“La teología pide ser hecha en un contexto de fe cristiana vivida, es decir, de fe, oración y compromiso evangelizador”, asegura el profesor de la Universidad de Navarra Antonio Aranda
"Theology must be done in a context of lived Christian faith, that is, of faith, prayer and evangelizing commitment," says Antonio Aranda, professor at the University of Navarra.
"Theology needs to be done in a context of faith and prayer. No great theologian has received directly from dogmatics the dynamism of his own theological thought, but its root has been, above all, the holiness received and lived in the bosom of the spirituality to which he belonged". This is how Antonio Aranda, professor of the department of Dogmatic Theology of the University of Navarra, expressed himself on the occasion of a seminar of professors organized by the School of Theology on the topic 'The theology and the spiritual experience of the saints. Around the teaching of St. Josemaría Escrivá'.
In this sense, the expert bet on the "mutual and necessary reference letter between theology and spiritual life". The spiritual life sharpens the intelligence of the believer and allows him to penetrate into the truth contemplated with greater depth. The theological reflection that an author makes on faith is necessarily related to his staff Christian experience, and his development is never completely separable from that origin".
Thus, he insisted that "in the theological system of an author one penetrates not only through the logical coherence of his constructions or the plausibility of his conclusions, but also thanks to the knowledge of the fundamental intuitions that are at the basis of his spiritual life".
In the same way, Professor Aranda referred to how the great saints - "men and women that God gives from time to time to his Church, placing them as luminaries in her midst" - also constitute for theology "a new explanation of revelation, an enrichment of doctrine, a deepening of truths that perhaps had been less considered until then".
"Although they were not theologians, their person, their existence and their teaching can be considered as a living Gospel, capable of innovating and invigorating in certain aspects not only life but also Christian thought," he said. By way of example, he mentioned, among others, the case of St. Teresa of Jesus or St. Catherine of Siena, doctors of the Church.
He also added that, "understood and assimilated in connection with the mission statement that God entrusted to them, and meditated on core topic both spiritually and theologically, the teachings of the saints constitute a true transfusion of Christian vitality, useful also for an adequate renewal of theological concepts".
Finally, Antonio Aranda outlined several lines of work on the impulse that theology receives in the light of St. Josemaría Escrivá. group In this regard, he recalled a suggestion made by the then Cardinal Ratzinger to a group of theologians working on this question: "To analyze the accentuated and singular Christocentrism of St. Josemaría, in which the contemplation of the earthly life of Jesus and the contemplation of his living presence in the Eucharist lead to the finding of God and to the illumination, from God, of the circumstances of daily life. From this nucleus derives a whole theological understanding of man, of the world and of history, as is attested to in a precise and incisive way in many of St. Josemaría's texts.
Professor Aranda concluded that "this concrete Christocentric anthropology, when projected -from the Christian intelligence, formed by such spiritual and moral categories- on the whole of the Christian message, provides enlightening ideas for theology, that is, it allows to establish operative keys of interpretation and development useful for theological reflection".