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cope, mediate a distinctive grace to the strong and powerful. The central theological question that informs this study is how relationships with the “poor” in this biblical sense actually mediate the grace that transforms. This question is also conditioned by the presupposition that such grace is understood most clearly in the larger context of God's economy of salvation. It proceeds from a fully Trinitarian basis of theology and the notion of theosis or “deification” in the Christian life but sees deification not only as mystically and sacramentally mediated, but as a process that takes place in and through relationships of love, presence, and communion.
The foundational premise of this enterprise is that the study of the process of spiritual transformation in the context of L’Arche can contribute significant phenomenological, psychological, and theological insights to current understandings of growth toward moral and spiritual maturity. While most previous work on L’Arche has focused on aspects of this process in the lives of those with disabilities,2 this study undertakes an analysis and interpretation of this process in the lives of the caregivers or “assistants” in a L’Arche community.3 In the light of both the psychological and theological literature on conversion and spiritual growth, this study raises questions about the psychological dimensions and theological significance of spiritual transformation in this particular communal context. As a study of Christian spiritual transformation, it is guided by two additional theoretical convictions.
The first conviction is that the phenomenon of Christian spiritual transformation can be properly understood only in its depth dimensions within a particular community of faith in which persons experience a way of life together that is informed by a distinctive theological, liturgical, and spiritual tradition. Spiritual transformation can never be viewed “generically” or in the abstract apart from a living body of persons in relationships enlivened by an ecology of faith traditions and practices. Although the phenomenological description and psychological analysis of transformation in the context of L’Arche could be viewed strictly in terms of cultural anthropology or organizational theory, this study presumes that they find their fullest meaning and intelligibility in the Christian theological, spiritual, and liturgical traditions that underlie and give shape to the life of a