In the midst of a hectic life, full of external but above all internal noises, in the maelstrom of social networks where everything moves at breakneck speed and in a world where superficial and in-the-moment relationships prevail, is there space and time? for inner life? Is there space and time for God? How to live the following of Christ in these circumstances?
Juan Antonio Guerrero, SJanswers these questions in the book we are reviewing today. Learn to feel in Christ It is an invitation to think about one’s own life from the point of following Jesus. This supposes a a prioria previous life choice, more or less defined or more or less authentic; I want to say that this book is aimed primarily at every baptized person who wants to renew his Christian life or who seeks a greater commitment to following Jesus.
The approach that our author makes is, at the same time, simple and tremendously suggestive. Throughout these pages there is a magnificent combination of what is most typical of ignatian spirituality condensed in his book of spiritual exercises, which adapts like a glove to the complexity of our world and the men and women of our time. Without giving up anything that is most typical of Christianity, faith in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and lived in the Church, Father Guerrero adapts the rules of discernment proposed by Saint Ignatius so that we can live them in our today. I find this especially important for two reasons. The first, because all spirituality, including Christian spirituality, has a circumstantial part. Whoever develops a form of relationship with God following Christ proposes a path that is determined by his own experience and his time. Now, that spirituality that responds to a certain time by being founded on the Gospel has something permanent that surpasses time and space, and it is Christ himself who always remains.
The second reason is that the forms of spirituality, if they are authentically Christian, respond to the thirst for God that exists in the most intimate part of the human being at any time. What Saint Ignatius lived and left written in his exercises is not part of the history books, but is a living and current experience of God that any person at a given moment can make their own.
Throughout these pages we learn again the value of intimacy with a God who has become one of us, who walks alongside us, who sustains us and shapes us according to his heart.
Learn to feel in Christ
Juan Antonio Guerrero, SJ
2024
