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In Christianity, the concept of mystical union emerged from the more general notion of the divine presence in the believer. As theologians developed this concept using Platonic and Neoplatonic language, the idea of a progression of steps toward spiritual perfection and divine union manifested itself. These steps or stages typically move through an initial phase in which the individual experiences a sense of God’s presence and feels attracted, a second phase of passive acceptance of God and increasing introversion, and finally the state of mystical union. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), the great Spanish mystic summed up the difference between the initial and climactic stages by comparing them to the “spiritual betrothal” and the “spiritual marriage.”
A long tradition of Christian mysticism begins in the medieval period with such outstanding figures as Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), a German mystic and Dominican monk who greatly influenced Martin Luther, but also the sixteenth–century Jesuit Peter Canisius.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic mystics led by such figures as Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), Francis de Sales (1567–1662), and Pierre de Bérulle developed a real science of meditation by which the individual could reach mystical union in a series of stages. The publication in the vernacular of such key works as Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises transformed mysticism, once the province of a tiny minority of adepts, into an important part of the popular religious culture of the Baroque.
In the modern epoch, Catholic mysticism has remained vital and productive. Two figures, Sister Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, illustrate the vastly different mystical paths followed by the mystics of the twentieth century. Sister Faustina’s life reads like that of a medieval or early modern mystic with the constant presence of God, spiritual marriage, visions, trances, and prophecy. In contrast, it is difficult to conceive of Teilhard de Chardin’s mysticism outside of a modern context with his engaging combination of nature mysticism and belief in modern science combining to produce his vision of a universe evolving toward the Omega or the Cosmic Christ.
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