Francis’s Mysticism and the “Canticle”

Abstract

Bernard McGinn defines mysticism brief ly as “the consciousness of God’s presence in a deeper and more immediate way” (McGinn 1998, xi), to which one might add only that in the course of the experience the mystic becomes unaware of anything other than the presence of God. Afterward, the mystic frequently struggles to find words or images adequate to express the experience. Rigorous spiritual discipline—the practice of spiritual exercises, chastity, fasting and abstinence, vigils and self-denial, and, in the monastic life, obedience to a superior, celibacy, and the renunciation of possessions—constitutes a preparation for mystical experiences but does not in itself constitute mysticism or necessarily produce mystical experiences.