Monika Hellwig’s Sacred Quest In this paper I will be analyzing Hellwig’s sacred quest through Cunningham and Kelsay’s four varieties of media. Cunningham and Kelsey define religion in two elements. The first one is that, “a religious person is one who affirms that there is a dimension of reality beyond the world of immediate experience…” (Cunningham and Kelsay [CK], pg. 55). This means that a person believes in something bigger than what they can see and feel. Hellwig states, “…the vision of the reign of God among men seems to be quite realistic and functional” (pg. 136). This shows that Hellwig believed in God; a dimension beyond immediate experience. After her father’s death, Hellwig states, “…my father had passed through a veil but…we were still in communion with him” (pg. 123). To me, this shows Hellwig had a sense that although her father had passed on, he was still with them in a spiritual way, showing she had a belief in a dimension beyond the immediate world.
The second part of their definition, “…yet with which human beings can have contact” (CK, pg. 55), means along with believing in this greater power, you can also have some type of connection with it. While Hellwig was teaching at Georgetown University, she says, “…[I] tried to tune in to the Spirit to hear what else there might be to do in my spare time” (pg. 144). She also says, “Prayer has always seemed to me the most natural and spontaneous human activity…” (Hellwig, pg.124). Both of these show that she felt the ability to communicate with the realm beyond our world.
The first varieties of media that communicate sacred reality to human beings is sacred persons (CK, pg. 39). Cunningham and Kelsay first say, “The association of the sacred with certain persons is a characteristic of numerous religious traditions, most obviously those whose history points to a ‘founder’ or great figure