Marriage and Mystical Loving

My book ‘The Primacy of Loving’ is being published in the UK on the 9th of December and in the USA on the 1st of January. If you have found what I have been saying in the past years helpful, then you will find far more in this book subtitled ‘The Spirituality of the Heart’. I can best give you a flavour of this work by quoting from the forward.

A Lesson Learnt from His Father

Although David  spent years studying mystical theology, it was in fact from his parents that he came to understand the meaning of the ‘Mystic Way.’ After his mother died, his Father told him that in the last years of their married life together he and his mother loved each other more deeply and more perfectly than at any other time in their lives. In the first days of what he described as their adolescent love, they were drawn to each other by powerful waves of emotional and passionate feelings, that inevitably faded away.

His Father told him that it was what happened between the moment when these powerful emotional feelings faded away, and the perfect love that they experienced at the end of their life, that made this perfect love possible.

Perseverance

For many years, no decades, unknown to onlookers, unseen even to their closest friends, they persevered in practising selfless sacrificial loving, whether they felt like it or whether they did not, come hell or high water. It was this other-considering loving that gradually enabled them to be bonded ever more closely. This continued until, as perfect a union as is possible in this life, was the joy of their last years together. First enthusiasm in human loving is clearly visible to the lovers themselves and to onlookers too, but the daily and ongoing self-sacrificial loving that is the making of any marriage is not. In the Greek that was used by the majority in the early Church, the word for hidden, unseen, or invisible was mystical. It was derived from the Greek word Mysterion which St Paul used to describe ‘God’s Secret Plan’ to share his eternal happiness and unrelenting joy with those whom he created for that purpose alone. It was called ‘God’s Secret Plan’ because it was hidden until Christ came to reveal it and because it was only possible to enter into it by practising the hidden selfless or mystical loving that was taught to his followers by both word and example. When you practise this loving that St Paul called the greatest of the theological virtues, you are open to receive in ever greater measure, God’s love without measure.

That is why prayer is pivotal because this is the place where, as we have seen, selfless sacrificial loving is learnt day after day. That is why St Angela of Foligno  later called prayer ‘The School of Divine love.’ That is also why what is both practised and received there is the perfect preparation for selfless self-sacrificial and mystical loving practised by married couples. This mystical loving not only daily draws them closer to each other, but to God too.  The truth of the matter is that selfless sacrificial loving is the only way to be open to the divine love. As this divine love mingles and merges with human loving it takes a believer up and into ‘The Mysterion’. In other words, into God’s secret plan to share the ecstatic bliss of eternal happiness and joy with all whom he has created for that purpose, beginning in this life.

Mystical Spirituality and its Counterfeit

Be clear about this then,  the word mystical for Christians means firstly and above all else, the selfless sacrificial loving practised in marriage or in a person’s personal prayer life, or rather both, that will alone enable them to be happy in this life and infinitely happy in the next. Beware, therefore, because the word mystical or mysticism tends to be used in modern times by those, not so much seeking to follow Christ by learning how to carry the cross, by daily self-sacrificial love practised in marriage and in prayer beyond first beginnings, but by spiritual bounty hunters. They are for the most part seeking quick or instant esoteric supernatural experiences for their own solace and satisfaction by employing man-made methods and techniques. The word mysticism cannot be found in the teaching of the early Fathers of the Church, because their spirituality is totally God-centred. They all taught how to seek God by selfless giving, not by Magic. As Greek ceased to be used as the language of the majority of Christians the word mystical was no longer used to describe married loving, but only the hidden or unseen loving of those lay, married and celibate Christians who sought God in an ever-deepening personal prayer life.

A Lesson Learnt From His Mother

David’s mother said that if she and his father had not already been married, then their marriage could so easily have floundered and failed. She was referring to the spiritual marriage that they had both entered into when they were baptised. It was this, their marriage to Christ, that gave them access to the grace of God that continually sustained and supported their weak human love. As she later explained, her marriage depended for its success on this other marriage and on the spiritual or mystical loving that is first learnt there, even before she walked down the aisle with his father. This loving learnt gradually opened both of them to receive the mystical loving of God that would gradually mingle, mix, and merge with their own weak human love. This would, not only enable them to love God more deeply but each other too and the children that they were given.

A Lesson Learnt From the First Mystic

Each of them in their own deeply personal and spiritual journeys, that would manifest itself most particularly in prayer, would, like  Christ the first Mystic, have to experience what it felt like when God seemed to be far away, and terrible temptations and distractions would all but overcome them.

This is what Christ had to experience, in the desert, in the garden of Gethsemane, and on the Cross. However, there would be other moments when he would be overwhelmed with joy as he prayed with his own family, his disciples and with his apostles on  Mount Tabor. St John of the Cross would describe what it was like in darkness in his book ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, and St Teresa of Avila would describe what it was like when darkness was replaced by light, and God’s presence would be experienced in moments of unalloyed joy in her masterwork‘ Interior Castle’. What she describes there can be found at the very beginning of Christianity as experienced by St Paul when he wrote about the visions and revelations that he received when he was raised into what he called the ‘third heaven’ that he identified with paradise regained (2 Corinthians 12:1-5). This is described by St Teresa of Avila and called the prayer of ‘Full Union’ or even ‘Ecstasy’ in her famous mystical masterpiece.  It is this mystical prayer that St Teresa of Avila said was the very soul of the Church, that is now under serious and systematic attack. Who would wish to belong to a Church without a soul?

My Parents Were Mystics

If David told his parents that they were mystics they would have laughed, but like so many other parents who had to battle against ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ to find the peace that they finally attained, they were indeed mystics. They were quite clearly married mystics from whom celibates called to the mystic way could well learn what they have long since forgotten. This loving is also called mystical for a Christian because it takes place in and continues to grow within the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, where it is united with Christ’s own mystical loving, or his contemplation of his Father that he practised while he was on earth and is now brought to perfection as he is in heaven. The body of knowledge gathered together and written down by those who have travelled along the mystic way to help others is called mystical theology, or mystical spirituality. It details the selfless sacrificial loving practised in personal prayer when first fervour fizzles out in the spiritual life as it does in married life. It is the result, the consequence, or byproduct of selfless sacrificial loving, not of self-sought techniques or magical man-made methods that promise instant mystical experiences.

God has called us all, not just to be drawn up into Christ’s life, but into his action, into his ongoing contemplative loving of God. That is why throughout the book David continually reminds the reader that in the words of St Thomas Aquinas our vocation is ‘to contemplate God lovingly, in with and through Christ, and then to share the fruits of contemplation,  with others’.

The Primacy of Loving is Published on 9th December 2022 in Britain and on 1st January 2023 in the USA

It shows everyone a step-by-step guide on how to practise the simple, practical Christ-given spirituality that can change lives permanently for the better.

Christmas Sale: 50% off David Torkington’s eBooks from 9^th – 31^st December from his publisher. First click on the shopping basket icon to remain on the publisher’s site – Add to the basket then add coupon FESTIVE50 at checkout.