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Remember as a child the number of times you ran up to somebody, someone you trusted—a parent, a teacher, a friend? Completely trusting, full of life, you tried, with a nakedness you can never bring yourself to risk again, to share something you were excited about: a leaf you had found, a drawing you had made, your report card, a story you wanted to tell, a fall you had just taken, something that was very important to you. Try to recall the warmth, trust, and spontaneity of that moment.

Christ came and declared a wedding feast, a celebration, at the very center of life. They crucified him not for being too ascetical, but because he told us that we might enjoy life. He told us that life will give us more goodness and enjoyment than we can stand, if we can learn to receive it without fear. But we are still in exile, without wedding garments, looking for the key to the room of celebration. Perhaps we need to be just a bit more earnest and sincere when we say the words, “your kingdom come!”

While a vocation does bring us joy and should be something that we are good at, it is not primarily concerned with either of these things. As the word indicates, a vocation—from the Latin vocare, “to call”—is something that comes from outside and for the sake of something other than ourselves.

Gregory of Nyssa elaborated a theory of the stages of the mystical life that had a profound impact on the future of Christian spirituality. For Gregory, the spiritual journey is a dynamic adventure of progressively deeper union with God that can never stagnate or get boring, since our created nature can never contain or comprehend the fullness of the infinite God. Since God surpasses our intellect, Gregory identifies a certain darkness that characterizes the mystical experience, a theme that would be developed by many subsequent writers over the centuries.

The mystics have been touched by God in an extraordinary way and in some cases have written extraordinarily well of the inner journey. Every mystical text is the story of an individual’s encounter with God. In those words we can find inspiration and motivation to seek, with the same single-minded perseverance, to be open to God’s voice. Not every mystic will appeal to everyone, but one or the other may strike a chord in the heart of someone trying to live the Gospel and know God.