Seeing the Beauty of the Lord: Mystics on Nature as Theophany

Abstract

Mystics are often thought to have little interest in the natural world, given their concern with the inner self. Many mystics, however, have had a profound sense of the beauty of creation. Their interest is not in nature as such, but in the world as a manifestation (theophania), a veil in which and through which God reveals and conceals Godself. This essay will sketch the line of “theophanic mysticism” in three figures. In several texts (e.g., Confessions 9.10; City of God 22.24), Augustine meditates on natural beauty as revealing God. In his “Canticum Solis” (Hymn of Brother Sun), Francis of Assisi presents a distinctive view of the natural and human worlds as praising God in a “familial chorus.” John of the Cross, who at times seems to reject the world, insists that when the soul is emptied of all false attachments, it will finally be able to see and love the beauty of creation. The essay concludes with a look at Pope Francis’s “Laudato Si’” as a contemporary revival of theophanic mysticism and an important ethical option in the midst of the current ecological crisis.

1. Introduction

“No one has ever seen God, but the Only-Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known” (Jn. 1:18). This passage from the Johannine Prologue is echoed later in the Gospel when Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father and it will be enough for us.” Christ responds: “Philip, I have been such a long time with you, and you still have not known me? He who sees me, sees the Father” (Jn. 14:8–9; see Jn. 6:46). It is fundamental to Christian belief that we cannot see God directly in this life, but the purpose of the Incarnation was for God’s Son to become visible in Jesus Christ, so that seeing and believing in him offers a way to the beatific vision in heaven. A problem emerges, however. How can Jesus be seen since his return to the Father? Although some Christians, especially seers and mystics, have claimed some kind of visionary experience of Jesus over the centuries, the basic scriptural answer to the issue of seeing Jesus is that he is, indeed, still visible, but not in himself. Rather, Jesus can be seen in the body of those united to him in the Church, especially the least fortunate. In the Judgment scene of Matthew 25, Jesus tells the saved that by giving succor “to one of the least of his brethren, they gave this to me” (Mt. 25:40). Likewise in verse 45, the refusal on the part of the wicked to see Jesus in the poor, sick, and the persecuted, means their exclusion from the vision of God in heaven.

My purpose here is not to talk about these forms of seeing God, but to look at another kind of visio dei, one expressed in Romans 1:20, where Paul says, “Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible as they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (see also Wis, 13:1–5). This seeing of God through the things he created is reflected in many places in the Old Testament, not least the Psalms that call on the world to praise the Creator for the beauty of what he has made. Psalm 148:1–3, for example, says: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord in the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars” (vv. 1–3).The psalm surveys the heavenly world (vv. 4–6), and then turns to “Praise the Lord from the earth” (v. 7) and all it contains, both the natural and the human worlds (vv. 8–14).

I start with these brief remarks about seeing God in his creation to frame observations about what some mystics have had to say about the universe as a way of seeing and praising God. But why the mystics? And what kind of “seeing God” is involved? In answer to the first question, I note that many mystics, due to their concentration on God present in the center of the soul, have been thought of as “world-deniers,” people who turn away from everything external, especially corporeal beauty, lest it distract them from their goal of uniting with the Supreme and indescribable divine Beauty. To be sure, there are many passages in the mystics that at first glance seem to support this view. But that is not the whole story—nor even half the story. Even mystics who seem to offer little direct reflection on seeing God in creation may offer insights into how opening one’s eyes to the world is also to open the eyes to God. The second question asks what kind of seeing is involved. How do we see God when we behold the world and its beauty? We can, of course, think of this as a form of what has been called “nature mysticism.” The term is often employed, but I confess to finding it ambiguous, at least with regard to Christian mysticism. Over sixty years ago, R.C. Zaehner did much to popularize “nature mysticism” as one of his three forms of mysticism. According to Zaehner, “the experience that tells you that you are all and that all is you,” which some mystics testify to, is not so much “pan-theism” (“all-God-ism”), as a form of “pan-en-hen-ism” (“all-in-one-ism”), which, Zaehner says, is the “experience of the nature mystic” (Zaehner 1957, pp. 28–29). He notes how accounts of such experiences can be found in many religious traditions, such as Hinduism, and also in some nineteenth-century authors (e.g., Richard Jeffries). How helpful is the category of nature mysticism for the history of Christian mysticism?

Reflecting on Romans 1:20 about seeing God “through the things he has made,” I do not find the concept of nature mysticism very useful for Christianity, precisely because the Christian mystics were not interested in “nature” as an independent realm, let alone in feeling that they can become one with all that exists. Rather, their concern was with nature as “creation,” that is, the relation of the world we see and experience to its Maker. It is not that these thinkers do not talk about natura with originality and sophistication (e.g., Otten 2020), but rather that the notion of “nature” used in “nature mysticism” does not map well on their concerns, due to its emphasis on natura apart from Deus. What I find in Christian mysticism is a set of variations on what I would call “theophanic mysticism,” that is, how the world as manifestation (theophania) reveals and conceals the unknowable mystery of God. God is seen in and through the world as a veil whose beauty both entices and frustrates our gaze towards the divine mystery. Many mystics, emphasizing the veiling aspect, have had negative things to say about the world and its beauty; others have praised the beauty of creation’s veil as a way to the Beloved.

The term “theophanic mysticism” demands some explaining. Theophania (literally, “a showing, or manifestation, of the god”) originally described a pagan ritual at Delphi, when a cult statue was unveiled. In Christianity, it appears in the fourth century. Before 340 CE Eusebius wrote a treatise On Theophany, that is, the manifestation of the Lord in the flesh. By the end of the century it was used in Latin as a term for the Feast we call the Epiphany (e.g., Cassian, Collationes 10.2). As far I can determine, the word does not occur in Augustine (Kloos 2005), but it gained traction in the Dionysian writings from around 500 CE. Dionysius does not use theophania very often (about ten times, mostly generically as “divine vision”),1 but it has been argued that the term is a good characterization of his thought.2

In the seventh century Maximus the Confessor also uses the word, but it was in the writings of John Scottus Eriugena in the ninth century that theophania emerges as a major category, at least in the West. Here we find the first full theological exposition.3 Theophania keeps its original meaning as any form of divine manifestation or vision, but Eriugena takes this a step further by analyzing how divine and human action unite in creating a theophany. The key text is the treatise De theophania that appears at the beginning of Eriugena’s summa, the Periphyseon.4 As the Master (Nutritor) and Disciple (Alumnus) begin to discuss the different kinds (species) of natura (reality), the term theophania had already been used several times, before Alumnus asks for a definition. Magister replies that this is a deep matter, but that “the books of the holy fathers” have spoken of it. He starts by citing Maximus: “He says that theophany is effected by no other cause than God, and is done by the coming down (condescensione) of the Divine Word, that is, the Only-Begotten Son who is the Father’s Wisdom, as it were from above towards the human nature that has been both created and purified by him, and also by the lifting up (ascensione) of the human nature towards the aforesaid Word by divine love” (P1 (449B; ed., 1:13). This coming down is not the condescensio of the Incarnation, but is rather what takes place by deification (theosis/deificatio). Eriugena says this teaching is also found in Augustine, and he quotes a passage to that effect to show the conformity of East and West in the doctrine of theophania. What is peculiar is that neither the passage from Maximus or Augustine has ever been identified. Eriugena seems to have created his teaching on theophany out of a generous reading of what he thought was the intention of the Fathers. This uniting of divine descent by compassion and human ascent through love and understanding can also be described as “virtue” (virtus), that is, a good habit begun in this life and perfected in the life to come. It is effected “in the self both out of God and out of ourselves” (in se et ex deo et ex seipsis efficitur). Here, theophania obviously indicates personal deification, but it also involves a more general aspect. If the deified soul is a true theophania, the whole universe, insofar as it partakes in the deification process, is also theophanic.

This is what the Irishman argues in the remainder of his Periphyseon treatise by citing the analogies for deification found in Maximus, such as air illuminated by the sun and iron made molten in fire (450AB). Air and iron do not lose their own natures in this transformative process, but become veils for the appearance of what cannot be seen. “From this you are to understand that the Divine Essence is incomprehensible in itself, but when it is joined to an intellectual creature, it becomes after a marvelous fashion manifest” (450B), The unmanifest has been manifested. Eriugena again turns to Augustine for help in explaining this, specifically to his teaching at the end of the City of God (Augustine 1877, Book 22, Chapter 29) about how the blessed in heaven will see God in their bodies, that is, “contemplate the translucent clarity of God” in all bodies and with their own bodily eyes. “Therefore,” the Irishman concludes, “it is through bodies and in bodies, not through Himself, that He will be seen” (per corpora ergo in corporibus, non per se ipsum, videbitur: 450C). Eriugena has further reflections about this eschatological condition in which “God will be all in all,” as St. Paul predicted (1 Cor. 15:28), but I will not engage here in further discussion of the perfect theophania to come in heaven. I only want to point out that the theophanic glory completed there has been begun here. For those who have grace-filled eyes, nature, indeed all things, can be seen as “God-manifest.” This universal sense of theophania is summarized in a passage found in Eriugena’s Commentary on the Gospel of John: “Theophanies are all visible and invisible creatures, through which and in which God frequently appears, has appeared, and will appear.”5

This is a clear summary of what I mean by theophanic mysticism. I am not claiming that other mystics actually knew Eriugena’s expositions of the topic. What I am saying is that their gaze on the world and descriptions of natural beauty are to be thought of not so much as abstract appreciations of the universe as created by God, but that their seeing “the world as very good and beautiful” is primarily beholding God in and through creatures, that is, seeing all things as divine in a theophanic way. In what follows, I will investigate three examples of theophanic mysticism through an analysis of some representative texts. I chose these three mystics—one ancient, one medieval, and one early modern—to show the broad continuity of theophanic mysticism in the Christian tradition.

2. Augustine of Hippo

It is safe to say that Augustine would not usually rank among the names identified with extensive meditations on the physical universe and its beauty. Peter Brown, reflecting on how the bishop distanced himself from the “cosmic piety” of late antique culture, remarks, “A touch of sadness at Augustine’s failure to respond to the quiet of the cosmos still shared by many of his contemporaries is an entirely appropriate emotion in an historian of ideas” (Brown 2000, p. 505). This may be true for much of Augustine, and yet I fear it misses where Augustine’s view of the natural world and its beauty took a new direction (for a general account of Augustine on beauty, see Harrison 1993). I will look at three texts that reflect this new view.

At the end of the ninth book of the Confessions, as Augustine wraps up the story of his long journey to Christian faith, he gives us an account of his conversation with his mother, Monica, as they were waiting to sail back to North Africa (Augustine 1992, Confessions 9.10.23–26). This took place in their residence in Ostia, as they were sitting and looking out a window over a garden and talking about heaven. The garden location is fitting—the original human felicity and the Fall happened in the Garden of Eden, and Augustine’s fall into sin by stealing pears (Confessions 2.4) seems to have taken place in a garden. Later, a garden was the site of his conversion realized by the power of grace (Confessions 8.12.28–29). The narrative from Book 9, which Augustine fittingly shares with Monica, is a foretaste of heavenly joy and peace—the ultimate celestial Garden. It recounts their brief passage through the beauty of the temporal order and finally beyond created beauty to a taste, touch, and hearing of “the region of unending richness, where You [Lord] nourish Israel with the food of truth for eternity” (ut attingeremus regionem ubertatis indeficientis, ubi pascis Israhel in aeternum veritate pabulo: Ez. 34:14).6

The Ostia event, written down in 397, describes an overcoming of the world and leaving it behind, as Augustine says at the end: “While we were speaking such things, the world itself with all its delights was growing worthless in the midst of our words” (cum talia loqueremur et mundus iste nobis inter verba vilescerit cum omnibus delectationibus suis). But, as the beauty of the language and its images shows, Augustine is not rejecting the goodness and beauty of creation as much as he is showing its limits. You might say that he is utilizing the cosmic piety of the ancients to show its insufficiency as a source of true and unending joy. One has to know and appreciate the beauty of the world in order to be able to really let it go.

The Ostia account develops in two sections—the first is narrative; the second framed as a discourse. Both are designed to invite the reader to surpass the pagan view of the cosmos as a self-contained system in which gods, humans, and natural things exist in a beautiful harmonious order fit for the philosopher’s admiration. For Augustine, the intensity of the desire for the eternal life of the saints (vita aeterna sanctorum) cannot rest in anything bound to the physical universe and the temporal order. The narrative begins with a description of the surpassing of the delights of the senses, corporeal light, and all the joys of this life. The ascent is set forth in three stages, based on Plotinus (1966, Enneads 1.6.7). He says: “Lifting ourselves upwards by more ardent love towards ‘the Self-Same’” (idipsum: Ps. 4:9), (1) We gradually traversed everything corporeal and heaven itself; then the sun and the moon and the stars that shine on the earth. (2) We ascended still further within by thinking and speaking and marveling at your works. (3) And we came to our own minds and transcended them…” The goal is briefly attained: “While we were speaking and aspiring toward it, we lightly touched it with the whole stroke of the heart” (attingimus eam modice toto ictu cordis). Augustine then reprises the ascent narrative in the form of a discussion with Monica about silencing all creation so that God alone may be heard. He puts it as follows: “If the tumult of the flesh were silent to someone, silent too the images (phantasiae) of earth, and water, and air; silent the poles of the heavens; and the soul be silent to itself and pass beyond itself by not thinking (see Enneads 5.1.2); if dreams and imaginative revelations were silent, every tongue and every sign, and whatever takes place by passing away were entirely silent, …,” then, “because they have lifted up their ears to him who made them, so that he alone may speak, not through them but through himself, we may hear his word,” not through likenesses, but through “himself whom we love in them and whom we may hear apart from them.” This touch of Eternal Wisdom “by a quick thought” (rapida cogitatione), if it were to continue, and were to “snatch away and absorb, and hide the beholder (spectatorem) in interior joys, would be the equivalent of the supreme moment of understanding, which is “entering into the rejoicing of your Lord” (Mt. 25:21), which will take place at the resurrection of the dead.

This ascent through the world and beyond it can be compared with a passage in Augustine’s Sermon 251.2 (Patrologia Latina, Vol 38:1134) that spells out the cosmic picture in more detail, but from the same perspective of its radical insufficiency. Augustine says: “Ask the beauty of the earth, ask the beauty of the sea, ask the beauty of the widespread and intermixed air, ask the beauty of heaven, ask the order of the stars, ask the sun illuminating the day by its shining, ask the moon tempering the darkness of the night that follows with its splendor, ask the animals that move in the waters, those that dwell on the earth, those that fly in the air…, ask them all and they will answer you: ‘Look and see, we are beautiful.’ Their beauty is their confession of God (Pulchritudo eorum, confessio eorum). Who made these beautiful and mutable things save the Unchangeable Beauty?” This brief phrase encapsulates the role of nature’s beauty in Augustine.

The Ostia event is among the best known texts of Augustine. The second passage I wish to study is far less known and cited, but in many ways equally moving. The final four books of the City of God (DCD), written in 428–29, lay out the bishop’s teaching on the last things. Book 19 summarizes his thoughts on the contrasted fates of the civitas terrena and the civitas dei, which exist together while they are in this world. Book 20 surveys biblical teaching on the Last Judgment. The last two books center on the final states of the human pilgrimage—Hell and Heaven. What is remarkable about these books is not only their extensive consideration of the biblical evidence on these topics, but also Augustine’s attention in his old age to the necessary role of human corporeality in punishment and reward (Hunter 2021). The bishop spends much of Book 21 arguing for how the resurrected body can be subject to eternal fire in Hell without being destroyed, and in Book 22 he shows how the reward of the saved in Heaven includes a physical seeing of God.

The beauty of the universe had already come in for comment in Book 11 of The City of God (e.g., DCD 11.18 and 11.21), but Book 22 expands on these early remarks. Augustine takes up the task of defending the Christian view of the resurrection of the body (DCD 22.25–28), and then wrestles with what he admits is the impossible task of trying to describe the beatific vision itself (DCD 22.29–30). Before these sections, Augustine inserts a long chapter (DCD 22.24) on the many blessings God has already given us in this life as motivations for our striving for the supreme blessedness of the world to come. This is the bishop’s most extensive and perhaps most striking presentation of theophanic mysticism, that is, contemplating the goodness of the created universe, especially in human nature, not for itself, but for the way it reveals God. This text has attracted surprisingly little notice. Years ago, Maurice Testard pointed out that it is partly based on a passage from Cicero’s De natura deorum 2.133–62 (Cicero 1972), but Augustine radically transforms the Roman’s Stoic cosmic piety into something distinctively Christian (Testard 1955). The chapter falls into four parts.

The first section is directly Christian, an account of the blessings given to humanity before the Fall (ed., 2:609.24–612.4). Many of these gifts were lost by the sin of Adam and Eve, but the greatest remains, the divine command, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Those who continue to think of Augustine as an enemy of the body and all sexual activity ought to peruse his words here carefully. To be sure, Augustine believes that since the Fall, sex is tainted by sin and punishment due to the presence of lust, but it always maintains the double goodness given it by the Creator: (1) the propagation of the species by sexual activity; and (2) the conformity of new humans to the nature of humanity as made in the image of God. In human mating, it is actually God’s power that effects both propagation and conformation to the species. “For it is by ‘the working that he still works’ (Jn. 5:17) that he makes the seeds to develop their kinds and to evolve from certain hidden and invisible mysteries (a quibusdam latentibus atque invisibilibus involucris) into the visible forms of the beauty that we see.” This mingling of the corporeal and incorporeal is “a great and wonderful work, not only in man, the rational animal, who for this reason is more excellent and finer than all earthly animals, but also in the tiniest fly, so that it induces wonder in anyone who thinks about it and gives birth to praise of the Creator” (ed., 611.23–612.4).

The second part of the chapter (ed., 612.5–613.27), which is closer to Cicero, is a presentation of the wonders that can be attained by the human mind when it attains maturity and gains wisdom. These are of two kinds. The first are the saving blessings. From its capacity for truth and love of the good, the mind “draws forth wisdom so that it may be endowed with the virtues to struggle prudently, strongly, temperately, and justly against errors and other innate vices and to conquer them by its desire for the highest and immutable Good” (ed., 612.9–13). These powers are innate in the mind, although their activation in fallen mankind requires the grace of God given in Christ Jesus. But also, asks Augustine, are there not “the many and great arts discovered and exercised by human genius, partly out of necessity and partly out of pleasure” (nonne humano ingenio tot tantaque artes sunt inventae et exercitae, partim necessarie partim voluptarie)? He then launches into a rhetorical passage devoted to the full range of human arts and accomplishments—the industrial arts, the creative arts, the arts of war (!), the culinary arts, the musical arts, etc. Geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy are mentioned, and even “the brilliance of the philosophers and heretics in defending their errors and falsehoods,” which displays the natural abilities of the human mind. The fact that all these marvelous accomplishments are destined for eternal punishment, save in the case of a few (Augustine the pessimist is alive and well!), shows “the exceeding greatness of the sin in the first man from whom other humans have arisen” (nimis grande peccatum in homine primo, de quo ceteri exorti sunt: ed., 613.25–26).

Thus far, Augustine’s list of blessings has concentrated on human activity and accomplishments, based on man’s rational nature. In Part Three (ed., 613.28–615.11), he turns to the human body and its order, usefulness, and beauty. This is another section with many affinities to Cicero’s De natura deorum. “Now in the body itself, although we share mortality with the beasts and are actually weaker than many of them, how much of the goodness of God and the providence of so great a Creator is manifest” (ed., 613.28–31). The sense organs and the arrangement of the body show that it is fitted for a rational soul. The fundamental characteristic of the body, for Augustine, is its combination of usefulness and beauty—“Even if we take away the necessary modes of operation by which harmony of all the parts is multiple and beautiful in responding to each other, it is hard to know whether in creating the body more weight was given to usefulness or beauty. Certainly, we see nothing created in the body for use that does not also have its beauty” (ed., 614.6–11). This is true both of the parts that are visible and the hidden parts. Inside and outside the body there is a marvelous harmony, and, indeed, some parts of the body seem more for decoration than usefulness. The section closes on a surprising note, where Augustine stresses the aesthetic value of the body in itself: “I think it is easily understood that dignity is more important in the body than usefulness, for necessity is passing and a time is coming when we will enjoy each other in beauty alone without any hint of lust (quando sola invicem pulchritudine sine ulla libidine perfruamur). This state will be especially referred to that praise of the Creator, of whom it is said in the psalm, ‘You are clothed with praise and beauty’ (Ps. 103:1).”

The beauty of the human body naturally invites thoughts about the beauty of the physical universe in the last part of the chapter (ed., 615.12–616.32). Augustine begins: “How could any speech exhaust the rest of the beauty and the utility of the creation which the divine generosity has bestowed on us to behold and to draw in, although we have been cast into and condemned to these labors and miseries?” The following list of natural blessings is long and sometimes surprising. We would expect mention of the sky, earth, and sea; sun, moon, and stars; trees, flowers, and animals, including the work of ants and bees, and perhaps even the “huge bodies of whales” (inmensa corpora ballaenarum). Augustine is unexpectedly eloquent about the sea and its beauties, and he dwells on food and its preparation with surprising detail, indicating his asceticism may not have excluded enjoying a good meal. At the end he confesses that he could never describe all God’s natural blessings. But the lesson of all this lush description is not so much to appreciate what we see in nature for itself, but to recognize the goodness of the creature as made by God and to hope for the heavenly blessings made available to us through the death of God’s Only-Begotten Son. “All the things mentioned are the solaces of the miserable and condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What will these be, if those are so many and of such a nature? What will he give to those predestined to life, who gave these gifts to those predestined to death?” (ed., 616.8–13). The dark specter of the late Augustine’s doctrine of double predestination hangs over this passage, despite his sense of the goodness of God and the beauty of the blessings of the theophanic universe. The chapter closes with a list of some of the heavenly blessings, such as “secure knowledge without any labor or error;” and “highest joy without any opposition.” Finally, the bishop ends with the question, “What kind of body will this be, which is wholly subject to the spirit and has sufficient life from it without need for any sustenance? It will not be animal, but spiritual, possessing the substance of flesh, but without the corruption of the flesh” (ed., 616.28–32). This whole section shows Augustine’s remarkable aesthetic sense of the beauty of the world, but as the good creation of God, not just as taken in itself.

3. Francis of Assisi

Everybody loves Saint Francis. One of the reasons is doubtless because of his attitude towards the natural world. Many stories about Francis tell us of his love for and care of animals, and there is no reason to doubt that such stories are rooted in his life and practice, however much they may have been embellished over time. The earliest Life of Francis by Thomas of Celano (Vita Prima, Caput XXIX, 80) tells us: “Who could ever express the deep affection he had for all things that belong to God? Or who would be able to tell of the sweet tenderness he enjoyed while contemplating in creatures the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of the Creator? From this reflection, he often overflowed with amazing, unspeakable joy as he looked at the sun, gazed at the moon, or observed the stars in the sky…. With such an outpouring he often used up an entire day or more in praise of them and other creatures…. Finally, he also used to call all creatures by the name ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in a wonderful way, unknown to others …” (Fontes Franciscani, Francis of Assisi 1995, pp. 355–56). But in what sense is it right to call Francis a “nature mystic,” as some recent investigators have? Of course, even those who use the term for Francis recognize that he is not a pantheist, or even the panentheist nature mystic of R. C. Zaehner’s description. They admit that his attitude towards nature is “based on Christian beliefs and involves an appreciation of Creation as God’s handiwork” (Armstrong 1973, p. 16; see also Sorrell 1988). Still, given the fact that Francis never uses the term “nature” in his writings and that he does not show any appreciation of nature for nature’s sake (Vita Prima, Caput II, 3), it seems better to agree with the Francis scholar, Jacques Delarun, who says: “Francis does not venerate nature. He celebrates creation. To an immanent vision, he opposed a transcendent one, in which all creatures contribute to the praise of God” (Delarun 2016, p. 54). One aspect of his mysticism is its theophanic praise.

This key motif of Francis’s piety is most evident in his Canticum Fratris Solis (“Canticle of Brother Sun,” in Fontes Franciscani, Francis of Assisi 1995, pp. 39–41), the hymn that he began composing in 1225 as he lay ill at San Damiano. Among Francis’s sparse authentic writings, the Canticum stands out, not only for being written in vernacular, but also for its unique poetic genre. Francis’s attitude towards the natural world is best seen in the context of his whole mystical theology. Briefly, the Poverello’s mystical thought is archaic, wholistic, kenotic, and fraternal. Francis is archaic, because he knows nothing of the contemporary theology of the Schools, nor even of the rhetoric of the monastic theologians of the twelfth century. He was nourished by direct contact with the primary, or archaic, level of Christian belief, that is, the Bible and its use in the liturgy (Matura 1997). Francis’s theology is also wholistic, because it presents a total view of the mystery of salvation in which subsequently separated theological categories like Trinity, Creation, Christology, Salvation, Sacraments, etc., are fused together into a seamless whole. As a form of lived imitation of Christ, Francis’s theology is also fundamentally kenotic—the following of Christ that Christians are called to is centered on the Cross. A life of poverty and humility is the best preparation for the total emptying of self that Jesus realized on the Cross. It is only by such emptying that the rust of sin and selfishness is removed and the emptied self can be so united to Christ that he or she can behold the universe as it truly is and sing a hymn like the Canticum Solis.

Many analyses of this brief song have been written; no commentary is adequate to explain the effect that it continues to have on subsequent generations.7 Pope Francis’s ecological encyclical of 2015, “Laudato Sí,” takes both its title and much of its inspiration from “Saint Francis,” whom, the pope says, “invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness” (Pope Francis 2015, No. 12, p. 16). I will offer only a few comments on the Canticum and its significance, not pretending to explain its full meaning and power.

Francis’s attention concentrated on God as the Creator, the maker of all things visible and invisible, as proclaimed in the Creed. The visible creation, therefore, was of great importance to him, because it was God’s gift to humanity. Francis was not a speculative theologian who discussed how the realities of creation (sun, moon, stars, elements, animals, etc.) reveal God as theophanies (a word he never used), but he is a witness to a direct and powerful sense of how every element of creation joins with the human race to praise the Creator and to become one with him, not in any private sense, but as part of a universal fraternitas. This is why some have spoken of Francis’s song as an “enfraternization” of the universe, but let us remember that the language of “sister” is also used in the hymn, so we might better speak of a “familial model” in which all creation as brothers and sisters are called on to praise our common parent, the God who is both mother and father. The familial model demonstrates the profound interconnection of all creatures, as well as the material nature of the family of creation. There is no distinction here between spirit and matter, but only praise of God in and through the material universe.

The Canticum Solis has four sections that were developed over the last fifteen months of the saint’s life. The first two parts (I. The Call to Praise, and II. Creation’s Praise of God) were composed at San Damiano in Spring of 1225 when Francis was ill and being cared for by Clare and her nuns. The short Part III, a prayer for peace and harmony in human society, comes from October, 1225, when Francis mediated a peace agreement between the warring factions of the bishop and the mayor in Assisi. Finally, as he approached death a year later, Francis composed the last section on “Sister Death” with his final call for universal praise.

Part I begins with the horizon of praise, the duty of all creation—“Most High, All-Powerful, Good Lord,/ Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all blessing” (Altissimu onnipotente bon signore,/ tue so le laude la gloria e l’honore et omne benediction). Then the saint appeals to what I call the horizon of limit, or negation: “To You alone, Most High, do they belong,/ and no man is worthy to mention your name.” Praising is necessary for us, but never worthy of God. The Second Part in which the family of creation is called on one-by-one to praise God is the longest. Note that unlike the biblical hymns, individual creatures are not directly called on to praise God, but are spoken of indirectly as the instruments through which praise is being given to God. This means that God is ultimately praising himself per (through) and cun (with) his creatures.8 There are two sections here, the first dealing with heaven and its three creatures—sun, moon, and stars. “Praised be You, my Lord, with all creatures,/ especially Sir Brother Sun,/ Who is the day and through whom You give us light./ And he is beautiful and radiant and with great splendor;/ and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.”9 The second and third creatures are mentioned together: “Praised be You, My Lord, through Sister Moon and the Stars,/ in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.” The second section calls on the four terrestrial elements (air, water, fire, and earth) to give praise, each one being given four qualifying features. I cite only the first and the last elements. “Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,/ and through the air, cloudy and serene and of every weather,/ Through which You give sustenance to your creatures.” At the end, “Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,/ who sustains and governs,/ and who produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.”

Part III of the Canticum proclaims the imitation of Christ as the only way to bring forgiveness, peace, and harmony to the fractured human world, both of Francis’s day and our own. There are two aspects to this following of Christ: actively pardoning others, and passively bearing and enduring infirmity and tribulation. “Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for your love/ and bear infirmity and tribulation.” As in the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, these virtues bring their reward: “Blessed are those who endure in peace/ for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.” Part IV closes the song by insisting that death is a part of life. Death is not an enemy, but a Sister, although these lines confirm that the life each person lives leads to a bifurcation at the end: either to a good death or a bad death. The conclusion summarizes the call to universal praise and service with humility (one of Francis’s key virtues): “Praise and bless and give thanks to Him,/ and serve Him with great humility.” The Canticum Solis is a total theological vision of the meaning of creation.10 It is certainly more than just what many might think of as a form of “nature mysticism.”

4. John of the Cross

The Spanish Carmelite John of the Cross is both a fascinating and disturbing figure, so unremitting is his insistence on the complete stripping away of all created attachment for the soul seeking God. John’s program for purifying and destroying our inordinate appetites is more systematic, severe, and even ruthless than many other mystics, but in the long run, it is in the service of restoring an integrated psycho-physical whole dedicated to love of God. As he puts it in the Dark Night treatise: “God gathers together all the strengths, faculties, and appetites of the soul, spiritual and sensory alike, so that the energy and power of this whole harmonious composite may be employed in love” (Dark Night 2, 11, 4).11 The intensity of John’s descriptions of the dark night of the senses and especially of the more terrible night of the spirit have troubled some interpreters and led to misunderstandings. One such misunderstanding was voiced over a century ago by the English student of mysticism, Inge (1899, pp. 228–29). Inge did not care much for John, especially because he found in him an aversion, even a hatred, of the created world and human nature. His analysis of John of the Cross concludes, “It [John’s view] is a terrible view of life and duty—that we are to denude ourselves of everything that makes us citizens of the world—that nothing which is natural is capable of entering into relations with God….” He goes on: “We hear nothing of the relation of the creation to God, or why the contemplation of it should only hinder instead of helping us know its Maker. The world simply does not exist for St. Juan; nothing exists save God and human souls. The great human society has no interest for him; he would have us cut ourselves completely adrift from the aims and aspirations of civilized humanity….” A pretty devastating critique, and yet, it misses so much of John of the Cross that one wonders what kind of a reader of texts Dean Inge was.

There are, of course, many strong passages in John’s four prose treatises about the need for the total divestment of the self from one’s own desires, wishes, and pleasures. According to John, the world, both of nature and of human society, often functions to block our way to God, and even tears us away from him, if we consider these things only in themselves. That is the key for John, one that Inge seems to have missed. In his personal life, John was noted for his love of nature, especially for his admiration for the starry night sky as a manifestation of God’s beauty. His companions tell us he spent whole nights on the roof of the convent gazing at the sky. If we want to think of such stories as hagiographical exaggerations, all we need to do is to turn to John’s poetry and its amazing descriptions of the beauties of nature as images of the soul’s love for the Divine Bridegroom. Can Inge have ever looked at the Canciones entre el alma y el Esposo (“Songs of the Soul and the Bridegroom”) that is the poetic basis for the treatise known as the Spiritual Canticle?12

I cannot survey the whole forty stanzas of the poem and the lengthy prose expositions of the Spiritual Canticle treatise here, but citation of a few passages will make the point. The First Part of the poem (Stanzas 1–13) deals with the Purgative Way, beginning with the Bride’s general desire for the Bridegroom (Stanzas 1–3). She then seeks the Groom in creation (Stanzas 4–6), starting with a “Question to the Creatures” (Pregunta a las criaturas) at the outset of Stanza 4: “O thickets deeply-trammeled,/ Which my love’s hand has sown along the height:/ O field of green enamelled/ With blossoms, tell me right/ If he has passed across you in his flight.” The Bride is awestruck at the beauty of nature because of its power to reveal the transcendent beauty of the Bridegroom, as she begs in Stanza 11: “Reveal your presence clearly/ And kill me with the beauty you discover,/ For pain acquired so dearly/ From Love, cannot recover/ Save only through the presence of the Lover.”13 The appeal to nature continues in the Illuminative Way (Stanzas 13–19). Stanzas 14–15 compare the Bridegroom to an array of aspects of nature: “My Love’s the mountain range,/ The valleys each with solitary grove,/ The islands far and strange,/ The streams with sounds that change,/ The whistling of the lovesick winds that rove” (Stanza 14). Then, in Stanza 15, John says: “Before the dawn comes round/ Here is the night, dead hushed with all its glamors,/ The music without sound,/ The solitude that clamors,/ The supper that revives us and enamors.” Each of these riveting images receives a full exposition in the prose text of the Spiritual Canticle. The Unitive Way is treated in Stanzas 20–35, before John ends with five more stanzas (36–40) on the spiritual marriage. Stanza 36 is particularly important for its picture of the mutual beauty of the Bride and the Groom as seen within the context of the beauty of nature. The Bride says” “Rejoice, my Love, with me/ and in your beauty see us both reflected:/ By mountain slope and lea,/ Where purest rills run free,/ We’ll pass into the forest undetected” (trans., Campbell, p. [27]). John’s exposition of the beauty of Bride and Groom in the prose text of Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 36, contains a bravura prose ode to the dialectical relation of the lovers in which the word “beauty” (hermosura) is repeated twenty-three times.14 Finally, Stanza 39 uses five mysterious images to describe what Stanza 38 spoke of as “That which You gave me the other day,” that is, a foretaste of heaven. This foretaste is like, “The breathing air so keen;/ The song of Philomel: the waving charm/ Of groves in beauty seen:/ The evening so serene,/ With fire that can consume yet do no harm” (trans., Campbell, p. [27]). Each of these figures is explained in detail in the treatise, with the groves being identified with God nourishing the beauty of creation within himself. John says: “The soul intends to beg for the grace, wisdom, and beauty that every earthly and heavenly creature not only has from God, but that also manifests in its wise, well-ordered, gracious and harmonious relation to other creatures…. The knowledge of this harmony fascinates and delights the soul” (Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 39,11, in ed., p. 736; trans., n. 626).

To address the seeming contradiction between the many negative statements about creatures in John’s writings and his obvious love of created beauty, I note the uncompromising nature of the Carmelite’s mystical thought. For John it is either all or nothing, that is, either we devote our efforts totally to the divine ALL and reject the NOTHING of created things taken in themselves, or (conversely) we flee from the TODO of creation to embrace the NADA of God. He puts these contrasts strongly in a passage from the Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Chapter 13: “To reach satisfaction in all/ desire satisfaction in nothing./ To come to possess all/ desire the possession of nothing./ To arrive at being all/ desire to be nothing./ To come to the knowledge of all/ desire the knowledge of nothing.” The mystical paradoxes continue, concluding with: “To go from the all to the all,/ you must deny yourself of all in the all./ And when you come to the possession of the all,/ you must possess it without wanting anything,/ because if you desire to have anything in having all,/ you do not hold your treasure purely in God” (my translation). We might paraphrase by saying that only by truly living the NADA, i.e., the negation of all our own desires, can we attain the TODO that is God.

The divine ALL is all Beauty (hermosura). Beauty dominates the thought of John of the Cross (Von Balthasar 1986, pp. 151–52). God’s beauty is his foremost attribute, and the Carmelite’s impressive theology of creation is based upon God’s communication of beauty to the universe (Collings 1990, chap. 2). This gift of beauty is brought to its fulfillment in the Incarnation, as John says in the Canticle: “And in this elevation of all things through the Incarnation of his Son and through his Resurrection according to the flesh, not only did the Father beautify creatures partially, but, we can say, he clothed them entirely in beauty and dignity” (Spiritual Canticle 5,4, in ed. 644; trans., 497).

5. Conclusion: Pope Francis and Theophanic Mysticism

A full history of Christian mystical views of the beauty of creation has yet to be written. As far as I have been able to determine, there is even no comprehensive study of theophania. Hans Urs von Balthasar retrieved beauty as the forgotten transcendental term in his great multi-volume work, Herrlichkeit (Von Balthasar 1982), but I think von Balthasar would agree that his volumes are still only a beginning, not the end of our understanding of what beauty means and how all forms of beauty, including that of the natural world, light the way for the soul’s path to God.

This theophanic outlook is still capable of eliciting true mystical insight into our human condition, as we can see in Pope Francis’s Encyclical, “Laudato Sí” of 2015. This is not the place to try to give a full analysis of this remarkable document, but it is obvious that the Pope was inspired by his namesake’s vision of the praise of all creation for its Maker to meditate on our current ecological and moral crisis. The pope argues that ecological education and ecological action are part and parcel of a renewed ecological spirituality. In calling for an “ecological conversion,” Pope Francis says, “I am interested in how such a spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world” (“Laudato Sí,” No. 216; ed., pp. 144–45). What is particularly striking in Pope Francis’s invocation of a new theophanic spirituality/mysticism is its social, we may even say, political dimensions. These were not absent in the past, but have become more pressing than ever in our current situation. The crisis of our deteriorating climate (its loss of beauty, we might say) is not just a problem for individuals, but for the whole human family. Francis says, “The ecological conversion needed to bring about the lasting change is also a community conversion” (No. 219; ed., p. 146). He continues: “It also entails a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion” (No. 220, ed., p. 147).

The spiritual depths of Pope Francis’s view are evident in the two prayers with which he concludes “Laudato Sí.” The first is addressed to all who believe in God as the Creator, and concludes with these words: “Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,/ to be filled with awe and contemplation./ to recognize that we are profoundly united/ with every creature/ as we journey towards your infinite light. We thank you for being with us each day./ Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle/ for justice, peace, and love” (No. 246, ed, p. 162). The second prayer specifically asks Christians to pray for “the inspiration to take up the commitment to creation set before us by the Gospel of John.” In this “Prayer in Union with Creation,” Pope Francis praises the three Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one by one, before addressing the whole Trinity: “Triune God, wondrous community of infinite love,/ teach us to contemplate you/ in the beauty of the universe,/ for all things speak of you./ Awaken our praise and thankfulness/ for every being you have made” (No. 246, ed., p. 163). Pope Francis does not use the word “theophany” here, but I would suggest that he expresses the inner meaning of theophanic mysticism to the full.