Contemplative Haven

I cannot dance, O Lord,
Unless You lead me,
If You wish me to leap joyfully,
Let me see You dance and sing -

Then I will leap into Love -
And from Love into Knowledge,
And from Knowledge into the Harvest,
That sweetest Fruit beyond human sense.

There I will stay with You, whirling.

[Mechthild of Magdeburg] 

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The Prayer (by Jones Very.  American poet, 1813-1880)

Wilt Thou not visit me?
The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew,
And every blade of grass I see
From thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew.

Wilt Thou not visit me?
Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone;
And every hill and tree
Lend but one voice, - the voice of Thee alone.

Come, for I need thy love,
More than the flower the dew or grass the rain;
Come, gently as thy holy dove;
And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again.

I will not hide from them
When thy storms come, though fierce may be their wrath,
But bow with leafy stem,
And strengthened follow on thy chosen path.

Yes, Thou wilt visit me:
Nor plant nor tree thine eye delights so well,
As, when from sin set free,
My spirit loves with thine in peace to dwell.

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I’ve been feeling rather sad about something since listening to our Trinity Sunday homily.  In discussing it here I do not wish to do so in a judgemental way, or without bearing in mind that a ten or twenty minute homily is not adequate for an in-depth teaching on any subject.  Still, I do not think it is a case of being either unduly harsh or simply overly-sensitive. 

The homilist began by saying that the mysteries of God, the Holy Trinity for example, must be accepted on faith alone because we will never be able to understand them.  Would we wish to adore a God Who could be fitted into our finite understanding?  He said that today (Trinity Sunday) was not the time to try to delve into the mystery of the Trinity.  Case closed.  There was no mention of any possible experience of the Trinity beyond our understanding, beyond the rational, no reference to the possibility of direct, mystical experience of the Trinity. 

On my previous post, Ann, of Poetry, Prayer and Praise left the following comment: 

“If I may say….it is by the gift of faith alone - and a blessed one at that - we come to accept these teachings which our intellect cannot wholly grasp. A lot about God is mystery - including the three persons, and no-one will fully or can fully understand or know God until we are with Him and see Him as He really is.

Having said that, Julian of Norwich has thrown light on this mystery in a very beautiful way, as have other saints, all of which makes me even more excited at the thought of what wonders await us all.”

Perhaps our homilist was himself attempting to express what Ann has done so beautifully in her comment, but there is a significant difference.  Ann leaves us on a note of wonder, with the desire to deepen our limited understanding by reading the experiences of the saints, by gaining knowledge of what is possible for us through knowledge of the lives of those who have deepened their mystical experience through openness and receptivity to the Holy Spirit.  There is no “case closed” with Ann.

I could not help but feel that our homilist had put up a wall to the mystical and had perhaps constructed, or at least reinforced, that wall for many in the congregation.

Where was the encouragement to read the lives of the saints?  Where were the references to St. Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Julian of Norwich… on the subject of the Trinity?  Where was the advice to read such as Father Thomas Dubay or listen to his audio teachings?  Where was the mention of strengthening and deepening our contemplative prayer life in order to strive to reach the altogether possible-on-this-earth Transforming Union?  Any or all of these types of encouragement could have been given in less than five minutes.

And most importantly, where was Mary, our teacher and portal par excellence into the mysteries of the Holy Trinity? 

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“I beheld the working of all the blessed Trinity, and in this beholding I saw and understood these three properties:  the property of fatherhood, the property of motherhood, and the property of the Lordship in one God.  In our Father almighty we have our keeping and our bliss as regards our human substance, which is ours by our making without beginning.  And in the Second Person, in wit and wisdom, we have our keeping as regards our sensuality, our restoring, and our saving:  for he is our Mother, Brother, and Saviour.  And in our good Lord the Holy Spirit we have our rewarding and our recompense for our living and our labors which will far exceed anything we can desire, owing to his marvelous courtesy and his high plenteous grace. 

For our whole life is in three.  In the first we have our being, and in the second we have our increasing, and in the third we have our fulfilling.  The first is kind, the second is mercy, and the third is grace.” 

[Julian of Norwich:  Revelation of Love] pg. 129

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Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy
and Sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your
tears.  And how else can it be?  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very
cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your
spirit, the very wood that was hollowed
with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is only that
which has given you sorrow that is giving
you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth
you are weeping for that which has been
your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than
sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is
the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits
alone with you at your board, remember
that the other is asleep upon your bed.

[Excerpt from “The Prophet”, by Kahlil Gibran] pgs. 29-30

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The mystical life of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) began early.  She was only six when she saw a vision of heaven in the sky, where Jesus appeared to her along with Peter, Paul and John the Evangelist.  Jesus smiled upon her lovingly while making the sign of the cross over her, and from that moment on Catherine knew that she wanted to devote herself and her life to God. Her continued absorption in God was profound, distressing her family very much, but upon finally realizing that Catherine’s mystical life was the will of God, her family conceded and Catherine was accepted as a Third Order Dominican with the Sisters of Penance. The Sisters of Penance were not cloistered, but lived withdrawn from the world in their own homes. In “Catherine of Siena“, by Igino Giordani, the author writes: “It seems curious that considering her absorption in God and her yearning to flee the world and conquer her flesh she did not seek admission into a cloistered convent. Instead, Catherine, whose only wish was to withdraw from the world, still determined to remain in it. The Lord had called her to a special mission: that of an apostle, whose vocation is to be in the world but not of the world.”

Catherine, continually absorbed in contemplative prayer and well-practiced in asceticism and mortification, reached the heights of love of God and experienced the mystical espousal with the Lord when she was only twenty.  Quickly thereafter, the Lord sent her back out into the world to care for the sick, give her followers spiritual direction, and teach the most learned and powerful.  Igino Giordani beautifully writes:

“Thus appears a second phase of Catherine’s life:  the phase of active life; but not as a change or turning point in her former life - rather as its increase and complement.  She merely joined action to contemplation; or, more exactly, her contemplation was so penetrating that it had to express itself in action.  She was united to God; therefore she had to be united to men.  And if she will no longer live enclosed in a cell with walls, [my note:  Catherine’s bedroom] she will always live in the cell which is knowledge of self.  She will carry her cloister, her cell, with her wherever she goes; her rule will ever be love.”  

[For a beautiful prayer written by St. Catherine of Siena to the Blessed Virgin, please see my post of today at Consecrated to Mary.]

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Just one more reason why everyone should read the lives of the saints. 

From the Arthur Young Series:

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In case anyone was scandalized or confused by the choice of love songs in the previous post, let’s take a brief look at the mystical language of love, a language I’m sure was very familiar to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque’s soul.

In, “Fire Within”, Father Thomas Dubay tells us that, “the divine invasion leading to the consummation of the summit is indeed a fusion of unimaginable light and unspeakable love.  Hence, John [St. John of the Cross] speaks of the frequent experience of an intimate spiritual embrace.  This divine clasp or hug…can be so wonderfully overwhelming, notes John along with other mystics, that the soul needs an infusion of special strength to endure it….He remarks, for example, that the praises and endearing expressions of love which frequently pass between the two are indescribable….It is in this spiritual marriage of the summit that ‘the soul kisses God’…”  

Even if the summit of love has not yet been reached, the soul’s longing and desiring for a complete love-union with God has always been expressed with the language of passion.  Fr. Dubay writes, “The saints know what it is like to be in love, a love immeasurably beyond what worldlings label as love.  The delight is intense because the love is intense.  Teresa [of Avila] is a woman so keenly in love with her Lord that she must proclaim:  My King, I beseech You, that all to whom I speak become mad from Your love….This soul would now want to see itself free - eating kills it; sleeping distresses it…nothing other than You can give it pleasure any longer…and I would desire to see no other persons than those who are sick with this sickness I now have.” 

Sufi poet, Rumi, knew this love language well.  We will hear much in this video that is also at the heart of our own Catholic mystical tradition - Divine Love expressed in passionate poetry - the love that St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and so many other saints have described:  the love that annihilates the ego, and brings the soul to Divine Union. 

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Abbot Joseph, of Word Incarnate, has a beautiful and thoughtful post up, entitled: On the Mystical Life.  Abbot Joseph writes:

“Simply put, what the Church (and all humanity) needs most urgently and fundamentally is genuine mysticism. That is the lifeblood of souls and of the Church, the hidden “river of life” essential to spiritual vitality and the fulfillment of God’s dream for the perfection of his Bride.”

And what is genuine mysticism?  Well, off you go now, and read the whole post!  
 

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