Originally published at crisis magazine
St. Angela of Foligno was a wife and mother before she became one of the greatest mystics in the Church. She called prayer “The School of Divine Loving,” or Schola Divini Amoris, because it is the place where selfishness is cast aside in order to practice what she called Divine Loving—in other words, the same sort of loving with which God loves us.
Throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s divine, selfless, unconditional loving in action. Throughout the New Testament, we see this same Divine Loving in action once again through His Son, Jesus Christ. The message is quite simple: it is only by practicing this Divine Loving in what St. Angela of Foligno called “The School of Divine Loving” that we can be united with Jesus Christ and then—in, with, and through Him—with the Father.
Sadly, this selfless Divine Loving was extracted from Catholic Spirituality and, therefore, selfishness was eventually institutionalized in Synodality.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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In perennial Catholic spirituality, Systematic Theology, which taught how to come to know God with the mind, was always taught hand-in-glove with Mystical Theology, which taught how to practice Divine Loving in
