15 June 2021 - Tuesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time - Psalm 146

     The psalmist asserts today: “Praise the LORD, my soul!  I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God while I live.”  We are called to praise the Lord in our words and our actions, our thoughts and our contemplation, our work and our leisure, our prayers and our reflections.  There are many ways to praise the Lord.  We as Catholics praise the Lord as disciples of Christ in the context of our Catholic faith.   

    I take mysticism for granted as a part of my spirituality. I look at the saints who are seen as mystics who have influenced my journey of faith: the Desert Fathers, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Francis de Sales, Brother Lawrence, Bernard of Clairvaux, Benedict of Nursia, Meister Eckhart.  I could name many more.  Mysticism has had a huge influence in our Christian spirituality, both in the Catholic tradition and in many of the Protestant traditions.  I take mysticism for granted.  But today, on June 15th, back in 1941, a spiritual author from England passed away.  Evelyn Underhill, a Catholic-Anglican author, wrote a book in 1911 entitled Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness.  This work is said to have had a huge impact on the acceptance and incorporation of mysticism into Christian spirituality.  Like the mystics such as John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila who incorporate action and reform into their mystical spirituality, Underhill emphasized the practical dimension of spirituality in her writings, asserting that God “made us in order to use us, and to use us in the most profitable way.”  While she stated that God could use us in a heroic fashion, he most often uses us in the ordinary, everyday rhythm of our lives as we live out our religious vocation.  I can state that some of my most mystical experiences on my journey of faith occurred in the middle of serving in an inner city soup kitchen or working in the stark harsh isolated reality of the jungle.  At the time that Underhill’s book was published, it is said that many Protestants and Catholics did not take mysticism seriously.  Her writings and thoughts had a big impact of changing that perception.  The story of Evelyn Underhill shows us that there are many unsung heroes and unknown members of the community of saints who have had a huge impact on our journey of faith.