Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis

The Mysticism of Reconciliation

Goicoechea

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781532600630
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

David L. Goicoechea presents his fourth volume in a series on agape. The book focuses on the complementarity of agape (Christian love) and bhakti (Hindu love). First, he shows how the Jesuit Spirituality at Loyola in Chicago and the Franciscan Spirituality at St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, helped him to appreciate mystical love. Secondly, he shows how agape with all nine of its characteristics is central to the Gospel of Mark. Then, especially with the help of the work of Dr. Raj Singh, he shows how bhakti developed throughout the history of India. Finally, Goicoechea shows how Georges Bataille, especially with the help of St. John of the Cross, looks deeply into the Inner Experience of the Mystical Ways.

Part One

The Love of Wisdom

I. In Jesuit Spirituality

I.1 From Benedictines and Sulpicians to Jesuits and Franciscans

I.1.1 Leaving the Seminary Fifty Years Ago

Mother dear, today, September 6, 2011, is your ninety-fourth birthday.

Each year on your birthday I begin writing a new love book.

Will you please pray and intercede for me that the writing

of this fourth volume on Agape and Bhakti at Loyola

and St. Francis will proceed along in just the right way?

As you remember it is just fifty years ago this fall that I

left the seminary and in January of 1962, went out to Chicago

to begin graduate studies in philosophy with the Jesuits at Loyola.

In the fall of 1961, when my spiritual advisors helped me

to decide to leave the seminary, I waited until I was

accepted at Loyola before I left because I could have been

drafted into the military if I were not registered at a university.

I wrote to Father Hecht, who was the chair of the philosophy

department and told him I would love to study at Loyola

but that I did not have any money and after he looked at

my grades and read the letters of recommendation he invited

me to come to Loyola and said they would take care of my needs.

Thank God again and Holy Mother church for looking after me.

The Jesuit Fathers took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience

and thus they did not need large salaries and could make

it easier financially for their poor students like myself.

Why I left the seminary and why I wanted to go to Loyola

I will explain in the next few chapters after we see the big picture.

In the seminary, we concentrated on growth in faith, hope,

and love by praying the daily mass and about half of

the divine office and by doing our spiritual reading and

listening to a daily sermon on things pertinent to the priesthood.

At Loyola, I moved to the new primary emphasis of understanding

the love of wisdom and especially the history of philosophy which

I started in the seminary but now went into in greater depth.

I,1.2 Why I must tell the Story of the Leaving in Detail

My leaving the seminary had to do with the three great

secret things: Sex, Religion and Art as George Hunt S.J.

treats them in his book on the religious writing of John Updike.

For many years I tried to practise celibacy with many

sins of masturbation which I could not seem to overcome.

I tell that story in the third volume in which I especially

consider two of my confessors: Father Ambrose and Father Gus.

I was struggling but did make some progress and

everything seemed alright as I tried to devote myself to

the religious love of serving God and his family of man.

Religion for me was the great value and sex the great problem.

As I tried to give up sexual love for the sake of religiou...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Detailed Line of Argument
• Part One: The Love of Wisdom
• Part Two: The Wisdom of Love
• Part Three: To The Things Themselves
• Bibliography