This revelation does not make me a better person. I am only better if I love God better. And if it makes you love God better, the vision is more for you than for me. I am not saying this to those of you who are wise, for you already know it well. But as for those who are simple, like me, you may draw comfort and strength from this account. We are all one in love. — Julian of Norwich1

When I used to work for the Trappist monks here in Georgia, one elderly monk in particular used to tease me and put me down, practically every chance he got. It got to the point where I just assumed he didn’t like me very much. Then, one day, I was speaking with another layperson, and this particular monk came up in the conversation. “You know he thinks the world of you,” my friend said. “Really?” I replied, incredulously. “You couldn’t tell from the way he keeps poking at me.” “That’s monastic culture,” she replied with a laugh, going on to explain that the monks had a tendency to say things about each other that, on the surface, seemed teasing or even cruel, but were actually meant to keep each other humble.

I don’t know if this was really a characteristic of monastic life in general, or simply a quirk of this particular priest. But I do know that one of the potential pitfalls of monastic culture is ego inflation — the tendency to see oneself as especially blessed or favored by God, particularly after receiving any kind of mystical experience.

After all, if you had a deep experience of union with God, wouldn’t it be all too easy to jump to the conclusion that God, therefore, must be particularly fond of you — which in turn would seem to imply that you therefore must be… special?

Recognizing how ego inflation could easily accompany any meaningful experience of God, it is illuminating to see how the medieval visionary Julian of Norwich understood her own visionary experiences — most notably in relation to other people. Julian refused to entertain any idea that her visions (“This revelation”) made her a better, or holier, person. She got it that mystical experiences are not, in themselves, the point. “I am only better if I love God better,” she bluntly states, as she points out that anyone who reads about her visions, and consequently loves God better than she does, is ultimately more of a “visionary” (mystic) than Julian herself. Eventually, this train of thought takes Julian directly to nonduality — for her line of thinking concludes, “we are all one in love.” This oneness leaves no room for any suggestion that any one of us is better than anyone else.

Mysticism, including mystical experience, is never about figuring out who is closer to God, or “better” than anyone else. On the contrary, at its purest, mystical spirituality undermines pecking orders and social hierarchies. It really makes no difference whether you are a visionary or not. We are all one in love. Therefore, the mystical life has only one real purpose: to love.

The study called inspective is that by which we go beyond things seen and contemplate something of things divine and heavenly, beholding them with the mind alone, for they are beyond the range of bodily sight. — Origen of Alexandria1

I once saw a t-shirt with the slogan: “Meditation: Inquire Within.” It’s a clever play on words, but beyond the pun it points to what the ancient Christian mystic Origen of Alexandria called “inspective” contemplation. Inspective is an unusual word: in everyday English the suffix -ive (meaning a tendency or disposition to act in a certain way) is more likely to be used in a word like prospective, which means “the act of looking forward” — like a prospective customer refers to someone who in the future might make a purchase. The word inspect, in ordinary English, means to examine something carefully, and perhaps critically, as in an inspection at work when the boss wants to make sure everyone is doing their job properly. The heart of this word is -spect which means to see: think of spectacles, an old-fashioned word for eyeglasses (although nowadays, a singular “spectacle” singular is an extraordinary sight to see, like clowns making spectacles of themselves at the circus).

In contrast, here we have Origen, using inspect- not to mean some sort of external “inspection” but a more internal seeing. The unusual word inspective therefore means “the act of looking within” — using your imagination to, in Origen’s words, “see and contemplate something of things divine and heavenly.” It’s still a type of “inspection” but now an entirely interior examination, marked not by a careful evaluation of some external object, but perhaps an equally careful scrutiny aimed within. Clearly, this involves something other than our physical eyes!

To be inspective, therefore, is to be engaged with the imagination, calling upon the “inner eyes” of the mind to visualize divine and heavenly things. Origen is fairly coy when he makes this statement, and does not spell out what such exalted “things” might be. But I believe we can assume a visionary “spectacle” of angels, of the saints in paradise, and even of God in God’s three persons.

So we “inquire within” to encounter that which cannot be seen by our physical eyes. I know this is something that skeptics and atheists might scoff at (for example, “angels, just a figment of your imagination”). However, we who engage our mind’s eye from a posture of trust rather than cynicism may keep our minds open to the possibility that the wonders we imagine are spiritually “real,” even if they can never be measured or documented. How do we know that spiritual things are real? Simply by the difference in our lives, especially over time.

For years now, one of my favorite images for the mystery we call God is that of the ocean — probably because I grew up in Virginia, not far from the Atlantic. There, my imagination was inspired by the vast sense of spaciousness where the azure sky met the cerulean water.

Later, when I encountered the wisdom of the seventh-century mystic, Isaac of Syria, I learned that he compared the mercy of God to the vastness of the ocean (by comparison, all the sins of all humanity were nothing more than a handful of dirt, easily washed away by the expansiveness of the ocean!).

So it was a delight to find this nugget of wisdom in The Primacy of Love, a short book by Franciscan theologian and scientist Ilia Delio: “love is an irresistible ocean of attraction whose infinite goodness leads into the heart of God.”1 She goes on to say, “The world is not created ex nihilo, out of nothing, the world is created ex amore, out of the infinite love of God.”2

When I was growing up, most of the images of God that I encountered, whether at home, in church, or through society at large, tended to emphasize God as a patriarchal figure who judged our sins and maybe only begrudgingly gave us eternal life (thanks to the death of Jesus). I have long since abandoned that caricature of the divine mystery, but I know its effect lingers, not only in my life but in society at large.

Failure to trust in the God of infinite love might be a root cause of so much of our social division and individual angst. I’m not suggesting that if everyone agreed that “God is love” suddenly the world would be a perfect place: far from it! But I do believe that a more widespread willingness to meet God through an ocean-like abundance of love would certainly help.

“God is love” — it’s the only time in the Bible that biblical writers offered a succinct and direct definition of God. St. Isaac, Ilia Delio, and others expand on this: God is an ocean of love. May we who follow the mystics take the time to truly ponder what this means, and consider how we can calibrate our lives to this liberating truth.

Thinking matters.

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, where I learned at a young age that acting impulsively and thoughtlessly could cause real harm. This ranged from one of my worst childhood moments (breaking a window when mindlessly angry) to witnessing the tragedy of a high school friend going to jail after committing armed robbery.

Spirituality, like life, does not benefit from unthinking actions and choices. What is fundamentalism, after all, but a “thoughtless” (i.e., uncritical) way of reading scripture? A thoughtless religion can lead to shaming people, excluding people, and reinforcing human bigotry rather than working to heal and transform such prejudice.

I feel like I had to write the above two paragraphs to set the proper context for a recurring theme in mystical writing: that it is our heart, not our head, that brings us to divine union. As The Cloud of Unknowing succinctly puts it, “By love, God can be embraced and held, but not by thinking.”1 Cognitive ability — even that of great philosophers — only takes us so far on the spiritual journey.

As much as I love this principle, I think it carries the danger of subtly implying that we can check our minds at the church door. But since that leads to fundamentalism, it can hardly be what the mystics are trying to tell us. Which is why this quote from Richard Rohr is so helpful:

We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.2

Rohr eloquently and simply reminds us that an intellectual faith never matters as much as a well-lived or embodied faith. The mind is a great servant but a terrible master; and nowhere is this more true than in the contemplative life. We think carefully and responsibly to protect ourselves from problems like superstition, fundamentalism, implicit bias, and unexamined privilege. We need critical thinking and careful reasoning to sort through the complexities of life. But mystics like Rohr remind us: careful thought must be formed by compassionate living (not the other way around).

When we give our heart to love, compassion, justice, and learning to care the way God cares, we create an inner foundation where a thoughtful mind serves us and protects us well. So let’s not check our minds at the door, rather, may we invite our hearts to be our primary inner guide.

One of the challenges of studying the spiritual tradition of Christianity (or indeed of any wisdom tradition) is recognizing that not all saints or mystics necessarily reach the same level of spiritual maturity. A person can exhibit profound insight and wisdom in one area of their life, and yet appear to be far less evolved in other ways. This is probably true of all of us, even of the greatest saints — and yet the differences can seem more dramatic in some than in others.

A good example of this is Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan friar who died in a Nazi death camp after volunteering to take the place of a stranger in Auschwitz. This sacrificial act not only made him a modern martyr — the “martyr of charity” as Pope Paul VI described him when he was beatified — but also became the defining moment of his too-short life. Pope John Paul II canonized him in 1982, making him one of the first modern Polish saints.

Unfortunately, the luminous witness of his supreme sacrifice is paired with a kind of theological writing that is far less inspiring. Like his contemporary (and fellow Polish saint and mystic) Maria Faustina Kowalska, his way of describing his spiritual worldview comes across as harsh and almost dualistic. Rather than celebrating the infinite love of God, he focuses on the problem of sin, the threat of Satan, and an almost naive rejection of modern science (he heaps particular scorn on the theory of evolution). Much of this is no doubt cultural: St. Maximilian died twenty years before the Second Vatican Council, so his language and theology are much more shaped by traditionalist Catholic theology, not to mention the harsh realities of Europe during Nazism. My honest assessment is that he could have easily been little more than a footnote in the history of 20th-century European theology — if not for the truly heroic way his life ended.

And perhaps it is fitting that the martyr of charity is known for this observation:

A person is great and becomes a witness and a teacher, capable of leaving an authentic message to the world, not so much on account of what one says or writes, but for what one is and what one achieves. What one says or writes deserves attention only insomuch as it is an expression of what one is or does.1

In other words, the flaws and limitations of St. Maximilian’s theological and spiritual writings are not nearly as important as the profound heroism and beauty of his final act of caring for another human being. That’s what we are meant to remember of him.

I do not mean to anger or offend the many people who find Kolbe’s life and witness meaningful and inspiring. Many mystics and saints cast a shadow, some longer than others. The point here is not to look for reasons to “cancel” or dismiss the mystics for their inevitable hypocrisy. Rather, may we find in the mistakes, limitations, and cultural blind spots of even our most revered spiritual heroes a reminder that we are all wounded and imperfect — all of us, without exception. This means that divine grace, or mystical transformation, is not reserved only for the especially holy, pious, or advanced — it’s meant for everyone, for all who wish to receive the felicity of divine love.

Francis of Assisi is easily the best-loved Christian saint outside of Biblical figures. Known for his simplicity, humility, joy, and love for animals, nature, and those who are poor, it’s pretty hard to find anything unlikeable about him. This makes it all the more gratifying that he is also generally regarded as one of the greatest Christian mystics, in addition to being a great saint.

What is the difference between a saint and a mystic? I’ve described it this way:

A saint is someone who is good and holy, while a mystic is someone who knows God, who embodies the presence of God, and whose life has been transfigured by this divine presence. Put even more briefly, saints embody goodness while mystics embody love.

Clearly, there’s some overlap here. Maybe it’s not even possible to be a mystic without also being at least something of a saint — and vice versa. After all, great mystical teachers from the second century through the twentieth have suggested that purification is an essential first step in the mystical life. In other words, let go of whatever separates you from divine love, in order to be one with that love. This purifying process — driven by grace, of course — not only makes us more available to be mystics, but also makes saints of us.

There’s too much to say about Saint Francis to easily encapsulate in a short devotional meditation like this one. So let’s just attend to his own words:

Where there is charity and wisdom there is neither fear nor ignorance.
Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor disturbance.
Where there is poverty with joy, there is neither covetousness nor avarice.
Where there is inner peace and meditation, there is neither anxiousness nor dissipation…
Where there is mercy and discernment, there is neither excess nor hardness of heart.
— Francis of Assisi, Admonition 27

Whether we are talking about sanctification (the process of becoming a saint) or deification (the process of becoming a mystic), it seems that at the heart of such an interior transformation is a simple commitment to releasing qualities and values that corrode our hearts and our lives, and replacing them with values that foster compassion, felicity, kindness, and serenity. Don’t fight what is “less than” — simply follow the advice of Johnny Mercer, and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” When we cultivate love, wisdom, patience, joy, and so forth, we embody the antidotes to those qualities that undermine our happiness. Not only that, but we make ourselves more available for the abundant life that both the saints and the mystics exemplify — and offer us.

Paid subscribers: Scroll below for the link, dates, and topics for our upcoming “Let’s Talk About Mysticism” Zoom calls!

Quotation sources:

• McColman, Carl. Christian Mystics: 108 Seers, Saints, and Sages, Kindle Edition, p. xvii.

• Francis and Clare. Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (edited by R. J. Payne; translated by R. J. Armstrong & I. C. Brady), Verbum Edition, p. 35.

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• April 22, 7 PM Eastern USA Time

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