Mystic Union

I love Catholic Spirituality - the great originator and preserver of Christian Mystiscm. John has always challenged me with his talk of mystical union with Christ. I think I will take Merton with me to District Council this week.

This from an encyclical by Pious XII:

"What a spectacle for heaven and earth," observes Our predecessor of happy
memory, Pius XI, "is not the Church at prayer! For centuries without
interruption, from midnight to midnight, the divine psalmody of the inspired
canticles is repeated on earth; there is no hour of the day that is not hallowed
by its special liturgy; there is no state of human life that has not its part in
the thanksgiving, praise, supplication and reparation of this common prayer of
the Mystical Body of Christ which is His Church!"

The worship rendered by the Church to God must be, in its entirety, interior as well as exterior. It is exterior because the nature of man as a composite of body and soul requires it to be so. Likewise, because divine Providence has disposed that "while we recognize God visibly, we may be drawn by Him to love of things unseen." Every impulse of the human heart, besides, expresses itself naturally through the senses; and the worship of God, being the concern not merely of individuals but of the whole community of mankind, must therefore be social as well. This obviously it cannot be unless religious activity is also organized and manifested outwardly. Exterior worship, finally, reveals and emphasizes the unity of the mystical Body, feeds new fuel to its holy zeal, fortifies its energy, intensifies its action day by day: "for although the ceremonies themselves can claim no perfection or sanctity in their won right, they are, nevertheless, the outward acts of religion, designed to rouse the heart, like signals of a sort, to veneration of the sacred realities, and to raise the mind to meditation on the supernatural."