Rosmini experienced a moment of great mystical tension at Calvario di Domodossola. It was there that he made a retreat in February 1828 following the call of God, who wished him to found a new religious family. It is one of the most intense moments between him and God during that Lent of austerity and penance, in that profound solitude "on the mount"; and as ever he kept things to himself. He does not mention it, even to those friends spiritually closest to him.

But there are passages in his letters at that time that convey his overwhelming intimacy with God, that his soul is wholly for him, completely detached from the earthly things in which it is also realistically grounded, because this is characteristic of a man on this earth. We should point out that there is never anything of the visionary, or the dreamer in Rosmini. Even if he knew himself to be totally in God he was always interested in the smallest things of daily life as is shown in his Letters.

He writes from Calvario, for example, to his friend Giacomo Mellerio: ‘That the Lord , may annihilate us, undo us because it is from nothing that he raises his mercy, and he rejoices in the kindly triumph of his almighty power! May we be, as it were, melted down in him, in a hidden invisible life!’ And to Giovanni Padulli: ‘Let us ask of God that we may be consumed in the love of the Father. Taken up into him, we shall have the fullness of life, sharing it with Jesus Christ. How wonderful it would be to have no life of our own, but to have the life of Jesus as our life. This would mean an eternity free from sin, pure light, the fullness of joy.’

And again to Don Sebastiano De Apollonia: ‘I feel the need of God: I feel it in the very heart of me, in my very being. May he become our life, and our being, so that we shall no longer live in ourselves but in him. Then we shall see how much we need him.’ This longing and yearning makes us feel his intimate experience of God.

And such was the strength of his soul, so steeped in God, in those days on Calvary, that it had a beneficial effect on his physical body renewing and restoring his health after months of extreme illness which had worn him out at the peril of his life. In the last months of 1827 he had been very gravely ill. But hardly had he recovered somewhat than he wished to betake himself to Calvario di Domodossola in February 1828 to respond to the call of God. And up there, as we have said, his physical health flourished again.

What he experienced in his soul at that truly intense time is the great secret between him and God. For years he nurtured in his mind and heart the plan of a religious institute, because he felt that God wanted this from him. He waited simply for a definite sign in order to begin this work. It was a real spiritual gestation period. The work wished by God was the fruit also of his great mind and heart that had so great a capacity to love.

As soon as he thought that God wished such a work from him he committed himself wholly to this will of God; and this total commitment to the will of God was an act of love. It is due to the warmth of this love that the seed of the religious institute germinated in him, blossoming there on Calvary at the foot of the Cross. His dearest ‘child’ was born there. Yes, the Institute of Charity is the work of his heart and it would always be his first love, taking priority over and meaning even more to him than any of his great philosophical works.

There are many, many pages of Rosmini’s writings, theological, ascetical and even philosophical, which testify to his mystical experience. As we have already said, it is not that Rosmini speaks directly of a mystical experience, but what he writes reveals that he lived in intimate union with God to the point of being totally caught up in him. He could not have written certain things if they had not been experienced.

An example are the pages where he speaks of the ‘feeling’ of God. Feeling is not a mental attitude; it is something real, which is felt and experienced. He lived it; he did not think it. His teaching on feeling is fundamental to Rosmini, as we see in his Anthropology and in his Theosophy. But when he speaks of the feeling of God he is carried beyond the rational sphere and communicates to us a wise and mystical experience that totally overcomes him.

Rosmini says that the feeling of God is aroused in man by the real action of God on the soul. ‘And when man is touched positively by God and so perceives the infinite truth, it is no longer possible to confuse any other feeling caused by finite beings with this new and unique feeling…The positive feeling of God is wholly the effect of an infinite reality which acts in him…For this supernatural feeling alone can he have the true enthusiasm and that sublime madness of which St Paul writes, "We are fools for the sake of Christ" (1 Cor 4: 10).’ (Theosophy n.1137)

Yes, the enthusiasm: ‘that sublime feeling, originating in God, which he communicates and which overwhelms and ravishes the whole man’, does not come from just thinking about it. To speak of it as Rosmini does, it is necessary to experience it. And this is true mystical experience.

We find this even more intensely expressed in the work which signals the summit of his theological and ascetical thought, and this is The Commentary on the Introduction to St John’s Gospel where he treats of the incorporation of man into Christ. These are pages that raise us up to true heights of mysticism. The soul experiences almost a ‘frisson’ when Rosmini says that the whole of Christianity is contained in the words IN CHRIST. ‘In this solemn word the whole of Christianity is contained, because it expresses the real mystical union of man with Christ. Christianity consists in this union and incorporation in act’. (p.179)

Rosmini feels profoundly the value of being united to Christ; he feels it ‘vitally’. And he expresses it with great force, precisely because he is treating of his own intimate experience. For example, again in the Commentary on the Prologue to St John’s Gospel, he narrates the words of Christ: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.’ (Jn 15: 5-8)

And then he comments: ‘From these words we see: 1. That without Christ man can do nothing; 2. That abiding in Christ man can do everything’. And he continues, ‘From these two principles come two convictions in the Christian: that of his own nothingness and that of his greatness, dignity and power.

‘The feeling of his own nothingness is illuminating for him because it gives him the knowledge of his own impotence and incapacity for any good; and it is the origin, the first and chief cause of Christian HUMILITY, the foundation and condition of virtue in the followers and disciples of the Saviour.

‘Together with this there is the feeling of MAGNANIMITY. For man united with Christ feels that he possesses a new principle of spiritual life, which is our Lord Jesus Christ himself, who is united with him in a wonderful way. In this supernatural moral life of Jesus Christ, in which man shares, consists the new dignity of man, his grandeur, his power, and the feeling, as we said, of Christian magnanimity’.

Certain pages certainly deal with contemplation, which is much more than simple thinking, and we are absorbed and, so to speak, overpowered by the feeling of a reality, which enters the whole of our spiritual being . We are overcome by feeling. We repeat that it is a real experience; an experience, which we live, in a sphere far different from reasoning.

This is exemplified in the pages that we quote. These pages are perhaps the most lofty and intense of Rosminian theology, in which he speaks of the action which the Most Holy Trinity effects in the soul. The effect of this action is a feeling which is produced in the soul, a triniform feeling, which is manifested in three modes. And Rosmini describes it not in terms of simple doctrine, but in the effusion of his soul; in adoration, contemplation and profound joy, a true mystical attitude.

‘If it is a divine feeling, a feeling in which we experience the operation of something ineffable within our soul of the supreme, the infinite, that begins in the perception of God, this feeling must be one in its essence but three in its modes. Let us attempt to analyse this feeling, which is wholly ineffable, unknown to the animal man and is revealed by God only.

"We have seen that the nature the essence of this feeling which comes from God in as much as he is the object of our spirit, makes us feel a certain force, indistinct indeed, but such that all forces and all things are included in it, so that nothing is wanting, but it fills us perfectly, satisfies and contents us so completely, that we feel and are at times conscious of perceiving not one or other part of being or of good but all being, all good.

‘Now this feeling of the ALL (the totality) has three forms or modes. The first mode is that of feeling a power or force which operates in us, invisible, but undeniable, supreme, intimately pervading our personality. In a word, we feel the presence in us of something which substantially invades and dominates us: so that we feel in this affection something so great, that it is impossible to conceive anything opposed to it. For it is like a creative power, that is to say, it has a vigour that takes precedence of all other things, which in some way partake of that vigour which alone preceded them. In the greatness of this force we feel ALL BEING, and this mode of feeling is the source of the fear of God.

‘The second mode of feeling of ALL BEING is by means of a knowledge of God, an idea or concept, which being elevated and illuminated by grace, constitutes faith. In this notion and thought of God we see such beauty that it ravishes and overwhelms our intellect. We feel that this idea is superior to all else because it is both substance and food for the soul, which it so satisfies and fills that nothing remains for it to desire except to plunge deeper and deeper into that ocean of light, more and more to grasp this knowledge and enter into full possession of it.

‘The third mode of feeling of ALL BEING is when this knowledge diffuses and expands in us a light which draws our will and love to it by its ineffable beauty. And we experience a love so great that it has a plenitude of substance, a mannah, which nourishes, a wine that exhilarates. It is food for the soul of incomparable delicacy which inebriates, in which it drowns, as in an ocean of love, where it reposes satisfied in all its desires, feeling that no more remains to desire, and that in this love alone it possesses all.

Another very beautiful page, on the action of the Trinity in the soul, is again in the Supernatural Anthropology. Again we are not on the simply rational level but in a true mystical dimension. Rosmini states primarily that the Holy Spirit which Jesus calls ‘the Spirit of Truth’ ‘emanates from the Word as warmth from light’. And then he goes on:

‘The impression therefore of the Holy Spirit in souls is a certain affection of love, a certain joy of truth, that diffuses itself in the soul. Through this affection the soul contemplates and drinks to the full the light of truth, and this very feeling of love is itself full of truth, and is what can alone satisfy and fill the needs of the intelligent soul.

Rosmini says that the "feeling" of God, produced in the soul by the action of the most Holy Trinity, is manifested in three forms or modes. In that feeling God is felt as "power", or as "light" or as "love". It is easy in this way to glimpse the action of the individual divine Persons, that is, the action of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

It is easy to infer from the life of Rosmini that he is dominated by the "feeling" of God as power, as a force that invades and takes over his soul. When he speaks of God, especially in his ascetical and spiritual letters, confidentially with personal friends, we feel that he is totally imbued with the reality of God which rules him entirely and brims over from his soul in an inexpressible way. He does not "speak" simply of God; he "knows" God because he is ineffably taken over and dominated by him.

Because he feels God in this way, he is visited, at certain times and circumstances, by an interior, spiritual and moral "force", which enables him to overcome even the most painful trials that are most agonising for the soul. One example will suffice. In 1849, at the time of his "crucifixion" after the apparent failure of his mission to Rome, when he seemed to bear the whole world on his shoulders, Rosmini replied to a friend who assured him of his presence and support:

"Thank you for wanting to share in the strange and unbelievable vicissitudes through which Providence leads me, whose immutable counsel never fails.

Note the words: "I feel in my innermost spirit". This is no longer simply "to know through faith and reason": it is to feel through the intimate experience of the soul that is totally ruled by God.

This is confirmed by the fact that in these troubled months, in such contrary circumstances, he was devoted to the loftiest philosophical and theological thought, writing stupendous pages in the Commentary on the Introduction to St John’s Gospel. These are pages in which speculation becomes contemplation; and the doctrine of the incorporation of man into Christ is expressed in terms of intimate experience, which is also undoubtedly "mystical". His philosophical and theological "knowledge" would be insufficient to maintain it at such heights. It was kept there by the profound experience of the ineffable reality of God that possessed him and ruled him totally.

In his life we have also a a continual demonstration of how he felt God as "light", as "truth" which attracts, which shines, which enlightens by whose beauty "the intellect is "enraptured and overcome". This is the second form or mode in which the "feeling" of God is manifested in the soul, as indeed he says himself.

Rosmini was always fascinated by the beauty of truth. This sheds light on all his speculation in the field of knowledge. His desire, eagerness, and greatest longing was always to spread the truth

We can even say that his "thought" has a certain mystical "value". For example his "anthropology" culminates in this most beautiful definition of man: " a potency the last act of which is to unite itself to Being without limits through loved knowledge". This "unite itself" is like a conjugal act of the mind, which embraces the whole of being…in loved knowledge. Here we are truly in the mystical dimension of thought.

Rosmini explains the way his mystical vision of the union of all beings in "love" which is the end of the universe itself, in the Anthropology as an aid to Moral Science.

In this action of the Trinity in the interior of the soul, Rosmini says that one feels God either as "power", or as "light", or as "love". But in whatever mode there is always a feeling, which takes over and rules the whole soul. For everything lies in knowing how to enter into one’s innermost self where God is present and works ineffably. It is then that one can grasp his presence and feel ruled by him.

We have seen how Rosmini demonstrates that God is felt as "force" and "power" by which he was taken over completely; how he felt the "truth" which attracted him by its beauty and inexpressibly satisfied his mind.

Especially in the discourse on the essence of Charity, we experience the feeling of God as love throbbing within him. We glimpse, as it were, his discomfort because the ardour of his soul which loves and which feels loved by God wishes to break into words. But the prudence of the father, who speaks to his children not yet raised to such heights, makes him restrain his impulse through a discourse, which their minds find more convincing. But the heat of the fire that burnt within him spreads all the same, and kindles another fire in whoever reads these pages; pages not to be read but to be lived, the person letting himself be totally taken over by them. They carry us to the heights that are proper to the mystics. We quote at least the passage in which Rosmini speaks of the love, which yearns for God who is Love.

"This love, you see, loves to love as much as it loves to be loved. This explains the contrast lying at the heart of such love; it explains what I may call the tremendous battle between two extremely powerful forces. On the one hand, the lover searches for the beloved with unlimited vehemence in order to possess and love him; on the other, he desires with equal vehemence to be loved by him. This second love holds back the impetus of the first because the lover knows that he will be loved in so far as he remains distant from his beloved during the earthly pilgrimage, and works for greater good. The desire to merit conquers and restrains the desire to savour: For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren (Rom 9:3).

What Rosmini says here we find confirmed by other mystics. For example saint Teresa of Avila writes in her autobiography:

"Clemente Rebora confirms this: "When love is reciprocated, love desires everything". We find the same thing confirmed in Angelina Lanza, expressed with her exquisite feminine delicacy:

"If Jesus gives everything to the soul, and the soul gives everything to Jesus, union is complete. But if the soul holds back something, which is not fully offered, then the union is lacking from one of the two parties. Certainly Jesus can supply for our deficiencies; but there is a secret recess in our soul, which is totally ours; and that is freedom.

"When we freely and willingly attach ourselves to some earthly blade of grass, Jesus can only manifest towards us his infinite and merciful patience. Jesus who waits! Jesus who entreats our greed to let go of that ultimate possession of decaying and transient things!"

In the preceding pages we have said that there are some invocations or "ejaculations" of Antonio Rosmini in which we feel "the effusion of his soul brimming over with love, that the ineffable union with God dwells within him and that he is totally satisfied and ruled by it."

But even when he does not utter this name, and yet addresses the invocation to him, we feel that his soul is constantly intimate with the Father, to the point of having no need to name him, because his soul is already in him and with him. For example when he makes this invocation: "Oh, give me the good which you know I need"; or "May you master me with your almighty and absolute rule". And again, "You are goodness: I am powerless to make you mine, but communicate yourself to me.

Invocations, for Rosmini, are not the beginning of union with God. This union for him is already an intimate actuality, and it was so intense that it could not be restrained. He therefore burst out into words because his soul was full to the brim. We consider this to be an intimate mystical experience.

It is interesting to observe the same constant interior attitude revealed by these invocations, even separated by time. Reading them one after another, from the first one, dated 11 October 1832, to the last dated 20 May 1853, one has the sense of a continuous intense union with God, which Rosmini lived uninterruptedly, even in the many complex exterior events that marked his life.

They are invocations of a soul that, in its intimate union with God, experiences above all its own littleness and poverty faced with the infinite grandeur and power of God. This happens with the mystics. Teresa of Avila calls this grandeur and sublimity , "Majesty": "his divine Majesty."

And it is this Majesty that Antonio Rosmini addresses: "You are goodness: I am powerless to make you mine, but communicate yourself to me"; "O my God I was made for you: may I not lose you"; O my God, I am wretched and wicked, I condemn myself do you save me"; "You see all my ills: bring a remedy for them"; "O Lord, I am alas, a deceitful man. Make me truthful".

And experiencing himself to be so poor and needy he breaks out into invocations to be wholly taken over and filled by God, to have him totally. His soul does not ask for this or that particular thing, but he asks the Infinite One for everything: "O infinite God I ask the infinite of you…O my eternal good"; "Give me yourself, give me yourself, O infinite Good, sole Good, infinite Good"; "O my Father, give me that which is right for me, give me everything…according to the order of good." "You are Goodness: I am powerless to make you mine, but communicate yourself to me." "O God, God, God, give yourself to me: I will rejoice in you; I will glorify you for all eternity"; "Father, give me everything"; "You have created me: you cannot deny me: I ask you, give me everything"; "Father give me goodness [good]; I was created for goodness; give me goodness"; "O give me Christ, so that I possess him fully"; "O my God! Give me that which my Saviour wishes to give me"; "O Father, give me that good which your divine Son knows"; "Father, I ask of you the good that he [your Son] knows, the good that his heart loves; I ask of you that which he has already asked of you all that he has asked of you"; "O Mary, what I ask is that which is good as God sees it, and as your Son sees it; for to me, too, that is good"; Father! I ask for your divine Son and your Spirit"; "I ask of you whatever the heart of Jesus wishes me to ask".

In these final invocations we find the expression of an even more enlightened faith. Rosmini knows and feels that the Son intercedes for us, that his heart truly wishes our good, and so asks for "what is in that heart"[of Jesus]. He entrusts himself to him. This faith, is illuminated, as we said, because he believes that the Son intercedes for us, and believes that what he asks of the Son is indeed the true good for us.

The loftiest moment for his soul, revealed in these invocations, is when he asks for his total consummation in God. In so many invocations there is this yearning to be totally with God, to be "transfused" into him. One could almost say that the soul strains to break the bonds, which keep it on earth.

We feel incapable of comment. But we do not wish to do so. It is sufficient to let ourselves be seized by these expressions, which come from the most sublime mystical depth, to which God led Antonio Rosmini.