Mystagogia Epsilon

Sursum corda: Lift up your hearts!

If, as I suggested at the beginning of this series, the Liturgy of the Word corresponds to the catechumenate, then the solemn beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist corresponds to the illumination of baptism. Instructed by God's Word and actively working to uproot vice and plant virtue in our hearts, we prepare to enter God's presence in a fitting state. The first movement in this preparation is to exclude from our hearts any worldliness, and lift our hearts up to ponder heavenly realities. The Cherubic Hymn, used in Orthodox liturgies, beautifully exhorts us in this regard:

"Let us who mystically represent the cherubim now lay aside all earthly cares. That we may receive the King of all Who comes invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts. Alleluia!"

If it is our task to represent the very cherubim who attend at God's throne, we have to make the effort to situate ourselves there, in heaven, away from the world.

At the risk of repeating myself, I believe it is important one last time to recall the prerequisites for receiving the King of all: "Lord, who shall be admitted to your tent and dwell on your holy mountain?" Answer: "He who walks without fault; he who acts with justice and speaks the truth from his heart; he who does not slander with his tongue; he who does no wrong to his brother, who casts no slur on his neighbor, who holds the godless in disdain but honors those who fear the Lord; he who keeps his pledge, come what may; who takes no interest on a loan and accepts no bribe against the innocent. Such a man will stand firm forever. [Ps. 15; cf. Ps. 24, and Ps. 118: 19-20]"

This requires an act of imagination. The King comes to us invisibly, and when He does manifest Himself, He does so not yet fully in glory, but in the humility of bread and wine, transformed into His Body and Blood, sacrificed upon the Cross.

I suppose many today ask if this is 'realistic' or 'worth it'. Many of us would, without much forethought, perhaps prefer more tangible results, like smiling parishioners who make us feel good to be there. Nothing against smiles and hospitality, but here is where I believe that we need mystagogy, an appreciation of the mysteries so badly. When life throws us curveballs, such as when the person we are counting on to smile has encountered terrible suffering and isn't smiling today, if our faith is only supported by this human effort, it is going to wither. We need to "seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God [Col 3: 2]." It is this Christ, raised from the dead, triumphant over all human failing and dealing the death-blow to death itself, Who gives us confidence in the face of trials. Only Christ can save us: no amount of effort at warm fellow-feeling can save us from death.

"Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet....For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet....But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering! [Heb 12: 12, 18-19, 22]" Would that we truly believed this in our hearts! What could stop us from being saints?

Does our turning our backs on the world mean disdain for those in the world, or the many blessings of creation? Me genoito! May such a thing not be said! We will be sent back into the world as Christ's ambassadors, but if we do not return to the world having received Christ's presence, and the grace to triumph over temptation, then what will we bring to the world that the world does not already have in some way? No; we must bring Christ, and to bring Christ, we must first receive Him, invisibly upborne by the angelic hosts. To receive Him, we must lift up our hearts to Him.

May the peace that surpasses all understanding be with you!

Mystagogia: Beginning Again

"Behold, I tell you a mystery." God is mysterious. To write this is not to imply that God is unknowable. I do, however, mean to imply that God cannot be known simply by reading about Him, any more than someone can be my friend simply by reading my blog. All spiritual beings manifest mystery: "Deep is calling on deep," is one passage of Scripture that the Fathers frequently used to express this fact. A human voice seeking God, calling out to God, is one fathomless depth seeking another.

We are all driven to know other spiritual beings. We are made for communion. We are incomplete without each other and without God. Our differences suggest this, and where post-modern philosophy posits a fundamental violence caused by a supposed desire to wipe out difference, to make other persons like myself, Christians say that where this violence exists, it is a form of sin, not of nature. Nature, created good, impels us to appreciate the necessity of difference in communion. St. Paul gave this truth its classic expression:

"There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit....For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ....For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body....The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you,"....Now you are the body of Christ and individually member of it [excerpts from 1 Corinthians 12]."

People who 'fall in love' experience something of the reality of our desire for communion and the goodness of communion. Life somehow seems to make more sense. One's own gifts seem to find purpose in serving another, whose own gifts seem so precious.

What we find, after initial enthusiasm in love, at work, or in other meaningful activity, is that there are inside us areas of 'blockage'. We find something strange about other persons, or unnerving in ourselves. Communion seems to threaten us with annihilation of what is unique in us or other persons. We lose heart; we need a 'gut check'. Will we trust the original inspiration, and do battle against what stands in the way of love and responsibility? Or will we give into the post-modern nihilism of constant flux, 'tolerance' that is simply an excuse for not caring?

In the language of Christianity, those 'blockages', those parts of ourselves that kick against the goad, that seek preservation of a narrow self instead of solidarity with the bigger picture: this is part of the matrix of sin, either 'original' or personal and chosen sin. We are born with an inclination toward poor choices and weaken what should be a naturally joyful response to life. The moments of falling in love, being rapt in the beauty of a sunset or a beautiful church, of being creative, these are moments of grace, in which the call to communion gives us insight into the radical freedom and goodness of the Creator and His creation. This is merely insight and not full understanding because those blockages in us are still there, and because spiritual beings are unfathomable mysteries. Our insight suggests that the pursuit of love is worthwhile, that behind the mysteries of life is Someone Who is Good and Who is Love.

It is because we have this fundamental conviction of God's goodness that we make the 'gut check' that allows us to confront the unconverted parts of ourselves, those 'blockages' that undermine love and joy. This is why the universal tradition of the Church, in accord with other major religions and ancient philosophies, sees the need for asceticism if we are to progress in wisdom, insight and understanding. We cannot simply go toward truth with our minds without taking account of the sluggish neediness of an ill-disciplined body and will. Pascal captured this memorably in a Pensee: man ponders the mysteries of far-away galaxies one moment, and the next curses the banal and insignificant fly that lands on his brow. Our path to wholeness and holiness begins with recognition of our present state, with all the ambiguities of our motives, all the hidden compromises that we have made with disintegration.

This is what is captured by the early monastic tradition when we read quotes such as these:

"Whoever wishes to attain to the theoretike [that is, spiritual knowledge of God] must first pursue practical knowledge with all his strength and power. For the praktike [practical knowledge=moral virtue] can be possessed without the theoretical, but the theoretical can never be seized without the practical. For certain steps...follow one another according to [a] method [so that] a person can attain to a heaight to which he cannot fly if the first step has not been takeen. In vain, therefore, does someone who does not reject the contagion of vice strive for the vision of God. 'For the Spirit of God hates deception, and it does not dwell in a body subject to sin [Wisdom 1: 5, 4].

"Now this practical perfection exists in a twofold form. Its first mode is that of knowing the nature of all the vices and the method of remedying them. The second is that of discerning the sequence of the virtues and forming our mind by their perfection in such a way that it is obedient to them not as if it were coerced and subjected to an arbitrary rule but as taking pleasure in and enjoying what is so to say a natural good, thus mounting with delight the hard and narrow way. [Cassian, Conf XVI. 1-2; emphases added; cf. RB 7: 67-70, and 58: 8]"

Abba Antony the Great expresses a similar nexus of teaching in his famous first exhortation after emerging from his fortress, with his "soul in a state of purity, for it was not constricted by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor affected by either laughter or dejection. Moreover...he was not annoyed any more than he was elated at being embraced by so many people. He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by reason and steadfast in that which accords with nature."
[Vita Harper Collins ed. p. 18]

He goes on to teach thus: "Having therefore made a beginning and set out already on the way of virtue, let us press forward to what lies ahead....For virtue exists when the soul maintains its intellectual part according to nature....When it turns from its course and is twisted away from what it naturally is, then we speak of the vice of the soul....First we ought to understand this....much prayer and asceticism is needed so that one who receives through the Spirit the gift of discrimination of spirits might be able to recognize their traits. [pp 22-24]"

At first blush, this emphasis on learning what the vices are and their traits tends to strike [post-]moderns as overly harsh, obsessed by sin and self-worthlessness. The opposite in fact is the case. The best defense is a good offense: zealous to guard 'what is in accord with nature' and is therefore good, we first set out to do combat against whatever lessens our humanity and our freedom, whatever stands in the way of our growing in understanding of the mysteries of God.

So God willing, we will really move on to theoretike this coming week.

Mystagogy Gamma

"For freedom Christ has set us free." This means freedom from the ultimate dominance of the 'powers and principalities' of the cosmos. Heady stuff. No wonder not many people dwell on this on an everyday basis.

I suggested yesterday that we often avoid dwelling on these apparently arcane passages of Scripture because when things go wrong, it is easier to blame the 'powers and principalities' ("I can't help it!") than to admit that we have been granted freedom and that we often use our freedom to choose the wrong thing. On the other hand, when by grace we recognize the path to freedom offered us in Jesus Christ, we should be honest about this tendency to 'pass the buck'. This implies that a first step to clarifying our experience is repentance: the decision to act according the God's law and to own up to our failure to do so. We 'admit (borrowing from AA now)...the exact nature of our wrongs,' with the intention 'to have God remove all these defects of character' by training in virtue. Cassian insists that spiritual knowledge is only available to those who have worked to acquire the virtues (who have attained 'practical knowledge'). The Old Testament attests to the same, though with different imagery and terminology. Enoch pleased God, he 'walked with God', that is, he followed God's commandments, and therefore, he was 'translated' directly to heaven to be with God. Similarly, there was no meeker man on earth than Moses, who was deemed worthy to see God as God is, and to speak to him 'mouth to mouth' as friends do. What an amazing gift, to have intimate knowledge as 'friends of God', and this is offered to us, if we are willing to repent and seek God.

This is why catechism stresses not only learning, but a change of life. We must consciously renounce the 'glamor of evil', the wiles and snares of the devil, the countless little pacts we have made with indifference and hatred. We must make the effort to bring our actions into line with the path of holiness. Only at that point will the mysteries begin to shine in our understanding. If we are seekers of mystical knowledge (and there are many such out there today), and if we find prayer boring, Scripture irrelevant or Church teaching on spirituality foreign to our experience, a first step is a humble admission that we need God's help, both in terms of learning where our behavior needs improvement, and in terms of God revealing himself to us.

If I may close this post with another comparison drawn from real life...do we not find that young men who fall in love for the first time often do so with little or no real knowledge of the woman behind the face or image that has so smitten them? Is it not the case that such young men will collect pictures of the beloved, will go out of their way to bump into them, will even begin to imagine that the object of their affection is ready to reciprocate this interest--all this while the young man has never had a serious conversation at even a superficial level with this young woman. If asked to name her favorite color, favorite band, TV show, movie or food, or if asked about her family, the young man could not pull this information from his imagination, the place where the relationship exists at that moment. No, that won't do...he will have to speak to her! When he tries, he discovers that in fact he is offensive to her in some way, perhaps because she feels him staring at her all the time! So if he really thinks that she is worth it, he will first have to change his behavior so that he can ask her about what she is really like. More problematic is the fact that he will probably have to abandon his preconceived ideas about what she is like in order not to offend her further once they do start talking. In other words, because of his imaginary relationship, he does not come to the real relationship with a clean slate. Some change of heart will have to accompany his effort to know this attractive young woman.

This is a bit of a stretch, perhaps, but I believe that we often block ourselves from knowing God because preconceived imagined ideas about Him make the real God of Jesus Christ appear strange and perhaps even threatening. We need to convince ourselves that knowing the real God is the best thing for us, and that if this requires us to mature in our understanding of God and in our behavior, the benefits of this will make themselves known.

Now in making the analogy to our relationship with God, we should be aware that God wants us to change our behavior not out of discomfort with our behavior, that is, not for His own sake, but for ours. The sinful behavior that blocks our relationship with God also blocks our truthful understanding of ourselves and makes us unfree. Those who are not free are never able to enter fully into a relationship, because they are not able to give of themselves freely. In this sense, we are 'not at our own disposal'. We are less than we should be.

How can we be sure that repenting will be a change for the better? If we find ourselves wavering at this point, we have various proofs of God's goodness: the resurrection of Christ, the example of the saints, hopefully the overall witness of the Church herself.

I will end here with a challenge for those of us who are already persuaded that God's Law and conformity to Jesus Christ really do make us free to act out of love and not out of fear: do our lives provide convincing witness to these convictions?

Mystagogy Beta

Mystagogy, properly speaking, refers to the mysteries that Catholics celebrate in the 'Liturgy of the Eucharist' (this same holds, but with different terminology, for Orthodox Christians). During Lent, when there are catechumens present at the Divine Liturgy, they are allowed to participate only as far as the end of the Liturgy of the Word. At this point, they are dismissed and cannot yet participate in the 'mysteries' because they are not yet baptized or otherwise fully initiated. So in this series of reflections, I will meditate with you on the principal mysteries of the liturgy that are connected to the Eucharist, including the Sursum Corda (Lift up your hearts!), the Eucharistic Prayer and consecration of the sacred elements, the Lord's Prayer, the Kiss of Peace, and Communion, which of its nature implies what I will ultimately be driving at: The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ and Bride of Christ, of which we baptized are members and without which we have no access to these mysteries.

However, as I indicated yesterday, to appreciate fully the notion of mystery and the incredible dignity that flows from our access to the sacraments, we need to do some spade work to break up the dry and unimaginative worldview that we inherit from our present situation. We are not inclined to allow for things 'mysterious', or, when we do have such an inclination, it is often a highly personal affair and not infrequently confused (in my opinion as an artist) with singular states of mind or feeling. In other words, the tumult of our own passions tricks us into thinking that we are in the presence of the mysterious when in fact we are simply prey to unreason. The life-giving mysteries of God fulfill and perfect reason while utterly transcending it. It does not follow that anything not open to our reason, especially before reason has been purified and elevated, is divine. This is why catechumens first undergo instruction and testing in virtue before being allowed to gaze upon the mysteries.

However, let me return to the first problem, which I think is possibly more pernicious because more habitual: the disinclination toward the mysterious, the numinous, the Other. A veritable pot pourri of modern ideologies, Darwinsim, Freudianism, Marxism and positivism, produces in us a habit of trying to explain away things of the spirit as mere byproducts of material forces (Freud's role in this is a bit more complicated, but I will cover that elsewhere, if I have the time). Falling in love is explained by pheremones and biological drives to reproduce. Enjoyment in music is summed up by fanciful evolutionary postulates. These reductionist enterprises lead us to mistrust our experience, especially when it suggests something mysterious. The 'hermeneutics of suspicion' block our ability to read our own lives with the spiritual level in view.

If you will permit me a light-hearted reference to that Canadian poet-duo, Neil Peart and Geddy Lee, are we merely "A planet of playthings?" Do "we dance on the strings/of powers we cannot perceive?" If so, do we ultimately discover anything of significance through more and more science? That is, if we succeed in perceiving the powers that account for our behavior, does that leave us with anything worth living for: any freedom, any spirit? I suspect that there is a lingering uneasiness in many of us today that materialism might finally explain everything, and we reinforce this malaise by being quick to return our spiritual freedom in order to get a pass on the possibility that our freedom causes us to choose evil. Again, to quote Peart/Lee, "Blame is better to give than receive." (In the context of their song "Freewill" this quote is ironic...)

This dilemma is in many ways a recent one, and yet like most human phenomena it connects us to the dilemmas of past ages. Like the world of St.Paul, we live in a time of great upheavel and global connectness that tends to seek out a universalist 'Grand Unified Theory'. We also live in a time of unprecedented prosperity that makes seeking comfort into an easy way out of dealing with these questions. So in his letters (or his disciples' letters) to the Colossians and Ephesians, St. Paul is concerned to demonstrate precisely that our freedom in Christ dispels these powers by investing us with the spiritual power of the gospel.

Before ending today, let me emphasize that this is not a disgression. If we feel uneasy with talk of our lives being manipulated by hidden forces, that uneasiness is a good sign. It suggests that we have a more deeply rooted sense of the goodness of things and of our own freedom. We have maintained a sense of the wrongness that happens when we sense our freedom threatened by malice hidden within what otherwise strikes us as a good and benign creation. These intuitions are not provable by scientific hypothesis and experiment, but are rather reflections on precisely the experience that scientism would tend to exclude. Thus it is an elevation to the spiritual level, the level without which there can be no discussion of mysteries, of God or of eternal salvation.

Mystagogy

He is risen! Alleluia!

This period after Easter is traditionally devoted to 'mystagogy', that is, the interpretation of the Mysterium Fidei, the Mystery of Faith, for the newly initiated.

While the recently baptized have much to learn, the same holds true even for Christians who have been at it for awhile. By definition, the Christian mysteries are inexhaustible, since they put us in contact with the infinitely awesome God Who created all there is. I suspect that some of the difficulties we encounter in our daily lives as Christians are less effectively addressed by attempting 'more of an effort to live well'. Rather, that very effort wears us out because we forget the dignity to which we are called as well as the power and glory of God. Gradually our good resolutions are broken down by daily pressures and simple human inertia, and we cease to know either 'the Scriptures or the power of God [Mark 12: 24].' Like the Sadducees, resurrection begins to look like a fairy tale, and suffering becomes unredeemable and unbearable.

So we do well to meditate, especially at this time of year, on the "depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God [Rom 11: 33].'

Let us first admit that this 'depth' of God is mysterious. We are mysteries to ourselves and one another: how much more mysterious is Almighty God Who dwells in uncreated light? If we have spent any time at all getting to know ourselves or if we have entered into relationships in marriage, with children or long-term friendships, we discover that human beings themselves are an infinite source of wonder, puzzlement and growth. In this we image forth the wide spiritual spaces of the unseen God.

Grasping that our worship of God is by means of sacraments (mysteries) is a first step in preserving ourselves from the mistake of thinking that all we need to do is follow some formula wo get to heaven, whether that be following the rules of the Catholic Church, or even simply accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior. We must constantly change, morphing from glory to glory, deepening our love for God, broadening our love for the Church and the world. To stand still or 'coast' in our discipleship might not immediately manifest itself as going backward or falling away, but when we serve a dynamic God and the Lord of History, why should we wish to settle for simple prerequisites? Let us go forward into God's glory, following the 'path of life' shown to us by our merciful and loving Lord Jesus Christ!