This nothing consecrated Catholic hermit noticed a saved "draft" of an email sent a few years ago to my late Bishop. These are thoughts that came to me one morning, back then, when pain was severe and the mystical state at Mass opening the soul to insights, very loving and clear. I recall that Bishop was trying to grasp matters, which he said to me were very hard for him to grasp.
We can certainly understand how mystical experiences and insights can be difficult to grasp when so much of our lives and existences revolve around the temporal goings and doings, especially for a bishop who is responsible for many priests and various diocese employees, as well as ultimate for each person in his diocese, his "flock". Plus, there are the interactions with other dioceses and bishops, with the general assembly of bishops twice a year, with the Vatican, as well as with the community and city leaders, various board meetings, and visiting schools and parishes, preaching, praying--when there is time if much at all.
I've had another couple of very difficult days of suffering severe pain. Yesterday I could not think clearly enough to figure out how to install a microwave hanging bracket which needed some toggle bolts! I've installed it before without a hitch. So I called Craig at the lumber yard, and he kindly and patiently talked me through how to do it, while on the phone. He knows my pain issues, and all I had to do was say it was severe and keeping me from being able to think clearly.
After I got the metal hanging strip securely installed and was off the phone, I started to pass out from the pain. So I got to the mattress here on the floor of my tiny cell room, and realized I needed to take some pain medication. I did not want to, and I have not for quite awhile now, but there comes a time when there is no other recourse, for safety's sake, at minimum.
This morning I'm resting longer for the back is on what I call "high pain alert." And thus I ran across this email sent to my late Bishop, back when he was my spiritual director, prior to his grappling with the mystical realities becoming too much for him, and prior to his unexpected death.
I'm re-reading and absorbing the thoughts expressed, for they are appreciated insights given me, and I am reminded of the reality of the mystic portal.
I am living the temporal humanity of Christ.
I bear His temporal pain and breathe His soul's suffering.
But only when the human is subsumed in His mystical Divinity
is there one Joy, one Love, the one Reality: God.
Only then do the two worlds [temporal and mystical] become one reality, the Divine Reality.
The temporal is a shadow of the full humanity of Christ, without union in the mystical reality of His Divinity.
The temporal Catholic world is a holding cell. Humans must pass through the mystic portal in order to
come to full humanity of Christ in His Divinity, to then be one in the One in one true reality.
I hope I am stating it meaningfully, accurately; words are incompetent.
It is something like this, and I must get through the mystic portal with His physical and soul suffering,
in order to be in the true reality, the one reality of oneness in God.
Do you see that the Sacraments, all of them, but most frequently Eucharist in Mass and reconciliation in confession,
are parts of the portal and are passage points for the temporal to enter into the mystical, and that without the One in reality
of the mystical in these sacraments, there would be nothing?
Jesus in His full humanity is the Divine ever-flowing into within the temporal. He is not the temporal occasionally touching the mystical.
When we pain-bearing, soul-suffering humans pass through the mystic portal to be subsumed in His Divinity, we awash the temporal
in and by His living waters. We then may fully live His humanity divine as we have become one with the One Reality.
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