Liturgy

:ist e r c ia o f t he st r ict o bs e rv a nc Ol.8 N0.2 AUGUST 1972

f_ERIPTOR J U M

L I T U R G Y Vol ume 6, Number 2 / August 1972

EDITOR Is PAGE 1

THE CURSING PSALMS : FOR OR AGAI NST 3Dossi er of Comments from La Vie Spirituelle

THE CANTICLES OF THE NEW COVENANT IN THE LITURGY OF THE HOURS 33Emmanuel MAYEUR

MYSTICAL LIFE AND PASCHAL MYSTERY 51Paul ST-CYR

LITURGY Bulletin serves to share with others whatever thoughts and ex periences may contribute towards the development of a living liturgy for today.

Manuscripts should be forwarded to: Fr. ChrysogonusGethsemani AbbeyTrappist, Kentucky 40073 (U.S.A.)

Material for the next issue (late November or early December) should be received by mid-November.

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E D I T O R ' S P A G E

I like the story I first read in (I think)Martin Buber's little

collection of Hasidic aphorisms and stories, Ten Rungs. As I remember it, there was once a poor Jew from Cracow who, three nights in a row, dreamed that he heard a voice saying: "Isaac ben Levi, go to Prague; and there, under the bridge which leads to the king's palace, you 'll find a great treasure . After listening to the voice for the third night, Isaac ben Levi finally gave in to the voice and walked the long distance from Cra cow to Prague, only to find that the bridge leading to the king's palace was patrolled by gendarmes . Still, he waited patiently for an opportune moment to begin digging, till at last the captain of the guard asked his business. In all simplicity, Isaac explained: "Three times I dreamed I heard a voice 'Go to Prague; and there, under the bridge which leadsto the king's palace, you'll find a great: treasure.'" The sympathetic officer of the guard laughed; and to demonstrate to the credulous Jew the folly of taking such dreams seriously, remarked that he himself had had a similar dream in which he heard a voice saying: "Go to Cracow, and dig un der the stove in the room of Isaac ben Levi, and you 'll find a great trea sure." So Isaac trotted home, dug under his own stove, found a great trea sure, and was thereupon able to build a fine neighborhood synagogue .

Like most Hasidic stories, this one probably contains multiple morals and applications; but one at least of these is this one : Though we might sometimes have to journey rather far- afield in order. to find our treasure, we 're really sitting on top of it all the time . All we have to do is to dig beneath the surface of the place in which God has put us.

It seems to me that this little story is not without its element of pertinence in our present context of liturgical and monastic renewal. What it's all about is simply this: We want to enter more deeply into the Mys tery of Christ present and acting in the liturgy and in our connnunity; and we want to express this reality and be transformed by it as perfectly as possible at the level of each individual, and at the level of the entire connnunity.

Our desire to enter into more perfect possession of the spiritual riches which are already ours, but whch perhaps are experienced at times

...·'•,

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only in a somewhat superficial manner, will take some of us from time to time to Prague . It's probably a good thing that we query McLuhan, Jung,Whitehead, Cox; that we avail ourselves of all that can be offered us by cybernetics, psychology, sociology; that we make our own the positive acqui sitions chalked up by Gontemporary theologians and exegetes. After all, in Christ, all things are ours; if the Prince of Darkness is still at work,so is the Spirit. And , though we always have to exercise keen spiritual discernment not all things are expedient for us , it would be rather churlish of us, and would manifest a weak faith in Christ as the Lord of history, were we to regard all the fruits of our fast evolving culture (s) and civilization (s)as rotten . Still, all these acquisitions of modern times will prove rather ineffectual in our own regard, if they fail to bring us back to our own little room in the back streets of Cracow, to dig beneath our stove so as to come into possession of our real riches. It's not in in Prague, and in front of the king's palace that we'll find our treasure, but in our humble, unpretentious dwelling in Cracow.

And now I hear more than one confrre pounding the table and shrieking: "Obscurantist! You're digging like a blind mole into a past that 's dead and buried; while the Spirit is saying to the churches:'Forget what lies behind and stretch forward to what lies ahead! '" It's a good objection, but one which shouldn 't be made if we understand that, after all, every comparison limps .If I describe a living return to tradition and a deepening of our spiritual experience in terms of a digging beneath the surface where we 've lived for years, this doesn 't mean that the movement is exclusively downwards andinto the past. In point of fact, Isaac ben Levi didn 't spend all his life digging beneath his stove. He built the synagogue, transformed his hovel, and lived in style•••

The trees which soar the highest upwards have the deepest downward roots . If we sink our roots deeper into the rich soil of our monastic heritage and spiritual patrimony (with the help of the best techniques of modern forestry), we might possibly find ourselves by the same token stretching fruit-laden, living branches upwards, to what lies above .

So off we go to Prague, so often as we hear the voice telling us

to do so. But what a shame if we were to take up permanent residence there! Our treasure lies in the back streets of Cracow, where we already are•••

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T H E C U R S I N G P S A L M S F 0 R 0 R A G A

I N S T *

The new arrangenent of the psalms in the Raman Breviary has acceded to the insistent demands of many people by suppressing the nost i.nprecato ry of the psal.ros and psalm-verses . Sare regret this nove; others thinkthat the deletions are not bold enough; so that this irritating dif ference of opinion is still not settled.

One wonders if it 'WOuld ever be possible, or even benef icial, to set tle it. The very f act that a thing of this kind cannot be

legislated forbut remains a diff iculty to be overoc::me by each individual, is an indication that the matter touches us in a vulnerable spot. It could be that the Holy Spirit Who inspired the psalms , and inspires the Church not to

abandon the practice substantially, does not wish us to attain a tranquility which is too perfect. Prayer, cleverly purif ied , .might mask tmresolved conf licts in our heart. The Holy Spirit may not be displeased at the waves of protest these psalms arouse in us: it is only when we are forced to ask ourselveswhat such novements signify that we come to scrutinize our spirits clearly and f rankly. We would have our protestations inplicate only the ancient He brews -who becane wicked through being deeply humiliated . We would like

to make it clear that we have not very much in cx::mron, and \l.Ould like to be

f reed frcm the obligation of reciting their threats and trumpeting their savage cries. NON , even if this is evidence of our true position, we knav:

that even the nost justif ied protest, if persisted in, makes one suspect the denial of some truth which involves us.

How exactly are we in°q?licated? At what level? And by what a::nplexus of attitudes? This needs to be clarif ied as it cannot be deduced from the content of our protests. In short: The Holy Spirit has lef t us a way of

* This is a translation of a dossier of comments which appeared in ?rench fn La Vie spirituelle for March, 1970, pp .291-336, and later, in English,in the Supplement to Hallel, 2/1 (Lent, 1972), pp .30-51. The Editors of both magazines are warmly thanked for permission to re-print this

material.

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prayer which all Christians have follCMed dam the centuries. Here and there along this way of prayer there are to be formd certain stum bling blocks. The point at issue is how aPe we supposed to overaome these obstacles.

For or against the cursing psalms : what does this :rcean? Is itjust a question of adapting language? Does it :rcean adopting a "ration alizing" attitude to what we hope might be :rcere p:;eudo-prablems which have arisen as by-products of passing cultural crises?

'Vbat if these things were injuri es borne

without arw respite by Him who, at the very narent of our prayers , wishes to test us and seeks to convert us by

causing our true sentim::mts to e:rerge from our hearts?

With these considerations in mind, a practical, or empirical, ap proach was necessary. An enquiry was necessary into the way we experi ence a sturrbling block. As well as that we had to examine the contentof our secret and overt protestations with their notives and justi f

ica tions . Thus , we asked a nurrber of individuals and camn.mities who re cite the p:;alter to indicate as f rankly as possible if they experienced a dif f iculty and hCM they handled it. The dossier which we nCM present is the result of this enquiry.

The dossier is canposed of two "suites" (used in a sense analogous to the musical tenn) . '!he f irst is the f ruit of an exchange with sever al people whose only stimulus was through a cxmnunication of J.-P. de

ce, O.P. The text of this ccmrunication foDilS the "overture" .The second "suite" was canposed by grouping the reaction of other indi viduals and groups to the f irst "suite". In this way it verif ies, re states and oomplen:ents the f irst "suite".

By way of an "interlude" , two texts have been inserted between

the "suites". These provide food for thought: the f irst reminds us of the animal depths f rcm which -we

have e:re:rged; the other , the degree of per fection to which Christ calls us.

J.-P. de MENASCE, O.P.

Sorce of those who lovingly recite the psalter in the liturgy have

The Cursing Psalms 5

decided not to use the so-called "cursing psalms" as being repugnantto Christian sentinent, by reason of their cruelty. Is this merely a s1x:mtaneous expression of the traditional doctrine of the i.Irperfect na ture of the Old Testarrent in relation to the New? If so, there would

be nothing wrong with this attitude, were it not f or the fact that an equally spontaneous use is made of those psahns which seem to be ex clusively concen'l.ed with temporal goods. If praying earnestly for the goods of this life causes us no enbarrassirent, is this not because our petitions seem to us -correctly -to be the bearers of our deeplonging f or spiritual goods? The desire for peace and plenty is

inferior to that for the things of the Spirit. Nevertheless, in accordance with the law mich governs the relationship between the Old and New Teasta.ments, the fonrer synibolize and pre-f igure the latter. This being so, could we not use the cries of a quite natural hatred -which is madeall the worse for being directed to the sinner rather than to the sin - to express a spiritual hatred of evil? The reality and intensity of such

a hatred will be in proportion to the strength and purity of our lovefor God himself . The I.Drd praises, in his parables, unjust sentimentsand actions , but means to highlight only one aspect of them, nanely , vinl lence, which is rarer and less noticeable when in the source of good.Preachers hesitate before such a figurative exegesis. But what other

in terpretation can be put foi:ward?

If the analogy is not perceived in the case of hatred, it is question able Yb.ether it has really been seen in the case of love. In asking to inherit the land,Iam aspiring to another country. But how deep-seatedis the aspiration if , at the sane time, Ido not wish with all IIo/ being that everybody begotten by ma that is opposed to God - even children - should be dashed against the rock?

SUITE No.1

FRAN<JUIS LEUVEL, O.P

It seems to me that the vernacular translation of the psalter hasposed the problem with a fresh starkness. Certain wssages f;r;om the psalms have, at one stroke, appeared in an inpossible light. I can still hear

the

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Sisters in Togoland singing: "O God , break the teeth in their nouth." it becones awkward f or us to apply this to Christ. Again, which of us oould neaningf ully sing the Introit for the Mass of Several Martyrs ("Intret" ) , "Render to our neighbors sevenfold in their hearts • .• "While in the past sentinents such as this may not have proved to be sturIDling blocks, in our day we have became very sensitive in speedl to all that savors of mildness, peace and oonoord. We f ind it diff icult to make our CM1 the words of a µsalm which call for violence and

revenge.This f actor of our oonterrp:>rary sensitivity must be taken into acoount: every age has its legibi.mate preferences which later ages may

criticize.

At the sane tine I am aware of the danger of wanting to adapt theµsalnsnerely to suit noden1 tastes. I renerber once telling a priest worker about icy dif f iculties with these "cursing µsalms". He replied:"In icy case it is the opposite. I feel in tune with these psalms of violence. '!here's too mu.dl injustice and too many prof iteers and tyrants and o:ppressors in the world today. What a relief to be able to say what

I think of them when praying! " Then he added: "On the other hand, I have serious dif f iculty with those psalms which speak of everything being just perfect for the just man." By the tine we had corre to the end of our oon versation we had agreed that not only were our two attitudes

camplenenta i:y , but that they showed forth the richness of the psalter

and the Church's prayer.

R.ecently I read sane "psalms" which had been written in prison by a Latin-American .Orristian. They had all the violence of the biblical

psalter. It seems a good thing to ne that such things should be expresserl, provided that they stay within certain bounds. I once asked a ral::bi, out of curiosity, hCM nodern JEMS pray those µsalms , and he told ne there wereno cursing psalms anong those prescribed for the regular prayers of the norning, evening, and Sabbath. On the other hand, he said, there were

psalms prescribed for private prayer to be said in weekly cycles. These

oontained all the psalms; but, remarkably , the imprecatoi:y passages appear in small print and are neant to be said in a CM voice. Not one jotof the divine "WOrds IIRlSt be suppressed, for there is an awareness that sudl "WOrds, oontaining a reystery , should be said in a whisper.

The Curaing Psalms 7

M .-D.CHENU, O.P.

When it canes to singing the cursing psalms , I am just a "con sumer" . An exegete gleans f:rom his sources a true human understanding of these psalms. A professional liturgist, who kncMs how to transfer the words of Scripture into the prayer of the assenbly, would overcare

the dif f iculty by using the allegorical methcrl. A theologian, and a fortiori, a prophet, will knav hav to integrate the parts played by

violence, aggression and the demands of justice into the domain of loveand liberty of conscience (although even he will have some dif f iculty!) . A sociologist will recognize the literacy vocabulary of national strug gles and class warf are. But for a simple nerri:>er of the f aithf ul , like Iey"self , these fearsone verses make me start when I hear them in the lit-

. urgy. I 'm af raid I just swallav than without thinking about them. Not that I want to eliminate them frcm the Bible -this w::>uld be an imperti nence as well as a serious e.rror . It is possible that the daily strug gles of the individual Christian nake these verses understandabl e. But when singing and praying in the liturgy, I share the assembly 's distaste far such forcef ul declamation of curses in public. Besides , the pastors of the Church no

longer refer to them in their Gospel hanilies.

PHILIPPE ROUILIARD, O.S.B., M:lnk of Wisques

I wonder if it is not the formulation rather than the oontent of these psaJ.ns that bothers us? The language used is that of poetry , neta

phor and hyperbole. In order to judge the psaJ.ns oo.rrectly, we would have to OOI11pare than with oonterrp:>rary p:>etry and songs. Do we f ind a similar

veh.e:lrence of expression? When a choir of religious declaims that its enanie$ : surround it like wasps and "in the name of the Lord I will cut than dCMn with the mvord" , this will d::>viously give rise to understandable surprise am:mg the laity participating: they would not have imagined that

oontemplatives lived so dramatically • • •Doubtless , this is because we are so much attached to the literal interpretation of the psalms.

Part of the diff iculty , also, is that the liturgy requires the

psalms to be said day af ter day. Originally , hCMever , the saying of the

psalms sprang fran a certain experience, and in order to understand them correct-

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ly it is necessa:ry to have something of the sane experience. Tn' e day that an individual or group of the faithf ul undergces an unusual ex perience, for exanple, of violence, it will then see the eminent suita bility of certain psalms -and these they will ccmrence to sey in an

entirely new wey from then on.

Isn 't this, in f act, the wey the Ranan liturgy cane into being in the f irst place? In the time of St. Grego:ry theGreat, Christians lived in fear of violence frcm the Barbarians. The Christian cammmityat Rane gave expression to its real anxiety by selecting suitable psalms and arranging them as Introit chants (notice the fonrer Sundays of the Septuages.irna period) • This was a response to a need in a local situa tion. Why, then, was it thought necessa:ry to impose these texts on the universal Church for the next fourteen centuries? We usually overconethis dif f iculty by "spiritualizing" them; since the ene:ny was no longer the Barbarian horde, we tried to visualize them as E.'vil, Sin, and the Devil. M:>dern man seens to be dissatisf ied with this type of transposi tion. In tirres past, people found it easy to personify · evil, but "When

we succeed in in doing so we see our enemies with f amiliar faces;instead

of "sin" or "evil" , we see one or other of our neighbors with whan we have

a dif f iculty -and this we f ind unacceptable.

I am not t:rying to say that :rrodern man is better able to cope with hostilities in his lif e. If someone plays a "dirty trick" on us , we

are only too prone to call him a rotter. But I don 't think this gives us

the right to say -in prayer, "Lord, wipe out all these rotters! " We :mUst be clear , of course, on "What we rrean by prayer. In other centuries man was ready enough to ask God to f ree him frcxti his enemies. Todey, ho.vever , a militant Christian trade-unionist, if he were unjustly dismissed f rom

his job, would stand in God 's presence and try to discover ho.v best to react. Prayer rreans nore to us : it is an atterrpt to see clearly under the gaze of God.

For rre , it is one thing to recite certain psalms alone or in a small group, and quite another to proclaim them solem.ly in a mixed assenbly.Public psallrody conf ers the character of a value-judg:rrent on the text; it.

The Cursing Psaims 9

is a high-lighting of the Christian ideal. This is why it is so dif f i cult to make use of psalms which seem clearly to contradict specif ically Christian virtues. A Benedictine nonastery experienced this problem recently when a group of boys on retreat attended .Matins at four o'clock in the noming. The boys listended attentively to the psalms recited in the vernacular. The tone of the language scandalized them so nru.ch that they af te:rwards said to the m::>nks: "HON can you possibly rise in the

middle of the night to say such things?"

CHANI'AL LION, Marriage Counsellor

In JI¥ acperience many lay-folk are not at all at ease in the over structured atnosphere of the liturgy. The a:xrplacent tone of sc:xre of the

Masses is unbearable: we are all f ine and happy to be together; we have

the sane Father and everything is beautif ul! This does not accord atall with reality. For this reason I am inclined to def end the psalms of "aggression" . Why are we embarrassed by than? Could it be the violence within ourselves which we dare not admit in a liturgical atroc>sphere? But

not to admit this would be to leave out part of ourselves.

Obviously a great ef fort will have to be made before Christian rreek. ness bea:xres a reality. F..ONever , I have the i.npression that our

liturgi cal pref erences are not in order. Is it not possible that reciting the:r;salms of violence may well help us acquire Christian meekness?

AN'IDINE LION , O.P.

1-¥ big objection is related to that of Phillipe lbuillard: the impossibility of integrating these psalms of violence into JI¥ prayer. I have no dif f iculty when I use them as :rreditations, because I can under stand them by putting them into their context. I can also identify with

the groanings and cat\Plaints of the oppressed. But when f aced with curs ing I sturrble at every step.

Vhy should this be so? I readily admit that we are neither less

violent nor less aggressive than Christians of another age. It is the structure of our sensibility that is dif ferent. Vb.en Lucien Febvre de-

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scribes the nen of the 16th centw:y , he p:>rtrays them as "simple and

without oontrol". Their ercotions resp:>nd to the slightest stinulation. Let the music at a concert evoke a battle scene and straightavay they are prancing about, ready to mine the

action. With us , ha-1ever , it isquite dif ferent. our sensibility is of the ref lexive type: we f ind itdif ficult to pray without passing jUdgnent on it at the very instant we are praying.

Sane say that the cursing psa.llrs have at least this value, that they

act as a safety-valve for the violence in us. I cannot agree with this view because I don 't believe that prayer-ti.Ire is the ti.ne for letting of

f steam.The discovery that we have feelings of vindictiize aggression does , not entitle us to give expression to them in prayer, under the pretext of being "authentic". I have also mcm:mts of pride, sexual impulses, etc.Must these, too, f ind a place in my prayer? My malaise extends beyond the psaJ.nE of vengeance. Such a phrase in one of the new Prefaces as "and called us to the glory that has made us a chosen race, a royal priesthocxl,

a people set apart," grates on ne because it seerrs to f latter our prideand the collective pride of the Church. To speak such words we would want to be very pure indeed. Christ uttered curses against the

Pharisees. But, then, he was Christ. In similar situations , we are far f rom having ac quired his p.irity. Should not our ti.rre of prayer be

a privileged ti.ne when we try to becare ever more spiritual men who wish to leani haN notto hate -nen of the Beatitudes?

I. DUIS d 'AGIER, O.P.

In the f irst place, when we speak of aggressiveness, we must use the

tenn accurately. In the f ield of psychology there is an aggressiveness

which is healthy and good; this was kncMn to Olrist hircself . 'Ihere was nothing feigned alx>ut his outbursts of anger against the Pharisees.

In

connection with the vindictive or cursing psalms , the aggressiveness we are speaking of is that \\hi.ch mankind expresses spontaneously in its vio lent struggles stained with sin. It is the saire f or us as it was for the psalmist. When sarreone witnesses, . or is the victim of , certain types of action, his basic reaction in the 20th century will be what it would have

The Cursirtf] Psalms 11

been thirty centuries earlier. It is not a Christian reaction. If one wishes to make it Christian, it must be transfonood so that it can be

replaced by the love of one 's enemies. Just think of the spontaneous reaction of the apostles to the hostility of the Sarraritan tc:Ml: "lord, do you want us to call dCMn f ire f ran heaven on this tavn?" Jesus rebuked them, "You do not knCM of \\hat spirit you are." It is the sane with us: at f irst we either don 't knCM or f orget of what spirit we are. Only af ter a second , ref lex, action do we say: "Mind yourself ". If I want to follav Jesus , I can 't give way to these sentiments. This creates withinus what would be called a split psychology. Even today , people can openly threaten destruction and promise to massacre their enemies. They identify corrpletely with what they are saying and, if circumstances lend themselves, will remrselessly fulf ill their th.i:eats. But we cannot identify perfect ly with such instincts or even with sorre of our actions.

What can a Christian do in ti.ma of war? He must kill the enerey , but must also strive to el:i.rninate hatred. He must kill in the hour of battle, but in sadness; there is no other solution. For several years I had an analogous experience in Africa. As of ten as we priests ref lected on it,we were persuaded that it was ri¢1.t to remain in the country. We were also well aware of the sent.im:mts which animated those mo did not shrink f rcm killing white priests along with other Europeans. Five of our priests dis appeared. Living in such circumstances where violence was inevitable, we tried to f ill our hearts with thoughts less ugly than thoughts of hatred ,fw:y and ven<;reance.It was not the Gospel alone which inspired our atti tude. It arose fran a civilization which is stamped nore than it realizes with Christianity.

Our society has slowly learnt the cost of giving free rein to passion.What is true in the, ;case of sensuality is equally so where aggression is concerned: a society disintegrates when all control vanishes. The neN sci ences have given us a better understanding of the forces which operate\\hen aggression is released. We are now ·aware of the dif ferent fonns of culpability and of masochism. In the cursing psalms, what causes rre nost disquiet is that they are always directed a:,Jainst "the others"; it is they who are the evil-doers. But I am the just man , persecuted without

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cause. On the one side there are the good people with morn we can i dentify. On the other side stand the wicked. on whom we call dcMn f ire fran heaven. This kind of attitude has been well analyzed, and

should cause us disquiet. For example , E. M:)rin says in his book , Le vif du sujet (Seuil, Paris 1969 , p.187) , "Up to the present man seems to needa culprit in order to explain himself , to relate, to crush evil .• •In the

demands of daily life, each person "secretes" a culprit. '!his inculpation of our neighbor is nothing else than the projection of a guilt-carplex mich, though unconscious, is constantly being lived, resented and re newed. II

I am aware that the problem must be tackled as a whole. HcM are we Christians to speak of our enemies in prayer? For

have enemies , and prayer should not be a stranger to life. Certain kinds of injustice cause us to revolt, and this should f ind an echo in our prayer. It seems to me to be nonnal, then, to pray for the cessation of a strugglemi.ch is just and necessary. · But with 'What words and with 'What sentiments? '!his is the heart of the question.

A. -M. BESNARD, O.P.

Up to this point, two kinds of consideration seem to daninate the

prcblem as it was posed. Firstly , the

difference in outlook, habits and psychology mi.ch separates modem man from the ancient psalmist. Second ly, the laws governing prayer and

liturgical structures. To the f irst · point I should l:LJre to observe that "cursing" , in the old and strong mean ing of the tenn, seeIYS to be no longer an ef fective category of the mind. (I am not trying to establish here \\beth.er this is progress or not; I merely note the f act.) '!his is so because, prayer is becoming less and less meaningful f or us today than it was for men of another generation.As soon as tley encountered an cbstacle which exceeded. their strength,nen of fo:oner tiJres had imrediate and ardent recourse to the p:Mer of God.Modern man will react to an enemy dif ferently than primitive man would have done. He will not dream of calling dcMn f ire fran heaven to constllle him, for modem man does not take to cursing with the natural ease of

The Cursing Psalms 13

primitive mm. Instead he shall try to neutralize his enemy 's hostility by .irnp:rovbfg relations with him or considering prolonged and IIEthodical

conf lict. And if everything else fails, these very thoughts and

resolu tions will force him to pray -but it will be the prayer of petition rather than that of imprecation.

Account must be taken, too,. of new conditions created by hostility in m:xlern industrial society. When an individual or a group suf fers intense hostility or oppression at the hands of another group or groupof interests, there will not necessarily be a direct personal oonf ronta tion. Nowadays , persons tend to becx:me involved in conf licts, the causes of which lie beyond their control. (Cf . E. J.llbrin, op.cit., p. 195,

where Marcel M:>rean is quoted as saying: "We are living in the cave age • • •ex posed to a condition of invisible, nameless forces . We haven 't even succeeded in identifying the enemy.") Even atheists who belong to revo lutionary novements claim that they are not opposed to particular persons as such, but only to the f unctions and roles played by them in an unjust situation.

Does this indicate a solution? Can we not see the enert¥ and the wicked of the psalms as oppressive systems , collective injustice, etc., rather than concrete persons? Or , does such transposition of IIEaning

result in a type of eythologizing whidl is rather too forced and artif i cial? There is a question here \\Urth thinking about.

The second consideration touches on the modus operandi of prayerand the liturgy. We admit that the psalms can be integrated m:::>re easily

into persona! medi.tation than into public prayer. When we use them in

this way our inner liberty all<Ms us to see them in perspective , to hear in them a thousand nuances , and to ma,intain at the same time an acute a wareness of the Gospel. In personal prayer and meditation , a mini-drama unf urls where the psa.1.rrs act as a foil, putting the heart to the test as well as being an expression of f eelings. If an assernbly were thus capa ble of living out the stages of such a mini-cil.rama, there would be no dif f iculty with these problematic psalms •

.t-k:>nastic psalm:x:ly, it \\Uuld seem, ocrupied a middle position. The

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recitation of the psalms in public seeITed to be the unanirrous voiceof a ccmnunity. In reality, however, the illlinterrupted personal nedi tation of each nonk had provided him with an intimate life-rhythm and scale of values. It was within this inner register, which varied fran nonk to nonk, that each understood the psalm.

Whatever may be the manner in which oontemporru:y nonks

understand and live the choral Office, the liturgical assanblies of the faithful are quite different. Here we see the full inplication of Philippe Rou illard 's remark: a psalm sung or declairred in the assanbly takes on a different meaning. (Isn't this because we are better able to perceive today that language does not deliver up the totality of its meaning in a single disoourse, but anbraces also the listeners' expectations and their whole psycho-social situation?) Words are no longer anrnunitionto fight with, but slogans for "label-sticking". Can the psalms be used in this way?

.Must we exclude the possibility that a liturgical assenbly would be able to support a real interior struggle? Many of us would like to see our daily struggles, which are

sometimes bitter, finding expression in the liturgy . If we

sinply ignore than, there is the danger that we shallend up with a liturgy which is insipid and ethereal. By all<:Ming the vio lent language of the psalros"ttexpress what is actually lived by those parti cipating, the liturgy would have the opportunity to respond to this vio lence by infusing into it the spirit of the gospel and of Christ's sacri fice. 'Ihus, certain psalms oould be arranged to be said at the beginning of the celebration which could never be used as a Ccmnunion piece. It is i.nportant for us to regain an awareness of the possibilities offered by the inner dynamism of prayer as well as the texts themselves.

INI'ERWDE

NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS U885-1957)

Well knaNI1 as a novelist (Zorba the Greek; Christ Re-crucified), Nikos Kazantzakis is primarily a poet. He was bom in Crete and becarre enarrored of that liberty so dear to the

Cretans. His life oould be de-

The Cursing Psalms 15

scribed as a passionate search f or the truth. He sought it at the feet of f our masters, none of wham he subsequently renounced: Christ ,the contemplative Buddha , the f ighter Ienin , and Ulysses the traveller , the f ree man.

One night I was walking with a friend on a high snCM-capped rrountain. Suddenly, earning to a twist in the nountain, Iglinpsed far away at the very bottan of the valley some pa.lelights; it nrust have been a small hamlet still awake. I halted, clenched my f ists and, shaking one of them at the village, I cried out : "I ' ll slaughter all of you! " This was uttered in harsh voice which wasn 't my avn. As soon as I heard it I was seized with terror and trembled f rom head tof oot. My f riend, who had beoorre. anxious , ran up to me and caught me by the arm: "What 's cone over you?" he asked. "Wham are you going to slaughter?" I was weak at the knees andfelt overcame by an inexpressible f atigue. The sight of myf riend standing there before me brought me to my senses. "That wasn 't me" , I :murmured, " • .•wasn 't me. It was sorreone else."

It was saneone else. But who? Never had the depths within me opened up so revealingly. For years I had suspected it, but ever since that night Iam certain of this: there are dark depths within us, many ·levels, harsh cries, ravenous hairy beasts . Can nothing ever die, then?Can nothing in this world die? As long as we live, all the nights and noons before man 's caning, together with their hunger , thirst and pain, will live on and continue to suf fer with us. Fear sweeps over me when Ihear the bellCMing of the terrible burden I bear within 1I¥ in rrost being . Will I never be saved? Will the depths of 1I¥ being never be purif ied? ·

Bilan d'une vie: LettPe au Gpeao(Plon , Paris 1961) , p.28.

SII.OUANE of Athos

The staretz Silouane (d. 1938) , inheritor of the great tradition of Athos , and conf rere of Sera?Um of Sarov and John of

Cronstadt,lived a startling life of cammmion with all living creatures. He felthimself to be a man exiled on earth, crying out to heaven. In his CMn

body and soul he bore the pa.inf ul distress of the world, of his beloved Russia, and of the persecuted Churdl. He judged no one, condemned no

one, but ''gave his heart 's blood".

16

Was it not the lord himself who said: "'lhe Kingdom of God is within you"? . • • Give proof of this, IIW brothers, I beg of you! If anyone of fends you, calunniates you, takes what belongs to you, or even persecutes Holy Church, pray to God and say: "lord, we are your creatures; ta1<e pity on your servants and make their hearts repent." '!hen you will feel grace within your soul. In the beginning, of course, you shall have to make an ef fort to love your enemies. When the Lord sees your good will, he will preserve you in all things, and the experience itself will point out the pa.th you TIU.lSt take. . Whoever , on the other hand, plots evil a gainst his enemies cannot have love, and thus cannot knavGod.

Never use violence against your brother; never judge him. Disarm him with sweetness and love. Pride and stubbomess take away peace. Love those who do not love you and pray for them; in this way your peace will never be troubled. But you may say: "Hav can I love the enemies persecuting our Holy Church?" Listen to rre. Your poor soul does not know God; it does not realize hCM much he loves us and waits for all men to do penance and gain etemal lif e. God is love. He sends his Holy Spirit on earth to teach rren to love their enemies and pray that they too may be saved. '!his is true love.

When the grace of the Holy Spirit dwells in man 's hea,rt, in hoNever slight a degree, that man will weep for all roen, and especially for those that do not knav God or resist him. Night and day he will pray f or them to be oonverted and acknowledge God. Christ prayed thus for his crucif iers: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." Stephen also prayed for his persecutors, that God might not inpute sin to them. If we wish to remain in grace, we must pray for our ene mies , for he who has oo corrpassion for a sinner has not the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him.

- Si Zua:ne. Coll. "Spiritualite Orientale" , Bellefontaine; pp.51-2 and 38. (French translation by M.-A. Lassus, O.P.)

SUITE No • . 3

BENEDICTINE MJNKS OF 'WAVREMJNT

Speaking in tenns of our own experience and that of our guests; it seem:; to us that three principles can be brought f orward:

1- 'Ihe problem of the so-called cursing psalms is really part of a wider question: the nod.em Christian 's understanding of

Scripture.

The Cursing Psalms 17

2- Scripture cannot be :mutilated or censored, that is to say , we cannot suppress or cut out parts of it (cf . Rev 22:19).But it can and must be interpreted.

3- The use of Scripture in the liturg'-./ calls f or selection.

The criteria to be used in selecti ng are above all pastoral and catechetical.

We shall nCJW' try to explain these principles:

1- Our conf usion springs partly f rom the f act that we no longer k:nav

the purpose or role of Scripture in our lives .•.

Scripture is a language dependent on a cast of mind f oreign, in part, to our own world of language and imagery. Hence arises the necessity, of which we shall speak f urther on, of interpreting languages which havebeen a .rreans of corrmunication a:rrong :rren. f rom ancient tines. The

language of Scripture delivers a ireaning; in its linguistic network of imagery and symbols Scripture gives the event of the word, and this sane wordstrives ceaselessly to bring a change into meaning. 'nus is seen clearly

in the sense of f ulfill.rrent mich Jesus imparts to the language of the

Old Testarrent; we notice it also in his dialogues with his qtestioners. For Jesus , it is always a question of revealing within the limits of language, the innovating 'WOrd calling man to f reed.cm. Scripture is not f ully expressed in a static literalism; it is grasped only in its dynamic inten

tionality calling sinful man to conversion and salvation.

In its viety of language, Scripture is a call to f aith. It sets up a dialogue which is sometines forcef ul and sonetilres violent. By be

ccmi1.1g caught up in the f lCM frcm its sources to Christ and f rom him to each of us , Scripture be<X>IIEs once nore an initiation into neaning. This happens precisely by a m:werrent bom of its own diversity of languageand a dynamism emanating f rom the letter of the Spirit.

2- Scripture cannot be erased. It is dif f icult to see hCM a censor

ship of Scripture could possibly be justi f ied. A priori, man is calledon to welcare the word . This attitude demands that he receive the totality of what is announced in a spirit of submission to reality. l\s we have

said, Scripture 'WOuld be dispirited if it were no longer a revelation of

18

the one God spoken in a network of dif ferent and even divergent human

languages. If it is to becare the word of lif e and truth , each one must hear it speaking in its own tongue; even before the work of in terpretation, this demands that the script of Scripture be understood.

The f act that the violence of the cursing psalms shocks us is no reason for rerroving them as tmsuitable. Are we so sure that we are thereby rercnving them f ran our daily speech? If , even in the na:rre of loveof one's enemies we delete these verses of revenge from the psalter,can we be certain that we are not losing a langua.ge which has something to teach us by disturbing that which we 'NOuld like to think of as uni

fonn? We must recall that our world tolerates injustice, and that the psa.lnE were not written for a choir of peaceful rronks or ntmS.

It is obvious that Scripture must be interpreted if its intention ality of salvation is to be assured. Since we cannot develop here the whole question of herneneutics, what solution is there for the question on hand? In view of ·what has already been

said, it would seem that we should speak of a . synthesis in which the cursing psalms would be brought into. the work of fulf illment ef fected by Christ. N::Jw, Christ did not de lete Scripture.The law of love for one 's enanies, the Gospel's last word, must be articulated in the psal.m3

of ven;Jeance. In this way it will not becx::nre the expression of an insipid, senti:rrental love, but the real novement of man tmdertaking to

love, and who, as such , must recog nize the totally other (the enemy) , he wham he must f irst encounter as adversary. A "Clrristologization" of the psalms? Yes, but not by at tributing them

literally to Christ; rather, by situating them in amovement of lif e wherein Christ of fers the solution of love to the pi:ob- . lem of violent conf lict.

3- Not everyone is able to take solid food; sorre need spiritual milk. This rule is valid here as elsewhere. When there is question of using a scriptural text in the liturgy, a searc.l.iing choice must be made.

To rnistmderstand this would be to f ail in that discretion and

discernment which knavs hCM to provide each one with what he is able to take. Now,it roust be admitted that Christians of today who ref lect on what they

The Cursing ?saZms 19

are praying , f ind it dif f icult to endure the imprecatory passages in the psalrrs. "HCM can you say such things in prayer?" , we were asked.

'lhis is 'INhy we pref er not to use them in the public liturgy. It seems to us that the general rrentality of Christians is not yet ready to

bring them within the perspective we have been describing.

It seems to us that sorre revision oould be made in those Of f ices

'INhich are attended by only a feil guests. Should we not learn again , under the salutary shock of the verses of reveaje, ·what Christ has saved us f rom, and be initiated into the true love '\Nhich is realized in the outf lcw of fear and of the law? . . .

J.L. VESCO, O.P., Prof essor of Sacred Scripture

The f irst step to be taken in regard to a text with a vieil to turn ing it into a prayer is to place it in its historical context so as to understand it. The cursing psalms were oorrposed at a tirre '\Nhen divine retribution was seen as being limited to this world. The triumph of the wicked expressed a divine defeat , 'INhile their punishment was an inmediate proof of the just judgment of God. The vindictive accents of sare psalms are a reply to the question: "Will Yahweh sho.v his pc:Mer?" "Will he give a sign to show that he is Lord of histo:r:y?" God is asked to ertErge f romsilence by begging him to render to each one according to his works : otherwise the history of salvation w::>uld becare problematical. The cursing

psalms must be seen less as cries of vengeance than the exigencies of

f aith fo.nm.llated in situations bordering on despair by a people threatenedwith extinction , yet who knCM that they are a chosen race; individuals man God's silence has lef t totally distressed .

or else byLet us add

that, in a world '\Nhere an organized force f or .maintaining public order was of ten lacking, the only neans lef t for obtaining the minimum of justice without 'INhich life would no longer be possible, was cursing, supposed to be ef f icacious , and intervening by neans of sanction.

We can take up the cursing psalms and see in them a witness to a still inperfect stage of divine revelation. Those cries , manif estly supersededby the Gospel beatitudes, give us a sense of the historical develoµrent of Fevelation. The Beatitudes are reached only after a long journey. Thanks

20

to the cursing psalms and many other Old Testament texts, a sense of history awakens in us and teaches us that Revelation reaches its apexin Christ. If the Old Testarrent were already perf ect, it would no

'longer be the Old Testament. Not everything in the Old Testarrent isnonnative, though all is instructive.

It is by taking up the cries of the cursing psalms that we can pray them. For this we must learn hCM to discover the truth of a cry. A cry of vengeance - though the cursing psalms are not exactly cries of vengeance -springs f ran a man 's heart without his being able torestrain it or call it f orth at will. If we have never cried out in our prayer , we cannot be sure that it was always authentic prayer. As long

as hum:m hearts remain on the earth such cries will go up. re should cornrmme with them, f eel a sense of solidarity with this humanity crying out. Would there not be a kind of pharisaisrn in not saying before God

what we of ten say under our breath? We can take up these cries on our

avn behalf and hurl them against the forces of evil at work in the worldwhich are hostile to the Gospel, and which f ind daily expression in wars, social injustice, etc• . • . Without presuming to judge or condemn any

one, we could see in the enenw which the psalmist opposes so vehemently,the syrril'Jol of the spirit of evil. There is no question here of a pious ruse, since an exegesis of the psalter tells us that the "enemy" sc::irretirres has a symbolic value.

'!his is what the cursing psalrrs contribute to prayer: a sense of the historical develdpnent of Revelation , and a f eeling of solidarity with

the cries of suf f ering humanity. The cursing psalrrs are of ten contrastedwith the Senron on the Mount in order to bring out their imperfection; this is not quite f air. It might be better to canpare them with the

New Testament texts on the Last Judgnent, as in Mt 25:31-46, f or example.

OLIVIER du ROY, Abbot of Maredsous

First of all, sane cx:mrents on the text of A.-M. Besnard (above) .

1- We Im.lSt, like Besnard , recognize that our civilization has con ditioned us to an extrerre fol'.lil of "civility". Social relations have be c::x::ne canplex by being institutionalized by convention, etc. This tends

The Cursing Psalms 21

to deaden their shock, but w:::>uld provide an opportunity to re-interpret the psalms of violence and inprecation. Inevitably the question arises as to whether we would be able to keep up incessant mental gymnastics? Can the liturgy be celebrated by oonstantly transposing, like a musician _, who is forced to continually change his soore?It is here, above all, that the listeners must fend for them.selves. Fram that point Besnardrightly passes to the question of the laws of prayer and liturgical cele-

. bration, to which we shall return belaiv.

a) It seems to me that we should dwell a little longer on the prcb lan of agression and violence. It is not enough to indicate how vio lence has evolved in our society. It has been canouf laged by means ofa cultural veneer, or masked by its institutional character . Might it not be a function of the liturgy to unveil this hostility and violence, strip of f their mask by making their presence felt in the 1iturgy? 'Ihenagain, there are still f orms of aggression in our private lives within the f amily. It w:::>uld be just as unhealthy to ignore that elerrental part of'us that lives in ranoors and aninosities as it would be to overlook social and institutional forms of violence by oonf ining ourselves to private con f lict. Is it not the function of the liturgy to provide this rroment of truth when we stand unveiled before Gcx1 in a cry for help

and of fer our selves to his transf o:rming pc:M"er operating by his w:::>rd?

b) HON is it that only the psalms of violence and vengeance create dif f iculties for us? There are other psalms and verses 'Which express cries f or help, cringing attitudes, the feeling of crushing def

eat and an awareness of personal w:::>rthlessness, which are all just as

ani:>iguousif taken literally. Isn 't there a need to evangelize and transpose these as well? Why are we not sensitive to these? It seans to me, then , that the question should be as broad as the whole psalter, and not conf ined to one section of it. In f act, to conf ine the question to the cursing psalms only seans to be arbitrary and uncritical.

2- Having thus dwelt on the f irst of Besnard 's two points, I shall ncM nove on to his seoond. f the psalms nrust be taken within a

nove nent 'Which at the sane tine gives them their narent of truth and brings

22

them to f ulf illrrent, then the question arises of the use made of them in the liturgy and the :rreaning they take on when publicly proclaimed.I am as much opposed to selective cuts in the psalter as I am to abusing the psalms by singing, reciting or proclaiming them inopportunely and without rhyme or reason. Recitation , conceived as saying the whole psalter at a stretch without regard to the literary genres, is no longer possi ble. We must, therefore, be careful that the psalms are integrated into the celebration of a concrete conmunity, that their meaning be understood within an on-going rroverrent, and that the conmunity as such beoorres filll'are of what it is expressing in the psalms . This has of ten been our experience: psahns which are prayed af ter a reading in the liturgy and which are fol lowed by a prayer which surrmarizes the conmunity oonsciousness are no

longer allegqrized by each one for himself according to his needs and m:xxls . Perhaps the psalter should be used like a f iling cabinet f ran which nothing is to.be excluded tinder pain of mutilating human

experience and God 's revelation, especially in those areas of our humanity in which the Word of God is bent on becoming incarnate. Seen in this light, the psalter is no longer a progranme but a repertoire.

JAO;:UES OOIRE WATELET, rv."onk. of Maredsous

I quite agree with Olivier du Roy. It seems to rre that the prcblem lies in oonfronting oonrary man with biblical man. Biblical man is much nnre glcbal in his errotion , more ooncrete in his expression of re venge and supplication. His aff ectivity or, at least, its expression ,

is too global and t6o valid when taken globally , to penni.t us to erase fromthe psalter, a:rbitrarily and for ever, those parts which shock us. Curiously enough, expressions of oonf idence and resignation (even of alienation) do not seem to shock our conterrporaries. Surely those aspects are just as dangerous 'When separated f ran the whale? The man of the Bible is a concrete, existential tm.it with primary feelings Ci.e. primitive roan in the good sense) • He havls against his enemies just as he exults in his God. He is not a "well-behaved" man of reserve and oontrol. He follows

his heart, bent tavards a God who seerPs closer than any other living being , and expresses his f eeling to him in a sinple, authentic mmner. To use

the psalms as a prayer involves holding onesf lf at a distance f ran them

23

just as much as taking them to oneself . But you must either take them or leave them: if they are taken as the expression of a primitive "I" , the deepest level of one 's being , it will still be necessary to utilize this "tribal language". In this way my spiritual experience of the psalms will link up with my deepest natural experiences. As a roan ofthe seoond half of the 20th centw:y, I am nearer to the biblical man -who would f ind little dif ficulty speaking of the Vietnam war -than I·am to Cartesian roan.

DCMINICAN C'ONTEMPLATJ:VES OF BEI'HLEHEM

Having read and re-read the dossier, we f ind ourselves in agreement with what was written there, and we shall take it rx>int by

point. All the sisters who were questioned -except one -love and pray the curs ing psa1ros, but realize it is dif ficult to use them in a liturgy open

to the public.

1- Why we love them: The nore we oarre to realize what sin is, what the Passion means for us in everday life; the nore we carrpassionate with the suf f ering of this world -to this degree do we f ind these µ;alrnsconducive to prayer. Jesus took them up in his Passion. If "in his Person he has destroyed hatred" , it was not by tuming a deaf ear to those hu-man -if savage -cries, but by allCMing them to echo within him. · It was thus that he delivered us from hatred. The cursing psalrns allON us to speak the violence we should feel with an ef f ective hatred for sin, and they permit us to express a desire that the IDrd might deliver usf ran evil. They make us a.vare of ha-1 we beca:re for our neighl::x:>rs the "unjust aggressors" • We all of us kncM men and warren who spend their lives struggling in situations similar to t.'liose of the psalmist. It is far us to say these psalms in the name of these people. It is good for us to be able SOiretirres to express our revolt against injustice and op pression.

2- Th e dif f i culty of using them in the liturgy: '!he language

of these µ;al.ms is not that of no:1ern man. Like Philippe Rouillard, we

aresensitive to the possibility of the ridiculous entering in. These µ;alms.a re hard to label. The ideal would be to introduce the psalms to those who ·want to share our prayer by helping them to see the connection

between

24

the violence of the psalms and the tensions within themselves . 'lhis would demand a whole biblical culture" • • • Sare of us propose to re serve the singing of the cursing psalms Wien the a:mnunity alone is asserrbled and there are no seculars about. But I don 't think this is

the answer . Nor am I in f avor of the solution adopted by the nf?N

Roman Breviary whidl. simply deletes certain psalms and verses. I should have preferred to see them bracketed, or struck out with a light stroke.we shall never sing them, but that doesn 't prevent me f rcm sc::irretiroes

saying them in J¥ heart. '1he solution which avoids the dif f iculty by

a recourse to sy:rrbolism doesn 't satisfy me. Prayer is not the time for

nental gymnastics.

One f inal remark. Taking evecything into accomlt, I think it is dif f icult to say those psalms in truth and out of a motive of love. It is possible, but it must be rare. It is dif ficult enough trying to live the lif e of love in our own lB,DJUage.

What will it be like if we borrav a language which, if taken literally, is the opposite to a language of love? The curses of Jesus are a series of calls to conversion, and are, thus, words of nercy . But do we know how to curse while loving? Idoubt it.

'!HE TRAPPISTS OF BELLEFONTAINE

The disµite arising f ran the use of these psahrs in the liturgy reached us in three stages:

a- On e theoretical level through some articles which evoked a rather negative response (Charpentier , in Bibl-e et vie ahretienne, 1961; Bem.irront, in NouveUe revue theol-ogique, 1962; Bea.ucanp, in Bibl-e et vie ahretienne, 1963) .

b- At the practical level as a result of a pastoral questionnaire issued a year ago af ter which we made sare changes -though not with out some reservations. An account of this will be foml.d at the

end of our contribution.

c- And what about today? We don 't f ind this dossier very

satis f actory , and we have clarif ied our reservations by asking ourselves

The Cursing Psalms 25

why this should be so. There is a whole section dealing with remarks about the malaise which these fo:nnulations of violence occasion today. While we are CtW"are of thismalaise, we f eel the problem has been in

adequate!y stated -and this in two ways:- Positively, the problem is such a real one that we "WOnder whetherthe dossier has given it its exact proportions?

- Negatively, we f ind it dif f icult to see our o,.vn problem in that posed here, because the dossier seans to ignore a dimension of prayer which is f amiliar to us .

'Ihis is the essence of 'Vbat we wish to say. We shall have to ex plain our pastoral choices with regard to these psalms , which were of necessity empiric ones.

1- The problem should not be minimized:It 's rather like a f amily quarrel. If .one sorre. grievance

slips past the censorship of mutual love, all the unconsciously hidden griefs cx:xre to the surf ace and ally themselves with the f irst, to the great a stonislurent even of the suf ferer himself . This seems to have been the line taken by de Menasce. If we are to be shocked by

the vindictiveness

of sare of the psalms , there is also their f eeling for happiness and

hope, their legalism and eschatology which are no longer ours. can all this be transposed? Our answer is no; not 'IODAY.

HON are we to read an ancient text without transposing it?Is there a single passage in the Old Testa nent or the N!W

which we can take as simply given, directly and totally, without fear of illusion? It is a question of language. One of us re

marked that, even before the problem of the cursing psalms , there are other psalms which are at least strange and, in extrE!lE. cases , incanpre hensible. The change of language from Latin to the vernacular has forcedus to postulate, sonewhat sbrplistically, that we can pray only in oUP own language ...The Sit z im Leben of the psalms is obviously not that of

our prayer. Are we going to accept the psalms in their context or our con text? Is it not the "life-situation of the psalms , even :rrore than the psalms themselves , which is inspired and touches us with its call? Isit not into this context that we should insert ourselves? The Lord is

not in the letter of the Bible but in the event crystallized in the letter.

26

Perhaps , then, we should in the f irst place accept a language which is not our a-lI1 in order to welcome an event whim precedes and detennines us.

2- The objective language of Revelation must be received and the Histo:ry of Salvation accepted:There is prayer and prayer. According to the monastic tradi

tion, true prayer begins when it is no longer ourselves who are praying.Would rrodern man rebel against this kind of alienation too? It seemsto us that he would, because to our astonishlrent we note that the dossier is taken up solely with the subjective, personal elerrent of prayer . Sub jectivity in prayer is quite a characteristic of our tines, and it isre-inforced by the dlange to the living tongue in the liturgy. We are inclined to appropriate the psalm in an acquisitive way instead of re ceiving it as a gif t. Fr. Jean Eudes Bamberger told us that this lack. of objectivity is deeply hann:ful to our monastic life in general. Here a gain the problem is a larger one: there is a monastic experience of the 11objective11 prayer of the psalter. Historically linked with an under standing of inspiration, with a theology and an exe;Jesis , in its actual

practice it doubtless creates problers. It is, perhaps , too soon topass over it in silence.

In a sacra:rrental manner, the psalter makes present what it enunci ates , i.e. the history of salvation. Under this aspect it could be con sidered as a sacra:rrental preliminary to prayer , in the rrodem sense .of the tenn: scnething on which it is necessary to lean. The Beatitudes rest not so much on petty vexations as on the Old Testanent :impreca tions taken in their context.

The psalter was once the dlief treasury of theological interpretations.By that f act alone it actualized the f aith of the Church. It is perhaps here that we f eel the pindl nost, because we f eel ourselves cut of f f ran a whole world of interpretation.But surely the prayers and invitatories of the psalter in the Jerusalem Bible indicate that it is still i;x::>ssible to read the psalter in this ecclesial perspective?

Should we not also.nention, especially in oonnection with.. the cursing verses, the psalter 'spower to exorcize? It is dif f icult to choose between a subjective and

The Cursing Psaims 27

an objective reading of the psalter. Neither of them can be lirposed and neither dispensed with. What has been given objectivel y cannot be ref ashioned to suit our pleasure, particularly when it has been

given for the prayer of the Church as a ·whole.

3- The pastoral point of view:'Ihe principle is retained that this objective prayer presupposes

a mininrum of biblical culture (initiation to, and experience of , prayer) . The private use of the psalter presents no dif f iculty .• •The real problem arises at those Of f ices attended by guests and retreatants. At Bellefon taine this was resolved in practice by suppressing the cursing verses of Psalms 138 and 140 sung at Vespers.

CLEMENT DE OOURr.oc>NT, Monk of Bellefontaine

Having read the dossier , I place JI!iSelf beside de Menasce and Chan

tal Lion. Iwould like to adopt as niy CMl the remark of Philippe Rouil lard: " • • •we are too much given to a literal interpretation of the psalms" . It is a pity he di&l 't devel9P this point f urther.On the other hand ,

a remark of his in the following paragraph seems to ne to be an over-simplif ied placing of oneself yis- -vis the psalm: "'!he day that an individu al or group of the f aithful undergoes an unusual experience, for

example, of violence, they will see the eminent suitability of certain psalms , and these t:h.ey will c:x:mnence to say in an entirely nB11 way f rom then on".

This idea underlies, to sane extent, the replies of Louis d 'Agier and A.-M. Besnard, when asking hcM the Christian can line up "conf licts" and express them in prayer; or hew he can transfer the CUX'Ses f rom theoppressors to the oppressive structures. In all these cases the authors seen to take up a position on the literal level, adapting the

psalm tothe personal situation of the one saying it and, particularly, to his relations to other persons. This seems to ne to be a f alse use of

the psalm and also betrays an ignorance. of the pedagogy of elation.

a..:. The questi on of "a.pPropriating" the psalms:

'Ihe anbiguity here seems to arise fran the use of the ter:rn "prayer" in regard to the psalms. For us , prayer. suggests an act by whi.ch we turn Ou:l'seives t<Ma.rds God, and expressourseives before him in the concrete

28

reality of our aspirations, limitations , diff iculties, joys , etc.

But if the psalm is a certain expression of ourselves, it is one which

is given to us f rom outside, f rom above. I.et us say that it cares f ran a source hidden CMay in the very depths of our being , neither whose quantity nor quality is at our ccmnand. The Word of the psalm is, by that very f act, a word to be heard at the sane time that it is uttered, and in the IeySterious sport 'Which only the Creator can make with· our

f reedan, it is a word received in the very act of pronouncing it.

My position with regard to this word is the same as my relation to

the eucharistic Bread. When I assimilate this Bread, it is not I who transfonn it into icyself , but it confonn.s rre to its substance. Like wise, the word of the psaJrn takes possession of rre much nore than I take possession of it and m::>ld it to icy present situation.

'!his word has always scxrething to say to rre, no matter what situation I f ind IeySelf in. t is therefore f utile and f alse to wait for certain experiences before using psalms whose literal rreaning would then hanron ize with icy experiences. When a word issues f rom those depths where God

dwells and where the Holy Spirit hircself utters what I am unable to say,it is a word- spoken above all in reply to an interior situation. And

this is so even if the word makes use of tenns which, in therrselve.s , des ignate concord or conf lict with "others" . The "conf lict" sought in so cial injustices rrentioned by d'Agier and Besnard,

resides, in f act , in each one of us. It is this latter "conf lict" (the root cause of all the others} to which the word is directed in the cursing psalms. Wien Iproclaim that the just man will wash his f eet in the blood of the wicked(Psalm 57} , I kncM very well who, exactly, those wicked really are . • •

b- The pedagogy of Revelation:

We must not be surprised to f ind the word expressed -even reveated -by a process which points to conf usion. It seans rreaningless to rre that on this point the cursing psallns should be separated from the

rest of the Bible. Scripture has, tine and again, given rise to colossal mistakes. Christ was condemned in the narre of the Scriptures. In con nection with the psalms I should like to cite just one passage by J.-M.

Pohier, o.p., taken f rom Psyaho Zogy and Theofogy , pp.271-272:

The Cursing Psq ims 29

Psychology teaches us that the imagination drai.vs the raw material of its activity f rom h\u major inpulses: sexuali- ty and aggressivity. Whatever may be the suitability of these appelations , these are the h\u dynamic groups which had already been distinguisherl with great precision by the nore classic schools of thought: on the one hand, desire, mether love or hatred; on the other, the struggle againstan obstacle, where ther·struggle is a oonstructive force, re bellious anger or passionately destructive. Here again, the narmer in which the material for aff ective energy is f ound to be oonditioned and structured by experiences at the dawn of life, provides a prototype and gives a certain shape to their later activity.The structures that the impulses of desire and aggressivity have aa:;ruired by these experiences will be dynamically present in all our relations with others; they will provide matter for , and penetrate into, all our dealings and representations of other persons.

The author then shows hav Revelation has utilized these theres: love, marriage, etc. As this is well knavn there is no neerl to insist on it. But then he adds:

This Love which reveals itself is no nore af raid of cx::mpro roising itself with aggressivity than it is with desire: this loving God is a jealous God - a God who takes revenge and whose anger is destructtve. To be sure , the divine pedagogy slavly and patiently clarif ies what is m=ant by nuptials; that this God , slav to anger and pronpt in nercy , does not wishthe death of the· sinner but that he should live. Yet , what is i.nportant to note here is that the divine pedagogy does not prarote the developrent of the Christian imagination by f lee ing from the nost basic areas of the human imagination; nor does it rule out the oontent of these radical experiences, asa too human ooriception might be tempted to think.

In other words: the lord uses no other neans f or bringing hare to

us his radical, def initive horror of evil, of sin , than the human vocabu lary we would use spontaneously to express our hatred and desire for ven geance against those who oppress us.

Here, I think, is 'Where :rw thought ooincides with de Menasce 's point: "If the analogy has not been perceived in the case of hatred, it is questionable whether it has been seen in the case of love"; and alsowith Chantal Lion 's question.

30

c- Vi ol ence and the word:

The attempt to apply the cursing psalms to situations of strife on the purely social level, and to "christianize" them sarrehav, is domed to f ailure, because this is not really the problem at all. l'b

rrore than our reading of Exodus is rreant to guide us in crossing sorre Red Sea, butrather a Sea of our own making, personally and collectively: Sin and Death. No rrore than the Pranised Land had an earthly happiness in mind, an illu sion which the Cross whould have shcMn us once for all. At the outside, our experience of simila,r conf licts may bring to light our instinctive aggressivity, even if grace allavs us to master the primacy reaction.But can it help us to grasp the irresistable quality of the divine re pulsion to all iniquity , mich is part of God 's ver:y Being? To relegate these psalms to the province of silence, i:;ersonal meditation, would beto ref use the Word the right to express itself as it wishes. For this word of the psalms was not intended to be read but to be uttered. This is its originality , its irreplaceable character in Revelation as in liturgy. I must speak the word in order to hear it. Only thus can it lay hold of rre as it has the right to do. It lays hold of rre through my

mind, imagination and voice. Even JI¥ body is animated by its rhythm. In

a liturgical asserrbly, it is possible for rre to hear through the mouth of a soloist, because I am then consenting to becorre one with him, so that his breath inspires what I say interiorly , and ny rhythm harrronizes with his. Here again we see the inaOOqua.cy of ther term "prayer" , which istoo of ten given a cerebral signif icance vis-a-vis the psalms. The ancient nonks didn 't neditate the psalms in our nod.em sense of the word "medi tate''; they "ruminated" them, that is to say, they murmured them, so that even outside the church the rhythm of the Sacred Word would punctuate

their breathing and share their existence. (Cf . Jean I.eclercq, The Loveof Learning and De sire for God , p. 123) .

Finally, we must adopt same of Besna,rd 's remarks about the place to be allotted to the dif f erent genre of psalms in harrcony with the

unfold ing of the liturgy. (Besnard seans to have the eucharistic liturgy posi-

The Cursing Psalms 31

tively in mind , to judge f rom the context -the allusion to the Can

munion piece) . But we must not eliminate the violence f rom the psalrrs just because it has to be uttered , and so ref use to enter into this violence. This 'INOUld be to deny to the Word the right and possibility of readling us in that very area where, in a unique though paradoxicalmanner, it can reveal us to ourselves and cause us to live with an abso lute hatred of evil in the inf inite purity of Love.

At the end of this dossier, the reader may have the irrpression

that these two "Suites" will evoke others. Why not? Vbat seens clear is that there is a cleavage between a certain "m:mastic experience of the objective prayer of the psalter" and the experience of prayer proper to

believers "living in the 'INOrld" . Let us prescind f rcm whether one orthe other of these might be called true prayer as distinct f rcm prayer

which might be imperfect in its structure. It 'INOuld seem to be

tenden tious to label the second kind of prayer as "subjective". Doesn

't the militant Brazilian, groaning under torture, reproduce, in a sense, an "objective" Clrrist-like situation? When Jesus cried out: "My God , my God, why have you forsaken ire?" he was not content to asSUIIe this cry as of another being in order that the Scriptures might be fulf illed ob-j eative ly . In sane way which escapes us, he engaged his quivering, agonizing humanity in that ' cry. When we say that true prayer takes place

when he prays in us, this does not nean that when we groan or fight he strips us of our ONn humanity , but that he himself ccmas to suffer in us precisely when we live and suf fer f or him.

If both the experiences recounted here a.re valid, and if it is clear ha.v the nonastic lif e with its universe of meaning has taken the means to recover the psalter in its entirety and even enter into itssuf f ering, the second experience can only leave the question open. Itdeserves to be stated in .IIDre precise terms and in a wider context than

the sinple use of the psalter .

Trans., Ernest CAHILL M:>unt Melleray

33

THE CANT! CLES OF THE NEW COVENANT

IN TH ELITURGY OF THE HOURS

The Blessed Lord spoke:

Since with mortal eyes thou canst not see me, lo! I give thee the Divine Sight.

See now the glory of my Sovereignty!

-The Bhagavad Gtta XI, 8

I • '11EE FACT

A few years ago, the prayer of t11e Church was enric..h. .ed thanks to nine texts taken f rom the New Testarrent and assigned to Vespers; they

were called canticles. 1

This rd 11canticle11 seems to put these ner.v texts on the same level as the other three l.;ew Testament canticles alreaay used in theOf f ice -the Song of Zachary, the Song of Mary, and the Song of Sirne on. In point of f act, "canticle" is a rather broad tenn. It 's usedto describe rrore or less lyrical passages \.\hlch have a nore or less rretrical or rh [thmic structure, and which can be sung rather easily.

These canticles present a wide spectrum of literary f o:r:ms , andthe rd of God reveals itself in than with all the resources of bibli cal symbolisrn.

In the four canticles f ram the Apocalypse, the ieyste:ry of God 's action is presented under the syrri::>ol of a sealed book; it can be opened

only by the 1".'ian-God Mediator, the imrolated Lamb (Canticle I, Rev 4:11; 5:9-10, 12) ; but the nations raged in their anger , the rage

of peoples steeped in evil; and the counterpart to their ·wrath is the wrath of God and of his Christ, that wrath directed against sin in virtue of which God himself takes upon him the chastisement so as to save the sinner;

and it is in this wey that the Accuser of the brethren is cast out (Canticle II, Rev 11:17-18; 12:10-121 . £1ighty and w:)nOerf ul , then ,

34

are the works of the IDrd -works which have manifested the disconcert ing judgrrents of Love (Canticle III, Rev 15:3-4). And nav the Lanb ex ercises his kingship, clothed in his purple wedding ganrent, and calling to his bride who has

decked herself with beaub.J, and has bathed herself in the Blood of the Lamb (Canticle N, Rev 19:1-2 5-B}.

This is how the four Canticles from the Apocalypse form, as it were, a single irnrrense fresco depicting the whole of Salvation Histo:ry.

'rhe fifth Canticle is the christological hynn of the 1st chapter of Colossians . Its theological density is sustained by means of quite sim ple images which cover realities beyond description:the passage fran darJr...ness to the Kingdom of light, through the forgiveness of sins grant ed because of the Son, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstoorn of all creatures, the Head of the C'1.urc."."1, which is the corrmunity ofthe saved, and of those who have received peace through the Blood of Christ (Canticle V, Col 1:12-20).

The opening "blessing" of the letter to the Ephesians sings of the eternal plan of divine IDve -the plan to have innurrerable sons by

of the One Son in "Whom all things are recapitulated (Canticle VI,

Eph 1:3-10).

Canticle VII is the hyim to Christ the I.ord, 'V-.ft10 was exalted be cause of his obedience (Ph 2:6-11).

Canticle VIII is the text from I Peter 2:21-25,which is sorrething of a charter of Christian non-violence:Christ suffered for us, shav ing us the path to follCM; for us, then, there can be no question of insults or threats directed against others, b1it only of our peaceful surrender to the justice of divine Love .

Finally, Canticle IX is that fragirent of the catechesis which Paul calls the " ste:ry of Godliness" in I Tinoth.y 3:16, where he sketches the whole "trajecto:ry11 of Christ, fran his manifestation in the flesh to his exaltation in

glo:ry.

These fEM ideas give sare notion of the richness of these texts.

The litera:ry genre andthe litera:ry fo:rrns, the exuberant lyricism of

The Canticles of the New Covenant 35

canticles f rom the Apocalypse (rrore discreet in the canticles f rom Paul and Peter) call for a musical setting suitable for fostering an intimate assimilation of these riches.

In point of fact , there has been no lack of conp::>sers ...Indeed, some twenty-two other passages of the Hsv Testarrent have becx:rne part of the canticle-repertory, and have been set to music -f rom the Be

atitudes of Matthsv 5:3-12 and the Hy.rm to Charity of I Corinthians13:1-8, to the evocation of the Nev Jerusalem in Fevelation 21:2-

4.2

An ef f lorescence such as this is proof that the nsvly opened vein corresponded to a real need. Greater f amiliarity with the enserrble of

the Bible has rrade us sensitive to the f act that the Mystery of Christ, who fulf ills the Promises and Types, was not suf f iciently in evidence in the of f icial prayer of the Church.

II. VARIOUS EVALUATIONS

It would seen, then, that the introduction of the New Testarcent canticles should have given general satisf action. For some tine past, hav ever, occasional reserves have been expressed, and even detailed criti cisms.

1- Doubt has been expresserl as to the 11 singability 11 of sane of these canticles.

It' s quite certain that the translators have a problem on their hands. Take, for instance, Canticle V. A m:xrent ago we stressed the

point that this is a theological writing of great d.octrinal density; its lyricism is sober, concentrated. .• It 's easy to see why this text

was retained as a canticle: it's the sort of text which should be knCMn by heart, and it would be good to be able to sing it. But was the trans lation really shaped up with a vi9il7 to its being set to music? It 's dif

f icult to think so.

In a recently published round-table discussion on the question, z

one interlocutor asks ''whether we let ourselves be tempted by the theo

logical content or the powerf ul impact of a text f rom St. Paul, so that we wanted to turn it into a ce.nticle, even though the passage was so"intellectual" in expression • • .so rx>nderous .• • 11 4

36

My ONil answer VJOuld be that the lyricisr:. is 'there , but that the translation hasn ' t suf f iciently brought it out. The translation is little nore than prose divided into strophes. It would be well worth the ef fort to touch up and. re-work the translation, because the text is a roverf ul one, resonant with

insight.

2- A second criticism is m:>re serious. It calls into question the very advisability of introducing these canticles into the Of f ice, and this for a number of reasons.

- First and f orerrost , the synbolism of these canticles is said to have be incarprehensilile for nod.em culture. It even seens

that this criticism touches on a larger area , a.".1d aff i.nns that the

whole ensemble of images and t.herres styled "biblical" leads straight to an impasse. We might want to lead the man of today to recognizethe Living God in his Son Jesus Christ; but these texts threw us back into a cosncgony of the past, and we f ind the syrrtx:>ls blunted and un balanced.

- Further, to be nore precise, these canticle texts of the New Testament represent a stage in the Christian re-reading 0£ biblical tradition. This might be valid for conterrporary man. Ha.Never , these texts arose in a context in which the integration into real lif e of the saving event, Jesus Christ , was only just beginning. It soon re ceived a f ixed ;fonn in writing. But if we sinply take these writings as they are, they became., in practice, no nore than a dead letter.

- Would the solution lie in an atten;:>t to give the assembly of the

f aithf ul a biblical culture? '!his ef fort, we are told, vuld be artif icial, doarred to f ailure. So we should look in a dif ferent direction. Sta.rt from the positive reality- which these New Testament canticles;r;-epresent in the history of Christian thought. They bear witness to a concrete actualization of f aith. So oontinue along the sanE

line,without getting tied dcMn by a fonn of expression which belongs to thepast. What you have to do is create new texts whia.'1 bear witness to the Christian experience as lived at the present tirre , and

expressedin a contemporary vocabulary. It 's not the biblical text which brings usto an understanding of what our life is about .• • Rather , it 's an under-

The CanticZes of the New Covenant 37

standing of our life in confrontation with Christ which makes it possi- ble for us to find under other fonns and expressed with different words the sane vital experience such as we

find attested by the early bibli- cal texts. This is the condition for the efficacy of every fonn of Christian culture, and hence, of the word addressed us by God.

This challenge makes us reflect, and leads us to clarify a few details so as to discern the elerrent of truth in this argurrent, and to rectify the elements of confusion. We're here confronted with the problem of the value of the word of God, and with the further prdJlem of creativity in the expression of our faith.

III. 'l"HE VALUE OF THE 'WORD OF

GOD 1- I n t r i n s i c V a l u e

This problem appears clearly in one of the last affirmations reproduced arove: the biblical text isn't a key for an understandingof our CMil life; rather, it's an understanding of our life in confron tation with Christ which enables us to find once more the experience of the witnesses of an earlier age -an experience described in texts of the past. But the i.nnediate reaction could well be:Yes -but hCM am I to kna.v

or recognize Christ(\\ho is the neans by which I have to un derstand R¥ own life), if not in the word transmitted by the Church fran one generation to the next? For it's the Churcll which guards theword in its purity, and interprets it according to the varying hmran situations.

I'ts quite certain that the problem of language is no false prdJlem.

One of the directives given by VaticaY\II is to provide the word of God with a clothing, with a fonn of expression which is accessible to nod.em nan. This represents a cultural evolution(and even revolution), par ticularly in the process of secularization. It has becane banal to note the fact.

It's quite enlightening to read, in a recent issue of La vie spiri tueUe, Jean Lestavel's chronicle about Gustave

Thibon. We read there that "the Christian of today, despite the loss of a certain lyric and epic tone, mistrusts every kind of exaggerated language when it corres to

38

expressing his faith (even though it might be perf ectly all right toinvest languages other than that of faith with a high degree of af fec tivity) ". 5 'Ihis was said with regard to the re-publication of the

EcheU e de Jacob , combined under one cover with Le pain de chaque jour . In his pref ace, Gustave 'Ihibon was prudent enough to f orestall the critics: "You use an outnoded vocabulary. Words such as "soul" , "sin" , "grace" , "heaven" , "hell" • .• no longer f ind an echo in rrodenl man."Could it be that Christians no longer knew hCM to hear the "eternal

content" of Revelation? G. Thibaut is af raid that, "under the pretext of openness and dialogue" , Christianity will be re-absorbec into the nodern world; and he insists on the rights of truth over the "novelties

and tastes of the current season based on feeling and opinion" . We be lieve that Christians in the Churd.1 always knew hew to listen to and hear the "eternal content" of Revelation; but this "eternal content" cannot be closed to ·every atterrpt at re-interpretation.

'Ihis situates the problem in its proper context.

'Ihe word of God , transrnitted by the Church in its biblical fonn (that is to say, in writings inspired by the Holy Spirit) , has an in trinsic value. '!here is a divine gif t, a divine transmission of the word (the word of the Word of God) ; this Wl'Jrd bea:::mes incarnate in the integral human condition, and is "objectif ied" in a def initive f ashionin the Holy Books·. 'Ihis is why the the Vatican II Constitution Dei Verbwn says that the entire presentation of t.11e Christian Mystery has gotto be "nourished and ruled by sacred Scripture". 6

As soon as we see all this fran an cbjective via\7P0int, we admire the extent to which the biblical theres and the bililical symbolism are universal. Every human culture can f ind neaning there. When I was in China, I was struck by the all but insunro\.llltable dif f iculty of feredby l.'.ristotelian and , theref ore, scholastic thought; but what joy thesesame Chinese had when they cane into contact with the Bible! They felt at home with the divine word. Thanks to a recent study· on the Bhagavad Gtt, I see that the same is true for India. In the sacred writings of

The Canticles of the New Covenant 39

this civilization, there are numerous texts whic.h could be transposed directly into the Bible without any prd:>lem. This is particularly true of the canticles of praise:

Glory to Thee, O grea,test of gods!Be gracious !Iseek to k.nON Thee, the Prineval;IknON not Thy ways.

-XI , 31

By Thy glorification,the universe rejoices and shCMs love to Thee.

-XI , 36

Bowing dCMn, and holding the body so lON, Thee, o Lord, I pray for grace;forgive, o Lord, as forgives the father the son,the friend the friend,and the lover the beloved .

-XI , 44

'lhe blessed Lord spoke: He that 'Vvorks but for ne,for whom Iam the supreme goal,who is devoted to ne,devoid of attachment for things, and devoid of hate,cornes to Me.

-XI, 55

Even if the nost evil-conducted roan worships Jt.e with exclusive devotion,he is to be considered even as righteous because he is established on the right road.Such a one quickly becares righteous-souled, for he comes to perpetual peace.

devoted one shall never be destroyed.-IX, 30-31

The universality of bililical language extends not only throughout space, but through time as "1;\fell. Can we really say that at any given pericx1, the syrribols of the Bible are no longer ad raem, that they no longer have anything to say?

In a very fine article,8 Paul Beauchanp expresses his CMn

opinion to the contrary: 11 It would be to speak without due thought, were a per-

.

40

son to represent nature, which holds so irrportant a place in the Bilile, as an elerrent. of existence "'11.ch is on the way to being overcalE and mastered: it pertains to the essence of man that he be situated in a

cosrros which both precedes him in existence, anO. goes on after hiro ...9

When he is cut of f f rom nature, man f eels a deeper and deeper loss of

balance; and he won 't stop till he recovers his equililirium. We' re f ace to face with this serious problem. The urban dweller runs away from the city in order to plunge into the woods and the sea; he 's crazy about srow, rrountain-cl.inbing, hunting, real bread, local vintage wines ...The very thrust of civilization is leading it back to the sources of the word of God.

Let's take a look at the currently signif icant book by Fr. Gelineau and his international group of collaborators -Dans vos assembZees 10 When it 's a question of placing in its proper context "the specif ic roleof Scripture in the liturgy" , we read: "Bililical language has been fashioned by the experience of the People of God throughout the oourse of Salvation History, and this language has becx:are the language of Jesus and his disciples • ..The liturgy, then, oould not fail to grasp the value of this lan-

guage which is the specif ic language of the Scriptures. "

11 '!he author

does, of oourse, recognize the f act that there 's a problem of understand ing this language; and this sanetirnes calls for an initiation , a cateche sis. Hcwever, he adds the follc:»ling: "We ought not imagine that the lan guage of the Bilile and the liturgy is outdated. 'lhis would be true if they depended on, and referred to realities which are now

desacralizedand better understood , such as the realities of outer space. In point

of fact , the sacraments and the realities with which they 're bound areinterwoven with basically human realities which are identical f or everytine and place: sy:rrbols of a meal, of water, of judgnent, of love, of death, of a covenant, etc . • .. These categories are always contanporary, and they are the ones which best express the relations of the Living God

W'1th l'vm.

g roan" .12

We should like to add that :the .mistake would oonsist of identif ying the word of God with the language of ideas. In

the latter , words are born and die acoording to the f luctuation of systems and passions. They

The Canticles of the New Covenant 41

have to have a shock-ef fect on our imagination and sensitivity. When they no longer make our skin tingle, they die of f .

2- Ef f icacy

This leads us to a consideration of t.li.e reproach that the

lan guage of the Bible lacks ef f icacy. 'lhis is a quite natural

reproachf or m:>a.em man to make, since he is inclined to judge evei:ything by

the ircmediate result , the .imrediate reaction.

We were just naN speaking about ideological language and its exi gencies. '!he word of God is nost exactly NO!' addressed to the epide:rmis; it knocks, rather, on the door of the heart. Paul Beaucharrp also notes with pertinence that the biblical word doesn 't necessarily produce itsef f ect straightaway. We ought not ask the hearers for their inpressions as they leave the church. So of ten as the reaction follCMS imrediatelyupon the action of the word, only the surf ace of the person is af fected".J.J

Farther on, the author stresses the f act that it pertains to the vei:y essence of the 'WOrn of God to be proclairred in an assembly of believers, and this is one of the conditions for its eff icacy. "'!here is an ef f icacy proper to the worn of God; and the duty to proclaim this 'WOrd depends up- on this ef f icacy." And he quotes Janes 1:21 - "'Ihe 'WOrd planted within

your hearts can save you." The proclamation of the word is a central litur gical act; but it presupposes a global action which surrounds it, as does

the act of putting a seed into the grmmd. '!his derives fran the divine origin of the word, and f ran the sacrarrental orner of which it is a part. This word, then , is proclained "in an institutional act" , as willed by Christ. A failure to realize this "explains a great deal about the partialfailure.of so many atterrpts to provide the f aithf ul with a solid biblical pedagogy11

• 14 The round-table discussion organized by Chant et Monast'eres

expresses it well by saying that "the place where the Bible renders its true sound is the ccmnunity'' •15 Or, rrore precisely, if you wish.: the ecclesial camrunity.

'!he book Dans vos asserriblJes gi-ves all this a definitive formulation: "Faith is received through listening to the worn of God • • •The Church has

42

handed down to us not a l::xJok, but the proclamation of God 's w::>rd. Lis tening to the word of Gcx1 is indispensable, because it means a direct enrounter with the Lord who is really present in the proclamation ofhis word. We should rerre:nber that the word not only ex-presses a thought, but that it is also ef f icacious. 'Ihe Hebrew w::>rd dabar is a word-action. "16

It 's essential, then, that "the liturgy itself and the asserrbly ought to create an abrosphere of listening .• •The faithf ul ought to listen inan attitude of expectation, so that the w::>rd might act in each listener. 1117

As the Constitution Dei Verbum expresses it , "The word of God is the p:::Mer of God for the salvation of all who believe."

3- FecundityAs Paul Beauchamp has just suggested, we always have to cone

back to the word of Jesus : Semen est Verbum Deil This can be trans lated in two dif f erent ways. By wey of explaining the parable: 11The seed is the word of God''; by way of applying the text in a living way:"The word of Gcx1 is a seed" . This was the great light received by NEM

roan: the expression of the entire lif e of f aith, t.'-le tota,lity of the

Church 's experience (all the action of the Holy Spirit} , in tenns of the ilra.ge of organic grc:Mth. We here have an eminently biblical synbol, the reality of Wrich is constantly under our eyes, if only in the realism of human generation.

If I thus receive the -word in a well disposed heart, it 's inpossible that this -word should not bring forth its f ruit in TIE. The "good soil"of which Jesus speaks presupposes w::>rk, tilling, weeding, etc. The cultural ef fort required in approaching the Bible is, acrordingly , indis pensable, according to the possibilities af forded each individual; and pastors have an irrperious duty to provide access f or the f aithf ul to the word of God. A disposition of vital exchange is created in the heart;

the word of God becc:xres master of lif e. I receive the w::>rd just as it is -biting , tender, soothing. I off er Il!l!Self to the word, which inturn opens to TIE the secret of Lif e, assumes the burden of lI!l:'

experience, and f irst of all teaches me hew to experience lI!l:' CMn insuf f iciency, lI!l:' CMn poverty before the Il!l!Stery • • • • It 's the inkling of this Il!l!Stery

The Co:nticles ofthe New Copeno;nt 43

which nourishes the heart of man , fills it and makes it dilate, and soon causes it to overf low in a canticle of love.

It 's not the overwhelrning things v.hich touch us at our deepest level, but the things which enter into the f lcrw of our quite ordinary day to day existence, and bring with than some small ray of light.Men rreet each other at depth in the simplest realities, the uost ordi nary symbols. The more one is stripped of all arrogance, the nore one is f ree of all encumbrances , the better will one be able to grasp the real meaning of the slightest gestures and actions. The of f ering ofa f la.ver can be of greater value than the of fering of a f ortune ...And when it 's a question of love, the simplest words are never trite • ..

In this way, the irruption of the word of God within me calls me to conversion, to look at things in a ne\'1 way; and , in so doing , it opens up within me the source of a new song. This new song will re peat the word received., but in a unique manner; it will be a f aithf ul echo of the eternal word, nut yet will be something quite

original.This is hcM spontaneous expressions of the f aith are created under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. This brings us to the problem of creativity.

IV. CREATIVITY IN THE EXPRESSION OF THE FAITH

The New Testament canticles proceed from tl"...is interior novernent.

Saint Paul told the f aithful: . 11Sing i.'1 your hearts I addressing one an other in psahns and hymns and spiritual songs • • • 11 'Ihe history of the Church sJ1a.ls us that the word of God has always had a deep , strong resonance in those hearts mich the Spirit f ills.

Here we have to make a distinction between two groups : those who had a part in the shaping up of the Gospels, and the f aithf ul of the pilgrim Church.

1- Those Who too k part in shaping up the Gospel

Theirs is a special privile:Je: their songs and hymns (those, at least, which have been preserved) carry with them the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. The Gospels are proof that Jesus Christ himself ex pressed himself with an all but disconcerting ricbness of syrrbols; he

44

said even the rrost important things in words bordering on the banal: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep" ...And yet , these words are irnrrortal,

so charged with :rreaning that all the treatises on ecclesiastica juris diction have not yet exhausted their content. Allrost everything said by Jesus teems with lyricism and lerrls itself to song • • •The repertoryof Chant et Monastere s mentioned earlier, notes five texts wlll.ch have

attracted the attention of nrusicians, in particular, the Beatitudes in St. .Matthew 's version , and the "benediction" of Luke 10:21-22.19

Jesus , who is the Word made f lesh, appears as the singer of t.-.:.ie word of God. He gathered together as in a splendid, huge bouquet, all the f la.vers of the Prophets who prepared his caning, as · did Mary , Zachai:y , and Sineon.

Jesus opened the f urrav for the def initive sowings which were to folla.v; for the apostles only had to follCM what Jesus had already traced out.Singing the Gcx:x1 News meant singing of Christ, sincJing about the f ulf illrcent of the proruses , discovering the prophetic depth of the psalms by reading them in the light of Christ, creating hyrms ...The apostles and the f irst Christian camn.mities animated by them thus integrated the word of lif e into the f lCM of human existence which the grace of Christ

had care to sanctify. These texts, these expressions of f aith. preserved

f or us by the New Testament, have the privilege, the."1, of being part of the deposit of Revelation transmitted to all generations till the end of

tine. This is an irreplaceable privilege. All these texts , spontaneous though they might be, and no matter how heterocli te they might appear , are oriented ta.vards that "center to which we nrust constantly returntine. and again11

, as Fr. Congar once expressed it.

2- The f aithf ul of the pilgrim Church

All the above has a nonnative value for us , as regards the expression of the f aith; but this doesn 't mean it has to stif le inspiration. On the contrary. Its value is that of being exerrplary·. It 's an invitation. If the word -and this incluCles the New 'l'estament canticles -is trulysa.vn within our hearts, it won 't stop singing there, and bringing forth genuine £.owers and f ruit, provided that we don 't cut the root f ran which this springs.

The CanticZes of the New Covenant 45

Deep da-m, the Church has always felt the need to re-create the

expression of the f aith, without restriction as to literary f onns and . gen."..'"es -on oondition, havever, that there 's a real compatability, or rather , harnony, with the central chorus of New Testament singers ,

whose value remains universal.

In the work ref erred to earlier , Fr . Gelineau makes a· good point. He f irst notes that "the Ranan liturgy had given a preponderant place to the psalms 11

, while the Eastern liturgies "gave a larger place

to hymnody" . He then goes on to d:>serve that today, in the West, "we feelthe need, in the prayer and song of the assenbly, to have an expressionof the f aith in contemporary lyric and poetic fo:rms . Hymns are winning back their proper place". It 's quite certain that a vernacular

liturgy can only further . point up this exigency • • •But does this have to be to the detriment of the New Testament elements introduced into the Of f ice under the nane of canticles? 'Ihe author replies with two important re marks:

a- "The psalms are the privileged witness to the word of God in

prayer. They are to hymns what the reading of Scripture is to preadring. The essential thing is to proclaim the Gospel; but, in the liturgy, this proclamation made by preaching is oonstantly referred to the Scriptures.So too, the essential thing is to pray; but the words used in prayer will always be re-born fran contact with the inspired psalms".

21

!Fidelity , liberty -this tension is always the mark of an authentic

Christianity. Basically, it 's a characteristic of love to f ind nEM waysof repeating and expressing the sarre reality.]

b- 'Ihe second remark is this: "'!hough. hymns are the si911 of the Church's catholicity, since the Churdt in every period, place, and cul ture re-nodels the living expression of her faith, the psalms are what oonstitutes a sign of unity between Christians." And the author justif ies his af f inna.tion in this way: "Aro:>ng all the languages which. the

liturgycan employ, it 's the language of the Bible (in which the images and vocabu lary of the psalms fonn the privileged corpus} which is the basis for the symbols and language in cx:mron use. The nore the Church opens herself to

the diversity of cultures, the nnre inp:>rtance ao the structural images

46

of the Bible acquire f or the evangeZization of the myths and synbols of these other cultures". 22

I myself have noted hCM the great civilizations such as the Chinese and the Hindu spontaneously f ind themselves on familiar ground when it oones to the language of the Bible. There will always be a Christian ten sion between unity and pluralism; but the solution is tlat of continually referring to the center. "Constantly return to the center, time and a gain" , to repeat Fr . Congar 's VJOrds.

So let the f la-1ers bloan! ron 1 t hesitate for a m::rcent. Just keep your eye on the root. Othei::wise, the f lCMers will fade, wither .• •

Moreover , creativity is in f ull blocm.TrUe, total successes arestill sorcewh.at exceptional; but this sl1oul.d cause surprise to no one who has squ:i_red up to the problan. At least, people are singing.

'Ihink of the p::>pular religious songs whim, in times past, served as catechetical aids (and hence f acilitated access to the v.urd of God} . These of ten proved ef f icacious at a time

when Latin still held uncontested sway.Sare regions had an admirable

repertory of such songs. But, on t.11.e whole, these songs were nostly clinkers; a really good one was always an event. Perhaps we ought not be too demanding, especially since we have to recog nize the f act that the general level of the over-all repertory is higher than it used to be.

So let 's create, let 's sing. The problem is always that of giving its proper place to the proclamation and the singing of the word of

God; f or only the living sap of the Spirit wt.1.0 lives in the word of God

can make human hearts and voices fruitful. •

We close with a quotation f ran :Marcel :Legaut -a prayer which isalso a canticle:

When the word is the right VJOrd, it brings forth prayer • • •it raises up the Presence.My lips f ind it sweet,it resounds within IT¥ heart;

Iam one '1.Ti.th it, forIam its echo. Always new;

Ihave only to repeat,it calls ne into being ,calls God within ne. 2 3

BricquebecTrans., Gethsemani Abbey EmnanuelMAYEUR

The Canticles of the New Covenant 47

N O T E S

1 These canticles have been given an interesting introduction by Andre Rose, "La repartition des psaurres dans le cycle liturgique", in La Maison-Dieu 105 (1971), pp.92-94.

2 Paul-Errmanuel Spies, Repertoires des cantiques bibZiques, in Prier ensemble (= Chant et Monastres 12 lDec .1971]), pp.47-45.

3 Table ronde: "Les cantiques du Nouveau Testarrent dans l'Office", ibid.'pp.2-22.

4 Ibid., p.21.5 La vie spiritueZZe 589 (March-April 1972), pp.289-292.6 Dei Verbum 21.7 Mohini M.Chatterji(trans.and editor}, The Bhagavad

Gtta, The Ju lian Press, Inc., New York 1960.8 Paul Beauchamp, '_'OuvrU: le Livre en face du peuple11

, in Christus

42, pp .160-173.9 Art . cit., p .167.10 Joseph Gelineau and Collaborators, Dans vos assembZr!es, 2

vols., Des- cle et cie, Paris 1971.11 Op. cit., T.I, pp.158-159. See also pp.155-160.12 Ibid.13 Art . cit., p .162. 14 Ibid., pp .162-163.15 Art . cit., p.22.16 Dans vos assembZees, T.I, p.159. 17 Ibid., pp.159-160.18 Dei Verbum 17.19 Art . cit., supra, Note 2 .

20 Quoted by Jaoques Desseaux, in Unite des chrtftiens 6 (April 1972), p.5.

49

M Y S T I C A L L I F EA N D

P A S C H A L M Y S T E R Y *

INTIDDUCTION

F i r s tP a r tL I T U R G Y AND M Y S T I C I S M

I. THE GOD OF TRANSCENDANCE AND r..cm:II. THE MYSTICAL EXPERIBNCE

a) In the tradition of the early centuriesb) In the life of the Christianc) In the Mystery

d) Characteristics

S e c o n d P a r t

S Y M B O L A S E X P R E S S I O N

A PIDBLEM OF EXPRESSION

I. SYMBOLISM

l} The symbol as it is in itself2} Language and sy:rrbol

3} Sy.rrbolism and the cusn:os

II. MAN 'S EXPERIENCE OF SYMOOL

a) Archaic tirresb) The Middle Ages

c)The Renaissanced) M:Xiern times

* This study was written by Fr. PauZ St-Cyr, monk of N.-D. du Laa, during 1970/71, in fuZfiZZment of the requirements of the Institut Superieur de Liturgie of the Institut CathoZique de Paris.

50

T h i r dP a r t

N I G H T F I L L E D W I T H L I G H T

I. THE PASCHAL MYSI'ERY

a) Structureb) A passage

1) By m=ans of faith and the sacraments2) In the rcy"stical life

II. PASCHAL LIFE : NIGH'"l' Ai. LIGHT

a) In the Paschal Nightb) IGH'I'

1) Universal symbol2) Night as seen by the ancients and th.e rcy"Stics

c) Structure of the Night1) A passage2) A wisdan3) Ascendancy of the Spirit4) In the fire of Love5) In water6) a void7) "O living flarre of love!"

CONCLUS!Ol'l

Notes and references

Bibliography

51

M Y S T I C A L L I F E

A N D P A S C H A L M Y S T E R Y

The hour is ooming, and no.v is,

when the true worshipers will worship the Fatherin spirit and truth,

for such the Father seeks to worship him.- Jn 4 :23

INTRODUCTION

Rav can we becare adorers such as "the Fat.her seeks to worship him"? Hav can we assimilate in a living manner, and in all its reality, the Mys tery of Christ as actualized in the here and DCM by the liturgy? These are delicate questions, but of vital irrportance for our life as Christians .

If the liturgical It¥Stery makes Christ live on throughout the period of history which extends all the way up to the Parousia, it should, then, be in

everyone the source from which flavs forth an authentic experience of Cod, a It¥Stical life. We shall then be at the heart of the Church's life and of our vocation as "adopted sons of God". Mystical life and liturgical life in this way throw light on one another.

In this world of sense perception, havever, the ineffable and the tran scend.ant can be perceived only in sign, in analogy, in Symbol. This will be the subject of the secxmd part of our reflections.

Then, in the light of the great mystical doctor, St.John of the Cross, we shall see hav we experience the realities of the Paschal Mystery: death, life and union with Cod. Mystical theology will thus be able to account for the Paschal Mystery lived at depth by means of the light it sheds on the ma jor symbols:night and light, water and fire.

52

F i r s t P a r t

L I T U R G Y AND M Y S T I C I S M

I. 'l'HE OOD OF TRANSCENDAl.\ICE AND I.OVE

'Ihe God of Revelation is at one and the sarre tine the God who

is transcend.ant and the God ·who is inmanent to the heart of man.'Ihis

truth is the basis of the Olristian experience.

To whom then will you conpare :rre ,that I should be like him?

says the Holy One. -I s 40 :25I1 B:19

Why do you call ne good? No one is good but God alone. -Lk

'Ihe Jr¥Stical teaching of St. John of the Cross is developed on the basis of this truth:

All the being of creation • .•compared with the inf inite Beingof God, is nothing • • •All the beauty of the creatures , a:mpared

with the inf inite beauty of God, is the height of defonnity • • •-Ascent of Mount Ca::t>mel I, iv, 4.

It should be noted that this juClgment relative to things created

is made only with ref erence to God 's transcendence. We know the Holy One 's f eeling with regard to the beauty of created things in themselves: And God SCM that they were good • • .

But the reality which man ought to interrogate is no longer the nere f inite reality; it 's no longer towards the contingent that man turns,but to the one only Absolute; and this Absolute, man realizes, is wholly original. Man is then struck by 'God's catplete liberty with regard to everything. God is not only autonarrous: he is absolutely conplete and self-suf ficient in himself .

Dios no arna cosa fuera de si.• •God loves naught apart f rom him-- Spiritual Canticle .xxiii, 5

Iself .

But this Transcendant God is also a personal God. 'lhls divine person ality is what fonrs the bond between God 's transcendance and his imnanence. Jacques Maritain has brought this out well, when he wrote: "God is sarre one who says "I" just as we do." 1

It was this sane God who told Pascal :

-L g

My sticai Li f e and Paschai My ster 53

"No one is as Im.lch your friend as I am." 2

Since God is the 'Wholly Other, and since he absolutely surpasses all that our limited minds can conceive, we shall attain him, then, on ly by going beyond sense experience and perception by our created intel

. ligence. 'Ihis personal God wishes to effect with us a comnunion mich shares in his transcendance. St.John of the Cross expressed this when he wrote:

And there is no reason for marvelling that•••even in this life there should be accomplished in the faithful soul that which the Son of God has promised -that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit would rome to him that lovedGod and make their abode in him. What else does this rean, but that the soul 's understanding would be divinely enlight ened by God in the wisdom of the Son, that its will would find its pleasure in the Holy Spirit, and that the Father would clasp it and abso:rb it by his strength and might in the embrace and abyss of his sweetness.

-L'.iV'.ing F .i,,ame of L

ove

2 bis

When two persons love each other here belav, and, in a dialogue be tween heart and heart, profess to belong each to the other -"You and I" they, and only they, are able to

express themselves in this manner. But this is hav it is in our relationship with God:

I am yours, and I am for your sake. I take pleasure in being what I am, so that I can be yours, and can give 11¥ self to you.

. .'iV'in

., fFi,ame o L

ove2 bis

The God we love is a "jealous God"; he wants our whole heart.Wehave to tend to love him for himself, though without failing to be grate ful for the gifts he has placed within us .3 At the feet of Jesus, Mary

.Magdalene pays homage to this transcendance of God and to this nearness of the Son of l\'.lan. We here are very close to the 11¥stery of pure prayer, of the 11¥Stical experience•••

II. THE MYSTIC.AL EXPERIENCE

a) In the Tradition of the Early

Centuries Let us rejoice,

Beloved,And let us go to see ourselves in your beauty.

-Spirituai Canticie xxxv, 1

54

'Ibis stanza of the Spiritual Canticle expresses in a great

poem the If!YStical experience with which Jolm of the Cross had just been fa vored.

What is the origin of the Greek word "If!Ystikos 11? Its root caresf rcm the vem "If!Yo" , which means "to close" , and particularlyto

close one's eyes. It places the accent on the irrational elerrents ll'Ore than on the social, rroral or dogmatic aspects of religion. One rould def ine If!YSticisrn in this way:

...the Jt¥Sterious desire -experie.nced as sacred, anterior to any kind of rational justi f ication, sub-'conscious at times, but deep and incoercible -f elt by the soul when it tries to enter into contact with wnat it holds to be the Absolute -generally its god, but at tirres also an entity of a vaguer sort: :Oeing in itself , the great All, nature , the world-soul. 4

In the rqystexy religions , we f ind this word used before the Christian era. The essential rites of these cults were kept from the uninitiated.There was, then, a certain kind of "secret" . In hellenism, this "secret" has nothing to do with a higher f onn of religious understanding, but con cerns the rites only in their material aspect.

The great religions of the past have their If!YStical books , and this Jt¥Sticism becomes nore and nore in evidence to the extent that these civ

ilizations af f inn their authority: buddhism in India , taoism in China, Arabian and Persian If!YSiticism.

Christian texts will give the word "Jt¥sticism" the proper meaning of r e 1 i g i o u s k n o w 1e d g e or understanding - a meaning it had never previously had. The If!YSticism of the prophets and the psalmist runs like f ire across Israel's religion.

Jesus appeals unceasingly to the prophets and the psalmists; for he it is who cane, not to destroy the religion of his ancestors, but to bring it to its perfection. 5

With the Fathers , 6 and with Clanent of Alexandria and Origen in par ticular , "Jt¥sticism" will designate the ll'Ore dif f icult and the deeper as pects of the problems and questions contained in Revelation. In this line of thought we shall envisage biblical exegesis, mi.ch will give rise to the allegorical meaning.

Mystical Life and PashaZ Mystery 55

For Origen, the entire Bible and the whole history of the People of God find their corrplete and total meaning only in Christ. In the course of his letters, St.Paul has developed this thought at length.·Christ himself affinns it in the Gospel according to St. John:

You seardl the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me .

-Jn 5:39

Clement will say: 11For the sake of the New People, Jesus was be-

gotten as the n¥stical Angel.11 7

The Fathers gave the name !!mystical" to the deepest content of the faith . Eusebius of Caesarea named the very Trinity: "the Mystical Triad". In his Demonstration according to the Gospel3 he affinns that Christ's divine nature is nnre n¥stical than his human nature .

For the Greek Fathers, the divinity itself is, then, lI!{Stical. Knav ing the divine is considered as something "mystical".We are thus led to

a religion "in spirit and truth"; and we reject all that would not be vivified by Christ.

In the scriptures, we look for the spiritual meaning, the mystical neaning; but this is also true of the liturgy.In the rites and the Christian sacrarnents, we have to discover that which lies beyond the visible and material. Eusebius calls the whole ensemble of the eucharistic liturgy "a mystical worship11

• 8 For him, baptism is

"mystical regeneration in the Narne of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit11

• 9

The mystical experience is presented as a union of love which means a deepening of what preceded, rather than a fresh discovery in the strict sense; by a different route it arrives at an abject already revealed or known in a different manner.

b) I n t h e L i f e o f the Ch r i s t i an

Jean !J.' ouroux has expressed it well:

The Christian experience neans grasping oneself in relation

to God; the Christian life means being in relation to God.10

The Christian experience makes us conscious of the fact that Christ

is living in our hearts by faith. It means a grasping of our relation

56

to Christ, and of our relation to the Church wr..ich nourishes this faith within us by means of the sacrarrents .Karl Rabner was thus able to write:

The 'incarnation' of grace, and grace's process of becom ing tangibly historical, reaches its climax in the sacra ments. Grace is not only incarnated in the personal super naturalized activity of roan, but also in the acts of the Church as such: not only in the activity of a :rrerrber of God 's people, but in the essential activity of the histor ically constituted people of God, i.e.in the essential ac tivity of the Church in her own public, social sphere.11

And so the IT¥Stical experience sinply deepens and prolongs that Christian experience which is found in ever:y believer. We can speak of a substantial continuity, one which continues in the same direction as the initial and decisive thrust. Accordingly, it is impossible to think here in tenns of a contenplation which is purely of the intellectual or philosophical order, after the ma.rm.er of a Plato or a Plotinus. The · IT¥5tical experience is rooted deeply in one's baptismal and sacrarrentallife.There are sorre who have wanted to consider the IT¥Stical life solely in tenns of itself; and the result was that they cut the vital link between Jr¥Sticism and the sacrarrents and liturgy.12

With the Fathers, the If!YStical experience is never considered as sim ply an experience of the psychological order; never is it reduced to pure subjectivity. It's always a question of one's exp=rience of the divine Object which is known by rreans of Scripture, and which has corre to us in Jesus Christ; an objective reality which lives on in the Church, and in which we participate by rreans of the liturgy. It was in the breaking of the bread that the disciples of Ermaus recognized Christ; so, too, it isin the liturgy that we shall recognize and understand the true Iey'stical

13experience, and shall manifest to others the If!YSteries of Christ.

As Fr.Ephrem Iongpre wrote:

The Eucharist is the sacrarrental principle of the IT¥5tical experience, from its beginnings to its highest peaks •••So lofty are the supernatural conmunications deriving from the Eucharist, that the

Bread of life realizes or actualizes - and this as the nonnal thing J when it finds present the necessary conditions of adherenee to CJ-rist and total fideli ty to him, that interior, Iey"Stical manifestation which the

Mystical Pra&er and Paschal Mystery 57

Lord promised all the faithful at the Last Supper: "He VJho loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him (Jn 14 : 21 ) . 14

c) In the Mystery

The word "mystical derives from the same root as the word "mystery".

With the Greeks, the mystic was the one who initiated others into the mysteries; and everything touching upon the mysteries was called 11mystic al". St.Teresa of Avila will insist on the fact that, at absolutely no stage of grcwth in the mystical life can one abandon meditation on the Mysteries of the Word made flesh. Jean Danielou has said:

Mysticism without the JI¥Stery, that is, the religious experience 'Which does not meet with Christ, is something 'Which remains uncertain.15

So also, mystery without JI¥Sticism, that is, the Christian faith 'When it does not become prayer and inwardness, is in danger of becoming formalism.

The genuine mystic doesn't withdraw' from the connnmion of believers; he doesn't cut himself off from the Mystical Body. He knc:Ms hew to in teriorize in the deepest :i;ossible way the mysteries experienced in the liturgy. The liturgy itself is the vehicle of a genuine mystical value.

Basil Zenkovsky has written:

I don't identify liturgical life with JI¥Stical life as sudl; but, when we do celebrate the liturgy, we pass along a path which is purely mystical, and this JI¥Stical experience is saretimes rrore intense and rrore profound than the type of mystical experience which can take place outside the context of the liturgy .16

For his part, Jean Danilou says:

The JI¥Stj.cal state in its ineffable reality consists pre cisely in being the synthesis between these two apparent ly contradictory elements -light and darkness.17

The JI¥stical life makes the Christian pass through the crucible

of death and life contained in the Paschal :Mystery, which is celebrated in the liturgy. This means a personal appropriation at depth of the eystery-states of Christ. Without this bond between JI¥Sticism and litur gy, the authentic liturgy would fold up and collapse. We would easily

58

fall into the ritualisrn of the mystery religions, where the important thing was the correct execution of the ritual action.It's the mysticalelement which makes it possible to have a deep encounter with God at the very heart of the ritual action and ecclesial prayer.18

The experience of rronastic tradition shc:Ms us that the highest type of TI¥Stical experience can be had within the very context of the liturgical action. Let's listen to cassian:

Someti.Jres while I'm chanting a psalm verse, I'm cast in-to this prayer of fire.Again, it's someti.Jres the rrelodious voice of one of the brethren which rouses souls from their torpor•••19

We could also quote St.Gertrude of Helfta. Host often it was during

the celebration of the Eucharist that she had her raptures.

'l'he nnre this union with Christ grows at the heart of the liturgical action, the nnre contemplative does the liturgy become . This contempla tion represents the interior aspect of the liturgy rendered to perfection; and in no way can we make an adequate distinction between this contempla tive experience and active participation. Let's not forget that we are called to celebrate the mysteries ''with the same mind which we have in· Christ Jesus" (Phil 2:5). Charity -that gift poured out in our heartsby the Spirit -has got to be corrprised in the act of worship; only then does worship acquire its full value. The action is reciprocal:the in tensity of love gives the worship its value, and the act of worship helps increase the degree of charity. We see the connection: liturgy and in terior or Ilo/Stical contemplation.

St.John of the Cross, who was such a great master of the nystical life, had an ecclesial conternplation, centered on Christ, and nourished by the sacraments. Taking into account the historical context and themilieu in which he lived, his biographers assure us that his life of con ternplation found its center in the celebration of the Eucharist, wherehe received outstanding graces. The Bl. Sacrament was for him

"all his glory, all his satisfaction, surpassing all the things of earth".

For John of the Cross, there aren't two lives, the one being devoted to contemplation, and the other to liturgical prayer.Rather, the liturgy

My s tica l Lif e and Pascha l Mys tery 59

itself springs f rom the sources of oontemplation, and gives us access to a deep It¥Stical life -provided that we kn.cM hav to make our CMn

the riches of the sacrarrent, and to live f ran them in an authentic man ner. In his comnentary on Jesus ' triumphal entcy into Jerusalem, St.John of the Cross shavs the result of a liturgy without interior love:

IConsider] • ..the description of that feast which they made for His .ajesty when he entered Jerusalem. 'Ihey received him with songs and with branches, and the IDrd wept; for their hearts were very f ar renoved f rom him and they paid him reverence only with outward adornments and signs. We may say of them that they were making af estival for themselves rather than f or God . 20

For his part, Hans Urs von Balthasar said:

'..rhose who work to assimilate the divine word oontained in the liturgy, in their prayer and oontemplation, are laboring to attain a f ull spiritual personality found ed upon the Church and sacraments as they actually are. It is to this end that Church and sacraments are or dained, and such men.;• anned with the "sword of the Spirit" , are capable of going forth to do the work of Christ in the world. 21

dl Characteristics

In the present terrestrial state, the II¥Stical experience is

structured within the ensemble of the sacraments; but what is its CMn proper and original point?

It is true, writes A. Ieonard , that II¥Stical knavledge oonnally takes its rise from the sacraments , and that it develops within the setting of \\Drship, and that itcan even f ind therein -as experience shCMS in the case of the Eucharist -its peak rrorrents; but neither the sacrarrents nor _.worship set limits to the horizon of It¥Stical knavledge. The wish to enclose the whole of nusti cism within the bolll1ds of worship -and the sanE remark applies to the reading of the Bible -would not onlymean a basic misunderstanding as to the specif ic originali ty of II¥Sticism, but would turn into barriers and outer limits those pathways which open out upon the depths ofGod. 2 2

60

The mystical experience errerges beyond all that by means of a i;x:>int which penetrates into the abyss of God. This is its essential i;x:>int, its vei:y heart. Charity makes i;x:>ssible a oontact with God

without need of any intenrediary . The wisdom which flavs fram thischarity will make it J;X)Ssible to taste God: "Taste and see hON

good the Lord is."(Ps 33:9)

He.re it is no longer reflection which is called for, but passivity under the infused light of the Spirit.As

Jacques Maritain wrote:

The proper light of infused contauplation derives only from the ardor of love shining in the night.23

An extrerrely keen consciousness makes it possible to experience this divine presence which takes i;x:>ssession of tl-ie entire being.This is the climate or abrosphere of a truly evangelical conterrplation.This is the corrmunion of which St.John speaks :

That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellavship with us; and our fellavship is with the Father and with his Son JesusChrist. - I Jn 1:3

'Ihis knavledge of God -a knc:Mledge "which is eternal life" - has to be understcxxl in the semitic rneaning of the term, as requiring the note of experience. St.Paul will give expression to this experience: He who is united to the lord becares one spirit with

him. -I Cor 6:17St.John of the Cross will make this comrent:

The soul that is united and transfonred in God breathes God in God with the sarre divine breathing with which God, while in her, breathes her in himself•••And the.re is no need to wonder that the soul should be capable of aught so high; for since God grants her the favor of attaining to being deifonn and united to the fust Holy Trinity, wherein she becares God by participation, hav is it a thing incredible that she should perfonn her -work of un derstanding, knowledge and love in the Trinity, together with It, like the Trinity Itself, by a node of participa pation, which God effects in the soul herself?

-Spiritual Canticle Clst version) xxxviii,

3And elsewhere:There are natures in one only spirit and

one only love of God .

j

a

Mystical Life and Paschal Mystery 61

The ieystics wanted to live and express the aspiration of every human being: liberty in love.

At the conclusion of his long study on St. John of the Cross, G. Morel wrote:

If there is one lesson left us by the fi¥Stics , it is to recall that, when we revert to the universal origin, God alone is the :rreasure of each , precisely because God is without measure • • •To give oneself in tine to the pc:Mof Love - this is the f undamental human experience.

And Jean Daniel.cu says:Natural fi¥Sticism depends on a technique of inwardness , so that it is by his avn effort that man f inally reach es the goal, 'Whereas the Christian It¥Stical experienceis essentially that of gif t to which we nrust open our selves but 'Which utterly sw:passes all that man could ev er cone to grasp by his ONn powers.25

In c=•. perspective such as this, there's nothing nebulous or impre

cise. Christ is able to give a knavledge of God and of his Mystery. On

several occasions St. John of the Cross will cite this passage ·frcm Exodus 33:20 :

You cannot see Ito/ f ace; for man shall not see :rre and live.

In the Spiritual Ccmticle, the Saint will say:

The lof ty caverns are the lof ty and high and deep llo/Steries in the wisdom of God 'Which are in Christ • • •And thus there are great depths to be f athaned in Christ. For he is like an abundant mine with many recesses containing treasures,of which, for all that :rren try to f athcm them, the end andbottcm is never reached.

-Spiritual Canticle xxxvi, 2 and 3

When Philip asked for a revelation of the Father , Jesus answered:

Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not knavTIE , Philip? He 'Who has seen TIE has seen the Father.

- Jn 14:9

Thus , through the Christ of histoxy we have access to the Father.The soul of the Ito/Stic who nourishes himself at the source of the sacra nents sees the Father revealing himself to the soul in the Son.

62

In order to atta:in to this God 'Who is transcend.ant and yet, at the sane tine, so very personal, we shall see, as a result of thisstudy, that as two-fold dynamism is necessary: one of a canmunal nature, the liturgy; the other rrore personal, TI¥Sticisro.

'!his participation in the life of God is not de-limited si.nply bya doctrinal expression. It has looked for ways of express:ing itself - ways which oot only have a pedagogical value, but which also have to be:instrurrents for the transmission of lif e and salvation. This functionof vehicle will be f illed by synbolisro.

S e c o n d P a r t

S Y M B O L A S E X P R E S S I O N

A PIDBLEM OF EXPRESSIOO'

It would be rash to go on speak.mg about TI¥Stical experience andTI¥Ste;r:y without paus:ing to ref lect at greater depth on the means of expression which is :involved. Though there is certainly an elenentof the 11secret11 :in the If¥Stical lif e and :in the .Myste;r:y of God ,

this "secret" is not :in OPJ:X>Sition to open .manifestation, but rather

demands it • • •The deeper the secret lies, the nore need there is for corrm.mica tion.

Ap G. Morel expresses it:

Love is at one and the sane tine interior and exterior,26 eternally mak:ing the surrender of its eternal intimacy.

S:ince it 's a question of love :in the TI¥Stical experience as well as in the rnyste;r:y of God 'Which is the object of this experience, we can easily understand this need to m:lke oneself understocxl, to p:mr oneself out, to be one with the other. If God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, it was :in order to unite as perfectlyas possible the div:ine and the human :in a s:ingle Person: Jesus Christ.

But doesn 't it seem po:intless to want to express the :inexpressible?

All the sane, b"'le nore love is at work, the nore it becomes clear that

t.y stica Z Prayer and Pascha l, My stery 63

it pertains to the very essence of the It,: stery to manif est itself .

Since VJOrship has got to express and actualize man 's rel.ationto the Inf inite, it can 't simply assurre reality in all its eartJiy and profane brutality. i\7orship has to modif y this reality, "give it a midway form which can enable man to come f orth fran his exclusively terrestrial sphere, and which can also

represent the divine." 27 This

special, original node of reality, which is more than reason by itself , is the s y m b o 1.

G. .Morel writes :

The symbol is itself based on reason, and has nothing to do 'vith arbitrary llnitation or with any kind of "as if ": it is even the only expression , the only possible explication of the Mystery. It 's t.. ough symbols that the Peal really manif ests itself . 2 B

We shall place ourselves especially at the level of religious experience. Te:rms taken in their proper sense cannot adequately express this grasp of the transcend.ant. nan is bound up with matter , and itis there, then, that he has to look for his :rreans of expression. About this, Fr. Schille.beeckx ·wrote the following:

The v.urld of matter is, as it were, the f ield of ex perience within which rnan f inds and cones to himself as a spirit-in-the-'!tDrld. Bodiliness is t.'.lus caught up into a specif ically human , f ree, and purposef ul activity .• .The material 'i.vorld is , in a certain sense, the means by 'Which man f ulf ills himself as a person, and consequently it is in the material w:irld ti1at man expresses his developing personality . 29

I.SYMBOLISM

l} The Syrcbol in Itself

Attenpts have been made throughout the course of th.e centuries to explain what synioolism is; but symbolism hasn 't always been given t.tie same rreaning by everyone. At one and the same tline it was an occasionf or conf usion , but also of enrichment. I.a.lande wrote this:

The word "sy.rrbol11 cxmes fran the Greek symbo Zon , which is a sign of recognition made up of b.;o halves of a broken object brought together again; later on, it canes to nean any sign , token , stamp, mark , pass-word .• • 3O

64

At the point of departure we f ind a note of convention; this seems to be the f irst historical aspect brought to light: the

object was cut in two; and it was only the reunion of the two pieces whichconstituted the symbol in its totality. In this wa:-..r we have sorrethingvery rich, an expression of a human action and a personal sentirrent: a f riendship, a hospitality pact, a contract agreed upon .• .Scripture gives us , arrong many ot.l.ier instances , the following account of 'Ibbit (according to the Greek text) :

"What sign of recognition shall I give him, so that he may believe me and return rre the money?" Tobit asked his f ather. Then Tobit the f ather answered Tobit the Son : "We exchanged signatures on a note; I cut it intwo, so that each of us oould have a half . I took one 31of the halves, and gave him the other with the rroney. "

Getting back to the primitive :rreaning of symbol, this has the ideanot only of sign , but of cc:mron agreenent and reoognition. The syrrbol is "an ensemble 'INhich aims at expressing :rretaphysical life, the meetingof the Absolute with the contingent 11

• 32

The symbol is a sort of sign , but every sign isn 't a synibol.

Con trary to certain signs 'INhich are knONn prior to or subsequently

to the reality signif ied, the symbol gives and unc.ersta..11ding both of the sign and of the reality symbolized in one single grasp of the spirit, inone and the same act. Here we touch upon an essential point about the syni:x:>l. Let 's go deeper into it, and consider t.11.e distinction betvleen allegory and symbol. Fr. de Lubac wrote:

The dif f erence between 71llbol and allegory is like thedif f erence between myth and rhetoric, or poetry and litera ture. To the f irst we assign an intuitive character , while we recognize in the second a discursive operation. The tenn itself - "allegory" -evokes abstraction, superf ici ality , f rigidity , 'Vhereas the term "synbol" evokes wannthof f eeling, a vital link, ontolQ:Jical weight. 33

If there is of ten a oonf usion between the two, this is

because allegorical elE:nEnts are so:rretimes mixed up with the expose of a sym bol. While the symbol tran.."'.icends all concepts, the allegory attempts

to translate ooncepts into images. Allegory can bring us to a veritable experience, but it always remains sarrething extrinsic to this experience.

My stical 'Prayer a:nd Pascha l Myster y 65

On the contrary, the synbol is situated at the level of intuition, and it leads to the experience only because it proceeds from the ex perience. It tries to induce dialogue, and bears within itself both "the neaning and the path to the meaning". Jean Baruzi wrote:

The true symbol directly adheres to the experience.

34It is not just the figure or image of the experience.

Anterior to all reasoning, the symbol proceeds to a direct grasp of the reality. As Baruzi says,

The symbol demands that we no nore try to express the image by ItEans of the idea, than that we tr.t to express the idea by ItEans of the image.Rather, the symbol flavs from an adhering of our being to a f onn of thought which exists in itself. 35

There is, in this profound intuition, an affective content which renders all the nore difficult any clear translation of the experience itself. So we ought not to think of trying to find a fonn of expression in order to translate some previously conceived experience: the expression of a symbol is spontaneous, and it's in and through this expression that the poet becomes conscious of his experience.

In a 'WOrk such as that by St.John of the Cross, we can't canplete ly exclude allegory; it has its own role to play. As Fr.de Lubac says,

A. purely personal meditation can consist of nothing but pure symbol. But religious sy.rnbolism, if it has anythingto do with an objective tradition, is necessarily doctrinal. It is a "theologica poetria" (John Scotus Eriugena), which carmot avoid being nore or less didactic. This obliges itto find some kind of allegorical expression. 36

It can't be :maintained that there were same Jl¥Stics or poets who wanted to minimize the role of reason, and passed themselves off as being anti-intellectual. Jacg:ues Maritain expresses with clarity the two-fold function of understanding:

neason has a life which is at one and the same time deeper and less conscious than its logically

articulated life••• 'Ihere is not only a logical reason, but also, and anterior ly to it, an intuitive reason.37

66

2) Language and Symbol

In its metaphysical meaning , symbolism has in itself a :rreaning which is very precise, and nost certainly marks one of the lof tiest

fonns of language, that especially of God with man , and of man with God.

Understanding the symbolism of the mystic or the poet neans f inding oneself in a situation analogous to that of the authors, and being able to experience in oneself what the symbolic language conveys to us. In his prologue to the Spirituai Ca:ntiefo, St. John of the Cross

tells us:The Holy Spirit cannot express the abundance of his meaning in cam:ron and vulgar tenns , so he utters myster ies in strange f igures and similitudes .• •

Mystical wisdan (which canes through love, whereof the present Stanzas treat} needs not to be carrprehended distinctly in order to produce love and af fection in the soul; it is like to faith, whereby we love God without canprehending him.

The synbol makes possible a re-creation of the experience within the reader . It gives access to man 's deepest intuitions. Despite the "non-discursive kncMledge" technique of the WJrld of symbols in making one 's CMn experience well up in a conscious f ashion, contact with

the Ir!YStics and with the liturgy can becane that very occasion for stirring up that which is latent in one 's being. This deep personal reality tends to express itself as a means of graving in intensity.

Liturgical symbolism \l\Orks in this way, too, but in a manner yet nore profound. The sacraments are bearers of the grace of salvation , and the symbols which are used Jllake living at the level of the whole person the reality which is made present by means of the Spirit. J.P ..Manigne writes:

Inasmuch as it is symbolic, the Poetics of Faith culminates in the language of the sacraments • • •The sacrament is the corner stone of the Poetics of Faith, because in it we experience absolute camrunion, the..

fulf ilhrent of our sense

nature in action and \l\Ord, and that ccmnunication 'Which is possible between men; we draw f rom the synil::xJl a taste for a poetic activity of inf inite scope, whia.11. tends to the revelation of the entire universe in the unif ying rite .• .

Mystical Life and Paschal Mystery 67

In virtue of one of its aspects, sacramental syrnbo lisn transports us tONards the spiritual reality of salvation; in virtue of its other aspect, it teaches us how to dwell here below on earth, and find here our proper place and the meaning of our existence.SB

In this way, the baptismal waters flCMing over the head of the newly baptized make his flesh and spirit share in the grace of purifi cation, and in the grace of death to sin and of new life in Christ.Better than any kind of conceptual approach, water provides a language which best evokes that divine action which transfonns the person.Thisis no less true for the other symbols of the liturgy.39

Here we have a question to ask: C"..ouldn't the realities expressed by Scripture, mystics and poets in symbolic language be expressed in the same manner by ordinary or speculative language? Wouldn't it be a mat ter simply of pure subjectivity, of a taste or a personal aptitude as regards the expression of one's CM.n

consciousness?

We claim, rather, t.h. at this sort of exigency derives from the reality expressed, and not just fran the subject. "Any such reality thus ex pressed is grasped in its oneness with the individual existence of theperson who experiences it." 40

Speculative knCMledge can thrc:M light on this personal, existential note of the individual. But the grasp of this reality in itself can be effected only by rreans of an affective connotation, because what is being rranifested is precisely a personal, individual experience.Nav, this af fectivity, insofar as it has its avn proper characteristics, can't be grasped by the intellect. The intellect "can classify tendencies and canmake distinctions between one tendency and another; but it can never ex-press that which

i.s UIU..que i.n any gi.ven persona1 erroti' on." 41

St.John of the Cross tried as best he could to write a ccmnentary on his Jlo/Stical poems; but these texts of poetry retain

their primacy as expressions of the experience undergone by the Saint. The transcendanceof God, "which admits of canparison with nothing else whatsoever",

42 de

mands this recourse to syrrbolism.I entered in ·-I knew not where - And, there remaining, knew no nore, Transcending far all human lore.43

68

The symbol tries to transl.ate the eysterious link between the

subject and the reality experienced. And, as Fr. Vidal writes ,

The symbol of fers itself in function of an act of union, as an aesthetic, rroral, nystical stimulus , as a disavc::Mal of mere reason. 44

3) S ynOOli sm and the f o srros

If human language is sanething material, this is because it's so intimately bound up with matter. Victor Hugo wrote that:

Everything in the inf inite says something to someone;a thought f ills the proud tumult to the full. God did not create a noise without giving the Word a role to play therein. 45

So also Claud.el:

N:>thing is cx:mplete in itself ; all is drawn f ran with in itself , f ran the outside by the vacuum, delineated1¥' its absent fonn, as each trait is detennined bythe others.

Nothing remains closed in upon itself ; an opening outwards is

absolutely necessary for sw:vival or for really living to the full ex tent of one 's being. in the present m::irent.The language of symbolismis wholly open upon the contingent universe; and frcm that vantage· point it turns itself ta.Yards the Absolute and the Transcendant.

There's no question of creating a second universe divorced frcm the f irst one. Rather , human language attempts to evoke the :rrearringof this natural universe which leads to the world beyond, which is· eternal; this is the natural universal.

Synbolisn starrps and marks man 's interpretation of that matter which he takes up ever:y day in his two hands and which he treads under foot. G. Morel writes:

'!he passage fran nature to the Absolute calls for a :rreta pi.ysical · conversion, apart f rom which every reality be cares an impasse, an d:>stacle , a contradiction to whichno reply can be given. 46

For animals incapable of st:eech, there can be nothing synbolic in the universe. Matter , then, is mt syrrbolic simply as it is in itself ,

My stica l, Li f e and Paschal, My ster y 69

but only through, and by maans of language. We here see man 's role in creation. He is the head of everything; his is the pc::Mer to be master in all truth. It is man 's word which re-vivifies matter; and it is bybeing re-defined by man that this world attains to its highest expression. Nor is this world fashioned by man 's language any less real than the fhysical rld taken by itself.A higher fo:rm of life is conferreq on it. The mystic and the f()et can truly transform this world and give it a new fhysiogna.T!y. Matter thereupon lets appear that divine inprint which the Creator stamped upon it when ti.Ire first began. "The Spirit of God brooded over the waters" (Gen 1:2 ) . The synbol can unite in their specific differences God, man, and the universe.

The synbol, then, is extremely important, in the activity of the hlllllail spirit.

It translates a hmna.n situation into cosrrological tenns, and cosrrological situations into human tenrs. M:>re pre cisely, it reveals the solidarity between the structures of human existence and the structures of the cosrros.4 8

Man doesn't feel that he"s alone and isolated in the universe.

His deepest life is fomed by the sum total of reality.

In this perspective, this global view, the principle of unity in the cosrros is Christ, the Kyrios . Every created being "bends the kneeat the narre of Jesus".According to the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians, Christ holds absolute primacy over the whole

rld (cf. Eph J.:4 f f ; CoZ 1:15-1?) . Because the Principle, Christ, is the center of cohesion and hanrony, the world gathers itself up in him and bec:x:tres a cosrros, an ordered universe.

J. Huby writes:Whoever would have a sudden glinpse of the ·wh.ole universe, past present, and future, would see all things ontological ly de:pendent on Christ, and finding their ultimate meaning and intelligible content only in him and by means of him.?!:9

And in her :r;x:Jetic neditations on the hymns of the Divine Office, Aaneliana Lehr writes:

WU.le the Greek, enlightened. by the natural light of his country, and by the higher light of the wisdan possessed by the ITDSt illustrious geniuses of his people, alreadyknew that he was living in a world of synbols, we ourselves have had px>ef of this only from the nanent that the Author

70

of all symbols, the Logos, became f lesh, and set up his tent in our midst. Fran the time that he dwelt am::m.g us in a human body which was visible and tangi ble, as in a tent, the nature of all things created,of all things material, has been revealed to us in its entirety. 'Ihe Man Jesus Christ appeared as THE synix>l in that universe of symbols which he, as Logos, had created. 50

By reason of his intuitions about reality , man learns ha-v to pass beyond his personal situation and to open himself outwards to

th.e objective world which surrOllllds him. That which is universal be corres easier to grasp. The syrobol makes the present ccrnrmme with the

past and with particular situations; and these situations thereupon

take on· a lil'liversal value. The synbol breaks down the barriers of tine and of space, and opens outwards upon the inf inite. But for this to happen, one must experience the synbol at depth, and knav ha-v to under stand its value in all its fullness. Acoording to Mircea Eliade, "to transfonn one 's personal, individual experience by means of symbolism, is the equivalent of opening oneself to the

Spirit."

To reoognize sy.nbolism means to penetrate into the danain of the

sacred. When .man was still in a primitave stage of evolution, "the real was pa.rt and parcel of the sacred. 11

As· Mircea Eliade once nore says:

The synbol not only reveals a structure of the real or even a dinension of existence; it simultaneously invests human existence with its rreaning. This is why those sym bols which ref er to ultimate reality establish oonjointly existential revelations for the man who can decitfler their message.

Opening as it does up:m the universe, the symbol has as its charac teristic po ZyvaZence . At one and the sanE ti,me it can express multiple meanings on dif ferent registers. This is why it 's so dif f icul.t..to grasp a syrobol in all its richness. It would be an error to wish to draw forth f ran a given symbol one only rreaning, and to declare this one rreaningthe primary, fillldanEntal one. This 'WOuld risk losing the thousand dif ferent f acets which the syrobol should reveal to us. There is a real sol idarity between the dif ferent levels of reality; and, in practice, dis cursive reason by itself cannot i;e.rceive reality in all its hanrony.

Mystical Li f e and Pascha l My stery 71

Man who himself is a syrrbolic being cannot help but express him self and bec::are conscious of his own experience in the dircension of cosmic symbolism. St.Gregory the Great explains Mk 16:15 by stating the tradition of the Greek Fathers:

By the words "every creature", it is man himself who is designated. For man has sanething in a:mron with every creature; with rocks he shares existence; with trees, life; with animals, feeling; with angels, knc:Mledge. And if it is true that man possesses this character which is comron to everything created, this is be cause he is truly in sc::ne sense "every creature".51

Symbol, then, as an integrating part of man 's life, situates this

"shada.v' of Gerl" in its true place in the universe.

II.MAN Is EXPERIENCE OF SYMEOL

According to his milieu, period of history, anC. culture, man has reacted differently when faced with the WJrld of syn'Dols. Let's nav study this question briefly throughout the course of history, so as to better understand our own present situation.

al Archaic T im e s

We 've already seen that, in the thought of primitive man , the real is easily confused with the sacred. In a perspective such as this , whatever has being is considered as the creation of the gods or of the all-pc:Merful spirits.It seems that every penetration into the world and into the organization or structure of the world will also be part and parcel of the sacred, and will fonn part of the religion of a primitivepeople. 52

In archaic times, symbolism is identified with an ontology which has not yet arrived at the stage of being systematized . The vocabulary has not yet been shape:i up or arranged in logical order. But the ex pression of truth is no less true and profound.

In order to illustrate this point, take the following example giv en by Mircea Eliade:

72

'Ihe tenns which express concepts of transcendance and liberty are f oUna relatively late in b11e histo- ry of philosophy. And nevertheless , in pr.imitive cultures, numerous It¥ths and symbols bearing on the magic f light and ascension into heaven are used to signify these spiritual experiences. The magicf light expresses the f act that lxx:lily weight has been abolished, and that an ontological change has been ef f ected in the human being itself . 53

b) The Middle Ages

In the f eudal period, man had evolved; he lived in the midst of a "forest of symbols". In social lif e, a s-ymbolic gesture always accanpanied a sale or a purchase. A person might , on such occasions,

have a written doet.nnent to specify the conditions in detail; but this

was only an accessory mich sel:Ved as a rnarory-aid for later times.

The literature of the Middle Ages enables us to grasp the mecha nism of the symbol in the lif e of men of that period. In the

tales of knightly chival:ry , there 's always a search or some kind of "quest".This search can be notivated by dif f erent reasons; but a s-jillbolic aspectis always part of it.

Medieval man appears to us as puerile, of ten divorced f ran reality. Neverb'leless, he arbraced reality itself . Tm1ards the 12th century , va rious writings describe the habits of animals, the nature of plants and stones. The entire universe is conceived of as an ensanble of signs and images which ccmnunicate theological truths. Whether real or .imaginary,

beings and the manner in which they acted only repeated in a sort of

rosmic ''ranance'' the one true History -that of the Incarnation, the Redanption, and the Church. The Bible became the means through which the universe and life were perceived and experienced.

It can 't be contested that men of the Middle Ages knew har.r to read on several dif f erent levels at one and the same time. The impor

tance of the symbol became such that it f inally becarre the key to the

whole of medieval art , and gave birth to a fonn of plastic art which was wholly original.

Mysticai Life and PaschaZ Mys tery 73

The liturgy must have had a great vitality as regards the syrnl::ol ic elanent, since it in sane ·way imposed its CM1 proper m:xie of expres sion on the whole life of society. Daily life appeared as a reality which was wholly sacramental and liturgical.

c) T h e Ren a i s s a n ce

Towards the 14th century, allegory infiltrated into the world of symbols. In liturgy, an attanpt was made to find a symbolic valuein absolutely every minute detail, and one thus becane lost in an impene trable forest. A flair for the theatrical multiplied colors and scenes, but had little to do with the Myste:r:y being celebrated.

As Michel Foucault has dem:>nstrated so well in his studj, "I.es roots et ies choses" ("Words and Things"), for the renaissance man, "theworld was a bcok which had to be deciphered and interpreted in close con nection with the henneneutics of the Bible."

d) Mo d e m T im e s In the beginning of the 17th century, and especially under

the influence of Descartes, this sane "WOrld becarre the ooject of scientific rese:irch; its origin in matter was lost sight of, and it was oonsidered only fran the level of pure reason. As

Pierre Colin has written,

Fran that time onwards , rational thought was no longer able to consider the language of symbols

as anything but a stage in the pre-histo:ry of reason, according to a schema expressed, for example, in Auguste cante''s "law of the three stages of evolution".54

Since the 17th century, the language of science has gone on put ting greater and greater enphasis on itself, thus digging an ever-widen ing gulf between itself and therld of symbolism. Then man becanes conscious of his position relative to the cos:roos, and feels called to transfo:rm the rld by means of his CMn

work.

For present day man , nature no longer has the quasi-divine, "can-

pleted or perfected" character of past centuries.The relationship between man and nature more and more becanes a relationship Which is, under the influence modem teclmiques, explicitly historical:in its ensem-

74

ble, nature becares less and less directly re lated to man. This observation might be a banal one; but it nonetheless has its repercussions on man 's language in all the dif f erent spheres -in cluding that of religion. 55

But does our oonclusion really have to be that the language of sy:rrbolism is totally in opposition to modern civilization? Of course not! Man , frustrated as he so of ten is, is seeking all the more avid ly for contact with nature, with the mystery • • •This is behind

the es cape IIK:>vernent to the lakes, prairies , forests • • •

The mcx:lern mrld has to work , not to annihilate nature under the technical in one way or another , but to render it nore human , IIK:>re f a miliar; because the madern world will have see1in nature an authentic ccmnunion with God.

says:Writing about the mysticism of St. John of the Cross, G. I>brel

The paradoxical identif ication which the mystic recog nizes between God and nature is, in its proper mode or aspect, the paradoxical indentif ication between man and nature. Man can recognize the f act that Gcx:1 becx:mes f or man "the solitary , 't\1\'.X>d.ed valleys" (Spiroitual Canticle, Stanza D) , only if man also becanes these same "solitary , wooded valleys" • The meeting of God with man takes. place by means of , and within the world. 56

The Second Vatican Council asks fran Christians "an active, conscious participation in the liturgy" ; but this renewal will be attained only through a re-discovery of syrrbolism, and by means of a deep assimilation· of the reys teries of God experienced in and throu:rh these synhols. It was the prrposeof the f irst chapters of this work to make this clear. So we can nr::M

pass on to a IIK:>re detailed application of this principle.

T h i r d P a r tN I G H TF I L L E D W I T H L I G H T

St. Paul wrote to the Ranans : "If you oonf ess with your lips that Jesus is lord and believe in your heart that God raised him f ran the dead, you will be saved" (Rom 10 :9 ) . The ApJstle points out to us the fund.amen-

My stica l Lif e and Paschal Myster y 75

tal Orristian attitude required for us to attain our goal.

This is the Paschal Mystery lived at depth. :sut, precisely just what does the Paschal Mystery consist of? Hav can I assimilate it and live it with my mole being and to the end of my life? Hav can I make my life into a paschal life?

This third part of the present study will cry to give an answer to these questions. A night filled with light is waiting for us, so that we can bea:::me in all truth "the nev man".

I- Tc'lE PASCHAL MYS'IERY

a)Structure

The Faster preface proclaims the Paschal Mystery in these tenns :

By dying he destroyed our death;by rising he restored our life.

And the Liturgy of St.Basil says:

•••in order to fill all things with his being,he descended fran the cross into the kingdan of the dead, and he destroyed the pangs of death.On the third day he rose again,and cleared the path for all flesh -the path which leads to the resurrection fran the dead.

We here have all the elenents needed for us to understand the JI¥S

tery of our salvation realized by Christ on the cross.

Before all else, this is death -the genn of which we ourselves once introduced in us and in our human race by wanting to becane "like God". As the Fathers have so well explained, and St.Leo in cula.r, the God-Man had to die in order to slay death and be able to say with St. Paul,

Death is swallowed. up in victory. O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting? 57

For the first time, life canes forth fran death, death gives birth

to life.58 Here there's no question of a natural, simple process, as might be suggested by an overly literal interpretation of the parable of the "grain of wheat fallen into the ground". Moroover, when Christ rose fran the dead, it was

for ever, and not just for a certain period of time, as

76

when he raised Iaza.rus f ran the tanb • .

Above all else, Christ has gained sarething IlUlch nore than that which was his relative to his previous state:

God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus 'Vhan you crucif ied. 59

see the po.verf ul structure of the Mystery of Christ, who over cane death. This same structure of the Pasch of Christ is continued in each individual Christian. The Mystical Body of Christ has to attain to its perfect stature. Moreover, the litw:gical celebration of thisMystery is not just a sterile cc:mnaooration of past events. The celebra tion gives rise to a lif e-giving m:we:nent: that penetration by every newly baptized person into the night of Christ, for a death-lif e in the depthsof one's being -all of which is a "work of God" accanplished, according to the expression dear to Scripture, "with a strong hand, and with ann out stretched".

As Fr. Dur:rwell expresses it :We thus leam to what extent the world is nailed to the cross, and where the transfonnation of the world takes place: essentially in man himself . In Christ dead andrisen, the world has already been crucif ied, the cosmic 60u ri.ty realized, and the heavenly pavers put in subjection.

But let 's never forget that the Paschal Mystery is an indivisible whole. In the f irst centuries of the Church , when only the Paschal Vigil was celebrated, the over-all unity of the single M;{stery was nore

in evi dence.Dan Jean Gaillard writes:

Easter , the Pascha Domini, at that time consisted of a night watch passed in listening to the word of God and in praying in camon; it f inished with the eucharistic liturgy, and ef f ecterl t.". le transition f ran f ast to feast. The f ast which preceded the Vigil was itself an integral part of the Pasch. 61

Again, "the crucif ixion and the resurrection are less two separate events than a single Mystery with two faces or aspects. "

62

Mystica Z Li f e and Pascha Z Mystery 77

b} A Pel?sageThe death of Christ has never been separated f rom his

resurrec tion. Nevertheless , one element has been more stressed than the other , according to the interpretations of the v.urd in Hebrew, 1'Pascha" .Christine Mohimann tells us, in a heavily documented study , that the

f irst interpretation put the accent on the aspect of the passion, and was based on the typology of the Paschal Larrb. This was the J;X)pular ety.rrology which linked pascha with paskein (patior, I suf fer } . The second conception refers to a dif f erent interpretation of the Hebrew

word: diabasis , diabateria, tx>ans{;tus , the passing or passage of the Lord. This latter interpretation won out over the f irst at a rather ea,rly date. But even in the meaning of pas sio, there's that idea ofvictory and heavenly glory which f ollow af ter suf fering. 63

Dan Odo easel writes:If we want to give the Pasch its most intimate character, we have to say that it 's the passage f ran f ast to f east, a f rontier point, a passing beyond the line ofdemarcation which separates lif e f ran death, or better yet, this world fran the v.urld to cane. 6 4

The Fathers themselves base their af f innations on the Gospel, and St. Augustine gives the f ollowing ccmnentary on the passage f rom St. John:

Bef ore the feast of the Passover, Jesus , knc:Ming that his hour had cane to depart out of t.. s worldto the Father .• •This is the saire w:>rd pascha , which,as I have said , is translated into latin by tx>ansitus ... Behold the Pascha , behold the Transitus. Passage f rom where? passage to where? Unde et quo? Fran this w:>rld to the Father. This hope has been given to the nanbersin the Head; and they -no doubt about it -will 65f ollc:M along the same route by which the Head has passed.

As Oscar Cullmann , too, has remarked, in St. John 's perspective,the exaltation of Christ (on the cross} is already in sane sense his

exaltation in heaven. 66 Fr. Benoit takes the same approach:

When John speaks of the exaltation on the cross in tenns which evoke at the same time the idea of the heavenly ex altation, this does not mean that he misunderstands the burial and the resurrection, which he describes later on; rather , he simply has recourse to a striking theological foreshortening, so as to show that the cross ot7Christ is

the f irst stage of his heavenly glorif ication.

78

It was linportant, in vie.v of what is to follav/ that these two:i;oints be e:nphasized: the essential unity of the Paschal Mystery, and

the intrinsic bond between death and life. 68

1) I!z7 Means of Fa ith and the Sacraments

The Paschal Myste:ry is not just a simple pious mauo:ry of sanething past. It provides us , rather , ·with an orientation leading tc:wards a life mich is wholly paschal in character -the very Pasch of Christ shared inby an existence which has itself becane sacrif icial and paschal, in which man journeys tc:wards life in a death which he ex;:_:ieriences as the road leading to lif e." 69

This rreans a prof ound imitation of Christ; it ans plunging into his

kenosis , in order to return to his Father in heavenly glo:ry. Bishop Jenny stated it with his usual wannth of expression:

The Pasdlal Mystery means a ne.v appearing of the Lord, a parousia in the here and nCM of the present world, while we wait f or and hope for the f inal Parousia. This suns up the whole myste:ry of Christianity, the whole wonder of the Eudlarist: it 's in this incredible novement of thePaschal night-watch tc:wards the splendor of the risinj 70Sun that Christians understand and becane what they are.

By means of faith and the sacraments , each and eve:ry Christian enters into that f lCMing current of the death and lif e of Christ, which is his passing fran this world to the Father. A real knavledge of this Myste:ry

is bound up with the ensemble of the sacraments which are the authenticcult-expression of this Mystery. Baptism, oonf innation , and the eudlarist are, in particular , those sacraments whidi. make us enter directly into

the dynamism of the Pasch. 71

Nicholas Cabasilas wrote with regard to this:

You see, then, at what price true life passes into us through the intennedia:ry of the Savior 's death. As re.,. gards the ans by which we draw this lif e into our souls, it consists in our being initiated into the sac raments: the baptismal washing , the anointing with chrism, the meal at the holy table. It 's through our carrying out these sacred rites that Christ canes to us, adheres to us , and grCMS within us. He puts sin to death in us , pours into us his avn life and perfection, and makes us sharers in his victo:ry • • •We make our CMl1

his wounds , his pierced side, his death; as much as is possible, we interiorize them· within ourselves ..•72

Mystioa Z Life and l:aa.a'b.aZ Nztster y 79

This lived experience of sharing in the Mystecy of Christ ought to lead us on to a deep experience of Christ's own life, and to a deepening of the roots of our faith.

we 're united to the I.Drd in order to camume in his passion, in order to have part in his heroic charity, and in order to pass then with him to the new spiritual life•••This is why, at a vecy early date -doubtless even during the time of the apostles -the celebration of the Pasch took on the fonn of a night watch, of a mystical tine of waiting, accanpanied by a sacred fast which was nore or less strict and prolonged.73

2} In the Mystical Life

The Christian and the mystic would like to assimilate this life which is received in the sacrament. This first thing which the sacrament offers is death. Gaudium et spe s tells us that "It is in the face of death that the riddle of human

existence becanes rrost acute." 74

Death is first of all a physical happening which has

occasioned considerable discussion at present. We all see later in this study that, if we're to enter into the Paschal Mystecy of Christ,we have to put to death in ourselves everything opposed to life and resurrection. The mystic is the man who takes this death seriously, and who enters in to this death day after day by accepting it to the full:Quotidie morior .

Farl Ra..11.ner writes:

Death can be experienced within oneself only as the mani festation of the void and of our being bound up with sin, only as the obscurity of eternal darkness; and this is because the real order of thiD3's is the supernatural or der, fran which death ought to be excluded.75

"The mystic is familiar with death, because he is a man in love with life•••For the mystic, death is a pe:r:manent happening.Long ago he exorcised the frequently accepted illusion which identifies death onlywith its :i;:hysical context." 76 The mystic camumes in the death of Christ, that death Wiich leads, not to perdition or to sane sort of annihilation, but to life; for death itself becanes the seed of life.

The mystical life itself -that paschal life par exaeU enae -is an anticipation of death.

I

I

I

80

But the human elEIUent always retains a natural repugnance for physi cal death; and this is true even f or the man who tries to die to self daily while waiting f or that f inal manent which will tear away the thin web whidl still separates the world of f aith frcm that of vision.

St. Jahn of the Cross writes:

Even as a web is not so opaque and dense but th.at the light can shine through it , even so in this state of mystical union this bond appears • • •to be a very f ine web, since it is greatly spiritualized and enlightened and ref ined, so that the Divinity cannot but shine through it. ??

This death which is engendered by the mystical life is not a de

struction of the human structure. It 's rather a fullness , a plenitude in contrast to the limitations imposed on tl1at same nature wounded andWeakened by sin. The passing to eternal lif e, which death brings about, realizes this plenitude in an absolute, def initive fashion.

We can say with Karl Rabner:

Those who have died in the faith have "died in Christ" , not only because they have lived in Christ, but also because their death too has taken place in Christ. We can also say that death oonstitutes the culminating point of our appropriation of the work of salvation. ?B

1II. PASCHAL LIFE: NIGHT AND LIGHT

a) In the rasrnal NightI

That great Doctor of the Paschal Mystery, St. Augustine, makes us

enter into the deep meaning of this night of light which is the Paschal IVigil:But perllaps you are asking why we keep watch this night. It is not dif f icult to f ind a good answer. He who has given us the glo:ry of his name has also illumined this night. He to whan we say, "You shall illumine my dark ness" , µ:>urs forth his brightness into our hearts; and,just as our dazzled eyes oontemplate these shining torches , so also our enlightened spirits make us see the reason for so luminous a night • • ..And even if Christ ts .. beefy 'Were still

Mystical Li fe and Paschal Myster y 81

in the tarib during our night watch , and even if he had de ferred , the mcment of the resurrection , our vigil would retain its full meaning; because he has f allen asleepso that we might keep watch and be awake; he has died so that we might live. 79

Here we f ind the symbols of light and night, syrrbols which St. Au

gustine, in the same hanily , refers to the :rocment of creation, when dark ness covered the abyss and light sprang f orth out of darkness at the word of the Creator. A new creation appears under these oosmic and b.iblicalf igures of darkness and light. This is the whole Christian paradox: Mys tery of death and lif e. It 's in this night , too, that the Hebrews were

able to reach the haven of f reedan and salvation:

And there was the cloud and the darkness; and the night passerl without (the host of Egypt and the host of Israel) caning near the other all night. 80

Again, it 's during the night that the three-fold "Light of Christ" rings out, and all give thanks.

By grasping the :i.m,E:ortance of these two syrrbols in the oontext of the Paschal Vigil, we can truly understand the light-darkness themewhich provides the theological basis of the Gospel according to St. Jdm,and mich we find in the Prologue:

The life was the light of mm.The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcane it. 81

b) NIGH!'

ll Uni versal Sy:mbol The sy.ml:x)l of night, like its opposite syrrbol of day, is uni•

versal. It covers the entire universe. When day cxnes to an end, the whole

universe is sul:mitted to darkness; and this is a physical , oosmic :Eflenane non observed in all places f ran the earliest times. But night is also uni

versal in the sense of intensity; it attains to reality in its essence andexistence, and without further particular detennination. G. M:>rel tellsus:

When an Wi-vidual states that, when it cares to IIDrals, he no longer sees anything wrong, his statement is oor rect. He aoesn 't see. His oonscience is plunged in dark-

82

ness. But his conscience is only the expression of his yery being. To be in the night means to be de prived of the Presence. '!his is why night is situ ated at the highest level ••• of all syrrb:>ls.82

Beyond this night there is only that death whidl is either i;Xiysi cal death, or else metarflysical death, in virtue of which we pass fran symbolism to reality.Night expresses in an all-embracing manner nothing ness. When a man passes with Christ into the night, he descends into aa state of keno£;Jis , and he can see God as he is in all his fullness.Nightmakes all that is contingent disappear; it makes us strain to see the light.

2} Night as een by the Ancients and the Mystics

The symbol of night is an archetype, and there is no ooubt but that it belongs to the first rank of important symbols.The life of ancient man was closely bound up with the i;il.enanena of material nature. Water, air , earth, fire -these were understood as sacred forces precisely because of their non-objective aspect. Thus was born in ancient Egypt the cult of the sun. Van der I.eeuw writes:

Under the influence of the priests of Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, imposing sanctuaries were raised up to their god frcm as early as the first half of the third millenium before Christ•••We ascend to the foot of the obelisk alonga passage-way mich at first is quite soolber, then c:orrplete ly dark:this symbolizes the course of the sun at night; at the foot of the obelisk, we turn tc:Mards the East, and greet the rising of the victorious day star.83

In Christian mysticism, Pseudo-Denis had an exceptionally strong in fluence on the thought of the mystics.We Ofle to him the famous expression, "Pay of darkness". Other expressions also passed into the vocabulary of mystical theology: "silence nnre luminous than light", "darkness more lu minous than light", "superessential darkness which conceals all the light contained in thinJs created". 84

Henri Charles Puech has shCM.n, in his article,"La t ebre mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys", that the point of departure for this tradition of night is Philo of Alexandria:

Mysti-cc(l Life and Paschal Myster>y 83

In the writings of Philb the Fathers found not only the syrrbolism of the Exodus of the Hebravs out of Egypt asan itiner>wium mentis in Deum, but also a systenatic al legorization of the series of episodes of the Exodus, cul minating in the ascent and transf iguration of Moses on Mount Sinai. 85

The sy.rril::>ol is bound up with a particular experience. When we study closely the biography of St. John of the Cross, we f ind night presented as the life and expression of his CMl interior experience. The Sainthad a particular experience of night considered even as a physical entity. He loved the Spanish nights, and he found in them an elanent of contarpla tion and mystical experience. Fr . Juan Evangelista aff i:rms that he of ten saw St. John of the Cross pass "entire nights • ..at the windcw of his cell,

looking up at heaven." We knew, too, that he used to go with his canpanions

to pray in the setting of nature at night.

But if night has its cha:rm, it can also be sanething dreadful, atro

cious. It was in the midst of this terror that John of Cross experienced light. His CMl brethren in religion kept him jail ed for a Ill.lrrber of nonths in a prison cell in 'Ibledo. It was there that the Saint experienced hisworst suf ferings. But it was also there that love inf licted its deepest wound; and, in the midst of this pain, he canposed his poem about the Night:

Oh, noche, que guiaste,oh noche, a:rnaJ:>le mis que la alorada • • .

Oh, · night that guided me,Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,Oh , night that joined Beloved with lover, lover transfo:rmed in the Beloved!

In his biography of the Saint, Fr. Bruno, O.D.C. , writes:

Twice the dungecil was lit up by light as if it were day. 'Ihe supernatural brightness shone through the cracks of the door. 86

All that was experienced. It was in his CMl f lesh that the Saint came

to kncM' mat night means . G. Morel carrnents on this sojourn of the Mystic in the 'Ibledo dungeon, and explains its real meaning:

84

It was not by chance that the mystic experienced the trials of the dark night of the soul at the very time that he was plunged into the darkness of prison, or that he escaped f ran that prison af ter being set free f ran the l:xmds of the spiritual night. 87

We can here see the Paschal Mystery being experienced and lived at depth in the very heart of a human existence. This essay is meant to deal with precisely the wey the nwstic sees the Mystery as experiencedf ran within.

In order to express his mystical experience which took place during the night, St. John of the Cross oontinually referred to Scripture; in this he adopted the sane approach characteristic of the liturgy , which

also has recourse to Scripture.

The basic text is Exodus 33:18-23:

Moses said, "I pray thee, show me thy glory .• •And the Lord said, "Behold , there is a place by ne mere you shall stand upon the rock; and while !Io/ glory passes by I will put you in a clef t of the rock , and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my f ace shall not be seen."

The Mystical Doctor cited or carmented on this text no less than

eight dif f erent times. There is , however , a clear cx:mnection between

this passage and Plato's text, where the man stands at the bottan end of the deep cavern. God covers the man with his hand, and the Saint describes this gesture as follows:

Whensoever God camumicated himself intimately, he appeared in darkness. 88

Saint John also uses as his basis all the night syrrbolism of Exodus and Deuteronany. In his own f ashion he translates the biblical acoounts which he envisages especially f ran the aspect of their symbolism:

Faith was foreshadc:Med by that Cloud which divided the children of Israel and the F.gyptians men the f orn:er '\Nere about to enter the Red Sea.• •A wondrous thing itis that, though the Cloud was dark , it should give lightto the night.

My stica Z Lif e and Pascha Z Mystery 85

J. Vilnet writes:

Saint Jahn of the Cross is so sure there was an authen tic It¥Stical experience in the Old Testanent, that he does not hesitate to write that the expression of the passive purifications in the dark night of the senses "fills every page of Scripture"; and he adds further, "particularly in the psalms and the prophets". 90-91

Three great Old Testament figures in particular attract the atten tion of the Mystical Doctor: Job, Jere:niah, and Isaiah.

Job sp:mt whole nights suffering and waiting for God in anguish of

soul:Like a hireling 'Who looks for his wages, so I am allotted JIPnths of emptiness,and nights of misery are apportioned to me. When I lie dCMn I say, "When shall I arise?" But the night is long,and Iam full of tossing till the dawn• • • 92

Night here indicates both aspects -the physical and the mystical.

The two levels criss-cross, exactly as in the life of St.Jahn o;f the Cross.

God also makes his light stream forth, and he reveals his spiritual

gcxXls when the darkness has been driven awey:He uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light.93

God penetrates the very depth of the heart, and brings to light everything which until then had been buried and hidden.

Jeremiah is the prophet who provides the Mystical Doctor with the symbols of the trials preparato:ry to divine union. Jeremiah is in a spe cial way the man of God's transcendence; he is linked rrore with night than with day. It's especially in the Lamentations that the Saint draws uponthe Prophet's thought. He cites extracts f ran the third l.am:mta.tion around a dozen times. In the Dar k Night , he feels a profound ccmnunion with the soul of the Prophet, as if passing

through the sane night experienced by Jeremiah :I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath;he has driven and brought meinto darkness without any light••• he has ma.de me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.9 4

86

In this text, Jolm of the Cross sees God 's direct action in a man plunged into the heart of darkness. This is an ixrIEortant text. '!'he Dark Night also quotes this passage:

'l'hou hast wrapped thyself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. 95

This Cloud appears not only as a necessary neans by which the Light reaches man (as in the case of Moses) , but as something which separates God and man, and canes between then. '!his is a passing trial, but a cruel one; it ends with dawn.

Isaiah. St. John of the Cross also makes use of c. few' texts in which Isaiah has recourse to the synbol of night:

My soul yearns for thee in the night. 96

This brief text can easily be linked with the text of Job quoted above.

Night is identif ied with misery. Fran the depths of his misery , man criesto his God.

Another text from Isaiah cited by St. John of the Cross:

They will gravl over (the people) on that day,like the roaring of the sea.

And if one look to the land, behold, darkness and distress;

and the light is darkened by its clouds.

In the writings of St. Jolm, this text takes on a mystical nean.ing, and designates the darkness which f ills the soul not yet wholly purif ied.

These three great biblical f igures who lived in darkness folla-ied Christ in his Paschal Mystecy; f or Christ had to pass through death in or der to arrive at light and life with his Father.

If there is darkness, there is also light which follavs darkness. AsG. MJrel says:

The Fia.t 7:ux! of Genesis is a point of ref erence of capital importance, since union of love neans man 's true birth • • • The dialectical identity between day and night is af f irned in two verses of Psalm 138: "If I say , 'Let only darkness cover me ' .•even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee." Darkness and light, then , are identical. 9 8

sin.

----------------- -- -- --- -- ---

My stical- Lif e and Paschal Myster y 87

In the Living F Zame , John of the Cross ca:rments at length on the dazzling vision which opens the prophecy of Exechiel.99We can never

make a complete separation between the symbolien of night and that of light: the two call each for the other, just as in the Paschal Mystery,

Life springs f orth f ran death.

The Saint quoted especially Old Testam:mt texts. This doesn 't mean that he ignored the New Test.anent, which, in this respect is more sd:>erin its :ina.ge:ry. He gave a camentary on St. Paul's text: "What f ellCMship has light with darkness?" 100 Darkness here indicates evil and

202

The Ascent of Mount CaPme Z also ref ers to the text fran St. Peter 's Secondletter, where Scripture is conpared to "a lamp shining in a dark place, tmtil the day dawns a,nd the rrorning star rises .• • " _1° 2

By no ireans , then, was it the Mystical IX>ctor 's imagination whichswept rum CJ!day when he described bis interior experiences. Rather , he simply

_ :made use of the biblical sy.mbols already used by the sacred writers when

they wanted to reveal God and his Mystery.

Since liturgy, in its tum, oonstantly draws on biblical synbolism,

we can nCM see the new light whidl :reysticism can throw on litw:gical life.The mysticism of St. Jdm of the Cross thus proves to be a choice source of material ;for a study of this topic.

c) Structure of the Night 1) A Passage

In order to disoover the true structure of night, let 's study the night of the spirit , in which God acts directly in the soul , and in which the darkness is deepest , and dawn is about to break . St. John of the Cross gives us a description of the essence of this night:

This dark night is an inf lowing of God into the soul , which purges it f ran its ignorances and imperfections, habitual, natural and spiritual, and which is called by cx:mtemplatives infused oontarplation, or mystical theolo g'j . Herein God secretly teaches the soul and instructsit in perfection of love, without its doing anything, or understanding of what manner is this inf used contempla tion. Inasrruch as it is the loving wisdan of God, God produces striking ef fects in the soul, f or , by purging and illumining it, he prepares it for the union of love with God. 103

88

The entire night of the spirit is only a passage, a long, painful journeying of the soul towards an experimental kn:Jwledge of God.

Let 's take the subject at its starting point, Which , for Jahn of the Cross , means sareone in the category of those Who are making pro

gress. Two categories of inperf ections have got to disappear: the one of the psychologi cal order , the other of the noral order. In the psy dlological order , we note with the Saint:

Timidity, dullness, divided attention, our incapacity to go beyond narrcM concepts -all these are proof of our weakness every bit as much, if not nore, than the sttll indocile and mu:uly movanents of our sensual appetite. 104

In the noral order, we tre concerned with the roots of our sensitive nature's defective habits; and these are rooted out only at the price of an entire re-shaping of the spiritual part of the soul. 105

For St. Jdm of the Cross, these two kinds of inperfection are

close ly linked. At the end of the night, we obtain a two-fold register of per fections, according to the two-fold purity which St. Thanas Aquinas

de scribes with regard to the gif t of understanding:

There is a two-fold purity: one serves as a prean:Pule anddisposition for the vision of God; it oonsists of a purif ication of the aff ectivity. 'Ihe other is purity of heart; it is, as it were, the f inal stage relative to the visionof God, consisting of the pl.p;ity of a spirit cleansed of all phantasms and errors. 106

This night gives the soul a purity as regards everything touching on the sensual appetite. It renders the soul hurrble, meek and pure. 107

This neans the soul 's entry into light, where the theological virtues

ccme in to full strength so as to unite the soul with God.

2) A W i s dom

Since the night of the soul tends by its very nature towards an end, let 's try to f ind the object which is here sought. This is a quite dif f icult question , since the great theologians who have studied this question closely have arrived at quite dif ferent conclusions. For sane, the goal would be the clear oonsciousness which the soul has of its divi nization by grace. 108 For others, it would be an imnediate intuition of

My stiaa Z Lif e and Pascha Z My stery 89

God. 109 Finally, a whole school of thought nore or less dependent on St.Thomas is situated between these two extrerres.

Let's examine the major texts by John of the Cross in order to find out of what this kna.vledge oonsists. It's necessa.DJ to be stripped of everything belonging to the order of sense. The Mystical Doctor returnsto this µ:>int time and again.Thanks to this radical detachment, the spirit becarres "so refined, so sinple and delicate, that it can becane one with the Spirit of Gcxl. '' 110

Note, too, the soul's passivity in this night. In this kind of knOIV ledge, God has all the initiative. The kn.otvledge which thus results is acoordingly of an eminently higher order than the knowledge acquired by the soul through its CM1 efforts, with things material as the startingpoint. "God takes the hand and guides the soul in the darkness, as though it were blind," as St.Jolm of the Cross says.111

So pc:Merful is thisaction of God, that we can speak of an "annihilation" of the soul's facul ties. 'lhe natural faculties are enveloped in night, and can no longer act acoording to their proper mode. The result will be in proportion to God's Being, rather than in proµ:>rtion to the being of the soul and its faculties.

Left to themselves, the faculties of the soul could not receive things supematural and divine save after a base and a natural manner, exactly in their own fashion.113

· W:l.at is the principle of this new kind of knowledge of God? God's loving Wisdan. "This fire of loving wisdan" 113 illumines and purifies the being in its totality.

3) A5cendancy of the Spirit

What is this transfonnation, if not -as theolCXJians tell us - the invasion of the Holy Spirit by means of the Gifts? 'lhough John of the Cross states with all clarity that the

only means proportionate to union with God is faith, the faith we are concemed with is a living faith illu mined by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Joseph of the Holy Spirit was folJa.ling in line with the Mystical IX>ctor when he wrote that "faith illu:nined

by the gifts is the proper hahitus of conterrplation.114 He also explains

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that the gifts add nothing to our certitude of faith; they functic:n simply to cast light on the obscurity of faith.

As Fr.Lucien-Marie has so well said:

'Ihese characteristic features lead us to conceive, in a single act of contenplation, an

ly rich psycholo gical nechanisrn 'Which is under oonstant develO};mmt during the oourse of the night of the soul. This cbscure grasp (experimental and negative) of the divine Essence is at one and the sarre time kna.vledge and love, or -better - love becaning a neans of kna.vledge under the inspiration of the gift of wisdan.115

In brief, we attain, in this night, to a supra-human node of kna.ving God. We can understand 'Why the natural faculties have to

pass throUJh the crucible of purification, and 'Why they have to accept being deprived of their a.vn proper activity.

This night of the soul - leads throUJh the death of Orrist to an ex perienre of the direct kna.vledge of God. This neans a profound entering into the Paschal Mystery, and a vital, existential assimilation of the sacranents.

We ought not think that this night is simply a period during 'Which the soul is accumulating nerit as a result of the

sufferings it has to en dure. Were this true, it would be impossible to see ha.v a new node of kl'lONing and loving God is realized. An illustration of this defective approach would be the knight 'Who has to perfonn deeds of chivall:y in orderto merit the hand of the fair maid 'Whan he loves. The granting of her hand in marriage would be the recanpense for his brave:ry. But this eJ<Planation is an overly rroralizing one.

Here's the principle 'Which John of the Cross brings to the fore:The sane light 'Which produces the quite painful effects of the night of the soul is also the principle fran'Which derive the goods of divine union. This point is extremely irrportant.

The sane loving wisdan that pw::ges the blessed spirits and enlightens them is that 'Which here pw::ges the soul and illunines it.116

This divine rey of cont:efil'lation•••pw::ges and illumines the soul. 11?

My stical Li fe and Pascal Mystery 91

We see in the context of this principle of the unity of the light the re;ruisite noverrEilt which effects the "passing" or passage in the soul of the JI¥Stic fran suffering or purification to the light of knc:Mledge; just as in the Paschal Mystery, the "passing" or passage is fran death tolife. The light doesn't change; it remains one and the same. But the sub ject reacts differently under the action of this divine fire.

4) In t h e F i re o f l o ve

Here we arrive at the central point of this Paschal Night described by John of the Cross. The Mystical Doctor uses a striking image as best able to express his thou:rht.

Material fire, acting upon wood, first of all begins to dJ:y it, by driving out its noistu:re and causing it to shed the water which it contains within itself. Then it beginsto make it black, dark and unsightly, and even to give forth a bad odor, and, as it dries it little by little, it brings out and drives CMay all the dark and unsightly accidents which a:re contra:ry to the nature of fire. And, finally, it begins to kindle it externally and give it heat, and at last transfontE it into itself and makes it as beautiful as fire. In this respect,the wood has neither passivity nor activity of its am, save for its weight, which is greater, and its swstanre,which is denser, than that of fire, for it has in itself the properties and activities of fire. Thus it isdJ:y and it dries it is hot and heats; it is bright andgives brightness; and it is much less heavy than before. 118All these properties and effects a:re caused in it by the

fire.

In this familiar oomparison, the Mystical Doctor uses a new symbol to describe God's action:that of fire. 'Ihis fire has the same effects as light. It causes pain, and makes the wood pass into a fonn in which it is abject and darkened.In a rertain sense, it loses its proper manner of being. '!hen the blackened 'WOod itself turns into fire, becares the substanre ofthe other reality. The seoond state of being derives from the first, and is related to it by an intrinsic bond.

St. Paul wrote thus :Being found in human fonn he humbled himself and

became o bedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the nane which is above every name•••119

92

This is the fire which Christ came to cast upon the earth,

and he longs to see this fire errbrace the whole universe. This fire represents the destruction of the being dc:Mn to its very substance, as the Prophet Ezekiel had already understood:

Gather the bones; burn than in fire; consume the flesh; and cook this mixture.

This extranely realistic text applies to the reality of the mystical trials. G . Morel writes:

A burning fire consumes the rey-stic. His heart becanes a hearth, but a hearth devoured by flames. 120

When the fire no longer has to burn <:May anything which resists the flame, the heart becanes a hearth filled with fire and light:

At ti.mes lightening streaks across the immensity of the nights, revealing that the darkness is only the inverse side of light•••In the final pages of the Dark Night, the word "love" breaks forth in all the strength of a sun at the m:ment of its creation, illuminating by its splendor the birth of the new man, the birth of the new world, en veloping all the elements of the experience in light. 121

This new fire blazes up in the Paschal Night when Christ canes forth alive fran the tanb. Here again, the symbolism of the mystical life and

,I

of the Paschal Mystery meet in a very profound manner. This fire whichwe set blazing in front of the church door, and which the liturgy sings about with such magnificence, is the same fire which bums the soul arid makes it pass fran darkness to light.

So we sing in the paschal proclamation of the ExsuZtet :

Iet earth be joyf ul ,in the radiance of this great splendor. Enlightened by the glo:ry of her eternal King, let her feel that frcm the whole round world the darkness has been lifted!•••In thanksgiving for this night, O holy Father,receive the evening sacrifice of this flarre, which Holy Church offers to you•••

My stical Li f e and Paschal, My ster>y 93

In the deep of this Night, the flame soars up and shines; but al though it gives forth light, the flame itself is distinct fran the light. The symbol of light anphasizes the aspect of r e s e m b 1a n c e,while the symbol of fire indicates the radical d i f f e r e n c e be tween man and God. True, the wood becanes the proper substance of the fire; but for this, the fire has to

produce its destructive effect on the wood.What fire transfonns is something other than itself. If God changes us in this night which is at one and the same time filled with both darkness and light, this is only because we are distinct and other than God. 'I11us, Deuter>onomy represents God

as "a consuming fire".122

Under the effect of this divine fire, the tmiverse takes on its full meaning :

The world is not ended: it was created by God only to be unceasingly metarrn:rphosed in the burning hearth of Love, and this is what "creation11 really rreans .123

Jean Baruzi shavs that we can't separate the symbolism of night fran that of fire. The one isn't sanething juxtaposed or added to the other. The fire proves to be nore and nore inward and interior in the midst of the night; and the night has only to becane rrore explicit,more clearly defined, for this fire to make its appearance.

5) I n W a t e r

Though, in the Pasch.al Night, fire gives light in the midst of darkness, there is also the water which flows forth "fran the right side of the Temple11

, as the Prophet Ezekiel said. This symbol of water is an element essential to this passing fran death to life.

In his Traite d 'Histoire de s Re ligions , Mircea Eliade makes the following remark:

Whatever might be the religious context in which it is·· present, the function of water is seen to be always the same:It destroys and causes the disappearance of fonns, it washes away sin -purifying and giving re birth at the sarne time. 125

In pagan religions, the passing through water always signifies a return to a state anterior to the emergence of all fonns. Jung had expressed this in one of his lapidary fonnulas:

Aqua e:::i\. quae OCC•ldit et

V.lV.l fl.eat•

126

128

94

Water has a strange ambivalence; at one and the sane time , it 's the object of a sacred fear , but also an object of attraction , for in water is found life, and sanetimes lif e everlasting. Iouis Be:inaert writes:

The dialectical connection between the waters of Death and the waters of Lif e is such that it 's impossible to rise rene.wed fran the waters, without having f irst ex perienced death in its depths. 127

In the Church of the first centuries and of the Fathers , baptism refers to more than simply the primordial waters of the cosrrogenesis and the anthropo:Jenesis. St. Paul wrote to the Rcmans :

Ib you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death ,so that as Christ was raised fran the dead by the glo-ry of the Father , we too might walk in newness of life.

In his treatise De Mysteriis, Ambrose of Milan writes:

Water is an element in which f lesh is im:nerged so that all sin might be washed <May f ran this f lesh.

'Ihere in the waters , every crime is buried • ..Of itself , water would be totally useless for the salvation to cane, but when it is consecrated by the mystery of the Cross of salvation, it becanes capable of becaning a spiritual bath of regeneration and a cup of salvation. 129

So the symbol of water makes us enter into the Paschal Mystery of Christ. 'Ihe Fathers likewise take pains to ccrrpare the water to the earth in which Christ was buried. When he goes down into the water ,the baptized too is being buried with Christ. St. Greg0r:y of Nyssa ex plains it in this way:

When we receive baptism in .imitation of our IDrd and Teacher and Master , we are not buried in earth • .• ; rather , we cane to this element which is akin to earth -water; in it we hide ourselves , as the lord hid himself in the earth; and when we bury ourselves three times in the water , we are .irnitating the grace of the reesurrection on the third day. 130

Christian baptism f inds its meaning only in the death and resurrection of Christ. 'Ibis is why Tradition has of ten represented baptism as a f low

Mystical, Li f e and Paschal, My stery 95

of water fran the open side of Christ on the cross. The inscription c:x:mposed for the Lateran baptistery by Si.xtus III reads :

Here is the fount of lifewhich waters the whole

world, and has for its sourcethe wounded side of Christ.131

In the course of the Paschal Night, the water which is to transfonn the catechunens is blessed in this way:

May this holy, limpid creature be set free fran all the en.aey's assaults and cleansed by the re:noval of all wick edness. Be this a fount of life, a water of new birth,a purifying stream, so that all who are washed in this bath of salvation may , by the working of the Holy Spir it within than, obtain the grace of perfect cleansing.

In his Mysta.gogica"l Catecheses , Cyril of Jerusalem explains to those who were newly baptized during the Paschal Night the nature of their sacramental configuration to Christ dead and risen:

Thrice you were plunged into water, and thrice you emerged, thus symbolizing the three days of Christ in the tanb • • • In the same action, you were dying and were being born. 'Ihis saving water became at one and the same time your tanb and your mother•••These two events took place simultaneously: your birth coincided with your death.132-133

The mystics were quick to use this symbol of water in order to de scribe the passing of the soul into the night and into light.These wa ters, which seem lifeless. in appearance, are really not so in fact; they produce their effect on the substance carmitted to them. They drag it far fran the shore and lead it into the darkness of the deep. They puri fy and liquify; but this dissolution is accanplished in view of a re creation of the being.

We can cry out with John of the Cross:Save me, lord•••, for the waters have cane in even unto my soul; I am cane into the depth of the sea and a tan pest has overwhelmed me.I am made fast in the mire of the deep, and there is no place where I can stand .134

To the extent that the individual is carried away by

this flood, his feeling of being ova.whelmed vanishes.Forces hitherto unexperienced

96

are set f ree within him. Speaking about the person who has surrendered to his passions, John of the Cross says that he is digging "broken cis terns , which cannot hold water to satisfy thirst." 135 But, for the

Mys tical Doctor, water is also an element of lif e and grace. He gives the follONing ccmnentary on the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan

waaan :Christ our IDrd, speaking with the Samaritan wanan, called faith a fount, saying that in those that believed in himhe would make for himself a fount whose water would spring up into everlasting life. And this water was the Spirit whic h they that believed in him should receive in their faith. 136

The symbol of water is also used to signify the rapidity and pcMer of IDve: not the lake or tranquil sea, but the waves , the rivers , the torrents • • •IDve is a river current and a torrent. It ceaselessly gushes forth in the world, and men can 't resist it. This image of the riveris thus described by the mystic:

Rivers have three properties: the f irst is that they as sail and sul:merge all that they meet;the second, that they f ill up all the low and hollow places that are in their path; the third , that their sound is such as to drCMil and take the place of all sounds else. 137

When the waters of deatli have done their work , the waters of life bring IDve and well up in light. Thereupon water symbolizes life in its most creative , spontaneous fo:nn. The entire poem of the Living F Zarne

is devoted to this water in perpetual movenent. "The waters of the divine splendors" , 138 are, as he says , rippling with brightness, shot through

by dazzling sunlight. Seen in this way , water is inseparable fran light. In a rather bold passage, John of the Cross went so f ar as to write:

These lamps of f ire are living waters of the Spirit• .• And this this f ire is likewise water. 139

'As regards this union of the symbols of water and f ire, G. Morel

gives us an excellent explanation:

can water bum? can f ire quench thirst? To af f inn this in the literal sense would be foolish; but for the mystic,there is nothing exaggerated in such statements. They express

---------------·---------· --- - -----

Mystical Li fe and Paschal Mystery 97

in the rrost realistic language possible that the elements of the cosrros are canposed of the same substance, and that this substance is truly substance -that is to say, truly divine -only in virtue of a radical operation in which sane elements are assumed into others, and are reborn in a transfigured state: their transfiguration is the manifestation of Love, the realization of the mystical life.140

It can be said that the passing fran water to fire is really a tran sition or passage, not a confusion of substancesi and this passing is ef fected by the luninous aspect of the lived experience:the water glimners and the flame ripples. When Scripture tells us to live as "children of light", we should think of that subtlety of light which evokes transparen cy and clarity: fran now onwards the light encounters no obstacle, and the mystic is thus in a certain sense a "luninous being".

This is the water which gushes forth during the Paschal Night, this is the flame which makes this stream of water radiant with light.

'lhrough this camnunion with the cosrros, the mystic brings creation to a still greater perfection, and contributes to the definitive caning of the Kingdan of Christ in which everything will be in Christ. This fire which flares up in the Paschal Night, these waters which cane forth fran "the right side of the Temple" -they are the Risen Christ, the great Mystic, who takes to himself the elements of creation so as to bring his Kingdan

to perfection. By means of these elements, man finds the divine once a gain, and the new Night•••And nature is waiting to be thus assuned by man.

The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected t6 futility•••but only in the hope of being set free franits bondage to decay and of obtaining the glorious liber ty of the children of God.141

6) A V o i d

We've studied already several aspects of this plunge into night and the light which streams forth fran this darkness. The fire bums, transfonns, and illunines; it

produces this passage fran darkness to light. John of the Cross throws consi able light on one aspect of this kenosis: the void, the nothing -Nada.

98

We think of Christ dying on the cross and crying to his Father: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani." 142 We can have sane small tmderstand ing of this state of abandonment and of this irrmense void through whichhas passed he 'Who has opened to us the way and path of light. His most intimate canpanions had disappeared, and the earth

heaved while he was breathing forth his spirit to his Father. Christ obtained the two-fold irmnlation:irrmolation of the senses, irrmolation of the spirit. Through this supreme abandorment he accx:raplished a work far greater than those which he had wrought during his 'Whole life in heaven and on earth by means of his miracles and marvels:for Christ on the cross effected the reconciliation and tmion of the hunan race.with God by grace.

If we in our turn are to accx:raplish this same "passing", each of us must pass through this same void, this same kenosis.

If we want to grasp 'What Jolm of the Cross really means, we must see that he is reproducing in himself Jesus Christ crucified. We're not simply dealing with that cross which calls for the suffering entailed inasceticism. Rather, the cross is the figure of absolute annihilation.The Saint lives the inner moverrent of the Savior by sharing in his self-empty ing, and not just by contemplating him fran the exterior.

When the fire has so consuned the green wood that it has turned into its CMn substance, we can then speak of a oanplete turning inside out.When Bergson speaks of a "fonnidably resistant steel machine which eliminates fran its substance everything insufficiently pure, resistant, or supple to be used by God," 142 he canes close to this image of being turnedinside out and of being re-fashioned.

We knCM that our psychological potential is limited. When it finds itself subjected to an intense activity, nothing is left over in it to render it apt for sane other activity. Now, in this deep night, it is God himself 'Who is acting. He is acting according to his CMn divine mode of action:he infuses an intense light, a light which surpasses

the capaci ty of our hunan spirit. Jolm of the Cross writes: "This dark night of contemplation absoms and inmerses the soul in itself." 143 So powerful isthe ray of supernatural light that "not only does it overcane the soul,

Mystiaal Li f e and Pasahal My stery 99

but likewise it overwhelms it and darkens the act of its natural intel

ligence. 11 144 It seems , then , that one of the great suf f erings of the

Night -that painf ul voiding of all the soul 's f aculties -is caused by the constitution of a new psycholCXJical mechanism. At the manent of

union , when the f ire will have transfonned the dry wood into its ownproper substance, this one and the same light, instead of producing dark ness, will make its brightness blaze up and shine.

In the depths of this night, love for God is much greater than in an earlier stage. Love grc:MS in the very act of purif ication and of death.

The result is a whole series of contrasts. The Mystical Doctor en joys making things intelligible by means of contraries. In this luninous night , the divine Essence reveals itself in its inf inite richness; but hu man misery as yet undreamed of is also revealed with stark brutalit_y. The soul thereupon grasps the richness of God by rreans of the contrast af

forded by its great poverty' as a created being. Jor.ll1 of the Cross thrc:MS the following light on this drama:

The darkness and the other suf ferings endured by the soul when invested with this divine light, cane not f ran the light but f ran the soul; and it is the light which reveals these suf ferings to the soul. The soul, then , is illunined as a result of the divine light. But it sees at f irst,with the help of this light, on1y what lies nearest , or , better , only what is within the soul itself , that is to say, its darkness and its miseries. These the soul finally dis covers through the mercy of God; for , previously , it did not see them so long as it was not invested with this supernatur al light. This is why the soul f eels at the beginning only darkness and af f lictions. 145

Jean Baruzi has written that "It 's precisely at the manent when God

enters into us that we have the feeling we're losing him for ever." 146

John of the Cross of ten speaks to us of the growth of the theological virtues in the midst of this night; but here let us consider rather their manner of operation which is nCM changing. The action of the night assails the rrechanism by which these virtues are exercised according to a human m:rle. When f aith remains solid and living in spite of the absence of the usual supports , when love inf lames the will in spite of the trials, and

100

gives rise to an i.nmediate knc:Mledge of God and a feeling of his pres ence, we can say that the passage f ran night to light has taken place.

Wisdan rescued f ran troubles those 'Who served her. She guided the righteous man on straight

paths•••147

What about these "straight paths" . of 'Which Wisdan speaks? If they are those of the Night, which lead necessarily to the true light, are they not also those paths follo.ved by Christians who want to live the Paschal Lif e of Christ, and to resenble him in the Mystery of Death and Life?

It 's this lif e 'Which they are going to draw forth f ran the liturgy, so asto live it again mystically with their whole being.

7) "O Living Flame of love!"

For the man who lives by God 's love , human life recx::mnences every day. Such a life is without end, because I.Dve is inexhaustible. It is then that the Real is revealed in all its reality and truth. There's no lon:]er God, man, and the world, but only one sin:}le ccmnunion in this

one only reality. To the extent that man becx::mes love, he disoovers ho

rizons which stretch forth limitlessly and invite him to journey further onwards to new discoveries.

Fran no.v on , ccrrmunion with others is a need 'Which springs f ran the

depths of one's bein:}. This new quality can have its source only in God.

One's previous experience no.v f inds its meaning: "I was loved by God ,

but I didn 't realize it."

Who can set its proper value on the radiation , the mysterious f ecun dity of a life -unsuccessf ul , perhaps as seen by the world -which ,

when viewed in the light of the example lef t by Christ , has been exceptional ly successf ul? Here belc:M, suf fering remains;

but it finds its true mean ing in this oonf iguration with Christ. It 's at this price that we acquire liberty of spirit, peace of heart , and that stability of a soul for 'Which

God alone is enou;Jh.

It 's always in the deep of night that, for every Christian, the pc:Mers of renewal triumph over the seeds of death. The striking beauty of the Paschal Vigil consists precisely of this: a death-life.

Mystical, Li fe and Pascha Z Mystery 101

CDNCLUSIC'.N

At the end of this study, new light is t.hrcMn on the question: What is the role of the contanplative, of the

mystic at the heart of the prayer of the Body of Christ, the prayer of the liturgy?

At the level of expression, the liturgy and the Mystery have re oourse to the same symbols in order to express the same Myste:cy: Jesus Christ.

The ever-deepening enrichment of the soul of the mystic can becane the heart of the liturgy. By express.in;r his experience in the liturgy, a neN strength wells up meaningful for life and for prayer. The Paschal Myste:cy as lived in the liturgy spr.in;rs forth anew to becane a paschal,mystical life lived at the heart of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Trans Zation, Gethsanani Abbey Paul ST-CYR

Notre-Dame du Lac

NOTE'S AND REFERENCES

First Part:L I T U R G YA N D M Y S T I C I S M

1 Cf . Maritain , Les degres du savoir, p.461.2 Paschal, Le rrry stere de Jesus .3 On the cross, Christ passed through a radical death, total

annihila tion. He thereby shc:Med that "the death of man, in the twofold meanin;J of physical death and spiritual death, has its basis inthe absolute transcendence of God. Only by passin;J throUJh death can the rroverrent of contin;Jent being be said to be a IOOVe ment of transcendence." -G. Morel, Le sens de Z 'existence se Zon St . Jean de Za Croix, T.II , pp.166-167.

4 Jeanne Ancelet Hustache, Maitre Eck hart et Za my stique rhenane , p.5.5 J.A.Hustache, ibid., p.6.6 Note that the first Fathers of the Church made their

CMn everything in Hellenisn which seemed to be a preparation for Christianity, and which oould be incorporated with it; this was notably true for pla tonic thoUJht.

7 Clement of Alexandria, The Pedagogue , 1,7.8 Vita Constantini, 4,71.9 Contra Marce Z Zum, 1,1.

102

10 Jean Mouroux, The Ch-Pistian ExpeY'ienae, New York 1954,p.363.

11 Karl Rabner, TheologiaaZ Investigations, T.II, Balt.inore-I.Dndbn 1963, p.125.

12 Paul Anciaux highlights the place of the Sacrament in the whole of Christian life:

As a visible activity, the sacranent is an encounter be tween men in the Church, canposed of dialogue and sym bols which refer to the deep ireaning in .the event, the happening: the me: ting between the Lord and his Church••• The sacraments are the expression and the consecrationof faith in the Lord.

-Saa-Pements et Vie, Malines 1967, p.33.13 "It is through the liturgy, especially the divine

Eucharistic Sacri fice, that 'the work of our redanption is exercised'. The liturgy is thus the outstanding ireans by which the faithful can express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church."

Const. on the Saa-Ped Litu-Pgy, n.2.14 Diationnai-Pe de spiPituaZite, T.IV, col.1586.15 J. DaniAfou, Myth and Mystery [= Twentieth Century

EnayaZopedia of CathoZiaism I/8], New York 1968, p.39.16 Quoted in C. Vagaggini, Initiation the'oZogique Za Ziturgie,

T.II, BXUJes 1963.17 J.Danielou, PZatonisme et theologie mystique, Aubier.18 Ch.A.Bernard, "Vie spirituelle et connaissance thoologique",

inGregoY'ianum 51/2 (1970):

The vital assimilation is not a pure and simple subjec tive developnent:theological objectivity plays the role of guardian over the authenticity of the spiritual life and of mystical knc:Mledge•••In accepting this sul::mission to a nonn external to oneself, the soul frees itself fran its a-lil subjective reactions and interpretations. This is no hinderance to its personal activity; in point of fact, it purifies this activity.

19 Cassian, CoZZatio IX, 26.20 Asaent of Mount CaPmeZ III, 38.21 Prayer, Paulus Press Deus Books, 1967, pp.98-99.22 Suppl. Za Vie spiritueZZe 23 (1952).23 Les degre's du savoir, p.523.24 Morel, Le sens de Z'existenae•.., T.III, p.156.25 Myth and Mystery, p.39.

Mystical Life and Paschal Mystery - Notes 103

Second Part: S Y M B 0 L A SE X P R E S S I 0 N

26 Cf.G.M:>rel, Le sens de l 'existence.•• , T.III, p.30.27 Paul Schebesta, Le sens reZigieuz des primitifs, Paris 1963,

p.101.28 Morel, op.cit., T.I, p.209.29 E.Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, I.£>ndon-New York

(Sheed and Ward paperback) 1963, p.94.30 Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la Philosophie.31 Tobit 5:2-3.32 Morel, op.cit., T.III, p.39.33 De LubacI Exg se medievale, 2e partie, T.II'p.178.34 Baruzi,St. Jean de la Croix et le probleme de l'exprience

rrrystique,Al.can 1924, p.328.

35 Baruzi, op.cit., p.324.36 De Lubac, op.cit., pp.179-180.37 J.Maritain, L 'intuition crffatrice dans l'art et dans Za

poesie,Descl de Brouwer 1966, p.69.

38 J.P.Manigne, Pour une poetique de la foi, Paris 1969, pp.152-154.

39 Jacques I:Ournes is correct when he writes :Basically, just what is the liturgical refonn about which there 's so much discussion? There's no reason to get ex cited. It's not a novelty produced by the Council:it's not even a recent IIK>Veirent . It be:!an a long time ago -already in the time of the prophets•••I think that what we' reconcerned with is sinply that activity of the People of Gcx:1, which, under the motion of the Holy Spirit, consists of or ganizing nova et vetera, so as to readjust the signs of worship according to a two-fold aspect:relative to the man of here and nr:M , the sign has to be the right one: relative to the reality signified, the sign has to attain to a greater degree of truth and authenticity. ·

-L'offrande des peupZes, Paris 1967, p.85.40 Lucien-Marie, L 'exprience de Vieu, Paris (Cerf) 1968,

p.87.42 St.John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, Stanza xviii, 1.43 St.John of the Cross, Poem IV.44 Class notes of the course follcwed at the I.S.T.R.,

Paris, 1970.45 P.Claudel,Poetic Art, New York 1948, p.47.

46 Morel, op.cit., T.III, p.41.47 Mircea Eliade.

104

48 This whole is the world of the syrrbol, the world of intuition.But just what is intuition?

Philosophers tell us that intuition is the faculty of kn.owing; it is not deteDnined in a specific manner by method, nor defonned by education or by sane professional bent; it is free fran illusions of the senses, of the ima gination, and of language, and thus tries to grasp sane concrete reality. It anbraces in a single glance and syn thesizes a multitude of individual facts and relationships. It takes an ensanble view of the whole thrust,which rea son can follow by only one thread at a tilre. In brief, in tuition is the soul in its entirety applied to the objectin its entirety.

-A. Brunot, Le genie Utteraire de St. Pau"l, Lectio[Divina 15.

49 J.Huby, Les epitres de "la ca:ptivite, Paris 1935,p.40.50 Aaniliana hr, I"l y eut un soir, i"l y eut un matin,

Ed.St.Paul, Paris 1965, p.37.51 Cf.A.Kirchgassner, La puissanae des signes, Mame, Paris 1962,

p.130.52 Louis Bouyer, Rite and Man : Natural, Sacredness and Christian

Liturgy,Notre Dame 1963, pp.9-10, 11:

The extremist opponents of the ultraconsei:vative liturgists, looking for refonns and innovations, strive to preserve the human character of the liturgy and of the whole of Christ's religic:n in the name of the Gospel. They are right in their ainl, but they are wrong in believing that a salvation of hu manity means to leave it as it is, and even to wipe out all distinctions between the sacred and the profane in order to allow it to be simply itself while belonging wholly to God in Christ•••The Incarnation, therefore, does not lead to thethe disappearance of natural sacredness, but to its metamorpho sis. This sacredness, in spite of all its deficiencies and even its distortions, rE!l1ains in man as the stepping-stale to the Incamation.

53 M.Eliade, Le symbo "lisme des tenJbres dans "les re"ligions archaiques,Etudes Cann.1960, p.16.

54 Pierre Colin, Liturgie a:pr s Vatican II, [Series Unam Sanctam] Paris 1967, p.214.

55 G. Morel, op.cit., T.III,

p.45. 56 Ibid., p.47.Third Part: N I G H T F I L L E D W I T H

57 1 Cor 15:54-55.L I G H T

MystiaaZ Life and PasahaZ Mystery - Notes 105

58 F.X.Dunwell, The Resurreation, New York 1960,pp.58-59:The death of Christ is the fulfilment of the initial will to kenosis,, :the dedicaticn of Christ's hunan weakness and his loss of glo:ry; but at the same time it re:roves the state of kenosis by bringing about his resurrection.The Resurrection is the divine life of the Son of God, shining forth in a hunanity for which he has renounced all life not of God; it is the glorious fulfilment of the mystery of the Incamaticn.

59 Aats 2:36.60 Dunwell, ibid.61 La Maison-Dieu 67, p.36.62, J. Huby, Mystiques pauZin ienne et johannique, Paris 1946, p.21.63 Ephemerides Liturgiaae 66.64 "Art und Sinn der ltesten ch.ristlichen Osterfeier",

in Jahrbuah ftlr Liturgiewissensahafft 14 (1938),p.44.65 St.AU]UStine, In Ev. Ioannis, Traat. LV_, 1.66 O. CUllroann , Les saarements dans Z'EvangiZe johannique_, p.19.67 BerDit, "L'Ascension", in Revue bibZique 56, p.185.68 Dun.well,op.cit., pp.53-54:

The paradox of a Christ who triurphs over the flesh in the act of succumbing to it can be silrply resolved in the Johan. nine phrase "I go to the Father", in the idea of passingfran the earthly condition to the divine life by mean5 ofdeath•••By his death Christ left thecondition of this world and of sin because by it he was moving ta.vards the Resurrec ticn:his death was redemptive becat1se it was the road to his glo:ry•••The Resurrection is the conclusion of the keno sis, the aim and object of its merit.

69 Ph.RJqueplo, E:x:perience du monde : e:x:perienae de Dieu_, Paris(Cerf},

70 In La Maison-Dieu 28, p.68. [1968.71 J.M:>uroux, The Mys tery of Time, Descl 1964:

The sacranent is the m:ment when the bodily and the spir itual meet Christ, and this encounter is itself the Sacra ment of our encounter with God.

72 De vita in Christo, PG 150:517-520.73 J.Hild, in La Maison-Dieu28, p.145.74 Gaudium et spes_, n.18.75 Karl Ralmer, TheoZogiaaZ Investigations_, T.III. 76G.M:>rel, op.cit.,T.I , pp.312-

313.

106

77 Living Flame, I, 26.

78 Karl P.almer, op.cit.79 St. Au]ustine, Homily II for the Holy Night, in the oollection

Lettres chretiennes 10.80 Ex 14:20.81 Jn 1:4-5.82 G. Morel, op.cit., T.III , p.91.83 Van der Leeuw, La religion dans son essence et ses

manifestations,Payot , p. 59.

84 Cf . Oeuvres compltes du Pseudo-Denys, Aubier.85 H.C. Puech, "I.a tffire mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys" , in

Etudes Carmelitaines, Oct.1938, pp.46-47.86 Fr. Bnmo, St. John of the Cross, New York 1936 , p. 176.87 G.Morel, op.cit., T.III , p. 160 .88 Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 9, 3.89 -- Ibid., II , 3, 4 and 5.

90 J.Vilnet, in Etudes Carmelitaines 1949.

91 We can note that St. Bernard too has the same conception of the biblical authors:

For St. Bernard , the biblical authors are before all else nediators of the divine word. He always considers thanin the perspective of his mystical preoccupations, namely, under the aspect of their being able to lead the docile soul to mystical mrion with God. As a result, the biblical texts are for Bemard as so many works written by authors who had lived a mystical experience and are capable of leadinJ souls to the heights of mrion with God.

-Denis Farkasf alvy , L 'Inspiration de l'Ecriture sainte dans la thologie de Saint Bernard[= Studia AnseZmiana 53] , R:me 1964 , p.42.

92 Job ?:2 f f ., quoted in Dark Night II, 7 , 1.

93 Job 12:22, quoted in Dark Night II, 7 , 3.94 3rd Lamentation, Lam 3:2 f f ., qooted in Dark Night II, 7.95 3rd Lamentation, Lam 3:44. quoted in Dark Night II , 8.96 Is 26:9, quoted in Dark Night II, 11, 6.97 Is 5:30, qooted in Dark Night II, 16, 11.98 G.Morel, op.cit., T.III, p.173.

99 Cf . Living Flame III, 15.

Mystical Life and Paschal Mystery 107

100 2 Co'I' 6:14.101 Ascent of Mount CaY'ITleZ I, 4, 2.102 2 Pete'!' 1:19, quoted in Ascent of Mount Carmel II, 16, 15.103 Da'I'k Night II, 5.104 J. Baruzi, St. Jean de Za CPoix et Za pPobZeme de Z

'expePience mystique, Paris (Alcan) 1924, p.589.105 Cf.Da'I'k Night II; and Garigou Lagrange, L 'Amow.• de

Dieu et Za Croix de Jesus, T.II, p.550. ·106 St.Thanas Aquinas, Swnrna TheoZogica IIa IIae, Quest.8, art. 7.107 Cf.Da'I'k Night II, 7.108 Cf.De Guibert, Etudes de ThloZogie Mystique, p.83.109 Cf.Marechal, Etudes sU1" Za PsychoZogie des mystiques I, p.236.110 Da'I'k Night II, 7.111 Ibid., II, 16.112 Ibid., II, 16.113 Ibid., II, 12.114 Joseph of the Holy Spirit, CU1"sus TheoZogicae Mystico-SchoZ.,

Disp . XIII.115 Lucien-Marie, L 'Exp €!Pience de Dieu, Paris (Cerf) 1968,pp.189-

190.

116 Da'I'k Night II, 5.117 Ibid., II, 8.118 Ibid., II, 10. 119 Phil 2:8-9 .120 G.Morel, op.cit., T.III,

p.90. 121 Ibid., pp.95-96.

122 Deut _ 4:24, quoted in Living Flame II, 2.123 G.Morel, ibid., p.144.124 Cf.Jean Baruzi, op.cit., p.330.125 M.Eliade, T'I'ait d'histoi'I'e des PeZigions, p.187.

126 K.Jung, PsychoZogie de'I' Uebe'I'tragung, p.130.127 IDuis Beinaert, in La Maison-Dieu 22, p.96. 128 Rom 6 :3-4 .

129 St.Ambrose, De Mysteriis, in L 'initiation chretienne (Collection

Lettres chPetiennes] Paris 1963, pp.66-67.

108

130 Gregory of Nyssa, "In dian lumi.nun," PG 46:585b.131 Qooted in DOlger, Die Inschrift in Baptisterium S. Giovanni in

Fonte.132 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 20, 6.133 E.Masure, Le Signe, Lille (Bloud et Gay) .1953,p.213:

"Unless a man is born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdon of God" (Jn 3:5).In these tei:ms Christ reveals to a sage of Israel.••the mysteriousunion of the hunblest matter, the rrost cx:mron (though also the purest) liquid, with the nost spiritual p<:JNer : and it was this strange collaboration which would give rise to this birth to divine life by which men becane Olristians.

134 Dark Night II, 6.135 Ascent of Mount Ca;pmel I, 6, 6.136 Spiritual Canticlexi,·2.137 Ibid., xiii, 9.138 Living Flame III, 15.139 Ibid., III, 8.140 G.Morel, op.cit., T.III, p.143. 141 Rom 8:20-21.142 Mk 15:34. H.Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion,

p.247.143 Dark Night II, 16.144 Ibid., II, 5.145 Ibid., II, 3.146 J.Baruzi, op.cit.- , p.592. 147 Wis 10:9.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Principal works quoted or used in this study.

1 ANCIAIJX, Paul, Sacrement et vie, Malines (castennan) 1967.2 BEmARD, C.A., "Vie spirituelle et oonnaissance

theologique", inGregorianum 51/2 (1970).

3 B:XJYER, I.Duis, Rite and Man : Natural Sacredness and Christian Litur gy, Notre Dame [= Liturgical Studies 7] 1963.

"Mysterion", in Mystery and Mysticism, New York (The Philosophical Library) 1956, pp.18-32.

Mystical Life and Paschal Mystery - Bibliography 109

4 BRIJNDr , A., Le g nie litteraire de St Paul, [= Lectio Divina 15], Paris 1955.

5 CABASILAS , N. , Exp Zication de Za divine Ziturgie, [S. Chr. 4]Paris 1943.

6 CAMELOI', T. , SpirituaZite du bap teme, [Lex Grandi 30], Paris 1960.

7 a:::NGAR, Y., "Situation du Sacre en regime Chretien," in Liturgieapres Vatican II [Collection Unam Sanctam 66]Paris 1967.

8 DAI.MAIS, I.H., Initiation a la liturgie, Paris (Descl) 1958.

9 OOURIBS , J., L 'offrande des peuples, [Lex Grandi 44], Paris 1967.

10 LL , F.X., The Resurrection, New York 1960.11 Hl'IMMAN, A., L 'Initiation chrtienne, Coll.Lettres

chrtiennes 7, 1963. , Le Mystere de Paques, Coll. Lettres chrtiennes 10, 1965.

12 IOEHR, AE., Il y eut un soir, il y eut un matin, Paris (&i.S.Paul), 1965.

13 MANIGNE, J.P., Pour une po tique de la foi, [Coll.Cogi Fidei 43],

Paris 1967.14 MOUroUX, J., The Mystery of Time, New York (Descl) 1964.15 RABNER, K., Ecrits theologiques, T.II(Descle de Brouwer) 1958;

T.III 1963.16 R::XJUEPIO, Ch., Expffrience du monde: exp€!rience de Dieu, Paris

(Cerf) 1968.17 SCHII . I.EBEECKX , E., Christ the Sacrament, I.Dndon-New York (Sheed

andWard paperback) 1963.

18 INI, C., Initiation theologique a la liturgie, T.II, Brug-es. 1963.

19 La liturgie du Mystere paschal = La Maison-Vieu 67-68, 1961.20 "Eucharistie et exp&ience mystique", in Dictionnaire de

spirituaU te, T.IV, cx:>l .1586.21 Le mystere = Semaine des intellectuels catholiques,Ed.Pierre

Horay, Paris 1959

II.SYMBOLISM

22 BEAUOOIN, C., Psychanalyse du symbole reZigieux, Fayard 1957.23 BEINAERI' , L. , "Syrnbolisme mythiqu.e de l'eau dans le baptane," in

La Maison-Vieu 22.24 CARIDUGES, M., "La nature est une parole," in La Maison-Vieu

22.25 OOLIN , P., PhenomenoZogie et hermeneutique du

symboUsme, [Coll. Unam Sanctam 66], Paris

1967.26 DE LUBAC, H., Exeg se m€!dievale, 2e Partie, T.II.27 DURAND, G., L 'imagination symboZique, Presse Univ., 1964.

110

28 ELIADE , M. , Le symbo lisme des tenebres dans Zes re Ugions aPcha- iques, Etudes Canne1.itaines 1960 .

29 KIRCHGASSNER, A. , La puisscince des signes, Paris (Mame) 1962.30 MA.SURE , E., Le Signe , Lille {Bloud et Gay) 1953.31 M)REL, G., Le sens de Z 'existence se Zon St Jean de Za Croix: T.III:

La symbolique_, Paris (Aubier) 1961. .32 SCHEBESTA, P., Le sens re ligieux des primiti f s , Paris (Mame) 1963.33 SINOR, D., "Le synbolisrrt; instrument d 'expression de 1'hcmne," in

La Maison-Dieu 22 .34 VIDAL, Course given at the Paris I.S.T.R., 1970-1971.35 PolaPite du symbo Ze , Etudes cannelitaines 1960.

III. STICISM

36 ANCEIEI' HUSTACHE , Maitre Eckhart et Za mystique rhenane_, [Coll. Maitres Spiritue Zs.l Paris (Seuil) 1956.

37 BARSarrI, D., Vie my stique et mystere liturgique , Paris (Cerf ) .

38 BARUZI, J., St Jean de Za Crow et Ze probZeme de Z 'experience mystique ,Paris (Alcan} 1924.

39 BALTHASAR, H.Urs van, Prayer>_, Paulus Press Deus Book, 1967.40 BOUYER, L. "Mystique" , in Supp Z . Vie Spir . 1949.41 BRUNO DE JESUS MARIA, St. John of t'he Cross, New York 1936.

42 DANIEI.DU, J., Myth and Myster y , New York (Hawthorn Books} 1968.43 FARKASFALVY I D. I L 'inspiration de Z 'ecriture sainte dans Za

theoZogie de saint Berna.Pd , [= Studia Anse Zmiana 53] R:Ine 1964.

44 LKNARD, A. , "Recherches hlogiques auteur de 1 ience mystique" , in Supp Z . Vie Spir. 23 (1952) .

45 I.CNGPRE , E. , Art ., "Eucharistie et experience mystique" , in Diction naire de spiritua Zit, T.IV.

46 LUCIEN DE SS. SACRAMENTO, Vida y Obras comp Zetas de San Juan de ZaCruz, Madrid (ed. BAC} 1964.

47 LUCIEN-MARIE, L' expefrience de Dieu, Paris (Cerf } 1968. Les oeuvres spiritue Z Zes du Bienheureux Pre Jean de Za

Croix, Paris (Desclee de Brouwer) 1949.48 MARITAIN , J., Les degres du savoir, Paris (Descleen 19321.49 IDREL, G., Le sens de Z 'existence se Zon S. Jean de Za Croix, 3 Tones,

Paris (Aubier) 1960-1961.50 M<XJIOJX, J., The Christian Experience , New York (Sheed and Ward} , 1954.

Mystiaa Z Li fe and Pasaha Z Mystery 111

51 PELLE-DOOEL, Y., St . Jean de Za Croix et Za nuit mystique , [Coll.Maitroes Spiroitue Zs ] Paris (Seuil) 1960.

- 52 PIE , A. , "Pour une mystique des mysteres" , in Supp Z . Vie Spiro. 1952.

53 VIINEI', Bible et mystique ahez St . Jean de Za Croix, Etudes Carme!litaines 1949 .