When the world is in greatest confusion, visionaries become oracles. Panic, like every other passion, blinds the intelligence of man, and he is glad to take refuge from everything that bewilders him by giving it a ‘supernatural’ interpretation.

-Fr. Marie Louis, O.S.C.O. [Thomas Merton]

While actual discernment of spirits is itself a work of grace, the governing principles of Catholic mystical theology are far simpler, and far more restrictive, than perhaps most imagine – especially if the fads one sees in cyberspace are any indicator.

A salutary counterweight may be found in the works of two of the greatest commentators on the mystical life from the 20th Century: Thomas Merton and Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. While their politics differed greatly and their popular reputations continue to do so, they both offered a great gift in bringing mystical theology to their time (and ours). Garrigou-Lagrange had a formative role for Pius XI’s declaration raising St. John of the Cross to the status of doctor, for Lumen Gentium’s chapter on the universal call to holiness, for Pope St. John Paul II personally and, through him, for Fides et Ratio; Merton disseminated the thought of St. John of the Cross and the Scholastics through the post-World War II revival of Catholic contemplative life and beyond in incisive and often unforgettable prose. The influence of their thought is pervasive here, even beyond the direct citations.

In the abovementioned Apostolic Letter of August 24, 1926 declaring St. John of the Cross as Doctor mysticus, the mystical doctor, Pope Pius XI wrote of how the saint “points out to souls the way of perfection as though illumined by light from on high, in his limpidly clear analysis of mystical experience… [his works] rightly can be called a guide and a handbook for the man of faith who proposes to live a life of perfection.”

And yet, as Pope Benedict XVI preached of him, “the life of St. John of the Cross did not ‘float on mystical clouds’.” He suffered poverty, abandonment, and a persecution from within the Church that amounted to torture. He studied, he labored, he nursed the sick; his service to the Cross in concrete and practical terms informed his mysticism and defined his sanctity as much as, if not more than, anything in his academic studies.

All authentic mysticism bears this dual character, of rational soundness and of the abnegation and sacrifice that testifies to a true commitment to the Cross. Another identifying character of authentic mysticism is that it always works to the good of the whole Body. In Deus Caritas Est, Benedict writes of a

sacramental ‘mysticism’ [which] is social in character: [F]or in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants…. Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians.

To maintain accord with its identity as religio vera, Christianity must uphold among the religions a privileged relationship to truth; what is true, over and against interests, agendas, myth-building, or political utility, should thus, for Christians, be always the criterion of communal fellowship. The privatism which would exalt one against the others is decidedly not a good sign. And yet, cults of personality infest religious movements, particularly those claiming some spurious mystical connection or power, among notorious and discredited Catholic-identifying (or actually ordained) individuals and ranging far beyond across all traditions – from independent bishop Francis Konrad Schuckardt of the self-styled Tridentine Latin Rite Catholic Church (whose devotees refer to the man in capitalized pronouns); to Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, called blasphemously among his followers “The Appointed Son of God”; to Paul Mackenzie, “pastor” of the evangelical “starvation cult” in Kenya; to Li Hongzhi of the Falun Gong New Religious Movement behind the well-known Shen Yun dance performances; to the late Osho, formerly known as Acharya Rajneesh, of the Oregon Rajneeshpuram.

This, dear friends, is the seal of an authentic experience of the Holy Spirit, the source of every charism: the person endowed with supernatural gifts never boasts of them, never flaunts them and, above all, shows complete obedience to the ecclesial authority.

Even where supernatural gifts are real, the contemplation-adjacent phenomena which St. Teresa places in the fifth and sixth mansions typically cease in the seventh. This is because they are the result of the action of the Spirit on the faculties, rather than on “the substance of the soul,” as in perfection. Ecstasies are not at all a feature of transforming union. As Lagrange writes: “Christ and the Blessed Virgin had all these charisms [freely-bestowed gifts of knowledge, prophecy, et al.] to an eminent degree, but without losing the use of their senses; from the very beginning of their lives, they were superior to ecstasy and rapture.” Supernatural gifts are not given to disrupt the modes proper to human knowing, but to expand and purify them.

It makes me especially nervous when someone is overly impressed that his writing processes are “automatic,” or that he or she is – get this – ignorant of doctrine and Scripture. Yet in what amounts, following St. Jerome, to culpable ignorance of Christ, are you not but boasting in your shame? After her visions at Lourdes, St. Bernadette Soubirous embarked on the journey of literacy, education and religious formation not available to her in her childhood. Enrolling in a catechism class, or even one in ocular biology, is of likely more value than orations, say, instructing the pious to stare directly at the sun.

Many conjoin the notion of religion based on the experience of the supernatural by the mystic to that of orthodoxy, a sort of “remnant” spirituality. For Christians, this approach contradicts the inner logic of Christianity. Dwelling on the interchangeability of tropes found across religions – the transposition of the Greek pantheon to the Roman, or certain basic principles of asceticism – can leave the soul lost amidst a multiplicity of seemingly equivalent paths. Moreover, Ratzinger notes that many modern philosophers of religion treat extraordinary experience as the ultimate criterion of an otherwise unknowable truth, thus reducing religion to a derivative offshoot of the mystic’s singular and “firsthand” knowledge:

All religion is said to be based in the final analysis on the experience of the mystic, who alone is able to make contact directly with the divine and who passes something of this on to the many, who are not capable of having such experience… It is clear that this mystical interpretation of religion forms the background for the idea of religion for man today… and that the significance and correctness of this idea stands or falls with the reduction of religion to mysticism.

The mystic’s experience, of course in itself non-communicable and defying translation into language, becomes a systematization of what is essentially opaque, and on that basis demands submission. Methods and formulae are to be accessible to and repeatable among the masses. A substitute god figure willing to specify exactly what exterior practices are to be done so as to secure a result offers a subtle temptation to claim an elusive assurance in the midst of a risky and invested cosmos.

Even with regard to things that are holy, deception stands as a very live danger. The imagination — the individual’s reservoir of sense perception, including the synthetic power of composition with respect to those perceptions — is an entryway to the soul. It is an interior sense, and yet highly manipulable from without, by definition, impressionable; can one human not effect an imaginative vision in another, simply by invoking the reality of a seal-point Siamese kitten, as I have just done?

Now, a genuinely prophetic revelation may come by way of a sensible vision, in which the mystic experiences something external to himself; an imaginary vision, which is imagistic and interior; or an intellectual vision, a coordination of pure ideas. The recipient may be awake, asleep, or in an ecstasy. Ecstasy, which may be partial or complete, is the result of the weakness of nature in the presence of the preternatural. Infused prophetic light to interpret the revelation, as with Joseph in the Old Testament as an example, will accompany the vision as well. A revelation occurring while the visionary is awake, however, is superior to one while he is asleep, because of the value of his having command of his faculties.

Divine revelations are, as Lagrange puts it, “the supernatural manifestation of a hidden truth by means of a vision, a word, or a prophetic instinct.” These revelations are said to be public if they were authored by the prophets, Christ or the Apostles; they are said to be private if they have any other origin whatsoever. These differ one from another not only in degree, but essentially. “Private revelations, no matter what their importance, do not belong to the deposit of Catholic faith.”

As Cardinal Prospero Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV) wrote:

An assent of Catholic faith is not due to [approved private] revelations; it is not even possible. These revelations seek rather an assent of human faith in keeping with the requirements of prudence, which puts them before us as probable and credible to piety.

Moreover, as Lagrange writes, “Private revelations may not be published without the approbation of ecclesial authority” (citing a decree of Pope Urban VIII in 1625, confirmed by Pope Clement IX in 1668 – although I am not as sure that these disciplines still apply as Lagrange seems to be, I can find no evidence of their ever having been abrogated).

Even a genuine revelation may contain error. This is because, as Lagrange explains, “there are many degrees in prophetic light, from the simple, supernatural instinct to perfect revelation.” Where there is only a prophetic office or instinct, the prophet may not understand his own utterance – thus could the high priest Caiaphas prophesy: better that one man should die rather than the people.

Lagrange laments “the error of imprudent directors who, impelled by curiosity, are excessively concerned with souls favored by visions and revelations,” and quotes The Ascent of Mount Carmel at length:

“The soul imagines that something great has taken place, that God himself has spoken, when in reality there is very little, or nothing, or less than nothing. In truth, of what use is that which is void of humility, charity, mortification, holy simplicity, silence, etc.? This is why I affirm that these illusions offer a great obstacle to divine union, for if the soul makes much of them, this fact alone drives it from the abyss of faith…”

While all of the characteristic phenomena which may occur in the spiritual life can be catalogued and categorized, for St. John of the Cross, “In regard to obscure and general knowledge, there is no division; it is contemplation received in faith.” This obscure and general knowledge is not only the end toward which the soul should be led, but, in fact, the telos of all other forms of knowledge, from which “the soul should progress by detaching itself from all of them.” Christianity, according to Ratzinger, recognizes “the absolute value of the divine call that has been made audible in Christ.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in turn, refers back to the authority of John of the Cross:

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say… because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.

So how did we get to where we are now? What really puzzles me is that Catholicism is not the religion of sola scriptura, yet everyone seems to judge himself qualified to make his own private interpretation of private revelations (approved or unapproved, as the case may be), outside of the spirit and mind of the Church. As Thomas Merton writes:

“It is not false mysticism to have visions, but it is false mysticism to make mysticism consist essentially in visions. It is also false mysticism to attribute greater importance to visions, locutions and private revelations than to the truths revealed by God to the Church.”

We must not scruple to reject that mysticism which, though presuming to speak in moral imperatives, rings to reason and heart as somehow “off.” The Mystical Doctor himself assures us: Even should such be from God, “this rejection is no affront to him. Nor will one, by rejecting and not wanting them, fall to receive the effect and fruit God wishes to produce…”

Merton sums up beautifully:

“The apparent ruthlessness of St. John of the Cross consists in the fact that he turns the merciless light of an intellect purified by the fire of God upon scores of objects and desires which seem, to the misguided, to belong to the very essence of sanctity and Christian perfection: and he condemns them all. Not that they are all evil: but the mere fact that they are not good enough means that they are not worthy of our desire… Not only the good things of the world are to be renounced by the ascetic but even some of the highest gifts and favors of God.”

Extraordinary mystical phenomena originate from many sources; God alone can infuse the soul with divine charity. If the Christian is to walk via a path of darkness with respect to the intellect, it is the concomitant via amoris with respect to the will which must be dominant. And of this way, limned out by St. John in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Benedict describes the totally gratuitous reward of fidelity: “the gradual, joyful possession of God, until the soul succeeds in feeling that it loves God with the same love with which it is loved by him.”

Image: “Gigon Saint John of the Cross National G” (CC BY 2.0) by bobistraveling