L.J. shares a reflection on this Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to John.
Baptism means an immersion in the mystery of God. St. Antony of Egypt shows us a way to immerse ourselves in the divine presence.
Baptism means immersion. The endpoint of baptism is a life immersed in God. To elaborate, I would like to draw your attention to a feast day occurring later this week: January 17 is the feast of St Antony. This is not St. Anthony, a follower of St Francis who lived in the 1200s. Rather, this is St. Antony of Egypt (no “h” in his name!), the desert father who lived in the 300s.
St. Antony was a an Egyptian and he left society to become a hermit. He lived most of his life in silence and solitude even though he had a steady stream of visitors in the form of disciples. Antony is a mystic. His life and teachings illuminate the path to becoming a mystic.
He performed an act of anachoresis or “fleeing.” He fled people to go into the desert. To “flee people” in this context is shorthand for the renunciation of society’s values, i.e., the whole system of honor, privilege, and wealth. In short, Antony renounced the way of upward mobility and the mentality of the crowd. To withdraw into the desert was a decisive step in the Gospel journey of downward mobility. In the silence and nothingness, the winds of public opinion and the crowds’ admiration or hatred do not affect one. In a very real sense, the desert dweller is supposed to be dead, dead to the world.
Antony, like all the early desert mothers and fathers, did not live by established norms and customs stemming from a church-approved rule of life. He lived beyond the reaches of ecclesiastical law. He deliberately centered his life on God in silence, solitude, hospitality, humility, and ceaseless prayer. He enjoyed the wild and harsh freedom of the desert, which strips away everything - absolutely everything. He learned to rely on God alone in solitude.
What did he do in his solitude? Prayer, for Antony the desert mystic, is all that matters. It is the sole foundation and “rule” of life. It is truly the only spiritual practice. For, he did not withdraw into the desert to pray occasionally. He withdrew to remain in the divine presence at all times, in obedience to the Gospel command “to pray always” (Luke 18:1). The “struggle” or “work” of prayer is to keep coming back into the contemplative state of mind. One needs to return to God often throughout the day because it is so easy to forget the divine.
Now, prayer does not mean saying prayers only. St. Antony once said, “Perfect prayer is not to know that you are praying.” Perfect prayer transcends the mind with its thinking, the heart with its feelings, and the very sense of self we all have. Such prayer is silent and nothing: an un-self-consciousness. Such prayer transcends self-awareness by letting go of all mental phenomena while remaining present to God in faith. We let go of the thought of self, of self-reflection, by simply staying put in the silence just as Antony stays put physically in the desert. Simon Tugwell once wrote, “It is precisely our "existence" as independent subjects that is our original fall. It is our standing -out (ex-sistentia) from the primordial wholeness and oneness of all things in God which breaks our union with him. As long as there is an "I" which confronts God, there is no real union with him.” Perfect prayer is one with the One and there is no separate self. Practically, it means dis identifying with feelings, thinking, and self-talk. We let thinking and emotions fade into oblivion. We allow ourselves to disappear in the nothingness as Antony vanished from society in the desert.
Tugwell continues, “The abolition of any clear notion of God in contemplative unknowing thus goes with the abolition of any clear awareness of the knowing subject. One must approach God in such nakedness that it is clothed not even in itself. Only so can it allow the ‘nothing’ in the ‘nowhere’ of contemplation. Only ‘nobody’ constitutes no obstacle to this work…If God is to be all in all, there is no room for us as a separate center or focus of existence…But this ‘self-naughting,’ though it means that we must lose our consciousness of ourselves, is actually the way that we become ourselves.”
Prayer is the practical means to becoming a mystic, but not prayer as an occasional practice. Antony shows us that prayer must be your very way of living. He prayed in such a way that he realized he was immersed, baptized, in the divine mystery. That is the way for us as well. Prayer as a constant activity and an experience of unknowing is how one becomes a mystic.