"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."

St Philip Neri

* * *

"It is better to be burdened and in company with the strong than to be unburdened and with the weak. When you are burdened you are close to God, your strength, who abides with the afflicted. When you are relieved of the burden you are close to yourself, your own weakness; for virtue and strength of soul grow and are confirmed in the trials of patience."

St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

* * *

"Whoever wants to stand alone without the support of a master and guide will be like the tree that stands alone in a field without a proprietor. No matter how much the tree bears, passers-by will pick the fruit before it ripens. "

St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

* * *

 

Blessed John of Rusybroeck   (1293-1381)

 

THE ADORNMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE (cont)

 

by Blessed John of Rusybroeck

   

Introduction (cont)


In the second division (caps. 35-38) this process is extended to the "higher powers" of the soul: the memory or mind, the understanding, and the will. The experience of God is, for these higher powers, an experience of fresh enlightenment and fresh ardour; in Ruysbroeck's favourite imagery, of light and fire.

Grace, which dwells like a living fountain at the heart of our personality�the "unity of the spirit"�thence pours forth into each faculty in three streams of radiance: claerheit, a word expressive at once of pervading brightness and limpid clearness, which occurs on almost every page of his writings. The sense of this supernal clarity, veritably experienced�a viva luce, a quickening light, of which we become aware when we open the soul's eyes�is found in nearly every mystical writer from the time of St John, and probably originates in that consciousness of enhanced lucidity which frequently accompanies spiritual exaltation. It was crystallised by the schoolmen in the doctrine of the lumen gloriae�the Divine light which transfigures the soul and makes it like to God[20]�and much of Ruysbroeck's work is really a poetic elaboration of this idea.

As a "simple light" this Radiance now frees the mind from the teasing complexity of distracting images: as a "spreading light" it illuminates the understanding: as a burning flame, it enkindles the will. The self thus becomes capable of the first form of contemplation, adherence to God by means of the purified reason and will: responding to the "loving drawing-nigh" of God�dat minlike neyghen Gods�with an ardent outstretching of himself towards that seeking and compelling power.

The powers of the soul, then, in the second stage of illumination, become inundated by the divine claerheit. It "drenches them"; and the result of this is seen in the state of perfect charity to which the self now attains: the condition of equable outflowing love to God and all manner of men (caps. 39-43).

In the third and highest stage (caps. 49-65), we pass beyond the enhancement and enlightenment of the separate powers of our nature to the "essential being" of the self: that unity of the spirit of which Ruysbroeck is always speaking, and wherefrom the powers proceed, as the Divine Persons proceed from the Unity of God.[21] Whether our mental and emotional powers as such participate in the spiritual life, is for him a secondary consideration. They may do so, if they be wholly surrendered to God. But our true union with Him takes place in the abysmal deeps of our being�our "ground"�and ever abides there: for here our life, as it were, buds out from the Divine life, and here God dwells eternally "according to His essence." If we learn to enter within, passing beyond the powers to the unity of the spirit, we become conscious of this.[22] There we experience His mysterious touch and stirrings; feel and respond to the thrust and invitation of His love, as He drives each created spirit forth to work His will, and draws it home again towards His heart. There, outside Time, the Eternal Birth takes place (caps. 57-61).

As a result of this practice in introversion, this simplification of consciousness, the self now first becomes capable of the second form of contemplation, described in The Twelve Beguines as

"A knowing which is in no wise;
For ever abiding above the reason."[23]

and enters upon that profound yet simple communion with God which Ruysbroeck calls the most inward of all exercises. For this his favourite image is that of feeding: the soul tastes God (cap. 65), eats, devours, assimilates Him, and in her turn is eaten and consumed[24]�language which probably reflects his great personal devotion to the Eucharist. With this mystical savouring and feeding upon Reality, the self reaches the term of the interior life, and the full stature of that "secret friend of God" described with such marvellous subtlety in the 8th chapter of The Sparkling Stone.

It is at this point that the dangers of a false mysticism make themselves felt. Here, then, Ruysbroeck enters upon a vigorous and acute criticism of Quietism (caps. 66-67): especially valuable to us at the present day, when so many irresponsible apostles of "new mysticism" are recommending voluntary passivity of this type as a substitute for the stern discipline and perpetual willed effort involved in the Christian science of prayer.

Ruysbroeck describes the interior blankness and silence of the quietist as a psychic trick: a deliberate sinking down into the subconscious�the subsoil of human nature�where it is true that the Divine Life dwells and supports our created life, but where we are below instead of above the levels of normal consciousness. Here, indeed, the soul experiences a sensation of rest and peace: but it is merely resting in its own emptiness, a false repose which demands no exercise of virtue, no tension of the will, and is a caricature of the active and loving surrender taught by the Christian saints.

The true emptiness and idleness of which Ruysbroeck speaks as an essential preparation of the contemplative state, is a condition of meek and passive attentiveness to God, which excludes consciousness of the ordinary objects of perception and thought; sweeps and garnishes the interior castle. Here the virtue is not in the emptiness and idleness, but in the humble and eager yielding of ourselves. Although man cannot by his own effort reach God, yet without such deliberate loving effort we shall never possess Him.[25]

Beyond even the highest point of this interior life, in which the contemplative feels himself to be living "in God,"[26] is that transfigured or deified life, as the Platonic mystics named it, which Ruysbroeck calls overwesen�superessential�the life of the "God-seeing man" (Book III). Whereas in the interior life we may be said to re-discover the lost inheritance of our spirit, in this life there is a genuine transcendence, a passing beyond that spirit's created being: for the Being of God, in which this consummation is found, is "more than being" to us. It abides beyond all the concepts of reason, beyond anything that we can name or describe, outside Time, in the bosom of Divine Reality: that deep Quiet of the Godhead which cannot be moved.

Those who ascend thereto have passed from the state of "secret friends" to that of the "hidden sons" of God, and completed the soul's journey to its home.[27] Then they find themselves, so far as their separate consciousness persists, in a place that is placeless and a way that is wayless: in the abysmal Onwise of God, a word for which we have no exact equivalent, but which embodies one of Ruysbroeck's most important conceptions, and is the occasion of some of his most mysterious utterances. It represents that world of spiritual reality which is beyond all attributes and conditions; which is neither This nor That, which is "in no wise"�the Absolute wherein all ways and modes of being, all wise, are swallowed up, and all our finite perceptions die into ignorance and darkness (cap. 4).[28]

"The splendour of That which is in no wise is as a fair mirror
Wherein shines the everlasting light of God:
It has no attributes,
And in it all the activities of reason fail.

It is not God
But it is the light whereby we see Him:
Those who walk in the divine light thereof
Discover in themselves the Unwalled."[29]

Seen from the synthetic and spiritual point of view, this supernal world of experience is the Essential Unity, wherein the richness of Eternal Life consists, and where the surrendered soul enjoys the peaceful fruition of God. But seen from the analytic and intellectual point of view it is the Essential Nudity, the "nought" or "divine dark" of Dionysius the Areopagite: for it has been stripped of every character of which we can think.[30] Here the mystic feels himself, as regards his essential being, to be poured out into God, melted and merged in Him as a river in the sea: and, as regards his own separate consciousness, apprehends Him in one simple act of absorbed attention "seeing and staring" with wide-open eyes. It is in this one act, sometimes felt by us as a passing beyond ourselves, sometimes as a fixed ecstatic vision, "beholding that which we are, and becoming that which we behold" that the self at last knows itself to be one life and one spirit with God.[31]

The mystic has now entered into union with the three wise, the three modes or ways, under which Divine Love imparts itself in the spirit of man: characteristically distinguished by Ruysbroeck as three forms of movement. First this energetic love pours itself out from the Godhead into us as grace: and we, in receiving it and making it ours by our virtues and good works, are united to God "through means." This is the function of the active life harmonising man's work with God's work. Then, as a compelling tide, it draws us within its own flood back towards God. This is the union "without means"' wherein we are wholly surrendered to His love: it is the proper condition of the interior life.

But when we have reached the superessential life, and seem to our own feeling to be lost in the Darkness, burned up in the Brightness, and sunk in the Eternal Stillness of God�that "dark silence where all lovers lose themselves,"[32]�then the circle is complete. We are made part of His divine fruition or "content the eternal satisfaction and eternal activity of Perfect Love; achieving thus the "union without distinction," though not union without "otherness."[33] Henceforward we can participate in God's dual life of rest and work, transcendent fruition and immanent fruitfulness: abiding in restful possession of Him, yet perpetually sent down from the heights to serve the whole world.[34]

The final state of the Christian mystic, then, is not annihilation in the Absolute. It is a condition wherein we dwell wholly in God, one life and truth with Him; yet still "feel God and ourselves," as the lover feels his beloved, in a perfect union which depends for its joy on an invincible otherness. The soul, transfused and transfigured by the Divine Love as molten iron is by the fire, becomes, it is true, "one simple blessedness with God"[35] yet ever retains its individuality: one with God beyond itself, yet other than God within itself.[36] The "deified man" is fully human still, but spiritualised through and through; not by the destruction of his personality, but by the taking up of his manhood into God.

There he finds, not a static beatitude, but a Height, a Depth, a Breadth of which he is made part, yet to which he can never attain: for the creature, even at its highest, remains finite, and is conscious that Infinity perpetually eludes its grasp and leads it on. So heaven itself is discovered to be no mere passive fulfillment, but rather a forward-moving life:[37] an ever new loving and tasting, new exploring and enjoying of the Infinite Fulness of God, that inexhaustible Object of our knowledge and delight. It is the eternal voyage of the adventurous soul on the vast and stormy sea of the Divine.

EVELYN UNDERHILL
 

 
   
 
20. Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, i., q. 12, a. 5.
21. The Book of Truth, cap. 11
22. Ibid., cap. 8
23. The Twelve Beguines, cap. 8
24. The Sparkling Stone, caps. 9, 10 and 11. Compare The Twelve Beguines, caps. 5 and 15.
25. The Sparkling Stone, cap. 9.
26. Ibid., cap. 10.
27. Cf. The Sparkling Stone, caps. 8, 9, 10 and 13; and The Book of Truth, caps. 10, 11 and 12.
28. The Sparkling Stone, cap. 13.
29. The Twelve Beguines, cap. 8.
30. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, bk. iii. cap. 6.
31. The Sparkling Stone, caps. 9, 10 and I2. The Twelve Beguines, cap. 12. Compare Dante (Par. xxxiii. 97):

"Cosi la mente mia, tutta sospesa,
mirava fissa, immobile ed attenta,
e sempre del mirar faceasi accesa."
32. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, bk. iii. cap. 4.
33. The Sparkling Stone, cap. 12, and The Book of Truth, caps. 10 and 12.
34. The Sparkling Stone, cap. 14.
35. Ibid., cap. 10, and The Book of Truth, cap. 12.
36. The Twelve Beguines, cap. 16.
37. The Book of Truth, caps. 11 and 13.