Quietism in all its different manifestations seemed to encourage the reformer’s belief that our own efforts are useless and even blasphemous. Its adherents were not only encouraged to do absolutely nothing in prayer, but to do nothing about temptations either, that could only be overcome with God’s grace. Miguel de Molinos Molinos, the [...]
Before the 1960s, mental prayer took place behind the closed doors of a personal prayer life. However, as the charismatic movement began to spread amongst Catholics, communal charismatic style prayer became more and more popular, not least because of unusual phenomena, from speaking in tongues to slaying in the spirit. When criticised as a deviation [...]
How could a small “heretical Jewish sect” of little consequence convert the vast pagan empire of Rome, created and sustained by the greatest military power the world has ever known, and in such a short time? In the early Church, once a person heard the good news and expressed belief in Christ, baptism followed almost [...]
It is only in mystical contemplation that our weak human love is so purified that it enables this love to mix, mingle and merge with the love of the Holy Spirit. Then, suffused and surcharged with this love we will not only be able to enter into the mystical body of Christ but into Christ’s [...]
Meditation is a means to an end; contemplation is that end. It is our eternal destiny which we will enjoy with all we have known and loved in this life, and those whom we have never known, but who have loved Christ from the beginning. When most readers hear the expression “mystical spirituality” they usually [...]
Begin your meditation by primarily using the Gospels to centre your whole attention on the person of Jesus so that knowledge can gradually turn to love. Affective Prayer begins when the sparks of love that are generated there begin to lead upwards and into the Risen Christ. After the Protestant Reformation, a new terminology began [...]
The first Christians practised a way of life they simply called ‘The Way’ in which they received God’s love endlessly poured out by their Risen Lord. They called this the spiritual life because the love of the Risen Lord was none other than the Holy Spirit, the One whose love had bonded the Father to [...]
Rod Dreher wants us to see into the life of things—to see the creator hidden in the creation, to see the grandeur of God and sense the “deep down things.” But the trouble with the appeal of mysticism is the perennial danger of gnosticism. Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, [...]