"The first school of spirituality that directed my living of Christian faith from my earliest years was a "spirituality of devotion". I do not intend this term disparagingly, as if it were a spirituality concerned only with externals. No, as a follower of that school, I believed deeply in an "inner life", a life of grace that somehow involved a participation in the life of God; but this inner life was fostered largely by external, devotional works of piety. The problem, as I see it now, was that I gave so much attention to the activities that nourished and strengthened that life that I had little time (or at least gave little time) to reflecting on that inner life itself and what it meant. A crude way of putting it would be to say that I spent so much time trying to do the things that would please God that I had no time left to be with God. It is fair to say that one of the principal emphases in the "spirituality of devotion" was the doing of certain things (especially devotional things) that were considered to be pleasing to God."
William H Shannon "Silence on Fire"
What is devotion? Every religious tradition have practices of devotion. Devotion is more than the simple psychological mechanism of placing an ideal in the heart and mind which we can then strive for. There is much more to it than that. The act of devotion is a transforming power itself. It creates changes deep within. However, getting caught up in the many practices of devotion as seemingly the way to please or get the attention of the one devoted to can become a trap for the unwary. Devotion to the many external practices of devotion can become a way of life that takes one out of the cycle of life intended by God for our spiritual growth and well-being.
As William Shannon points out in "Silence on Fire", in our church there can be many well-intended devotional practices. Mass and reconciliation are two in themselves, and there is nothing wrong with mass and reconciliation. We can also participate in the many "nine first Fridays", and then make them over again and again, just to be safe. We can have special devotions to the Sacred Heart, Marian devotions, novenas for special occasions. And then we can devote ourselves to the many devotions that are contained in prayer cards that we have accumulated for that purpose.
Often times, when we fail to meet our need for these accumulated devotional practices, we may feel a sense of guilt or missing the mark on God's expectations for us. The process of doing all these practices of devotion in the past, has been referred to as "getting my prayers in".
Stop! Let's examine what is happening. The very thing that has been designed to bring us into one with God and one with one another can become the excuse for not connecting with God and with others in our community of faith. These practices can become the very reasons to become disengaged from the process of reaching out to others and building dynamic engaged faith communities. The devotional practices in themselves will not do this.
William Shannon continues: "What I want to point out most of all is that there is behind this mode of spirituality a mentality, subtle, perhaps often unconscious, that needs to be seriously questioned. It is the tacit assumption that, if I did all these "religious things", God is most certainly bound to be pleased with me and will take good care of me. It is a kind of subtle Pelagianism (the heresy of salvation through works) which pointed out ways of winning God's good favor, of making points with God, as it were. It was as if we all started out neutral and then had to prove ourselves to God. The principal way in which we "proved ourselves" was by doing these various devotional things that for some mysterious reason, God is supposed to find pleasing. It was always a puzzle to me why nobody ever seemed to ask why it was that my "getting my prayers in" was so pleasing to God."
God only wants us. God wants an intimate relationship of love with us where we involve Him in our day-to-day adventures of life. When God is present, all of our actions are holy. When God is present, we experience a joy and freedom that places on our heart something that we wish to share with others. It is in this way that God's Kingdom is made visible to the world so much in need of it.
Very important to all of us are our times of quiet, silence and stillness to allow God to break into our otherwise busyness. Devotional practices can be those times of quiet, silence and stillness for this purpose. But if they only add to and perpetuate our otherwise busy and distracted lives, then they may become an obstacle to the Grace that God intends for us.
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