When Augustine arrived in Milan in 387 AD he observed that the Church did not fast on Saturday as the Church in Rome did. He consulted Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who replied: "When I am in Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am in Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the Church where you are." Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, refines Ambrose's expression to: "When they are in Rome, they do there as they see done." Eventually Burton's paraphrase was further distilled into the well-known aphorism "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

As Augustine learned from his mentor, spirituality is hard to define. What looks like empty ritual to one Christian is deeply meaningful to another. On the other hand, spontaneous worship can appear shallow to those more comfortable with order. Christians from different traditions can therefore find it hard to understand each other. And Christians of any stripe must seem all but incomprehensible to a culture that is spiritually aware but less and less Christian.

Dr Charles Nienkirchen, Ambrose's Professor of Christian History and Spirituality, attempts to bridge this gap by relating the essence of Christian spirituality to the spiritual experience of those seeking meaning outside the Christian faith. His explorations take him to the roots of our faith and to the intersection of Christianity and other faiths. The fact is that for most of us Rome and Milan are constantly intersecting. These intersections are increasingly found in the places we live, work, learn, and minister. How well we understand them determines how effectively we connect with others in a meaningfully spiritual way.

Ambrose is a place where Christian Truth gets prodded by the spiritual search of our culture. We ask, "how does our faith stack up in the eyes of either Canadian or global culture?" Seeing ourselves through the eyes of Rome is never comfortable, but at Ambrose, it is a way of life.

-Kim Follis, Editor