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Relationality and Difference in the Mysticism of Pierre de Bérulle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

Edward Howells
Edward Howells*
Affiliation:
Heythrop College, University of London
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The mysticism of the seventeenth-century French cardinal, Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), contains an extended treatment of the relationship of the human and the divine in mystical union. Bérulle explores the nature of mystical union in detail and gives attention to the combination of the apparently incompatible elements of the human and divine and the historical and eternal. He prefers not to begin with the opposition between these elements but instead, by exploring the relationship between them, to use relational language, which brings together unity and difference. For this task, he draws on the tools of late medieval mysticism, which entail especially the metaphors of interior poverty, nuptial mutuality, and neoplatonic emanation. At the same time, he applies the categories of Christology to the problem of mystical relationality and difference. Christology deepens the ways in which to assert and to combine unity and difference between the human and the divine in mystical union. For the reader today, this provides an intriguing perspective on the question of mystical relationality.1 I intend here to set out Bérulle's understanding of mystical relationality and to focus on his christological development of questions of unity and difference.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 102 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 225 - 243
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2009

The mysticism of the seventeenth-century French cardinal, Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), contains an extended treatment of the relationship of the human and the divine in mystical union. Bérulle explores the nature of mystical union in detail and gives attention to the combination of the apparently incompatible elements of the human and divine and the historical and eternal. He prefers not to begin with the opposition between these elements but instead, by exploring the relationship between them, to use relational language, which brings together unity and difference. For this task, he draws on the tools of late medieval mysticism, which entail especially the metaphors of interior poverty, nuptial mutuality, and neoplatonic emanation. At the same time, he applies the categories of Christology to the problem of mystical relationality and difference. Christology deepens the ways in which to assert and to combine unity and difference between the human and the divine in mystical union. For the reader today, this provides an intriguing perspective on the question of mystical relationality.Footnote 1 I intend here to set out Bérulle's understanding of mystical relationality and to focus on his christological development of questions of unity and difference.

As his key move, which he approaches from a number of angles, Bérulle refuses an understanding of the usual ontological opposites of human and divine, created and uncreated, historical and eternal—and so on—as merely opposites, but rather regards them as mutually dependent. He seeks an inclusive rather than an exclusive relationship between these pairs of terms, yet one which also keeps sight of their ontological distinction. He wants not only to hold the two terms together satisfactorily but to express how they actually require each other for their meaning. In doing so, he moves beyond the sheer tension of paradox to a deeper synthesis. The paradox remains, but he penetrates it to a level of mutual dependence. Christology gives explanatory power to this relational deepening. Bérulle draws out the way that “humanity” and “divinity” function as relational terms, since both come already made for each other in the incarnation. Bérulle explores their meaning with reference to the christological language of person and nature, substance and subsistence, Christ's defining activities of “adoration” and “servitude,” and the Trinitarian language of mutuality in the Father-Son relationship. He develops the question of Christ's union of natures in conversation with the parallel question of the relation of human and divine in mystical union. Bérulle combines christological ideas of kenosis, expressed in his language of “servitude,” with mystical language of interior poverty exchanged in a marriage-type union, which shares divine identity. He uses ideas of emanation, further, to articulate the relation of Christ's union of natures to the soul's union with God. This method results in an extended christological treatment of the central questions of unity and difference in mystical union.

Without digressing into the modern debates over mystical mediation, one can point out briefly where Bérulle's approach can contribute to this discussion. Today we generally approach the problems of unity and difference between the human and the divine in mystical union in terms of “mediated” and “unmediated” types of relationship. For instance, Bernard McGinn singles out the element of immediacy in the relationship with God as central to almost all mystical texts.Footnote 2 Going further, he notes that this does not mean a simple loss of mediation because elements of mediation continue:

Is there a moment or aspect of immediacy and directness in the actual encounter with God? On the basis of the writings of the mystics, we can answer both yes and no.… Since even those mystics who claim to have reached identity with God usually also say that on another level some distinction between Creator and creature remains, we can say that mystical consciousness involves a complex form of mediated immediacy.Footnote 3

The phrase “mediated immediacy” indicates the complex combination of mediated and unmediated elements in the consciousness of mystical union: both elements present simultaneously and are hard to disentangle. In some sense, the two elements belong together. One cannot simply say that mystical union occurs either unmediated or mediated. This sets up the central paradox of mystical union. But what can one say to deepen this paradox? How can one hold together the different “levels” of distinction and identity between the human and the divine to which McGinn refers? Bérulle points us to the key role played by a wider framework of human-divine relationality within which we can work out such paradoxical statements. His relational framework moves us beyond opposition to the possibility of holding the terms together more meaningfully. We do not want to introduce a third term by which to combine the opposites—to find something that mediates between mediation and immediacy! Rather, we seek language that expresses both mediation and immediacy at the same time. Bérulle's use of relationality achieves just this. He develops a language in which the human and divine partners to union can find expression at once distinctly and yet without compromise. In effect, Bérulle breaks through the dilemmas of mediation by introducing a language of combined unity and distinction in the analysis of mystical union.

The view of Henri Bremond—that Bérulle led the new “French School” of spirituality in the seventeenth century and developed and first set out its characteristic themes and concerns—remains current.Footnote 4 Not only a mystical writer but a cardinal and the founder of the French Oratory, Bérulle proved an important figure in both church and politics in his day. For the development of his mysticism,Footnote 5 the Parisian salon of Barbe Acarie had a significant early influence. This group of lay people, religious and church leaders, mostly aristocratic, generated a distinctive spirituality, which drew on the late medieval mystics of the “abstract” school, such as Harphius, Catherine of Genoa, and Benet of Canfield.Footnote 6 Benet of Canfield's Rule of Perfection, produced in a number of versions between 1592 and 1610, shows the group's approach to mysticism. They aimed to attain union with God through the annihilation of the will and by passing beyond mental images to a state of pure nakedness in which the soul finds itself passive to God's activity.Footnote 7 The annihilation of the human will allows passive union with God's being without multiplicity.Footnote 8 They called this the “abstract” approach because of the focus on the abstraction of the human will from concrete historical particulars and images.Footnote 9 We can see Bérulle's own version of this approach in his earliest work, the Bref discours de l'abnégation intérieure, an adaptation of Isabella Bellinzaga's Breve compendio intorno alla perfezione cristiana, which he produced under the direction of the Carthusian Dom Beaucousin in 1597. He puts the stress on the annihilation of the “being” (être) of the soul in order to allow for naked contact with God. In comparison with Bellinzaga's original work, Bérulle removes all references to Christ, apparently to emphasize the lack of created intermediaries between the soul and God in a complete loss of mental images.Footnote 10

Shortly after Bérulle's first account of mystical transformation and union, however, we see a second emphasis arising in his mysticism. He started to give new attention to the place of concrete encounter with the humanity of Christ. His making of Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises at the Jesuit house in Verdun in 1602, from which his notes survive, marked a turning point after which we find Jesus Christ and the humanity of Christ at the center of his thought.Footnote 11 Around the same time, the followers of Teresa of Avila, who came to Paris to set up the first Teresian Carmel in 1604 at his invitation, influenced him.Footnote 12 Teresa's close companion, Ana de Jesús, made clear that she opposed the “abstract idea of God” favored by Barbe Acarie's circle on the grounds that it detracted from the humanity of Christ.Footnote 13 Bérulle then confronted the dilemma between the “abstract” approach of his early development and his new appreciation for the role of the humanity of Christ in mystical transformation.Footnote 14 These two elements come together in his later thought. The christological mysticism of his mature teaching attempts to bring the encounter with the humanity of Christ together with annihilation and the “purity” of the “abstract” relationship with God as dual features of mystical union. This combination makes Christology important because it offers Bérulle a way to balance both human and divine elements in his understanding of mystical transformation. He does not reject either element of his early thinking but seeks a synthesis.Footnote 15

In Bérulle's greatest work, the Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus (1623), he develops his christological mysticism most fully.Footnote 16 The work arose partly out of a christological dispute among his contemporaries over his understanding of the “deified humanity” and “humanized divinity” of Christ and whether he had strayed into Monophysitism, on the one hand, or Nestorianism, on the other hand. They accused him of both personalizing Christ's human nature (Nestorianism) and collapsing the two natures into one (Monophysitism).Footnote 17 He answered these charges with a thorough treatment of Christology in which he put questions of unity and distinction between the natures at the center. But he did so by putting Christology at the service of mystical transformation rather than by giving it a “plain” doctrinal exposition. He intended to transform our experiential categories of relationship with God into those of Christ's relationship with the Father and so to lead us into the union of the Trinity. At the heart of the work, he makes a claim for mystical relationality appropriated within the Father-Son relationship:

The only Son of God continually refers all that he is to the Father. His being and his life consist in this relationship.… In the same way our being and our life should be totally dedicated to a perfect and absolute referral of all that we are.Footnote 18

He aims to attain a “pure relation” (une relation pure) with the Son of God.Footnote 19 He reduces the mediating elements between the human soul and God to a state of “purity.” “Purity” refers to the model for this relationality in the Father-Son relationship. Here, the soul joins in the life of the hypostatic union at its Trinitarian source. Bérulle develops christological explanations throughout the work to show how the oppositions between human and divine become a mutual dependence in this form of “pure” relationality, as we shall see. The soul comes to possess Christ's twofold relationality in the same manner that Christ possesses it simultaneously with humanity and with the Father. We already know what it means to live in relation to others in creation—the human side of this relationality—but how we can perfectly unite this with an inner-trinitarian relationship with the Father constitutes the focus of Bérulle's christological explanation. Attaining the “pure relation,” the key shift in the process, means shifting from relating to God as an external object to relating to God by participation in the interior reality of Jesus' relationship with the Father. The process as a whole involves experiential “elevation” of the soul to God.Footnote 20

The Relationality of Human and Divine: Adoration and Servitude

Bérulle begins by locating our understanding of relationship with God in two key features of Christ's dual relationality with God and with the world: adoration and servitude. Bérulle sees adoration as the answer to the Cur Deus homo? God became incarnate, he says, in order to offer the infinite adoration required by God from creation without defect and without any detraction from divinity.Footnote 21 Jesus performs the activity of adoration both as the Son in the relational love with the Father, which means the procession of the Holy Spirit, and as the God-man in Jesus' vision from within human nature “of himself subsisting within uncreated being.”Footnote 22 From the start Bérulle's effort shows the continuity in Christ's person between his activity within the Godhead, as the Son, and his activity in his human life here using the analogy of “adoration.” In both, he adores the Father. Further, a single process of “emanation” or “birthing” of this activity links the divine and human natures. Jesus has “three births”: in eternity as the eternal procession of the Son from the Father, in time in the womb of Mary, and into immortality by rising from the tomb.Footnote 23 The first birth takes place at the divine level of the Trinity in which the Word proceeds from the Father as the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from them both together in their mutual adoration. The second and third births form part of a distinct, second level of emanation, which occurs through an excess or overflow outside the Trinity in the eternal-and-temporal event of the incarnation, which produces creation—the second birth—and leads fallen creation back to God—the third birth.Footnote 24 Adoration makes up the constant activity of the Son in the Trinity and of Jesus in the incarnation, in both emanations, and in all three births. By means of this analogy, Bérulle sets up his understanding of the nature of both relationality and distinction between the human and the divine in Christ. Adoration, a relational activity, requires difference, but this difference occurs first of all not between divine and human but between the divine Father and the Son. This difference, a purely Trinitarian one as between Father and Son, alone gives rise to the difference between the human and the divine in Christ by emanation. In the Trinitarian origin of the difference, difference occurs within a relationship of mutual dependence rather than at the level of ordinary human distinctions between independent entities. Quite how one may understand this form of relational distinction remains unsolved, but adoration brings it to our attention.

Bérulle gives more lengthy attention to Christ's relationality in his treatment of servitude. Jesus possesses divinity by servitude understood in terms of the kenotic model of Phil 2:6–7 (ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν producing the key term anéantissement, “becoming nothing” or “annihilation”).Footnote 25 The debate that gave rise to Grandeurs over Christ's “deified humanity” and “humanized divinity” had itself originated in a dispute over a “vow of servitude to Jesus and Mary,” which Bérulle had sought to impose on the Carmelites as their superior in 1616. His own congregation, the Oratory (the congregation of priests that he had founded in 1611), had already taken this vow at his instigation.Footnote 26 Bérulle sought to link servitude to the activity of kenosis in the incarnation against those who regarded the vow as unnecessary.Footnote 27 When God becomes incarnate in order to offer a perfect eternal adoration to God within creation, he does so as a servant in humility and in a state which as created amounts to nothing (néant) in comparison with his divine nature. Jesus takes the form of a servant in an ontological sense as God, who takes on the “néant of our humanity,” and in a human sense as the servant of his fellow creatures to the point of dying on the cross.Footnote 28 For Jesus the “state of servitude” means a relational activity of self-offering (se référant soi-même) in which he keeps nothing for himself.Footnote 29 This applies to the inner divine life of the Son with the Father as much as to the human life of Jesus. Bérulle stresses that Jesus engages in the “same occupation” of self-offering both in the Trinity and in his pilgrim life.Footnote 30 When Jesus takes on the néant of human nature and gives himself for others in his human life, he pursues a single, permanent servitude, which expresses his person of the Son in relation with the Father. Servitude makes up the essential downward, negative complement of adoration, which accompanies the positive, upward aspect, and servitude and adoration together form two parts or aspects of a single relational activity.

More than adoration, servitude occupies a central role in Bérulle's understanding of Christ because it explains the “pure” or divine relationality at the heart of Christ's person. He calls the relationality of the persons of the Trinity “pure” in that they possess their natures only in relation to each other.Footnote 31 This same pattern of mutual dependence, and nothing else, gives rise to the distinction in the hypostatic union between the human and divine natures. When the Son becomes incarnate, he strips the human nature that he takes of its “right and power to dispose of itself and its actions,” and transfers this right “from the human nature to the divine Person who sustains it.”Footnote 32 The pattern of mutual dispossession occurs both in the relationship of Father and Son and in the union of human and divine. Human nature gives up its possession of itself in order to receive possession by the divine person of the Son, who himself has his personhood only by mutual dispossession with the Father. In the incarnation the Son takes on a “state of dependence” toward humanity in his relation to his mother while in the womb and most of all at his death.Footnote 33 Humanity and divinity unite through pure self-offering, or mutual dispossession, as God gives up divinity for humanity, and humanity gives up humanity for God. This process unites them in Christ in the “pure” manner of the relations of the Trinity and permits a relational distinction between them.

We can expand on the logic of Bérulle's understanding of the relationality of Christ's servitude because it appears vital to his understanding of mystical union. Mutual dispossession brings the language of servitude and anéantissement together with the erotic language of mystical union from the medieval Song of Songs tradition. Bérulle used both in conversation with Christology, although he barely refers to the Song.Footnote 34 Christ's servitude, as the divine Son in relation to humanity, derives from a Trinitarian relational mutuality, which Bérulle explores according to the logic of the sharing of possessions in a marriage. Instead of each possessing part of their total possessions individually over against what the other possesses, the two partners, transformed by mutual dispossession, possess all of them equally and together. When one applies this to personal identity or self-possession and not just to material possessions, one gets a paradoxical result. The partners give up all that they possess as separate identities and offer each other their nothingness apart from the other. They then possess themselves, as selves, only in the act of dispossession in favor of the other. They have no self apart from each other but only a shared self constituted by mutual dispossession. The act of dispossession, however, remains distinctly enacted by both partners and so lends a distinct identity to each, yet such a distinction occurs only within their mutual act. For Bérulle, this logic provides the best way to understand both the relations of the Trinity and those of the human and divine natures related in Christ. Christ gives up divinity for humanity and his humanity for God. These distinct acts—made mutually, originating in the mutuality of the Father and the Son, and given wholly for the other, withholding nothing—create a unity. The “same occupation” of mutual dispossession that unites them permits a simultaneous distinction between the partners in the pattern of ongoing relational dispossession in favor of the other.

Bérulle's central concern is to show the transformation of our human relationality into this human-and-divine relationality of Christ in mystical union. The key to our transformation lies in our response to Christ's dispossession with a similar dispossession of our own. The vow of servitude begins with the wish that “there might be no longer any of me in me” (qu'il n'y ait plus de moi en moi).Footnote 35 A loss of self follows from the fact that for the soul, which has its life in God, “its life, its movements and its actions no longer flow from it or belong to it, but rather belong to the one who divinely sustains it.”Footnote 36 The soul seeks to become nothing but a “naked capacity and a pure void” for Jesus, just as Jesus has become a néant in the incarnation for God.Footnote 37 Bérulle both echoes the abstract approach here and takes the concrete self-dispossession of the human Jesus as his model. He prefers neither alternative but asserts them together. He aims to obtain a mutual dispossession with Christ exactly like Christ's mutual dispossession with the Father, which allows one to form a “pure” relationship with God and thus to draw human selfhood into the manner of “selfhood” in the Trinity—of persons existing only through their mutual self-gift.Footnote 38 As Bérulle says, Jesus “wants to transform his natural filiation [in the Trinity] into a living source of adoptive filiation [in us].”Footnote 39

By attaining the pure relation with Jesus that he first offers us in kenosis, at the human level, an ontological sharing of benefits between Jesus and the human soul occurs in a mutual kenosis, or the pure relationality of the inner life of the Trinity. What each possesses no longer belongs to them alone but to both together as a shared identity in which both have given up all that belonged to either of them separately. Bérulle says that we then take up in our contemplation of God the “divine gaze” with which God regards humanity in the incarnation, so that we may look upon the divine gaze as “our own.”Footnote 40 The way that God regards humanity in the incarnation is already shared between Father and Son, and God now shares the divine gaze further when we join in the same relationality. He gives the same shared identity to the soul, so that it can become part of God's gaze and regard God's gaze truly as its own. This process constitutes mystical union.Footnote 41

Bérulle often describes this appropriation of the union of the Trinity by the soul with reference to the text frequently cited in the late medieval period for mystical union: the prayer of Jesus to the Father in John's Gospel.Footnote 42 We receive the effects of Jesus' contemplation of the unity that he has with the Father. Jesus has this unity with the Father because he is “always offering himself.” In the same way, by offering ourselves wholly to Jesus, we can transform into a purely relational selfhood with Jesus, which constitutes us in the inner relations of the Trinity in the manner of Jesus' divine person:

We desire that the power of him [the Son of God], who truly transforms the nature of things, should be brought to bear on us, so that by the strength of his powerful love the substance of our being might change its state and condition to become happily a pure relation towards him to honor, love, and imitate his substance, life and personal subsistence, which is totally related to the eternal Father.Footnote 43

The soul now possesses the same pattern of distinction and unity seen in Christ's adoration and servitude. Mystical transformation entails the transformation of our selfhood into the pattern of dispossession that we see in Christ, in relation to Christ, so that our identity transforms into the Trinitarian personhood, which Christ has. Mystical union involves a self-offering modeled on Christ's self-offering in his humanity, which has attained a level of mutuality with Christ such that it becomes the “same occupation” as his divine self-offering. One cannot distinguish this divine relationality from that of the Father with the Son. But one possesses equally a human relationship with Christ in the kenotic mutuality of servitude with Christ in his humanity. Mystical relationality, therefore, simultaneously comprises both an inner Trinitarian relationality and a created relationality, and distinguishes the two within the single “occupation” of mutual dispossession.

Deepening the Human-Divine Relationality of Mystical Union: Subsistence Language

Bérulle uses the category of “subsistence” to expand his view of the christological structure of mystical union and the deep human-divine relationality, which constitutes the relationship of the soul with Christ. R. Bellemare notes that before Bérulle wrote Grandeurs, a significant change in his language took place at the time of the controversy over the vows (around 1614) in that he no longer spoke of an anéantissement de l'être (annihilation of the being) of the soul but started instead to refer to the anéantissement de notre subsistence (annihilation of our subsistence).Footnote 44 This change formed part of the broader move in his Christology to clarify the distinction between Christ's person and his natures. Christ's personal unity as the Son has to do with his “subsistence,” while the distinction between his divinity and his humanity has to do with his two “natures.” Jesus remains relationally one with God in his humanity as a matter of “subsistence,” while the two natures remain ontologically distinct. Bérulle speaks of God “stripping” the human subsistence from human nature in the incarnation, as humanity gives up its “natural right to subsist in itself, so as to subsist only in the divine Person,” as we have seen.Footnote 45 He then extends this language of subsistence to others in relation with Christ and suggests that we undergo an “annihilation of our subsistence” when transformed by Jesus. We lose a personhood defined by relationships other than those with God and gain a new personhood or “subsistence” of pure relationality with Jesus.Footnote 46 Thus, he uses subsistence language to iron out any notion of an ontological annihilation of created being, which renders the soul divine in an exclusive sense. But at the same time, he models the manner in which the soul unites to God exactly on the subsistence of Christ's human nature in his divine person, so that both human and divine hold together.

Bérulle uses subsistence language, surprisingly redolent of modern Catholic theology, to deepen the relational dependence between the human and divine in Christ and consequently in mystical union too. As Michel Dupuy puts it, Bérulle holds that the incarnation makes human nature “infinitely capable of God.”Footnote 47 When human and divine unite in Christ, human nature does not conflict with the divine nature but relates to divinity as its fulfilment. As Bérulle says, Jesus' “personal existence is intrinsic to nature; it is its term, bringing it to fulfilment, making it [his personal existence] in a way part of the very substance of things.”Footnote 48 One can distinguish what comprises Jesus personally from nature, but his person constitutes the basis and fulfilment of nature without which nature has no actual existence. Bérulle's doctrines of creation and incarnation interweave nicely. When the Son takes on human nature, in spite of the miraculous stripping of human subsistence from human nature, which God alone can accomplish, human nature becomes part of the incarnation in a “natural way, if we can speak thus.”Footnote 49 He finds human nature apart from God strongly distinguished from God's divine act in the incarnation, but once seen in relation to the incarnation, he finds human nature intimately linked to divinity.

The connection with modern Catholic theology is that we can recognize an “intrinsicist” link between humanity and divinity in Bérulle's thought.Footnote 50 Bérulle finds human nature not divided from God but, by reference to the incarnation, to have divinity at its heart, within its substance, and as its fulfilment. Thus, in mystical union, the divine does not position itself over against the human nature of the soul but brings human nature into the fulness of the divine life. To apply “subsistence” language to mystical union does not merely make an analogy from the hypostatic union but a realist assertion about our own nature. The hypostatic union actually lies hidden in our nature waiting to bring it to its proper divine fulness. The soul can thus take on the divine life as its “own,” as we have seen.Footnote 51 The soul's divinity does not simply constitute an addition to its humanity, still less its opposite, but rather the relational other to which it belongs intrinsically. As Bellemare evocatively puts it, Bérulle's thought contains a “real ontological density (une véritable densité ontologique)” between the human soul and God.Footnote 52 Bérulle uses subsistence language to maintain a careful distinction between humanity and divinity, but his greater purpose is to show that this distinction exists only within the concomitant unity of human and divine and not apart from it. Just as in Christ, unity and distinction remain intrinsically bound together in mystical union, and Bérulle does not understand them as alternatives in competition with each other.

The Human Dynamics of Human-Divine Relationality in Mystical Union: The “States”

Bérulle further develops his understanding of the deep interpenetration of the divine and the human in his terminology of the “states” (états).Footnote 53 The “states” extend the relationality of the Trinity into the realm of concrete encounter between the human soul and Christ. Bérulle begins by considering Jesus' life, which expresses his divine relationship with the Father in the concrete “states” of his earthly life. He focuses on Jesus' states of infancy, desert, passion and Eucharist. He brings out the pattern of servitude in each state, whereby he considers Jesus' human activity and divine activity as one.Footnote 54 The states have a key feature in that they do not merely represent contingent events alongside others in history but constitute simultaneously divine acts of relationship, “constant, solid and permanent,” with the Father.Footnote 55 Of Jesus' adoration of the Father in his earthly life, for instance, Bérulle says, “we are speaking of an adoration by state, not by action; an adoration not simply coming from the faculties of the spirit or depending on thoughts. Rather it is solid, permanent, and independent of powers and actions, deeply imprinted in the depths of the created being, and in the condition of its state.”Footnote 56 The phrase “deeply imprinted in the depths of the created being” shows that Bérulle emphasizes the way that the mediation of the historical Jesus gives access to the inner dynamics of the hypostatic union.

The position of the historical Jesus in relation to God in the states does not mean a separation of humanity from divinity because, again, the logic of mutual dispossession governs it. Jesus shows us a dispossession of his divinity and humanity at the same time. Equally, our response, in a similar dispossession in relation to his states, establishes a relationality fully human and divine. The states bring the mediation of the historical Christ to the forefront of Bérulle's mysticism, yet by drawing attention to the level of relationality, he shows that the limitations of Christ's historical form present no barrier to his divinity. Christ's human relationship with us parallels the divine relationality between the Father and the Son. Bérulle uses the concept of mutual dispossession to hold together the divine and the human, which in the case of the states means that our human relationship with Christ, at the concrete historical level, corresponds to none other than his divine relationality.

The states have powerful implications for Bérulle's anthropology. Bérulle defines Christ's humanity within the human-and-divine unity of the incarnation by means of relationality. Bérulle sees it not as a static substance but as a nature “stripped” of its “natural right to subsist in itself, so as to subsist only in the divine Person.” Christ possesses his humanity by acts of servitude toward others in creation, which he does out of his defining relationship with the Father. To become Christ we must relate both to the humanity of Christ and to others in creation on this model. The result is that Bérulle has no concept of humanity apart from relationship either in Christ or in us, and his anthropology is entirely relational. To reach mystical union, one must relate to the human Christ and to humans other than ourselves on the model of Christ. Thus, we cannot separate mystical union from relationships between humans in their full temporal and contingent reality because our human relationality is the subject of our transformation into the divine relationality in mystical union. Further, the “density” of Christ's human-divine relationality imbues Bérulle's relational anthropology. He did not dwell on the way that his thought deepens the value of historical life, but the states give divine weight to the historical sphere of human relationships.Footnote 57

I have been arguing that Bérulle's application of the logic of the hypostatic union to mystical transformation enlarges our understanding of the paradox of simultaneous unity and distinction in mystical union. But a question arises as the soul approaches the perfect divine relationality of Christ in mystical union. If the soul has the union that Christ has—if mystical union is the hypostatic union—what continuing role does Christ have, once the soul has attained union? How does one maintain the human relationality between the soul and Christ, so focal in Bérulle's treatment of the states, when the soul has the divine relationality of Christ? Or, to put it another way, where does Christ have a place in mystical union? I consider the point an important one for understanding the continuing place of the “pilgrim life”—the ongoing life of concrete human relationality—in Bérulle's concept of mystical union.Footnote 58

I have presented two strands of Bérulle's thinking on this point, which at first sight appear to conflict. On the one hand, he points out an enduring difference between Jesus and his followers in mystical union in which they remain hierarchically dependent on him. Thus, he says, what Jesus has naturally, we have by adoption.Footnote 59 He remains the source and center of union, while we move toward him.Footnote 60 He constitutes the substance; we consist of the accidents.Footnote 61 As the first to see the unity of God, he prayed that we might receive it.Footnote 62 As he writes, “Jesus is the only one… to possess uncreated and infinite being,” in contrast with us, the created. We receive nothing uncreated but only created grace.Footnote 63 Bérulle suggests two kinds of distinction here. First, the soul participates by grace in what Jesus already has by nature. The soul shares what Jesus has secondarily to Jesus, after Jesus. Second, what Jesus has, the soul must receive from Jesus; Jesus gives the union that he has received first himself. The first kind of distinction concerns participation and the second concerns instrumentality. Each case emphasizes the distinction between the human soul and Christ.

On the other hand, the soul adopts the inner life of Christ and possesses the divine relationality of the Trinity in its pure form. In his treatment of emanation, Bérulle develops the way that he combines the element of distinction between Christ and his followers with this strong emphasis on their identity in relation to God. Emanation has three stages already introduced in the context of adoration. First, the Word is the image that the Father produces in contemplating himself. Second, the Son contemplates the bond that emanates from the personal love, the Holy Spirit, of the Father and the Son, and this forms also the bond, which unites him to human nature.Footnote 64 Then, third, we contemplate Jesus' own contemplation and in doing so become part of this contemplation, “inseparably joined to the Son of God, in the same way as he is inseparably joined to the Father.”Footnote 65 Bérulle draws out the aspect of continuity. The God who emanates as the Word from the Father emanates further as part of the same emanation both in the incarnation and in our own union with the incarnation.Footnote 66 Emanation forms a “chain of love,” first produced by the “excess” of love between the Father and the Son, which flows to us in the incarnation, “binding” us to the Father and the Son.Footnote 67 In the power of this emanating love, we join in the same act of “seeing” and “contemplating” (regardant, contemplant) that Jesus engages in with the Father. Thus we make God's own our own because God looks eternally and unceasingly on humanity as his own in the incarnation.Footnote 68

What, then, does emanation offer that might help us to distinguish between Christ and his followers within this unity? For Bérulle, emanation does not have its neoplatonic form. It does not move from divinity to humanity in stages. Rather, as centered on the incarnation, emanation proceeds only from the unity of humanity and divinity and thence to us. From this perspective, one cannot even call the internal emanations of the Trinity “prior to” or “superior to” God's activity in the incarnation—they simply occur coterminously with it.Footnote 69 We can say that the divine relationality of the Trinity “replicates” at the human level, both in the incarnation and in us, but not that this relationality has a different or inferior quality at the human level. Emanation does not help us to distinguish between the human and divine, such that we could put Jesus “closer” to God than ourselves. The replication of the divine relationality at the human level, however, brings about another kind of difference by which we can distinguish the followers from Jesus. At the human level, the divine relationality produces a relational kind of humanity. While Jesus' divine relationality constitutes his person, his humanity has the same relational quality, which means that he does not have human nature as an autonomous possession but in relationship to other humans.

His humanity actually requires relationships with other humans in order to constitute the kind of humanity that he has. To remove the distinction between Christ and his followers would, then, collapse the humanity of Christ in a way incompatible with the relationality of the incarnation. Emanation, therefore, when worked through Bérulle's relational framework of the incarnation, does not distinguish between Christ and his followers with respect to divinity but does retain a relational distinction between them. Participation and dependence exist only at the level of this relational distinction. They express not ontological inferiority but the contingent order of our transformation. Christ first possesses the union of human and divine, and we receive it from him by entering into human relationship with him. We grow into Jesus' divine relationality, whereas Jesus already has it. Theoretically, one could imagine a situation in which we could attain the relationality of mystical union through relationship with an individual other than Christ, who was also in mystical union—a possibility which Bérulle affirms in our relation to the Virgin MaryFootnote 70 —but in this case, the chain of relationships would still go back to Christ and retain Christ's central position. Mystical union remains ontologically indistinguishable from Christ's union, but Christ remains central because he first possesses the union and reaches us only through his human relationality.

Nevertheless, the mutuality of mystical union undercuts the hierarchically superior position of Christ in relation to his followers. In union, by mutual dispossession, Christ makes himself dependent on his human partners and shares himself fully. This explains the way that, alongside the expressions of Christ's supremacy, whatever Bérulle affirms of Christ, he also affirms of his followers in mystical union. Bérulle's commentators have not always recognized this fact. Michel Dupuy, for instance, in his notes to the text of Grandeurs, states that the “communication” of divinity to humanity only applies to Jesus, whereas the “divinization” of humanity applies to us.Footnote 71 But such a distinction does not hold true of Bérulle's view of mystical union. Bérulle ascribes “communication” to us also. He says, in contemplating God in the mystical life (la vie mystique), “God imprints and communicates his holy unity in the spirit which is prepared, purified and elevated, making it one spirit with God.”Footnote 72 We occupy Jesus' position in the Trinity as named by Jesus in John 17, where we “enter into excellent communication with the Divinity,” as “substantially united with God, by certain degrees and stages.”Footnote 73 Here, Dupuy's distinction, between “communication” as reserved to Christ in his Trinitarian life and “divinization” as what we receive, breaks down. Unlike Christ, we require divinization—in this sense we remain secondary to Christ—but divinization includes us in the communication of divinity, which Christ enjoys. The fact that we receive from Christ the union that Christ has does not mean that we have a union inferior to or outside of Christ; rather, we have the same union that Christ has only now seen from our perspective as his human followers.

Conclusion: Bérulle's Understanding of Mystical Union

Bérulle's understanding of divine unity entails a kenotic relationality of mutual dispossession, and he applies this understanding to answer the principal questions of mystical union. First, he deals with the question of the distinction of human and divine in mystical union. Bérulle sets human-divine difference within his understanding of divine unity and uses the model of Christ's adoration and servitude. The relational otherness of the Father-Son relation, as a mutual dispossession, makes room for the radical ontological difference of the human, as a néant, within the divine relationality. Bérulle then applies this view of unity to mystical union in order to show that the nothingness of our humanity constitutes no bar to union but actually forms part of the relational otherness necessary to the union. He finds unity and difference complementary rather than opposed. Human and divine cannot in the end oppose one other but require each other for their distinction. Second, what sort of humanity can unite with God in mystical union? Bérulle draws out the implications of his relational approach for his view of humanity. We should not think of humanity primarily in terms of nature and substance but in terms of the kind of relationality or “subsistence” by which it can be fulfilled. Bérulle considers humanity a form of relationality fulfilled when it becomes the mutual kenotic relationality of the Trinity, which also makes it divine. Thus, union does not threaten or destroy humanity because humanity fundamentally suits union. Third, what place does ongoing human relationality have in mystical union, once it has attained the divine? Bérulle's “states” show that concrete human relationality sustains mystical union because the divine relationality only unites with humanity at the level of human relationality. Human relationality must continue in order to sustain mystical union. Fourth, does the attainment of mystical union make Christ redundant? Bérulle's view of the “pure relation” attained by the soul with God in mystical union does not challenge the place of Christ again because of his relational anthropology. We attain the same union as Christ, ontologically, but possess this union only through a human relationality defined by mutual dispossession. We possess such a pattern in continuing relationship with the human Christ without whom this form of relationality collapses. Christ remains the permanent “center” of this kind of relationality.

In each of these answers, Bérulle begins with relationality and works out difference at the level of relationality rather than prior to or outside of it. For mystical union, he provides a language able to express both unity and difference together and avoids the dilemmas of meaning entailed in the juxtaposed opposites of simple paradox. The element of paradox remains, but Bérulle's relationality always embraces the paradox, which allows him to express both unity and distinction coherently and together.

References

1 The main studies of Bérulle's thought are now mostly over thirty years old; they are mostly in French and not well known in the anglophone world (excepting the very good Classics of Western Spirituality volume; see nn. 4 and 5, and further references, for the literature). Further reasons must be guessed at for the lack of recent attention to Bérulle's mysticism: perhaps because he stands at the beginning of the distinctively French development of spirituality in the seventeenth century, and is therefore often confined to that context; perhaps because his mysticism has become associated with the thesis of Michel de Certeau, that mysticism went into terminal decline after 1600, consequently being regarded as part of that decline, lacking the creativity of the earlier period. See Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992)—although de Certeau does not include Bérulle as part of the breakdown.

2 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism; New York: Crossroad, 1992) xix.

3 Bernard McGinn, ed. and trans., The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (Modern Library Classics; New York: Random House, 2006) xvi–xvii. McGinn adopts the phrase “mediated immediacy” from Bernard Lonergan (ibid., xx). Lonergan speaks of the mystical relationship with God as a “mediated return to immediacy.” Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972) 77.

4 Henri Bremond coined the term École française (French School) and showed the centrality of Bérulle in seventeenth-century French spirituality in his magisterial history on the period. See Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu'à nos jours (9 vols.; Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1921–1936). The first three volumes are in English translation: A Literary History of Religious Thought in France: From the Wars of Religion Down to Our Own Times (trans. K. L. Montgomery; London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1928–1936). Bérulle is treated in vol. 3. Whether the term “School” is justified in such a diverse and complex context has produced considerable discussion. For a recent example, see Yves Krumenacker, “Henri Bremond et l'École française de spiritualité”, Chrétiens et sociétés XVIe–XXe siècles 9 (2002) 115–38. Online: www.univ-lyon3.fr/ihc/publicat/bulletin/2002/krumenacker.pdf. For Bremond, the “French School” refers to Bérulle and his direct followers, notably the Oratorians and Sulpicians, but his criteria for inclusion are less clear when he introduces others such as Vincent de Paul and Jean Eudes, who could be regarded as heading distinct schools. A second key writer on the history of seventeenth-century French spirituality is Louis Cognet; I have used especially his De la dévotion moderne à la spiritualité française (Je sais, je crois 41; Paris: Fayard, 1958); trans. P. J. Hepburne-Scott, Post-Reformation Spirituality (Faith and Fact Series 41; London: Burns & Oates, 1959); and Louis Cognet, La spiritualité moderne (Histoire de la spiritualité chrétienne 3; Paris: Aubier, 1966)—the former is a brief outline, the latter more substantial.

5 The main studies and articles that I have used here are as follows. Michael J. Buckley, “Seventeenth Century French Spirituality: Three Figures,” in Christian Spirituality III: Post-Reformation and Modern (ed. Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers; London: SCM, 1990) 28–68. William M. Thompson, introduction to Bérulle and the French School: Selected Writings (ed. idem; trans. Lowell M. Glendon; New York: Paulist, 1989) 1–59. R. Bellemare, Le sens de la créature dans la doctrine de Bérulle (Paris: Desclée, 1959). Fernando Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle. Théologie et spiritualité des “états” bérulliens (Roma: Università Gregoriana, 1974). Miklos Vetö, “La Christo-logique de Bérulle,” intro. to Pierre de Bérulle, Opuscules de piété (1644) (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1997) 7–136.

6 Buckley, “Seventeenth Century French Spirituality,” 30; Thompson, introduction to Bérulle, 13. Which mystical authors Bérulle read remains unclear; the consensus among scholars is that these three are probably the most important. For the influence of Harphius and Canfield, see Cognet, Essor de la spiritualité moderne, 340, 355; idem, Post-Reformation Spirituality, 73. Bellemare treats the importance of Catherine of Genoa in Bérulle's development, regarding Bérulle's unpublished notes on the Life of Catherine of Genoa as a key transition in this thought (Bellemare, Le sens de la créature, 16–17). Also see Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 19–23.

7 Benoît de Canfield, Renaissance Dialectic and Renaissance Piety: Benet of Canfield's Rule of Perfection: A Translation and Study (trans. and intro. Kent Emery, Jr.; Medieval & Renassance Texts & Studies 50; Binghampton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1987). This is the theme especially of Part 3, chs. 1–15, pp. 173–227.

8 Ibid., Part 2, ch. 1, p. 160.

9 Ibid., Part 3, ch. 1, p. 176; ch. 5, p. 187; ch. 6, p. 192.

10 Buckley, “Seventeenth Century French Spirituality,” 42.

11 Ibid., 43.

12 Bremond, Literary History, 2:195–228.

13 Ibid., 2:229.

14 The theme of the humanity of Christ and opposition to its “by-passing” (dépassement) is a key strand in the history of seventeenth-century spirituality; see Cognet, Post-Reformation Spirituality, 15, 16, 31, 41, 60, 62, 69, 70, 73, 83; and Jean Dagens, Bérulle et les origines de la restauration catholique (1575–1611) (Paris: Desclée, 1952) 301–21.

15 Bellemare argues that Bérulle moved definitively away from the “abstract” emphasis of his early mysticism, against Bremond's view that he retained it (Bellemare, Le sens de la créature, 15, 43). My view is that Bérulle aimed for a synthesis.

16 I focus on the Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus in this article because it shows Bérulle's christological and mystical development most systematically. The Œuvres de piété (or Opuscules de piété) are a further useful source for fleshing out Bérulle's mystical teaching. In my references, “G” stands for Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus, known for short as Grandeurs. I have used the recent critical edition of Bérulle's works: Pierre de Bérulle, Œuvres complètes (intro. and notes Michel Dupuy; trans. Auguste Piédagnel; Paris: Oratoire de Jésus; Cerf, 1995–1997). Grandeurs is to be found in Discours de l'état et des grandeurs de Jésus. Mémorial. Élévation sur Sainte Madeleine (vol. 7 of Œuvres complètes; 14 vols.; Paris: Cerf, 1996), and page numbers refer to this volume. Page numbers in parentheses refer to the English translation by Lowell M. Glendon in Thompson, Bérulle and the French School; otherwise translations are my own.

17 Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 87–99.

18 “Comme le Fils unique de Dieu a un rapport continuel de tout ce qu'il est vers son Père, et son être et sa vie consistent en ce rapport… aussi l'usage de notre être et de notre vie doit être totalement employé à la relation parfaite et absolue de tout ce que nous sommes.” G 5, ch. 9, p. 215 (137). Bérulle typically uses the words rapport and relation for this relation—elsewhere he also uses the verb se référer (e.g., G 3, ch. 8, p. 154). The translator (Lowell M. Glendon) has used “refer” here to give the active sense intended in Bérulle's rapport and relation.

19 G 5,9, 216 (137).

20 “Car, étant vivement et sensiblement touchés de la grandeur de ce rare objet [Jésus-Christ et le mystère de l'Incarnation]… nous croyons être obligés de nous élever à Dieu.” G 2, ch. 1, p. 82 (114). Bérulle occasionally shifts from the language of third-person description and explanation into the first-person mode of address to Jesus, to enter into these elevations more directly, using phrases such as, “I address and lift myself to you, O my Lord Jesus (je m'adresse et m'élève à vous, ô Jésus mon Seigneur),” and “I long for you, O my Lord Jesus (j'aspire à vous, ô mon Seigneur Jésus).” G 2, ch. 6, p. 95 (121); p. 97 (122).

21 G 2, ch. 13, pp. 123–24 (126). Also see Michel Dupuy, Bérulle. Une spiritualité de l'adoration (Tournai: Desclée, 1964).

22 “La vue de lui-même, comme subsistant dedans l'être incréé.” G 3, ch. 8, p. 153 (127).

23 G 10, ch. 1, pp. 371–73 (150–51). The three births form the structure of the last three discourses of Grandeurs, each birth being treated separately in Discourses 10, 11, and 12. Guillén Preckler notes that an important strand in Bérulle's understanding of emanation is Dionysius, whose writings he knew well; however, a difference from Dionysius is that Christ is not the archetype and top of the celestial hierarchies but includes them all in himself (Guillén Preckler,“État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 54–55, 63).

24 The second emanation produces both creation and salvation together, although they are distinguished as the second and third births; see G 2, ch. 5, pp. 93–94 (119–20).

25 For a valuable treatment of this theme, see Erik Varden, The Principle of Servitude in the Work of Pierre de Bérulle (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2000).

26 Thompson, Bérulle and the French School, 14–16. Guillén Preckler quotes from the manuscript of the Vow of Servitude: “Je fais vœu à Dieu de servitude perpétuelle à Jésus Christ à son humanité déifiée et à sa divinité humanisée” (Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 87).

27 The kenosis of Phil 2:6–7 is central to Bérulle's spirituality. See the long list of references to this text in G 490 (in the edition used here).

28 “Néant de notre humanité,” G 2, ch. 13, p. 120.

29 “Un état d'abaissement et servitude,” G 2, section 13, p. 121; “le Fils de l'Homme qui est Fils de Dieu est… toujours se référant soi-même et référant cette unité nouvelle qui le fait nouvel homme à l'hommage des unités divines et adorables de l'Être suprême et incréé,” G 3, ch. 8, p. 154.

30 “Même occupation [dedans les cieux] que vous avez eue durant le cours de votre vie humble, souffrante et voyagère.” G 3, ch. 8, p. 155.

31 “The divine persons have a relation and a rapport to their principle of origin. They only subsist through his [God's] attributes and relations and are happy to live in this relatedness, rapport and mutual love (en la Trinité sainte les personnes divines ont relation et rapport à leurs principe et origine, et elles ne subsistent qu'en ses propriétés et relations et vivent heureusement en ce regard, en ce rapport, et en cet amour réciproques).” G 2, ch. 5, p. 93 (119).

32 “Cette humanité sacrée est-elle destituée de ce droit et de ce pouvoir de disposer de soi même et de ses actions, et ce droit se trouve être légitimement transféré de la nature humaine en la personne divine.” G 2, ch. 10, p. 112 (124).

33 “État de dépendance.” Vie de Jésus, 28; Oeuvres Complètes, 8:299 (162).

34 Bérulle brings together his emphasis on the anéantissement of the soul, which itself owes much to late medieval mystical language of annihilation, with an erotic relationality taken from the mystical tradition of commentaries on the Song of Songs, supremely those by Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux, where the possessions of the “marriage” partners are given up to each other and shared. He could have encountered this language in many late medieval mystical sources, for instance in Ruusbroec or in mystical compendia such as Harphius. But he makes very little reference to the Song of Songs in his scriptural quotations. He prefers to situate his union language in terms of the hypostatic union, especially by citing John 17 (see n. 42), although the logic of mutual dispossession is also that of erotic union.

35 G 2, ch. 12, p. 119.

36 “Sa vie, ses mouvements et ses actions ne sont plus comme d'elle ni à elle en propriété, mais sont à celui qui la soutient divinement.” G 2, ch. 10, p. 109 (123).

37 “Je veux… que je ne sois plus qu'une nue capacité et un pur vide en moi-même, rempli de lui et non de moi, pour jamais.” G 2, ch. 12, p. 119.

38 G 5, ch. 9, p. 216 (137).

39 “Le Fils unique du Père… veut rendre sa filiation propre et naturelle vive source de la filiation adoptive.” G 5, ch. 9, p. 214 (136).

40 G 12, ch. 2, pp. 468–69 (157). See n. 68 for full citation.

41 Grandeurs repeatedly refers to the theme of union, both Christ's union and our union with God, although the term “mystical union” is not used. Bérulle sometimes, but rarely, speaks of the “mystical life” (la vie mystique) and characterizes this using the union language of John 17 (see nn. 42, 72). His most frequent language of mystical union is in terms of attaining the divine “unity (unité)” of Christ and the Trinity.

42 John 17:20–23: Bérulle cites the passage frequently, e.g., G 2, ch. 7, p. 98; G 3, ch. 8, p. 155; G 3, section 10, p. 162; G 6, ch. 4, 229; G 6, ch. 6, p. 229; G 8, ch. 7, p. 309 (the latter is on John 17:5 but develops the same theme).

43 “Beaucoup plus devons-nous désirer que la puissance de celui qui transmue vraiment la nature des choses soit employée sur nous, et que, par la vertu de son amour puissant, la substance de notre être change d'état et condition, pour être heureusement convertie en une relation pure vers lui, en hommage, en amour et en imitation de sa substance, de sa vie et de sa subsistence personelle qui est toute relative vers le Père éternel.” G 5, ch. 4, p. 216 (137).

44 Bellemare, Le sens de la créature, 61. Bellemare cites the following references from the Migne edition of Bérulle's works (Paris, 1856): Œuvres de piété 132, part 3, 1166; part 5, 914; 87, part 2, 1071–72; and from Bérulle's Collationes Congregationes nostrae, 1614 (Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 18210) 234–36.

45 “Elle lui cède encore le droit naturel qu'elle a de subsister en soi-même, pour ne subsister qu'en sa personne divine.” G 2, ch. 10, p. 112 (124). Also see n. 36 above.

46 G 5, ch. 4, p. 216 (137), as cited above, n. 43.

47 G 9, ch. 4, p. 360 n. 1. [My emphasis]

48 “L'être personnel entre dans le ressort de la nature, en est le terme, comme l'accomplissant et faisant en une certaine manière partie de la propre substance des choses.” G 2, ch. 10, p. 112 (125).

49 “Comme naturelle, s'il nous est permis d'ainsi parler” (ibid.). There is a “rapport” between creation and incarnation, and between nature and grace (G 11, ch. 7, p. 426).

50 I use “intrinsicist” in the sense which emerged from the debates surrounding the nouvelle théologie in Roman Catholic theology in the 1950s, as contrasted with the “extrinsicism” of too strongly segregated categories of nature and grace. See, e.g., Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1992) 55–59.

51 G 12, ch. 2, 468–69 (157), cited in n. 68 below.

52 “Pour Bérulle cette union [notre participation au Christ] possède une véritable densité ontologique” (Bellemare, Le sens de la créature, 140).

53 This is the theme examined by Guillén Preckler in his “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle.

54 Ibid., ch. 7, pp. 179–220.

55 “Y ayant deux manières de le servir, l'une par actions seulement et l'autre par état, nous devons choisir cette voie constante, solide, permanente.” G 5, ch. 9, 216 (137). The incarnation means that God not only became flesh in Jesus, but that “there was never a moment when the Word did not behold in his divine essence, as in a perfect mirror, that human nature” (le Verbe n'a jamais été que regardant en sa divine essence, comme en un parfait miroir, cette nature humaine)—so that every state of Jesus is both temporal and eternal: G 12, ch. 2, p. 468 (157).

56 “Nous parlons d'une adoration qui est par état et non par action; d'une adoration qui n'est pas simplement émanante des facultés de l'esprit et dépendante de ses pensées, mais qui est solide, permanente et indépendante des puissances et des actions, et qui est vivement imprimée dans le fonds de l'être créé et dans la condition de son état.” G 11, ch. 6, p. 420 (154).

57 Bérulle applied the various states of Jesus' life to the different vocations of individual Christians and religious orders in his day. The state is a concept of vocation, something pursued through the contingencies of a particular vocational relationship with Jesus (Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 165–67).

58 There is an additional concern for orthodoxy: mystics had in the past been condemned for denying a continuing distinct role to Christ in mystical union. See, e.g., the bull of condemnation of Eckhart, “In agro dominico” (1329), in Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (trans. and intro. Bernard McGinn and Edmund Colledge; New York: Paulist, 1981) 77–81, esp. articles 10–12, 20–22. But by the time Bérulle was writing this was not as pressing an issue as were the conflicting claims of the “abstract” approach, on the one hand, and concrete encounter with the humanity of Christ, on the other hand, as we have seen.

59 G 10, ch. 6, p. 392.

60 G 2, ch. 2, p. 85 (117).

61 G 2, ch. 5, p. 91 (118).

62 G 3, ch. 8, p. 154.

63 “Jésus est seul… possédant l'être incréé et infini, entre plusieurs qui possèdent la grâce [créée] et la gloire.” G 1, ch. 6, p. 79 (113).

64 G 5, ch. 4, pp. 203–4 (135); 5, section 9, p. 213 (135); G 3, ch. 8, p. 153 (127), the latter quoted in n. 22 above.

65 “Nous devons être inséparablement conjoints au Fils de Dieu… comme il est lui-même conjoint à son Père.” G 5, ch. 9, p. 216 (137).

66 E.g., G 1, ch. 6, p. 75 (110); 2, ch. 5, pp. 90, 93 (117, 120).

67 “Nous honorons en lui [le Fils] son Père qui nous l'a donné, par l'excès et l'abondance de son amour; [ce] qui est une chaîne d'amour et d'honneur qui nous lie au Père et au Fils et nous rend imitant et adorant l'amour et l'honneur réciproque qui est entre eux.” G 5, ch. 10, p. 217.

68 Ô regard qui doit tirer notre regard, notre amour et notre hommage vers cette humanité que Dieu regarde éternellement et incessamment comme sienne, et que nous devons regarder comme nôtre.” G 12, ch. 2, pp. 468–69 (157).

69 “This divine mystery [incarnation] is like the center of the created and uncreated world (divin mystère qui est comme le centre de l'être créé et incréé).” G 1, ch. 2, p. 69 (110). Guillén Preckler suggests that this is a re-reading of the hierarchical orders of emanations in Dionysius, giving the incarnation a more central place (Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, 63).

70 The close relationship between Jesus and Mary means that “to speak of Mary is to speak of Jesus (c'est parler de Jésus que parler de Marie),” for Bérulle, and we are transformed into the divine unity in relation to Mary's “states.” Vie de Jésus 6, 224 (159); Guillén Preckler, “État” chez le cardinal de Bérulle, ch. 8, pp. 221–49.

71 G 93 n. 3.

72 “La vie mystique, en laquelle Dieu imprime et communique à l'esprit préparé, purifié et élevé, son unité sainte, pour le rendre un d'esprit avec Dieu.” G 7, ch. 4, p. 269.

73 “Nous entrons en une excellente communication avec la Divinité… nous sommes unis, par certains degrés et échelons, substantiellement avec Dieu.” G 6, ch. 4, p. 229 (139).