The Secret Path: A Catholic Response to the New Age

Stratford Caldecott's essay is chock-full of reflections on Christian gnosis, theosis, spiritual knighthood, and Wisdom.

In the West, the virtues we normally think of as foundational for the Christian Way are the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. What emerges from the texts I have been quoting is the importance of a virtue we have tended to neglect. Chastity, or purity, or spiritual virginity, turns out to be the very key to the knowledge of God. In a certain way, it integrates the other seven virtues, as white light includes within itself the colours of the rainbow.

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This is, in the end, the main reason why "Christian esoterism" is so hard to detect or distinguish. It is morally demanding. It has hidden itself in the exterior, in the practice of virtues and the service of justice, the visiting of prisoners and the care of the dying, faithfulness in marriage, the resistance of oppression and the offering of friendship to all those whom God places on our path. It is too easy to speak of theology and mysticism (as I am doing here), and at the same time to neglect these things, which are objectively more important. The mysteries of Christianity reveal themselves to the pure in heart, to the poor in spirit, to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness... not necessarily to those who read the Philokalia.