Mystagogy Reading: The Rod, the Root, and the Flower by Coventry Patmore, Pt I

Coventry Patmore, portrait by John Singer Sargent

The Rod, the Root, and the Flower by Coventry Patmore is a collection of aphorisms expounding the culmination of Patmore's spiritual thought. Patmore is a poet of the the late nineteenth century, a member of the Christian Romantics, poets who found the Romantic movement in and of itself, too bereft of religion, intellect and philosophy, but found inspiration in the Romantics' rejection of the Rationalist philosophy, and their return to allegory, symbolism, and medieval imagery. Patmore was considered a mystic and was popular in his day though that waned after his conversion to Catholocism, which still made someone something of a persona non grata in England.

Stratford Caldecott in "Why We Need Coventry Patmore" (Communio 2014) notes that Patmore's writing is a poetic expression of St John Paul II's Theology of the Body almost a hundred years older than the Pope's groundbreaking exegesis of faith and sexuality. And in Patmore's diligent exploration and expression of the ideas of St. Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, both of whom he quotes often in The Rod, etc. Caldecott also sees a presaging of the ressourcement movement of the mid-twentieth century.

Since the book is a collection of aphorisms, I thought I would pick out some that particularly spoke to me, and write little commentaries on them over the course of a few blog posts.

'Searchers of Majesty shall be overwhelmed with the glory.' Blissfully overwhelmed; ruined for this world, yet even in this enriched beyond thought; happy searchers, consumed by the thunder of divine instruction  and the lightning of divine perceptions, but surviving as a new creature in the very flesh of her destroyer.
—Aurea Dicta, IX

The opening quote is an English Translation of the Vulgate translation of Proverbs 25:27: sicut qui mel multum comedit non est ei bonum sic qui scrutator est maiestatis opprimitur gloria. When we finally, as Christians, surrender ourselves to the Theological Hope with our eyes firmly set on Heaven as Participation in the Divine Life, Theosis, Divination (see CCC 460) then the we become "ruined" for this world. Nothing in it will satisfy to the level to which have faith that that God will provide. C.S. Lewis found this longing to be in everyone, for even before we start searching for God we find that nothing in this world fully satisfies our desire, especially our desire for joy, so we must be made for something greater than this world. Lewis calls this the argument from desire. But how much more intense it becomes when we truly "lift up our hearts to the Lord"?

The imagery of God as destroyer and being consumed, especially by thunder and lightning, are frightful images that call to mind Job in the whirlwind (purposefully, I imagine). But they link me back to what Vanauken wrote about in A Severe Mercy about the Shining Barrier's most important function was to protect their love from self; we must die to self in order to be reborn "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were [...] so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:3 & 4)

Hate pleasure, if only because this is the only means of obtaining it. Reject the foul smoke, and it will be forced back on you as pure flame. But this you cannot believe, until you shall have rejected it without thought of reward.
—ibid, XV

"Pure flame" excites the spiritual imagination (did Patmore read the desert fathers?). "Hate" here, I take to be in the same vein as Jesus saying "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Not hate as with disdain or wrath, but as an expression of recognizing the order of good. Nothing should come before God and all things should be ordered toward God. If one is not willing to sacrifice familial relationships for God, then we have made idols of family. And if we must be willing to sacrifice family, and even our life if it not ordered toward God, then pleasure too must be "hated." But when it is so hated, when pleasure is enjoyed not in replacement of God, but as a sign of his goodness, then it shall be received as "pure flame" However, just as when pursuing God, it is necessary to at times withdraw from family ("when you pray, go to your closet, close the door and pray"), when pursuing God it is also necessary at times to abstain from earthly pleasure and take delight in the Lord alone.

So give me to possess this mystery that I shall not desire to understand it
—ibid XXVIII

and

Great contemplatives are infallible, so long as they only affirm. When they begin to prove, any fool can confute them.
—ibid LXXIII

Both of these relate to types of religious knowledge: Understanding and Wisdom, or perhaps comprehension and apprehension. This has been at the heart of my recent mystagogy focus. I'm wanting to move away from an apologetics focused knowledge of the faith, the temptation "to prove" and instead affirm "with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength." I want to "go out into the deep" where I'm no longer just learning about God, but I'm encountering Him: My heart says to thee, "Thy face, LORD, do I seek."

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Reading The Rod the Root and the Flower (2013, Angelico Press) is a continuation of my reading the Bibliography, or related readings, from Stratford Caldecott's The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God as personal mystagogy. This work is not in the bibliography but Patmore's Religio Poetae Etc. was not available through the library, so I thought this was a good place to start. Mr Caldecott wrote a foreward to the Angelico Press edition of The Rod, etc., which he rewrote as the article linked above for Communio.