Isabel Gómez

In this article I explain the origin of the concept “postsecular”. I argue that such concept, spread by Jürgen Habermas since 2001, has its origin in the reformist Jewish thought from 70’s in the United States. In this context, the postsecular is drafted as a phase which Jewish Theology is experiencing as result of its contact with secular lifestyle. Such contact summons to a reflection on ethic values which secularization missed. I argue that some of the meanings of the current concept of “postsecular”, which Habermas articulates, were already present in the first uses of such concept from Eugene B. Borowitz and Emil Fackenheim. Finally, I argue that it might be set up a correlation between the ethical origins of the postsecular and the Habermas’s as “awareness of what is missing”.

The purpose of this work is to take Mary as the subject of a life of contemplation, to observe her manner of relating with God, of speaking to His messengers and of praising Yhwh. She is a daughter of Israel who speaks to the God of her people and interprets His figure according to that tradition. The questions we will attempt to answer are: with what God did she relate? Where did their encounters take place? How did she regard her person in relation to the divinity? To what degree did her son’s life affect her understanding of God? We do not know her feelings nor her reactions at the Cross but by following Old Testament patterns I am going to offer possible conjectures. Rather than present Mary simply as an object of biblical contemplation I want to give the model of Marian spirituality that can serve as a personal path for Christians so that her figure as summa contemplatrix becomes that of illuminatrix, helping us to enter into a relationship with God and discover the whole range of possibilities that this offers.2