Mystics All (Mid-week Message)

Mystics All

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

June 15, 2016

Today, June 15, is the commemoration of Evelyn Underhill, Church of England writer on the mystic experience, who died on this day in 1941 at the age of 65.

Born in 1875, she was in her mid-thirties before she began to explore faith.  She began with several studies on mysticism, culminating in her 1911 masterpiece, Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness.  The book did much to rid the study of peak religious experience of the intellectual objectification and relative emotional sterility that had been introduced by William James’ 1901 book, The Varieties of Religious Experience.  By the mid-1920s, her faith journey had brought her back into full participation in the Church of England, where she had been baptized as an infant and confirmed as an adolescent.   Her 1936 book Worship was a meditation on the mystery of faith and “humanity’s universal instinct” toward adoration. Underhill taught that the life of contemplative prayer is not just for vowed religious like nuns or monks, but is the priceless heritage of each and every Christian.  All they need is the will to undertake its practices.   For her, modern psychological theory was not a threat to faith and contemplation, but rather a useful tool to enhance these.   In her later life, she spent much time leading retreats and giving spiritual direction.

A Prayer for Wholeness (by Evelyn Underhill)

O Lord, penetrate those murky corners

Where we hide memories and tendencies

On which we do not care to look,

But which we will not disinter

And yield freely up to you,

That you may purify and transmute them:

The persistent buried grudge,

The half-acknowledged enmity

Which is still smouldering;

The bitterness of that loss

We have not turned into sacrifice;

The private comfort we cling to; the secret fear of failure which saps our initiative

And is really inverted pride;

The pessimism which is an insult to your joy, Lord;

We bring all these to you,

And we review them with shame and penitence

In your steadfast light. 

“O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all your creatures: Grant that your Church, taught by your servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power, and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have promised by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+