christianmystics.com

"..so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you will be filled with the utter fullness of God."
Eph. 3:17-19

 

As I've said elsewhere, I've found that for many people who identify themselves as Christians, the concept of a Christian mystic seems difficult to accept. This manifests in one of two ways. First, they just don't see what is so Mystical about "true" Christianity. It's cut and dry -- Jesus was the Son of God, he died for our sins and if you believe in him you go to heaven. If not, you go to hell. What could be more UN-mystical and straightforward?

These are the people who, if viewing a painting, might simply note that it is a picture of a woman smiling. "What's the big deal?" they might ask. "We've seen women smiling before." Another person, looking at the same picture, might see the interplay of light, the colors and patterns, the symmetry and feel that this, the Mona Lisa, is a moment of epiphany, when all the pieces work and the Radiance shines through. Both have seen the same picture, meaning an image has hit the back of the eye -- but which has really seen it? And how much profound joy is that first person missing?

All this can lead to the second way that people respond to the idea of a Christian mystic -- that one cannot be a mystic and a Christian, period. These are most often those who were not, say, given the exposure of Catholics to people such as St. Francis, Teresa of Avila or others. This is not to say that all Catholics have, either! To those people, I usually mention Paul as an example of a Christian mystic. The name-dropping usually is met with a blank stare.

Yet in the quote above, we have in one sentence the foundation of the mystic's faith and experience, spoken brilliantly by someone, if we can set aside his personal problems or the ingrained cultural influences that led him, for example, to have what we would now consider rather odd attitudes toward women.

Breaking it down, we come up with something like this: Christ may live in your hearts through faith -- Christ lives not in the brain (in knowledge) but in the heart, in love, to which I will return in a moment. This condition is tied in with faith, but here the original Greek word is "pistis" which, in this connection, doesn't mean intellectually convincing yourself that something is true. It is more in the sense of an active opening up of the soul to healing, the result of the innate desire to be made whole. In this sense, faith is perhaps better translated as "longing." And where does this longing come from? It is, as a friend said, that "we are wired for God." Faith, then, is active longing, not some passive belief. Faith entails the risk of opening oneself up which we do because it is what we as humans are, in essence, made to do. In essence, then, it is our faith which is a response to who we are and strengthens our desire to open more fully.

Paul's quote continues "and then, planted in love and built on love" adding, "you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth;" From the mystic's point of view, this is the cross, the meeting place of the four points, the mandala or energy center from which our life is to be lived. Paul goes on to state, "until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge," a familiar theme. We are looped back into the concept that God cannot be grasped by knowledge, but rather by love.

I've heard many people talk about knowing God -- a phrase that always makes me very uncomfortable. Quite often, these people might tend to speak in what I call "metaphysical bumperstickers" or "spiritual slogans." From the standpoint of a Christian mystic, it's pure ego to assert that one can "know" God. Jesus, the post-Easter Christ whose presence is felt in the world, acts as an intermediary, yes, a window so transparent that we can see the dazzling light but can't penetrate its mystery. But we are, as humans, in no position to claim we know God in the same sense that we can know our house. We can walk around it, inspect the roof or the crawlspace beneath the house and feel we have somehow "absorbed" or surrounded the house with our knowledge. That same process is simply not possible with God, by both definition and reality.

Paul realizes this as he concludes that with all of this, "you are filled with the utter fullness of God." Here we have the mystic union, but we no more have possession of God than a teacup can be said to have the ocean when it's been dipped and filled by the surf.

Taken as a whole, then, the quote is a magnificent summary of the process of the mystic, spoken by someone who, by his own account, was carried up into Third Heaven and learned things that are beyond words but require them as pointers, just the same.