Christian Mysticism Quotes

In the last years, I've been reading the Eastern fathers, the older mystical writings, a rich, deep, and truly traditional Christianity which most Western Christians know almost nothing about. It is very mystical and prayer centered Christianity, with a strong social conscience.

I know that I have to move from speaking about Jesus to letting him speak within me, from thinking about Jesus to letting him think within me, from acting for and with Jesus to letting him act through me. I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes.

Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are today overrun with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they? The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience into the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God.

Spirituality is a mixed-up, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that turns our lives into an upside-down toboggan ride of unexpected turns, surprise bumps and bone shattering crashes ... a life ruined by a Jesus who loves us right into his arms.

We're rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life.

In that first 'fusion' with Jesus (holy communion), it was my Heavenly Mother again who accompanied me to the altar for it was she herself who placed her Jesus into my soul.

Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes.

We just sat there quiet for a long time, which was fine, and I was thinking about way back in the very beginning in the Literal Heart of Jesus.

You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic

If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one.

Now, the fourth gospel says that the moment that Jesus is glorified is the moment he's put to death on the cross, not the resurrection. The moment he's put to death on the cross is when he shows forth glory, and the reason that is, is that he became free enough to give his life away and to love those who were taking it from him. And that's what God is all about. That's the mystical point of view that was hidden from me for years.

Christ is born into the world through each of us.

Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.

Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment.

The early Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit 'the wild goose.' And the reason why is they knew that you cannot tame him.

The Father and the Son have one Will, and that Will is the Holy Ghost, Who gives Himself to the soul so that the Divine Nature permeates the powers of the soul so that it can only do God-like works.

I believe that Jesus realized his oneness with God and he showed, what he attempted to do was show the way to all of us, how to realize our own onenes with God also, so he's a precursor.

I was deeply influenced by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who in her day was quite famous as a faith healer, which is a term I've always distrusted, because it conjures up charlatanry. She was not a charlatan. She was the real thing, and she had had remarkable healings.

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.

The Church is God's Bride. All the saints and mystics say the ultimate purpose of human life, the highest end for which we were made, is the Spiritual Marriage. This is not socially relative; it is eternal. And in it, the soul is spiritually impregnated by God, not vice versa. That is the ultimate reason why God must always be he to us, never she. Religion is essentially heterosexual and therefore fruitful.

I don't know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?

The Imitation of Christ is a cherished treasure of the Christian world. This great book was written by a Roman Catholic monk. "Written", perhaps, is not the proper word. It would be more appropriate to say that each letter of the book is marked deep with the heart's blood of the great soul who had renounced all for his love of Christ.

Saint Augustine cries, Lord I cannot love you, but come in and love yourself in me. According to Saint Paul, we must put off our own natural form and put on the form of God, and Saint Augustine tells us to discard our own mode of nature; then the divine nature will flow in and be revealed. Saint Augustine says, Those who seek and find, find not. He who seeks and finds not, he alone finds. Saint Paul says, What I was, was not I, it was God in me.