The essentials of mysticism, and other essaysUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The essentials of mysticism, and other essays
Underhill, Evelyn
Mysticism
A little time before her death, she said to her sister Pauline, “Une
seule attente fait battre mon cœur; c’est l’amour que je recevrai et
celui que je pourrai donner.... Je veux passer mon ciel à faire du bien
sur la terre,” and again, “Je compte bien ne pas rester inactive au
ciel, mon désir est de travailler encore.” In these sayings, so unlike
in their vigorous activism the conventional aspirations of the devout,
we have probably the germinal point of her _cultus_. It has come to be
believed that this simple and loving spirit, who passed from the body
with so many generous longings unfulfilled, is indeed spending her
heaven in doing good; and the deeds attributed to her are just those
practical and friendly acts of kindness, through which during life she
expressed and perfected her spirit of love.
II
LUCIE-CHRISTINE
Those students of mysticism who feel that the purely cloistered type of
spirituality, as seen in Thérèse Martin and Elizabeth Catez, is too
remote from the common experience to be actual to us, may find something
with which they can sympathize and from which they can learn, in the
self-revelations of the remarkable contemplative who is known under the
pseudonym of Lucie-Christine.
This lady, whose spiritual journal was published in 1912, was a married
woman of the leisured class, leading the ordinary life of a person of
her type and position. She was born in 1844 and married in 1865. She had
five children. At forty-three she became a widow, and in 1908, after
nineteen years of blindness, she died at the age of sixty-four. Nothing
could have been more commonplace than her external circumstances. On the
religious side she was an exact and fervent Roman Catholic, accepting
without question the dogmas and discipline of the Church, and diligent
in all the outward observances of conventional French piety. Her time
was spent in family and social duties, sometimes in Paris, sometimes in
her country home; and she appeared to her neighbours remarkable only for
her goodness, gentleness, and love of religion. Yet her inward
life—unsuspected by any but her parish priest, for whom her journal was
written—had a richness and originality which entitle her to a place
among the Catholic mystics, and often help us to understand the meaning
and character of the parallel experiences which those mystics describe.
The value for study of a contemplative who is at once so modern and so
classic is obvious. This value is increased by the fact that for many
years Lucie-Christine knew nothing of mystical literature, and was
ignorant even of the names of the spiritual states which her journal so
faithfully describes. Therefore in her case unconscious imitation, which
accounts for much so-called mystical experience, appears to be excluded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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