The Mystical Life

By Pascal P. Parente

The scope of this volume is distinct from that of THE ASCETICAL LIFE, also by Dr. Parente. Here the author discusses the higher realms in the life of prayer. As in the former work, he treats the subject with the greatest clearness.

Why should a priest be acquainted with mystical theology? One reason is that at some time he may be the spiritual director of a soul that is in the way of the mystical life. Without adequate knowledge he is likely to be an unreliable guide.

The work is divided into three parts, as follows:

I. General Aspects and Basic Elements of Mysticism

II. Mystical States in Particular

III. Mystical Phenomena

The third part considers such phenomena as stigmatization, protracted abstinence, visions, private revelations.

The information contained in THE MYSTICAL LIFE ought to be part of the theological equipment of every seminarian before he starts out on the work of the ministry. A priest who has not already acquired this knowledge will do well to study this volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839748196

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Any intuition or experimental perception of transcendent truths is generally regarded as a mystical act and mystical knowledge. Our purpose in this volume is to investigate the nature of such acts as reported by Christian mystics and to interpret them in the light of divine revelation. The most transcendent object of mystical knowledge is God Himself; hence this part of the sacred sciences is called mystical theology. The present book on mystical life together with The Ascetical Life, first published in 1944, completes our theological treatise on Christian spirituality.

Both mystical theology and Christian mysticism are often understood in a broad sense so as to include the ascetical and the mystical element of the spiritual life. In a still wider sense they extend to the mysticism of the sacraments and divine worship. In this case the term mystic, like the old mystes, means initiate; in this sense every Christian is a mystic, having been initiated in the most sublime and deifying mysteries. This is the mystical initiation extolled above the useless rites of pagan mystery cults by early Christian writers.{1} Both mystical theology and Christian mysticism are understood only in this very wide sense by some modern authors.{2} Some others still retain the old connotation of mystical theology, a connotation it acquired with the first treatise of that title written by the Pseudo-Areopagite at the beginning of the sixth century.{3} Mystical theology is for the latter the equivalent of Christian spirituality in all its forms, active and passive, acquired or infused, ascetical or mystical. This system is retained in our day by those theologians who belong to the speculative school with regard to spiritual questions.{4} For reasons of clarity and other practical reasons, we prefer to treat separately of ascetical and mystical theology. Lack of such a procedure is in part responsible for the great obscurity that has characterized mystical theology for over a millennium, till the eighteenth century. The inherent obscurity is primarily on account of the nature of mysticism, the very name of which means something closed, concealed, secret, being directly related to mystery. No one is able to eliminate this part of obscurity from our subject without changing its very nature. However, we have tried to eliminate the obscurity that has been caused by unsuitable method and by too metaphysical concepts or too allegorical diction. We have used plain language as far as the nature of the subject would permit and have explained technical terms whenever their use was imperative. We have employed the combined method by taking into accounts facts and principles, and thus we have followed a middle course between the merely speculative and the purely descriptive school. The separation of mysticism from asceticism, for reasons of method, does not countenance the conclusion that Christian asceticism and mysticism have nothing in common. Christian spirituality is both ascetical and mystical. There is no true asceticism without some degree of mysticism, and there is no true mysticism without asceticism. The Christian mystic remains always an ascetic in his cooperation with grace, in the practice of virtue, in his self-denial, in carrying his daily cross, and in his imitation of Christ. His approach to God in prayer is different, in manner at least, from that of the ordinary ascetic. His prayer is infused, it is an infused contemplation, strictly mystical in every respect. Infused contemplation is a special grace, partaking of both the actual grace (gratia illustrationis et inspirationis) and the charismata. In this volume we treat of mystical life in the restricted sense of infused contemplation.

In the first part of this work we explain the various elements of the mystical state with a special chapter on pre-Christian sources of mystical terminology. In the second part we examine the mystical states in their various degrees of perfection. The third part is dedicated to mystical phenomena. We have endeavored to present only solid facts and well-founded opinions. We have taken into consideration only such authors as have contributed in one way or another to the advancement of mystical theology. The legion of compilers and imitators who have only popularized some mystical doctrine but have not contributed anything to the doctrine itself has been purposely omitted from our study. Those who are acquainted with mystical theology will find some old questions developed, a new classification, new aspects and solutions of a few controversial questions, and, above all, a new arrangement of the subject matter which, we hope, will make the mystical questions a little clearer and more accessible to all. Mysticism enters into the most beautiful pages of Christian literature. The increasing interest in such literature and in mysticism itself bids well for a work giving a comprehensive introduction into Christian mysticism and mystical life. Foremost in our thought, however, were mystical persons and their spiritual directors. Every priest as a potential guide of such souls must make himself acquainted with the special ways of the mystical life and the various manifestations of the Spirit. These were the spiritual things St. Paul took great pains to explain to the Corinthians: Concerning spiritual things, my brethren, I would not have you ignorant.{5} Infused contemplation is regarded by some theologians as a connecting link between the present life of faith and the future life of glory. May the study of the mystical life inspire the soul with an ever-growing interest in the true life of the spirit, the life in God, which alone is truly eternal life in the midst of this mortal life on earth.

Pascal P. Parente

Catholic University of America

PART I — GENERAL ASPECTS AND BASIC ELEMENTS OF MYSTICISM

CHAPTER I — MYSTICISM

DEFINITIONS AND HISTORY

1. The word mysticism has received more definitions than any other word we know. William R. Inge has collected twenty-six of them,{6} and these only as specimens. Indeed the list might be much longer. Such a variety of definitions has naturally caused no little bewilderment about a concept in itself admittedly obscure. So distorted is the meaning of this word at the present time that William James was well justified in saying: The words ‘mysticism’ and mystical’ are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic.{7} This is without question a mistaken connotation of the terms mysticism and mystical, but their use in this way has been condoned because their true and genuine meaning remains generally unknown or obscure.

2. It is our intention to disregard, for the moment, all the definitions of mysticism offered until now. We shall give rather a brief historical review of the use made of the word mysticism when it was first coined by the Greeks and of its connotation at that time. We believe that the original meaning, born of the Greek mystery cults, is the genuine meaning and that it remained substantially unchanged when it was transferred to Christian truth from pagan myths and superstitions. The abstract word mysticism is intimately associated with the concrete word mystery, the noun mystic, and the adjective mystical. In the logical as well as in the ontological order, the abstract follows the concrete and objective. It is a concept that grows out of things or facts in us or in the outside nature. For this reason we shall discuss now the terms mystery and mystic. They are very old terms, whereas mysticism is comparatively modern. Mysteries and mystics have created the idea of mysticism. We shall understand the meaning of mysticism once we have penetrated the nature of mysteries and mystics.

PAGAN MYSTERY CULTS

3. Pagan mystery cults were commonly known as mysteria. Often the connotation orgia or teletai stood for the same type of religion. A pagan mysterion was a secret worship to which only certain privileged people were admitted. The great mysteries, as the Eleusinian mysteries, were under state protection and supervision. They were the most important part of the Attic state religion. Many other mysteries were known to antiquity, most outstanding among them, after the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionysiac or Orphic mysteries, the Phrygian and the Mithraic. The object of the initiation in these mysteries was to place the person, the mystes, in a special, close, privileged relation with the divinity honored in that mystery. In time, this close relation with the divinity became a transformation into one or more of the divine attributes, a deification, and consequently the initiation came to be regarded as a rebirth, a resurrection.{8} A ritual of purification or trial was required before a person could be admitted to the initiation. The initiation itself was known as μύησις (instruction), and the initiated person as a μύστης (instructed). The Eleusinian mysteries, as we will explain soon, required that one year should elapse between the first myesis and the final initiation, called ἐποπτεία, whence the fully initiated was known as epoptes, or one who had seen the sacred symbols and beheld the secret drama. The myesis was considered so important in itself and so fraught with dangers for the aspirant, that a hierophant was needed to conduct the ceremony, and a mystagogos (a kind of sponsor) to assist and guide the candidate in the initiation.

4. Now, all these terms: mysterion, myesis, mystes, are the words from which our own terms mystery, mystic, and mysticism were derived. The Greek terms are based on the verb μνέω, which means simply to initiate into the mysteries. It is evident that this verb, which in itself could not reveal anything of the nature of the initiation, was formed from the other verb μύω, meaning to be shut or closed, especially with reference to lips and eyes. Suidas and Hesychius derive the term mystes directly from the word myo.{9} Suidas seems to speak of a closing of the lips as a symbol of secrecy, Hesychius, of a closing of the eyes as a necessary condition for the contemplation of things divine. Whatever the interpretation, the fact remains that the terms mystery, mystic, and mysticism are connected with the verb myo, from which they derive the basic idea of something shut, closed, secret. The mystes, the neophyte of the mystery cults, must have had both lips and eyes closed in some way. The closing of the lips meant absolute secrecy; the shutting of the eyes was a kind of experimental knowledge of things and symbols which the newly admitted mystes was not yet sufficiently purified to behold or quite well instructed to understand but would freely behold at his epopteia. Many fragmentary documents seem to support our interpretation. On a marble vase, found in a tomb of the gens Statilia near Porta Maggiore, in Rome, there is a series of relief figures illustrating an Eleusinian initiation. The neophyte is no less a person than Hercules himself. After the first scene of purification, the aspirant is seen seated on a chair. His large robe, pulled over his head, covers his face completely. He is unable to see the symbolic liknon that a priestess, standing behind him, holds over his head. He is aware of her presence, of the nearness of the sacred symbol, but, because he is a mystes, he has only an awareness of things, not an epopteia, a vision, because his eyes are veiled.{10}

5. This ceremony of the Orphic mysteries seems to be the key to the proper understanding of what has come to be termed mystic knowledge or mysticism. Here the mystes was to be brought into close relation with the divinity by means of legendary symbols or relics. He was made aware of the presence of those objects by the hierophant, yet he was unable to perceive them because his eyes were closed. The knowledge he so acquired was veiled but certain, because in many instances he was given to handle and touch those sacred things he did not see. It was a knowledge that was halfway between faith and vision. It was a veiled or obscure vision of things present, an experimental knowledge of persons or things he could touch but not see. This constitutes the essence of mystical knowledge and of mysticism. When these concepts were transferred to Christian mysticism, as they were by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, new mystical elements were added, such as divine grace and illumination, which make that obscure knowledge more vivid and more certain.

The veiled knowledge of the mystes at his initiation offers only an analogy to the obscure knowledge of the Christian mystic, but the terminology is the same. In elaborating on these elements of the pagan mystery cults, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus developed a philosophical system of mysticism which marks the highest spiritual peak to which the pagan world ever rose. This system, purged of its errors and Christianized by the Pseudo-Areopagite, was finally adopted by Christian writers of mystical lore.

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

6. For a better understanding of the pagan mysteries and the analogy they offer to Christian mysticism, let us illustrate one of them a little more fully. A complete and detailed account of the whole ritual is not possible. Pagan writers were reticent when it came to information on this subject. The law of secrecy was strictly enforced and universally obeyed. Christian converts from paganism, however, who had themselves been initiated in those mysteries, were less reticent, as, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Arnobius. Many paintings, sculptures, and inscriptions that have come to light in the last three or four centuries have extended considerably the once very limited knowledge of the subject, though many points still remain a matter of conjecture.

7. Pagan writers, especially poets, are unanimous in praising the mysteries: Happy is he who has seen these mysteries: but he who has taken no part in them has by no means an equal lot in the darkness of the dead.{11}Happy is he who has seen them [the mysteries] before he goes beneath the hollow earth: that man knows the true end of life and its source divine.{12} The special object of such praises was the Eleusinian mysteries, the most renowned of them all. They were celebrated almost without interruption for nearly eleven centuries, from the eighth century before Christ to A.D. 396, when the monks who followed Alaric completely destroyed the telesterion, or sanctuary, of Eleusis in Greece. The subject of the mystery was the legend of Demeter (or Ceres, the Mother Earth) mourning the loss of her daughter Persephone (or Kore, the Springtide). The legend is told by many poets and most beautifully by Ovid in the fifth book of his Metamorphoses. Proserpina (Persephone), the young daughter of Demeter, was carried away by Pluto, the god of the lower world, while she was picking flowers in the beautiful valley of Enna in Sicily. By the flame of two torches lit at the fires of Aetna, Demeter sought her daughter all over the world, without touching any food or drink. She searched all lands and seas without finding her: Quaerenti defuit orbis!{13} At length, sad and weary, she sat down upon a stone and remained nine days and nights in the open air exposed to all kinds of weather and still without food. The place where she sat mourning became later the site of the city of Eleusis, not far from Athens. An old man named Celeus saw her sitting there and invited her into his house, which stood close by. There, finally, she broke her fast and cured the sick boy Triptolemus, predicting that he would one day teach men the use of the plow. Demeter returned to Sicily, watching the banks of the river Cyane where her Kore{14} had disappeared. There the fountain nymph Arethusa told her she had seen Persephone as queen of Erebus, the powerful bride of the king of the realm of death. Demeter went immediately to implore Jupiter to order the restitution of her daughter. This, Jupiter said, could be done only if the girl had not broken her fast during her stay in the lower world. Unfortunately for Demeter, the maiden had eaten a little of a pomegranate which she had picked secretly in the garden. She could not return, but a compromise was effected: she was to spend half of each year with her mother on earth and the other half with the king of Hades. Pacified, Demeter returned to Celeus to teach the boy Triptolemus the use of the plow and to sow the seed. She took him all over the earth in her chariot drawn by winged dragons. Under her guidance, he imparted to mankind the knowledge of agriculture. After his return home, Triptolemus built a temple to Demeter (Ceres) in Eleusis and established the worship of the goddess by means of the Eleusinian mysteries, which symbolize, in the mythical drama of the wanderings of Demeter and Kore’s return, the works and hardships of agriculture during the dark months of winter and the joyful return of springtime.

8. In the beginning, these mysteries were nothing but a form of nature worship to invoke the natural blessings of fertility. Later on, Orphic elements were added and Dionysos became an added attraction. The Eleusinian mysteries took place once a year, usually in the autumn, and lasted several days. Every four years, however, they took on a more solemn form. The first day of the celebrations was called the day of gathering. The candidates for initiation met in the Stoa Poikile to hear the hierophant deliver his prorresis or proclamation, in which the general rule for admission was repeated and explained. It seems that Origen has preserved the very words of the prorresis in his work Contra Celsum: Those who invite people to participation in other mysteries [the non-Christian mysteries], make this proclamation: ‘Everyone who is pure of hand and of intelligible speech’; others again thus: ‘He who is pure from all pollution, and whose soul is conscious of no evil, and who has lived a good and just life.’ And these proclamations are made by those who promise purification from sin.{15} Hence requisites for admission were purity of conscience and a knowledge of Greek. Persons not speaking Greek and all barbarians were excluded from the mysteries.

9. On the second day of the festivities, the proclamation, ἅλαδε μύσται, was heard, that is, "the mystae to (or into) the sea!" They went to the seashore to purify themselves with sea water. Sprinkling with pig’s blood seems to have been part of the cathartic ritual, the pig being sacred to chthonian deities. This was the beginning of the catharmos, the purification which was completed on the third day by means of a sacrifice of expiation in honor of Asclepias after the return of the mystae from the sea. Just why Asclepias should be placated at this juncture we do not know, but we may suppose it was considered good policy for a mystes to be on good terms with the god of medicine and health. While still a mortal, Asclepias had cured sick people and even brought some dead persons back to life. Pluto, the king of the realm of the dead, naturally regarded him as a betrayer. Desiring his elimination, he asked his brother Jupiter to strike Asclepias with a thunderbolt. Jupiter obliged, but, after killing him, made him a god, and therefore a rival to Pluto. Now Pluto had something to say in the initiation of the Eleusinian mysteries, since he was the consort of Persephone; hence the mystic’s precaution to placate Asclepias, who might have made life miserable for the new votaries.

10. On the fourth day, a great procession bearing the god Iacchos started for Eleusis. There the night was spent in orgiastic revel and dances with Iacchos under the stars.

The final part of the initiation took place in the telesterion of Eleusis. Here the sacred things (ἱερά) were displayed for the newly initiated mystai. The more revealing ones, however, were reserved for the epopteia (the vision) that would be granted to senior mystai and to epoptai in good standing. What was the nature of these sacred things? It seems that they were objects pertaining in some way to the deity of the myth, symbols and legendary relics. The mystai performed some ceremonies with these objects that were reminiscent of actions performed by the deity. All this seems to be expressed by the password of the Eleusinian mysteries recorded by Clement of Alexandria in his Protrepticus: The following is the token of the Eleusinian mysteries: I have fasted; I have drunk the cup; I have received from the box; having done, I put it into the basket, and out of the basket into the chest.{16} The fasting and the breaking of the fast by drinking the cup are an imitation of what Demeter did while still searching for her Kore; the other ceremonies are too cryptic to permit guessing. They seem to designate the performance of one who is blindfolded. We have seen before that, at the first initiation, the candidate’s eyes and lips were closed.

The sacred things shown in the mystical rites of Dionysos were the following: dice, ball, hoop, apples, top, looking-glass, tuft of wool.{17} The mysteries of Dionysos re-enacted the mythical tragedy of the killing of the child Dionysos by the Titans, the tearing of his limbs, and the devouring of his flesh. The toys are the iera of this mystery because they recalled the child who was playing with them when he was abducted by the Titans. These sacred symbols were kept in a revered sacred chest, or basket, called cista mystica.

11. The final epopteia must have consisted, among other things, of a sacred pageant and a mystical drama re-enacting the sacred myth. This is confirmed by Clement of Alexandria, who writes: Demeter and Kore have become [the personages of] a mystical drama, and Eleusis with its torchlight processions celebrates their wanderings, abduction, and sorrow.{18} Another Christian writer, Asterius, who wrote in the fourth century of our era, seems to allude to a mystical marriage, a ieros gamos, that took place as part of the epopteia; several pagan documents and illustrations apparently confirm this view: The underground dark room and the solemn meeting there of the hierophant and the priestess, each with the other alone, when the torches are extinguished, and the vast multitude of the people believes that its salvation depends on what is done there.{19}

12. Summing up the various parts of the normal mysterion, we have three essential parts of the initiation proper: (1) the katharmos, or purification; (2) the paradosis, communication of