Analyzing Mysticism and Spirituality Compare and Contrast Two Women

Mysticism and Spirituality Comparison of Two Women: Catherine of Sienna and Julian of Norwich

Spirituality and Mysticism

The relationship between mysticism and spiritualism is one question that often arises in the modern study on the concept of spirituality. In large terms, most modern Western techniques often treat mysticism and spirituality like synonyms. Spirituality means the exploration of the depth of human existence, the main purpose of life and the search for a more in-depth wisdom. Summarily, it is easier to understand spirituality when it is treated as the larger concept. Mysticism is only an aspect of Christian spirituality- a way of intensifying the spiritual path of Christianity. It is quite necessary to note that the significant role of mysticism and spirituality is quite ambiguous. Most Christian traditions like the Western Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox value most of these aspects greatly (Sheldrake 8-9).

Catherine of Sienna

Devotional Practices

Catherine, who lived between 1347 and 1380, created a part of the culture in spirituality history under which women molded by mystical experiences became forces to reckon with in the politics played at that time and the spiritual supervision of officials of the church. Incidentally, these women equally gained a huge influence in the main spiritual issues of the day. Women under this culture included Bingen's Hildegard who lived in the 12th century, Magdeburg's Mechthilde who lived in the 13th century, and Sweden's Bridget who lived in the 14th century (Villegas 22). By the time she turned 18, Catherine became known as Dominican Mantellata (the matellate were a set of widows who provided support for the poor and sick people in Siena and were in affiliation with the Dominicans). While still living at home, the next three years of her life were mostly spent in prayer and solitude. Through her meditative experience, she felt a stronger will to become a part of the work done by the mantellate. Following the guidance and urgings she got through prayers, she increasingly got involved with more people and a large number of issues touching on spirituality, politics and social matters. She played the role of a spiritual mother to the numerous people who assembled in her room in her father's house; she acted as a mediator between rival families; she made efforts to mediate with and affect city state leaders; she offered advice to highly placed church leaders like the pope, the cardinals and several other church leaders (Villegas 22).

In Catherine's writing on what the church requires as a prerequisite for becoming a doctor of the church, Suzanne Noffte offers a very beneficial rubric for taking Catherine's theological contributions into considerations. The prerequisites for canonization involve righteousness, the testimonies of popes or the general councils, and renowned teachings. Digging into the natural gifts Catherine had, the nature of her theology is unearthed by Noffte. Firstly, she is not academic, though she was one of those few whose ideas were heavily included in academic developments; she is far more imagistic than most of the writers that existed during her days; and she kept on with the teaching of the famous magisterium. The tone of her letters and the manner in which she passed her messages was driven by the imagistic nature of her relationship with God-she utilized the imaginary she saw in the Bible and the Christian culture to provide direction to the advice she gave (Dickens 161).

Catherine offered most sermons, such as penitential sermons, which was said to have stirred up the spirit of repentance in all who heard her message. Pope Gregory Xl made special apostolic letters available to allow Raimondo da Capua and his two fellow priests to pardon people who visited Catherine and longed to confess. In her letters, Catherine emphasized the need for every Christian to engage in charity work, which she gave example of by taking care of sick people, mostly during the years of the plague in 1374 and I375 (Allen 224-230).

Mystical Experiences

In every one of her public works, intense mystical experiences sustained Catherine. In times of prayer, she was often thrown into unconsciousness like one in rapture or trance. Certainly, in the letters she wrote, and maybe in her sermons as well, Catherine got translated into an ecstatic world. During one of such experiences, she saw a vision of herself being betrothed to Christ. For medieval people, this was a very familiar image. To Catherine, it stood for the union man has with God, which every mystic dreamed of having through serious and affectionate contemplation.

Such imaginary occurrences may not seem appropriate to modern Christians, but late medieval belief in God always showed union with God with regards to the friendly human union. Mystical experience often led Catherine back into the service world. Virtuous actions were carried out for the sake of God alone. "Loving me for your own sake is not the important thing, or loving your neighbor for your own sake, but loving Me for Myself, loving yourself for Myself, and loving your neighbor for Myself" (Marshall).

In spite of living in the suppressive aspect of the Christian mysticism in the middle of the 14th century, Catherine of Siena experienced two main mystical marriage events. The first one happened when she turned 21 and had a vision of Jesus placing a ring on her finger while Paul, Virgin Mary, and other relevant saintly figures in the bible watched (Fanning 129-130). The second vision Catherine had, and probably the most graphic one, involved the opening of her body's left side by Jesus and replacing her heart with his, joining them together forever. This close visionary experience was the main reason for the authority of Catherine within the papal politics of the 14th century (Pangle 3).

While the life of Catherine was after the controversies of the 12th century, which contrasted the knowledge gotten through mystical consideration and understanding dialectics and reasons, the knowledge that earned her the title of the Doctor of the Church is mystical. This knowledge is a reflection of the wisdom Thomas Aquinas described, a knowledge brought about by the Holy Spirit through an intimate relationship with God. Most singular natural gifts favored that assimilation, but it was equally something extraordinary, as a result of a charism of wisdom inspired by the Holy Spirit, a mystic charism. Catherine believed her wisdom was a direct gift from God. Her mystical knowledge was a combination with a theological structure that was borne of spiritual direction, what she preached, and spiritual readings (Villegas 24-35).

The teachings of Catherine on discernment go far beyond aspects of the tradition of discretion as her wisdom of discernment and the central theme were intertwined: getting the knowledge of truth and love, and living that way. Under these contexts, discernment is no longer one of so many virtues, or the virtue that directs other virtues. Instead, discernment is an attendant fruit of the capacity of an individual for truth and love, capacities that formed the main purpose of the person's creation. The capacity for equality and discernment, as it were the discernment of a person is tied in an extricable way to the conversion process and the development of their potential for love and truth (Villegas 27-35).

The more an individual gets transformed into another Christ, the more her ability to discover pure truth and what is due to love gets activated; dialectically, the more the individual comes to understand the real truth about God and her own self, the more she yearns for that transformation. "Everyone of these insights is clearly elaborated in every one of her works; Catherine emphasized that as the individual grows into a relationship with God (charity), her desire gets transformed. Such desire transformations lead to the capacity to discover and choose what is truly good. Thus, Catherine recognized varied levels of discernment capacity, when discernment got more advanced; it is the unique example of the gift of wisdom as exemplified by her. When the capacity of a person for love and truth gets more orderly, she discovers and selects from connaturality with God (Villegas 28-37).

Catherine's life was during an era when some outstanding women started assuming roles of spiritual mentors with political roles and international importance, just like the case with Sweden's Birgitta. The broader vocational chances did not just affect her self-perceptions, but equally changed how she saw Christ. Christ was not just a bridegroom or a bride. To Catherine, love was the ultimate, but nuptial metaphors and sexual relationships were not among the most predominant metaphor for her union with Christ. To her, He was her teacher, the object of her ecstasies, her bridegroom and most importantly, the suffering savior. Catherine depicted Christ using multiplicity of images: A Fountain, the tree of life, a knight, a lion, a lamb, an eagle, a bed, and a bridge. Her letters show how she tasted the blood of Christ in her mouth for several days on a stretch and perceiving the smell of sin. In the discourse, she draws a picture of Christ as a bridge, and gives minute details of her image, describing the relevance of certain things like the steps and stones. These images gave physicality to her tangible descriptions of her visionary life (Dickens 158).

Spiritual Contribution

Knowledge of God and Self

Embedded in the Thomistic belief that love goes with knowledge, the spiritual writings of Catherine continuously conveyed the knowledge about God and oneself. These themes cannot be left out when properly appreciating any aspect of her spirituality, since they are connected to every one of her main themes. There would be no kind of relationship with God or a spiritual life in the absence of these two aspects of knowledge.

To Catherine, knowledge about God and self are very important for describing the capacity of an individual to love. This assumes a different dimension from Julian who focuses on the value of knowledge on a broad perspective. Without describing the capacity to love, there could be no discernment; so knowledge about God and self are important for discernment. The two aspects of knowledge are different sides to a coin. Yet, to have a constructive knowledge about self and bear good fruits to support growth in charity, it must be experienced jointly with the knowledge of God (Villegas 25-28).

In the house of cell of self-knowledge, God and self are encountered. By foraging into the self-knowledge cell, Catherine was talking about making the choice of paying attention to inner experience as a way of listening and experiencing the truth in a felt way in relation to its revelation about the good and bad on self and the love of God. This attention to inner experiences is what Catherine refers to as continuous prays and is a way of expressing God's love. By the fact that she had her eyes on the knowledge of both God and herself, the soul prays incessantly. This is a good and holy will prayer and an incessant prayer as well. In her letters, Catherine kept on advising her correspondents to venture into the self-knowledge cell so as to learn to gain knowledge of charity (God's love) and also to learn about charity (how to love God and neighbor) (Villegas 28-34).

Knowledge of God involves both the felt truth of the extent of God's love for us because we are dear to him and the felt truth that we all need God at all times. To Catherine, the most important aspect to the knowledge about God is to learn about His infinite mercy, which is His undying patience with our shortcomings, and His infinite wish to increase our capacity to love. A person is able to learn this by holding on to the self-knowledge cell that she is incapable of transcending weaknesses and selfishness without God, and won't be able to live as a true image of God or practice virtue.

Therefore, she learns about the mercy of God as she gets to know more about herself, and she encounters the mercy of God. And the knowledge of this fuels desire transformation. "Therefore, self-knowledge and considering her sins should bring her into knowing God's goodness to her and help her maintain her exercise with real humility (Villegas 33-38).

Contemplation and Action

One ground for the spirituality Catherine exhibited is her strong sense of self. She attributes this to her belief on her self-knowledge cell. Under this inner space, the individual comes to a cell where it is possible for God to be present with her. Instead of being just a physical cell, it is an inner place where an individual can run away from everything that cause distractions and become present to God in an intimate way. It breeds both knowledge of God and knowledge of self. Catherine gives an explanation that the role of this self-knowledge is both a divine and human enterprise, when she gives an explanation on how we may not be able to provide nourishment for others except we first find nourishment for our soul and on real concrete virtues, and we will be unable to do this if we do not cling to the breast of divine charity and draw nourishing divine sweetness milk from that breast (Dickens).

Love and Free Will

Catherine had one specific goal in her life, the honor and love of God, which involved loving one's neighbor. This is the main message contained in her writings. She was quite sure she would be guided by the light of the Holy Spirit. In her view, people who never had the privilege of being under that light were unable to travel during their pilgrimage on earth. Though Catherine existed after St. Thomas Aquinas was gone, her doctrines had no traces of Neo-Scholnstieism or Aristoletian Thomism (Allen 226-235).

Julian of Norwich

Devotional Practices

The practice of Julian and her devotional work showed four distinct sources of religious knowledge: (1) the images of daily perception; (2) the more complicated images, which were created by what we now know as the creative memory or the unconscious mind; (3) propositions gotten from religious instructors; and (4) the propositions from which she built the initial three sources as supporting materials. She equally grouped the knowledge of these sources into three: natural reason, the teaching of the Holy Church, and the working of Grace by the Holy Spirit. She employed her personal experiences in working with these as materials for both the Holy Spirit's instruction of her mind and her reasoning (Allen 203).

Unlike Catherine, Julian made deliberate effort to bring out the value of knowledge in his practice. Julian intended to judge based on the study of the emphasis she laid on the value knowledge had on religions, to enhance the spread of education. She made her intention known by incorporating her point into every aspect of her paper and mentioning it in not less than 28 passages. Julian believed that one's knowledge of God leads to love, that knowledge is essential to loving God and it characterizes divine love, in addition to being one of the great gifts God has given to us. In the words of Julian, a range of activities is stimulated by activities-doubt, analysis, appreciation, synthesis, assurance and compassion. Confronting disagreement would not lead to doubt, but would result to rising pace and faith. For Julian, the value of an increasing religious knowledge was thus in its productive powers (Allen 217).

The general teachings of these "Showings" are directed to Julian's co-Christians. 'In view of all these, I became moved by love towards my co-Christians that could also experience what I experienced, because I wanted it to give them comfort for everyone of this vision was shown for every man' (Sheldrake 99). According to her, love and not judgment, is God's ultimate reality. She starts with her vision about the Passion. The main point in all this was to discover in the broken image of Jesus, God's reality. Therefore, in Christ, every manly creation, eternal future and life, are captured into the life of God as the trinity. 'And in this same revelation, the trinity suddenly filled my heart with the greatest joy imaginable, and I understood that in heaven, it would still be the same thing with any end in sight for people lucky enough to make it to heaven. For God's trinity, the trinity is God. The trinity is God the maker, protector, everlasting lover, and our endless joy and bliss' (Sheldrake 99).

Mystical Experiences

The main nature of Julian's mysticism is strikingly precise because it could not fit into any of the stock categories perfectly, and this creates a distinction with the experiences of Catherine. Instead, the fact that she includes a number of devotional trends provides both difficulties to giving her the right interpretation and an unforeseen depth to her works. Based on what the reader is told by Julian, concerning the conditions on which she got the revelations and as remarked by one scholar, 'Julian lays very affective godliness emphasis on the travailing body of Christ and changes it into a kind of Christo-centric revelation and redemption theology (Dickens 146).

Just like Catherine, Julian used images to bring out various aspects. One of Julian's most memorable images is the motherhood of God; the image's strength does not lie in only the image, but within its context in Julian's work. God's image as a mother goes as far back as the patristic era in Christianity and the image keep appearing in the works of several writers all through the high Middle Ages, both theological and spiritual writers, and religious leaders like Anselm of Canterbury, Aelred of Rievaulx, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure Aquinas, William Flete and Richard Rolle. They all made use of Christ's image as a mother in all their prayers, sermons and treatises. In Julian's era, Christ's image as a mother connected with the increase in very affective devotional godliness. These devotional cultures depended on the human sense built on the likeness and image of God (a common inheritance from the Augustinian tradition) and Christ's human nature served as an assurance that human beings can anticipate being connected to God. The motherly role of Christ was predicated upon three basic stereotypes: firstly, the mother was viewed as generative, creating the new child from her own substances; secondly, the mother had a loving and a tender nature and could not help loving her own child; and thirdly, a mother cares for her offspring just like when her child is fed with her body (Dickens 142-144).

To Julian, Christ's body, which she sees-is just like one detailed landscape that could not have been exhausted and needs more than one lifetime to understand. Just like Hildegard of Bingen, the visionary turns into a text, which is interpreted by Julian as a basis for every other gift. In the case of Hildegard's, these additional gifts involved prophecy and preaching leadership in the church and outside her congregation. According to Julian, this gift showcases itself in her interpretive role and the integrative phase of her prophetic vision, which is rooted both in the contemplative and affective prayer cultures (Dickens 146).

Probably, the most relevant source of the authority Julian wielded, as a guaranteed guide to the spiritual lifestyle, rely on her amazing ability to get languages shaped to suit different purposes. Probably, she would have mostly agreed with the comment of Abraham Edel that the main object of consideration is beyond contemplation, since we cannot change any part of it, but merely come to gain a good understanding of it. And still, as pointed out by Donald Homier, she, however, tried to make what has been revealed to her plain by employing self-seasoned, rhetorical expressions in ancient forms like repetition, quite deftly. The 13th of her revelations contained one of these most captivating uses of this practice, where Julian gave a description of how Divine Love (Bernard 242) can direct us towards blessed assurance: "For by this same blessed authority, wisdom, and love by which all things were made by Him, our ever loving Lord often brings them to similar ends, and he will bring them there by himself, and we shall see it when the time is right" (Zehringer 347-359).