Sensing the Spirit: Towards the Future of Religious Life by Judith A. Merkle is an important call for men and women religious today to consider anew the role of the Spirit at work in their charism and communities. Taking up the call from the Second Vatican Council to discern the Spirit at work amid the “signs of the times,” Merkle documents our contemporary reality as one of secularity and argues that secularity must be the “signs of the times” that guide religious today.
The book’s chapters offer tools for religious to understand the challenges and opportunities of our secular age and find where the Spirit is calling religious to live their charisms anew. Chapter 1 turns to the seminal work of Charles Taylor, who documents how religious belief is one among many options and often not the most popular. This calls religious congregations to discern the Spirit at work amid changing personal, social, and cultural context. Chapter 2 documents shifts in the niche religious have occupied throughout Christian history according to shifts in the greater cultural context. Asking how religious might imagine religious life anew, chapter 3 concludes that religious serve as a bridge between the secular and sacred, points to how one might live a religiously focused lifestyle, offers examples of how to become holy and find fullness, and in doing so therefore witnesses to what matters in life.
Chapter 4 suggests that religious vows offer a model of freedom that call all to conversion—intellectual, moral, religious, affective—all components of a greater Christian conversion. Given the hungers that each of us have, documented clearly in chapter 5, religious offer a path to meet each with a fullness of life. Finally, chapter 6 argues that through communal discernment, religious can manifest the virtues of faith, hope, and love in our secular world.
One of the assets of this book is its consistent dialogue throughout with social theory and the social sciences. This models the call at the beginning of the book for religious to discern the signs of the times. For religious communities trying to discern their own niche in our world today, Merkle efficiently invites readers into a clear analysis of our social imaginary.
Despite the clarity of concision in which Merkle describes this social imaginary, it may remain difficult for some whom, she argues, may associate discerning the Spirit at work in their congregations with bad memories or who may be discouraged with congregational diminishment. Merkle’s turn to the ice plant is a helpful antidote: she describes a plant that has been able to be flexible and adapt despite some of the harshest environmental conditions; indeed, the plant Merkle contends has found its own niche. This image is important for religious communities trying to digest and live into the social imaginary (Taylor’s concept for a group’s imagined collective social contexts) as they practice communal discernment to find the Spirit at work. How might they too be like this plant: flexible, adaptable, and indeed able to thrive in some of the harshest concerns?
As noted, this book is ambitious and offers tremendous tools for religious communities today. At the same time, religious might find it challenging to allow the book’s rich resources to move beyond the intellectual to the affective, which might limit how one receives the Spirit at work today. Because the book seeks to offer universal tools for religious congregations, superiors might find it helpful to offer reflection questions grounded in their particular charism, history, experience of the vows, et cetera to help members move from their head to their heart. Another strategy might be to connect the text to explicit reflections from Scripture and the life and ministry of Jesus as religious imagine and review their own ministry in life of our secular social imaginary.
In conclusion, Sense of the Spirit should be commended for clearly seeing our social imaginary as a challenging opportunity, but as an opportunity nonetheless. Religious men and women can use this book to respond to this challenge through their charism today, calling not just their particular congregation, but all people of good will, to the new opportunities offered by the Spirit today.
