“I marvelled more than I can say when I first felt my heart grow warm and burn, truly, not in imagination but as it were with sensible fire. I was indeed amazed at that flame which burst forth within me; and at this unwonted comfort—because of my inexperience of this abundance—I have often felt my breast to see if perchance this heat was due to some outward cause. But when I knew that this fire of love had blazed forth only from within, and was not of the flesh but a gift of my Maker, I was full of joy and dissolved in a desire for yet greater love; and chiefly because of the inflowing of this most sweet delight and internal sweetness which, with this spiritual burning, bedewed my mind to the core. For I had not thought before that such sweet heat and comfort might come to pass in this exile.”

Richard Rolle of Hampole, from “A Translation of the Legenda in the Office Prepare for the Blessed Hermit Richard” in “The Fire of Love” (2015, Aeterna Press)

Richard Rolle of Hampole was a Christian mystic who died in 1349. I have been reading his work “The Fire of Love” as released by Aeterna Press in 2015. As Evelyn Underhill notes in the foreword to the volume, Richard Rolle presented a vision of God’s presence that was marked by heat, sweetness, and song. She states:

“His love was essentially dynamic; it invaded and transmuted all departments of his nature, and impelled him as well to acts of service as to songs of joy. He was no spiritual egotist, no mere seeker for transcendental satisfaction; but one of those for whom the divine goodness and beauty are coupled together in insoluble union, even as ‘the souls of the lover and the loved.’ “

As a Methodist, I have to admit that my attention immediately caught upon the description of a strangely warmed heart. John Wesley is infamous for expressing an experience of similar automatism when reading Martin Luther’s introduction to the Book of Romans on May 24, 1738. I picked up Richard Rolle’s book to trace a quote from an anthology of Christian mystics on the nature of love. I have been trying to sort out my feelings on the subject of love and relationships, so I wanted to have context for Richard Rolle’s words… Yes, I still remember the motto we were taught while studying scripture and philosophy in college: “A text without a context is a pretext for misinterpretation.”

I have yet to find the elusive quote as I think doing a search for the phrase would be rushing into the text without context. Searching on Kindle is wonderful, but some analog methods of study still have merit. What I have found is this interesting correlation between John Wesley and Richard Rolle who both had similar experiences approximately four centuries apart. Like many a Methodist, I caught on Wesley’s description as it reminded me of my own spiritual experiences while coming to faith and growing throughout the years. 

I felt an immediate spiritual kinship with Richard Rolle that I felt with John Wesley. I have spent most of my spiritual life as an adult both in service to God through the United Methodist Church where I am called as a minister and seeking to understand my own relationship to God and neighbor. I am still unpacking the act of God that literally saved my life as a teenager who was on the edge of committing an act of self-harm that could have been fatal. My life on the night of my fifteenth birthday was blanketed with love and my heart was given that sense of warming peace that I had never known. The direction of my life changed although I would continue to struggle with anxiety, depression, and eventually the hidden disease of alcoholism that would come for me as the son of someone who struggled with Johnny Barleycorn for a good portion of the life I shared with her.

All of this to say I feel drawn to Richard Rolle as I continue my life as a minister, a divorcee, and as a person in long term recovery, I am curious about where and how the experiences of Richard Rolle and John Wesley will mirror each other. 

I am also curious about what I will read and resonate with as I read through Richard Rolle’s work from centuries ago. I am curious whether I will see things in a similar perspective to Evelyn Underhill. She stated that in  “examining the passages in which Rolle speaks of that ‘Heat’ which the ‘Fire of Love’ induced in his purified and heavenward turning heart, we see that this denotes a sensual as well as a spiritual experience.” Will I find a more sensual side to this experience than that normally connected with John Wesley? Only time will tell.