Where is the mysticism?

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sw85 said:
As is often the case with posts on CAF, the title of the thread has nothing to do with the question actually asked by the OP, which concerned not mysticism but the sense of the mystical and wondrous.
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How is a sense of the mystical and wonderous different from mysticism?

I don’t understand.

-Tim-
 
Okay…now being thoroughly confused as to the actual intent of this thread, let me jump right in here.

Priorities, priorities, priorities! For me it is the priceless treasure of Eucharistic Adoration - even in the early morning hours when, although half asleep, the silence allows me to “Be still and know that I am God.” It is in Lectio Divina where the Word is allowed to penetrate into a deeper part that sometimes I’m not even consciously aware of. It is in the discipline of a daily Rosary when each supplication is heard and honored by our Blessed Mother. And it is in daily Mass where the day begins with a prayer and continues through-out the hours with Grace occasionally tugging at the heart and reminding me that God is near.

The affects of secularism and our new-found atheism as displayed in every facet of today’s modern life is palpable. Given the pressures of a typical daily schedule between work and family, one is hard-pressed to find and be committed to a meaningful prayer life. It’s not that we don’t want to, but that the noise and time constraints is drowning it out. In the busy-ness, we wonder just where the day has gone. If we could only remember and tend to our souls, how different it would all be.
 
TimothyH said:
How is a sense of the mystical and wonderous different from mysticism?

I don’t understand.

-Tim-
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The “sense” of the mystical and wonderous is a gift from God. Mysticism however, is not always filled with the sense of the mystical and wonderous. St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa of Calcuta and St. Therese of Lisieux did not always have the sense of these gifts. They often were left without this sense and lived their spiritual lives walking in what is called “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

The sense of the mystical and wonderous is a gift from God and is not something that we acquire of ourselves.
 
Julia_Mae said:
Thank you. I was hoping to find pictures of the interior. I don’t care that much what the outside looks like, most of the time. I didn’t find much, but what is visible here, isn’t very encouraging: georgenberg.at/
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Ah, but you don’t know. God is working quietly behind the scenes in the lives of the people around us. A soul may not even know that the Holy Spirit is undermining their materialistic view of life until one day they are suddenly captured by God’s love.
 
Why do I get this feeling that people want to divorce the physical universe from the spiritual realm?
 
LilyM said:
Which is hysterically funny given that the language of the liturgy went from the original Greek to Latin precisely because Latin WAS at that time the everyday language (ie most people could at least somewhat understand it, whereas Greek was for the intellectual snobbish minority).
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This is not really correct. The early Church did not spread in Rome among “intellectual snobs,” it spread among the slaves and the downtrodden. And sure enough, Rome had a significant population of Greek slaves. Later, as it spread more to the general population, the everyday language (Latin) was adopted.
TimothyH said:
I see now what this thread is about…

It is about mystery only being available in the Latin Mass using Gregorian chant in cruciform shaped Churches.

Glad to know it. 👍 I always thought that mystery was experiencing God in prayer, being touched by God in a personal way, intimate communion with God, things like that. 🤷

-Tim-
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“Mystery” can be any of several things (of which “I can’t hear it” and “I can’t understand it” are, of course, the most facile). The problem comes when somebody experiences mystery in one way, and then, because he lacks imagination, assumes that everybody must experience mystery in this way, or even that he has stumbled onto “objective” mystery.
 
MarkThompson said:
“Mystery” can be any of several things (of which “I can’t hear it” and “I can’t understand it” are, of course, the most facile). The problem comes when somebody experiences mystery in one way, and then, because he lacks imagination, assumes that everybody must experience mystery in this way, or even that he has stumbled onto “objective” mystery.
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This is very good. Thank you. It addresses the point below:
YoungTradCath said:
Why do I get this feeling that people want to divorce the physical universe from the spiritual realm?
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I don’t require any special setting or environment to get the sense of God’s presence. I do however sense God’s presence through my pyhsical body - in my mind, my heart and in my senses.

Blessed John Paul II spoke of this in Theology of the Body - how man perceives God through the physical body. For me, there is no greater reality of the physical universe than my own senses, mind and heart. That for me, can take place anywhere.

-Tim-
 
HelenRose said:
Ah, but you don’t know. God is working quietly behind the scenes in the lives of the people around us. A soul may not even know that the Holy Spirit is undermining their materialistic view of life until one day they are suddenly captured by God’s love.
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I agree entirely, I was commenting on the design of the building.
 
MarkThompson said:
“Mystery” can be any of several things (of which “I can’t hear it” and “I can’t understand it” are, of course, the most facile). ** The problem comes when somebody experiences mystery in one way, and then, because he lacks imagination, assumes that everybody** must experience mystery in this way, or even that he has stumbled onto “objective” mystery.
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This is such an excellent observation. Also, I think we have to make room for people to pursue mystery in their own way.
 
tata888 said:
Do you think the Catholic church in modern time has lost her sense of mystery and wonder and replaced it instead with mere convenience?
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This question is absolutely impossible to answer. It varies on a parish-to-parish level. You can have priests in the same parish who celebrate masses that are miles apart as far as mystery and wonder are concerned. There are so many orders, so many different regional and national displays of spirituality, that to answer “Yes” to this question without having been outside of your local church would be to place 1.2 billion Catholics into one stereotyped box.
 
TimothyH said:
I see now what this thread is about…

It is about mystery only being available in the Latin Mass using Gregorian chant in cruciform shaped Churches.

Glad to know it. 👍 I always thought that mystery was experiencing God in prayer, being touched by God in a personal way, intimate communion with God, things like that. 🤷

-Tim-
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I have never attended an EF mass, only watched them online, and I admit they are beautiful. But this thread isn’t about Latin Gregogrian chant in cruciform shaped churches at all. In fact just last week I visisted a beautiful modern Catholic parish. The crucifix was tiny compared to the standard life-like size, there were no statues savefor two small altar for the Virgin Mary and St. Lawrence (the church’s patron saint). But I felt God in that church. You don’t need Gregorian chants or Latin (though it’d be nice) to draw out the mysticism of the Church. All you need is for priests and the faithful to perhaps move a little slower in worship, to add a little more contemplation, to make sure that Catholic spirituality is prioritized over modern conveniences and personal interjections in worship.
 
I’ve been wondering, too, are there any pure methods of attempting to commune with God and the saints, other than prayer?
 
TimothyH said:
Not replaced with convenience, but with the force of reason and Aristotlean philosophy. These have been granted pride of place in western Catholicism, to the detriment and sometimes to the exclusion of mysticism.

Any mention of the fact that Christianity existed for 1000 years before Aristotlean philosphy was even accepted in the western world, and that theology was mystical, based on prayerful reading and meditation on Scripture intead of systematic, is taken as a personal rejection of Thomas Aquinas himself.

The lesson of Babel hasn’t been learned. We are a culture of engineers trying to reason our way through faith. Many seem to want to understand God but few seem to want to sit still, learn to pray, and have a converstation with him.

The rapid plummet of this thread into an argument about Church architecture, as if architecture is mystery, proves my point.

-Tim-
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I think this is true. To a large extent, especially when I hang around on these forums, I get the feeling that our faith is reduced to a set formulaic recipes and laws: if you don’t do x, believe y, and avoid z, you’re not a true Catholic. Just look at all the threads on “did I commit a mortal sin?”. We are missing out on a deep mystical experience of God.

There seems to be little emphasis on a true, lasting inner personal conversion. We need to restore the notion of a deep, mystical longing for God, and acceptance of His sacramental graces.

Really getting into the Rule of St. Benedict, especially the degrees of humility, and the emphasis on a life-long journey of inner conversion, has helped me. It’s helped me realize that “there but for the Grace of God go I”. I’ve been spending a long time meditating the third promise of my oblation, inner conversion. It doesn’t happen by following a set of rules. It happens instead of opening the door to Grace. It often takes a lifetime of being beaten up by life’s experiences, and our own deep flaws, to open that door. I only came to that realization a couple of years ago.
 
HelenRose said:
How do you know that? Are you in a position to judge the prayer life of souls. It is my understanding of Christ’s teaching that we do not go around announcing our prayers. You would not see a true mystic advertising their mysticism. A Catholic mystic could be the business man with a brief case, a mother at a soccer game, a homeless person on the streets. You can not possibly know who does and how many souls “have any affinity for mysticism”.
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From her many previous comments it sounds like she does. This site just so poisonous, you cant even ask a question without sensitives getting on and start bashing someone. Ok we get is were not all as mystical and perfect as you are, but some of us enjoy what we have and constantly have to worry that it might be taken away when ever there is a change in leadership, sorry that we are not at your level.
 
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