Religion, religiosity and religious experience


RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Mario D’Couto

            A person who goes for Mass every day and who spends time in prayer for a considerable amount of time is no guarantee to show that he or she is a saint. Nobody who commits suicide or dies is called a ‘martyr’. We give credit to people of virtue for the kind of life that they live and this is what takes me to the point of religious experience.

            A religious experience is not a drug – induced state, that is to say, each time one experiences a feeling of being drawn toward religion or feeling good. Such a feeling should never be equated with some sort of spiritual ‘high’, so much so that a person loses touch with reality. The true and genuine meaning of religious experience is to be in love in an unrestricted fashion, we should love everyone without any distinction.

            Mere blind religiosity is useless. Even non – Christian or pagans carry out such things. Religiosity refers to the things done with regard to religion which mostly consists of rituals. The danger of this kind of approach is that we could get lost with the kind of work we are in. We could be doing things without knowing why we are doing such things. It could become just a mere mechanical routine. So how then does one distinguish between religion and religiosity for even in religion we see that a lot of ‘ritualism’ takes place (in a positive sense). Where do we draw the ‘thin red line’ between the two? What is the criteria for true and authentic religious experience that would lead one to a better understanding and a genuine appreciation of one's faith? Here are the words of St. John Marie Vianney which helps shed some light on this particular topic,

“My dear brethren, listen well and you will understand if you have religion as God wants you to have it in order to lead you to Heaven. If a person has true virtue, nothing whatsoever can change him, he is like a rock in the midst of a tempestuous sea. If anyone scorns you, or mocks at you or calls you a hypocrite or a fraud, none of this will have the least effect upon your peace of soul. You will love the offender just as much as you loved him when he was saying good things about you. You will not fail to do him a good turn and to help him, even if he speaks badly of your assistance. You will say your prayers, go to Confession, to Holy Communion, all according to your general custom.”
            To illustrate this point more clearly, here is a story he narrates, “In a certain parish there was a young man who was a model of virtue. He went to Mass everyday and to Holy Communion often. It happened that another man was jealous of him. One day, when both of them were in the company of a neighbour who possessed a lovely gold snuffbox, the jealous man took it from the owner’s pocket and placed it, unobserved, in the pocket of this holy young man. After he did this, without pretending anything, he asked to see the snuffbox. The owner expected to find it in his pocket and was astonished when he discovered that it was missing. No one was allowed to leave the room until everyone had been searched and the snuffbox was found, of course, in the young man’s pocket who was a model of goodness. Naturally, everyone immediately called him a thief and attacked his character, calling him a hypocrite and a fraud. He could not defend himself since the box had been found in his pocket. He said nothing. He suffered it all as something which had come from the hand of God. When he was walking alone the street, when he was coming from the Church, everyone who saw him, jeered at him and called him a hypocrite, a fraud and a thief. This went on for a long time, but inspite of it, he continued with all of his religious exercises, his confession, his communion and all other practices of piety, as though everyone was treating him with the utmost respect. After some years, the man who had been the cause of it all fell ill. To those who were with him, he confessed that he had been the cause of all the evil things which had been said about this young man, who was a saint, and that through jealousy of him, so that he might destroy his good name, he himself had put the snuffbox in the young man’s pocket.”

            This is the kind of true religion that he is talking about. In the Gospel narrations, we see the lives of the Pharisees and Sadducees and why Our Lord would get angry with them. It was not that He hated them as persons; He did not like their attitude. As a saying goes, “God loves the sinner but hates their sins”, the Pharisees were caught up with their ritualistic lives and what was worse was that they sometimes lived ‘double lives’, showing one kind of person, moving around with a mask outside and hiding their true selves. May we learn to appreciate our faith more genuinely and live by it, let us practice religion (our faith) and not religiosity, let us be people of true and authentic religious experience.

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