“Theophanic Nature Mysticism”
O Lover,
Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226) exemplified “theophanic nature mysticism,” writes Bernard McGinn, the historian of Christian spirituality. As a devotee of the Feast of the Epiphany (“show time!”) and, serendipitously, the father of my daughter named “Tiffany” (“divine Self-manifestation”), I explore in this prayer-post the theophanic (“God-manifesting”) strand of mysticism, particularly the way in which the term “nature” nudges me toward openness to Your Self-disclosure in all having being. Receive my prayer.
Surely one of the greatest tragedies in the Christian saga has been humanity’s extensive uncoupling of Your embrace of the created world. While You—brooding (Gen 1:2), incarnating (Jn 1:1-14), epiphanizing (Mt 2:1-12), Self-disclosing (Ro 1:18-23)—have never not been nearer to the cosmos than we are to ourselves, we of modernity have desacralized it, repeatedly neglecting the embrace. The result is that we often experience Your handiwork only empirically viewing You as transcendently remote (deism) or simply nonexistent and/or irrelevant (atheism). And the Incarnátio, principal linchpin for me of Your embrace, is reduced to an isolated personage, teaching or phenomenon among others.
My opening to “theophanic nature mysticism” surged during a decade (1997-2006) lived amid the biosphere and cosmosphere of the Chesapeake Bay. Aided by pan-sacramentality writings, I experienced being drawn via the kaleidoscopic flora/fauna and unoccluded night sky ever deeper into Your immanent ubiquity. In particular the Eucharist’s Real Presence was being enlarged exponentially to encompass all creation. I increasingly found the biblical ta pánta (“all things” [e.g., Eph 1:9-23]) to be translucent to You with none of Your handiwork excepted as “secular.” This sacrament was becoming for me the window into Your “all in All” (I Cor 15:20-28; Eph 1:23). This theophanic theme would only be expanded as I later stumbled upon the 13th century treasure trove including the likes of Beguine Hadewijch of Brabant (“Totality” [encompassing both Creator and created]) and Franciscan tertiary Angela of Foligno (“The world is pregnant with God”).
In the more recent past all of the above has relentlessly pressed upon me the question of how I think (or un-think) of Your Self-binding to all of us creatures. Is not the Annunciation (Lk 1:26-38) a defining paradigm for Your relationship with everything? Given the identifying of the Christ as Immánuel (“God with us” [Is 7:14; Mt 1:23]) and the further articulation of Your ubiquity in the Poveréllo, are You not decisively here and now wherever/whenever else You might be? Am I not being drawn to that here/now locus even more than to remote transcendencies and/or ancient verities? And insofar as I choose to hear, do not “heaven and nature sing,” in the words of the Christmas carol, of Your ubiquity in the aggregate of all the beloved finites? Indeed, is not “the entire earth full of [Your] glory” (Is 6:3 & Sánctus of Mass)? Is not Your principal home, Your Self-ligatured abode, the concrete cosmos in which You have tabernacled (Apoc 21:3)? Has not this universal inhabitation given rise in the tradition of Jesus to Your transformation of the Bethlehem event into the cosmic Christ? And is it not this scale inclusive of all things an expression of what the Letter to the Hebrews calls “the radiant splendor of [You] . . . the exact representation of [Your] nature” (1:3)?
In contrast to pantheistic reductions which are finally yet more forms of materialism, in the theophanic vision Your creating and Your immanent Self-imbuement are indistinguishable; nature, the plethora of beings, is found to be saturated with You. This permeation, a facet of the “new creation” in Christ of which the Apostle Paul writes (II Cor 5:17), is for me the path toward a re-sacralization, O Lover, but with a difference both pan-en-theistic and Christic. In the words of T. S. Eliot, “[T]he end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started [but] know the place for the first time.”
