A Holy Tryst

Evelyn Underhill says, in her book, Mysticism, The true end of [mystical prayer], like the true end of that mystical life within which it flowers, is the supreme meeting between Lover and Beloved, between God and the soul.…It means, during the hours of introversion, a retreat from and refusal of the Many, in order that the mind may be able to apprehend the One. P. 207/208

It takes much practice and patience in prayer before one experiences a few moments of union with the Sacred One. The practice and patience of this quiet waiting upon God is the “mystical life within which it flowers”.

It is a meeting with God in quiet, restful silence, day after day, in expectant waiting upon God with loving anticipation of a tryst with the Holy One.

Faithfully, the contemplative must come each day to be with God, holding herself still within her centre where God would dwell within her soul.

Joyfully she must prepare herself to be ready to receive the Sacred One who desires to live within her soul eternally, bringing her to spiritual maturity and holiness.

[The soul’s] method is the method of the mystic life, transcendence: a gradual elimination of sensible image, and bit by bit approximation of the contemplative self to reality, gradually producing within it those conditions in which union can take place. (Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism. Page 208)

© Judith Lawrence

This was first published in meditations on www.judithlawrence.ca

Union with God is a Union of Hearts

Plotinus the ecstatic is sure …that the union with God is a union of hearts: that ‘by love He may be gotten and holden, but by thought never.’ He, no less than the medieval contemplatives, is convinced …that the Vision is only for the desirous; for him who has ‘that loving passion’ which ‘causes the lover to rest in the object of his love.’ Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism P. 252

A union with God can be accomplished only through a joining of hearts—the heart of the mystic with the heart of God. Thus God and the mystic may be joined together through love of one another but will not find it possible to be joined through thought of one another alone.

A Vision of God may be ascertained only by that one who is desirous of the vision of God. The contemplative or mystic must have a loving passion for God and desire to rest in God, the very object of his love.

c Judith Lawrence