CRISTOLOGIA

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===== RUYSBROECK MAJOR SCOTT =====

Major Scott — Aspectos do Misticismo Cristão

Extrato de Aspects of Christian mysticism

==== RUYSBROECK ====

Let it be said at once that the profound insight into spiritual truths which his writings display, and the deep mystical teaching of Ruysbroeck, is not to be measured by his lack of learning or his obscurity of thought. Without following M. Maeterlinck in his extravagant eulogy of Ruysbroeck, it must be admitted that his great mystical treatise, Ordo spiritualium nuptiarum, is one of the most valuable works of its kind that exists, marking as it does, with intense force and lofty seriousness, the mystic ascent, and describing with extreme precision and astonishing fulness the steps in the way. All Ruysbroeck's books, as Maeterlinck has pointed out, " treat exclusively of the same science : a theosophy peculiar to Ruysbroeck, the minute study of the introversion and introspection of the soul, the contemplation of God above all similitudes and likenesses, and the drama of the divine love on the uninhabitable peaks of the spirit."

The truth could hardly be better expressed ; and when we remember that they were all written, as he says, under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, we may well believe that he had drunk deep of the wine of inward joy and spiritual consolation, of which he speaks so often and so rapturously.

He was born, probably, in the year 1293, and died in the year 1381. He was for some time prior of Vauvert, near Brussels, but afterwards retired into the forest of Soignies, where in the convent of Grunthal, spiritually exercised and after much meditation, he wrote most of his books. He seems to have read Dionysius, St. Augustine, Eckhart, and other mystical writers ; but the unsurpassed depth of his thought and spiritual acumen is unquestionably due to the profound spiritual experience, or rather experiences, of a singularly simple and sensitive— perhaps one might even say, emotional—nature, of which he writes at first hand. He himself, as we have already observed, most humbly but most -fervently believed that all his mystical writing was done under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, and with a special and most blessed consciousness of the divine presence in his soul. This blessedness included peace, inward quiet, faithful clinging to the source of all joy, sleep in God, and contemplation of the heaven of darkness, far above reason.

It was, in other words, the mystic labour and rest, concerning which Ruysbroeck writes: "In one and the selfsame moment of time, love labours and rests in its love. And the one is made strong by the other, because the higher the love the greater is the rest, while the greater the rest, the dearer is the love; for the one lives in the other; and he who loves not rests not, while he who rests not loves not. There are, however, some good men who believe that they neither love nor rest in God ; but this very thought springs from love, and since their desire to love is greater than their ability, it seems to them, therefore, that they are powerless to love. Yet in this labour they taste of love and rest, for only the resigned, the passive, and the illuminated man can understand how it is possible to rest and also to enjoy."

Perhaps no one has written more fully of the Stages of the inward way than Ruysbroeck; and although he would have agreed with the saying of Saint-Martin that Christianity possesses things of great force and great weight which neither are nor can ever be written, yet the three stages of the exiled soul's path have seldom been described more particularly or more faithfully.

The lowest stage is that of the active life. The distinguishing marks of this life are humility, love, and justice. We occupy, preserve, and order the kingdom of our soul, says Ruysbroeck, in going forth by love and the virtues, and it is essential that we go forth by charity and justice towards God, towards our neighbour, and towards ourselves. The greatest of all virtues is love, and Ruysbroeck tells us emphatically that none can enter into the repose that is above action, unless he has first actively loved love. The man who feels or thinks that he can possess God without the exercises of love is deceived. The exercise of love is indispensable.

The middle or second stage is that of the internal life. This denotes the rise of the soul from the exterior to the inner life, which Ruysbroeck sometimes calls the elevated or affective life. It is then that the mystic, having received the illumination of the intellect, beholds the eternal truth. For this illumination, this spiritual or supernatural vision, as Ruysbroeck calls it, three things are necessary. " First, the light of the divine grace, then the free conversion of the will towards God, and lastly, a conscience pure from all mortal sin." It is by the light of the divine grace alone that the soul can see. Ruysbroeck maintained as fervently as another great mystic that " the entire universe, notwithstanding all the splendours which it displays before our eyes, can never of itself manifest the truly divine treasures," but, "in order that the creature may conceive and comprehend God, it must be drawn up into God from above." Only by the agency and operation of God can the creature comprehend Him. It is divine grace which enables the soul to recognise and realise its latent possibility. To go out towards God by interior love in eternal work, and by joyous inclination to rest in God in eternal repose, to abide in God, and yet go out towards all the creatures in common love, in the virtues, and in the works of justice,—this is the supreme summit of the inner life. The soul that ascends to this height has all things under it, is sanctified by God, and in " the nothingness of humility " rises beyond all heavens.

While all are not called to the internal life, only few attain the third stage, which is that of the contemplative life. Here, by a process of " deification," the soul makes its ascent to God. At this stage we die to ourselves in God, and God unites us with Himself in eternal love. Thus the soul " sinks into the vast darkness of the Godhead." Very few men attain to this divine contemplation, according to Ruysbroeck, because of their incapacity and the mystery of the light in which contemplation takes place. Only he who is united to God and illuminated in this truth can comprehend the truth by itself.

This contemplation is the eternal recompense of all the virtues and of all life ; none can arrive there by knowledge or subtlety, nor by any exercise; but he whom God wills to unite to His own spirit and to illuminate by Himself can contemplate God, and none other can. It is to be remembered, however, that " the essential unity of our spirit in God exists not in itself, but abides in God and flows out from God, and is immanent in God and returns to God, as to its eternal cause." And, says Ruysbroeck, as the abyss of God calls to abyss, so it is with all those whose spirits are united to God in joyous love. All men who are raised above their creatureliness into the contemplative life become one with the divine glory, one with the same light by means of which they see, and which they see. 11 This calling is an irruption from His essential brightness ; and this essential brightness in the embrace of His bottomless love causes us to lose ourselves and escape from ourselves in the lonely darkness of God."

In another place, Ruysbroeck speaks of the manifestation of God and of eternal life beginning in the abyss of darkness. There the loving spirit is dead to itself. This is the highest state of knowledge to be attained, 11 the stage of ignorance —where there is neither God nor creature, as far as respects the distinction of persons, but where we in God, and God in us, form one simple blessedness, provided we have all lost ourselves, and have been diffused through, or even dissolved in, the unknown obscurity. This is the highest that can be attained in eternal blessedness, in life, death, enjoyment, love." Here " we behold the immeasurable glory of God, and our intellect is as clear from all considerations of distinction and figurative apprehensions, as though we had never seen or heard of such things. Then the riches of God are open to us. Our spirit becomes desireless, as though there were nothing on earth or in heaven of which we stood in need. Then we are alone with God, God and we—nothing else. Then we rise above all multiplicity and distinction into the simple nakedness of our essence, and in it become conscious of the infinite wisdom of the divine essence, whose inexhaustible depths are as a vast waste, into which no corporeal and no spiritual image can intrude. Our created is absorbed in our uncreated life, and we are as it were transformed into God."

Having won its way, the contemplative spirit enjoying as far as may be in this mortal state a real knowledge of the vision of God, will experience its living efficacy in the perfection of divine rest.

And towards the place of exile, far away, We shall look back in our relief and say:

Hard was the bed whereon we writhed in sleep; But now the vigils of true life repay With rest divinely deep. (A. E. Waite, Strange Houses of Sleep.)

We shall, as Ruysbroeck says, understand by love, and we shall be understood by love, and God shall possess us and we Him in unity. In a word, we shall enjoy God, and, united to Him, we shall rest in blessedness.

Deep to deep and sea to sea,

Wondrous union, wondrous rest,

And o'erflowing, then shall be

The long pent-up soul express'd.

This is the life of love in its perfection, which Ruysbroeck says is " above reason and higher than all understanding." The union grows closer all the days of our life which becomes an 11 eternal coming of our Bridegroom." The following words represent, without doubt, Ruysbroeck's own experience: 11 The coming of the Bridegroom is so swift that He is always coming— dwelling within us with His unfathomable riches —ever returning anew in person, with such new brightness that it seems as if He had never come before. For His coming extends beyond all limit of time into an eternal Now, and He is always received with new desires and new delight. Lo! the joys and the delights which this Bridegroom brings with Him at His coming are boundless and limitless, for they are Himself! For this reason, the eyes of the spirit by which the loving soul beholds its Bridegroom are opened so wide that they will never close again. The contemplation and the fixed gaze of the spirit are eternal in the secret manifestation of God, and the comprehension of the spirit is so widely opened, as it waits for the appearing of the Bridegroom, that the spirit itself becomes great as that which it comprehends. Thus is God beheld and comprehended by God, in whom all our blessedness is found."

Of the eternal satisfaction of the craving for union with God, it must be admitted that Ruys-broeck often speaks unguardedly. For example, he writes: "In this embrace and essential unity with God all devout and inward spirits are one with God by living immersion and melting away into Him; they are by grace one and the same thing with Him, because the same essence is in both." In such a statement as this, and many others which might be easily adduced, it is obvious there is that which might give rise to a suspicion in the minds of some that the writer had pantheistic tendencies; but Ruysbroeck certainly could not-be rightly charged with teaching pantheism, for in numerous passages he insists upon the fact that we remain eternally distinct from God. We arrive, it is true, at the eternal image after which we were created, and become one with the divine glory, but we also contemplate God. And this is the soul's supreme blessedness, for "here is nought but an eternal rest, in a joyous envelopment of loving immersion, and this is the essence, without mode, which all interior spirits have chosen above all other things. It is the dark silence in which all lovers are lost." The life begun by divine grace, continued by self-denial and discipline, and illumined by the Holy Ghost shed abroad in the heart, finds its completion and perfection in a realised union of the soul with God.

Of the strange and dark vicissitudes through which the soul passes ere it enters the Mysterium Magnum, Ruysbroeck writes : " Out of all sufferings and renunciations the man will derive for himself an inward joy, he will resign himself into the hands of God and will rejoice to endure suffering for the promotion of God's glory. And by persevering in this way he will experience secret joys never tasted before, because nothing so rejoices the lover of God as to feel that he belongs to his Beloved "... Further, when the time comes all consolation is withdrawn from these exercised spirits " so that they believe they have lost all their virtues, and are forsaken of God and of every creature, if they know how to gather the various fruits, the corn is ripe and the wine ready." Those souls who walk the way of love, amid all storms, to the place whither love shall lead them, having been disciplined by all the virtues, will be accounted worthy to behold God and partake of that sacrament which will be communicated to those who sit down at " the marriage supper of the Lamb."

Concerning the Person and the work of the Incarnate Son, Ruysbroeck teaches that " the Son is the Image of the Father, that in the Son have dwelt from all eternity, foreknown and contemplated by the Father, the prototypes of all mankind. We existed in the Son before we were born—He is the creative ground of all creatures—the eternal cause and principle of their life. The highest essence of our being rests therefore in God—exists in His image in the Son." " The office of the Son in time was to die for us, fulfil the law, and give us a divine pattern of humility, love and patience. He is the fountain whence flows to us all needed blessing, and . . . what the Son did, He did for all." Ruysbroeck is never weary of insisting that Christ must be the rule and pattern of our lives, and that often we must needs press ourselves to the wounds and open heart of Christ our Saviour, if in all things we would have God for our aim. In such exercises, visions and great revelations of the Lord have often come to men Ruysbroeck had a very keen eye for the abuses and the foibles, as well as the vices rife in his day, and as Vaughan points out, he " inveighs with much detail against the vanities of female dress—as to those hair pads, sticking up like great horns—they are just so many 1 devil's nests.'" He does not for a moment ignore what is known as the practical side of* the religious life, but urges that we must not remain on the top of the ladder, but must descend. A life of meekness, humility, and service is a proof of the birth of the Son in our souls. Or as another mystic has said: " As a proof that we are regenerated we must regenerate everything around us."

Finally, Ruysbroeck affirms that in the interior life, everything depends on the will. It is necessary above all things that a man should will right, fervently. " Will to have humility and love, and they are thine." All things are possible to the willing believer. " On the white colour of innocence we shall place red roses by evermore resisting all that is evil. Thus we maintain purity and crucify our own nature, and these red roses with their sweet perfume are very lovely on the white colour."