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Today's Scripture
1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
*Colossians 3.1-4, NAB
Wisdom Quotes
The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love.
*Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1210-1282), Christian mystic
St. Symeon the New Theologian (942-1022), abbot, theologian, and mystic, speaking to his monks ~ reflecting his ardent zeal in appealing for a reform among clergy and laity to an authentic mysticism:
O my dear brethren, with what pain and sorrow my heart is filled when I want to proclaim the wondrous deeds of God's hand and its ineffable beauty, so that you may know and learn its greatness and seek to receive Him within yourselves! Yet I see that some of you lack the desire of fervor to heed what I say and strive for the enjoyment of such glory! This is the reason why I remain tongue-tied; I am unable to tell or explain to anyone the glory of Christ our God, which He bestows on those who seek Him with all their soul.
Comments
St. Paul's mysticism is a common mysticism, a community mysticism. For in Christ each person is in the full Mystery of God, a Trinitarian Mystery, and each is in God as one member of the Body of Christ. This, this, is a Body Mystery.
St. Paul uses words of space and place to connote the mystery of the Body of Christ. We, together, are "raised with," are to seek that "above," and Christ sits "at the right hand of God." The metaphors imply intent and consent of willing love, and nonlocal geography. They refer to consciousness set apart, consecrated to the life in and for the Holy.
What does it mean to say, then, "I have died. My life is hidden with Christ in God"? St. Paul says, "You have died." This you is the self apart in consciousness, intent, and consent from the Mystery. This is the unhidden you.
The new birth, or birth from above, is our being hidden within Christ, which puts us inside God, God as Trinitarian Presence. Yes, this makes us each, as well, in Christ and hidden in God with the community, the Body of Christ. For how can I be in Christ in God, while apart from the Body of Christ? Hence, no person is hidden in Christ in God without being hidden there with the whole Body of Christ. Yet, let us not simply equate the Body of Christ with any group that names itself church or Christian faith.
To inwardly realize ~ and inwardly is the sole way to know this Mystery ~ these mystical truths, and not just believe them, St. Symeon the New Theologian reminds us demands "desire of fervor" and for us to "strive." We must, he affirms, seek God with all the soul. Sadly, due to different causes, among them spiritual sloth and lack of clergy example, Trinitarian Mysticism ~ which is orthodox and biblical ~ is absent from most professing Christian's awareness. God, at best, is a vague idea of ultimate power and knowledge.
What is this awareness in biblical terms? Seeing is this awareness, or consciousness. St. Augustine writes of this in On Seeing God:
But the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father (Jn 1:18) soundlessly declares the nature and substance of the Godhead, and hence to eyes worthy and apt for such appearance he shows it invisibly. Those are the eyes of which the Apostle says: "The eyes of your heart enlightened" (Eph 1:18) and of which it is said: "Enlighten my eyes that I never sleep in death" (Ps 12:4). For the Lord is a spirit (2 Cor 3:17; Jn 4:24); hence, "he who is united to the Lord is one spirit" (I Cor 6:17). Therefore, whoever can see God invisibly can be united to God spiritually.
Without going into details of how takes shape the ardent fervor that leads to this seeing of a person in one spirit with Spirit ~ this enlightening includes inner and outer aspects ~ , suffice it for me to end with words of Thomas Merton, in his Life and Holiness (1996 Edition) ~ but of great import is Merton placing the interior life alongside the life of the visible faith community, with its rightful authorities (let us not think mysticism a mere interior, individualist subjectivism behind which the self hides from the demands of community and, thus, from spiritual love):
The most important, the most real, and lasting work of the Christian is accomplished in the depths of his own soul. It cannot be seen by anyone, even by himself. It is known only to God. This work is not so much a matter of fidelity to visible and general standards, as of faith: the interior, anguished, almost solitary act by which we affirm our total subjection to God by grasping his word and his revelation of his will in the inmost depths of our being, as well as in obedience to the authority constituted by him.
Reflection
1. Do you see your experience of the Trinity as mystical? If so, put into words, as best you can, the realization.
2. What is your emotional response to describing your experience of the Divine as mystical? Explain.
3. What, to you, does being united to God spiritually mean?
4. Can we be one with God apart from a community of faith? Explain your response.
5. Why might I place this caution in the writing: "Yet, let us not simply equate the Body of Christ with any group that names itself church or Christian faith"?
*Sources: quote from Mechthild of Magdeburg, serenitybeach.com; quote from St. Symeon the New Theologian ~ Symeon the New Theologian. Trans. C.J. deCantanzaro. The Classics of Western Spirituality.; quote from St. Augustine ~ Augustine of Hippo. Trans. Mary T. Clark. The Classics of Western Spirituality.
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