{"id":16889,"date":"2016-08-15T14:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T18:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/?p=16889"},"modified":"2016-11-23T17:08:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T22:08:42","slug":"embodied-mysticism-saint-philip-neri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/2016\/08\/15\/embodied-mysticism-saint-philip-neri\/","title":{"rendered":"The Embodied Mysticism of Saint Philip Neri"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mysticism\"In No Strange Land: The Embodied\u00a0Mysticism of Saint Philip Neri<\/em> by Fr.\u00a0Jonathan Robinson, the Founder of theToronto Oratory, was published last year by\u00a0Angelico Press:\u00a0https:\/\/angelicopress.com\/robinson-in-no-strange-land\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The book concludes with these words:\u00a0\u201cOn May 26, 1595, very early in the morning, Philip Neri died. He died at the hour and on the day he had\u00a0foretold. No one doubted that a great Saint\u00a0had gone home to God. All over Rome, the\u00a0Cardinals and the famous preachers of the day were bold to say that Philip had no\u00a0need of prayers. The Preacher General of the Dominicans told a great congregation\u00a0at the Minerva that there was no cause to pray for Philip, since he was most\u00a0certainly living in the glory of paradise. Like the \u201cfaithful and wise servant\u201d in the\u00a0Gospel, whose master \u201chad set over his household, to give them their food at the\u00a0proper time,\u201d Philip\u2019s life
\nhad been devoted to revealing to others the mercy of God.\u00a0It was effective because it was based on a first-hand acquaintance with God\u00a0himself. With this first-hand knowledge by acquaintance, he became the Apostle of\u00a0Rome in his own time.<\/p>\n

It was in the ordinary, accessible practices of sixteenth-century Catholicism that\u00a0Philip\u2019s journey had begun, and that was where it ended. But there was a journey, a\u00a0journey that is best described by the tradition of the three ways, as understood by\u00a0St Gregory of Nyssa. The development of Philip\u2019s relationship to God is not to be\u00a0understood as a conscious effort to put into practice what is often today thought of\u00a0as mysticism. Rather, it was Philip\u2019s struggle to find and do the will of God in the\u00a0here and now that led to what is best described as his embodied mysticism; a\u00a0mysticism embodied in the beliefs and practices of sixteenth-century Catholicism,\u00a0but also embodied in Philip\u2019s own individuality and particularity.<\/p>\n

To say that Philip\u2019s mysticism was embodied in his individuality and particularity is\u00a0to remind ourselves of two things. In the first place, Philip\u2019s education in Florence,\u00a0his time in San Germano, the isolation in the catacombs, his studies, the beginning\u00a0of his apostolate, and the difficult years after his ordination\u2014all these are not so\u00a0many interesting but basically extraneous experiences to what was really going on.\u00a0There was nothing really going on, in a disembodied way, apart from these\u00a0experiences. If we are going to understand Philip\u2019s mysticism, we have to know\u00a0how it was embodied in, and only in, Philip\u2019s own personal history as it developed\u00a0within the particular cultural and ecclesial setting that was his own.<\/p>\n

If Philip\u2019s mysticism is ineradicably meshed into the particularity of his own life,\u00a0then it follows, secondly, that mysticism is not a readily identifiable concept that is\u00a0essentially the same in all cases. If we cannot remove the element of the historical\u00a0from a discussion of Philip\u2019s mysticism, because if it is in the historical that the\u00a0reality of his mysticism is actually to be found, then any attempt to talk about his\u00a0mysticism in abstraction from the historical becomes one more example of\u00a0Bradley\u2019s \u201cunearthly ballet of bloodless categories.\u201d Furthermore, if we cannot\u00a0discuss Philip\u2019s mysticism without recourse to his own particular history, then this\u00a0applies to any other mystic. We must not ignore the ineradicably personal and\u00a0particular interaction between the mystic under discussion and his religious and\u00a0cultural context. There may be a family resemblance in what they experienced or\u00a0taught, but that does not come from the fact that they were all practicing “mysticism.”<\/p>\n

To what, then, is this family resemblance to be traced? It is to be traced, first of all,\u00a0to the fact that all Christian mystics were formed in, and practiced, the ordinary\u00a0duties towards God and, as Julian of Norwich called them, their \u201ceven Christians.\u201d\u00a0The way of beginners, with its spiritual combat against sin and learning to live as\u00a0children of the light, is the beginning of all Christian mysticism, just as it is of the\u00a0beginning of all Christian living.<\/p>\n

It is only with the beginning of what I have called the mystical assault that the\u00a0mystical road can be clearly distinguished from the often heroic struggles and\u00a0genuine sanctity of those who remain in the first way. There are many saints who\u00a0are not mystics. On the other hand, it is just as clear that many saints are mystics,\u00a0and it is this mysticism of the saints that is our interest in this book.\u00a0The difference between the holiness of those who live in the first way and the\u00a0journey of the mystics begins to be clear with the onset of the illuminative way. The\u00a0light of the illuminative way comes not from the apparently clear certainties of the\u00a0way of beginners, but from what Gregory calls \u201ca more careful understanding of\u00a0hidden things,\u201d and he puts the second way in relation to the Mosaic theme of the\u00a0cloud. This way is marked by the privation of the sensible and of learning to be\u00a0alone with God. The cloud is brought about, in part, by a search for a deeper\u00a0understanding of life than anything the first way can provide. But as Bremond said,\u00a0\u201cit is God who creates mystics,\u201d and the privation of the sensible and the search for\u00a0hidden meaning are the result of the grace of God. St John of the Cross examined\u00a0and taught how this first darkness is the result of God\u2019s action, to which the soul\u00a0responds. Ultimately, then, the family resemblance between Christian mystics must\u00a0be reduced to the mystical assault by God on the individual, and the irreducibly\u00a0particular appropriation by real people.<\/p>\n

It was during this period of Philip\u2019s studies, and then of his solitude in the\u00a0Catacombs, that the physical phenomena of his mysticism began to appear. These\u00a0phenomena should not be used in a mistaken attempt to give an account of the\u00a0essence of mysticism. On the other hand, they are so often present in the lives of\u00a0the saints that they cannot be ignored. This observation certainly applies very\u00a0clearly to St Philip. In the previous chapter, \u201cTowards an Account of St Philip\u2019s\u00a0Embodied Mysticism,\u201d I have attempted an account of mystical experience that\u00a0shows, first of all, that such experiences require language to be experienced, but yet\u00a0these experiences cannot be reduced to this necessary requirement of language.\u00a0This exercise in the ontology of mystical experience is at best a tentative approach\u00a0to a subject that can hardly be said to be an over-plowed field. I hope that my\u00a0suggestion might point the way to questions that others will take up. My discussion\u00a0of the role of the paranormal in the mystical life is based on the traditional teaching\u00a0that such experiences are given for the benefit of others. Their role is to attest to the\u00a0genuineness of the mystic\u2019s life and teaching.<\/p>\n

Finally, in the unitive way, Philip gave himself over entirely to the action of God.\u00a0God then used Philip to help bind up the wounds of a suffering humanity. In\u00a0Philip\u2019s case, he believed this could best be accomplished by a mission centred on\u00a0the sacramental life of the Church. Philip had approached his maker in the\u00a0company of the holy people of God and brought back to them what he had learned in the darkness.<\/p>\n

But it was not only a verbal message that he took back with him. In the darkness,\u00a0Philip had been taken over by his Maker, and he became a living icon of the\u00a0radiance of the Father\u2019s glory. It was light he brought from the darkness, and the\u00a0light was not his own.”<\/p>\n

For some reviews of this book, see:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/web-exclusives\/2016\/03\/embodying-mysticism<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2015\/05\/26\/apostle-to-rome\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2015\/07\/26\/in-no-strange-land\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In No Strange Land: The Embodied\u00a0Mysticism of Saint Philip Neri by Fr.\u00a0Jonathan Robinson, the Founder of theToronto Oratory, was published last year by\u00a0Angelico Press:\u00a0https:\/\/angelicopress.com\/robinson-in-no-strange-land\/ The book concludes with these words:\u00a0\u201cOn…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/San-Filippo-in-estasi-Guido-Reni001.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8brX6-4op","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16906,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889\/revisions\/16906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}