In memory of Freda Nicholls (1931–2022)

Wise spiritual mentor and loving friend

So Longeth My Soul

A Reader in Christian Spirituality

Joanna Collicutt

© Joanna Collicutt 2024

Published in 2024 by SCM Press

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Contents

Preface

Part I

1. The Vital Testimony of the Ancients

2. Approaching the Text I: Understanding its Nature

3. Approaching the Text II: Interpreting its Significance

Part II

4. Lamenting

4.1. Bearing witness in words

To Mary and her Son

Blathmac, Son of Cú Brettan

Prayer to Christ and Meditation on Human Redemption (extracts)

Anselm of Canterbury

Stabat Mater

Unknown Italian author

The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom (extract)

Henry Suso

The St Matthew Passion of J. S. Bach (opening chorus)

Christian Friedrich Henrici

4.2. Bearing witness in martyrdom

Letter to the Romans (extract)

Ignatius of Antioch

To the Martyrs and On Baptism (extracts)

Tertullian

The Life of Cyprian (extract)

attributed to Pontius the Deacon

Confessions (extract)

Patrick of Ireland

5. Attending to the Body

5.1. The body of the community

Life of Pachomius (c.292–c.348) (extract)

Anonymous

Rule (extract)

Benedict of Nursia

Sermon on the Day of Pentecost

Augustine of Hippo

5.2. The body of the Eucharistic bread

Pange Lingua

Thomas Aquinas

The Imitation of Christ (extracts)

Thomas Kempis

5.3. The body of the believer

Hymn of Divine Love 2 (extract)

Symeon the New Theologian

The Life of Francis and The Mystical Vine (extracts)

Bonaventure

The Memorial of Angela of Foligno (extract)

Brother A

6. (re-)Attaching Imaginatively

6.1. Parental attachment

Prayer to St Paul (extract)

Anselm of Canterbury

The Way of Perfection (extract)

Teresa of Avila

Letter to Sister Françoise-Thérèse III (extract)

Thérèse of Lisieux

6.2. Erotic union

Commentary on the Song of Songs (extracts)

Bernard of Clairvaux

Letter IX

Hadewijch

Fourth letter to Agnes of Prague (extract)

Clare of Assisi

Sermon on Isaiah 54.5 (extract)

George Whitefield

6.3. Solidarity through suffering-with

Revelations of Divine Love (extract)

Julian of Norwich

Was you there?

Anonymous African American Spiritual

6.4. ‘Holding fast to the word of life’

Commentary on the Twelve Psalms (extracts)

Ambrose of Milan

Sermons on Several Occasions (extracts)

John Wesley

7. Returning

7.1. Ad fontes (to the source)

The Pilgrimage of Egeria (extract)

Egeria

The Pilgrimage of Holy Paula (extract)

Jerome

The Spiritual Exercises (extract)

Ignatius of Loyola

A Life of Jesus (extract)

Ernest Renan

7.2. Back to the womb

The Philokalia (extracts)

The Hesychasts

Sermon on Ephesians 4.23 (extract)

Meister Eckhart

Centuries of Meditations (extract) and The Return

Thomas Traherne

7.3. The gift of hindsight

The Approach

Thomas Traherne

The Life of Moses (extract)

Gregory of Nyssa

Modern Painters II (extract)

John Ruskin

8. Engaging with Absence

8.1. Enduring suffering and separation

Pastoral Rule Book and Moralia on Job (extracts)

Gregory the Great

The Pilgrim’s Progress (extract)

John Bunyan

8.2. Purposeful detachment

The Spiritual Espousals (extract)

John Van Ruysbroeck

The Scale of Perfection Book Two (extract)

Walter Hilton

The Cloud of Unknowing (extract)

Anonymous

8.3. Treasures of darkness

Commentary on the First Twenty-two Psalms (extract)

Martin Luther

The Dark Night of the Soul

John of the Cross

The Spiritual Espousals (extract)

John Van Ruysbroeck

9. Breaking Through

9.1. Piercing the veil

The Book of Divine Consolation and Sermon for Ascension Day (extracts)

Meister Eckhart

On Mystical Theology (extract)

Pseudo-Dionysius

9.2. ‘Lift up your hearts’

The Divine Comedy (extract)

Dante Alighieri

The Life of Teresa of Jesus (extract)

Teresa of Avila

Steal Away to Jesus

Wallace Willis

9.3. The open heaven

Life of Antony (extract)

Athanasius of Alexandria

Hymn of Divine Love 11 (extracts)

Symeon the New Theologian

Book of Divine Works (extract)

Hildegard of Bingen

Letter to Anna Flaxman (extract)

William Blake

10. Placing

10.1. Christ in nature

Hymn on the Nativity 4 (extract)

Ephrem the Syrian

Canticle of the Sun

Francis of Assisi

The Soul’s Journey into God (extract)

Bonaventure

10.2. The domestic transfigured

The Book of Margery Kempe (extract)

Scribe(s) of Margery Kempe

The Temple (extracts)

George Herbert

Journal (extract)

Susanna Wesley

Parochial and Plain Sermons (extract)

John Henry Newman

10.3. Material artefacts charged with cosmic significance

The Dream of the Rood (extracts)

Anonymous

Life of Malachy (extract)

Bernard of Clairvaux

On Noah’s Moral Ark (extracts)

Hugh of St Victor

11. Doing What He Would Want

11.1. Seeing Christ in humanity

Funeral oration for Basil of Caesarea (extracts)

Gregory of Nazianzus

Treatise on the Love of God (extract)

Francis de Sales

Discourse on Christian Charity (extract)

Jonathan Edwards

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

Gerard Manley Hopkins

11.2. What would Jesus do?

The Philokalia (extracts)

Maximos the Confessor

First Rule of the Lesser Brothers (extract)

Francis of Assisi

Summa Theologica (extract)

Thomas Aquinas

Social Purity (extract)

Josephine Butler

12. Remembering

12.1. Remembering with appreciation

Rule of Basil (extract)

Basil of Caesarea

Contemplation for Attaining Love

Ignatius of Loyola

12.2. Remembering as a reconstitution of the self

Anaphora of St Basil (extract)

Basil of Caesarea

Confessions, Book X (extracts)

Augustine of Hippo

Of the Lord’s Supper (extract)

Ulrich Zwingli

12.3. Remembering as keeping in mind: ‘Watch and pray’

On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination: One Hundred Texts (extracts)

Diadochos of Photiki

Forty Texts on Watchfulness (extracts)

Philotheos of Sinai (ninth century)

Letter to Miss Hatton (extract)

John Fletcher

Conclusion

13. ‘Patiently Waiting for the Smiles of Jesus’

Time and Place Table

Acknowledgements

Preface

This book has been several years in the making. It has arisen from my experience of teaching Christian spirituality to people training for ministry in the Church of England, and more specifically from three modules from Durham University’s Common Awards in Theology, Mission and Ministry: ‘Texts and traditions in Christian spirituality’, ‘Aspects of spirituality and ministry’ and ‘Christian theology, ritual and pastoral care’. The classes were sources of rich insights drawn from engaging discussion with intelligent and prayerful students, but they also revealed their limited exposure to the primary texts themselves. Several students told me that they had perhaps one or two favourite writers, but beyond this did not know where to start in reading and evaluating these sources.

This is something that is also true for a lot of ordinary Christians (including myself for many years). However, there are exceptions, and Freda Nicholls, to whom this book is dedicated, was an extraordinary ordinary Christian who was quietly steeped in the texts and traditions of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. I was her priest, but she was my teacher.

The book introduces readers with little prior knowledge to the range of Christian spiritual writings from the end of the apostolic age until the late nineteenth century. I have not ventured into more recent times as there seems to be much less of a problem in accessing twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers such as Evelyn Underhill, Simone Weil, Thomas Merton and so on. Even within this limit, the coverage is indicative rather than comprehensive: several key thinkers, such as Evagrios of Pontus, John Donne, Søren Kierkegaard or Catherine of Siena, do not appear. The chapters are arranged according to a number of psychological themes rather than on the basis of historical epoch or spiritual tradition, and texts have been selected primarily on the basis of their fit with these themes. (I have also tried to keep a reasonable balance between Catholic and Protestant, and east and west, and to include a variety of literary genres.)

The rather unusual thematic structure is aimed at helping readers engage with the texts in a way that is spiritually enriching and psychologically useful, and to encourage them to think about ways of drawing others in, perhaps by presenting the key ideas in more contemporary form. The rationale for the chosen themes (each connected in a different way with human bereavement) is presented in Part I, together with a consideration of the inherent challenges of engaging with historically distant texts, and some guidance on navigating these challenges and getting the most from them. Part II is devoted to the readings themselves, most of which are sufficiently long to give a flavour of the writer’s thinking. Nevertheless, each is only a small sample of the output of its writer, and the topic in question may not be fully representative of their major concerns. So, for example, while there are readings from Josephine Butler and Thomas Aquinas in a section on social justice, this topic dominated Butler’s thought but was only part of Thomas’ broader theological and philosophical agenda. This, of course, relates to a second aim of the book which is to encourage its readers to read more by or about the authors they encounter here. Suggestions for further reading are provided at the end of each chapter. A concluding chapter with a single reading returns to the theme of waiting well for the return of Christ, the foundational idea of the book.

Where possible, the most accessible translations have been used. Some translations convey the literal sense of the text accurately but others capture its spirit better. Where there has been a choice, I have generally favoured the latter. In order to engage well with these texts a sense of where they come in the history and geography of the Church and the world is useful. I have therefore included a time and place table (pp. 244–6) which makes this clear and helps locate the readings in relation to each other. From this it can be seen that, with the rise of Christendom, there is a relentless shift in the preserved written sources northwards and westwards, mirroring the geographic shift in centres of scholarship and faith, and the development in modes and channels of communication.

This book has grown out of many conversations, and I cannot now recall all the individuals who have knowingly or unknowingly offered helpful insights. I would, nevertheless, like to thank colleagues and students at Ripon College Cuddesdon, particularly Grant Bayliss, Eddie Howells, Michael Lakey and George Meyrick; my tutor at King’s College London, Rebecca Gill; and my colleague in parish ministry, Mark Thomas. I also owe a debt to Salisbury Diocese: to Colin Heber-Percy and the people of Pewsey Deanery, and to James Woodward and students at Sarum College for their hospitality in allowing me to present some of the material as part of their learning and development programmes.

A number of scholars, translators and religious communities have been generous with permissions and advice as I requested approval to reproduce work authored by themselves or deceased colleagues and loved ones. These are all acknowledged on pages 247–51, but I would particularly like to thank Father John Anthony McGuckin for sharing his scholarship on Symeon the New Theologian.

Much of the groundwork for the book took place during the lockdown of 2021, during which Alister McGrath and I were delighted to discover that, after 40 years of marriage in which we didn’t see much of each other, we still get on rather well. I am deeply grateful to him for his translations of three of the readings, and for much more.

Part I

Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks:

so longeth my soul after thee, O God.

Psalm 42.1 (Book of Common Prayer)

1. The Vital Testimony of the Ancients

This book is a collection of readings from classic texts of Christian spirituality drawn from the early years after the close of the New Testament to the end of the nineteenth century. Its aim is to offer the reader a way into these texts that enables them to be received as living and relevant for both personal spirituality and ministry. In my experience people beginning the study of Christian spirituality have an ambivalent attitude to primary sources from the past. On the one hand they are intrigued by the mysterious ‘otherness’ of their language (examen, shewings, interior castle, hesychasm etc.) and the promise that this very ‘otherness’ may take them into exciting uncharted territory. On the other hand, they lack the confidence to navigate this territory, so that what begins as strangely intriguing can quickly become ‘just too weird’.

In this vein it has been said that primary sources on Christian spirituality fall into the class of literature that ‘everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read’.¹ That may be going too far; some people on first encountering these texts seem to relish their archaic and arcane aspects, treating them somewhat like literary fantasies. There is nothing wrong with this, especially if it goes beyond simple diversion and opens the door to forms of self-transcendence. But I would want to argue that a lot more is required to do them full justice; otherwise there is a danger of ‘silencing the ancients: of refusing the vital testimony they can give on great questions of who we humans are, why we act as we do, and how we may wisely direct our short and often painful lives’.² This book is an invitation to listen and attend well to some of this ‘vital testimony’.

From action to contemplation

In my 2015 book The Psychology of Christian Character Formation I presented the Christian life as a transformative process of ‘growing up into Christ’,³ a phrase that reflects both resemblance and union. The book was mainly concerned with the former: developing a Christ-like character through conscious imitation of him (1 Corinthians 11.1). It focused on the cultivation of virtue, and thus emphasized the active side of Christian spirituality, at times drawing on classic texts such as the Rule of St Benedict. The present book could be described as a companion volume that concentrates on these texts themselves, and with a more experiential and contemplative focus.

While the active and contemplative are not so easily separated as this might seem to imply, the shift from an early focus on virtue to a later focus on contemplation is a pattern repeatedly found and even explicitly advocated in several classic texts, summed up by Evelyn Underhill: ‘First, there are the virtues to be acquired: those ornaments of the Spiritual Marriage with which no mystic can dispense … the rebuilding of character – as the preparation of the contemplative act.’⁴ This order does not indicate that concerns of character and virtue are less important than divine contemplation; rather it is to assert that they are foundational to it. You cannot go straight to mystical union without passing the ‘Go’ of good character. The contemplative life is not an escape from the challenging world of embodied human relationships but something that emerges from it⁵ and speaks back into it.

The shift in emphasis from imitation to contemplation is then not so much about advancing up the rungs of a ladder beyond spiritual basics (though some of the writers in this book do talk in such terms); it is more like moving around a circle and exploring another perspective to give a full account of ‘what is going on’. It represents a move from considering the Christian spiritual life as one of following Christ to one of encountering Christ, from knowing about to knowing, from a ‘Me and Him’ relationship to what Martin Buber called an ‘Ich und Du’ (I and Thou) relationship.⁶

The phrase ‘I and Thou’ reminds us that the contemplative gaze of the believer is not directed at an object (however exalted) but at a person who meets our gaze, an experience beautifully, if unintentionally, captured by Monteverdi’s famous secular love duet Pur ti miro (‘I gaze upon you’).⁷ Paul describes this in more theologically robust terms as receiving ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4.6b). For Paul at least, any ‘I and Thou’ encounter with the triune God takes the form of a meeting with the second person of the Trinity, a key point to which I shall shortly return.

Is God dead?

The context in which the Christian life happens is the gospel – the ultimate good news story that in the life, death, and raising of Jesus of Nazareth, God acted to reconcile all things to himself, and that now in and through the Spirit Christians are ‘being transformed from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Corinthians 3.18). Christians believe that God came to be with us in Jesus and, because of the resurrection, God is still with us in Jesus. Lest we forget that fact, most Anglican collects end with the assertion that Jesus is alive.

But our lived experience may be different. Sometimes it takes the eyes of a child to notice this and the naiveté of a child to name it. Many years ago my (then) little niece asked me with great seriousness, ‘Joanna, is God dead?’. ‘What makes you think that?’ I questioned, hoping to buy some time. She replied, ‘Well, because when we go to his house he’s never home.’ Somewhat thrown, I explained that God was indeed there but in a different and special sort of way. She didn’t look convinced.

Later, I told her mother, who ran through some possible amusing alternative responses that included, ‘He’s just popped out to the shops, but he’ll be back later.’ It seemed to me that in saying this she had unknowingly put her finger on the heartbeat of the Christian dilemma: Jesus came but then he went away; Jesus is with us now but not yet; or, in the words of those Anglican collects, ‘who is alive and reigns with you …’ – not dead but inaccessible in heaven. Both the individual Christian and the church live in a constant state of tension between the presence and absence of Jesus. This means that much of our spiritual experience takes the form of yearning for something half-remembered that is just beyond our grasp, or seeking after something that we have mislaid, at least temporarily.

The Christian story of salvation presents the human condition more generally in these terms, framing it as ‘paradise lost’. In the beginning human beings lived in intimacy with God in a garden with the tree of life at its centre (Genesis 2.9). The Fall resulted in their banishment from this state with no hope of accessing the tree of life (Genesis 2.24) – that is, until the coming of Christ.

Human spiritual awakening has then traditionally been understood as an inchoate desire for this prelapsarian life. It can present as a seeking after parental intimacy and connectedness; a longing for liberation from oppression; a search for true identity; a desire to shake off the shackles of the ego; a quest for ultimate understanding and meaning; a deep need to go home:

Greatly saddened was the Tree of Life

when it beheld Adam stolen away from it;

it sank down into the virgin ground and was hidden

– to burst forth and appear on Golgotha;

Humanity, like birds that are chased,

took refuge in it that it might return them to their proper home.⁸

However, the Christian is not promised a return to Eden but is instead offered the prospect of the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem whose gates stand open (Revelation 21.25), with the tree of life at its centre, its fruit now available to all (Revelation 22.2). The writer to the Hebrews suggests that this vision is also for those who died in faith before Christ (Hebrews 11.13–16), and emphasizes that ‘in these last days’ (Hebrews 1.1) there is no more need for anyone to look back with regret or nostalgia.

And yet we do.

Marana tha

That description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation ends with a cry of unconsummated longing that forms the conclusion to the Christian Bible as a whole: ‘The one who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (Revelation 22.20). This is obviously a future-oriented sentiment, but its roots lie in the past; for the call is not for a first meeting with a stranger but for a reunion with someone already known:

… the Aramaic phrase ‘Marana tha’ (Our Lord, come!), presumably originating in the Palestinian church …both expressed a prevalent need or wish and also maintained a sense of expectation.

… these very first Christians … remembered what it was like to know Jesus the first time around … They were bereaved … When you lose someone you love, the hope of a reunion is what keeps you going.⁹

This perhaps accounts for the feeling of wistfulness, the sense of having lost something precious, that can be found in the pages of the New Testament, and the repeated exhortations by its writers to look forward in hope rather than backwards in grief. Just as the human condition can be understood as a longing for Eden, the Christian condition can be understood as a longing for Emmanuel. This longing must have been acutely painful for those who knew Jesus of Nazareth (it is almost palpable in John’s description of the brief encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene by the garden tomb); many later Christians too have experienced a form of grief for the Jesus they never met.

In his book The Shadow of the Galilean,¹⁰ the New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen explores this idea. The book tells the fictional story of Andreas, a Galilean Jew who reluctantly finds himself working as a spy for Pontius Pilate. His task is the surveillance of local troublemakers or possible political insurgents and, as he goes about it, he keeps running into people who know Jesus, both enemies and followers. Little by little Andreas finds himself being drawn to this mysterious figure through hearing snippets of his teaching, meeting people who have been healed by him, and witnessing the transformation in the lives of some of his clandestine disciples. The suspense builds as Andreas comes nearer and nearer to meeting Jesus himself, and this appears to be inevitable as he arrives at Pilate’s headquarters in Jerusalem during Passover. But the meeting never happens; the nearest Andreas gets is to see the lifeless body of Jesus on the cross from a distance. Like Christians down the centuries, he has to be content with traces of Jesus, with the shadow of Galilean.

‘He is not here’

¹¹

The Gospels were written a generation after the death of Jesus, drawing on the recollections of those who had known him for an audience who had never met him (1 Peter 1.8). They clearly recognize the Christian dilemma, what another New Testament scholar Markus Bockmuehl refers to as ‘the dialectic of the present and the absent Jesus’,¹² and each addresses it in a different way. John is the most explicit, devoting four chapters to Jesus’ farewell discourses as he prepares his followers for his departure and comforts them with the promise of the Holy Spirit: ‘It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you’ (John 16.7b). For John, Jesus has gone but the Spirit has come in some sense in his place.

Matthew, the evangelist who uses the term ‘Emmanuel’ at the beginning of his Gospel (Matthew 1.23), ends it with Jesus’ deeply paradoxical parting farewell assertion that ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28.20b). Matthew places much less emphasis on the Spirit and instead locates the continuing presence of Jesus in the gathered Christian community – the ekkle¯sia (e.g. Matthew 18.20), especially its weak or suffering members (Matthew 25.40).

Luke at the end of his Gospel gives a clear account of Jesus’ physical ascension heavenwards, repeating it at the opening of Acts, this time including the details of an impenetrable cloud and the confirmation by two angels that he has gone (Luke 24.51; Acts 1.9–11). Like John, Luke presents the departure of Jesus as a prelude to the coming of the Spirit, but in the Emmaus Road story he also identifies ‘the breaking of the bread’ as a place of encounter with the elusive risen Christ, which he links with the continuing practice of the first Christians after the ascension (Luke 24.35; Acts 2.42). As in John’s Gospel, a continuing sense of the presence of Christ is closely connected with the act of remembering, an important motif in the Emmaus Road story.

Here there is also a connection with Mark, whose Gospel ends abruptly with the angel’s statement that ‘he is not here’ plus the direction to return to Galilee with a reminder of Jesus’ earlier words (Mark 16.6–7; see 14.28). Mark’s emphasis on returning to where it all started brings to mind the opening words of his Gospel: ‘The beginning…’ (arche¯). The angel’s words invite the reader to follow the disciples back to where the Good News began and to encounter Jesus afresh in the text with the benefit of hindsight. The last words of this Gospel are ‘for they were afraid’; there is no sense of closure or resolution here, just the instruction to go back. This is something that survivors of trauma or bereavement involuntarily find themselves doing: going over it all, questioning, re-processing, seeking significance with hindsight.

Paul never met Jesus of Nazareth, yet he too struggled with a tension between the felt presence of the risen-and-ascended Christ in his life and a sense that he was also absent:

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1.21–23)

But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness … Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. (Romans 8.10, 34b)

This is never fully resolved for him; like Luke he associates the presence of Jesus with the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 10.16); like Matthew, he finds him in the gathered community (1 Corinthians 12.27); like John, he sees him as represented by the Spirit (Philippians 1.19). In all these ways Jesus is experienced in a mediated or indirect form, seen ‘in a mirror, dimly’ (1 Corinthians 13.12). Yet it seems that Paul has also had experiences more like direct ‘I-and-Thou’ encounters that might be described as mystical (Galatians 1.12; 2 Corinthians 12.2–4), in which the Christ Jesus who is at the right hand of God briefly became accessible to him, as he was for Stephen (Acts 7.56).¹³

The first Christians mourned a Jesus they had loved and lost, but who also continued to be with them in manifold ways, some of which are mentioned above. Subsequent generations continue to inhabit this presence–absence tension. All look forward to an ultimate meeting when we shall ‘see face to face’ and ‘know fully’ (1 Corinthians 13.12). In this sense all Christians are in a quasi-bereaved state. Yet, just as in human bereavement, we have ways in which we can maintain the relationship with our loved one and, unlike the situation in human bereavement, we have the Holy Spirit to help us in this. The Holy Spirit makes the presence of Christ a felt reality; or to put it in more theological language, his work is both psychological (comforting, encouraging and reminding the believer who misses Jesus) and ontological (mediating Jesus’ presence and bestowing spiritual gifts). Finally, like Paul and Stephen before him, we may catch a direct glimpse of the exalted Christ.

What has all this got to do with classic texts of Christian spirituality?

Christian spirituality is fundamentally eschatological; the life of faith is about inhabiting Jesus’ absence well as we eagerly await his return in glory. Many of Jesus’ own parables deal with this theme, especially the series in Matthew 25.¹⁴ Christian spiritual practices and systems, whether active or contemplative, can be understood as part of this greater agenda. Many focus on making Christ more psychologically accessible to the believer as she waits; some engage directly with the absence of Christ in its own right; some take a more mystical path, offering insights from heavenly visions or instructions on cultivating receptivity to such experiences. It is remarkable how Christocentric the spiritual practices of the Church have been