86. Homilies on St. John's Epistles 2.15. Dah ane
INTRODUCTION
insofar as they manifest the perfect Truth on which the mind in its knowing action depends, providing an indirect intuition of God. . For persons made to be "toward God," resting in God is authentic happiness. This does not imply devaluation of the temporal order or of earthly values. Augustine said: '"Am I not to love what God has made?''8* The answer is yes, but not to find one's complete happiness in them. All self-denial is to restore the "order of love" within persons so that God's world can be rightly loved and enthusiastically loved. The heart's yearning for God is profound prayer experienced by all. This aspiration to God does not remove one from time and history, for, as Augustine learned, the eternal is in the temporal as the source of its beauty that leads to God.
Although his early religious experiences were markedly intellectual, through faith in Revelation he understood the implications of graced orientation to Christ, who led him into the Trinitarian experience of life, wisdom, love—the fulfillment of all the basic human longings.
When'we speak of Augustine as a mystic we are referring to the experiential aspect of his Christian life, his experience as a "spiritual" man. As a Pauline term this word "spiritual" should not be interpreted merely Platonically. It signifies the proper unity between Christian doctrine and life, between theology and piety. The word "mystical," we have noted, was in Christian use before the origin of Neoplatonism and it did not signify the "extraordinary." It was used to convey the mystery of Christ, who communicates to us the divine reality, and it was used to refer to the hidden spiritual reality of the Sacraments. Origen spoke of Christ as "our guide in mystical and ineffable contemplation."®7
As Augustine deepened his theology of the Incarnation, he experienced union with God through Christ as head of the Mystical Body, the vine and the branches. One might almost say that as he became the Doctor of Grace, his spirituality, which included the consciousness of grace as friendship with God, became a mystical spirituality. If charity is common to our experience both here and hereafter, then the life of intimate union with the Trini-
86. Homilies on St. John's Epistles 2.15. Dah ane 87. Origen, Commentary on Jobn XIII.24, quoted in Bouyer, Spirituality, p. 410.