Just as the Holy Trinity is, at heart, communal, so too is Christian mysticism an inherently communal spirituality.

For a long time now, Ive been fascinated bypeople who self-define as spiritual but not religious (or spiritually independent, or none or some variation thereof) in other words, people who see the Church or institutional religion as overly legalistic, spiritually stifling, hidebound, more concerned with enforcing morality than seeking enlightenment. I dont speak out of judgment, for at times in my life, Ive been there myself.

Part of what fascinates me is how many SBNR folks, despite their dislike of Church, nevertheless adore the mystics.

I once got into a fascinating discussion with a man involved inceremonial magic who saw St. John of the Cross as a spiritual master. I asked him if he had heard of Meister Eckhart, and his face lit up. He may not have cared much for papal encylicals or catechisms, but he knew his mystics.

The popular new age author Carolyn Myss wrote a book about St. Teresa of AvilasInterior Castle. Indeed, you can visit the large new age bookstore here in Atlanta, and it has a modest but clearly visible Christianity section, where you can pick up the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Indeed, some Christians (particularly among conservative evangelicals) point to the fact that new agersrevere the mystics as evidence that the mystics themselves are dangerous! Which strikes me as another variation of denouncing Jesus because tax collectors and prostitutes followed him (a criticism which led Jesus to wryly remark that doctors treat sick people, not healthy ones!).

But what fascinates me is that, among the great Christian mystics of the past up to and including Thomas Merton, as well as living contemplatives like Richard Rohr or Thomas Keating faith communityis always regarded as an essential part of the spiritual life.

In other words, SBNR folks might love the mystics, but the mystics themselves were not SBNR far from it!

Julian of Norwich insisted that all of her visions pointed to accepting everything that Holy Mother Church teaches. This is significant because Julians writing could easily be misinterpreted as promoting universalism (the idea that everyone automatically gets saved). Julian herself insists that she is not in any contradicting church teaching, even though she also admits she struggles with the doctrine of hell (something I think any compassionate person would struggle with).

Meister Eckhart, when accused of heresy, insisted that he might be guilty of error, but never heresy. An error could arise because of a fault in his thinking, whereas heresy (deliberately rejecting church teaching) requires a defect of the will. In other words, Eckhart is saying I may not be right all the time, but Im always committed to being a faithful member of the Church.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, Church-friendly Mystic (painting by Rubens, public domain)

So two questions come up for me. First, why do people who dont love the church, love the mystics? And second (and more important), why do mystics love the Church?

I think mystics (and mysticism) appeal to the spiritual-but-not-religious seeker because, after all, their spirituality is so real, authentic, genuine. Reading the mystics is inspirational, in the best sense of the word. They truly point to the breathtaking possibility that we can find enlightening truth, illuminating joy, profound intimacy and even union with God. Thats heady stuff, and no wonder those who seek to find their own spiritual center would be drawn to it.

Furthermore, mysticism not Christian mysticism, but mysticism in general can easily be interpreted, especially in our culture, as asolitary spiritual pursuit. The pagan mystic Plotinus described the spiritual life as the flight of the alone to the Alone. Since we live in a Lone-Ranger culture that practically idolizes individualism, its easy for people immersed in our culture to ignore the communal, social,ecclesial (i.e. church-centered) nature of most orthodox Christian mysticism. They just look for all the alone-to-the-Alone stuff and ignore the rest.

But thats sloppy scholarship. We need to let the mystics speak for themselves, and again and again, they argue for a spirituality where love your neighbor is as important as love God. In other words, a spirituality where the community matters as much as solitude.

So on to our second question: Why do mystics love the Church? To answer this, lets look at Karl Rahner, the acclaimed20th century theologian who also was very much a mystic of his time. In an essay reprinted inKarl Rahner: Spiritual Writings, the author speaking in the voice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century mystic who founded the Society of Jesus talks about why great spiritual teachers love the church, even if they maintain a critical perspective on it.

Truly, I am not ashamed of this allegiance to the Church. Once converted, I wanted to serve the Church with my whole life, although even this service was for God and for humanity, not for a self-seeking institution.

In other words, when Ignatius (and, by extension, Rahner) served the Church, he was serving God and humanitythroughthe community of faith, andnot simply submitting to an institution.

Rahner goes on

The Church as infinite dimensions, because it is the community, filled with Gods spirit, of people who have faith, who are pilgrims in hope, who are loving God and humanity.

Church people may not be perfect (indeed, they/we most certainly are not), but they/we are united in love for God, which makes this Church a community worth participating in.

But you would totally misunderstand this allegiance to the Church that I had were you to take it as an egocentric love of power, fanatically setting ideological boundaries and leaving conscience defeated, or as an identification of myself with a system that had no reference to anything beyond itself.

The author goes on to insist that his love for the Church was motivated by a desire to love, serve, and help others. He continues:

All love for this institutional Church would be slavery to idols, complicity in a horrendous self-centered and self-enclosed system, if it were not inspired and informed and limited by this desire. But this also means (and the history of my mystical journey bears this out) that love for this Church, however unconditional in a certain sense it may have been, is certainly not the be-all and end-all of my existence but a derived reality, originating in immediacy to God, and depending on this intimacy for its import, its limit, and its nature

In other words, a mystic loves the churchalways as an outgrowth of his or her response to the love of God. Otherwise, the Church could become an idol (and I suspect many SBNR folks reject institional religion because they see how many of the institutions most ardent defenders are, in fact, idolizing it, rather than truly worshipping God).

Rahner, still speaking as Ignatius, finally offers a mystical approach to the Church, saying this his love for the Church grew out of the Churchs spiritualnature as the Mystical Body of Christ.

It was in this mystical union of God with the Church for all that the two are radically to be distinguished that the Church was and remained for me transparent to God, and the specific place of this ineffable relationship I had to the eternal mystery.

Rahner goes on to make an intelligent argument for why a person can disagree with, or criticize, the Church, while still remaining a loyal member of it(which reminds me of one of my favorite books, Philip Kaufmanns Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic).

Rahners viewpoint may not represent every mystic in Church history (the mystics are a notoriously non-uniform bunch). But he certainly gives us plenty of thought. Here is a summary of what I see are his most important points:

As I read Rahner, it struck me that, for a Christian mystic, participation in the faith community(in some form) is a natural outgrowth of the love of God. So when SBNR folks say they want nothing to do with organized religion, but they still are drawn to the mystics, I want to encourage them to read the mystics and to study their teachings. I think the more seriously someone takes the mystics, the more likely God will use mystical wisdom to draw that person into the imperfect love that characterizes the earthly/mystical Body of Christ.

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Read more:

Why do Mystics Love the Church? - Patheos (blog)