A Pragmatic Interpretation of the 'Indwelling of Christ' in the Preaching of Claude La Colombière (1641–1682)

Abstract

Abstract In his sermon 'Pour la profession d'une religieuse', French Jesuit Claude La Colombière (1641–1682) explains that a girl who has professed religious vows becomes a perfect nun when Jesus Christ lives in her in place of the world. Traditionally, spiritual writers have tended to discuss this 'indwelling' of Christ in quasi-mystical terms, as a kind of metaphysical and often eroticized union with God. With reference to the classical American philosophical tradition, the present article interprets the expression, 'le Christ vit en moi', as La Colombière himself uses it, not as a mystical state but as a conception of one's feelings, actions, and thoughts. In this sense, to say that Christ 'lives in' a nun is to call to mind what one can expect of her — even what she can expect of herself. By focusing on the logical structure of this expression, pragmatic method thus helps reveal how La Colombière understood nuns and how they understood themselves, as they lived within the religious institutions created for them and that they themselves sustained and developed.