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1	Self-Emptying Love: Kenosis as a Framework for Sacraments and the Church Burke, Thomas F. January 2014 (has links) Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / Contemporary religious believers tend to conceive of the sacraments as objective expressions of grace distinct from their ritual enactment and often exclusive of ethical obligations. Ecclesial structures have reinforced these understandings by associating the sacraments with Christological interpretations that diminish the active participation of Christians in worship by emphasizing Christ's eminence and power. By highlighting Christ's self-emptying love in the act of kenosis, I argue for new Christological understandings to support ongoing liturgical and ecclesial renewal. My research explores two major areas: the resurgence of sacramental theology after Vatican II, especially within the work of Chauvet, and the rise of a critical theology of the cross in the writings of Jürgen Moltmann and its kenotic implications for the church. By bringing together these two areas, I argue for an alternative sacramental framework that combines internal conceptions of grace with outward expressions of meaning that bear fruit in liturgical inculturation and acts of solidarity. This dissertation begins with a study of the liturgical renewal following Vatican II and its world-wide implementation. I pay special attention to the development of postconciliar liturgical renewal in light of the principle of active participation (actuosa participatio) in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and examine the relationship of structuralist approaches to liturgy to Christology. In chapter two, I explore sources for Christology that point to fresh understandings about the nature and person of Christ and the work of salvation. In chapters three and four, I present a thorough study of the work of Louis-Marie Chauvet on the sacraments, and Jürgen Moltmann on the cross. In doing so, I construct a relationship between sacraments and Christology centered on Christ's kenosis as a means of supporting ongoing liturgical and ecclesial renewal. In the final chapter, I explore how kenotic Christology can shape our understanding of the liturgy and contribute to greater inculturation in worship and acts of solidarity in the world. I conclude by proposing new ways to think about the liturgy that may become the ground for future ecclesial transformation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology. Kenosis Self-Emptying Love Systematics
2	A promise kept: the mystical reach through loss Collins, Jody 04 October 2019 (has links) The meaning of loss is love. I know this through attention to experience. Whether loss or love is experienced in abundance or in absence, the meaning is mystical with an opening of body, mind, heart and soul to spirit. And so, in the style of a memoir, in the way of contemplative prayer, I contemplate and share my soul as a promise kept in the mystical reach through loss. With the first, initiating loss, the loss of my nine-year-old nephew, Caleb, I experience an epiphany that gives me spiritual instructions that will not be ignored. I experience loss as an abundance of meaning that comes to me as gnosis, as “knowledge of the heart” according to Elaine Pagels or divine revelation in what Evelyn Underhill calls mystical illumination in the experience of “losing-to-find” in union with the divine. Then, with gnostic import, in leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary, I enter the empty room in the painful yet liberating experience of the loss of my self. In the embrace of emptiness, I proceed to the first wall, the second wall, the third wall, the dark corner of denial, the return to centre, and, finally, to breaking the fourth wall in the empty room so as to keep my promise to you. Who are “you”? You are God. You are Caleb. You are spirit. You are my higher soul or self. And, you are the reader. You are my dear companion in silence. And then, through a series of broken promises and more loss, within what John of the Cross calls, “the dark night of the soul,” I am stopped by the ineffability of the dark corner of denial, the horror of separation and the absence of meaning, which is depicted as the grueling gap between the spiritual abyss and the breakthrough. What does it mean to keep going through a solemn succession of losses? I don’t know. In going into the empty room, I simply put pain to work in order to reach you. Through loss, though there are infinite manifestations, there is only one way: keep going. And so, in a triumph of the spirit, I keep going so as to be: a promise kept in the mystical reach through loss. As for you, through my illumined and dark experiences of loss, what is my promise to you? I keep going to reach the unreachable you. In the loss of self, with embodied emptiness, in going into the dark corner of denial, with a return to the divine centre of my emptied self, in an invitation to you, I give my soul to you in union with you. / Graduate / 2020-06-25 mystic mysticism apophatic cataphatic mystical mystical reach a promise kept empty promise broken promise reverence epiphany losing-to-find gnosis loss union divine will parsing perfection Caleb Lanz put pain to work wholehearted emptiness the empty room first wall second wall third wall dark corner of denial stonewall breaking the forth wall return to centre Promised Land abyss gap standing in the gap void memoir contemplative prayer contemplation everywhere and nowhere revelation illumination ineffable ineffability metaphor higher self self-giving self-emptying embodied emptiness higher soul spirit the dark night of the soul mystical union God breakthrough infinity infinite dynamism spiritual instruction invitation to spirit paradox symbol eulogy spiritual eyes spiritual heart looking into the slow reveal remaining sudden I am everywhere and nowhere what is what ought to be what can be what will be what is as it already is on earth as it is in heaven no-self unknown spirituality

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Self-Emptying Love: Kenosis as a Framework for Sacraments and the Church

A promise kept: the mystical reach through loss