Mystical Mush

Is there a problem with mysticism? That depends greatly on what "mysticism" means.

In the Latin Church mystical theology signifies an interior, prayerful approach to understanding the mysteries of the Catholic faith. This is not opposed to, but certainly a contrast from, the more rigoristic theology of the Schoolmen, which used the Traditions of the Fathers and applied the logic of the Greek philosophers.

Indeed, while conventional Patristic and Scholastic theology concern themselves with understanding the faith, mystical theology concerns itself with the understanding of God Himself and the human being's relationship to Him. The mystic, in this sense, is concerned with spiritual truths, understanding (intellectus) rather than knowledge (ratio). Both the Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation produced numerous mystical theologians counted among the Doctors of the Catholic Church, among them Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the reforming Carmelite saints of Spain, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and potentially even Saint Francis de Sales, whose Introduction to the Devout Life and works on the Blessed Virgin Mary could only have been derived in pectore.

The mystic is one who leads primarily an interior life of prayer, finding similar power in reflection and surrender as most would find in the great liturgical ceremonies and Sacraments of the Church.

There is, however, a problem with mysticism: it exists in the heart and head of the mystic, and as such can be given to dreams, ecstasies, ill-judgments, and ignorance. Unchecked, these forces can accumulate to give mysticism a new meaning and a bad name to those familiar with its former glories and contributes to the spiritual life.

Our recent post reviewing a new book on Consecration to St. Joseph has renewed commentary which presents itself whenever a post on the topic of Saint Joseph and his constant re-invention appears. There is not much of a tradition around Saint Joseph, conventionally speaking, aside from that which appears int he proto-Evangelium of Saint James: he was a widower with six children who took the Virgin as a wife after she left the Temple, was thrown into doubt and confusion after her conception by the Holy Spirit, he took part in the events described in the canonical Gospels, and died in advanced age. The Church Fathers saw him as minor figure and none ever wrote more than a few lines about him. He figures more prominently in the Yorkshire mystery plays around Corpus Christi than he does in any sermon by Gregory the Great or Chrysostom. This is hardly a slight against the stepfather of Christ. Popular imagination in Christian Europe afforded him higher regard than any Father gave him.

Where this becomes difficult, aside from a well placed Spanish propaganda campaign, and where this relates to mysticism is that the contrary tradition of "young" Saint Joseph was born in intellectual theology and insinuated its way to mystics. The evolution of Saint Joseph during the 17th-19th centuries coincides with a de facto reinterpretation of mystical theology and the purpose of mysticism.

Name a mystic. María de Jesús de Ágreda? Anne Catherine Emmerich? Maria Valtorta? Each of these mystics provided a corpus of texts narrating the entire life of Christ in minute details, details which their defenders adumbrate as evincing proof: how else could person X have known such particular information about the layout of ancient Jerusalem?

Yet this is exactly where mysticism and mystical theology have changed. Whereas previously mysticism was a source of inner, spiritual knowing of God, it is now semi-synonymous with a person who has special knowledge of new information. In fact, it is a source of information and even lower tiered revelation where Holy Writ and accepted Tradition are silent on a matter, or in this case if they fail to say the right thing.

Most of "young" Saint Joseph has come to us from devotional writings and rational theology inadvertently ignorant of the larger Tradition. If Saint Joseph was a protector of Christ and the Virgin he must have been virile. If he was a provider he must have been a model worker. If he was worthy to live with the Mother and Child he must, too, have been a Virgin, sanctified in his mother's womb, and assumed into heaven; if he had those privileges he must have been the greatest saint after Our Lady and before John the Baptist, who Christ called the greatest man ever born of woman.

Mystical writings, particularly those of the aforementioned authors, provide legitimacy to these theological speculations in the form of purportedly revealed evidence. The problem, especially in the case of Saint Joseph, is that it is antipodal to the previously accepted characterization of the Saint. It would in fact be more intellectually honest to admit that if the Early Church's understanding of Joseph is unreliable then we do not know much about him at all other than what is plainly stated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

The result is that the power of Tradition is undermined, a house divided against itself, and mysticism is transformed into a means of obtaining private revelations for popular consumption rather than a means of communing with God. If a private revelation, vision, or supposed miracle purports to say anything inherently new about God, the Saints, or the Church then I am not interested in it. Biographers and contemporaries of Saint Philip Neri frequently recall that after his own solitary ecstasy he always held in suspicion those who had mystical visions, ecstatic prayers, or who learned special secrets when they prayed.

As an aside, I essayed to reader Valtorta and Emmerich some years ago and found both to be excellent cures for insomnia.