Finally Comes the Mystic (Part 2)
A constant theme in all of Franciscan theologian, Richard Rohr’s, teachings is the gold to be found in the rubble of our lives. What makes a thing sacred or profane is precisely whether we live on the surface of things or not. This is what theologian Karl Rahner called ‘the mysticism of ordinary life’. The divine is hidden but accessible in every authentic experience of despair, beauty and love. ‘Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God’ the Pope writes, ‘it opens up spiritual horizons within us.’ (EG n.272). Holiness, he repeats, is not to be found in a religion of rituals and regulations but in the flesh and feelings of the world, in senses and experiences, in excitement and disappointment, in real well-being and real tragedy, in moments of paralysing fear and of blessed courage, in living more passionately, more respectfully, more mystically. It is experienced, the Pope writes, ‘in a mystical community, a contemplative one . . . (EG n.92), where we remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other . . .’ (EG n.169).
That is the vision that drives our Pope. He has absorbed that whole revelation. He believes it and he has become it. ‘This way is not an extra add-on to my life’, he said, ‘it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self’ (EG n.273). He has identified with the mind of Christ, trying to see with the eyes of God. It is against this spiritual imagination of incarnate divinity that he will continue to approach the huge and challenging issues awaiting him – the needs of the poor, the reform of the Curia, the pain of divorced people, the plight of jobless young people, the neglected elderly, the inclusion of women at every level, debates around homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, financial and other scandals in the Vatican, ecumenical issues at many fragile levels. In all of the extremely daunting complexities that await him, including the vexed questions of authority, collegiality and subsidiarity, his guiding star will always be the one that once hovered in the sky over Bethlehem – the redeeming revelation of Incarnation.
Pope Francis’ contemplative vision and action spring from that understanding – the mystery of the fullness of God in the poverty, contrariness and sinfulness of humanity. Everything he says and does, whether he refers to it or not, is infused with that revelation. For instance when asked ‘What is holiness?’ his immediate reply shows his desire to ‘touch human misery, touch the suffering flesh of others, entering into the reality of other people’s lives through the power of tenderness’ (EG n.271). He did not dwell on the usual ‘marks’ of a Catholic or of ‘the one true Church’. He spoke of the patience of people, the woman struggling to raise children, the man working to bring home bread for the family, those with many wounds who can still smile, those who hide their sacrificial service of others, those who strive to stay open-minded, and the holiness of his Dad and Mom and his Grandma Rosie ‘who loved me very much’. (5)
There is a word that helps us express a key dimension of the ‘Francis factor’. Even though labelled a ‘conservative’ he talks of ‘magnanimity’ quite often in his interviews and homilies. This is a lifting, liberating and life-giving word. It is the mystical core of inner health. ‘Let ours be great souls,’ he preached, ‘cherish what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and most necessary’ (EG n.35). Big-heartedness! St Thomas Aquinas saw magnanimity as the major attribute of God. Live out of your anima magna, he preached, your big heart. Be expansive, let go of many things, let love dominate your life.
In almost all his recent written and spoken words, and certainly since his astonishing ‘conversion’ of mind and heart, Pope Francis emphasises the mystical, the creative, the imaginative. He sees all human encounters – with sinners, devotees of other faiths, agnostics, atheists – as potential moments, not for preaching, poaching or proselytising, but for developing some new synthesis, ‘a creative apologetics’ (EG n.132), another small incarnation, a graced foundation for future generations to build on. ‘The people of God,’ he wrote, ‘are incarnate in the peoples of the earth . . . (EG n.115). ‘We love this magnificent planet on which God put us and we love the human family which dwells there with all its tragedies and aspirations’ (EG n.183).
As we reflect on what makes our new Pope significantly different from his predecessors, setting people free at their most human and divine depths, a tentative word about the kind of theology that colours and nourishes his sacramental vision, that underpins his discernment, decisions and priorities, may enrich our understanding of him. Of all the current Christian theologies that can be identified in the Church today is there one that takes the hard, judgemental edge off the fall/redemption doctrine that still dominates Church teaching, that offers a renewed mystical story of original grace and beauty rather than of original sinfulness?
Obscured by an over-emphasis on reparation, sacrifice and moral perfection, there is a prior theology of nature and grace. Creation, our earth, our human condition, our death – all that we mean by our existence, by what is natural – all are already graced, created and fashioned in the divine image. That is one reason why Pope Francis, in his interview with La Repubblica’s founder Eugenio Scalfari in October 2013, (6) so easily refers to the power of the artistic experiences of his life – the literature, the music, the films, the paintings, evolution itself – knowing that such ‘secular’ creations and becomings are all pathways along his ‘Way of Beauty’ (EG n.167), all small sacraments of the divinity at their core.
The Pope’s theology of nature and grace, of creation, of liberation, of the poor (and they are all inter-related), is both mystical and incarnational. It is intrinsic to his deeply-interiorised understanding of the reasons for Creation in the first place, and for the later fleshing of the Word. It is his way of being in a world created by love and sustained by love. He quotes Thomas Aquinas’ assertion that God, right from the beginning, desired to become human simply because divine love needed to express itself outside of itself – first in Creation, and then, finally in Incarnation. ‘God is sheer joy,’ Aquinas wrote, ‘and sheer joy demands company’. And then, by virtue of solidarity and derivation, this love is embodied to a greater or lesser degree in all of us, and in the evolving world itself, most especially in all that we mean by the anawim, the truly poor.
Our Pope knows that being human does not mean (as we were mostly taught) being banished, fallen, cursed – a massa damnata as St Augustine put it – as if God’s original dream for us was, at some stage, radically destroyed. Instead, God’s seed, the divine image and dream were intrinsically a part of the eternal plan from the very beginning of creation, and the very beginning of every human life. That is why Francis is so slow to generalise, to condemn – he is always finding traces of God in everyone, no matter what way they have lived their lives, or how they might appear to others, especially those we misguidedly judge to be unworthy of sitting at the table of the Lord.
Across the world God’s people are watching this unfolding scenario, and the mystical image in their own hearts is unfolding too. In our deepest selves, too long repressed and fear-bound, there is an expansion happening, a damaged beauty is finding its original design again, and the frustration within us is healing as an original wholeness returns. And that graced process is released in us, as it was in Pope Francis, only in the costly surrender to the hidden light when the darkness is too heavy. There is no other way.
It is not good for the soul to sleep too long in the shadows. Many theologians of creation today speak of an awakening in human perception and awareness. They claim that evolving human beings are transcending the rationality of dualistic thinking and are opening themselves to a mystical consciousness that leads to the unity of all beings. ‘Human consciousness,’ William Johnston SJ wrote, ‘is evolving towards mysticism . . . (there is) a universal vocation to mysticism”’. 7
The recovery of a mystical theology, based on the radical revelation of Incarnation, will have profound implications for many Christian teachings and pastoral emphases, for our understanding of sacrament, for community ministry, for the religion/science debate, and for a new evangelising of young and old. But before that, it will transform our self-image as originally sinful failures, complicit somehow in the death of Jesus, into a vibrant awareness of our role as very imperfect, but vital co-creators with a patient God, of a steadily harmonising humanity, of a mystical Church, and of an ever-evolving universe of love.
References:
1 David Whyte, Songs for Coming Home (Washington: Many Rivers Press: 1984) p22
2 Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (New York: Random House: 1993) p269
3 Whyte, (D) p22
4 Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early (Boston: Beacon Press: 2005) p34
5 Pope Francis’ interview with Antonio Spadaro SJ; accessed November 10th 2013
6 Pope Francis’ interview with Eugenio Scalfari; accessed December 8th 2013
http://www.news.va/en/news/interview-with-pope-francis-by-eugenio-scalfari-ed
7 William Johnston, ‘We need a revolution’, The Tablet, 1 June, 2002, p12