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The Divine Mother
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<w.c.>
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In some ways this aspect of Christian spiritual life has always been confusing for me. Mary appears somewhat embellished by the Church in later centuries, although there is clearly enough in the Gospels and Acts to support a scriptural basis for devotion. Extending these scriptural references to her Immaculate Conception and Assumption are a stretch for me intellectually, but not devotionally, except for the fact that I had already received the presence of the Divine Mother in another form prior to a more formal return to Church life (still a work in process).

So I thought a thread like this might invite people to share their experiences of the saints, or perhaps some notion of God manifesting in an intimate, mothering aspect.

Before I forget . . . is anyone familiar with an Aramaic translation of the Lord's Prayer that includes both male and female images of God? I'm wondering if there is any scholarly support for this.

My experience of the Divine Mother is somewhat distinct from visitations of departed family memmbers giving counsel and comfort. She is perhaps simply a much more expansive presence, but ontologically somewhere between the departed and God in transcendental presence given through the grace of contemplation. At least experientially, contemplative grace seems less directly linked with the Kundalini, with effects on it appearing days later, although sometimes quite an impact - a kind of rearranging of things. Whereas devotion to the Divine Mother more directly involves the K, which would be consistent with the Hindu rendering, with Shakti the more visceral experience of the bodily temple, and Shiva (their conterpart to Christ) a more transcendent figure which recieves her. This last bit is interesting for me, since my experiences of the Divine Mother typically take a Roman manifestation of all things, but are often accompanied by a recognition in her of Christ's more transcendent love, something she urges me toward. So there is at least a subjective basis for a rather pluralistic theological anthropology in my case.

But just devotion in general would seem to sometimes require a turning to God as mother. Not that father is inadequate, but that mother is simply implied along with him. The father and son entails a profound mysticism, to the extent I've explored Trinitarian theology, but hey, where's mom? Maybe this is more a psychological need of men looking for their bride.
 
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Phil
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This is a good topic, W.C. Thanks for starting us off.

I would be happy to explain the reasoning behind the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, but that might have little relation to devotion, which seems to be your emphasis. We might also note, in mentioning feminine images of God, that the Wisdom of God in the Old Testament is considered feminine--Sophia! She is a forerunner of the Spirit, which we might also consider to have feminine attributes.

Increasingly, my own devotion seems to have little reference to any gender in God. God-as-Personal is, to me, a trans-gender issue, encompassing both male and female attributes. I seem to view the Persons of the Trinity accordingly, although my image of Jesus is male, for obvious reasons. Still, the Word is a trans-gender Person in my understanding.

Words which convey this trans-gender Personhood in my devotional practice are, "Loving God," "Lord of Light," and a few others. These are the "sacred words" which help to focus my prayer.

I do believe that for many who've been formed in an excessively male idea of God, introducing the concept of God as Mother can be a great help. I also believe that devotion to Mary helps to balance things, for many. She is very special in my own devotion, and I regard her as mother of the Church, and, hence, my spiritual mother as well, in many ways. She can also be a compassionate understanding friend and seems quite willing to assist us in our need, and most responsive to those who call upon her.
 
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johnboy
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quote:
a much more expansive presence, but ontologically somewhere between the departed and God in transcendental presence given through the grace of contemplation

a subjective basis for a rather pluralistic theological anthropology
I wonder what the Neo-Thomists would say regarding the necessary preservation of ontological discontinuity between God and creature? To that extent, for a creature, there would be no in between conceptually possible, only varying degrees of analogically reflecting the Imago Dei, quite distinct from any hypostasis, for instance.

I would like to introduce another ontological model from Mersch, Maritain and Mystical Theology by Jim Arraj. Somewhere, I wrote a musing, cannot remember when or where, but it had to do with the notion that, out there in the realm of nonenergetic causation, where associated memory fields and all sorts of information are floating around accessible to all, like everyone else's, Jesus' thoughts and experiences, both conscious and unconscious, including his spiritual unconscious, are available to be tapped into, in varying degrees, largely dependent upon how well we are in tune, both with that realm, in general, and Jesus, in particular.

Now, follow me, if you will (if that is possible vis a vis my prose).

Although none of us can participate directly in Jesus' supernatural unconscious , still, to the extent His supernatural unconscious influenced his natural consciousness and unconscious (which I am proposing we can access like any other human's), we can partake indirectly (through our own modes of consciousness, including our own spiritual unconscious) in the very supernatural unconscious, it in turn marked by the very mind of God. And this just represents one mode of Divine Communication among others, I'm sure, but one we might conceptually begin to grasp vis a vis a model of Jungian psychology using Maritain's philosophy and theology.

Now, certainly Mary is the most in tune creature who ever lived and, as such, however ontologically distinct from God, even Jesus, the degree of her cooperation with Grace and the extent of her participation in the very mind of God (vis a vis prevailing noospheric conditions vis a vis tapping into Jesus' consciousness and His unconscious, both during His/her earthly sojourn and in the atemporal realm) might speak directly to the issue of how expansive her Christ-like being truly is.

The lesson for us all is that we, too, can attain to and access the mind of God in the very same way. I don't know how well I conveyed this idea but it is one that I find positively exciting. Arraj can clarify below. Followed by a quote from the Pope.

pax,
jb

quote:


From Mersch, Maritain and Mystical Theology by Jim Arraj - extensive quote would normally be unfair use but I'm certain Jim won't mind Smiler

Despite the fact that the idea of a spiritual unconscious was implicit in many of the things that the medieval theologians said, there was a distinct tendency to view the human spirit as identical with what we would today call ego consciousness with its ability to know and will. Maritain saw that a wider view of the human spirit could provide a solution to the apparent paradoxes surrounding the humanity of Jesus. He hypothesized that Jesus had a normal ego consciousness, as well as a spiritual unconscious, that is, the normal human depths of the soul. But he also had what could be called a supernatural unconscious. If this were so, then it was possible to reason that Jesus in his ego consciousness, as well as in his human spiritual unconscious, did not possess a fullness of grace or the beatific vision. He grew in knowledge, learned by experience, and increased in grace. But in his supernatural unconscious he did have a clear awareness of himself as the second person of the Trinity, and between these two realms there was a translucent partition.

Maritain in his book begins the delicate task of trying to discern how the light from Jesus' supernatural unconscious effected the lower regions of his soul. The soul of Jesus is composed of ordinary ego consciousness, as well as an infraconscious equivalent to a Freudian-style unconscious, and a "natural preconscious" or natural "supraconscious of the spirit." (1) In addition, it will have a unique "supraconscious of the spirit divinized in Christ by the beatific vision." (2) Thus, Jesus had in his human nature two different states of consciousness: an ordinary "world of consciousness" embracing ego consciousness, the infraconscious, and the natural supraconscious or spiritual unconscious, and he had a divinized supraconscious that was "for Him a consciousness of self" which did not only show Jesus "the holy Trinity and His own divinity... but show to Him also, - although not by reflection on His acts, -that His own Person, the divine Word, was the Self from which all the acts produced by His human faculties proceeded..." (3)

There was a certain communication between these states, as well as "a certain incommunicability," (4) a translucent partition. There was no way that the transconceptual knowledge of the beatific vision that dwelled in the heaven of Jesus' soul could express itself directly in his world of consciousness, but it did enter there "by mode of general influx and of comforting, and of participated light." (5) And Jesus in his prayer, in his infused contemplation, entered into this divinized supraconscious of his soul.

Let's turn now to Mersch. He is the heir, as well, to St. Thomas and the philosophical and theological tradition that flow from him. When Mersch uses the word consciousness, he is using it in an ontological sense much more often than in a phenomenological or psychological way. Consciousness, then, is an intrinsic dimension of being. In God it is identical with his being, and the human consciousness of Jesus is "the first principle of the supernatural order." And this consciousness must become the "consciousness of our consciousness, as we have seen.

But when Mersch examines revelation in relationship to the Trinity, he focuses more directly on the kind of psychological consciousness that Jesus had of himself. Jesus "really has a human consciousness" which "has various aspects: it is empirical, pure, infused, and beatific." (6) While there is one person or ultimate subject in Jesus who is conscious, this one person "is expressed by a two-fold consciousness," one divine and one human, "and the latter may be multiple."

"The same is true with regard to the word "I"." We must acknowledge that there are in Christ two interior expressions in which the conscious person utters Himself. In this sense there is a two-fold "I"; and indeed, the human "I" in Christ is expressed in several different ways, and to that extent is multiple." (7)

And this is the reality that Maritain is trying to explore with his ideas on the spiritual unconscious and supernatural unconscious. The human consciousness of Jesus expressed the Word in a human way "in order that the "I" it expressed might be truly its "I."" (8) Mersch realizes that "a supernatural perfection can escape the awareness even of a consciousness divinized by grace." (9) But when he is considering the human consciousness of Jesus, the question that occupied Maritain was not in the forefront of his mind. What Mersch is doing in these pages is demonstrating how the human consciousness of Jesus must have awareness of his union with the Word. He is showing that the very Incarnation which creates the entity of union in the humanity of Jesus is the ontological foundation for the human consciousness Jesus has of being the Word of God. In doing so he clarifies the theological foundations for what Maritain is trying to accomplish. Given the fact that Jesus must have a human consciousness that expresses the reality of being the second person of the Trinity, how do we reconcile that consciousness with that other dimension of human consciousness in which he learns and experiences the human joys and sorrows that are so much a part of our lives? We have seen how Maritain began to develop a solution, and Mersch moves in the same direction. He recoils from the thought that the human development of Jesus was some "kind of sport for Him." (10) "As far as His empirical consciousness is concerned, therefore, we can conceive that a real progress could have been made in the explicit formulation of the knowledge He had in His soul, and that His questions and expressions of astonishment corresponded to a very natural advance in His knowledge." (11) But this issue, as I mentioned, was not something that preoccupied him, and he does not develop it.

By now we can begin to see the convergence of Mersch's more theological approach with Maritain's analysis of the various dimensions of the consciousness of Jesus. Mersch's entity of union with its trinitarian character and the knowledge that arises from it is a theological description of what Maritain is calling the effect of the beatific vision in the divinized supraconscious of Jesus. In that heaven of the soul, Jesus is aware of himself as the Word of God, and shares in the trinitarian life. His ordinary consciousness ascends and passes through the translucent partition and enters into that heaven of the soul in his times of infused contemplation. Any theology of contemplation or Christian mystical experience, therefore, must be founded on the model of Jesus' own contemplation, and will be a participation in it.

Not only is contemplation a participation in the human consciousness of Jesus, it must in some way bear a trinitarian imprint. If Mersch's and Maritain's speculations are correct, they should be confirmed by the experience of the Christian mystics, and we should be able to find among them an experience that would be equivalent to Mersch's entity of union as participated by Christians in the divinized supraconscious of the soul of Jesus. Maritain, in the concluding pages of his Degrees of Knowledge, shows us where to look: the state of spiritual marriage described by John of the Cross. The soul of the advanced mystic is transformed in a special and definitive way by love so that "there are two natures in one spirit and love of God." (12) This is an anticipation of the beatific life in which "the soul is in some manner the Whole, the very infinity of God's life which erupts in it as if the whole sea were to flow into a river, I mean a river of love surging with vital operations and able from its very source to become one single spirit with the sea." (13)

In some mysterious way the soul in this state of spiritual marriage is associated with the operations of the Trinity. "The Holy Spirit, in producing in it a "most delicate touch and feeling of love" (which is this breathing, by which it "may love God perfectly"), raises the soul so that "she may breathe in God the same breath of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son in the Father, which is this same Holy Spirit that they breathe into her in the said transformation."" (14) Maritain comments on these views of John of the Cross: "It is very remarkable and of the greatest consequences that, at the summit of the spiritual life and of mystical experience the soul emerges expressly into the depths of the holiest mystery of Christian revelation, "transformed in the flame of love, wherein Father, Son and Holy Spirit commune with it."" (15)

This state is the foretaste in the soul of the mystic of the life of heaven and a participation in knowledge and love in the human consciousness of Jesus, which lives With the life of the Son and through the Son that of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The divinized supraconscious of Jesus was where He experienced the fundamental fact that He was the very person of the Word and shared in the life of the Trinity. It was this world He entered and experienced in His infused contemplation.

"And at the moment of the Agony and of the Passion He can no longer enter there, He is barred from it by uncrossable barriers, this is why He feels himself abandoned. That has been the supreme exemplar of the night of the spirit of the mystics, the absolutely complete night. The whole world of the Vision and of the divinized supraconscious was there, but He no longer experienced it at all through His infused contemplation. And likewise the radiance and the influx of this world on the entire soul were more powerful than ever, but were no longer seized at all by the consciousness, nor experienced." (16)

What we have here is not yet a theology of Christian mystical experience, but the theological foundation for one. This would be a thoroughgoing Christocentric mystical theology resting on Mersch's vision of the mystical body and Maritain's ideas on the spiritual unconscious.

quote:
"So I may know what is pleasing to God"

Vatican City (VIS) � Pope John Paul II welcomed several thousand pilgrims to the weekly general audience held in the Paul VI Hall January 29. His ongoing catechesis last week was focused on the canticle �Lord, give me wisdom,� from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, Chapter 9.

King Solomon, Pope John Paul said, in a �dream-revelation, at the request of God, Who invited him to ask for a gift, answered: give your servant a gentle heart so that he will know how to render justice to his people and know how to distinguish good from evil.�

And, as we see in the canticle today, the Pope continued, King Solomon implored: ��Give me wisdom. ... Send her forth from the holy heavens and from thy throne send her forth.�� This wisdom,� he added, �is not just knowledge or talent or skill, but rather is a sharing in the mind of God Himself. In fact King Solomon asks the Lord to send forth the gift of wisdom so that he may learn what is pleasing to God.�

�Without this wisdom,� remarked the Pope, �we amount to nothing. But with it we are guided to holiness and righteousness. It allows us to understand history, helping us to look beyond mere appearances and to appreciate the deepest meaning of life. With Solomon, let us beg the Lord for His gift of wisdom, to enlighten our hearts and minds in the ways that are pleasing to Him.�

Let us view wisdom as Solomon did, Pope John Paul concluded: �I loved her and sought her from my youth, and I desired to take her for my bride, and I became enamored of her beauty.�

 
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johnboy
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his natural consciousness and unconscious (which I am proposing we can access like any other human's)

Not to diminish how problematical this might be and all that seems to be involved --- both psychically, in this life, and whatever one might call it in the next life, such as following this notion by Peter Kreeft: Everything that has ever happenned, every thought and deed of every person, must be known, open, available to everyone in Heaven.
 
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johnboy
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You know, there are times, when I write such as what I wrote above, and I truly wonder if, perhaps, I actually just decreased the sum total of my readers' knowledge.
 
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Phil
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Oh no, JB. Very good stuff, especially Although none of us can participate directly in Jesus' supernatural unconscious , still, to the extent His supernatural unconscious influenced his natural consciousness and unconscious (which I am proposing we can access like any other human's), we can partake indirectly (through our own modes of consciousness, including our own spiritual unconscious) in the very supernatural unconscious, it in turn marked by the very mind of God.

Remembering, as we contemplate this, that the gift of the Spirit enables a direct participation in the mind/life of God (cf. 1 Cor. 2: 11-13).
 
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johnboy
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"And at the moment of the Agony and of the Passion He can no longer enter there, He is barred from it by uncrossable barriers, this is why He feels himself abandoned. That has been the supreme exemplar of the night of the spirit of the mystics, the absolutely complete night. The whole world of the Vision and of the divinized supraconscious was there, but He no longer experienced it at all through His infused contemplation. And likewise the radiance and the influx of this world on the entire soul were more powerful than ever, but were no longer seized at all by the consciousness, nor experienced."

So, what are the implications for our own Dark Nights? Wherein, absent any felt consolations, bereft of any sensible experiences of God's presence, unable to even fashion and hold on to a conscious reflection of His very existence, we nonetheless persevere in love and virtue? Don't the mystics teach that it is then that the radiance and the influx of the Unitive Life on the entire soul are more powerful than ever? Might our own experiences of abandonment be patterned after His own such that, on the very threshold of the Unitive Life, our prayer seems like a drawing from a dry well, like a sojourn through the desert, because our entire being now dwells in a wholly different realm though still very much immersed in this otherwise alien space-time plenum? And our journey becomes a trek across a new landscape, not in need of desert blooms or life-giving, water-giving oases --- because our actions, themselves, become the little flowers and our deep longing, itself, becomes the windlass drawing wordless prayer from inner wellsprings of the indwelling Trinity. We thus experience a new ecstasy that doesn't at all overpower our senses but which, contrastingly, is rather peacefully and gently underwhelming, powerful only in the manner of energizing a most efficacious love that knows not what it is doing ? Such a darkness is indeed Light for the world.

pax,
jb
 
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