From Loving to Union

I was hardly out of my pram when World War II began, so I do not have any war wounds to brag about. But I do have memories, terrible memories of the fear that gripped me when the sirens began to whine. I would hear the planes and the rockets overhead and the sound of bombs exploding, and the sight of incendiaries setting our houses on fire, as I ran to the air-raid shelter.

The Sacred Heart

As our family passed the picture of the Sacred Heart in the hallway, we would all pray for spiritual strength and support and to be saved from the horrible death that might await us at any moment. It helped me to realise the terrible fear that must have petrified the early Christians. Their enemies were not high up in the sky threatening to destroy them. They were all around them threatening to put them to death if they did not worship their gods or buy livestock to sacrifice in their temples, or if they did not conform to the Roman Empire that ruled over them. They even considered it an affront if Christians did not take part in their sordid games when slaves were killed for the fun of it, or in their all-night drinking parties and sexual orgies that were commonplace in those days. Even when there was no official persecution, neighbours could report them to the local authorities sending them to prison where torture, scourging and death were not the exception but rather the rule. I would have been far more terrified then than in the war, when at least the enemy was not on the ground and we had a strong air-raid shelter, with loving parents and caring nurses and hospitals to go to if we were injured.

The Risen Lord

Nevertheless, like us, the first Christians did have the same Risen Lord to turn to who had promised to be with them to the end of time. They did not have pictures of him in their homes as we did, because they still took the second commandment seriously and would not have any man-made images in their homes or in their churches, at least to begin with. That is why the first apostles and the first disciples taught the faithful to picture Christ in their minds, in their memories and in their imaginations so that they could the more easily come to know and love him as they did while he was on earth. They even taught them to imagine him as they had seen him in the act of preaching God’s message of love, and then dying for proclaiming it to his people. They were taught to picture his agonising death, to see in their minds-eye, the length and breadth, the height and depth of his love for them. In the Resurrection, they would see God’s love for his Son, and the other great mysteries of the faith that enabled them to receive this love for themselves.

A New Form of Prayer

It was in this way that a new form or aid to Christian prayer was born that came to be called meditation. Gnostics and Hindus had practised what they called meditation before, as well as Neoplatonists and Stoics, but that was different. In this new form of meditation Christians could see the love of God as it was made flesh in Jesus, as it flowed out of him onto others, and was daily and continually flowing out of him and into them after the first Pentecost. From the very beginning, they had been taught to pray as before at certain times of the day, most especially at nine o’clock in the morning, midday, three in the afternoon and even at midnight. Now they were taught to practise the new form of prayer that would naturally arise from their meditations. Meditation on the most loveable man who had ever existed, in the act of loving and giving himself to others, naturally led the faithful to respond to him in the language of love. However, it eventually did even more than that.

When Something Life-changing Happens

When you come to know someone closely and intimately and come to realise that they not only love you but are prepared to give their life for you, then something life-changing happens. You will want to be united with them, to be one with them at all times, to do what they do and experience all that they experience.

In ordinary circumstances, although it is possible to love someone who is dead, it is not possible to be united with them. However, we are not talking about ordinary circumstances, we are talking about the extraordinary circumstances that arose when God raised Jesus from the dead, and then Jesus promised at his Ascension that he would be with those who loved him at all times, to the end of the world. This would be made possible through the love that drew them all up and into his mystical body at the first Pentecost.  This new form of prayer was not make-believe or play-acting but a form of inspired meditation. It would generate the love that enabled them to enter into Christ here and now, by leading them ever more deeply into his mystical body that would be forever with them.

This form of prayer has been known and practised by Christians throughout subsequent centuries. Taken up into his mystical body, Christians mutually support one another in being sufficiently purified for the next step in their spiritual advancement. This next step would be to be united with Christ in his mystical loving of his Father. Then, sharing the fruits received in this mystical contemplation with others, they would gradually be drawn into doing what God created us for, namely to love, adore, and glorify him and love others as Christ himself loved others whilst he was on earth. With the otherworldly quality of love that Christ himself came to give us, all the commandments, precepts and moral standards that you find in the Gospels become possible because with him and his love all things are possible that are quite impossible without it.

A False Proposition

The proposition that has been accepted by all too many in recent years, although it has never been officially taught by the Church, namely that mystical contemplation is not for all, but an extraordinary way for a few ‘pious souls’, would have been meaningless to our first Christian forebears. If all are called to union with God how else could this union be realised except in, with, and through Christ. He came, not just to tell us this, but to show us how to be united with him in his mystical body, and in his mystical loving of his Father. This is the essence of the God-given spirituality for which Christ lived and died, that leads us into the fullness of life and love and the happiness for which we yearn with all our hearts, as Christ himself put it, “I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

We end so many of our prayers as we end the greatest of all prayers, the Eucharistic Prayer in the Mass, with the words, “In Christ, with him, and through him”, as it is only because we are one with him that our prayers, our offerings, and our sacrifices can be accepted by God. This alone enables us to share in the glory for which he originally created us. That we can participate in the sublime and divine mutual loving of the Father and the Son without the sort of prolonged mystical purification that was commonplace for all in the early Church is literally non-sense. It is the most pernicious heresy that cripples contemporary spirituality.

Union Depends on Likeness

However, when meditation does generate the love that enables the Holy Spirit to lead believers into Christ’s mystical body, a profound purification begins. This enables our impure and imperfect hearts to be united with the pure and perfect heart of Christ, as we experience the mutual loving that continually flows between him and his Father. This new development in a person’s spiritual life is so important as it comprises the mystic way as it is usually understood. If you want to make a  resolution this Lent that can dramatically change your life, make a resolution to learn how to meditate. You will find books, blogs and podcasts to help you do this on my website, so why not begin now?

David Torkington’s blogs, books, lectures and podcasts can be found at  https://www.davidtorkington.com/