During the last decades, many currents of thought have emerged that promote the elevation of the human being through different disciplines whose intention is to generate spiritual self-sufficiency, taking advantage of the legitimate human nature of spiritual longing. This group of various disciplines is commonly referred to as “New Age” ideologies.
An adequate Christian discernment of New Age thought and practice cannot fail to recognize that, it represents something of a compendium of positions that the Church has identified as heterodox. Saint John Paul II warned us with regard to the “return of ancient gnostic1 ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practicing gnosticism – that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words…”2 (Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life, §1.4)
People feel the Christian religion no longer offers them something they really need. The search which often leads people to the New Age is a genuine yearning: for a deeper spirituality, for something which will touch their hearts, and for a way of making sense of a confusing and often alienating world.
Any problems there are with New Age are to be found in what it proposes as alternative answers to life’s questions. If the Church is not to be accused of being deaf to people’s longings, her members need to do two things: to root themselves ever more firmly in the fundamentals of their faith, and to understand the often-silent cry in people’s hearts, which leads them elsewhere if they are not satisfied by the Church. There is also a call in all of this to come closer to Jesus Christ and to be ready to follow Him, since He is the real way to happiness, the truth about God and the fulness of life for every man and woman who is prepared to respond to his love. (Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life, §1.5)
We can clearly identify these ideologies by their way of promoting a higher state of consciousness or trying to improve our health through their methods, whether through “energy therapies”, “energy balancing”, “bioenergetics” or “awakening the intelligence of our organs” among others.
Let us remember that our Lord Jesus Christ is the way, and the truth and the life, no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven except through Him (John 14:6). Let us lift our spirits through fervent prayer and be one with our Lord through communion every time we come to Mass.
1 Gnosis: in a generic sense, it is a form of knowledge that is not intellectual, but visionary or mystical, thought to be revealed and capable of joining the human being to the divine mystery.
2 John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, (Knopf) 1994, 90