Showing posts with label false mysticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false mysticism. Show all posts

22 March 2022

Hermits, Contemplatives and Mystics?

[[ Sister Laurel, are all hermits mystics? Are they all contemplatives? Is there room in the Catholic Church for mystics? I was reading a blog by a Catholic hermit who says anyone can be a contemplative but one is born a mystic. I just wondered about that because in some older posts you seemed to reject being a mystic and prefer the term contemplative. Do you still feel that way? I also wondered what it means to be born a mystic and if parishes would be upset by a mystic whom they thought could see into people and I think I would be turned off by that, even scared by it. One person writing about all of this suggests that the Church doesn't really have space for mystics and calls mysticism "an affliction like cerebral palsy or autism. . ." ]] (links deleted)

First, I can't conceive of a hermit who is not a contemplative and becoming more and more a contemplative every day. It is part of the very definition of the word hermit as far as I understand eremitical life. Some hermits will, therefore, also be mystics, meaning not merely that they have been immediately gifted by God with mystical prayer and therefore, will have grown in their contemplative lives to the deeper or infused forms of contemplative prayer; it also means they will have had their hearts remade entirely in terms of the virtues and God's love; a mystic is the dwelling place or tabernacle of the active and creative Mystery or depth dimension of all reality whom we call God; they live in greater or lesser degrees of union with God. Such union with absolute Mystery which only God can bring about is evident in their prayer but also in their ordinary lives, and so we call them mystics. While such persons may suffer as all human beings suffer, and sometimes quite intensely in their currently unrealizable yearning for final or ultimate union with God, I don't think any mystic would liken coming to greater degrees of union with God --- the very thing we are made for and come to joyful rest in --- to an affliction like cerebral palsy or autism.

We are all capable of becoming mystics -- even though God alone empowers the deeper expressions of contemplative prayer. It's quite a paradox!!! In fact, as just noted we are all "made for" this degree of prayer and life in union with God who is, again, absolute Mystery --- though few will experience it in their lives. In the Eastern Church the process of growth toward mystical prayer and union with God referred to here is called deification. Few "achieve" it this side of death, unfortunately, but all are made for it. To that extent I believe we can say we are all born to be mystics (those who experience union with God that is wholly God's immediate gift), but I don't think it is appropriate to say some are born mystics and others are not. Moreover, simply because one has occasional mystical experiences I believe the use of the term mystic is still to be cautiously applied. Mystics are not primarily about mystical experiences or phenomena like visions, locutions, and the like; they are first and last about union with God and that means these persons are shot through with Divine love and are transparent to it in a way which, in Christ, makes them into the very imago Dei they were made to be --- whether they are in prayer or living their ordinary lives. If one can say a person's life is defined by (i.e., conformed to and transformed by) immediate experiences of the Love which is God's very self, then I think we can say the person is a mystic, no matter the attendant and secondary phenomena.

Personally, I still prefer the term contemplative, in part because it is easier for folks to understand, but also because I am a contemplative who has occasional mystical experiences (that is, immediate experiences of the God Who is Love) as a kind of subset of this larger category of prayer; Moreover, I look towards union with God as a goal I am called to by God himself, not as a kind of achievement I want or need to point to. I don't think most parishes would have a problem with someone having occasional mystical experiences during liturgy, for instance, so long as the community understands what is happening. Ordinarily, the person praying in this way is profoundly quiet; this may even mean that one's breathing might cease or become indiscernible. Thus, unless one has explained the situation to others they might be concerned about a medical emergency, but if the situation was occasional and understood I don't see where it would be a problem. 

Other manifestations need not, but might well be or become problematical, and that would include the ability to read others' hearts. While one might have this ability, one does not need to reveal it to people, and prudence says ordinarily one should not do so apart from a strong pastoral need and authority. My sense is that God would only gift someone with such an ability in instances of exceptional need, along with the capacity for profound compassion, humility, and discretion, not to mention more than a modicum of tact. Ordinarily, this gift is associated with confessors who read into the heart or conscience and assisted the person in moving toward greater union with God. Outside of anecdotes about a number of priests I am not sure I know precisely all this gift entails, but I do know people who are profoundly perceptive about people and seem to miss nothing of what is going on with them. One of these is marked by her compassion and discretion as well and this may mean she can see into others' hearts in ways most of us cannot. When the two qualities are combined there is nothing scary about it --- though it can be unnerving initially until it is clear the person never judges others and does not otherwise misuse what they see/know. Still, perhaps this is only a weak approximation of the gift some confessors have been known to have.

Does the Church have room for mystics? Of course! In fact, she needs them and has always done --- even when their presence has been challenging or hard to deal with. But I think she has even less tolerance for those who are not genuine mystics, meaning those who might want to be recognized for "gifts" without being deeply prayerful, profoundly loving, and practiced in the virtues. In other words, mystics have a certain degree of holiness and that can be/is inspiring to others in ways we all need. What we don't need, however, are those who drop into what is supposed to be ecstasy-on-schedule or trance-via-trigger (I am thinking self-hypnosis here), or those who pretend to have been given the gift of reading others' hearts while demonstrating not the least bit of compassion for those others or true insight into themselves. 

Once again, as I have written before, "by their fruits, you shall know them"; the primary measure of the true mystic will always be their capacity to love as Christ loves, to be virtuous as Christ is virtuous, to be imago Dei or imago Christi as every person is ultimately called to be ("I, yet not I, but Christ in me!" is one of Paul's ways of describing himself as Christian and mystic who has experienced a degree of union with God). Only secondarily is such a person's life/prayer marked by mystical phenomena and I sincerely believe it is unlikely in the ordinary course of things, that such phenomena would be known to a larger parish congregation.

12 December 2015

Reflecting On St Bernard and the Fourth Stage of Love

[[Dear Sister, so often we love God for what he can give us. Is loving God for his own sake the highest form of love? St Bernard says this, right?]]

Hi there,
         Thanks for the question. You are absolutely correct that according to St Bernard of Clairveaux and many others as well, love of God for God's own sake is a higher form of love than love of God for the sake of our own needs --- that is, for the sake of the gifts and blessings God gives us. However, according to St Bernard loving God for God's own sake is actually the third of four levels or stages of love, not the fourth. This will certainly seem to run counter to common sense but the highest form or "fourth level" of love according to Bernard is love of self for God's own sake! It is quite difficult though to love ourselves simply because we are loved by God, simply because we are empowered by God in this way. It is difficult and paradoxical because it is a form of self love in which we are wholly empowered by God and forgetful of self! Paul expressed the paradox in this way, "I, yet not I, but Christ in me."

The prerequisite for this is the third level of love, that's for sure. We will only be able to forget (and truly love!) ourselves in the way that is necessary if we can love God simply because it is what God is worthy of and moreover, if it is that which Love-in-act itself empowers. We have to become practiced and strong in this intimate form of love of God if we are ever able to love ourselves and others in the way God loves us! In other words we must love God in this way (the third level) before we can love ourselves and others in God (the fourth level of love)!  The importance of this fourth stage and the way it follows the third cannot be overstated. Maybe it would be helpful to recall the first two stages of love, the two more immature forms before saying more about this.

First and Second Stages of Love:

The first form is one we all recognize. It is love of self for one's own sake. Sometimes called selfish love it is all about what one needs and desires. This is the earliest form of love we know, the love of infants and children who love others for the gifts they give, the blessings they bring. This form of love is often not really a form of self-love at all; the better word is narcissism. It can and ordinarily does grow into more authentic and mature love for the sake of the other just as children ordinarily come to love their parents despite not being able or desiring to get anything from them in return. The second form of love is love of God for the gifts and blessings which come from God. This is a higher form of love than the first because it includes a real love of God despite this being offered for the sake of the kindness, correction, empowerment, etc which God gives to us. We are loving God here but at the same time we are looking for God to help us in our sinfulness and immaturity, our lack of self-discipline and frailties of all sorts. There is a little forgetfulness of self involved here (we are no longer as narcissistic as we were as infants) though of course we can and ordinarily do grow in this form of love just as we do in the first one.

Third and Fourth Stages:

The third level of love is, as mentioned above, love of God for God's own self or God's own sake. This is an intimate form of love where we recognize God's infinite worthiness of our love. Those who sit in quiet prayer despite no expectations of mystical "experiences", no sense of God's presence beyond a faith commitment to this Divine truth, these persons know this level of love. Those who attend Mass regularly not merely for what they get out of the liturgy, nor because the Church requires this of them, and not merely as an opportunity to put their petitions before God, but simply because this is an act of worship of the One who is worthy of such time, attention, and love, they also know this level of love. I think these examples could be multiplied many times over. However, this level of love is not the same as union with God --- though there is certainly communion with God which empowers this particular level of self-forgetfulness and generosity (for genuine worship always involves self-forgetfulness and generosity). This form of love, like those earlier stages also mentioned is also capable of growth and increasing degrees of maturity or perfection. Over time one's heart is purified and eventually one reaches union with God where one loves self and all else only in the power of God who is Love-in-act. When this occurs, one has entered or reached the fourth level of love. One has truly "put on the mind of Christ."

The fourth level is described by Bernard as loving oneself for God's own sake. It means loving oneself as God loves one and in the way God does but doing so as an act of worship of God alone. In short, it means letting God alone act in and through you -- which is really the highest form of worship. Here one truly loves oneself but does so with a kind or degree of self-forgetfulness one had not known earlier. One certainly does not despise oneself. Instead one embraces a humility which is absolutely honest and loving precisely because one sees and knows oneself as God does.

Even the subtlest forms of self-hatred are healed in this form of love. One sees oneself as God sees us and we find we are truly loveable, precious and a delight in God's eyes. One takes care of oneself and one's legitimate needs but one does so precisely so that one may further spend oneself as God wills and empowers.This means one may certainly give one's life for others in the way Jesus did in his passion and death, but it also means spending oneself for others in ALL the ways God wills in a daily (continued) dying to self --- as Jesus and his true followers do every day of their lives. Take a look at how radically different the first stage of love is from this one! Both are ways of loving self, but the first stage is self-centered and protective; it is lived at the expense of others. The fourth stage is other-centered and kenotic; it is love of self lived for the sake of others whatever the God-willed cost to oneself --- just as Jesus' life was lived.

Fourth Stage Love as Corrective to Spiritual Individualism and False Mysticism:

I don't recall if St Bernard spoke of this specifically (though from the Cistercians I know, and the relatively little I know of the Cistercian Reform, it would not surprise me that it was a motivating insight of Bernard's own life and efforts at monastic reform) but seeing this as the necessary stage of love coming after love of God for God's own sake is an important corrective to forms of monastic practice and prayer which focus on despising the world outside the monastery or a mysticism which focuses on a "Me-and-God alone" relationship which is individualistic and exclusionary or exclusivist. Union with God means we love both ourselves, others, and the whole of creation with God's own love. Union with God empowers this kind of love and the selfless giving of self our world both needs and is made for. It allows God to love in and through us as exhaustively as God desires to do. It is not so much a spillover of our love of God, but a stage of love which love of God for God's own sake makes possible. It is precisely the way Christ loved, the love God calls us each to, and thus, the very apex of what having a covenant nature (as all human beings do) is all about.

Had the stages of love stopped at "loving God for God's own sake" we might never have been able to understand why Christ ever "came down from the mountain" or left any of those solitary prayer periods with God that so characterized his identity in order to spend himself for the sake of others; neither might we understand what moves the Triune God (a community of such love) to continually create and redeem as God constantly does. But being moved so is the very nature of union with God, the very character of God's Mediator and the Trinity itself. Union with God leads naturally to a divine love which goes out of itself to and for the other.

Had St Bernard not written so wonderfully and in a way which runs counter to common sense that  loving God for God's own sake was "only" the third stage of love, we might be tempted to adopt forms of spirituality which are really thinly veiled forms of selfishness or not-so thinly veiled forms of self-hatred. We also might be tempted to denigrate representatives of active as opposed to contemplative forms of life (or eremitical vs coenobitical) for choosing a "lower" form of love. This has certainly been done in the past by even the very best theologians and I recognize it as a significant temptation today.

I should also note that the significance of the fourth stage of love fits very well into the new cosmic consciousness I have mentioned recently because it does not allow spirituality to ever be an individualistic or privatistic matter. (Need I say yet again that this is especially true for hermits?!) We must be ultimately concerned with God's own will, God's own projects and plans for reality; moreover, we must do so ONLY as God's own Life/Love in us make possible. Union with God empowers something our world needs from each and all of us so very badly, something we were each made for and are called to by God as we participate in moving the drama of an evolutionary and unfinished universe forward, namely "love of self (and others and all reality) for God's own sake"!

P.S., What should probably be emphasized, I think, is that these four stages are somewhat like Kohlberg's ego stages. It is not so much that one stage of love is completely left behind as another is entered so much as it is the case that the earlier stage is integrated into the higher stage of love and transformed or transfigured in the process. For instance, as I understand it, we do not cease to care for our everyday needs or seek assistance as required but securing our own needs (and desires!!) are not the driving force of our lives. Moreover, integration means one meets one's own needs in appropriate ways while one's desires are tempered and moderated by higher stages of love.

Similarly, when we have reached higher stages of love we do not cease to ask God to help us with our needs or to count on God's blessings and gifts, but this is no longer the defining form of love motivating our prayer or our approach to reality. And of course, as noted above, we do not consider love of self something "base" to be despised and outgrown or simply rejected. Instead, our love of self is healed and transfigured by God's own love; it becomes something we do for God's own sake and that makes all the difference! Thus, as we become more and more certain of, filled with, and moved by God's own Self (Love-in-Act) we become more and more secure, less needy,  anxious, or fearful of loss and death, and more willing and even grateful for chances to generously spend ourselves for others. The paradox here includes the fact that in the third and fourth stages of love our own profoundest needs are also met but without the self-seeking found in the first two stages. ("Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.")