Why must the Church’s “ordinary time” be interrupted with extraordinary time? Is it to relieve the tedium of the same round of services day after day? I don’t think so, since feast-day services can be even more tedious due to their extra length, making your tired body and word-weary mind wonder if this is not a penitential service after all! It seems to me that we need to keep returning to the celebration of the mysteries of Christ and the Holy Mother because we need to be reminded often that the meaning of life is discovered only in the quest for communion with the Mystery of God.
What is it that is most needed today in the Church, in her mentality and practice, and in Christianity as a whole? Is it more focus on the external trappings of religion, more bureaucracy, more programs and projects, more uninspired worship? No, we don’t need that. Still less do we need insipid preaching, shady politics, corruption and hypocrisy, self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness, superficial spirituality, loveless truth and truthless love, irrelevant or misguided agendas, and emphasis on extraneous and petty concerns at the expense of the One Thing Necessary. We already have plenty of all that. 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.
If we trade in the search for God for the search for self-satisfaction, divine truth for political correctness, contemplation for committees, inner stillness for restless busyness, and silent solitude for back-slapping fellowship, we are fleeing from the essence of the Christian mystery. Not that there is no place for external activities and functions. They are necessary in their own right. But the Church is essentially the mystical Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ—not the “Office For Trying to Solve More Problems Than We Can Handle and For Creating New Ones of Our Own.”
Christ came to reveal the Father and to prepare us to receive the Spirit in order to live the “abundant life,” even the “eternal life,” starting now on Earth. He died and rose again to restore mankind and all creation to its original blessedness, to liberate us all from “the law of sin and death.” So the Apostle Paul exhorts us, who through baptism have mystically died and risen with Christ, to set our hearts and minds on “things above,” for our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:1-3). He was not writing only to monks or hermits but to a whole Christian community of people in all walks of life.
All too often Christianity is understood as a kind of moral code or social program. Rather, it is primarily the revelation of a creating, saving, transcendent, immanent God, and of a divine-human communion that is meant to begin on Earth and last for all eternity. One has only to consider the Johannine mysticism of mutual indwelling, the Pauline vision of the glorified Christ who fills the universe (and us) with Himself, the biblical language of Christ in us and us in Christ, as well as the metaphors of the Vine, the Body, and the Temple of the Spirit, to understand that Christianity sets us squarely within a vast, profound and inexhaustible mystery. (Of course, a genuine spiritual life will naturally overflow and be manifested in the practice of virtue and charitable works. Here, however, we are not discussing the outward expression but the inner essence. For practical applications, read the rest of Colossians 3.)
The interior life, what we may call our mystical relationship with God, is an essential and irreplaceable dimension of our Christian and human existence. When I speak of mysticism, however, I do not identify it with the experiences of “visionaries,” of those who see heavenly visions or hear voices or receive divine messages for the world. Those experiences—I speak here of authentic ones, not those created by psychological disorders, demonic interference, or uncontrolled pious imagination—are relatively rare and not given to all. Visions and voices are not the essence of spiritual life, but mystical union with God is. Our life in God does not need to be dramatic to be real and transforming.
Mysticism is no more and no less than the experience of God, an undeniable communion or communication with God in the depths of the soul. This experience may be granted us during prayer or sacramental communion or reading the word of God, or in the awareness of his presence in the beauty of creation. Many are the ways in which we can experience God, but it is always God who takes the initiative. All we can do is be well-disposed for that interior divine manifestation or loving advance. We cannot manufacture mystical experiences. That is why they cannot be identified with emotional or spiritual “highs” or with altered psychological states, even though such may sometimes accompany mystical experiences.
Fundamentally, the mystical life is a life lived with and in God, being led and “walking” by the Spirit. God is both the goal of our pilgrimage and our companion on the way. In God we live and move and breathe and have our being. We were created for divine communion. “Birds fly, fish swim, and man prays,” is a patristic dictum. When prayer and the awareness of the presence of God characterize your whole life and define your reason of being, you have become a mystic. Congratulations!
We must give much “quality time” to the exploration of the world of prayer and meditation, to the search for “Him whom our hearts love.” Each of us has a unique contribution to make to the renewal of the Church and the transformation of the world. We can think that we make no difference in this grandiose endeavor only if we do not believe that we are united to Christ, the Wisdom and Power of God. We have to give what is possible to give according to our state in life, whether we are monks or mommies, hermits or hard-working heads of households. All alike are called to drink of the life-giving waters of spiritual union with God, and thus fully realize the divine dream for us that was first expressed at the moment of our creation.
I seem to have undertaken an immense and unwieldy topic in this post. All I really wanted to say is that we need more than ever to “seek out and save what was lost,” i.e., the comprehensive vision of the mystery of Christ and the true essence of the Church. I wanted to say that we need to open ourselves to be permeated with the Divine Energies and led by the Spirit into the depths of this mystery, that our lives need to be hidden with Christ in God, through contemplative prayer and the experience of the God who transcends all and indwells all, who renews the face of the earth and transfigures our souls unto the likeness of Christ, who loves us with an everlasting love and who invites us to life and joy without end. That’s all I wanted to say.
