Uncreated Light

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In Eastern Christian theology (Orthodox or Catholic) there is a lot of focus on striving to see Tabor or uncreated Light. This doesn’t seem to be an emphasis of Western spirituality…but I came across the following passage in St. Teresa de Avila’s Interior Castle:
  1. To return to this sudden rapture of the spirit. The soul really appears to have quitted the body, which however is not lifeless, and though, on the other hand, the person is certainly not dead, yet she herself cannot, for a few seconds, tell whether her spirit remains within her body or not. 9 She feels that she has been wholly transported into another and a very different region from that in which we live, where a light so unearthly is shown 10 that, if during her whole lifetime she had been trying to picture it and the wonders seen, she could not possibly have succeeded. In an instant her mind learns so many things at once that if the imagination and intellect spent years in striving to enumerate them, it could not recall a thousandth part of them
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Can we draw any parallels here?
 
That sounds like a good explanation of a near death experience.

To be absent from the body is to be present with The Lord.

We seek The Lord by the five stones of the faith.

Jesus IS the light, the truth, and the way.

Uncreated light is a literary descriptive term for Jesus.

Bk
 
I don’t think what St. Teresa is describing is the same as the eastern idea of uncreated light. In that passage, she’s writing about rapture which is a particular kind of phenomena that can sometimes be associated with infused contemplation. It can’t be “strived for.”

Dave 🙂
 
I agree with Dave.

We don’t seek after visions, dreams, or the supernatural. We respond with love to God’s call to live his laws with love.

Supernatural things like what happened to st Teresa was a consequence of her holy living and gods generosity and action on her regard.

Though living your relationship with god ardently does bring about a greater union between you and heaven. The promises of those who recite the rosary devoutly for instance. Signal graces was what I was thinking.

Having counseled a few thousand people and taking spiritual histories I have discovered that gods miraculous interventions are more common then most would expect. That being said you can see the will and power if god in he common things as well.

Bk
 
BlueKnight said:
I agree with Dave.

We don’t seek after visions, dreams, or the supernatural. We respond with love to God’s call to live his laws with love.

Supernatural things like what happened to st Teresa was a consequence of her holy living and gods generosity and action on her regard.

Though living your relationship with god ardently does bring about a greater union between you and heaven. The promises of those who recite the rosary devoutly for instance. Signal graces was what I was thinking.

Having counseled a few thousand people and taking spiritual histories I have discovered that gods miraculous interventions are more common then most would expect. That being said you can see the will and power if god in he common things as well.

Bk
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Yes 🙂

Insofar as all prayer can be mystically understood as a spiritual ascent and descent I suppose it can be expressed as a yearning for uncreated light. Generally speaking, though, I don’t think westerners speak that way often.

As relates to the St. Teresa quote, she’s actually describing a very profound type of spiritual imperfection … and one not encountered on the “ordinary” way of contemplation. Raptures, ecstasy’s, flights of spirit and the like are examples where the contemplative absorption of our interior faculties (thinking, perception, awareness) overflows to our exterior senses and has the type of bodily effects described in the quote. Such people, according to St. Teresa, are too focused on the divinity of Christ … so much so they lose sight of His humanity. Her teaching is meant to literally bring such individuals back down to earth … to devote their spiritual activities to the ordinary way of all Christians: conforming our will to His.

In later chapters of Interior Castle she will speak of divinization from the the western understanding of things. We can find this in mansion 7. Better yet in stanza’s 22 to conclusion in St. John of the Cross’ Spiritual Canticle. Described as a “spiritual marriage,” the language is expressed as a kind of unceasing Triune dance between the soul and the three Divine Persons. We do not arrive at this state, though, through spiritual phenomena … but through intimate friendship.

Dave 🙂
 
This light, better than life is received. If the soul asks " show me my soul" there it is. Simultaneously " show me my body" there they are and yet there is seeing? No shadow of bending, the Light is living, enveloping, sustaining. …

Peace
 
Second reading From a homily by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, bishop

God is like an inaccessible rock Consider the feelings of a man who looks down into the depths of the sea from the top of a mountain. This is similar to my own experience when the voice of the Lord from on high, as from a mountaintop, reached the unfathomable depths of my intellect. Along the seacoast, you may often see mountains facing the sea. It is as though they had been sliced in two, with a sheer drop from top to bottom. At the top a projection forms a ledge overhanging the depths below. If a man were to look down from that ledge, he would be overcome by dizziness. In this same way my soul grows dizzy when it hears the great voice of the Lord saying: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. The vision of God is offered to those who have purified their hearts. Yet, no man has seen God at any time. These are the words of the great Saint John and they are confirmed by Saint Paul’s lofty thought, in the words: God is he whom no one has seen or can see. He is that smooth, steep and sheer rock, on which the mind can find no secure resting place to get a grip or lift ourselves up. In the view of Moses, he is inaccessible. In spite of every effort, our minds cannot approach him. We are cut off by the words: No man can see God and live. And yet, to see God is eternal life. But John, Paul and Moses, pillars of our faith, all testify that it is impossible to see God. Look at the dizziness that affects the soul drawn to contemplating the depths of these statements. If God is life, then he who does not see God does not see life. Yet God cannot be seen; the apostles and prophets, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have testified to this. Into what straits is man’s hope driven! Yet God does raise and sustain our flagging hopes. He rescued Peter from drowning and made the sea into a firm surface beneath his feet. He does the same for us; the hands of the Word of God are stretched out to us when we are out of our depth, buffeted and lost in speculation. Grasped firmly in his hands, we shall be without fear: Blessed are the pure of heart, he says, for they shall see God. -

See more at: divineoffice.org/ord-w12-thu-or/?title=Jun+25%2C+Office+of+Readings+for+Thursday+in+the+12th+week+of+Ordinary+Time&date=20150625#sthash.T6Xzw2TR.dpuf

Peace
 
Second reading From a homily of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, bishop

The hope of seeing God The happiness God promises certainly knows no limits. When one has gained such a blessing, what is left to desire? In seeing God one possesses all things. In the language of Scripture, to see is to have. May you see the good things of Jerusalem is the same as May you possess the good things of Jerusalem. When the prophet says: May the wicked man be carried off and not see the glory of the Lord, he means: May he not share in the glory of the Lord. One who has seen God has, in the act of seeing, gained all that is counted good: life without end, everlasting freedom from decay, undying happiness, a kingdom that has no end, lasting joy, true light, a voice to sing pleasingly in the spirit, unapproachable glory, perpetual rejoicing, in a word, the totality of blessing.

Such is the wonderful hope held out by the beatitudes. As we have seen, the condition for seeing God is purity of heart, and now once more my mind is in confusion, as from an attack of giddiness, wondering if purity of heart is something impossible, something beyond the capacity of human nature. If the vision of God is dependent on purity of heart, and if Moses and Paul did not attain this vision—they state that neither they nor anyone else can see God—then the promise of the beatitude spoken by the Word seems to be something impossible of realization. What do we gain from knowing the means by which God may be seen if we have not the power to see him? It is like saying that one is blessed if one is in heaven because in heaven things are seen that are not seen on earth. If we were told beforehand how to get to heaven, it would be helpful to know that one is blessed if one is in heaven. But as long as the way to heaven is impossible what do we gain by knowing about the happiness of heaven? This only saddens and annoys us when we realize the good things we are deprived of, because it is impossible to get there. Surely the Lord does not encourage us to do something impossible to human nature because the magnitude of what he commands is beyond the reach of our human strength?

The truth is different. He does not command those creatures to whom he has not given wings to become birds, nor those to whom he has assigned a life on land to live in water. If then in the case of all other creatures the command is according to the capacity of those who receive it, and does not oblige them to anything beyond their nature, we shall come to the conclusion that we are not to give up hope of gaining what is promised by the beatitude. John and Paul and Moses, then, and any others like them, did not fail to achieve that sublime happiness that comes from the vision of God: not Paul, who said: There is stored up for me a crown of righteousness, which the judge who judges justly will give me, nor John, who leaned on the breast of Jesus, nor Moses, who heard God saying to him, I know you above all others. If it is clear that those who taught that the contemplation of God was beyond their powers are themselves blessed, and if blessedness consists in the vision of God and is granted to the pure in heart, then purity of heart, leading to blessedness, is certainly not among the things that are impossible.

Hence it can be said that those who with Paul teach that the vision of God is beyond our powers are right in what they say, and that the voice of the Lord does not contradict them when he promises that the pure in heart will see God.

RESPONSORY Psalm 63:2; 16:15

My soul thirsts for you, my God; — my flesh longs for you. In justice I shall behold your face; and when I awake I shall be filled with the vision of your glory. — My flesh longs for you.
Peace
 
Psalms 51:
11 Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my iniquities.

12 A clean heart create for me, God;renew within me a steadfast spirit

Ezekiel 36: 26 I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

27I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them.

Peace
 
The Philokalia [V3] 285
St Symeon Metaphrastis
Paraphrase of the Homilies of St Makarios of Egypt
I
Spiritual Perfection
  1. We receive salvation by grace and as a divine gift of the Spirit. But to attain the full measure of virtue we need also to possess faith and love, and to struggle to exercise our free will with integrity. In this manner we inherit eternal life as a consequence of both grace and justice. We do not reach the final stage of spiritual maturity through divine power and grace alone, without ourselves making any effort; but neither on the other hand do we attain the final measure of freedom and purity as a result of our own diligence and strength alone, apart from any divine assistance. If the Lord does not build the house, it is said, and protect the city, in vain does the watchman keep awake, and in vain do the laborer and the builder work (cf. Ps. 127:1-4).
  2. The Holy Spirit, knowing that the unseen and secret passions are hard to get rid of - for they are as it were rooted in the soul - shows us through the psalmist how we can purify ourselves from them. ‘Cleanse me from my secret faults’, writes the psalmist (Ps. 19:12), as though to say that through much prayer and faith, and by turning completely to God, we are able, with the help of the Spirit, to conquer them. But this is on condition that we too strive against them and keep strict watch over our heart (cf. Prov. 4:23).
Peace
 
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