Breathing Light: A Little Book on Christian Mystic Living

By Rev. John J. Lombardi

Father John “Jack” Lombardi is a Roman Catholic Priest of thirty-four years and past pastor of a parish in Western Maryland and recently, Baltimore city. He enjoys outdoor recreational activities, spiritual adventure, travel, mystical theology, all summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas, “God is the artist, and the universe is His work of art”. Father Jack enjoys hikes and walks with his dog and faithful companion, Bella, a Labrador Retriever, a spiritual community and working for The Lord!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669854050

Rev. John J. Lombardi

Rev. John J. Lombardi is a Catholic priest of thirty years of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and is pastor of St. Peter Catholic Church in Western Md. He enjoys the mystical life of the Catholic-Christian Church, outdoor activities and social outreach, and pilgrimages to both local and foreign lands to serve the Lord especially in the poor and needy. He loves the balance in discipleship between spirituality and activities and wants to pass this on to you!

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Rev. John J. Lombardi.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/02/2022

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Contents

Introduction

Interlude

Chapter 1 Creativity, The Church, and Christ

Chapter 2 Innovators and Exciters

Chapter 3 Thoughts, Thinking, and New Thought—Some basics

Chapter 4 New Age and Christianity

Chapter 5 Christian Mystic Spirituality

Chapter 6 New Thought and New Age Pervasion in Culture

Chapter 7 Christian Approach: Responses, Critiques, and Meditations

Chapter 8 More Practices: Meditations

Chapter 9 Conclusions

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The author at Hudson River Valley, West Point, New

York, enjoying summer vacation and travels.

Introduction

The Trinity is a wholly creative and energizing reality,

self-consistent and undivided in its active power.

—St. Athanasius

And that is perhaps the most important difference between

Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity

God is not a static thing–almost a kind of drama. Almost,

if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

When Christ your life appears, then you too

will appear with him in glory.

—St. Paul (Col. 3:4)

Modern Woodstock spirit festivals; meditation sessions; essential oils; contemplative activists, locavores—local, food-only consumers; Christian yoga; hydrotherapy; crystals and precious stone healing; purging meditation walks; soaring musical vibes and enchanting music of the spheres; healing labyrinths; and mystical mindfulness—these are all in vogue, and they’re all Christian more or less or can be. Read on about these and other topics and renew your Christian walk through this little book and its mission: How to be a dynamic, not dead Christian

Many Christians today are seeking God; a deeper, dynamic life of prayer; and also a kind of discipleship that is not a stale recipe from an old spiritual box top or from a run-of-the-mill institutional church as in dinosaur religion. So it’s no secret or a mistake that many Christians are searching for a faith that integrates mysticism and morality, spirituality and service, meditation and community—an engaged and enlightened religion to live in this modern, sometimes mazelike world. Obviously, many others feel Christianity is dead, or they choose to no longer attend church or congregate with other Christians. They’re looking for a combination of the old and the new. So, dynamized or dead—which are you as a Christian?

Mystic spirituality, that is what many people are looking for today. The quotes at the beginning of this introduction–two on God as a dynamic reality and one from the Bible refer to this reality, and what our little book is about mystic living.

These days, even in Christian circles, folks are looking for the newest, best thing, and so, almost everything is subject to marketing squads and branding. It’s not just for politicians and internet searches anymore. By this catch-all term, branding, we mean the essence of a product and its promotion of such to the marketplace and the world.

Question: Did Jesus have a branding squad?

Answer: No, not back then, but He definitely does today. That’s us! We need, as Christians, to rebrand ourselves in order to present our faith, Christianity and Catholicism in new, spiritual, savvy ways to a world that desires mystical life in the here and now while retaining our orthodox essence. Or said another way, the masses want experiential religion, not just creeds and moralism.

My method: Appeal to the spiritual aspect of every person’s soul that has perhaps been siphoned off by materialism or splintered away by countless dry churches, institutional and otherwise, or else by New Age spirituality. Then I can show there is a real, spiritual, supernatural component to our faith that is being neglected, or even rejected, today.

We will explore mystic spiritual experiences of God and supernatural phenomena within Christianity and other religions and contained inside something I’ll call New Thought (example: The Power of Positive Thinking). Then I’ll discuss why so many people are attracted to these phenomena and how we can deepen our own faith where appropriate.

Since you’re reading this book, it’s likely some of those movements and personages described have probably attracted or affected you at some point. That describes me too with caveats! Here is my approach: critical adventure is needed in contemporary spirituality inside and outside of Christianity. Described another way, there is a little good and bad in the various ways of thinking regarding mystic spirituality and New Thought. Furthermore, Christianity (at least Catholicism, which has mystically morphed in many ways over the centuries) has always taken a little of human culture and its spirituality’s best offerings and integrated them into her spirit while discarding what is not healthy or holy.

Examples? All right, how about church architecture? Early church leaders utilized basic building design from Roman courthouses and temples (think of the Pantheon in Rome with its vast, soaring dome) and formulated a sacred symmetry later incorporated into various cathedrals and chapels that show within those structures a vision of heaven and the concept of divine light. Here’s another: the Christian church amalgamated incense and candles from secular and non-Christian rituals (from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Elysium in the Mediterranean world for instance). And on a nonphysical level, we note how Greek philosophy (especially the majestic Plato) affected Christian spiritual movements for millennia.

In later centuries, some groups (the Puritans come to mind) thought these so-called alien elements were pollutants and vehemently rejected them, but other groups rejoiced that these philosophical bits have been refined for the church’s understanding and positively influenced western civilization. Most famously and pervasively perhaps, St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle’s words and basically Christianized his whole Greek system, including epistemology (the study of knowledge), cosmology (how the universe operates), and ethics into a genuine Christian perennial philosophy. To this day, innumerable disciples are studying this system of Thomism all over the world and passing it on as a living system.

At this point, let’s utilize particular terms for our approach. These are OC/DC that are squished together. This translates into Orthodox Catholicism/Dynamic Christianity or Orthodox Christianity. This combines the best, brightest, and most beautiful qualities of Christianity and Roman Catholicism that feeds our dynamic faith today. All of this comes from the heart of our sacred tradition, the vast treasury of graces, creativity, and splendor which is true and godly.

Note: The above means going full-on classic Christianity and Catholicism from morality to mysticism through pastoral practice and pragmatic spirituality versus a pick and choose mentality, cafeteria Catholicism, or Catholic Lite approach (which is a lot of fluff without substance or spirituality without religious weight). When I use the term, dynamic Christianity, I mean all of the life-giving streams of spirituality, social awareness, art, discipleship methodologies, ethics, and outreach that make up the mighty river of Christianity. This also includes spirituality as a doctrinally solid and life-giving solvent!

Here’s something to make you extra comfortable in this venture: We may describe our little book’s goal another way instead of ceding meditation, energy, and other words or realities to the New Agers and Eastern mystics, we actually want to transform these realities and incorporate them into our own, or better put, re-own them. We are not taking what is of the world and appropriating it for our religion but, rather, we are reappropriating what is and was Christianity’s reality in the first place but is now misunderstood or underappreciated. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. was helped by Gandhi’s peace activism in South Africa, Greek and Near Eastern philosophy positively affected Christianity. We can progress in a righteous manner and maturely in spirituality with the help of God’s anonymous spiritual seeds in various places.

Interlude

The Synesthesia Principle

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Beauty inspires and when we use all our senses to

perceive God and his world we are alive.

As we close this introduction, here’s yet another aspect of a dynamic mode of Christian spiritual synesthesia, which relates to the book, Breathing Light.

Say what? Synesthesia means the combining of senses not normally grouped together, or a synergy blending of sensations that are usually separate. Perhaps you’ve heard of the American composer George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. It was a groundbreaking, marvelous 1924 concerto of jazz-classical piano and orchestra. How can music a rhapsody be blue? Well, just as people can feel blue or have the blues, we can listen to music with colors and thus embrace synesthesia. Another example, one that we are being encouraged to do today is buy healthy food which includes, for instance, eating multiple colors. This means consuming varied fruits, vegetables, and meats of different colors to accumulate holism and nutrients instead of consuming bland grains or having a boiler-plate diet of meat and potatoes.

In chapter 1, we will expand on this theme and reality. For now, here’s my brief on synesthetic meditation:

Breathing His resurrection light / frees my soul in His spring delight

Is it truly possible to breathe in light? This thought and meditation came to me in spring, right at Easter time. When you think about it, what’s better than spring after a harsh winter with its blooming flowers, surging fauna and trees, longer light-filled days, and radiant skies? In light of this wonder, some spiritually inclined humans (like myself!) desire to breathe in divine light, which is the Lord Himself. The fresh, lovely light and warm day made me take deep, life-giving breaths, so breathe in Jesus, allow His sustenance to pulsate, oscillate, within and through us and, like sunshine-processing plants and creation, our souls too become enlivened by God’s son.

Breathing His resurrection light / frees my soul in His spring delight

As we continue on in this little book, let’s set some caveats:

Clarification 1. This little book is intended for any kind of reader or seeker, be they an atheist, agnostic, or avid believer and is especially useful for devoted Christians and Catholics who are on the most fertile and opportunistic path in mystic spirituality. However, if you don’t think you’re a super Catholic or Christian enough, this book is still for you!

Clarification 2. Mystic spirituality, like anything else, this phrase can become corrupted as seen in many New Age spiritualities, even in some Catholic and Christian paths. Where this is apparent, we will use the phrase, errant mystic spirituality, when appropriate. I am obviously making a distinction between genuine, mystical spirituality in the Catholic and Christian churches and other religions and various movements, which do not embody the traditional Gospel of Jesus or Christianity.

One of the critiques of New Age and New Thought is that they turn spiritual practices and secular traditions into a product that is repackaged and resold to a yearning public. Let us remember this basic thought throughout our tour of this subject and remember classic Christianity and Catholicism.

Chapter 1

Creativity, The Church, and Christ

May the eyes of [your] hearts be enlightened, that you may know

what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches

of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is

the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe.

—Ephesians 1:18–19

Remember that opening paragraph of the introduction above? It exemplifies some of the ways we can be creative and Christ-centered as a church today. Let’s make some sense of it more precisely as a precursor of the chapters to come.

Modern Woodstock spirit festivals. There’re all kinds of Christian concerts, festivals, charismatic conferences, and art gatherings all over the world from the Franciscans at Steubenville, Ohio, to Holy Spirit rallies, family gatherings in France, and worldwide youth gatherings with the pope in Rome and elsewhere. How about that? We can worship God outside of church!

Meditation sessions. Every Catholic Mass actually embodies a meditation session of sorts. We begin quietly when entering the sanctuary in preparation (hopefully) before the Mass begins. Next, we embrace silence between the three or four scriptural readings, after the sermon, and during Holy Communion. Furthermore, many of our laypeople pray more deeply at home, do Bible meditation, and practice personal contemplation.

Essential oils. The Catholic Church has always used oil and ointments as a healing balm and precious sacraments. Other Christians and souls today are catching the connection between God’s organic healing ointments and the body-soul seeking deliverance through natural God-given ways.

Contemplative activists. This seems like an oxymoron, right? Think about Missionary of Charity (Mother Teresa’s order) sisters who pray while working and helping the poor and third-order religious laypersons (associated with Franciscans or Carmelites or other religious orders) who blend action and contemplation right in their homes and workplaces. So can you while doing the dishes!

Local food-only consumers (locavores). You’ve probably heard the calls for less government and more organic food and drink. In other words, less is more. That’s what Catholicism is partially about, as every church (and diocese) is governed as a unique and individual entity of sorts, becoming, hopefully, self-sufficient but still, nonetheless, part of a larger spiritual team, the worldwide church. Ancient Benedictines were ingenious in cultivating and providing food, drink, and local agricultural products in areas where they founded their monasteries, many of which eventually became centers of towns or cities. This ancient movement is regaining strength in today’s world.

Hydrotherapy. Everyone likes and needs water. From baptism to holy water fonts to water sprinkling rites, we use the most common