Mysticism

Next the vision of the self’s destiny: “Our activity consists in loving God and our fruition in enduring God and being penetrated by His love. There is a distinction between love and fruition, as there is between God and His Grace. When we unite ourselves to God by love, then we are spirit: but when we are caught up and transformed by His Spirit, then we are led into fruition. And the spirit of God Himself breathes us out from Himself that we may love, and may do good works; and again He draws us into Himself, that we may rest in fruition. And this is Eternal Life; even as our mortal life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our breath.” 892

“Understand,” he says again, “God comes to us incessantly, both with means and without means; and He demands of us both action and fruition, in such away that the action never hinders the fruition, nor the fruition the action, but they strengthen one another. And this is why the interior man [ i.e., the contemplative] lives his life according to these two ways; that is to say, in rest and in work. And in each of them he is wholly and undividedly; for he dwells wholly in God in virtue of his restful fruition and wholly in himself in virtue of his active love. And God, in His communications, perpetually calls and urges him to renew both this rest and this work. And because the soul is just, it desires to pay at every instant that which God demands of it; and this is why each time it is irradiated of Him, the soul turns inward in a manner that is both active and fruitive, and thus it is renewed in all virtues and ever more profoundly immersed in fruitive rest. . . . It is active in all loving work, for it sees its rest. It is a pilgrim, for it sees its country. For love’s sake it strives for victory, for it sees its crown. Consolation, peace, joy, beauty and riches, all that can give delight, all this is shown to the mind illuminated in God, in spiritual similitudes and without measure. And through this vision and touch of God, love continues active. For such a just man has built up in his own soul, in rest and in work, a veritable life which shall endure for ever, but which shall be transformed after this present life to a state still more sublime.

Thus this man is just, and he goes towards God by inward love, in eternal work, and he goes in God by his fruitive inclination in eternal rest. And he dwells in God; and yet he goes out towards all creatures, in a spirit of love towards all things, in virtue and in works of righteousness. And this is she supreme summit of the inner life .” 893

Compare this description with the careers of the theopathetic mystics, in whom, indeed, “action has not injured fruition, nor fruition action,” who have by some secret adjustment contrived to “possess their lives in rest and in work” without detriment to inward joy or outward industry. Bear in mind as you read these words—Ruysbroeck’s supreme effort to tell the true relation between man’s created spirit and his God—the great public ministry of St. Catherine of Siena, which ranged from the tending of the plague-stricken to the reforming of the Papacy; and was accompanied by the inward fruitive consciousness of the companionship of Christ. Remember the humbler but not less beautiful and significant achievement of her Genoese namesake: the strenuous lives of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa, outwardly cumbered with much serving, observant of an infinitude of tiresome details, composing rules, setting up foundations, neglecting no aspect of their business which could conduce to its practical success, yet “altogether dwelling in God in restful fruition.” Are not all these supreme examples of the state in which the self, at last fully conscious, knowing Reality because she is wholly real, pays her debt? Unable to rest entirely either in work or in fruition, she seizes on this twofold expression of the superabundant life by which she is possessed: and, on the double wings of eagerness and effort, takes flight towards her Home.

In dwelling, as we have done, on the ways in which the great mystic makes actual to himself the circumstances of the Unitive State, we must not forget that this state is, in essence, a fulfilment of love; the attainment of a “heart’s desire.” By this attainment, this lifting of the self to free union with the Real—as by the earthly marriage which dimly prefigures it—a new life is entered upon, new powers, new responsibilities are conferred. But this is not all. The three prime activities of the normal self, feeling, intellect, and will, though they seem to be fused, are really carried up to a higher term. They are unified, it is true, but still present in their integrity; and each demands and receives full satisfaction in the attainment of this fillal “honour for which man has been made.” The intellect is immersed in that mighty vision of truth, known now not as a vision but as a home; where St. Paul saw things which might not be uttered, St. Teresa found the “perpetual companionship of the Blessed Trinity,” and Dante, caught to its heart for one brief moment, his mind smitten by the blinding flash of the Uncreated light, knew that he had resolved Reality’s last paradox: the unity of “cerchio” and “imago” — the infinite and personal aspects of God. 894 The enhanced will, made over to the interests of the Transcendent, receives new worlds to conquer, new strength to match its exalted destiny.

“Amans volat, currit et laetatur: liber est et non tenetur ,” 896 said à Kempis: classic words, which put before us once and for ever the inward joyousness and liberty of the saints. They “fly, run, and rejoice”—those great, laborious souls, often spent with amazing mortifications, vowed to hard and never-ending tasks. They are “free, and nothing can hold them,” though they seem to the world fenced in by absurd renunciations and restrictions, deprived of that cheap licence which it knows as liberty.

That fruition of joy of which Ruysbroeck speaks in majestic phrases, as constituting the interior life of mystic souls immersed in the Absolute—the translation of the Beatific Vision into the terms of a supernal feeling-state—is often realized in the secret experience of those same mystics, as the perennial possession of a childlike gaiety, an inextinguishable gladness of heart. The transfigured souls move to the measures of a “love dance” which persists in mirth without comparison, through every outward hardship and tribulation. They enjoy the high spirits peculiar to high spirituality: and shock the world by a delicate playfulness, instead of exhibiting the morose resignation which it feels to be proper to the “spiritual life.” Thus St. Catherine of Siena, though constantly suffering, “was always jocund and of a happy spirit.” When prostrate with illness she overflowed with gaiety and gladness, and “was full of laughter in the Lord, exultant and rejoicing. “ 897

Moreover, the most clear-sighted amongst the mystics declare such joy to be an implicit of Reality. Thus Dante, initiated into Paradise, sees the whole Universe laugh with delight as it glorifies God: 898 and the awful countenance of Perfect Love adorned with smiles. 899 Thus the souls of the great theologians dance to music and laughter in the Heaven of the Sun; 900 the loving seraphs, in their ecstatic joy, whirl about the Being of God. 901 “O luce sterna che . . . ami ed arridi, ” exclaims the pilgrim, as the Divine Essence is at last revealed to him, 902 and he perceives love and joy as the final attributes of the Triune God. Thus Beatrice with “suoi occhi ridenti”— so different from the world’s idea of a suitable demeanour for the soul’s supreme instructress—laughs as she mounts with him the ladder to the stars. So, if the deified soul has indeed run ahead of humanity and “according to his fruition dwells in heaven,” he too, like Francis, will run, rejoice and make merry: join the eager dance of the Universe about the One. “If,” says Patmore, “we may credit certain hints contained in the lives of the saints, love raises the spirit above the sphere of reverence and worship into one of laughter and dalliance: a sphere in which the soul says:—

Richard Rolle has expressed this exultant “spirit of dalliance” with peculiar insight and delicacy. “Among the delights which he tastes in so sweet love burning,” he says of the true lover who “in the bond of the lovers’ will stably is confirmed,” “a heavenly privity inshed he feels, that no man can know but he that has received it, and in himself bears the electuary that anoints and makes happy all joyful lovers in Jesu; so that they cease not to hie in heavenly seats to sit, endlessly their Maker to enjoy. Hereto truly they yearn in heavenly sights abiding; and inwardly set afire, all their inward parts are glad with pleasant shining in light. And themselves they feel gladdened with merriest love, and in joyful song wonderfully melted. . . . But this grace generally and to all is not given, but to the holy soul imbued with the holiest is taught; in whom the excellence of love shines, and songs of lovely loving, Christ inspiring, commonly burst up, and being made as it were a pipe of love, in sight of God more goodly than can be said, joying sounds. The which (soul) the mystery of love knowing, with great cry to its Love ascends, in wit sharpest, and in knowledge and in feeling subtle; not spread in things of this world but into God all gathered and set, that in cleanness of conscience and shining of soul to Him it may serve Whom it has purposed to love, and itself to Him to give. Surely the clearer the love of the lover is, the nearer to him and the more present God is.

The state of burning love, said Rolle, than which he could conceive no closer reaction to Reality, was the state of Sweetness and Song: the welling up of glad music in the simple soul, man’s natural expression of a joy which overpasses the descriptive powers of our untuneful speech. In the gay rhythms of that primordial art he may say something of the secret which the more decorous periods of religion and philosophy will never let him tell: something, too, which in its very childishness, its freedom from the taint of solemnity and self-importance, expresses the quality of that inward life, that perpetual youth, which the “secret child” of the Transcendent Order enjoys. “As it were a pipe of love” in the sight of God he “joying sounds.” The music of the spheres is all about him: he is a part of the great melody of the Divine. “Sweetest forsooth,” says Rolle again, “is the rest which the spirit takes whilst sweet goodly sound comes down, in which it is delighted: and in most sweet song and playful the mind is ravished to sing likings of love everlasting.” 905

When we come to look at the lives of the mystics, we find it literally true that such “songs of lovely loving commonly burst up” whenever we can catch them unawares; see behind the formidable and heroic activities of reformer, teacher, or leader of men the vie intime which is lived at the hearth of Love. “What are the servants of the Lord but His minstrels?” said St. Francis, 906 who saw nothing inconsistent between the Celestial Melodies and the Stigmata of Christ. Moreover the songs of such troubadours, as the hermit of Hampole learned in his wilderness, are not only sweet but playful. Dwelling always in a light of which we hardly dare to think, save in the extreme terms of reverence and awe, they are not afraid with any amazement: they are at home.

The whole life of St. Francis of Assisi, that spirit transfigured in God, who “loved above all other birds a certain little bird which is called the lark,” 907 was one long march to music through the world. To sing seemed to him a primary spiritual function: he taught his friars in their preaching to urge all men to this. 908 It appeared to him appropriate and just to use the romantic language of the troubadours in praise of the perfect Love which had marked him as Its own. “Drunken with the love and compassion of Christ, blessed Francis on a time did things such as these. For the most sweet melody of spirit boiling up within him, frequently broke out in French speech, and the veins of murmuring which he heard secretly with his ears broke forth into French-like rejoicing. And sometimes he picked up a branch from the earth, and laying it on his left arm, he drew in his right hand another stick like a bow over it, as if on a viol or other instrument, and, making fitting gestures, sang with it in French unto the Lord Jesus Christ.” 909

Many a time has the romantic quality of the Unitive Life—its gaiety, freedom, assurance, and joy—broken out in “French-like rejoicings”; which have a terribly frivolous sound for worldly ears, and seem the more preposterous as coming from people whose outward circumstances are of the most uncomfortable kind. St. John of the Cross wrote love songs to his Love. St. Rose of Lima sang duets with the birds. St. Teresa, in the austere and poverty-stricken seclusion of her first foundation, did not disdain to make rustic hymns and carols for her daughters’ use in the dialect of Old Castile. Like St. Francis, she had a horror of solemnity. It was only fit for hypocrites, thought these rejuvenators of the Church. The hard life of prayer and penance on Mount Carmel was undertaken in a joyous spirit to the sound of many songs. Its great Reformer was quick to snub the too-spiritual sister who “thought it better to contemplate than to sing”: and was herself heard, as she swept the convent corridor, to sing a little ditty about the most exalted of her own mystical experiences: that ineffable transverberation, in which the fiery arrow of the seraph pierced her heart. 910

But the most lovely and real, most human and near to us, of all these descriptions of the celestial exhilaration which mystic surrender brings in its train, is the artless, unintentional self-revelation of St. Catherine of Genoa, whose inner and outer lives in their balanced wholeness provide us with one of our best standards by which to judge the right proportions of the Mystic Way. Here the whole essence of the Unitive Life is summed up and presented to us by one who lived it upon heroic levels: and who was, in fruition and activity, in rest and in work, not only a great active and a great ecstatic, but one of the deepest gazers into the secrets of Eternal Love that the history of Christian mysticism contains. Yet perhaps there is no passage in the works of these same mystics which comes to so unexpected, so startling a conclusion as this; in which St. Catherine, with a fearless simplicity, shows to her fellow-men the nature of the path that she has trodden and the place that she has reached.

“When,” she says, in one of her reported dialogues—and though the tone be impersonal it is clearly personal experience which speaks—“the loving kindness of God calls a soul from the world, He finds it full of vices and sins; and first He gives it an instinct for virtue, and then urges it to perfection, and then by infused grace leads it to true self-naughting, and at last to true transformation. And this noteworthy order serves God to lead the soul along the Way: but when the soul is naughted and transformed, then of herself she neither works nor speaks nor wills, nor feels nor hears nor understands, neither has she of herself the feeling of outward or inward, where she may move. And in all things it is God Who rules and guides her, without the mediation of any creature. And the state of this soul is then a feeling of such utter peace and tranquillity that it seems to her that her heart, and her bodily being, and all both within and without is immersed in an ocean of utmost peace; from when she shall never come forth for anything that can befall her in this life. And she stays immovable, imperturbable, impassible. So much so, that it seems to her in her human and her spiritual nature, both within and without, she can feel no other thing than sweetest peace. And she is so full of peace that though she press her flesh, her nerves, her bones, no other thing comes forth from them than peace. Then says she all day for joy such rhymes as these, making them according to her manner:—