Ontologische Voraussetzungen der geistlichen Begleitung in gemeinschaftlicher Spiritualität

In the history of spirituality, a way to search for the wisdom facilitating the imitation of wise people’s lives has been developed. This sort of spiritual guidance had been developed by the desert fathers and mothers, in the cloisters, and through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. An important step in the achievement of spiritual guidance is a search for a guide to help the guided person learn to discern the spirits. The discernment of spirits is to help one in selecting the goals and means of one’s activities of self-improvement. Spiritual guidance can be provided by individual men and women, but also by communities. A specific type of communitarian spiritual guidance was developed within the Focolare Movement, founded by Chiara Lubich, who understood God as love. Forsaken Jesus and Jesus who dwells in unity can be considered a foundation of this communitarian spirituality. The mystical experiences of Chiara Lubich in Paradise ‘49 point to the fact that this spirituality is premised upon an ontology, which has been developed into a Trinitarian ontology by Klaus Hemmerle.