For some time now, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of the Oratory. I’d heard the word pop up in various readings about the lives of the Saints, such as John Bosco, John Henry Newman, and Frère André Bessette. It was only when I visited the Toronto Oratory that my curiosity was piqued, and I realised how little I knew about St Philip Neri, who was the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory in Rome during the Italian Renaissance. What exactly is an Oratory? What is its purpose? Apart from the strange clerical collars, what is so unique about an Oratory? Something about it seemed different, yet the familiar. My impression of Oratorian life was something that appealed to my ex-Anglican sensibilities. It was fitting, therefore, that I would begin my research into the Oratory by learning about the founder himself; and so I did when I picked up a copy of In No Strange Land: The Embodied Mysticism of St Philip Neri by Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory.

I digested the book quickly, although this is perhaps the wrong way to read this book. In choosing it, I got more than I bargained for, as it is a work packed with philosophy and theology in its treatment of St Philip’s life. In that respect, compared to others works on the lives of the saints that I’ve read, it is an exceptionally dense work of hagiography. If you are looking for a simple biography, this may not be the book for you. In fact, its strength, I would contend is not in its biographical element. Rather, its greatest forté is the manner in which Fr Robinson deconstructs and examines the progression of St Philip’s spiritual life.

Fr Robinson spends a great deal of time in the introduction clarifying the use of the term “mysticism” and exploring various ways in which one might talk about the mystical life. In the end, he settles on an combined approach:

We have, then, three interrelated concepts for interpreting development of the mystical life. First, there is one modeled on the sacraments: Baptism and Penance, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. Secondly, there is an account based on the experience of the individual: the purgative way, the illuminative way, and the unitive way. And third, there is an approach that unites both the ecclesial dimension and the experience of the individual: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

Fr Jonathan Robinson, In No Strange Land

This method of interpretation is central to Fr Robinson’s analysis of St Philip’s mysticism. Contrary to many other works on the lives of the saints I’ve read, this one is fairly down to earth. Oftentimes, I find that the author of such a work stresses the prodigious nature (in the colloquial sense) of the saint, which is perhaps at the cost of their seeming relatable. In this case, that was not so. Not that St Philip was as bawdy or un-Christian as I was, but there were many points in reading the book that I saw in Philip something of myself. In fact, it got me thinking about where I might be in the spiritual life based on how relatable a stage of St Philip’s mysticism was to my experiences.

In the end, what I saw was the portrait of a man who was deeply human. Fr Robinson writes that

It was Philip’s struggle to find and do the will of God in the here and now that led to what is best described as his embodied mysticism; a mysticism embodied in the beliefs and practices of sixteenth-century Catholicism, but also embodied in Philip’s own individuality and particularity.

Fr Jonathan Robinson, In No Strange Land

For those of us who are Christian, this hits pretty close to home. That is, after all, what we all seek to do on some level. And even for those of us who aren’t Christian, there is a stark similarity between what is said here and what seems to trouble many of us: namely, finding our place in the world, our raison d’être, our purpose, meaning, or whatever you like to call it. There truly is a universal call to holiness—something that Philip fervently believed—even if one does not know it fully by that name.

St Philip’s life, then, was an extraordinary Christian experience undertaken within an ordinary Christian context. He, too, experienced the tumults of the spiritual life and all that entails; but by answering God’s call, Philip was led to something quite out of the ordinary. As Fr Robinson eloquently put it,

Philip had approached his Maker in the company of the holy people of God and brought back to them what he had learned in the darkness. But it was not only a verbal message he took back with him. In the darkness, Philip had been taken over by his Maker, and he became a living icon of the radiance of the Father’s glory. It was light he brought from the darkness, and the light was not his own.

Fr Jonathan Robinson, In No Strange Land

I would recommend this book not only for those interested in the life of St Philip Neri, but also those who are interested in the progression of the spiritual life. The spiritual life, after all, is something to be lived, and what better way is there to understand a way of life than to understand those who embody it? Personally, I expect that in years to come, I’ll be able to revisit what I read here, and find that those words have taken on new meaning.