Ravish Me
[“Batter my heart, three personed God; for you / As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; . . . / Take me to you, imprison me, for I / Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” (John Donne [1573-1631], from “Batter My Heart”).]
O Lover,
There is a rich variety of kataphática (“with images”) in the panoply of Christian spirituality: e.g., journey, ladder, river/sea, love affair. Such images typically begin in purgation, flower amid consolations, and may then plateau in comfort, segue into crisis, and/or be subsequently drawn beyond depiction. In contrast, there is the apophática (“sans images”) which involves being moved beyond depiction (as well as language, intellect, linearity and representation), often not without trauma, towards increased focus on the ineffable Tu sólus (“You alone”). Depictions of You with an apophatic thrust—e.g., “absence,” “darkness,” “silence,” “fire,” “depth,” and “abyss”—are variously self-immolative and are thus sometimes dubbed “un-images.” While the kataphatic and apophatic are complementary and both necessary, it is regarding the latter that terms like vía negatíva and “mysticism” are most frequently used. It is my experience, O Lover, that no image in spirituality is as richly delicate and powerful, and yet so instrumental in Your relentless drawing of us beyond all else into Yourself, as is amorous love.
How do we experience amorous love as kataphatic? As purgation clears debris, distraction, and fixations the neophyte becomes increasingly sensitive to the virtues, especially love. The benefits (“consolations”) of human love, perhaps particularly the amorous sort, often include knowledge, euphoria, and a sense of belonging in the dyad or community. Indeed, the saga here is seemingly baited with favors. The great temptation is to focus on the maximizing of and wallowing in such “goodies,” a process which can throttle awareness of You who are Agápe Itself (I Jn 4:8,16). The fruit of preoccupation with amorous jolts is often entropy and idolatry, with either retreat into comfort or spiritual crisis following. However, in such crises the pilgrim may also be being unmediatedly opened to You Yourself.
What then can be said about how amorous love bleeds into the apophatic? The central vector of all of our varied loves is unítas. As You draw us beyond all particulars we catch glimpses that all our loves are becoming translucent to one longing for union with You, whether distinctiónis or indistinctiónis. Such Self-disclosure on Your part is often discombobulating and impossible for us creatures to un-glimpse. Secular/sacred and supersessional dualisms begin to collapse as might the firewall between You as Creator and us as creatures. As we are incrementally being drawn into You we increasingly experience Your Agápe as unconditional, our personhood as beyond egoism and even differentiation. While well I know the manipulability of human love, especially the amorous sort, in its depths it can be glimpsed in Your homing through and beyond all depictions. For the mystics in particular The Saga is ever and always a Love story.
Yet another dimension of the love paradigm is that in it death has met its match (Cant 8:6). The nesting of love and death would be familiar to all opera fans or ponderers of the French la petite mort or those who have fallen in love. Human love senses that commitment both expands and delimits choices, and elevates the costliness of loss. In all of these ways, and more, Your Love understood apophatically embraces, penetrates, and transcends death in ways which other images seldom do. Such Love—undefinable, ineffable, all-encompassing— speaks forcefully to the challenge of death, especially for us denizens of anecdotage.
Finally, nothing opens us finites to being drawn by You along the transit from amorous and other loves into You as Lover, as Agápe Itself, as does trust. Everything incrementally shifts as we become aware of Your complete trustworthiness. Only the one having long been formed in Your tutorial of trust is able join Jesus’ words in Gethsemane—“Do with me as You will”—sans qualifier or asterisk. Only the beloved on this journey can embrace John Donne’s verbs (e.g., “batter,” “take,” “imprison,” “enthrall” [“enslave”], “ravish”) which offend, frighten, and yet hauntingly point. Donne’s words are actually the beloved’s “whatever!” to You, O Lover, O Totally Trustworthy One. Insofar as my resting in Your trustworthiness is yet a work in progress, my embracing of Donne’s “ravish me” prayer is not without hesitancy.
