page_title: Christian mysticism
section_title: Practice
hierarchical_section_title: Christian mysticism / Practice
context_page_description: Christian mysticism refers to mystical practices and theory within Christianity. Mysticism is not so much a doctrine as a method of thought. It has often been connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Christianity.
  The attributes and means by which Christian mysticism is studied and practiced are varied. They range from ecstatic visions of the soul's mystical union with God and theosis in Eastern Orthodox theology to simple prayerful contemplation of Holy Scripture.
context_section_description: Historically, Christian mysticism has taught that for Christians the major emphasis of mysticism concerns a spiritual transformation of the egoic self, the following of a path designed to produce more fully realized human persons, "created in the Image and Likeness of God" and as such, living in harmonious communion with God, the Church, the rest of the world, and all creation, including oneself.  For Christians, this human potential is realized most perfectly in Jesus, precisely because he is both God and human, and is manifested in others through their association with him, whether conscious, as in the case of Christian mystics, or unconscious, with regard to spiritual persons who follow other traditions, such as Gandhi. The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of this transformation in terms of theosis or divinization, perhaps best summed up by an ancient aphorism usually attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria:  "God became human so that man might become god."
caption: Marian apparition while praying  by Thomas Georg Driendl (1888)
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