The “Mystique” and the “Mystic”
One says mystique and the other says mystic.
I have been fascinated by the article by Thomas F. McKenna, C.M., recently noted on famvin. Equally, I have been caught by Tomaž Mavrič’s gentle insistence over several years that Vincentians (religious and lay) must be mystics of charity.
It’s vacation time for students here on the Bolivian Altiplano, so I have had time to think. After going back and forth with by email with my predecessor at .famvin, John Freund, C.M., about why Fr. McKenna echoes Toscani, saying “mystique of the poor” and Fr. Mavrič says “mystic of charity,” here’s what I’ve come up with.
No doubt Mavrič is talking about us being true mystics — perceiving Christ in the person who is poor. McKenna’s point is that Vincent was drawn, attracted, even “fascinated” by by what Giuseppe Toscani called a “mystique.” (La Mystique des Pauvres. Le charisme de la Charité : Saint-Paul Editions Religieuses, 1998). For me that’s a helpful distinction.
Vincent became a mystic because he perceived Christ in the poor after being drawn to them (in which lies their “mystique”). Listen to what McKenna says, when he uses that phrase in context [bold/italic is mine]:
“So, when the fascinated Vincent asks Jesus to “give him the wealth that lets him do all these things,” he feels summoned along Jesus’ own path. As Vincent engages with the downtrodden, he senses being a part of that current of God’s out-flowing love to these men and women. It is this attraction to divine loving that informs Vincent’s intuitions about where to head in life, and how to make his choices.12
Toscani uses the expression “mystique of the poor” to drive home the point. Vincent sees the Father, Jesus, the poor, and his own self all caught up together in God’s loving of humanity.13 He grasped the pure generosity that is sending the Word to the poor, the Sending to which Jesus gives flesh. The fuel for Vincent’s engine is provided by just this experience of God.”
It is Christ, in the poor person that is this attraction. It is this revolutionary theological perspective that Luigi Mezzadri identifies in the book’s introduction: “Dieu n’est pas “refuge” mais “appel”(“God is not a “refuge” but a “call.”)
The “mystique” of the poor is actually the moving love of God poured out in Christ who now dwells in the poor. To be drawn by it is a grace for which we must pray. We can perceive Christ if we are mystics and not only hard-working apostles.
Perhaps the greatest thing we could allow to happen for our 400th anniversary is to allow the “mystique of the poor” to draw us closer to Christ in the poor, and help us emerge as mystical apostles. We would say #IamVincent because we say #IamaMystic.
