“While on earth we come, through meditation on the Incarnation and redemption, to a contemplative experience of God that is not, however, a vision of His essence. . . . [F]or Cassian the way to contemplation is through meditative reading of the Bible.”

[And, interestingly, for Martin Luther, too.]

Merton, Thomas. “The Humanity of Christ in Monastic Prayer.” (1963) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 155.