[[ Sister Laurel, in writing about your experience at Lent earlier this year, and the whole idea of resting in and representing the heart of the Church and the heart of God within the Church, are you talking about mystical experience? Does this mean you are a mystic? Do you think you will withdraw more or will you continue teaching Scripture and doing this blog?]]
WOW! Just kidding, of course, but were you listening in on my spiritual direction session today? Because God is ineffable Mystery and because I have been writing about entering more and more fully into that unimaginable Mystery, I have to say yes, I am saying that I am becoming (or perhaps have already become) a mystic and have been writing about mysticism (and the experience central to mysticism) over the past weeks and months. (I have been comfortable calling myself a contemplative for a long time now, but using the term mystic, and cognates, has been a different matter!) What I said to my director this afternoon was that I am no longer feeling so allergic to using the term mystical or mysticism for my own prayer life or mystic for myself. It is too early to say much more than this, and, because it has to do with the nature of my prayer (and dimensions of my eremitical journey as hidden), it will always be a relatively private part of my life. Though I will likely continue to prefer the term "contemplative" for myself, it seems clear to me that this move to what might be called "mystical" is the way my eremitical life has been moving for some time and that it will continue to do so.
I don't think I will withdraw more, at least not generally. At the same time, that is something I continue to evaluate at every stage of my life and something I believe every hermit must remain open to. Presently, I plan to continue teaching Scripture in the limited way I do that. I will also keep writing, not only on this blog, but on the project I am working on. As I say, this "mysticism" is not really brand new for me, except for my own personal adoption of the terms mystical and mystic to describe my own prayer life, and maybe myself. I am still much more comfortable with the term "contemplative". (Words describing an immediacy of Divine presence, and increased attentiveness to or awareness of this, are also more comfortable for me than the use of terms like mystical or union.
In fact, my own favorite word for the process being pointed to here is deification, where that means being made truly human by and in relation to God!) However, several years ago, I asked my director to use the term "Mystery" in place of another word she referred to as we discussed the work we were doing and the journey I was making. That term signaled to me the nature of our work together and reminded me of a value or truth I needed accentuated --- both in regard to God and to myself. That has become more pronounced as I reflect on resting in and representing more and more the heart of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Besides, in my experience, mysticism also has an ordinary, everyday quality to it in light of the Incarnation and presence of the Risen Christ in our world. (Check out Karl Rahner on this idea of "everyday mysticism". He identifies it in some ways as the very hope of the Church. Bernard McGinn also writes about it in various places, as do some of the mystics he covers in his
Presence of God series.) We are all moving toward the new heaven and new earth that the Scriptures describe as our ultimate goal (and the goal of God, who is Emmanuel!), and that means relating to one another in Christ as citizens (or at least
potential citizens) of this new post-resurrection reality. Speaking of the journey I made over the past year and a half or two years ("into the shadows of death and near-despair"), especially, is to speak of a profoundly mystical journey into the heart of God and the Church. That is also true of a significant prayer experience I had back in 1982-83 or so, that foreshadowed this specific journey and promised union with God. It has just taken me some time to become more comfortable with the language of such extraordinary ordinariness!
Because my sense of the immediacy of God expressed by the language of mysticism is also the ground and source of more profound solidarity with others, I believe that the mysticism I am referring to will lead to growth in and accentuate the compassion I feel for others. Similarly, such growth will be rooted in and will deepen my relationship with both the Church and the larger world. (I think it was extremely timely that Pope Leo quoted Evagrius Ponticus and emphasized that the hermit's distance from others is not about separation from them but solidarity with them. This also underscores the extraordinary ordinariness of the mystical journey that unites us more profoundly with one another, even as it differs vastly from the journeys others will know.) As I have written before, real love requires distance as well as closeness. C 603's "stricter separation from the world" rejects enmeshment in "the world" --- i.e., enmeshment in that which is resistant to Christ; it is not opposed to standing in solidarity with the reality of God's good creation, or ministering to it from or even as (part of) the heart of the Church in Christ and the power of the Spirit! As Ponam in Deserto Viam notes, c 603 life, [[is a solitary life witnessed through the most complete gift of self, not as withdrawing from humanity, but as a withdrawal in the midst of humanity. II:10, p.17]]
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