The following article is a sintesis of the fundamental elements of Latinamerican spirituality which the author sees as centered on Believing as Jesus did.

In recent year the Christians of the subcontinent (South America) have lived a very special spiritual experience, which has strongly influenced our historic way of life and has given us our own spirituality that has become our gift to the world. And all great historic movements, synthesis of ideas, values and meaning come from a spiritual experience based on the profound, like one's own well in which thirst is quenched.

There are many spiritualities in Latin America, ranging from the preVatican II to New Age and including the Kikos, Opus Die and the charismatics... and all kinds of fundamentalists. But all of these, although they have spread here, were born somewhere else outside of Latin America. And there are even more than those that have arrived here. But there is also a genuine Latin American spirituality, which was born and grew here, strengthened by the fertile soil, watered with the blood of martyrs, that has been offered to the world with all of our charisma, charm and peculiar gifts that the Spirit has given us"for common use" (1 Cor 12:7). This is what will be addressed here.

Latin American Spirituality is characterized by placing at the center the historic figure of Jesus, the true Jesus of Nazareth, and believing in him and no other abstraction -Christ Messiah, Son of the Living God, the Word Made Flesh and Blood. Few spiritualities have placed the following of Jesus, his Cause and following throughout history, at the center, as we have.

"Believing today in our world as Jesus believed in the world of Pax Romana: "This means being Christian, a follower of Jesus. And, as such, because it means believing in him we have to act according to the same Spirit, with the "spirituality of the Kingdom". This is what our Latin American Spirituality has tried to do.

I have chosen this title because it expresses well the central issue, the fundamental, which can be systematically broken down in different theological elements. The most emblematic and encompassing symbols are found in faith in Jesus and his passion for the Kingdom.

In these few pages, based primarily on theological categories, I propose questions and offer answers on the fundamental elements of our Latin American Spirituality, the essential elements that make it what it is and without which it would not exist. During times like the present, of revision, insecurity and even superficial repentance, it is good to look for the essential principles, those that hold up the building, without which a genuine Latin American Spirituality would not be sustained.

In this perspective the question we need to ask is What are the fundamental elements of our spirituality that translate today in our way of believing in Jesus?

1. An historic-eschatological structure of the religious

This refers to the structure of religion itself, which, as is well-known, can adopt different concrete forms. In many religions the fundamental is lived according to a moral, such as complying with a divine external will through which salvation is gained. In other cases, religion is fundamentally the acceptance (intellectual and/or experiental) of a revealed truth. In other cases, the exchange between God/child is the ceremony and the offering of goods, in a kindof onthological-culturalist religion. None of these generic forms -common in the universe of religions- correspond to the belief in Jesus, although they do exist in many of the religions that say they are Christian.

To believe in Jesus implies having an historic vision of reality. Jesus had a dynamic concept of time, historic, lineal, not cyclical or closed within itself, but open, lineal, with an alpha and omega, with a perception of God walking before us and opening the future for us to build history.

Today we clearly see -scientifically speaking with Biblical texts in hand- the historic-eschatological character of Jesus' message (as opposed to other classical interpretations), which does not allow one to confuse its following -Christianity- with a moral, a cultual system, a doctrine or a simple juridical membership to a determined religious institution. Jesus' "religion" is a religion with an ethical-prophetic character built on an historical-eschatological structure, not an onthological-cultualist religiosity built on the classic models of religion (God above, human beings below).

The eschatological here alludes to relations between eschatology and history, not juxtaposed or discontinuity's relations, but relations of interpenetration and continuity. Eschatology imbues history allowing it to transcend history, the only form within our reach to be and do eschatology.

"Believe like Jesus" means conceiving reality like history, like a free choice for human beings, fomenting and generating utopia. From any other perspective and from any other reality one can be religious, but one cannot "believe like Jesus". And without this, Latin American Spirituality could not live.

2. God as the God of the Kingdom

Many people believe in God, but there are fewer people who believe in the God of Jesus, or there are fewer people who believe in God like "Jesus believed in God". He did not believe in God removed from history or God as something in itself, a God that is separated from us. Jesus believed in a God that has been talked about as a dual reality: God and Kingdom. God of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. A God without a Kingdom (unfortunately common among Christians) has nothing to do with Jesus faith (or Latin American Spirituality).

If a religious experience or a text (even if it is an ecclesial document) talks about God without talking about the Kingdom it does not reflect Jesus'spirituality (or Latin American Spirituality).

Jesus' God is always a God with a plan, a project, a utopia: God "dreams" of a different, new, renewed world, one worthy of human beings and worthy of God. And this project, this utopia is called - in the words that Jesus himself usedmalkuta Yahve, Kingdom of God.

This Kingdom was the project, dream and utopia of Jesus: the Reason why he lived, what he preached about, what he dreamed, why he took risks, why he was persecuted, arrested, tortured and executed. Jesus was, in effect, a fighter, a "militant", a person with a Cause. This way he believed. A Christianity without the Kingdom as its utopia, without a Cause for which live and die, a Christianity that believes that utopias - or history - have come to an end, has little to do with Jesus. He believed in a very different way.

This Kingdom of God was the center of Jesus' life and preaching. It was his "fundamental option" using a term from modern-day anthropology; his "absolute" in more systematic terms. He knew that "only the Kingdom is absolute, [and that] everything else is relative. "The Kingdom of God (God of the Kingdom) was the unifying center of Jesus' religious experience, of his dreams, of his message and his preaching. This is one of the fundamental features of Jesus' faith, which is why it is troubling to think of a Christianity (and Latin American Spirituality) that consciously or unconsciously proposes something other than the Kingdom as the center of Christianity.

3. Mutual implications between transcendence and immanence

A determined type of relationship between eschatology and history also means a particular relation between transcendence and immanence. For Jesus there are not two histories, two realities, but only one. Transcendence and immanence are dimensions of the one global reality. Salvation is in history and in its process of Liberation towards eschatological fullness.

While the Kingdom is not part of this world (it has its origin in God: "My kingdom is not of this world,"Jn 19:36), it is among us showing its liberating processes ("But if I cast out the devils by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you" Mt 12:28) at different levels and in different fields. All of the liberation that we experience shows the action of the anticipated eschatological salvation, fomenting the reality that will remain fully transfigured in eschatology. And this is what allows us, as it did Jesus, to contemplate history, its processes and its problems.

All dualism between transcendence and immanence, between what is above and what is below, between this world and the other world, between the divine and mundane, do not come from Jesus' faith and cannot be identified with Latin American Spirituality.

4. Practical realism

Passion for reality, for always begining with reality, for adequately studying and understand it, and for returning to it after a period of reflection with the purpose of transforming it to bring it closer to the demands of the Kingdom's utopia, is not only a methodological-pedagogical characteristic or a psychological disposition unique to Latin Americans, but it comes also from the Spirit, a genuinely Latin America spiritual experience.

This realism includes a will to know and better understand reality, to analyze it and discover its historic and structural causes, to discern mechanisms and strategies to love more efficiently because our love wants to be intelligence and effective. Jesus, who did not have the analytical tools that we posses 20 centuries later, did posses the same concern to denounce the many dark mechanisms in reality and to measure our hearts with love (Mt 25). Jesus was a profound realist: he was not fooled by words that were not accompanied by actions, even when the words were in prayer (Mt 7:21). Latin American Spirituality is the same.

5. Mercy

Jesus was guided by a passion, by a fundamental mercy that burned in his heart. His support was not found in theoretical doctrine or sociological analysis, but in a deep-seated feeling for so much pain and suffering, which is a sign of the absence of God.

Latin American Spirituality made "ethical indignation" (or the passion for dignity, to say it in a positive manner) a central experience of vital mercy, a "fundamental option." At the heart of all profound human experiences there is a passion for dignity and values and an ethical reactions to a reality that is contradictory. In the suffering in the world there are dimensions that compromise the absolute values whose integration is necessary to us to feel truly human. This experience lets us see the most sensitive part of existence, which moves us and makes us react.

The Gospels offer abundant witness to Jesus' mercy, his deep seated compassion from contemplating reality, which made him shake with an ethical indignation because of injustice and exult in jubilee to be a witness for the liberation of the oppressed. This "deep seated mercy" that leads to an uncontrolable force forms part of believing like Jesus, and of Latin American Spirituality.

6. Option for the poor

Jesus perceived contradictory interests on the part of the diverse groups in society who are actors beyond their mere selves. Jesus talked about diverse "plurals": the poor, the rich, the teachers of law, the Pharisees and Jesus took a stand in this conflict of interests. He tried to read them from the point of view of the "Justice of the Kingdom" and was in solidarity with the poor -the economically poor, women, children, the marginalized, the leper, the sinner. He felt part of them and worked in favor of them, and the enemies of the poor felt that he was not on their side.

Jesus, despite being the presence of love itself among us, was not neutral. He was always on the side the poor, the victims of injustice. And he called on all, including the powerful and those who pretended to be neutral for religious reasons, to convert and develop an effective solidarity with the poor.

God wanted to realize his project, the Kingdom; he wanted to introduce everything to the will of God. And this is the Good News for the poor that Jesus enthusiastically dedicated himself to carrying it out: "Blessed are the poor and poor in Spirit for they will inherit the Kingdom of God".

Believing like Jesus means that we have to adopt this same position and use our lives to carry out deeds that proclaim the Good News.

7. New ecclesiology

The return to Jesus, his rediscovery, has also led us to rediscover ecclesiology. Vatican II marked a fundamental ecclesiological shift. If Jesus had as his absolute the Kingdom of God and this was the Cause for which he gave his life, the Church has to follow him, it has to believe as he did. There is no space for the self-coronation of the Church, no room for ecclesial centralism.

It is the Church as a whole that has overcome -in theory at least- the ecclesial centralism: the Church is not the center, the Kingdom is. And furthermore, the Church is not the Kingdom. The Church is simply "the seed of and the principle of the Kingdom", and while not alone it is very significant. It is a "mediation of the Kingdom". It is at the service of the Kingdom. Its only role is to serve it, build it, draw close to it, encourage it. It owes it entirely. To work for and be worn out by the Kingdom: This is the objective and most profound sense of the Church.

The Church is not a separate world, a ghetto centered around itself with its own codes. Being Church is "to live and struggle for the Jesus' Cause, the Kingdom" or "to believe like Him". This is the Church's mission and the mission of Christians. And because the Kingdom is life, truth, justice, peace, fraternity, love... this Christian mission coincides with the mission of any human being. It is the "great mission" of human beings on this earth. Jesus did not want to remove us from our human mission, but to deepen our commitment to it with his own Spirit. And this is what he did. And doing it again ("believing like Him") is what the Church and Latin American Spirituality must do.

8. Political holiness

The experience of God which Jesus had, the Spirit, the fire he carried inside, led him beyond his private life to confront "the sins of the world", the world that God so loved (Jn 3:16) that he sent his only son (Jn 3:17). The same world into which Jesus sent his disciples. Jesus lived a truly "public life," not only opposed to the "hidden life" in Nazareth, unknown to us, but as contrasted with "family" or "private" life. The message of the Kingdom that Jesus preached had to do with the social and political structures of his time, which were moved by his preaching and his praxis. Finally, his death was a consequence of this public challenge of the proclamation of the will of God in a world structure of sin.

Believing like Jesus today means doing the same thing in a world that has become much more complicated, but which has the same fundamental ethical problems and the same need to hear the Good News. God did not want to "save us from the world", not even for us to be "saved in this world", but He wanted us to "save the world". That "we be in the world but not of the world", he said exactly. And today, and for various centuries, the world has become aware of the inevitable political dimension, that forms part of reality, and being ignorant of this does not remove our responsibility.

Trying to "believe like Jesus" would believe today, Latin America Spirituality fights for truth, justice and peace, human rights, in ternational law, the creation of new fraternal structures... greater virtues to correct and complement the classic virtues that are more domestic, individualist, spiritualist.

9. Macroecumenism and religious dialogue

Jesus was not a "professional ecclesiast". The center of his faith was not the Church, but the Kingdom, and he proclaimed the construction of this Kingdom as a eschatological criteria for the salvation that will judge all humans (Mt 25 :31 ss) . It is a totally ecumenical criteria, not ecclesial, not confessional, not even religious. It is above all creeds, races and cultures.

Believing like Jesus today means measuring everything against the Kingdom. That is why we feel closer to those who fight for the Cause of Jesus, maybe without even knowing it, than to those, even some of whom use His name, who oppose it.

This is tremendous, but real and evangelical. Jesus himself felt the same kind of closeness. He identified more with the Samaritan than with the priest and the Levite, more with the liberation of the oppressed than with the temple (Lk 10:25ss); closer to the humble sinners than to the Pharisees satisfied with themselves (Lk 15:11-32). closer to those who carry out the will of God than those who say "Lord, Lord" (Mt 7:21); closer to those who give food to the beggar without knowing Jesus (Mt 25:31ss) than those who work miracles in his name (Mt 7 22); closer to those who say "no" but do God's will than those who say "yes" but do not do God's will (Mt 21:28-32).

Jesus does not have his sights set on the pettiness of the Church. Optimistic from his vision of faith, Jesus looks beyond and see the immense fields of grain planted by God before the Church was built and today are harvested by many (Mt 9:38). Jesus does not send us out to plant but to harvest the immense fields that were there even before he arrived on the scene. Optimistic with respect to the salvation of the world, a contemplative vision of reality, a positive attitude towards dialogue and a willingness to meet others, lack of interest in the institutional... are the macroecumenical attitudes held byJesus that Latin American Spirituality wants to make its own.

In summary, it is not so much about believing "in Jesus" as believing "like Jesus" with his "spirituality of the Kingdom". There are many who believe "in Him", but do not believe "like Him". And we know that the devils also believe "in Him" but it does not help them (San 2:19).

"Follow Jesus", a metaphor that is often over used, does not mean following the exotic paths he followed, but in following our own path "the way he followed his", facing the world and History like Jesus did with rebellion and hope, utopia and realism, indignation, tenderness, struggle and contemplation and, above all, a perspective of the Kingdom as the center of all things.

He followed his path in his time, nearly 2000 years ago, and we are not going to repeat it because his world no longer exists. Imitation and repetition have no meaning because we are on a different stretch of the path, neoliberal today, and we need to be creative in our faith not trying to do what he did but what he would do today, or believing today the way he would believe with the same "spirituality of the Kingdom".

This is the basis of Latin American Spirituality.