Re-imagining Life - the difference between the 'Yes' and the 'No'

Nowadays there is a growing tendency to think of mysticism as a kind of Irish stew, made out of scrap-ends of Buddha, Muhammad, Tolstoy and Einstein, to believe that if we can only manage to sit still with the sole of our foot flat on our stomach and respect fleas, we shall reach perfections.

No, it is a mistake, the sacramental life which is indeed to the only true mysticism, the only pure contemplation, is the life that our Lady lived. It consisted in her daily self-giving of her life to make Christ's life, to give him birth, to give birth to him in all human beings. It was, and is, the life of sacramental love, the love which says and means: "I want to give you the marrow of my bones, every cell of my body, the pulsing of my blood. It is not enough to be with you, to look at you, I must be in you, must be you. I want to be your food, your flesh and blood, yourself. I give you my body and I give it in every split second of every moment that I live, awake or asleep, in all that I do, in my words, in my work, in eating, laughing, weeping, in sorrow and in joy, that you may have my life and have it abundantly." That is what our Lady's life said to our Lord Christ, that is what its tremendous littleness means. That is reality.

And she gave back to him the sort of love he had first given to her, for it is indeed her true son who says to all of us "Take this all of you, this is my body, this is my blood." That is our Lady, that is our Lord, that is reality, that is love.

Caryll Houselander in Lift Up Your Hearts

Houselander was writing in the earlier part of this past century.  Looking over the landscape today and seeing the 'fruit' from all of our dabbling around in Irish stew 'mysticism' we see nothing more than a scarier branch of nihilism - where truth is skepticism coupled with reduction, a rejection of faith and everything coming from it. Pope Benedict XVI recently lamented that God has "become the great Unknown and Jesus is simply an important (if that) figure of the past." 

In re-imagining life let us ponder once more what Caryll Houselander wrote above and what Pope Benedict XVI talked about in his article: personal conversion is the first step to true mysticism where you stop appropriating for yourself and allow another to dress you and lead you. (John 21:18).