What is Christian Mysticism?

hi friends I'm father Carrie Walters pastor of Holy Spirit American national Catholic Church and this is another Holy Spirit moment this one offering a very brief response to the question what is mysticism of all of the words that have been egregiously abused in the last few years mysticism I think tops the list it's either become a new agey generic term for all kinds of parapsychological phenomena such as levitation or mind-reading or spoon bending or it's become a term of opprobrium a term which signifies for the people who think this way nothing but superstition and delusion Bertrand Russell the British philosopher early on in the twentieth century defined mysticism as nothing more than emotional gushing it offered Russell claimed no knowledge whatsoever and didn't contribute anything that increases our understanding of the world that's the skeptical skeptical side the new agey side is abundantly clear to all of us who see the word mysticism thrown around hither and yon but in point of fact mysticism is something quite different from either of those two readings of it it derives of course from the Greek word was theory on which means mystery and was associated with the early mystery religions in greco-roman culture basically what mysticism is is a entry into the mystery of God a relationship with God that has become so intimate that things are revealed to the mystic that most of us have to learn only 2nd 3rd and 4th and to that end it seems to me we can distinguish three characteristics that are going to be found in all examples of at least Christian mysticism there are some people who want to argue that mysticism is Niq to Christianity I don't think that's true at all it seems to me that there are mystical strains in all of the world's great religious traditions but because I am a member of the Christian faith and don't wish to speak for other religious traditions I'll confine my analysis to Christian forms of men of mysticism so here are the three characteristics that it seems to me are more or less Universal in Christian mysticism the first characteristic is directness I hinted at that just a second ago the mystic is an individual who has such an intimate connection with God such an intimate experience of God that there's no mediation between her and God most of us get our knowledge of God our understanding of God in even our relationship with God second hand we learn about God from sacred scripture or we learn about God from authorities such as pastors and theologians and perhaps philosophers but we don't have that direct experience of God that is one of the hallmarks of mysticism and following upon the directness of a mystical experience comes the second characteristic ecstasy now by ecstasy I don't mean necessarily a feeling of sublimity or an emotional feeling of awe and Majesty although they may indeed accompany a mystical experience no what I mean is a rather more technical understanding of the term ecstasy a mystical experience is one that takes us outside of ourselves a mystical experience is one which diminishes our self-awareness diminishes our ego in order to open up all of our sensory apparatus to the presence of God so a mystic will frequently for example lose any sense of time or space when she's in this direct relationship with the Lord and quite frequently she will have no way of afterwards talking about the relationship except in poetic ways or perhaps even abstract ways because in point of fact there was no no err there if you will to understand the relationship and during the actual mystical experience but having said that there's a third characteristic of a mystical experience that's important to keep in mind it is no attic that is to say it is a form of knowing even though it's not any kind of knowing that you and I are used to it's not a knowing in which the eye or the knower is central it's not a knowing that can be easily explained afterwards it's not a knowing that we can somehow add to the entire bank load of our knowledge and work into it easily know that no ASIS or the knowledge that comes from a mystical experience is one that is transformative of the person who has the experience but isn't easily articulable isn't easily shareable with other people it is a kind of unknowing knowing if you will and I know that that may sound paradoxical and may even seem like a cop-out to you but mystics will insist that there is a kind of knowledge that is imparted to them even though they're not there during the mystical experience that is supremely illuminated supremely enlightened just a few more words about the Christian tradition of mysticism there are two general schools of Christian mysticism one is called the epithet expand one is called the cat affecting school these are simply Greek terms meaning negation and affirmation the apathetic school of mysticism wants to say that what we need to do in order to cultivate the possibility of this immediate direct experience of God is to separate ourselves from the things of the world to constantly remind ourselves that the sky is not God this is not God that is not God until we have stripped away everything that is not God and are left with what God is an effective approach to mysticism is kind of like peeling off the layers of onion what do you have when you've peeled off all the layers well you have no thing and that is precisely what God is for the UH perfected mystic then it's especially difficult to talk about what God is it's much easier to talk about what God is not and when we enter into an empathetic relationship with God we are thrown into as it's sometimes called a brilliant darkness the other school of Christian mysticism is the can effective school the affirmative school and people who are members of this school say that we can discover the presence of God in an immediate way in the world around us it may seem for example that a beautiful horizon is a mediator between us and God and in fact I serve a suspect that it is but a can of fact ik mystic would say no a beautiful an experience of a beautiful horizon is precisely an experience of God it can take us directly to God somehow how can we determine if an experience is a genuinely mystical one as opposed to a merely emotional one because of course they can masquerade can't they emotional experiences as mystical experiences how can we trust an experience that seems to be so subjective well two things can be said about that the first is this while it is true that a mystical experience is not objective in the sense that other people experience what the mystic is experiencing as she experiences it it is true that a mystical experience is entered subjective and when I say this what I mean is that we have lots of people from different centuries who have mystical experiences and report basically the same kind of experience to the rest of us in other words the experience while not immediately shareable seems to be shareable in other kinds of ways so there is an intersubjective objectivity to a mystical experience that's the first way in which we can gauge a mystical experience and the second is this a very wonderful 13th and early 14th century mystic by the name of Julian of Norwich was once visited by another mystic Marjorie Kemp and Marjorie was experiencing visions that she was worried about because she thought they might be from Satan or other than God and she came to Dame Julian to ask her counsel to ask her advice and Julian toed Margery words that I think are still really valuable she said if you are having a genuine mystical relationship with the Lord two things will change in your life how you worship God and how you behave with others a mystic is one who has developed a more intimate relationship with God than the rest of us have and so for example for a Catholic Christian the sacraments are going to become even more precious than they once were the sacraments are going to take on the true aspect of the mysteries that they are that is revealer of God in a way that is almost mystical and moreover a genuine mystic is going to see all human beings in the way that the Lord sees them and she will have cottoned on to this way of looking at people because of her direct relationship with the Lord she will see human beings as lovable creatures to go back to Julian of Norwich no small mystic herself her showings as she called them her mystical experiences with God showed her that in point of fact humans are beloved by God that sin is so insignificant compared to the love that God bestows upon us that when God sees us what God sees primarily our lovable human beings a mystic will sort of absorb that way that God looks at human beings and behave accordingly to her fellows so my friends all of us may not be mystics but we ought to at least be confident about what mysticism is it's not on one hand new AG tricks and it's not on the other errant superstition it is a way that some people approach God directly ecstatically and with a certain degree of no ASIS or knowing our Father Cary Walters and this has been another Holy Spirit moment thank you for listening and I will see you next time

Channel: Holy Spirit Moments, with Fr. Kerry Walters

Views: 65,492

Keywords: mysticism, Christian mysticism, apophatic mysticism, cataphatic mysticism, mystical ecstasy, mystical unity, mystical egolessness, Dame Julian of Norwich, Margery Kemp, New Age misunderstanding of mysticism, Bertrand Russell on mysticism

Id: OVB-D1OG204

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018