Mackenzie Worthing
What is the Devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ?
“In His silent whisperings, I understood the questions I had asked and our Beloved answered me in regards to His Mystical Humanity that it was necessary for me to live my chosen vocation with Him as my companion. Loaning Jesus my humanity for Him to govern as well as dwell within would make my life a living prayer, for He was life, living within me, and my body now dead to me was His living cross, His cross to take to Calvary, and from Calvary to the door of eternal life.” Cora Evans, Gems
The main website that this blog is hosted on is dedicated to the promotion of the cause for canonization of Servant of God, Cora Evans. Cora was a wife, mother, convert, mystic—she was many things, but mostly she was a woman of faith claimed by Christ for a special mission: to spread devotion to His Mystical Humanity. The Mystical Humanity of Christ is the very “abiding together” that the Lord himself describes in John 15 – “Abide in me, and I in you.” He becomes, as Cora describes above, our “companion” throughout the daily tasks of life. Growing in devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ is a way to make our lives “a living prayer.” Cora’s life and legacy is a powerful example of seeking the holy in our everyday lives through a deep awareness of the Lord who dwells within us.
Cora Evans, an Ordinary Woman who Received Extraordinary Grace
Servant of God Cora Evans was born Cora Yorgason in Utah in 1904. Her parents were Mormon and she was duly brought up to be a good, devout Mormon girl. But early in life, Jesus and Mary would make a claim on her: she had an inexplicable vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the age of three which would not have any sense made of it until many years later. She married Maclellan Evans in 1924 at the well known Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. The secretive and strange wedding ceremony left her disenchanted with Mormonism and seeking the truth about God.
For ten long years she searched different religions and denominations and found nothing substantial to go on. In the fall of 1934 she was at home alone one day when she heard the Catholic hour on the radio. She was sick and unable to get up and turn off the radio. In her years of searching she had always brushed off Catholicism due to lies told to her in her upbringing about Catholics. After this unsearched-for radio hour, she inquired about the Faith at her local parish and went on to be received into the Church several months later. Her husband and children converted in the months following her. She would also convince some thousand Mormons to come to her parish and more than a few converted through her friendship and introduction to Catholicism.
In the years that followed her conversion, Cora would experience Christ in ways many cradle Catholics can only dream (or read) about. God granted Cora the graces of many and various mystical experiences. Early on in these mystical visitations from the Lord, Cora vowed to dedicate her entire life to serving him. In 1946, Cora received her mission from the Lord—she was to spread devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ.
Through experiences of ecstasy and grand visions of the life of Christ, Cora was taught more and more by Christ what his Mystical Humanity was. She sought refuge in his presence in the Holy Eucharist through daily Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. She clung to his side when he appeared to her. She spent many hours in prayer seeking to be in the presence of the one whom her soul loved. During this time she sought and was appointed spiritual direction under Fr. Frank Parrish, S.J., who spent many hours with Cora during her ecstasies.
“Our Beloved Jesus spoke, ‘Write my letters to the world through thine own meditations on My Humanity. In thy meditations I’ll speak many times to thee for the world to know Me better…’” Cora Evans, Gems
Though receiving bewildering and beautiful insights into the life of our Lord, Cora remained humble and strictly obedient to the directives of Christ in her ecstatic experiences and through her spiritual director. The Lord compelled Cora to write, write, write. In spite of receiving a rudimentary education due to childhood illness, Cora went on to write boxes full of typed manuscripts describing what Jesus said to her and showed her during ecstasy. Cora’s life was dedicated to following Christ wherever he led. She was not extraordinary in personal gifts. She was not extraordinary in worldly goods. Cora was only a woman who sought truth. She found Him. And the desire to know and love him better was never quenched. He granted her the extraordinary graces to know and love him in mystical experiences that the whole world might benefit by knowing and loving him more and more. Jesus told her he would spread the message of his Mystical Humanity throughout the world if she would be his reporter and write what he told her to write. Now, devotion is spreading around the world as more and more people become aware of Cora Evans and her message of love for the Mystical Humanity of Christ.
The Mystical Humanity of Christ
Christ himself set the precedent for understanding his Mystical Humanity as his indwelling presence in souls. St. Paul took up the theme throughout his letters, but mostly potently in Galatians 2:20 where he states, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is the heart of the devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ—uniting ourselves body and soul to Christ and allowing him to reign in our lives. There are three things that stand out from Cora’s own reflections that have implications for how to live with greater awareness of the Mystical Humanity of Christ in our own lives:
- Live your chosen vocation with Jesus as companion
- Loan your own humanity to Christ
- Make your life a living prayer
Cora was a wife and mother. Her life with Christ was not an aside to being a wife and mother nor was being a wife and mother what she did outside of her life with Christ. Christ was her companion in her vocation. He is with the priests and religious and married and single. He is with the missionary, the student, the corporate executive, the lawn-mower, the custodian, the stay-at-home mother. No matter our state in life, he is there as our companion, our friend, and the “Captain of the Ship” of our lives. Life with Christ is not a spiritual life aside from our regular life, it is simply our life with Christ. He is with us in the daily ins and outs and ups and downs along the way. He accompanies us in the difficult tasks we have to accomplish as well as the beautiful moments of silent recollection. He is with us for all of it. May we ever invite Christ to be our daily companion in the vocation to which he calls us right now.
Loaning our humanity to Christ simply means being his hands and feet in the world. This is not a new concept, but something the saints have talked about from apostolic times. We are called to be Christ to those we encounter—to treat everyone with charity and to invite them to behold the awesome power of the kingdom of God. We loan Christ our humanity when we take care of the people in our homes, when we offer a bottle of water to the homeless man on the corner, when we drop off a meal to a family with a new baby, when we sit and grieve with those who are grieving, when we invite friends to Mass. This is loaning Christ our humanity and allowing him to work in us and through us in this world. We can better do this when we know and love Jesus better. The better we know and love him, the better we can become like him and imitate him. In addition to reading the Scriptures and spending time in meditation, Cora’s writings (and the writings of all the saints) shed light on who Christ is and how we can become more like him. May we spend more time knowing and loving him that we might better loan him our humanity.
The devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ is truly a way of making our lives a living prayer with Christ always at the forefront of our minds. How can I love him better? What is his laugh like, what do I do that makes others laugh? Why did he create so many different types of fish—I can make fish tacos on Friday for the family who is having a hard time. I wish I was at his feet, and I can be by being attentive to my spouse who needs me right now. An awareness of the Mystical Humanity of Christ, an awareness of the Divine Indwelling in our hearts, is a way to make our lives a living prayer. The devotion to the Mystical Humanity of Christ is a way to draw deeper into his life so that we may become more like him and spend all of eternity in the joy of his loving presence.
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