The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek and it means to be wrapped in God. The first part of the spiritual adventure on which we have embarked leads us onwards to be wrapped in God when meditation reaches its climax. But this is only first enthusiasm that reaches its high point in what I have called Acquired Contemplation. Enthusiasm is brought to perfection when a person is finally wrapped in God in what traditional mystical theology from the time of St Bernard has called the Mystical Marriage.
From Meditation to Contemplation
When Meditation has led the searcher into contemplation, prolonged periods of purification in spiritual darkness are interspersed with moments of light and enlightenment. The moments of mystical enthusiasm that follow are called by St Teresa of Avila, ‘Prayer of Quiet’ or even the ‘Prayer of Full Union’. These moments of spiritual transportations into the love of God are his gifts and can never be attained, let alone merited by human endeavour alone.
This is made quite clear by the unpredictable and capricious way that they come and go without anything that the receiver can do to generate or retain them. Nor are they given as a reward for perseverance, but rather to encourage the sort of perseverance in the journey toward the mystical marriage when we are completely wrapped in the love of God.
The Asceticism of the Heart
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me return to the meditation that leads to the climax of first enthusiasm. The journey begins because of the love that rises from within us, that as St Augustine says, will be ever restless until it rests in God. Because we begin our journey not wrapped in God but wrapped in ourselves, this love that yearns for God is waylaid with a thousand and one other lesser loves that would distract it from its purpose.
No one can, by their own endeavour alone, extricate themselves from all the powerful forces within. These would distract and prevent the love that they wish to be wrapped up in God, being wrapped up in themselves instead. Only the love of God can do the impossible and that is why what I call the ‘Asceticism of the Heart’ has a simple objective. It does not attempt to free us from all that prevents our hearts desire rising to God, but only to keep our hearts desire fixed on God despite the distractions and temptations that would prevent it.
A Mystical Pathway
This practice alone will gradually create a mystical pathway that will not only enable our love to rise to God, but his love to descend into us. It is his love and his love alone that can destroy within us all and everything that can prevent us from coming to know and love him as we desire with every fibre of our being. We must therefore at all times do all we can to keep our heart’s desire, our love, directed toward God whom we desire before all else.
This is what Christ himself did throughout his life on earth. Although the love from within him continually rose up to reach out to and into his Father at all times, like us he had to bear distractions and temptations too, but unlike us they did not come from the original sin that was never in him. It came from the original sin that was in others who wanted to destroy him. Before going any further in describing the spiritual journey that is ahead of us then let me make it quite clear that we are not only making this journey in Christ, because by Baptism we have been taken up and into him, but we are making it in, with, and through him.
True Worship ‘in Spirit and in Truth’
Firstly, realize that the more we come to know and love him in meditation and contemplation, then the more perfectly we are united with him, enabling us to travel with ever greater speed toward the destiny that God has prepared for us. Secondly, realize that the essential offering that we make to God in our journey is exactly the same offering that Christ made throughout his life on earth. In other words we are offering to God our love, as Christ offered to God his love. This is what Christ called the new worship ‘in spirit and in truth’.
In short, this is how we daily take up and carry our Cross in our daily prayer as the first Christians did in their daily prayer. Far therefore from being an extraordinary way for the few, the way that I am describing is for all. It is not just one way amongst many others, but ‘The Way’, the only way in which we practise what the early Christians called ‘white martyrdom’, or the daily way of the cross.
The Offering of our Hearts
In all our daily prayers and in the meditation and the contemplation that I am trying to explain, deep down beneath the surface of everything else, is the offering. It is the same sort of offering that Christ himself made every day of his life. In other words, it is the offering of the sacrifice of our hearts, our love to God the Father. At the Last Supper this living sacrifice of himself that reached its climax on the cross was celebrated in what eventually came to be called the sacrifice of the Mass, when all the offerings of a life time were embodied in a profound liturgical action.
This liturgical action would embody both his struggle against the forces of evil that were directed at him throughout his life on earth, together with his continual contemplation of his Father that was brought to perfection after his Resurrection. At Mass then, the fruits of his contemplation are continually being poured out to be received by those who participate in this sublime mystery, but only to the measure of their openness to receive them. This openness to receive the gifts of contemplation that he received will be determined by the quality of a receiver’s union with Christ.
The journey that I am describing into Christ, and into his contemplation of his Father, is not some mystical ego-trip for weirdos. It is the way in which our love is gradually reinforced, deepened, purified, and refined so that it can be united with the Sacrifice that Christ made for us while he was on earth, and continues to make for us now that he is in heaven.
Making our whole Life into the Mass
The measure of our capacity to receive God’s love that is continually pouring into him in this sublime sacrament, will be determined by the measure in which we are able to make our whole lives into the Mass. In other words, the place where we follow Christ by living our lives as he did, by being continually open to God at all times despite all the forces for evil that endeavour to turn our attention elsewhere.
This is our vocation, a vocation that, as we are about to see, is first practised in prayer through the meditation where our love is first generated. Then, through the contemplation where it is finally purified, enabling us to be wrapped in God where our first enthusiasm reaches its consummation in the mystical marriage that begins in this life and never ends in the next.
David Torkington’s latest book outlining the journey from Vocal prayer, through meditation to Mystical Contemplation can be found at The Primacy of loving – David Torkington