Some people – on both sides of the debate – talk about Catholicism as if it was a set of codified rules; a legalistic prescription for mollifying a tyrannical and pernickity God.
The Anchoress has a post pointing to several articles that remind us that the heart of our faith is a relationship. Here’s just one quote to give you the flavour – please read the rest.
God says, in essence: “For your sake, I will become broken, too, but in a way meant to render you more Whole, and Holy, so that our love may be mutual, complete, constantly renewed, and alive. I love you so much that I will Incarnate, and surrender myself to you. I will enter into you (stubborn, faulty, incomplete you, adored you, the you that can never fully know me or love me back) and I will give you my whole body. I will give you all of myself, unto my very blood, and then it will finally be consummated between us, and you will understand that I have been not just your God, but your lover, your espoused, your bridegroom. Come to me, and let me love you. Be my bride; accept your bridegroom and let the scent and sense of our love course over and through the whole world through the church I beget to you. I am your God; you are my people. I am your bridegroom; you are my bride. This is the great love story, the great intercourse, the great espousal, and you cannot imagine where I mean to take you, if you will only be faithful . . . as I am always faithful.“
The best of us are not those who say ‘no’: no to promiscuity, no to abortion, no to laissez-faire capitalism, no to all the ills that ail our society. The best of us are those who say ‘yes’: yes to deep marital commitment and loyalty, yes to helping those in need, yes to working together for the good of all, yes – in fact – to our divine Bridegroom, the Love whose love makes all things new.
My goodness, that’s awfully, err, explicit language there Joyful.
I hope we’re not expected to take it too literalistically , especially for us male readers if we’re expected to think of God as male
However the meaning is bang on.
God Bless
– from The Gift Of Years by Joan Chittister (BlueBridge)
God Bless
I like Sr Joan’s three categories, though I think it immeasurably sad that she sees them as age-related.
To some extent they probably reflect the stages of Sr Joan’s own life.
To be sure, the later stages of life do tend to build on the earlier stages, so the later does not negate the earlier.
But for others, these stages can be mixed up together, which is certainly the ideal although maybe not to common in Sr Joan’s youth in the pre-conciliar church of the 1940′s and 1950′s USA ?
God Bless
So rather than a set of rules, Catholicism is a creepy sexual thing? Is that what the Anchoress meant with what I presume was an excerpt from a Mills and Boon novel??
Church Fathers on the Song of Songs:
“Let no earthbound and materially minded person, however, be abashed at the mention of “kisses.” Let them, on the contrary, consider that also at the moment of holy communion we receive the bridegroom’s limbs, caress, and embrace them, press them to our heart with our eye, imagine a kind of embrace, believe ourselves to be with him, embrace him, caress him, love driving out fear.” Theodoret of Cyr
“For it is with the kiss that lovers cleave to each other and gain possession of the sweetness of grace that is within, so to speak. Through such a kiss the soul cleaves to God the Word, and through the kiss the spirit of him who kisses is poured into the soul, just as those who kiss are not satisfied to touch lightly with their lips but appear to be pouring their spirit into each other…She sought the kiss, God the Word poured himself into her wholly and laid bare his breasts to her, that is, his teachings and the laws of the wisdom that is within, and was fragrant with the sweet fragrance of his ointments. Captive to these, the soul is saying that the enjoyment of the knowledge of God is richer than the joy of any bodily pleasure.” Ambrose
“Having embraced the Word of God, the soul desires him above every beauty; she loves him above every joy; she is delighted with him above every perfume; she wishes often to see, often to gaze, often to be drawn to him that she may follow.” Ambrose
“‘Do not marvel’ she says, ‘That righteousness has loved me.’ Although I have become dark through sin and have dwelt in gloom by my deeds, the bridegroom made me beautiful through his love, having exchanged his very own beauty for my disgrace. After taking the filth of my sins upon himself, he allowed me to share his own purity, and filled me with beauty.” Gregory of Nyssa
There is nothing creepy about it. Sexual? Yes, indeed – as the best mystics have always known (though not physical sex, of course – but then those who think sex is just physical are missing out big time).
Here’s what St Teresa of Avila says:
When He touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets,
the way other lovers do
the earth’s weave
of clay.
Any real ecstacy is a sign
you are moving
in the right
direction,
don’t let any prude tell
you otherwise.
To me, it seems that many of the rules of the Church are more akin to the rules of grammar, or the rules of polite eating, than to (say) parking regulations. They are ways of ensuring the comfort of ourselves and others. People who treat them as if there will be a divine towtruck along any minute completely miss the point.
Well each to their own I suppose. But God, remember, is an Englishman, and might find it a bit over-done.
And interestingly, the saints Joyful quotes are Latin or Middle Eastern, who perhaps have a better handle on these matters than the English.
God Bless
Yes but God is an Englishman, so presumably they don’t
“God is an Englishman. (He lives upstairs—but we don’t mention him).”
God is an Englishman
Paul and the Gospel authors would beg to differ.
God is a Jew.
God Bless
Have I ever told the story about the minister who died and went to Heaven?
The minister was met by St Peter, and given a beautiful house on a hill, looking out over the celestial city. He was thrilled. However, a few day later, when he met St Peter in passing, he couldn’t resist pointing out that he’d just seen the priest from his former town, and the priest had been given a veritable mansion on an even higher hill.
“That’s right,” said St Peter. “He gave up so much in life – a wife, a family. He deserves a mansion.”
The minister thought that point was fair enough, but a few days later he came up to St Peter again, to ask about the palace on the mountain that had been given to the rabbi from his former town. “He had a wife and five lovely children,” said the minister. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy with my house; but I’d just like to know why he gets an even better place than the priest.”
St Peter spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “What else can I do?” he said. “He’s family!”
If, C.S Lewis style, we find an alien species who had an incarnation as well, I hope we don’t fight over which one of us is the other women
Any real ecstacy is a sign you are moving in the right direction, don’t let any prude tell you otherwise.
Abp Dolan might disagree with that “any” bit, and with the being dismissed as prude bit too.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/homily-archbishop-timothy-dolan-rails-sexual-immorality-article-1.1006700
But then Abp Dolan is no St Teresa of Avila, is he ?
God Bless
I don’t see the connection, Chris. In the link you gave us, Archbishop Dolan doesn’t seem to have mentioned mystical ecstasy in union with God.
Precisely. Perhaps that’s nine tenths of the problem here..
God Bless
To be sure, as a ‘no, no, no’, sermon, it is the precise opposite of what the Anchoress and others are extolling.
Actually, I’ve taken another look, and it’s far from a ‘no, no, no’ sermon. “It is chastity and purity that liberates us, while immorality enslaves us,” he says. To me, that’s a big ‘yes’.
It seems like a pretty standard sermon to me, and someone has to hold the line against ‘animal rutting’!!
I think JP is right, he didn’t just say no to promiscuity, he offered an alternative vision.
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“God is an Englishman
Paul and the Gospel authors would beg to differ.
God is a Jew.”
Shame on you Chris. It is not impossible to be both.
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Then there are those who suggest that all these nuns and unwell young female saints who often die young are, or were, simply suffering from suppressed sexuality in the first place.
Could be.
If that is so, having orgasms over Jesus is much the same as having them over, say, Elvis.
There may be some truth in that Toad.
God Bless
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“This is the great love story, the great intercourse, the great espousal, and you cannot imagine where I mean to take you, if you will only be faithful . . . as I am always faithful.”
Says jesus. But while all the celibate nuns and saints are being faithfull to him, He is being “faithful” with all of them.
Men !
Yes, Toad, the human mind is unable to comprehend the nature of God and must resort to feeble analogies from human experience. But, as even Aquinas admitted, such language is in the end all straw.
The dangers of too literalistic an interpretation of the bride of Christ and all that, and argument often used against ordaining women, are evident.
God Bless
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“… the human mind is unable to comprehend the nature of God and must resort to feeble analogies from human experience. “
Toad agrees with the first part, but thinks there is no “must” about resorting to feeble analogies.
Why bother? It’s pointless. If there is a God, we are not capable of comprehending Him, and will waste our time trying.
All analogies about God are feeble, the finite is necessarily feeble in comparison with the infinite, but of course some analogies are more feeble than others.
The ecstasy of divine union probably needs to be experienced to be appreciated. Those who never have are perhaps prone to reading descriptions of it in too sexual terms.
Trying to grasp the reality encompassing us is always going to be difficult, and in principle impossible, but none the less it is important to try to do our best at it. As, for example, science and literature do.
Most of us try to understand our spouses but realise that we’ll never fully comprehend the other. We aren’t even able to fully comprehend ourselves. Nonetheless, if we don’t work away at understanding, our relationships will be shattered.
God Bless
The comparison between ecstasy and orgasm is, of course, an analogy – and one that is clearly inadequate in some respects. To take one example, a person in a position to compare the two experiences knows that one experience is focused on the physical – primarily the two bodies involved, and in the other the person is likely to be completely unconscious of having a body or of the physical environment. That said, the analogy certainly captures an aspect of the experience of spiritual union that is not captured by the shepherd, king, or father analogies.
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“.as the best mystics have always known (though not physical sex, of course – but then those who think sex is just physical are missing out big time).”declares J.
A couple of debatable (to be charitable) points here.
Toad believes that there is no “of course” about it – what we are talking here is physical sex and nothing else, although the “saints” involved would be horrifed to hear it.
What they are doing is expressing their sexual frustrations in terms of an unfullfillable “love,” which, since it cannot be consumated (at least not physically with Christ) is “all right.”
Saint Teresa is looking down the wrong end of the telescope here.
Sex is not a by-product of religion, religion is a by-product of sex.
Freud was right. Thinks Toad.
Finally, not even the most doltish oaf could believe sex was “just physical.”
Otherwise there would be no difference in coupling with an inflatable sex toy or, say, Carla Bruni.
Well, I dunno Toad, I would have thought that there would have been a physical difference between an inflatable sex toy and Carla Bruni.
While there may be some truth in Toad’s hypothesis of sexual frustration as causative of supposed divine ecstasy experiences, the fact that happy married men, who are not sexually frustrated, have had similar experiences, rather undermines the idea.
A brief glance at the history of religions shows that the quest for a deeper, more intimate, personal experience of the divine has a been a constant factor.
Although Chris accepts that it may have been somewhat rarer in the 1940′s and 1950′s London Catholicism of Toad’s youth.
God Bless
‘Toad believes that there is no “of course” about it – what we are talking here is physical sex and nothing else, although the “saints” involved would be horrifed to hear it.
What they are doing is expressing their sexual frustrations in terms of an unfullfillable “love,” which, since it cannot be consumated (at least not physically with Christ) is “all right.” ‘
Horse hockey, Toad. For your categorical statement to be true, you’d have to show that only those who are sexually frustrated report ecstasy as a result of spiritual union with God. This isn’t so, as I can personally attest.
Freud was right … says Toad, and proceeds to get himself in trouble.
The great mystics of the Church were surely able to distinguish between erotic and spiritual ecstasy.
But not everyone is capable of or suited to such rarified spiritual experiences. It seems certain to me, though I can’t prove it, that for some of the young women who have entered converts over the centuries (for some the choice was made by the family), a clear distinction between erotic/romantic love for the Christ encountered in images and liturgy etc and more ‘spiritual’ love may not have existed. — I imagine some nuns have had feelings for Jesus that in modern terms might have something in common with the “celebrity crush”.
Yes, indeed. I quite agree.
Though that isn’t meant as a sneer. If the point of Christianity is that God (and all the infinite remoteness that entails) enters into humanity, and becomes human; then the awe, love etc, which people feel for God, is bound to become enmeshed with all the forms of love people feel for each other.
So it is probably too reductive to think of Christian love for God and Jesus as purely paternal, romantic, philial, or what have you. It can probably bear elements of all of those.
Though it is also true that to a Roman Pagan, modern sceptic (such as myself), or Muslim, the language of Christian love can appear decidedly feminine in nature. — which is an intriguing thing, and not something I claim to understand fully
A careful observer will note that the most conservative Catholic men (think SSPX) are the ones who feel the need to stress their machismo the most.
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“The great mystics of the Church were surely able to distinguish between erotic and spiritual ecstasy. “
Slight doubt there, Jerry? Toad thinks uncategorically, as always, that it is possible that they were not. Very likely, in fact.
How can it be a categorical statement when Toad carefully says it is what he “believes.”? He knows he maybe wrong. Always.
“Horse hockey, Toad. For your categorical statement to be true, you’d have to show that only those who are sexually frustrated report ecstasy as a result of spiritual union with God. This isn’t so, as I can personally attest.”
Illogical Joyful. Just because you can truly attest to your ecstatic feelings as a happily wed mother, etc., a frustrated, virgin, hysterical nun is a very different kettle of fish. There’s no “only” about it. Your testimony on the matter is no guarantee of anyone else’s.
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Oops! Forgot to put, “Thinks Toad” at the end.
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Toad, as usual, expressed himself clumsily earlier today. What he should have said was, that Joyful possesses the experience to distinguish between the two kinds of ecstacy. Saint Teresa, for example, would not have. (We must assume.)
Don’t suppose J can tell us what the difference actually is….?
“Freud was right … says Toad, and proceeds to get himself in trouble. “
Trouble , to Toad, is what dog excrement is to a fly.
Both experiences can only be analysed after the event, Toad – thinking about them at the time is in the one case impossible and in the other distracting to the point of spoiling the moment. (‘It’s very hard to sleep with all that sort of thing going on’ as the Queen said in BlackAdder.)
One difference, as I noted below, is in one state you are oblivious to physical sensations (including your body and your surroundings), and in the other you are intensely aware of physical sensations.
“If they talk about their experiences at all, mystics use words like ecstasy, illumination, and exaltation–after confessing that words fail them. Protesting all the while that their sensations cannot be explained, mystics… describe experiences of inspiration, peace, serenity, and all-rightness with the universe; of moving into another order or dimension of consciousness; of fusing in oneness with God, the universe, others, everything, eternity; of transcending time, space, and ego; of being infused with knowledge, recognition, awareness, insight, certainty, illumination; of having a sense of endowment, of gaining more from the experience than they can intellectually understand.”
Saint Teresa, for example, would not have.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that Toad.
Children raised in one room houses where children sleep in the same room with their parents, living around domestic animals, and in a rather earthy society may well have been quite familiar with sexual ecstacy.
And not every nun was a virgin and neither does virginity preclude sexual ecstacy.
There is certainly a link between sexual ecstacy and divine love, as scripture attests, for example in the Song of Songs.
God Bless
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Very good points from Chris and JP. Of course, as he at least points out, sex is all around us and always has been.
(Although observation can only get one so far.)
Thank you for your post here and the link to The Anchoress. really beautiful imagery, lots to meditate on.
It’s more like those who have not experienced the ecstasy of God have a hard time understanding it.
There is a difference between love-making seen a participation in the love of God, in comparison to something taken out of playboy.
The saints did not see erotic love as lust, the way the modern world does.
On the contrary they saw that erotic love ascends higher when it’s reconciled with the love of God and ascends lower when it’s not.
A person married or not, learns to love as God loves.
Srdc, I like the analogy of a triangle. The couple stand one on each corner. As they approach God at the apex of the triangle, they automatically approach one another.
Joyful,
That is a very apt analogy.
Nice to “see” you here.
Thanks Kerberos. Hello to you too.
“Some people – on both sides of the debate – talk about Catholicism as if it was a set of codified rules; a legalistic prescription for mollifying a tyrannical and pernickity God.”
## Most unfortunately, that – or something not a trillion miles removed – is how it has often been taught. Part of the problem is that “we have treasure in earthen vessels”; we have received something, or Someone, it is all too easy to give a very misleading account of.
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“The saints did not see erotic love as lust, the way the modern world does.”
You are looking down the telescope the wrong way, Srdc.
The modern world sees erotic lust as love. Or so thinks Toad.
(Who canot speak for the saints. What they thought of erotic love is no business of his, and may well vary from saint to saint. For all Toad knows.)
Toad,
Yes, it’s true that the modern world cannot tell the difference between love and lust.
Erotic desire when reconciled to the love of God, starts to move away from lust and towards love. One starts to love as God loves, a love that pours out in self-donation to others.
Saint Mechtilde, a German mystic of the 13th century, echoed the same idea when he wrote that Christ’s “noble nuptial bed was the very hard wood of the Cross on which he leaped with more joy and ardor then a delighted bridegroom” (cited by Blaise Arminjon in The Cantata of Love)
We aim for heaven through the love of cross, where every desire is reconciled with the love of God.
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“Christ’s “noble nuptial bed was the very hard wood of the Cross on which he leaped with more joy and ardor then a delighted bridegroom”
If that were true, Srdc, what was “The Agony in the Garden” all about?
(This “thread” is getting curiouser and curiouser.)