Mystique and Mystics in Christianity

LusoGlobe Research in Charge

Luís Larcher

End

Abstract

To speak correctly about Christian mysticism, it is necessary to identify its characterizing and qualifying elements. It is necessary that the mystical experience is consequent to Revelation and the Christian Mystery: Christ is the only object of spiritual experience. Christian mysticism was born from the New Testament, in the Gospel of Mark 4:11, Christ says to his disciples: “”to you has been entrusted the mystery of the Kingdom of God””, referring to the veiled teaching of the parables, we find just one of the many verifications of this concept. Paulo of Tarsus developed the reflection on the “”mystery”” of God revealed in Christ himself. Also Enrico Suso, in line with Rhenish mysticism, when reaffirming the concept of mystery, says it very clearly: this divine presence, “”Eternal Wisdom””, as he calls it, has its principle in the “”mystery””, in the abyss of divinity inaccessible to the human intellect and to those who are not prepared to access it because reason, precisely because of the characteristics that make it an instrument of abstraction and explanation, cannot penetrate the essence of superior things and much less can it apply to ‘essential’ reality God’s. The conceptions outlined in the New Testament are deepened and developed by the Fathers of the Church. At the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, thanks to the movement to rediscover biblical, patristic and liturgical sources, mystical doctrine managed to find its connection with the “”mystery””. The opinion that mystical experience does not belong exclusively to the field of the extraordinary and exceptional, separated from the essence of the Christian life, has become common among scholars. This experience is, rather, considered the ‘summit’, not always achievable and not by everyone, as it depends on an initiative from God himself and the availability of the subject. This study will address the Christian mystical phenomenon in its multiple approaches: the characteristics of the mystical phenomenon: mysticism and context; identity and structure; types of Christian mystical experience: mystical essence, bridal mysticism, Kenosis and absence mysticism; constituent elements of Christian mysticism: mystical experience, passivity and contemplative knowledge; written and poetic mystical experience; visionary imagination; the language of symbols; the visual and the visionary; and, the unprecedented union with God.

Researchers

Luís Miguel Larcher

Associated Missions

The study will make it possible to develop the program for a Christian Mystic Course, publish a book on the subject

Outputs

Know Christian mysticism, in theological and spiritual reflection; know and distinguish Asceticism from Mysticism; know the centrality of the Person and mystery of Christ, in biblical exegesis, culture, language and symbols; know the importance that mysticism had in the perception of man’s union with God and the phenomena that identify the presence of the Holy Spirit in the history of the Church; know the work and ideas of mystics throughout the history of Christianity; know the cultural and spiritual framework of mystics and their contribution to the understanding of Christian culture and theology; know Christian mystics, throughout history, their works and thoughts; get to know, in a special way, the Portuguese mystics and their work; know and interpret the depth of mystical revelations and experiences; explain and frame mystical phenomena.

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