Second Sunday of Lent: We are spiritual beings having a human experience

Mystical experience is literally the experience of the ineffable mystery of God. God is not some super-being that lives out beyond our solar system. We can say what God is like, but we can’t say what God is, because God is ineffable mystery. Ineffable is a word that means extreme or inexpressible.  Mathematics, poetry, music, philosophy and theology are all ways of talking about God. Because they are limited human expressions, they are all, each in their unique manner, inadequate to the ineffable mystery of God. God is a word that we use to refer to that mystery beyond human understanding and reason.
 
What is a Mystic?
A mystic is a person who has a conscious experience of the mystery of God. Theilard de Chardin, S. J. an early 19^th Century paleontologist got in trouble with the Vatican Curia as he tried to express his speculations about the mystery of the ineffable God in nature and evolution. He said, “You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.” Some scientists found him intolerable because he was too much of a mystic. Some churchmen found him intolerable because he was too much of a scientist.
 
Mystics in our Tradition
St. Bernadette Soubirous had a mystical experience of the presence of the Immaculate Conception. St. Faustina Kowalska had a mystical experience of Divine Mercy. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque had a mystical experience of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. Francis of Assisi experienced the passion of Christ in a mystical union. St. Theresa of Avila experienced the healing love of God in an imaginative vision of an angel hurling a golden dart into her heart. The Transfiguration of Christ is a mystical experience.  The story of the Transfiguration has the essential elements of most mystical experience.
 
Common experiences: the Mountaintop
Through all of scripture, mystical experience happens on mountaintops. Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac on Mt. Moriah, Moses and the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, the Jewish Temple and Mt. Zion and Jesus’ Ascension from the Mount of Olives. Mountaintop experiences are greater, more elevated and ineffable human experiences. Spiritual experience is a heightened sense of reality. Scratch the surface of people’s lives and you discover the mystical. Men and women have the experience of the peaceful presence of a loved one after death. The view of the mountaintop always sees further than the view from the valley. Through Jesus the disciples had access to this higher vision.
 
Common experiences: the Light
The gospel said that Jesus was transfigured, that is, a depth to his existence, his divinity, emerged through his humanity. That divinity is expressed in terms of illumination; he was whiter than snow. Brightness is a symbol of mystical experience. The glow that artists place around a saint’s head is a ‘nimbus’; it expresses this divine realm as a ‘glowing’. The book of Exodus expressed this same glow coming from Moses’ face. Ex. 34-29-35. This illumination is the expression of an increased vision; ‘I see it’ now, or ‘I get it.’ This experience of light is typical of near death experiences. St. Bernadette said that our the lady told her that she was ‘the Immaculate Conception.’ She described her vision,
 

“I had gone down one day with two other girls to the bank of the river Gave when suddenly I heard a kind of rustling sound. I turned my head toward the field by the side of the river but the trees seemed quite still and the noise was evidently not from them. Then I looked up and caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose, the same color as her rosary beads.” Description by St. Bernadette.

 
This experience happened in the town garbage dump, not a mountaintop. But clearly, she had an elevated experience. Earlier this month, a French bishop declared as a miracle the cure of a Roman Catholic nun who was an invalid for nearly four decades and recovered after making a pilgrimage to Lourdes. (Read about it by clicking this link)
 
Common experiences: Transience
St. Peter wanted to erect three tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah to make the experience last. Mystical experience by its nature is fleeting or transient. God dwells among his people, but our experience of divinity is transient. It is interesting that people who have a near death experience, often describe this elevated, light filled experience that, upon awakening, leaves them with a sense of joy. They do not fear death. Does mystical experience sees through creation to something or somewhere else? Or, for a moment, a brief glimpse, we see a deeper or, is it, a higher reality? In either event, it doesn't last. We are, as Fr. Chardin described, spiritual beings having a human experience. Sometimes, another world peeks through. Fr. Chardin observed, "The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed." 

A parish of mystics 
We are a parish of mystics that only partly or dimly see, for the most part. Mystical experience cannot be accepted unless one has faith. For materialists, not mystical experience or miracle is possbile. Mysticism requires faith in order to arrive at understanding.

We believe that the divine invades our world in our experience of prayer, the Eucharist and Holy Scripture. I encourage you this Lent to share your faith and experience with others.

• This Wednesday our parish is having the St. Mark Prayer Congress. It is a time to share the gift of prayer and community. You can sign up for that experience here.

• Starting next Sunday, our Lenten Small Group experience will begin. Our Lenten Small Group series is a three-week event that will be a time to meet and share with other parishioners about the Sunday scriptures and your own experience of faith. Overwhelmingly, those that participated in the Advent series enjoyed both the social aspect and the opportunity to discuss the faith with other Catholics. You can sign up here.

 
Faith seeks understanding. We are all mystics, whether we understand it or not.