms, the conscience helps the self to encounter the world beyond the totality and essence of the ego’s desires, resulting in alienation from one’s self. Here, lost in the horror of existence, the ego is immersed in a void of ethical meaning through states of indolence, fatigue, and boredom, oriented by illusions of “self-seeking, self-will, self-advantage and self-importance” (Kasper 1977, p. 86). It is essential for a spiritual theology of the conscience to appreciate the temptations of being, of existence, such as indolence, fatigue, and boredom. Acknowledging the commanding force of such temptations, the conscience can respond by way of ethics, prayer, and religion. A spiritual theology of the conscience is therefore beholden to how ethical transcendence reveals the awakening force of the word of God. Levinas’ thought provides a useful entry point to study the phenomenological character of these states. This provides a lens to develop a spirituality of the conscience, the better to appreciate how the horror and weight of existence disturbs consciousness to evade and escape God’s word in the depths of the conscience. Here, consciousness comes to greater light and understanding through the infinity of God’s movement through the face of the other to break up the totality, essence (self-interest), and indolence of the ego.

For Levinas, indolence matures as fatigue and boredom “breaking with the sources of life” and “the kingdom of heaven” (Levinas 1995, p. 35). In Christian theological terms, indolence can be called spiritual “acedia” and can be noted further as “spiritual sloth”, “spiritual desolation”, “the dark night of the soul” (Ballano 2021, p. 3), spiritual “torpor”, “apathy”, “boredom” (Norris 2008, p. 3), and “spiritual corruption” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 165). The concept of acedia (from “the Greek accidie which literally meaning ‘no caring’”) was developed in the middle ages and used, for example, to interpret how monks could fall into spiritual depression, that is to say, “sadness, and a disgust with the things of God, driving monks to leave their monastic cells and abandon their intimacy with God” (Ballano 2021, p. 3). The concept of spiritual acedia is evidenced by a 4th Century Christian monk, Evagrius Ponticus, in his writing, The Pratikos. He speaks of acedia with the metaphor of a “demon” who makes “it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long” (Norris 2008, p. 4). Nault points to the two following significant passages from the Pratikos (12) “on the strange and complex phenomenon of acedia” (Nault 2004, pp. 237–38):

The demon of acedia, also called the “midday demon” is the most burdensome of all; it attacks the monk around the fourth hour and besieges his soul until the eighth hour… This demon forces the monk to stare continuously at the windows, to take flight from his cell… Moreover, it arouses in him an aversion for the place where he is, even for his state of life… The demon makes him long for other places, where he will easily find what he needs… pleasing the Lord is not a matter of place: in fact, the divine may be worshiped anywhere, as it is written (Jn 4:21)… This demon attacks with every weapon in his arsenal, as they say, such that the monk abandons his cell and runs away from the contest. This demon is not immediately followed by another: a peaceful state and ineffable joy take over his soul following the battle.

The look of someone in prey to acedia frequently goes to the windows, and his soul dreams of visitors. When the door squeaks, he jumps. When he hears a voice, he looks out the window. He does not turn away until, overcome by drowsiness, he sits down. The acediac often yawns when he reads, and he gets tired easily. He rubs his eyes, he stretches out his arms, and he looks up from his book. He looks at the wall, then comes back to read a bit more. Flipping through the pages, he kills time looking at the end of the book. He counts the pages, calculates the number of fascicles, complains about the print and the design. Finally, closing up the book, he lays his head on top of it and falls asleep, but not into a deep slumber, because hunger stirs his soul once again, imposing upon him its own preoccupations.

Looking at these passages, the Old Testament gives vent to such depression and desolation as the psalmist laments: “I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead” (Ps 88:3–4). These examples of acedia point to the tragedy of existence and the challenge to reclaim personhood and otherness through patience, perseverance and hope (Rev 14:12).

Indolence, fatigue and boredom are egoistic forms that negate the relation to our brother/sister neighbour because the essence of the self is disturbed and therefore lost to the temptations of affluence, consumerism, and jealousy. The temptations disturb the soul as “shameful things” (2 Cor 4:2) because they can be excessive in nature aiming at the self by jolting the ego with a false sense of transcendence and “fleeting pleasure” (Pope Benedict XVI 2005, no. 4). The temptations are like an impulse to reject God’s approach to the conscience to be beholden to the commanding force of the totality of the ego and, hence, the horror of evil in being (reality and existence), a “perpetual reality” of “existence with ‘no exits’” (Levinas 1995, p. 62). In this horror and darkness, the self is prone to become “weary”; as Levinas, explains: “There exists a weariness which is a weariness of everything and everyone, and above all a weariness of oneself. What wearies then is not a particular form of our life—our surroundings, because they are dull and ordinary, our circle of friends, because they are vulgar and cruel; the weariness concerns existence itself” (Levinas 1995, p. 24). Weariness therefore may orient the self into spiritual acedia, a brooding existence falling into a loss of self.

What makes people weary of existence itself? What horror or darkness causes such fatigue? There is no “levity of a smile” to “innocently” transcend the unending moments of weariness and the aversion of existence (Levinas 1995, p. 24). There is little light to think and respond with a renewed affectivity against spiritual torpor. This is because the self is conscious of the harshness of making a “commitment” (Levinas 1995, p. 24). The indolence of the self, the loss of the conscience in fatigue, culminates into an “evasion” of responsibility, into a retreat from the “seriousness and harshness” of life (Levinas 1995, pp. 24–25). Levinas presents the metaphor of “an unrevokable contract” and the analogy of “the false smile of the complete skeptic who, having suspended his judgments, abstains from acting and from aspiring to anything” to emphasise that existence is grave like the “obligation”, to which the sceptic responds with calculated appeal and aversion. The result is to fall into an abyss of horror and nothingness, a stasis and the negation of life, to force an abdication “from existence” (Levinas 1995, p. 25) and escape responsibility from the appeal of God’s word resonating in the neighbour’s face.

The “condemnation” of the self to weariness, an “indolence” breeding “fatigue” about existence (Levinas 1995, pp. 29, 62) causes, ironically, an illusion of “a longing for more beautiful skies” (Levinas 1995, p. 25). What this means, essentially, in terms of the loss of the conscience, is that the self is waylaid or stuck or “tied up with the beginning of an action: the stirring, the getting up” (Levinas 1995, p. 26). In essence, the self prefers the dreams and comforts of sleep or illusions to the harshness and bitterness of existence and reality. Here, there is even no effort to seek to possess oneself through “riches” or “enjoyment”. There is only a desire, the dreads of existence, to “interrupt what was really begun” and, hence, “to end” any advent of adventure “in failure” (Levinas 1995, p. 27).

However, even within indolence, the self knows it must flee its inertia. In the desire to escape its own horror, the self nevertheless will evade the “Kingdom of heaven”, to be “poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3). This is but a further attempt to repress the conscience and flee from the horror of boredom. Consequently, the self gives “over to pleasure, entertainment and distraction” (Levinas 1995, p. 28). The evasion from indolence and boredom comes also at a cost to the dignity of the self, translating into the desire to disengage oneself from labour and “work” (Levinas 1995, p. 28). What this means is that the self has chosen fear rather than the vulnerability of entering openness and grace to seek and encounter God. Excessive “pleasure, entertainment and distraction” become forms of hiding from God (cf. Gen 3:8) through being in oneself, escaping the “burden of existence” through “a radical and tragic indolence” refusing to undertake any adventure in life by falling into fatigue and boredom (Levinas 1995, pp. 28–29). By rejecting and evading the conscience, the self has trained itself into a habit to reject any future of love and work. Such rejection by the self serves to disturb the interior state of the soul’s being. The soul, as it were, does not find rest, yet falls into a state of gloom, moments of restlessness to brood in a wound of nothingness, a state of spiritual torpor in which one refuses love. In his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton provides a reflection on how people fall into such indifference to life that helps to give some intelligibility to the tragedy of falling into spiritual acedia. He writes:

Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.

(Merton [1948] 1999, p. 26)

By contrast, the conscience works in a way to release the “extraordinary force” of “love” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1), the grace of God’s word resonating as compassion, mercy, and responsibility. But sin reacts to repress or suppress the conscience and the working of grace. Sin has various forms: broken relationships (hamartia), offending the other (hattah), deliberate rebellion (pesa), “turning away from God” (adikia) (Tirimanna 2001, pp. 58–59). States of existence, such as indolence, fatigue, and boredom, help to orient sin to reject love and repress or suppress the need for love. Merton points to the insight of the need to escape “humiliation”. By contrast, St. Paul thinks otherwise about the humiliations of “afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger” (2 Cor 6:4–5) by stating, “We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Cor 6:8–10). Hence, to think otherwise, to be an existent nurturing an ethical, prayerful existence, to be a person of and in the world, a person of enduring faith, is to believe in a future of love and work, and, hence, to choose God’s grace as an extraordinary force in a life with others. This, then, is the grace of the robust “little goodness” (Levinas 1999a, p. 108), of blessing resonating within the depths of the conscience, wherein hope breathes a little life to the conscience with meaning and sense.

3. “Love Reveals Itself as the Meaning of Life”: Encountering the Little Goodness of Blessing

In contrast to indolence, fatigue, and boredom, “Love reveals itself as the meaning of life” (Kasper 1977, p. 86). Here, within love’s truth, the conscience seeks to invite grace into the recesses (wounds, hopes, memories, imagination, and vision) of the soul and heart towards a time in which ethics and prayer unite. In this sense, prayer animates the affectivity of the conscience to possess the courage and confidence to respond to the excess of evil contaminating the world with acedia, sin, and temptation. In terms of spiritual theology, the conscience needs to awaken and respond to God’s inner word. One catalyst for such formation is the little goodness and charity of blessing. Possessing the grace of ethics as the truth of love, the conscience reveals itself through an outpouring of prayer in the form of blessing to awaken the self out of states of spiritual acedia, such as depression, indolence, fatigue, and boredom.

Accordingly, from the work and grace of blessing, not only does one share intimately with God, but one learns to appreciate a spiritual hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Matt 5:6) for the work of redemption of the lost (Lk 15:6–7). Abiding in God, there is a newness to encounter grace, and this is blessing, opening to a sense of mystery to invite the integral human development of love in truth in the conscience. In other words, blessing is pronounced in the service of righteousness, namely commitment to the lost and poor, one wherein language and behaviour seek to become one. Such blessing therefore comes from the “toil” (cf. Gen 2:15 and 3:17) of ministry. Amid toil and blessing, the conscience forms in an earthy, hidden way to unveil its jolts, vibrations, nudges, or even piercing awakenings to the movement of God’s word. For example, where we encounter difficulty, the conscience demands discernment, enabling “us to recognize the concrete means that the Lord provides in his mysterious and loving plan, to make us move beyond mere good intentions” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 169). The blessing of God’s prodding opens the pathway of discernment towards a new boldness to pursue truth, trust, and love (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 5), a new acknowledgement wherein the prayers of supplication and adoration/praise are united, as illustrated in Psalm 86:2–3: “Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all day long”.

Such a new boldness invites change because God’s light is redemptive in nature. This is because the boldness orients a journey to “walk” in the “truth” of love with “an undivided heart” (Ps 86:11). To walk with God unveils a surprise of newness overflowing as the grace of hospitality. This is the small or little goodness where, for example, hospitality is given to “enemies” and the “unrighteous” (Lk 5:45–46). Levinas develops the theme of the little goodness from Vasily Grossman’s book, Life and Fate, a compelling portrayal and “witness to the end of a certain Europe, the definitive end of the hope of instituting charity in the guise of a regime”, wherein “the regime of charity becomes Stalinism and [complicitous] Hitlerian horror” (Robbins 2001, pp. 80–81). Levinas explains the sense of the little goodness coming from Grossman’s book:

There is something positive in this book also: positive, modestly consoling, or marvelous, there is precisely goodness [la bonté]; goodness without regime, the miracle of goodness, the only thing that remains. But goodness appears in isolated acts, like, for example, the extraordinary movement with which the book ends, where a woman—the most mean, the most miserable—in a mob unleashed against a conquered German soldier, the most detested in a group of prisoners, gives him her last piece of bread. … There is also in Life and Fate a terrible lucidity, there isn’t any solution to the human drama by a change of regime, no system of salvation. The only thing that remains is individual goodness, from man to man.

(Robbins 2001, p. 81)

Levinas further elaborates on Grossman’s Life and Fate:

The book is frightening, and on every page that is the only positive thing. He even specifies that that little goodness or kindness of one for another is a goodness without witnesses. That goodness escapes all ideology: he says that ‘it could be described as goodness without thought.’ Why without thought? Because it is goodness outside all systems, all religions, all social organizations. Gratuitous, that goodness is eternal.

(Levinas 1999a, p. 108)

Levinas’ characterization of the little goodness helps to provide a context in which to perceive the nature of blessing, that it cannot be the tool of systems of totality whether they are political, social, or even ecclesial. Blessing remains within the realm of “the kingdom of a non-thematizable God” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 52). This means that the age of love of the Father’s Kingdom is beyond Being, beyond any “history of Being”, and is to be found in “The Good”, otherwise than being and “before being” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, pp. 52, 122). For Burggraeve, this is enunciated as the grace or small goodness of blessing.

Burggraeve explains that “God appears as grace for humans” in the encounter of grace and blessing. He writes as follows:

What I, as a human, experience from the ‘other’ as grace is the ethical dedication and commitment of that other. When the other—God, but also my fellow human beings—turns toward me out of their ethical movement and solidarity, I experience this as great grace and blessing whereby—in spite of myself—I find love. Because and through this love, I gain my self-esteem and self-worth, or stronger still, I receive my utterly positive uniqueness.

(Burggraeve 2020b, p. 214)

An example of such “solidarity” is the greeting of “Hello”, which manifests as a commitment to the little goodness of blessing: to be the leaven in the world (Matt 13:33) seeking to pronounce ethics and grace, and love and truth together in the redeeming time of Christ’s proclamation to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Such light of perfection (such as giving hospitality to people we find difficult and challenging) creates spaces for God’s word to renew life, to be a “new Creation” in Christ (2 Cor 5:17), to “Let light shine out of darkness” (2 Cor 4:6). Burggraeve derives his appreciation of the benediction/blessing of the greeting “Hello” from Levinas writings, noting the following:

‘Otherwise than being’ takes on a positive form in the responsibility for the other that spans over an entire spectrum of “works” (HO [Humanism of the Other] 26), starting from first benediction of saying “hello” (bonjour) (AT [Alterity and Transcendence] 98) and the “small élan of courtesy” of “the ‘après vous’ [after you] before an open door up to the disposition—hardly possible, but holiness demands it—to die for the other” (IRB [Is It Righteous to Be. Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas] 47): respect and recognition of the irreducible otherness of the other (justice in the broad sense) (TI [Totality and Infinity An Essay on Exteriority] 72), proximity and goodness full of insatiable desire (HO 30), not letting the other alone in the hour of death (EI [Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo] 119), “the very perfection of love” (IRB 58).

(Burggraeve 2020a, p. 445)

Burggraeve therefore finds much significance in Levinas’ assertion that, “All encounter begins with a benediction, contained in the word ‘hello’” (Levinas 1999a, p. 98), A simple courtesy that can take the form of blessing is programmatic for inviting grace into the life of the conscience. This is because the extraordinary force of love (and grace) signifies “perfection” in the benediction of hello, a little goodness and the maternity of compassion to bring light (a sparkle of grace) and affirm life for the other. Moving towards a spiritual and Christian theological perspective, the blessing of a simple “Hello” acts in a way to encounter the Spirit’s fresh air (Jn 20:22), of the Resurrection and Pentecost, to give thanks to God “with my whole heart” (Ps 86: 12). The act of blessing therefore touches upon the affectivity of the conscience to imagine, like Jesus, the world anew and otherwise, giving the conscience the very “ability to imagine” (Kelly 2006, pp. 182, 185). Kelly explains as follows: “The ability to imagine is what makes and keeps us human. It gives our lives momentum, direction and shape, moulding our existence into something passionate, defiant, and creative. This is the ability to see the world “otherwise” (Kelly 2006, p. 185) and to invite God into the world of the conscience entreating, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts” (Ps 139:23).

The little goodness, blessing, and greeting of “Hello” may even be reserved for an evildoer. Jesus’ teaching, “Do not resist an evildoer” (Matt 5:39), is appealing because it challenges the conscience to listen to “your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:45) with the “ear” of faith (1 Cor 2:9): “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt 5:45). The conscience signifies the gravity of love to give a little goodness and benediction of mercy and compassion. Speaking or dialoguing with one’s enemies is not easy. The difficulty begins in resistance and aversion. Hence, a greeting like “Hello” or “Here I am” (Ex 3:4) forms as a blessing to signify the priority of the good over evil, to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44).

Looking at the teaching to “Love your enemies”, the act of blessing can seem provocative because it may invite a sense of hypocrisy. However, entertaining a small vice of hypocrisy may have an ethical appeal. This is not the “narrow” hypocrisy exemplified in the “television series”, “Keeping up Appearances”, where the “ludicrous self deceit” and “innocuous form” of hypocrisy comes from “self-image”: “The hilarious Hyacinth, whose name is actually Bucket, but who insists on it being pronounced Bouquet, goes to great ends to gain acceptance in higher circles, or rather, to be considered by those around her as belonging to the better classes” (Vanlaere et al. 2019, pp. 60–61). In contrast to this beguiling hypocrisy, there is a “form of relational and social hypocrisy” (Vanlaere et al. 2019, p. 61) utilized to conceal one’s thoughts and feelings. Here, such hypocrisy is called “broad” and “mild” because it is “a form of hypocrisy that is characterised by mildness and generosity toward others, with the intention of not being too confrontational in relating to them. This kind of hypocrisy is used in order not to hurt people or to embarrass them intentionally” (Vanlaere et al. 2019, pp. 60–61). Such “misleading” becomes “acceptable” because of “the aim of making continued co-existence with the other possible” (Vanlaere et al. 2019, p. 61).

The point here is that we do not want to live in a naive world in which we say or do what we think all the time (Vanlaere et al. 2019, p. 61). This would make life unliveable. Hence, the conscience works with a small vice of hypocrisy, a little transgression transformed into a little goodness. However, there is a note of caution here. If we live in more an “unreal, false world” of dehumanization where “I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety” (2 Cor 11:28), then even a small fragment of hypocrisy is not going to work and can become harmful. The example of the value and ethical appeal of the small vice of hypocrisy serves to illustrate the importance of employing the theological, philosophical and spiritual imagination of faith. There is room to imagine the world otherwise in the hope that the little goodness of blessing may give light to the darkness of the world even with a soft smile imparting and bestowing a little grace and goodness of humour.

4. Imagining the World Otherwise: Discovering a Little Goodness of Humour

The act of ethical transcendence of responsibility for the other unveils the drama of God’s word resounding in the conscience. Levinas calls ethical responsibility a “difficult freedom” evoking a “liturgy” of responsibility representing an extraordinary force to respond as grace, to acknowledge and respond to “The Other’s hunger—bit of the flesh, or of bread” as “sacred” (Levinas 1990, pp. xiv, 272). To transcend vices into “sacred” times of ethics and grace, of love and truth, any act of ethical transcendence needs the mediating force of the conscience. Such power signifies the prevenience of grace revealed in the light of God’s creation (Gen 1:3). To imagine the world otherwise in terms of moving towards the Kingdom of God is inherently a spiritual task because it speaks of life of the soul, of wisdom endowed even with a little goodness of humour. St. Thomas More captures and gives clarity to this sense in his prayer:

Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humour to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called ‘I’. Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others”.

(Pope Francis 2018, footnote 101)

In contrast to the spiritual acedia stemming from “boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments”, there is the soft smile and light of humour, a gift of warmth and wisdom energising and enlightening the conscience from the depths of the soul and the prevenience of grace:

The way to light is a hopeful way and therefore full of humor. Humor is knowledge with a soft smile. It takes distance but not with cynicism, it relativizes but does not ridicule, it creates space but does not leave you alone. Old people often fill the house with good humor and make the serious businessman, all caught up in his great projects, sit down and laugh. Knowledge with a soft smile is a great gift.

(Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 172)

For Nouwen, the blessing of humour can often be found with the elderly. Humour invites God’s “light” to “shine out of darkness” (2 Cor 4:6) as an inner word stirring the soul with hope. Humour, like love, possesses an “extraordinary power” (2 Cor 4:7) that even helps to give room for the benediction of “hello” to be pronounced like the sparkle of God’s first light of Creation. The invocation of “Hello” can be filled with the humility and “sense of good humor” to help humanity emerge from the depths of darkness and despair, a “formless void” (Gen 1:1) of spiritual acedia.

Nouwen, Naus, and McNeill state, “Humor is a great virtue because it makes you take yourself and your world seriously but never too seriously. It brings death into every moment of life, not as a morbid intruder, but as a gentle reminder of the contingency of things” (Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 173). Sometimes, however, human suffering makes it very difficult to develop a mild humour. Humour works well with irony to break through systems of totality and fear or spiritual states of acedia, for example, by putting into question the seriousness of consistent ideas breeding optimism and indifference, rather than hope and vision. This is because humour reaches the little goodness of the “otherwise than being”, the “diachrony” of responsibility-for-the-other (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 19). Humour with a “soft smile” (Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 172) is like the art-form of God’s word stirring the conscience with the light and sparkle of grace and wisdom. Accordingly, society needs to be built with a little goodness or “otherwise than being” of humour. A little goodness of humour helps the self and community “to respond with responsibility: me, that is, here I am for the others” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 185).

Further, a little goodness of humour helps to break up any form of totality or system consuming the conscience with a threat of “violence” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 185) or the depression of spiritual acedia. The “weakness” and “passivity” of a little goodness of humour is needed to form “the little humanity that adorns the earth” so that people may “tremble or shudder at every instance” for “justice” and compassion (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 185). In other words, the passivity of a little goodness of humour with a “soft smile” pierces through humanity’s glares, stares, and blank faces in a spontaneous, awakening, surprising, or even shocking way, to put into question any impulse of acedia, indolence, fatigue, and boredom that aims and seeks to evade responsibility in response to the weariness of life.

God’s word needs the good sense of humour before a world bent on destruction and despair because it signifies “the little humanity hat adorns the earth” with the “extraordinary force” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1) of love and blessing. To imagine “the world differently” (Kelly 2006, p. 185) by way of humour, and even a little cynicism, yearning for a disruption of totality and evil, the conscience discovers the momentum or sparkle of God’s word proclaiming, “Sleeper, awake!” (Eph 5:14) for “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40). Through such awakening to the extraordinary force of grace, the conscience hears intently Christ’s message to “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” (Lk 14:22). Within the realm of love and grace, a little goodness of humour can be understood also as “an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1). Hence, given that “Love reveals itself as the meaning of life”, there must be room for a little humour to animate love’s “extraordinary force” unveiling the “light” of Creation (Gen 1:3), the light, vision, and blessing that invites care for our brother/sister, neighbour, and the poor.

Altogether, Jesus’ proclamation asks the human conscience to consider the poor as primary in one’s mission and identity. Jesus makes this clear where he proclaims in the Synagogue at Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Lk 4:18–19). These words suggest that the conscience is demanding, making freedom difficult because discipleship is costly. Jesus’ parables and personhood identifies the will of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the concern for the poor as central to the life of the conscience in which ethics unite with grace and love with truth. Possessing further a little goodness of humour in the work of discipleship and mission will bring humility, patience, and freedom (Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 173).

In terms of spiritual theology, the little goodness of humour helps to form paschal depths in the conscience. These kenotic depths of the conscience speak intimately of a law or driving force of the Spirit “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). This impacts precisely upon human freedom to listen to God, to discover the “extraordinary power” (2 Cor 4:7) of God’s word helping the conscience to understand: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:19–20). This signifies further that the conscience needs transformation through wisdom with a “soft smile”, a little goodness of humour to accept the “contingency of things”, that death is brought “to every moment of life” (Nouwen et al. 1974, p. 173), which is the life of prayer.

5. Conclusions: Conscience and Prayer, a Theophanic Event

Theophany is a biblical theme. New Testament examples include the baptism of Jesus (Matt 3: 13–17; Mk 1:9–11; Lk 3:21–22), the Transfiguration (Matt 17:1–8; Mk 9:2–13; Lk 9:28–36), and St. Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:8; Gal 1: 16; Acts 9:3). Encountering God’s light of grace and word appeals to the imagination of Christianity. This is important because these theophanic encounters testify to the witness of “the internalization of faith” (McGrath 2000, p. 99), to be child of God and called to a life of the conscience, to seek the Father’s Kingdom, to discover the face of Christ amid “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” (Lk 14:13). From the baptism of Jesus, the gift of the Spirit becomes a thread throughout Jesus’ life reaching greater revelation in the disciple’s encounter of the risen Jesus to “forgive” and “retain” (uncover) sins (Jn 20:19–23). In the Transfiguration, God’s revelation of Jesus as the Son of God invites a further dialogue to Peter, James, and John in the form of an imperative and teaching, to “listen to him!” (Matt 17:5). Now St. Paul must follow in this tradition to discover the riches of Jesus as the forgiveness of sin as further to listen to him with the eyes and ears of faith.

In the metaxic or in-between, turbulent world of human freedom and obedience to God, the self is thrown into a vision to pass from “decay to transformation” (Kelly 2008, p. 80) in “God’s mercy” (2 Cor 4:1). St. Paul exemplifies this “vertiginous” and “theophanic” encounter of God’s grace and presence in the risen Christ where he writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19) (Kelly 2008, p. 80). St. Paul speaks from the depths of his conscience wherein God’s word pushes him “to the limits of language and expression” (Kelly 2008, p. 80). Pointing to the significance of these depths, Kelly refers to Eric Voegelin’s description of the “theophanic event” (Kelly 2008, p. 80). Voegelin writes as follows:

In its experiential depth, a theophanic event is a turbulence in reality. The thinker who is engulfed by it must try to rise … from the depth to the surface of exegesis. When he comes up he wonders whether the tale he tells is indeed the story of the turbulence of whether he has slanted his account to one or another aspect of the complex event; and he will wonder rightly, because the outcome depends on the interaction of the divine presence and the human response in the depth, as well as the cultural context on the surface that will bias his exegesis toward what appears at the time the most important part of the truth newly discovered.

(Voegelin 1974, pp. 252–53)

The extraordinary force of the conscience forms in the discovery of salvific “grace” (Eph 2:8). A theophanic event of encountering Christ and God’s prevenient grace immerses the soul into a metaxic world between ethics and prayer. The “exegesis” of the encounter is pronounced wherein the extraordinary force of grace is revealed as being “created in Christ Jesus for good works”. Here, withing these depths, the conscience forms as responsibility-for-the-other, the maternity of compassion, and the little goodness, to live out the integral human development of love in truth. Accordingly, within the theophanic event, the conscience encounters “the divine presence” of “In the beginning” (Gen 1:1), the immemorial, anarchic (without origin) time of God revealing the light of God’s creation, an Edenic realm to grow and labour with God, to discover the presence of God animating new life in the risen Christ. Levinas describes the anarchic, immemorial encounter of God as “an immemorial past without a present” which “is named God” (Levinas 1998a, p. 136). This is the “otherwise than being”, the realm of the little goodness and Kingdom of God, signifying “a past more ancient than every representable origin, a preoriginal and anarchical past” (Levinas 1996, pp. 115–16).

To discern the enigma and mystery of God, the self needs to orient the theophanic encounter in prayer, lest it transforms into “‘egophanic’ projections of either a dogmatic or pragmatic type” (Kelly 2008, p. 81). An egophanic projection is a reaction to escape the experience of God by becoming “closed in on itself”. In such darkness, the self seeks to represent and thematize the egophanic state in terms of power and control, thereby falling into the false transcendence of idolizing its own experience. Kelly notes, “As a result, the glory on the face of Christ becomes a mirror-image of self-projective ego” (Kelly 2008, p. 81). In Levinasian terms, the self reduces the theophanic event to “its own initiative”, and does not understand the depths of the conscience of being “bound in a knot that cannot be undone in a responsibility for others” because “the oneself is provoked as irreplaceable, as devoted to others, without being able to resign, and this as incarnated in order to offer itself, to suffer and to give” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 105).

Hence, the self needs the time of prayer to acknowledge and digest the “exegesis” of the theophanic encounter with God, which is essentially a call to a life or “fulcrum” of “the soul, which in ethical metaphysical terms speaks of the sensibility of vulnerable maternity” (compassion): “Being torn from oneself for another in giving to the other the bread from one’s mouth is being able to give up one’s soul for another” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, pp. 78–79). The essence of prayer is to spend time talking to God, to meet and greet God, to understand the Father’s Kingdom, how it is new and near in Christ’s proclamation of love in truth, of his witness of the beatitudes to be poor in spirit, to be gentle, to inherit the earth, and to seek righteousness (Matt 5:3,5,10). The essence of prayer then lends itself on to the extraordinary force of grace in the conscience to orient the self to interpret and respond to God’s word, “to give up one’s soul for another”. Pope Francis explains, “You too need to see the entirety of your life as a mission. Try to do so by listening to God in prayer and recognizing the signs that he gives you” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 23). The conscience aids the “recognition” and discernment of signs by to judging “to what extent our life is being transformed in the light of mercy” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 105).

To respond to the theophanic encounter of prayer through “the light of mercy”, the self needs, as it were, an eschatological hunger and thirst for God (Matt 5:3). Such hunger speaks of the need for God in and through the depths of life wherein the human affectivity of justice, mercy, and compassion can be formed and transformed by the prevenience of grace. Here, in and through prayer, from the stirring depths of God’s grace in the conscience, the self learns to approach the Kingdom of God. In this journey, the self learns how to pronounce the word of God in the action of the little goodness, the leaven of the Kingdom of God (Matt 13:33). This is because the conscience arises in the self to appreciate the significance of the gifts of truth and love: “Truth—which is itself gift, in the same way as charity—is greater than we are, as Saint Augustine teaches. Likewise the truth of ourselves, of our personal conscience, is first of all given to us” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 34).

As the conscience faces moments of God’s truth, of the Kingdom of God, in turbulence and/or silence, the self begins to rise out of the moments and temptations of spiritual acedia towards God’s word of grace. In this way, the conscience unveils itself as an extraordinary force because it has been animated by the theophanic experience of prayer. The conscience has felt the challenges of indolence, fatigue, boredom, and/or self-interest making one indifferent to goodness and truth and has sought God beyond in the little goodness of prayer. God’s awakening grace reveals a creative and redeeming light in which the conscience takes expression. A prayerful disposition of the conscience will seek then to articulate love and truth, and ethics and grace together, acknowledging the other with growing understanding, intelligence, sensitivity, imagination, and compassion. This means that prayer overflows as responsibility and care for the neighbour’s struggles, outrage, disappointments, and sufferings. Here, through prayer, the conscience learns to pronounce “charity in truth” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1), the freedom to say “Yes” to God and acknowledge human existence in which “the wisdom of love [is] at the service of love” (Levinas [1998] 1999b, p. 162).

Prayer, the turn to “God’s love” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 79), invites a theophanic horizon for the conscience to grow and mature through grace. The conscience discovers freedom in God to encounter truth and the workings of love. Pope Benedict states in his opening paragraph to Caritas in Veritate: “Each person finds his good by adherence to God’s plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6)” (Pope Benedict XVI 2009, no. 1). The conscience therefore seeks the good of the other. The good is tested through prayer orienting an ethical life of humility and conviction so that the person of faith can find an inheritance in love in truth: forgiveness out of charity and love for others. Love is defining where the conscience expresses itself through prayer, through “adherence to God’s plan”.

To grow in holiness and boldness, prayer acts in a way to give form to ethical transcendence through God’s awakening presence and grace. In other words, prayer invites an approach to imagine the world otherwise with the boldness (“parrhesia” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 129)) of a little goodness, a spout of maternity lending its motherly eyes to envision hope for a new world. Pope Francis writes, “Trust-filled prayer is a response of a heart open to encountering God face to face, where all is peaceful and the quiet voice of the Lord can be heard in the midst of silence. In that silence, we can discern, in the light of the Spirit, the paths of holiness to which the Lord is calling us” (Pope Francis 2018, no.’s 149–150).

The ideal of holiness animates the effort to pursue the good (ethics), to talk to God (prayer). By contrast, the corruption of the self is an entrenched reality animating our existence with temptation, want, and escape. For the conscience to rebel against the clutches of corruption and self-interest upon the heart (Matt 15:18–19) signifies the murmurings of prayer to touch the Edenic realm of God’s immemorial gift of bodiliness, to see through the sight of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:9–10; Isa 64:4), to think and imagine the world otherwise so that, in the pursuit of the good and prayer, the self may hear God’s word in the other’s face (Levinas 1998b, p. 110). Such rattling in the depths of the conscience helps us to rebel against the darknesses of the world, and to encounter in the other’s face a time in which the unhealthy being of the self is put into question. Accordingly, the place of the conscience finds a home in prayer in “moments when you place yourself quietly in the Lord’s presence” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 151). Such prayer fuels discernment in the conscience wherein “the silence of prolonged prayer … enables us better to perceive God’s language, to interpret the real meaning of the inspirations we believe we have received, to calm our anxieties and to see the whole of our existence afresh in his own light. In this way, we allow the birth of a new synthesis that springs from a life inspired by the Spirit” (Pope Francis 2018, no. 171).

Through encountering the theophanic depths of the conscience, the self encounters an awakening. Such ethical sobriety and faith speak of being “inspired by the Spirit”, to “Go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37). This is to see the other/stranger as our brother/sister in need of relational care, justice, and mercy (Burggraeve 2018, pp. 22–23). As opposed to the sobriety of ethical transcendence, the problematic “ego” stares at the world like plastic, cosmetic structures of non-meaning and superfluity, experiences that dampen and trap the spirit into acedia, gloom, and brooding. In and through these haunting murmurs of the horror of existence, the self falls into the anonymity of being, and becomes, as it were, a spectre who walks past those in need. Yet, in spite of such horror, the conscience can be re-vitalised by the extraordinary force of grace. God’s presence and word enter the drama of being even in its horror to awaken a moment of goodness. John Donne writes in his Holy Sonnet XIV and prayer, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you, As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend” (Donne 1633, Sonnet XIV). God’s word of grace batters our heart in the approach of our brother/sister stranger so that we can encounter her/his pain. In prayer, in silence, or talking to God about the other’s pain, the heart becomes vulnerable to the light of God. In prayer to God, the conscience out of the depths of the battered heart waits for God’s surprise to transcend the horror of the loss of the self amidst the madness of conflicts of race, religion, region, and language.

To conclude, a spiritual theology of the conscience provokes the world to think and imagine otherwise. The extraordinary force of grace in the conscience invites a little healing, a small goodness of blessing, humour, and prayer to oppose any idolization or contamination of the idea of redemption as an omnipotent, totalizing Christian narrative of “stumbling blocks” making impossible demands on the “little ones” (Matt 18:6). Levinas’ philosophy has helped to bring out the diachronic and immemorial character of grace as the blessing of the little goodness, the invincible presence of God’s word in the conscience orienting the being of the self into a greater sense of ethical transcendence. God’s word, working in the depths of the soul, affects the life of the conscience to be for-others: spontaneous in faith, hopeful in encountering the other’s face of suffering, and vigilant in love. To encounter God’s light shining out of darkness, to understand the conscience, one must come therefore to speak a language of humility (Matt 18:4, 23:12) and grace, instead of omnipotence. Humility helps to revitalise the conscience with blessing, humour, and a prayerful stance towards a future of grace. Humility nurtures the self to be like a child of the “kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3) awaiting to be formed and ruptured into a deeper seeing and hearing, into the creativity, productivity, labour, and a liturgy of life and responsibility. In a final word, “the riddle” of “human existence” is answered in the spiritual journey towards listening and responding to the conscience, to the “intuition” and prayerful disposition of one’s “heart” (Pope Paul VI 1965, no. 18) revealing the extraordinary force of God’s grace.