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Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest and authority on male spirituality, has been sharing an email devotional series on mysticism. At first we may shy away from the whole concept of mysticism because it’s esoteric, mysterious, Catholic (with a capital ‘C’ meaning Roman Catholic not catholic as in one universal church). At the same time it’s not measurable in the same way as church attendance, giving money or sharing food.
Brother Richard has a way of expressing mysticism that is straightforward and doesn’t compromise our theology of the cross we Christians who happen to be Lutheran espouse. Instead of telling us how to go out and get it he tells us one way in which we can recognize we are having a mystical experience, an experience of God.
Mysticism should be an experience of new found freedom, not a freedom from but a freedom for: a new found capacity to love. I love this quote: “When you see people going to church and becoming smaller instead of larger, you have every reason to question whether the practices, sermons, sacraments, or liturgies are opening them to an authentic God experience.”
When we attend worship, when we read the bible, when we, as we promise to do in our Service of the Word liturgy, talk about God ‘when we are at home and when we are away’ do we experience a sense growing larger or smaller? The God of the Bible is a God that wants us to grow larger, not a God who wants us to get smaller, become paralyzed with a diminished capacity to love.
The God of the Bible is a God that wants to make of us a great nation, individually and collectively. As we enter a new church year with the beginning of advent (arrival or the anticipation of an arrival) let us anticipate that what God is sending us is a gift that increases our capacity to love.
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