Advent Enthusiasms and Idiosyncracies (5) Bernard Lonergan and Faith Maps

Last Christmas I was given a book by a friend who knows me well enough to make good choices about books. Faith Maps by Michael Paul Gallagher is about ten religious explorers from within the Catholic tradition. I read it slowly earlier this year and have revisited one or two chapters again during Advent. The chapter on Bernard Lonergan opens up a remarkable mind, and hints at the intellectual precipices Lonergan scaled in pursuit of a way of knowing that did not invalidate religious truth. He insisted honest enquiry must pay due attention to the actual experience of human knowing, deliberate attentiveness to what goes on inside us when we pay attention, seeking the insight that comes from looking critically inside, pursuing the discovery of oneself in oneself so that the authentic self can be exposed to the truth encountered in God.

But it is the end of the chapter that glows with Advent hopefulness, as Gallagher puts into Lonergan's mouth an interpretation of the Magnificat that is the distilled essence of Lonergan's view that passionate love for God, born of God's love for the world, is what gives life its meaning, purpose and worth:

As we look back on our lives we see that "in the whole outward and upward movement of our heart, God was active. But when we come to recognise this, and to speak to the Artist of our love in prayer, a new situation comes to birth. 'This complete being in love is the reason of the heart that reason does  not know.' It is the eye of faith that sees everything differently, life and death, joy and tragedy, the struggles of history; all is now the theatre of God's call and companionship.

Here the Magnificat becomes magnificently true. God has done great things, meeting our deepest hungers. All is God's doing. We walk in the flow of divine creativity, even when we think it is all our own doing. God's promise is received and fulfilled in the slowness of our daily learning. At the peak of our freedom the music changes; it is no longer our effort that counts but our yes of recognition, of gratitude, and of an authenticity that is not ours. Yes, faith, born from love and giving birth to love, is the God intended crown of our long journey towards a fullness here and hereafter."

(Pages 76-77)