Spiritiality, as defined in the context of the Eight Virtues, has a somewhat different meaning that one might typically assign to the word:

Spirituality…is the concern with one’s inner being and how one deals with truth, love, and courage. It is also the awareness of the love that unites one’s own inner being to those around one.

I have been slowly aggregating ideas for a novel in recent months, and at one point I was looking into who the patron saint would be for a monastic order of spacefarers. As it happens, the patron saint of astronauts (and pilots, for that matter) is St. Joseph of Copertino, the “”Flying Friar”. Copertino, as it turns out, is a small city in southern Italy, and St. Joseph was the inspiration for the naming of Cupertino, California.

Now, you might think that a monk gifted with the charism of levitation would have had an easy go of things. Not so St. Joseph; much of his life was an exercise in raw misery, and then from its very beginning:

He was born on June 17, 1603 into a family of poor artisans. Because of his father’s debts, he was born in a shed behind the house, which was in the hands of bailiffs. He was sickly and often at death’s door during his childhood, and at age seven he developed a gangrenous ulcer which was later cured by a religious man. He was always despised by his companions who called him a fool. Even his mother wearied of him and repudiated him for his lack of any human value.

He entered a Capuchin monastery later in life, and that too didn’t turn out well. Annoyed with his ineptitude and his complete lack of attention to his very surroundings, the monks expelled him:

…considering that he was good for nothing, the religious took his habit and expelled him from the monastery. Later, he declared that having the habit taken from him was the greatest suffering of his life and that it was as if his skin had been torn from his body.

When he left the monastery he had lost part of his lay clothes. He was without a hat, boots, or stockings, and his coat was moth-eaten and worn. He presented such a sorry sight that when he passed a stable down the lane, dogs rushed out on him and tore his apparel to worse tatters. He escaped and continued along the road, but soon came upon some shepherds, who thought he was a miscreant and were about to give him a beating, when one of their number had pity on him and persuaded them to let him go free.

And his relationship with his family didn’t improve after that point, either:

He went to the house of his uncle, who, ashamed of him, scolded him and sent him back into the streets with nothing. Reaching his native town, he came to the house of his parents, where his own mother berated him.

And even when he was taken in by the Superior of the Monastery of Grottela, he found little in the way of consolation there. His lack of aptitude for Scriptural interpretation and his unpersonable demeanour ensured that he was relegated to the task of tending the donkeys in the monastery stables. Concerning this period of his life, he wrote: “I complained a lot to God about God. I had left everything for Him, and He, instead of consoling me, delivered me to mortal anguish.”

And yet, in spite of the aforementioned sufferings, St. Joseph persisted in his life of prayer and faith. Then, one day, another monk visited him in his room:

“One day, when I was weeping and wailing in my cell, a religious knocked on my door. I did not answer, but he entered my room and said: ‘Friar Joseph, how are you?’

“‘I am here to serve you,’ I answered.

“‘I thought you did not have a habit,’ he continued.

“‘Yes, I have one, but it is falling apart,’ I responded.

“Then, the unknown religious gave me a habit, and when I put it on, all my despair disappeared immediately. No one ever knew who that religious was.”

From this time on, the life of St. Joseph of Cupertino changed. He became famous for his ecstasies, miracles, and for the gift of levitation, reported by numerous eye-witnesses. He experienced this so often he became known as “the flying Friar.” He began to attract so many pilgrims to the monastery that his superiors had to transfer him from one monastery to another to avoid the commotion. Finally he arrived in Osimo in 1657, where he continued to experience supernatural manifestations of God’s favors daily until he died on September 18, 1663 at age 60.

His tendency to levitate when at prayer even saw him reported to the Inquisition at one point — no end of trouble for St. Joseph!. He was exonerated thereby, mind you, but it goes to show that even in the phase of his life which brought him the most joy, hardships came his way.

Let’s come back to the topic at hand: Spirituality, the concern for one’s inner being and the awareness of the love that unites oneself to others. In St. Joseph of Copertino, we see a man who seemingly had everything stacked against him: he was by all accounts not particularly easy on the eyes, nor particularly intelligent, and at many points in his life could not even maintain a basic level of hygiene. Even when he entered into the latter stage of his life, when his daily prayers and sermons were characterized by miracles and levitation, hardship came his way. And prior to that point in his life, the most he was able to achieve was to be entrusted — barely — with the care and feeding of donkeys.

This is not the typical image of a saint. And yet, Joseph of Copertino was a saint, and in him was to be found a deep wellspring of faith. Faced with every hardship, Joseph continued in his life by directing his concern outward, ultimately toward God, but toward others as well. He extolled and encouraged people to exercise their free will — he called this quality humanity’s “unique possession”:

“Clearly, what God wants above all is our will which we received as a free gift from God in creation and possess as though our own. When a man trains himself to acts of virtue, it is with the help of grace from God from whom all good things come that he does this. The will is what man has as his unique possession”

Joseph of Copertino showed little concern for his outward being, but this is a very distinct thing from the inner being that the Virtue of Spirituality extols; indeed, the inner being can often be at great peace, and in a profound state of well-being, even if the outward being is in a state of advanced decay or illness. Equally, within the Christian context, God (especially as manifested in the Holy Spirit) _is_ the love that unites us with others, and St. Joseph was in constant pursuit of precisely this. Though his image does not precisely match that of the noble _Ultima_ Ranger — woodland warriors and prayerful seekers, they — the Flying Friar nevertheless exemplifies the beauty of a life lived not in pursuit of externals, but in pursuit of the inner life of prayer and hope and the constant acknowledgement of the love that connects each and every human being to one another. Equally, Joseph of Copertino’s life and history demonstrate the close connection between Spirituality and its reciprocal, Humility.

To conclude, I need to offer an apology: I had meant to have this post ready for last Sunday, since it is my custom to author these sorts of reflections during the seasons of Advent (which it is, currently) and Lent. Sadly, the chaos of transitioning between jobs robbed me of the time needed to finish this post, and so I am posting it today instead. Hopefully I will have the second reflection ready to go by next Sunday; bear with me if not!