Richard Rohr explains how experiencing God can be both scary and alluring, and ultimately wonderful.
In his book The Idea of the Holy, scholar Rudolph Otto (1869–1937) says that when someone has an experience of the Holy, they find themselves caught up in two opposite things at the same time: the mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinans, or the scary mystery and the alluring mystery. [1] We both draw back and are pulled forward into a very new space.
In the mysterium tremendum, God is ultimately far, ultimately beyond—too much, too much, too much (see Isaiah 6:3). It inspires fear and drawing back. Many people never get beyond this first half of the journey. If that is the only half of holiness we experience, we experience God as dread, as the one who has all the power, and in whose presence, we are utterly powerless. Religion at this initial stage tends to become overwhelmed by a sense of sinfulness and separateness. The defining of sin and sin management becomes the very nature of religion, and clergy move in to do the job.
Simultaneously, with the experience of the Holy as beyond and too much is another sense of fascination, allurement, and seduction, a being pulled into something very good and inviting and wonderful or the mysterium fascinans. It’s a paradoxical experience. Otto says if we don’t have both, we don’t have the true or full experience of the Holy. I would agree, based on my experience.
Mysticism begins when the totally transcendent image of God starts to recede, and there’s a deepening sense of God as imminent, present, here, now, safe, and even within me. In Augustine’s words, “God is more intimate to me than I am to myself” [2] or “more me than I am myself.” St. Catherine of Genoa shouted in the streets, “My deepest me is God!” [3]
To spiritually know things on a deeper level, we must overcome this gap. Then, ironically, we’ll know that Someone Else is doing the knowing through us. God is no longer “out there.” At this point, it’s not like one has a new relationship with God; it’s like one has a whole new God! “God is my counselor, and at night my innermost being instructs me,” says the Psalmist (Psalm 16:7). God is operating with us, in us, and even as us.
The mystics are those who are let in on this secret mystery of God’s love affair with the soul, each knowing God loves my soul in particular; God loves me uniquely. We are invited into that same mystery. All true love gives us this sense of being special, chosen, and like nobody else. That is why we are so joyful in the presence of our lover, who mirrors us with a divine mirror.
References:
[1] Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 140.
[2] Augustine, Confessions 3, part 6. Latin text is “Tu autem eras interior intimo meo.”
[3] Catherine of Genoa, Vita 14. Italian text is “Il mio me è Dio” (1580 ed.).
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And…: Daily Meditations (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2013, 2019), 108–109.
Jenna Keiper, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. God inhabits the rainbow of our being(s). We are all in God and God is represented in all of us, plant, human, animal, earth, star, light, dark.
Story from Our Community:
I saw the face of God everywhere on my return visit to my homeland, Chile, after ten years away. Any trepidation I had melted away as I soon recognized everything—sights, smells, the faces—even though I was born here more than seventy years ago. I felt embraced, cherished, connected to every encounter, and my sense of belonging deepened. I have been lost and found so many times in my life, and yet here, I feel so connected to God. This mystical land has always been my true spiritual home.
—Kathleen S.
