Christocentrism of Charism – Buggert - CarmelStream

There is also an economics to silence, solitude and prayer. They too are financially worthless
and hence are a prophetic denunciation of the commodity form. clxxxvii Silence and solitude are filled
with risks, for they reveal our needfulness and inner poverty, which are so strongly denied by the
commercialism and materialism of the commodity form. Silence and solitude are hopelessly
unmarketable. clxxxviii Prayer is an act of interiority which demands that we extricate ourselves from
patterns of behavior which are normative for the commodity form of existence; prayer involves being
present to God and hence to our true identity as persons; prayer is an attack against the fraudulence
of mere roles demanded by the commodity form; it is a centering in "being" rather than the "having"
of the commodity form. Prayer is a de-commodification of our lives and a reappropriation of our
personhood. clxxxix
Silence, solitude and prayer play also another role in our spiritual battle. These three
typically desert values of Carmel make us attentive to the gratuitousness of God's love in our lives,
dispose us to recognize that God is present in all things, purify our approach to others of the
commodity tendency to impose an alien will on them and thus enable a true and full encounter with
our neighbor. cxc Silence, solitude and prayer are the "stuff" which produces mystical prophets.
Because the prophet "tastes" the divine presence, he/she can also taste its absence in history, the
commodity form. It is this awareness of the divine absence which caused the prophet to denounce
the old, the reign of Satan, and announce the new, the Reign of God. Silence, solitude and prayer are
the school of Elijahn prophets. cxci
Community too is a counter-cultural form of spiritual combat. The original hermits of
Carmel contextualized their walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ by embracing the ideal vision of
the Jerusalem community. Albert's formula of life spells out this communitarian vision in terms of a
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