Follow Up on Hermits, Contemplatives and Mystics?

[[Sister Laurel, can you provide a link to the person whose blog was being referred to in the post on Hermits: Contemplatives and Mystics? I would like to check out what he says for myself. Thank you for that. I have done a lot of reading about mysticism and mystics and my understanding tends to comport with yours, that is, we are all created for and called to union with God and at the same time only God can take hold of us in the way that happens in what St Teresa of Avila calls infused contemplation, but especially mystical betrothal, and mystical marriage for example. I don't know what it would mean to say a mystic is born but if that's true, either one is born a mystic, or one can't ever become one [and mystical prayer would be closed to one for the whole of one's life] **. I don't think John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, St Francis of Assisi, Angela of Foligno, or Therese of Lisieux were born mystics but no one suggests they did not become mystics even if God was the one who made it happen!]]

Yes, I will get the link for you --- at least to the blog itself if not to specific posts being referenced.

I also agree that mystics aren't born but in fact are "made" (by God, of course) --- though again, I believe every person created by God has the potential for mystical prayer. One passage in David Knowles' book, What is Mysticism? makes me chuckle because by using St Teresa's encouragement of her Sisters to persist in their efforts to reach what is sometimes called the prayer of recollection, (she says it will only take a year, maybe six months), Knowles underscores the place of growth in prayer in the "mystical path", and by implication in contemplative prayer and then mystical prayer. 

He explains, [[The assertion of Teresa that it can be acquired must not be taken to mean that, like bicycling or swimming, it merely needs a short instruction and some practice. St Teresa may have misled some by her somewhat offhand empirical assertion that it can be acquired in a year or six months. We may forget that she herself spent fifteen years when prayer was tedious to her and that she has already described at length the first stage of prayer, its difficulties and distractions, the need for serious resolve and the absolute sacrifice of all else save God.]] and then Knowles continues, [[ It is only when the prayer of recollection has become settled and pure, maintained through aridities and distractions for long, that it can be regarded as in any sense a disposition for infused contemplation.]] (emphasis added)

When Teresa speaks of the deeper forms of prayer moving from recollection and beginning with the prayer of quiet, Knowles indicates how very different her language is: [[This prayer [she writes] is something supernatural to which no effort of our own can raise us, because here the soul rests in peace --- or rather, our Lord gives it peace by his presence.]] Another example from Teresa, [[We cannot make the day break, nor can we stop the night from coming on. This prayer is no work of ours: it is supernatural and utterly beyond our control.]] Of course, we cannot cause infused contemplation or mystical prayer; again, they are the work of God, but we can dispose ourselves toward this gift, or rather, these gifts. One can hardly do that if one is either born a mystic or not, period. On the one hand (if one is born a mystic) all the hard work of prayer and growth in the virtues is irrelevant and on the other (if one is not born a mystic) it all becomes essentially futile even as a way of disposing the soul to God's immediate intervention.

Throughout his work David Knowles refers to the "Mystic path" or to "mystical prayer" (Op Cit., p.81, apparently not a nonsensical or [[insensible]] word at all) and he speaks of a process during which prayer becomes [[gradually less and less a matter of words or motions of the will and more and more simple loving attention to God, until this too merges into a new realization or experience of the presence of God in the soul, with its accompaniment of a new knowledge and love of God which do not come from any purely human thought or motion. Herein is the beginning of the mystical life.]] (emphasis added) And then Knowles cites Teresa again, [[ Herein there is nothing to be afraid of, but everything to hope for]]. . .[[prayer is the door to those great graces which our Lord bestowed on me. If this door be shut, I do not see how he can bestow them.]] and again, [[How must one begin? I maintain that this is the chief point; in fact, that everything depends on their having a great and most resolute determination never to halt until they reach their journey's end, happen what may, whatever the consequences are, cost what it will, let who will blame them, whether they reach the goal or die on the road, or lose heart to bear the trials they encounter, or the earth itself goes to pieces beneath their feet.]] (emphasis added throughout)

In all of this and so much more we are dealing with the paradox that the mystic way or the way of mystical prayer, which means the way of a mystic, in fact requires effort and often long effort in prayer or "friendship with God" even as mystical prayer itself is the complete and immediate gift of God himself. Words failed Teresa and she worked out terms for various prayer forms over time (though she still wrote marvelously about all of this), just as words failed John of the Cross (it is hard to think of his Spiritual Canticle as a failure of words but it is!!) because of both the incommensurability of the experience and the ineffability of God. Still, they also succeeded so that even when Teresa takes pains to indicate something is not supernatural (or infused or mystical) prayer, there is the implication that there are forms of prayer which are these things!! I guess I understand mystics as those who are gifted by God with mystical prayer (i.e., an immediate experience of God's presence and union with God). As far as I can tell, no scholar of mystical theology and no mystic, especially Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, but I think also Elizabeth of the Trinity who I am reading now, believes one is born a mystic, though of course, they would all affirm we are created for union with God.  

Here is a link to the latest post in the blog referenced in the earlier question and post: Mystics are born Mystics. Please note that the author (MC) recommends David Knowles' book as a good place to start!! For that reason I referred to him above. Unfortunately, though I have read this book at least a couple of times, I can't remember or (now) locate even one place where he argues mystics are born not made, particularly as this position is opposed to the rest of what is cited above. Perhaps someone knowledgeable re where this is found might provide the citation. Knowles' book itself, by the way, is described on the cover (or dust jacket) as [[set(ting) out, in a very short compass and with remarkable lucidity, the traditional explanation of the mystical life as the fullness of the life of grace. Prof Knowles illustrates the mystical (or contemplative) life from the great English mystics of the Middle Ages. . . [to] Elizabeth of the Trinity in the present century.]] This surely says the mystical and the contemplative life are of a piece, no? 

Another necessary piece of this discussion which I have not seen in MC's blogs (unless she is writing about c 603, which is of primary interest or concern to me, I tend not to read her much so I could well have missed this) --- but what I have not seen even in the most recent posts arguing her position here is an actual definition of the term mystic. It is important to understand, I think, how she is using the term (besides calling it an "affliction like Autism or Cerebral palsy" which causes mystics to "pray to be normal"). If a mystic is born, then what constitutes a mystic? Is it the secondary or accidental qualities of visions, locutions, stigmata, levitation, and the like or is it, as all mystics seem to say, the result of union with God (i.e., the fulfillment of a life of grace) which requires a long apprenticeship in prayer? Just one more piece of the puzzle I would like clarified myself by MC or others who disagree with what I have written.

** thanks to the questioner for sending on the clarification added to the question above. I agree it is helpful.