University News

Fr. Harmless’ Book Spans the Lives of Great Mystics

The Rev. William Harmless, S.J., is the author of a new book, Mystics, that explores the lives of "path-breaking religious practitioners who claim to have experienced the infinite, word-defying mystery that is God."

The book takes its readers on a journey in time and culture, spanning the lives of eight great mystics, from Thomas Merton to the Sufi poet Rumi.

But it also does much more.

Through the writings — and the lives — of these six essential Christians, a Muslim and a Buddhist, Fr. Harmless believes voice is given to an essential part of ourselves and all other humans, a voice that our contemporary world quite "effectively silences in us all."

Not only does Fr. Harmless believe that the mystics can, through their writings, have a presence in today's world, but they can also awaken in us a realization of our own inner lives — and our connection with the Divine.

"(The mystics) use words to jolt us into recognizing the ineffable mysteries surging beneath the surface of our own lives and within the depths of our hearts," Fr. Harmless writes, "and, by their artistry, can awaken us to see and savor fugitive glimpses of a God-drenched world."

In fact, it is out of an ordinary classroom setting on a day that began like any other that Fr. Harmless says his inspiration for the book took shape.

"We had been going along for a few weeks, reading a mystic a day ... It was at this juncture in the semester when one of my students raised her hand.

"'I don't want to sound arrogant,' she began, 'But you know - when I read these people, I think that I've experienced something like that. I am beginning to think that I'm a mystic — maybe not the same way these people are, maybe not as intensely. But I know what they're talking about.'

"There was a pause, then hand after hand began to rise. I put aside the day's lecture.

"We talked about the culture we live in, the way our world ignores — even silences — the mystical, the way it has deprived us of words, stopped us from speaking about the mystery that runs under and through our lives.

"We talked about the way the mystics give us a language, a vocabulary, to begin to articulate what we all taste and feel. We talked a little about (German theologian) Karl Rahner, S.J., about the way he suggests that being a mystic is a constituent element of the human person, that most of us are, in fact, repressed mystics.

"Slowly, we begin to understand that God and ultimate truth can be encountered here and now, among the ordinary pieces of life."

Fr. Harmless, a professor of patristic and historical theology, calls Mystics largely "outside of my specialty, which is more in the area of early Christianity and the fathers of the church."

But his new book is also rooted in his own area of study, especially his second book, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. (Earlier writings include Augustine and the Catechumenate, which discusses the saint's concept of adult baptism.)

In this second book, Fr. Harmless examines the desert communities of early Christians, whose oral traditions spoke of a vibrant mysticism.

That book made a natural segue to Mystics, Fr. Harmless confides.

And the new book also seeks to add a different perspective to the body of literature on mysticism, Fr. Harmless says.

"William James, the great psychologist, was most interested in the mystical experience, what it meant in psychological terms" to have a sense of contact with the Divine. That abstracted the sacred experience from the ordinary, he believes.

Later writers urged that mysticism could only be understood through context and culture.

"Now, we study mysticism in terms of the communities, the recipients of the oral traditions. In the case of Hildegard of Bingen, we consider the Benedictines; Bonaventure, the Franciscans."

Now, instead of excising the ultimate moments from the ordinary, Fr. Harmless adds, "We are learning these moments can be encountered here and now," in the desert, in the classroom, "among the ordinary pieces of life."

Mystics is available through major book retailers and in the Creighton University bookstore.