Jesus Cannot Be Known Second-Hand (Pt 3)
the third and last part of a dialog with Bradley Jersak on mystical experience and intimacy with God
C: St Ignatius, in his Spiritual Exercises, directs us to ask for what we desire: “an interior knowledge of Our Lord, who became human for me, that I may love him more intensely and follow him more closely.” Am I wrong to think that this cuts to the heart of the matter?
B: No! That’s it! “Interior” knowing—that’s personal, relational, a living connection with Christ in me. And that leads to intensification of love for and imitation of Christ.
C: There’s such wisdom in this little prayer, isn’t there? It admits that we do in fact want to be near God, to love and be loved in ways that feel loving. It directs us to ask for what we want. It reminds us that the knowing we desire is an innermost knowledge—a “gnowing” as you’ve said. It urges us to desire him, Jesus, who alone makes God known to us. It teaches us that our delight in him should always be intensifying, so that our lives may be continually conforming more and more closely to his.
B: Yes. And I’m glad St Ignatius identifies the Incarnation as the means to deepening our love. I just want to add that that deepening involves seeking him—whether in contemplation, action, liturgy, or affliction.
C: Agreed. And seeking always already involves finding and being found—finding that we have being found!
B: Yes.
C: In that light, I wonder what you make of this distinction: in the seeking and finding there are experiences, plural, to be had. But what matters is how they fit within the larger experience, singular, of knowing God in Christ.
B: “Experience” in the sense of a continuous state of being?
C: Yes. Playing off Pelikan’s famous distinction between tradition and traditionalism, we might say that desire for experiences is the death of faith, but faith lives in the experience of desiring Christ.
B: A desire that includes the assurance of fulfillment?
C: Oh yes. It’s God we desire, remember. And God does not disappoint. Indeed, our desire for God is already God’s doing. The seeking is possible because the finding has already happened.
B: God does not give us a stone if we ask for bread.
C: Exactly. And God gives us bread even when we ask for a stone.
B: That’ll preach! So, we need, in a sense, to inhabit that singular experience of God.
C: Right. Otherwise, our experiences will seem to be nothing more than rare, episodic interventions of the Spirit, rather than steady, ongoing care.
B: This conversation is helping me develop some important distinctions. What if we said it like this: (1) our communion (covenant union) is established by God in Christ on our behalf, apart from any effort on our part; (2) but that communion is meant to include fellowship—regular and intentional participation in a real relationship—(3) as well as encounters, epiphanies—however episodic or surprising.
C: Brilliant. I would only add, and I know you’d agree, that those encounters, and that fellowship, need to happen in the shadow of the cross.
B: And in community gathered around the cross. That is, everything we’ve said can become overly privatized. But communion, fellowship and encounter are not merely the stuff of interior mystical palaces. Reflecting on the wisdom of the late Gordon Fee, to know Christ is to experience the grace of coming home (even if you never knew you already had a home) and to know the One who’s always loved you.
C: Yes! God has always been not only waiting for you to return but also seeking you and guiding you, even in those moments when you were sure you were lost.
B: There’s a cause for worship.
C: Absolutely. Let me quote Rahner to you again. He was a Jesuit, as you know; he had deeply integrated the wisdom of Ignatian spirituality. In one of his own prayers, Rahner prays, "Thanks to Your mercy, O Infinite God, I know something about You not only through concepts and words, but through experience. I have actually known You through living contact; I have met You in joy and suffering. For You are the first and last experience of my life. Yes, really You Yourself, not just a concept of You, not just the name which we ourselves have given You! You have descended upon me in water and the Spirit, in my baptism. And then there was no question of my contriving or excogitating anything about You. Then my reason with its extravagant cleverness was still silent. Then, without asking me, You made Yourself my poor heart's destiny. You have seized me; I have not ‘grasped’ You. You have transformed my being right down to its very last roots and made me a sharer in Your own Being and Life. You have given me Yourself, not just a distant, fuzzy report of Yourself in human words. And that's why I can never forget You, because You have become the very center of my being.” That, I believe, is what we’re all longing for in all our longings.
B: Stunning. Since you mentioned “waiting,” it reminds me of that dear soul, Simone Weil. I recall that she was tremendously suspicious of generating a false experience, so she even avoided reading the mystics, lest she start adopting them as fuel for projections. She calls her orientation toward God “attente” (literally, attention, but which I would translate “awaiting”) an openness marked by attentiveness, surrender and expectation. In that posture, we seek without striving, receive without grasping, gazing toward the horizon for God’s self-disclosure while continually “decreating” self-will. Her own ”participation” began minimally. Her prayers were restricted to the Lord’s Prayer in Greek and George Herbert’s Love III in English. And yet, that’s exactly where God found her and, in her own words, “possessed her”!
C: I like that you’re bringing her into this conversation, the patron saint of outliers. I can see her scowling at more or less everything we’ve said. But seriously: we need stories like hers, writing like hers, because they keep us from getting too comfortable with what we think we know. “Knowledge puffs up…” In one of her last essays, Weil talks about the profound, childlike part of the heart that expects, waits for, the good. As you know, she believed that no matter how much it suffers this part of the heart never dies. Would you say that’s the part of the soul that makes the living connection to God? And if so, wouldn’t everything depend on our staying in touch with that part of ourselves?
B: As I understand Weil, she teaches that we stay in touch with our innermost being, the childlike part of our heart, our inner child, not by focusing on it as an object but by living from that part of ourselves through the practice of attention (attente). That is, we stay in tune with the noetic eye not by looking at the eye in the mirror but by using the eye to behold Christ (in the beauty of the world and especially in our afflicted neighbor). That seeing nourishes the child in me, my childlikeness.
C: We’ve talked about the experience of God, but we’ve said nothing about the experience of angels and demons (something that appears at almost every turn in Scripture), or—and this will be “sticky” for some folks, no doubt—the saints (think, for example, about Bulgakov’s visions of Mary).
B: I see in this the same dilemma we’ve been discussing—experience is important, but also tempts to idolatry. So, I think I’d say this: while the experience of Christ is essential to my spiritual well-being, a conscious awareness of the saints and angels is more helpful than crucial. But I am dismayed whenever attention to the saints and angels, what we might call holy veneration, becomes an obsession that displaces Christ as our central gaze and distances him from us. This became hugely problematic in both Catholic and charismatic renewal circles I’ve travelled in. If an experience of the saints leads us to Christ, that is wonderful, and I do maintain a practice of their presence, especially Mary’s. What keeps that clean is continually noting their undistracted gaze on the face of Christ and emulating that. Theologically, I understand that any invocation involving an angel or a saint is answered by Christ himself, even if they become the means of his grace.
C: Jenson is right, I believe: Christ is our way to the saints; they are not our way to Christ. But I would add that Christ does not want to be known alone, apart from his apostles, his saints—apart even from you and me. To use the terms you suggested, I’d say that communion and fellowship with him cannot help but bring in its train encounters with those whom he has saved. That’s why, when Jesus is transfigured, revealed in clarity, Moses and Elijah are seen with him.
B: Amen! (I sound like Boso!)
C: Well, no, you don’t; but that’s probably a sign we should stop!
B: Ha!
C: In all seriousness, I’d love for you to lead us in a prayer exercise.
B: Happily. Here’s one I use often:
1. Clenched Fists: Take a moment to clench your fists, reflecting on the areas of your heart where you cling to that which worries and wearies you. Ask God to show you that which it’s time to release. “Lord, I can’t hang on any more.” Let him pry your fingers open.
2. Limp Wrists: Open your fists and turn your hands palms down, hanging limp in resignation. Are there areas of exhaustion where you feel the weight of despair? “Lord, I cannot pick myself up again.” Let him take those burdens into his care.
3. Open Hands: Roll your hands over, open to receive. “Lord, what gift would you give me this day”? With the eyes of your heart, watch as he puts a good gift in your hands.
4. Open Heart: Bring your hands up to your heart to receive that gift within. “Lord, thank you for this gift. I receive it.” Cradle your heart in your hands as Christ does. Let him hold you there for a while.
C: Amen. And thank you, too. You’re a gift.
Dear Chris and Brad, thank you for these reflections. You touch upon Simone Weil and her "scowling" at what you're saying here. Speaking as someone who is struggling with these exact things, how would you respond to Weil then? How can I trust any kind of idea or experience or feeling or thought about God or Jesus? Even our own "growing into love" - can't that be "just" our own psychological mirroring of an ideal person (Jesus) and thus us becoming more like him in a way that is the same as we would becoming like anyone else we stared at for a long enough time? Where is God in all my psychological projections and can I ever escape them?