We Apastelinos believe that to be a wholesome human person is to have a relationship with the divine. This relationship cannot be limited to just following laws and religious precepts, but it is about personal connection. Just as personal connection cannot be done sporadically, but must be maintained constantly on a daily basis, personal relationship with the divine demands the same. Our Club encourages its members to find their own “prayer niche,” whatever they feel comfortable, so they can have an open “communication line” with their spiritual life.
The spirituality principle helps Apastelinos to seek out the divine, because without a personal relationship with the divine, social justice and personal wholeness cannot be accomplished.
Some examples of spiritual practices:
Which category do Apastelinos fall under?
FALSE “SAINT”
The “perfection” of the holy one is something that reassures his neighbors by confirming them in their own prejudices, and by enabling them to forget what is lacking in their own communal morality. It makes them all feel that they are “right,” that they are on the right way, and that God is “satisfied” with their collective way of life. Therefore nothing needs to be changed. But anyone who opposes this situation is wrong. The sanctity of the “saint” is there to justify the complete elimination of those who are “unholy” – that is those who do not conform.
TRUE SAINT
One of the first signs of a saint may well be the fact that other people do not know what to make of him. In fact they are not sure whether he is crazy or only proud; but it must at least be pride to be haunted by some individual ideal which nobody but God really comprehends. And he has inescapable difficulties in applying all the abstract norms of “perfection” to his own life. He cannot seem to make his life fit in with the books.
Sometimes his case is so bad that no monastery will keep him. He has to be dismissed, sent back to the world like Benedict Joseph Labre, who wanted to be a Trappist and a Carthusian and succeeded in neither. He finally ended up as a tramp. He died in some street in Rome.
And yet the only canonized saint, venerated by the whole Church, who has lived either as a Cistercian or a Carthusain since the Middle Ages is St. Benedict Joseph Labre.
- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p.102-103