My favorite quote to illuminate what it means to be holy is the well-worn line from St. Iranaeus: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” From the perspective of faith, the sacred drama of life involves and avails us the opportunity to become human and holy. For Christians, in particular, whose faith is grounded in the incarnation, our primary vocation and orientation is to become fully alive, more not less human, and consequently more deeply and genuinely holy. Embodied in and expressed by Jesus, the incarnation reveals the great paradoxical mystery of the spiritual journey, namely, becoming human is to become holy and becoming holy is to become human. Humanization is sanctification and sanctification is humanization.

The Christian tradition holds that life is both inherently and potentially holy: inherently holy because we, and all of life, come from God who alone is Holy and who initiates a relationship with creation and invites humankind into a passionate partnership; potentially holy because humans—beautiful and unfinished, inclined toward the good and susceptible to the ignominious—are a work in process who must choose daily to fulfill both our end of the Divine-human partnership and our original identity in God.

Holiness is the ongoing commitment to human becoming, to the increasing actualization of one’s capacity for significant being as that significance is specifically related to and guided by the Holy One who is its source, way, and fulfillment. Holiness is the name for the dynamic, ongoing shift from self-consciousness to self-surrender which reconfigures life so that God is the center toward which all forces tend. Self-surrender to God translates to a life of self-offering as an expression of incarnated love.

Two interwoven ways that holiness is fostered is by cultivating the mystical and the prophetic dimensions of faith, each of which, in its own way, encourages and facilitates human persons becoming who we truly are. There is a mystic and a prophet that dwells within each of us.[1] Mystic and Prophet are not professional job titles or rarefied appellations reserved for the religiously elite or spiritually extraordinary. Instead they signal a way of being in the world, a way of receiving and responding to life with all its intricacies, implications, and intensity.

Above all, while being imperfect and “on the way,” mystics and prophets are great lovers: lovers of life, oneself, other persons, other-than-human creatures, the resplendent but broken world, and God. As a prerequisite and consequence of their being lovers, they grow in their willingness and ability to be awake and aware, open and appreciative, involved and concerned, responsive and responsible. They are consciously and passionately engaged in life and are characterized by their willingness to be moved and by their desire to respond to that which moves them.

Mystics and prophets see what others don’t see. But not because they have a rare gift or special vision. As James Carroll suggests contemplation is not “looking at the world and seeing something different. Contemplation is simply a different way of seeing,”[2] and as poet Mary Oliver knows “If you notice anything/ it leads you to notice/ more/ and more.”[3] This contemplative seeing that begins with the simple, intentional act of noticing and opens us up to being acted upon is what makes us “ooh” and “aah” at moon rises and at a rare super-bloom of wildflowers in Death Valley as well as at the sight of a screaming Vietnamese girl running naked except for the napalm that clothes her innocent body or at images of black citizens fighting for their God-given right to flourish as human beings as they are penned up against a storefront by the force of firehoses, attack dogs, and the racist hatred of those who have violated their own humanity in the process. Whether evoked by wildflowers or wild fury, the deliberate noticing, beholding, susceptibility, and engagement are the same for the mystic and the prophet. Only the vocal intonation of their “ooh” or “aah” is different—the one expressing awe, the other bespeaking what is awful.

Simple to state but sadly more difficult to do, mystics and prophets intentionally take the time to look so as to see, taste so as to savor, smell so as to breathe in deeply, touch so as to feel, and listen so as to hear. They make their way through the day consciously and regularly noticing, beholding, appreciating, being open and then responsive to whatever or whomever they meet along the way. They allow life to come to them in its many, seemingly insignificant or horrible guises, delightful intricacies, simple elegance, and breathtaking beauty and to penetrate and act on them so that the ineffable in them communes with the ineffable beyond them.

Too often it is easy for us to see neither the necklace of dewdrops on last night’s spun web nor the emaciated Syrian boy on last night’s news.[4] Sometimes the ineffable we do see is the night sky tumbling with meteor showers. Other times it is a masked and hooded man—a human being—holding a nine-inch blade at the throat of a kneeling, orange-clad captive who is also a human being. What we too often miss or too easily turn away from, the mystic and the prophet turn toward, behold, and respond to as the moment or conscience invites. Neither passive observer, unmoved witness, nor guilty bystander, they know the liturgy of life is self-implicating and calls for participation, at times with radical amazement and awe, sometimes with deep sympathy and compassionate action. When we look, see, allow ourselves to be moved, and respond, we too are mystics and prophets. It is quite simple, and quite profound.

The mystic perceives the marvel that is everywhere and everyone and each one. He enjoys a felt sense of the sacredness of life, and lives conscious of the intimate and cosmic kinship of all the living beings of earth. Rooted in the incomprehensible surprise of living, awake to the dazzling mystery of all creation, and enchanted by the extravagance and gratuity of God’s love, mystics are marked by radical amazement, radical receptivity, and radical responsiveness. Taking nothing for granted but understanding all, including their own lives, as sheer gift, they practice wonder, awe, reverence, gratitude, and praise.

The prophet is the man or woman who feels most deeply what God feels.[5] For the prophet, God is not only intimately and personally concerned about but also moved and affected by what happens to the world, earth, and humans. Mimetically, the prophet is radically aware, radically concerned, and radically compassionate. The prophet knows deep in her bones the fullness and depth of God’s care for all creation and all humanity and interprets it as a personal summons and challenge. The prophet concerns herself with what concerns God. If the mystic is acutely aware of humankind being an image of God, then the prophet is intensely aware of humanity and creation being a perpetual concern of God. As a result, the prophet is gripped by the realization that she is called to be the partner of God in making God’s dream a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” As a result, the prophet practices kindness, deep sympathy, compassionate action, the works of mercy and justice, peacemaking, and resistance.

The mystic and the prophet are not competitors, nor the antithesis of each other. They are partners in the movement of authentic spirituality toward God who is at the center. They move toward the center from different starting points. The mystic is the prophet listening. The prophet is the mystic acting. The mystic is the prophet whose deed appears in the form of a prayer. The prophet is the mystic whose prayer appears in the form of a deed. Not mutually exclusive, the mystic and the prophet ideally are one and the same person who throughout life weaves these two expressions of love and ways of being in the world. There are mystical prophets like Dorothy Day and prophetic mystics like Thomas Merton whose lives are given over to the Extravagant Lover to whom their lives are a daily response and a conscious giveaway.

Spirituality that is authentic and holistic, especially one that invites us into the ongoing transformation process of Christ-ening, will necessarily attend to the mystical and prophetic dimensions of faith which are everyone’s inheritance and responsibility. As we consciously adopt and live the mystical and prophetic way of life, we become more authentically human and more deeply holy, awakening and responding to the gratuitousness of divine love manifested in the everyday, as well as to the demands that love makes on us as human beings who are partners of the Divine, companions of Jesus and one another, and a member of the sacred earth community.

[1] Katherine Marie Dykman, S.N.J.M. and L. Patrick Carroll, S.J., Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet: An introduction to Spiritual Direction, New York: Paulist Press, 1981.

[2] James Carroll, Contemplation: Liberating the Ghost of the Church  Churching the Ghost of Liberation, New York: Paulist Press, 1972, pg. 78.

[3] Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, pg. 132.

[4] http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/12/heartbreaking-scenes–in-starving-syrian-town

[5] See Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001.

© Daniel J. Miller, 2016. All Rights Reserved.