Is Eastern mysticism as "sexual" as Western?

[GloriousOrder]

Friends ,

Forgive me for the potentially-scandalous title, but it gets the point across.

Lately, I’ve been delving very far into the depths of post-Augustinian Western mysticism. The neo-platonic theology expounded by that man seems to lend itself to passionate eroticism when considering God. I have been led to some of his writings in Confessions and The City of God. He speaks of the “embrace” of God’s “sweetness”, and how he was “seduced” by our Lord. Being a man who is trying to overcome disordered desires, I don’t see how this particularly helps me form a masculine, yet servile and loving relationship with God.

Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux speak like Augustine. Siena was obsessed with her mystical marriage to Christ and John of the Cross poetically imagined slipping out through secret staircases to meet our Lord in the night for a passionate tryst. Therese of Lisieux actually speaks of the “kiss” of “sweet Jesus”, rendering all love impotent outside that carnal union. It makes me sick, to be perfectly honest. I entered God’s Holy Church on April 23, but I already feel like I should be Eastern, because the West has become so soft and effeminate and just plain weird since Augustine.

I don’t know how to describe my sense of revulsion at this treating of God like a naked lover. All I can really say to some of these quotes is “ew”. I’m just not moved to devotion by this. The blessed Virgin just becomes a wide-eyed caricature to be fawned over and embraced, rather than the glorious humble saint she is. The holy Lord becomes a prancing, meadow-dwelling, deer-petting mockery of His true majesty.

Is the East and its mysticism like this? Does it fall into the carnal trap of kissing, cuddling, and holding, like the West seems to have done?

 

[puzzleannie]

you do understand that love language was just that, love language, long before it was co-opted by the sensualists and hedonists to refer only to sex, specifically sex divorced from love.

If we are horrified by love language used in reference to the relationship of the soul to Christ we are undoubtedly horrified by many parts of sacred scripture, including by analogies used by Christ himself, or by the Spirit-inspired writers of scripture. That probably says more about our own views of love and sexuality than it does about the spiritual encounter being described by a particular mystic. There is no “carnal trap” for anyone who is engrossed on that spiritual plane, only for those still in the grip of carnal views themselves.

 

[ddarko]

Friends ,

Forgive me for the potentially-scandalous title, but it gets the point across.

Lately, I’ve been delving very far into the depths of post-Augustinian Western mysticism. The neo-platonic theology expounded by that man seems to lend itself to passionate eroticism when considering God. I have been led to some of his writings in Confessions and The City of God. He speaks of the “embrace” of God’s “sweetness”, and how he was “seduced” by our Lord. Being a man who is trying to overcome disordered desires, I don’t see how this particularly helps me form a masculine, yet servile and loving relationship with God.

Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux speak like Augustine. Siena was obsessed with her mystical marriage to Christ and John of the Cross poetically imagined slipping out through secret staircases to meet our Lord in the night for a passionate tryst. Therese of Lisieux actually speaks of the “kiss” of “sweet Jesus”, rendering all love impotent outside that carnal union. It makes me sick, to be perfectly honest. I entered God’s Holy Church on April 23, but I already feel like I should be Eastern, because the West has become so soft and effeminate and just plain weird since Augustine.

So have you considered the fact that this indeed might be how it is?

Christ himself compared the Church to a bride. So Christ was comparing his love for the church along the lines of marital love. Does that bother you too?

I don’t know how to describe my sense of revulsion at this treating of God like a naked lover. All I can really say to some of these quotes is “ew”. I’m just not moved to devotion by this. The blessed Virgin just becomes a wide-eyed caricature to be fawned over and embraced, rather than the glorious humble saint she is. The holy Lord becomes a prancing, meadow-dwelling, deer-petting mockery of His true majesty.

Ok the blessed virgin is your spiritual mother. I don’t know what kind of ideas you mean by “fawned over” and “embraced”. I don’t see anything unnatural in wanting to be in the loving embrace of ones mother and hence I am not sure why it bothers you that some might want to be in the embrace of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

What exactly is bothering you? Is it that you don’t feel comfortable with Catholic theology or that you know it is wrong for sure?

God Bless

 

[ciero]

Friends ,

Forgive me for the potentially-scandalous title, but it gets the point across.

Lately, I’ve been delving very far into the depths of post-Augustinian Western mysticism. The neo-platonic theology expounded by that man seems to lend itself to passionate eroticism when considering God. I have been led to some of his writings in Confessions and The City of God. He speaks of the “embrace” of God’s “sweetness”, and how he was “seduced” by our Lord. Being a man who is trying to overcome disordered desires, I don’t see how this particularly helps me form a masculine, yet servile and loving relationship with God.

Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux speak like Augustine. Siena was obsessed with her mystical marriage to Christ and John of the Cross poetically imagined slipping out through secret staircases to meet our Lord in the night for a passionate tryst. Therese of Lisieux actually speaks of the “kiss” of “sweet Jesus”, rendering all love impotent outside that carnal union. It makes me sick, to be perfectly honest. I entered God’s Holy Church on April 23, but I already feel like I should be Eastern, because the West has become so soft and effeminate and just plain weird since Augustine.

I don’t know how to describe my sense of revulsion at this treating of God like a naked lover. All I can really say to some of these quotes is “ew”. I’m just not moved to devotion by this. The blessed Virgin just becomes a wide-eyed caricature to be fawned over and embraced, rather than the glorious humble saint she is. The holy Lord becomes a prancing, meadow-dwelling, deer-petting mockery of His true majesty.

Is the East and its mysticism like this? Does it fall into the carnal trap of kissing, cuddling, and holding, like the West seems to have done?

Get your mind out of the gutter.

 

[GloriousOrder]

My mind isn’t “in the gutter”. I know what such sentences as “'Oh Lord: act, awaken us, and call us! Come set us on fire and ravish us, fill us with sweetness” (Confessions - 1:15:24) mean. To be “ravished” in A.D. 400 meant what it means to be ravished today. What is this vaunted sweetness that Augustine brings up over and over? Since when is Jesus Christ our Lord so sweet, so ‘precious’, so soft? The words themselves speak for a very sensual attitude.

I fully realise that the Song of Songs is very heavy in such language. I don’t discount it, but it’s “just” one book out of many. It seems that everywhere I look in Augustine and those based on Augustine (i.e. the West), I get sentences like: “I did not remain stable in my enjoyment of my God. I was taken to You by your beauty”. He uses descriptive words that are so carnal. I don’t get it. The spiritual mystical authority and “judgmental mercy” of the holy Gospels just don’t seem to be reflected, generally-speaking, in Western ideas.

So have you considered the fact that this indeed might be how it is?

Christ himself compared the Church to a bride. So Christ was comparing his love for the church along the lines of marital love. Does that bother you too?

Our blessed Saviour indeed refers to the Church as His Bride, but never in carnal terms. He speaks of those not invested with the wedding garment being “cast out” into the outer regions of fire and gnashing of teeth. Where is the kissing and embracing and hugging and sweetness there? Do you see what I mean? It’s the emphasis, not necessarily the verity or falsity of the statement, that bugs me about Western mysticism.

Ok the blessed virgin is your spiritual mother. I don’t know what kind of ideas you mean by “fawned over” and “embraced”. I don’t see anything unnatural in wanting to be in the loving embrace of ones mother and hence I am not sure why it bothers you that some might want to be in the embrace of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

What exactly is bothering you? Is it that you don’t feel comfortable with Catholic theology or that you know it is wrong for sure?

The blessed Virgin is a spiritual mother. I believe the Eastern “Theotokos” expresses this very beautifully without falling into some Western attitudes. Depictions of our dearly beloved sister Mary remain very staid, stoic, and subdued in the iconic art. Look at Western Baroque-through-Classical-through-Romantic images of the venerable lady, and you see sensual blushing and carnal pleasure expressed in contorted postures. I am talking about a centuries-long and widening gap of atmosphere and expression.

Nothing is bothering me per se. The question was “does the East do this?”, and is not really part of my personality. Just ignore me, and answer the question.

 

[TrueLight]

Friends ,
I entered God’s Holy Church on April 23, but I already feel like I should be Eastern, because the West has become so soft and effeminate and just plain weird since Augustine.
(

You just entered the church and you already have doubts?

I would advise reading a variety of mystics with different viewpoints.

If you feel more comfortable with Eastern spirituality, there are Eastern Catholic churches.

I don’t mean to be offensive, but you seem very critical of the West for someone who just converted. It almost seems like you are looking for a reason to change churches and you really don’t need one.

 

[GloriousOrder]

You just entered the church and you already have doubts?

I would advise reading a variety of mystics with different viewpoints.

If you feel more comfortable with Eastern spirituality, there are Eastern Catholic churches.

I don’t mean to be offensive, but you seem very critical of the West for someone who just converted. It almost seems like you are looking for a reason to change churches and you really don’t need one.

You’re correct, TrueLight. I am very pusillanimous and worried about not having done what’s right. I am firmly convinced that I rushed into Catholicism without having fully understood the nature of its atmosphere/mood/emphasis. The weight of sin fully pressed on my conscience, and I badly desired baptism, so I was baptised on that holy night and washed by Christ. Perhaps I should have waited, because now I see that the nature of Western theology and its mystical expression overwhelm us with sweet scents of flowers, not the mighty sound of battle against Satan (to be Romantic).

I really don’t want to change churches. I want to worship Jesus Christ in spirit and truth, but in order to be truthful I have to be a member of His true Church. If you’re a member of a communion which has strayed from the very core, the very spirit of Christ’s intent as God, then you need to go to a place that has preserved Christ’s intent. His Spirit is glorious, and we are overwhelmed by the majesty of God’s kingdom and His angelic armies. This sense of the immensity of spiritual warfare seems to have passed out of the West, at least in Siena, Lisieux, Augustine, Avila, and John of the Cross. It’s all about embraces and touching His “face”, and having His blood “drown us”, and His “heart” touched to our hearts, as if God has components and can be taken apart.

It’s very confusing… why do you think I’m here, on this sub-forum?

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

Ewwwwwww… I am not about to have sex with Jesus. Sorry, no way!

 

[Hesychios]

I wouldn’t be able to compare the traditions. My favorite western mystics are Meister Eckhardt and whomever it was that wrote “the Cloud of Unknowing”.

Anyway, read the song of Solomon.

I happen to be very fond of it.

 

[TrueLight]

You’re correct, TrueLight. I am very pusillanimous and worried about not having done what’s right. I am firmly convinced that I rushed into Catholicism without having fully understood the nature of its atmosphere/mood/emphasis. The weight of sin fully pressed on my conscience, and I badly desired baptism, so I was baptised on that holy night and washed by Christ. Perhaps I should have waited, because now I see that the nature of Western theology and its mystical expression overwhelm us with sweet scents of flowers, not the mighty sound of battle against Satan (to be Romantic).

I really don’t want to change churches. I want to worship Jesus Christ in spirit and truth, but in order to be truthful I have to be a member of His true Church. If you’re a member of a communion which has strayed from the very core, the very spirit of Christ’s intent as God, then you need to go to a place that has preserved Christ’s intent. His Spirit is glorious, and we are overwhelmed by the majesty of God’s kingdom and His angelic armies. This sense of the immensity of spiritual warfare seems to have passed out of the West, at least in Siena, Lisieux, Augustine, Avila, and John of the Cross. It’s all about embraces and touching His “face”, and having His blood “drown us”, and His “heart” touched to our hearts, as if God has components and can be taken apart.

It’s very confusing… why do you think I’m here, on this sub-forum?

I feel for you Glorious Order.

Thank you for being honest.

I don’t want to go on a huge tangent, but I would feel that way if the doctrine of Mary as co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix was dogmatically defined.

You can still remain Catholic in communion with Rome, but attend a very Orthodox Eastern Catholic church.

I’ll let those who are in the EC respond.

 

[Hesychios]

Ewwwwwww… I am not about to have sex with Jesus. Sorry, no way!

My old pastor was a speaker on Theology of the Body, and he built a homily based around a theme something along those lines, although not so graphically expressed.

Read this …

 

[GloriousOrder]

My dearly beloved brethren in Christ, don’t imagine I’m saying there’s no place for love. The complaint is not of love, but of exaggerated love. I hear many traditional Catholics talking about the blessed Virgin being our mother in the most forceful terms. Franciscans especially seem to emphasise the Nativity of our Lord (for example) and our need to feel that we’re carrying Jesus in our “womb”, even if we’re males. Everything I’ve encountered in Western liturgy and life has been hyperbolised, made personal and ‘sweet’ to the senses. There are “children of Mary” aplenty, but no “knights of Christ”, if you know what I mean.

In the East, I see more of the “sons of God”, but in the West I’m sensing more a “daughters of Mary” attitude. Does this clarify things a little?

 

[TrueLight]

. There are “children of Mary” aplenty, but no “knights of Christ”, if you know what I mean.

In the East, I see more of the “sons of God”, but in the West I’m sensing more a “daughters of Mary” attitude. Does this clarify things a little?

I’m going to have to give a for that.

Which is one reason I am not joining any “Legion of Mary” group. Legion of Christ… .yeah .

But I think we’re digressing from your original post.

 

[WoundedIcon]

When God compares Himself to our husband in the Scripture, he’s not comparing Himself to Fabio Think of the jealousy of a husband, the wrath against another harming his beloved, think of the shame and disgraced horror of his beloved uniting with another man. God is love, within His Godhead He has a loving community. But love does not simply ravish, it protects. When Israel committed spiritual adultery He was appalled and chastened them. When the pagan nations attacked Israel He protected them like a man. When His human children hurt themselves and each other He is offended. He seduced us to His loving salvation, He supports us with His grace, He rebukes us for our wayward passions so that we can be one with Him. There is no dichotomy within Our Husband kicking Satan’s butt for swaying us away from Him, and it may seem to be very carnal language that the mystics and I are using but ultimately all creation finds it’s origin in the heart of God. Using it to describe Him is no perversion, but shows an understanding that He indeed intended the physical realities to reflect His higher order. Western mystics see the glory of God in every aspect reality, which is why they have no problem appropriating its imagery to describe it. It comes from Him.

I struggled with this same thing, but let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. The East sometimes overemphasizes the spiritual, strong, and masculine; the West sometimes overemphasizes creation, tenderness, and femininity. But ultimately I know that in the West all aspects are there, we just have to harmonize our own thinking to realize that even suffering and battle and knighthood are extensions of God’s loving essence.

 

[dzheremi]

I’ve asked about this before, after getting a bit into the western so-called “mystics” myself. I don’t get it, I guess. I think with this type of writing you either connect with it on some level or it seems totally bizarre and somewhat inappropriate. I certainly don’t feel the “mystic” component to these writings, and I don’t particularly like the feeling of being scandalized by this or that writer of high-esteem among Catholics, so I quickly stopped reading such things and went in search of different approaches to Christianity…

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

My old pastor was a speaker on Theology of the Body, and he built a homily based around a theme something along those lines, although not so graphically expressed.

Read this …

That’s great, but I have to admit it went a little over my head. I’m sure the person is very learned and is making finer points than I could understand.

However I think the imagery is just trying to express the intimacy of the divine and humanity through the instrument of Jesus on Earth.

The freaky thing is that a lot of the groups way back when had sexual initiation rites, so you almost have to wonder whether there were groups (which we would not recognize as Christian today) which used such symbolism to justify sexual initiation rites with initiates and priests (or whatever they would have been called then).

 

[GloriousOrder]

I’ve asked about this before, after getting a bit into the western so-called “mystics” myself. I don’t get it, I guess. I think with this type of writing you either connect with it on some level or it seems totally bizarre and somewhat inappropriate. I certainly don’t feel the “mystic” component to these writings, and I don’t particularly like the feeling of being scandalized by this or that writer of high-esteem among Catholics, so I quickly stopped reading such things and went in search of different approaches to Christianity…

Dear me, how terribly depressing…

I’m a Thomist through-and-through, which makes the incongruity very amusing. On the one hand, I find Western mysticism incongruous and inappropriate at times, but on the other hand I enjoy its logical cataphatic** style and place it far above the Eastern apophatic** style. What a mess!

I’m going to have to give a for that.

Which is one reason I am not joining any “Legion of Mary” group. Legion of Christ… .yeah .

But I think we’re digressing from your original post.

Actually, I believe the manner and expression of devotion to the blessed Virgin is at the very core of this issue. Traditionally, ultramontane Catholicism (i.e. pre-1960’s) was very very big on Mary. It may have ebbed away a tad in recent ecumenical years, but it’s still quite strong. The feminine heroine that the blessed Virgin has become in the West (founding religious orders, dispensing all Grace, co-redeeming the world, etc.) overshadows the true masculine hero that our Lord Jesus Christ actually is. I sense a hyperbolic attachment to the womb, to physicality, to materialism… whereas the Eastern hyperbole might be an attachment to spirituality, and gnosticism.

I do concur that we are all weak and all fall into different errors given our circumstances. Regardless, it’s nice to know these things. Clarity comes before agreement…

 

[Bluegoat]

I think there is really some sexual imagery in the labguage about Christ, and there is some of it that makes me uncomfortable, and some that doesn’t. Augustine doesn’t, Anselm doesn’t, the Song of Songs doesn’t. St Teresa, for some reason, does.

A few things strike me. One is that when we are trying to overcome inappropriate sexual feelings, it canbe especially hard to deal with this kind of imagery. It may be that it is just something that you personally need to avoid right now. But in that case I think it is also important to realize that doing so is a kind of concession to your own weakness, not necessarily a problem with the ideas themselves.

But more than that, I think it can be a real temptation for people struggling with sexual issues to put away sexuality altogether, to try to purge it out. Well, not only does that not work, it tends to have very unhealthy results. Everyone needs love, and real intimcy, and even physical affection. Our job as Christians are to integrate ourselves in a healthy way, not push it all down.

So figuring out what real intimacy with God means may in the long run be really important for you.

I’d say your best bet is to find someone that can give you good guidance, both personally and in your reading.

As far as weather the saints in the East are less mushy, I don’t know, but my gut feeling is that Eastern Christianity is less feminine than Western Catholicism. But unfortunately in Halifax Eastern Catholicism isn’t really a viable option.

 

[ConstantineTG]

My dearly beloved brethren in Christ, don’t imagine I’m saying there’s no place for love. The complaint is not of love, but of exaggerated love. I hear many traditional Catholics talking about the blessed Virgin being our mother in the most forceful terms. Franciscans especially seem to emphasise the Nativity of our Lord (for example) and our need to feel that we’re carrying Jesus in our “womb”, even if we’re males. Everything I’ve encountered in Western liturgy and life has been hyperbolised, made personal and ‘sweet’ to the senses. There are “children of Mary” aplenty, but no “knights of Christ”, if you know what I mean.

In the East, I see more of the “sons of God”, but in the West I’m sensing more a “daughters of Mary” attitude. Does this clarify things a little?

Are you suggesting that the West has become too focused on Mary?

 

[WoundedIcon]

Maybe we’ve lost focus on her Queen-ness?