Who among us has not suddenly looked into his child's face, in the midst of the toils and troubles of everyday life, and at that moment "seen" that everything which is good, is loved and lovable, loved by God!
Such certainties all mean, at bottom, one and the same thing: that the world is plumb and sound; that everything comes to its appointed goal; that in spite of all appearances, underlying all things is—peace, salvation, gloria; that nothing and no one is lost; that "God holds in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is."
Such nonrational, intuitive certainties of the divine base of all that is can be vouchsafed to our gaze even when it is turned toward the most insignificant-looking things, if only it is a gaze inspired by love. That, in the precise sense, is contemplation...
Josef Pieper, from Happiness and Contemplation
Because of
the hiddenness of mystical knowledge, mysticism has sometimes been described as
the experience of “God as a ray of divine darkness.” For Emilie Griffin, it is
“a deep and sustained intimacy with a loving God.” While there have been
instances in which a mystic gains unusual abilities or receives stigmata, which
lead us to imagine that mystics are not present in our lives today, Griffin
suggests that many mystics are quiet and anonymous, and their unique
spirituality is invisible to the casual observer. This book explores mysticism thematically, drawing on an assortment of mystical
experiences recorded both in Scripture and Christian history. Griffin lays out the mystic path for those who wish to travel it—noting, however, that
one can never ask, “Lord, please make me a mystic,” but rather, “Lord, I want
to know you better.”
From the book:
I believe that we are meeting mystics every day, but we do not recognize them. Their humility and modesty is such that they pass into the crowd ("So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple" John 8:59). Perhaps we could spot them by their spiritual disciplines: prayer, meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It is possible, but not likely. For real mystics practice their deep love and service to God in ways that may fly below the radar, unobtrusively, transforming the lives of others in ways that seem sublimely plain spoken and level-headed. Except when they receive extraordinary mystical gifts (not everyone does) it is hard to pick them out in a crowd. We have noted earlier that Padre Pio looked much like the next monk in the procession. More to the point, the Roman soldiers needed Judas to point Jesus out to them. To them, he looked more or less like any other Galilean.
Both Thomas Merton and Karl Rahner, a major modern theologian, insist on a mysticism of ordinary living. For Merton, the incarnation has sanctified all of human living. Far from taking the contemplative above and beyond the ordinary, contemplation, if authentic, roots the human being in the ordinary. The ordinary routine of daily life becomes the texture of contemplation for the devoted Christian. Merton insists that there is a "latent, or implicit, infused dimension to all prayer."
