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Mystical Love Poem
SWEET INTOXICATION
You chewed the husks
You knew your heart wanted more
So you started eating the kernels
thinking this would forever satisfy
Speaking your name
from your very desire
is the Something More
your Beloved has prepared you for
Some discontent
is the Voice of Love
calling you to lose yourself
in that Voice alone
You were raised on religion
You were matured on spirituality
Now imbibe of the sweet intoxication
surpassing both in a deeper Knowing
*Brian K. Wilcox, March 19, 2007
Comments
What is Christian mysticism? Such mysticism does not entail, necessarily, much experience linked with classical mystics. Such happenings include voices, levitation, the stigmata, visions, miracles, seeing the Light, bodily heat, ...
Then what is Christian mysticism that can be the Intimacy of every person in Christ Jesus? The Gospel shares a mystery. This mystery, according to New Testament writers, is an open secret; that is, revelation of the Divine in Christ and available to everyone.
There are levels of meaning enfolded within the general revelation, or that Christ mystery for everyone. We experience within us, if we choose to follow the Spirit more deeply, unfolding spiritual meanings as the Spirit of Christ inwardly prepares us to receive them. To move toward readiness to receive these deeper, experiential meanings, there is a movement to a more inward orientation in Christian devotion and life.
What is the meaning? This is experiential understanding, an intuitive, inner, lived grasp, within the deepening, ever-mysterious relationship. This meaning is not cognitive understanding, principally.
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In a paradoxical manner, as one goes deeper into the Christ mystery, she knows less of certainty cognitively and more of certainty intuitively. Faith shifts from “what I think is definably true” to “what I know by experience and indefinably as true.”
I will give a definition of Christian mysticism and offer a few ways different Christians experience this Mystery, based on ways Christian mystics over the ages have experienced the Great Mystery of God.
Christian mysticism is a progressive experience of the inward, spiritual meaning of the Mystery of the Triune God, grounded in the historical Incarnation of the Word and presence of the Holy Spirit, and this progressive movement is simply the natural unfolding of the potential in the Gospel at first received by one trusting God in Christ Jesus for spiritual and eternal salvation.
1) Theistic mysticism
Here the Christian experiences the Mystery principally as "God." This can be God as the Father of Christ Jesus or God as the Godhead, or Creator Source prior to all images of God.
2) Trinitarian mysticism
The Christian experiences a deepening, mystical devotion and progressive transformation into lived, inward consciousness of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here, the experience of Christ or the Holy Spirit as feminine is possible.
3) Christ mysticism
The Christian experiences the ever-unfolding mystery of Christ, as the fullness of Preincarnate Word and Jesus of Nazareth. A person may move toward one direction or the other~experience of the Cosmic Christ (Christ apart from the historical Incarnation), experience of the historical Jesus (Christ within the historical Incarnation). Ideally, these two aspects of Christ, as Son of God and Son of Man, will be integrated in practice and consciousness, seeing both are part of the fullness of the revelation of the Word.
Suggested Reflection
Do you receive encouragement from other persons to experience the unfolding, deeper meanings of the Christ revelation?
Do you see yourself growing to experience the meanings of God at deeper, more comprehensive levels of practice and consciousness? Explain.
God bless you as you fall ever-more in love with the Mystery of our Christian faith!
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