“The ears with which one hears the message of the Gospel are hidden in man’s heart, and these ears do not hear anything unless they are favored with a certain interior solitude and silence.”
Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958. (pbk ed 1999), Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
“The temptations have multiplied; discernment and renunciation have become more necessary than ever. We [Carthusians] have chosen to dedicate our life to the search for God in silence and solitude. Both things must be defended by clear choices, otherwise soon not much of either will be left. Our vocation is very uncommon, but does not every person need a bit of silence and solitude if he wants to be able to stay in contact with his heart? We have a cloister and a Rule that protect us. Someone who lives in the world must find his own cloister and his own rule; this is not something obvious!”
Dom Dysmas de Lassus, the Father General of the Carthusian Order at Grande Chartreuse, quoted in: Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 229.
Here’s one more-or-less traditional view: "“Contemplative life, a life characterized by solitude and prayer, which dispose one toward contemplation. Ancient and especially medieval monasticism perceived its way of life as contemplative; nuns and monks were called contemplatives. Medieval interest in the mystical life perceived the contemplative life as mystical in orientation. For some men and usually women the enclosure was seen as a necessary safeguard of the contemplative life. Post-Vatican II developments have shown an interest in a broader conception of the contemplative life for laity and religious yet one that retains the solitude necessary for living in the presence of God.”
McBrien, Richard P., ed. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, page 364.
“To be authentically human and Christian, the hermit’s life must aim at deepening communion with God and neighbor, even when the choice of the hermitage is initially motivated by the need to free oneself from an impossible situation in a monastic community.”
Matus, Thomas. The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers. Trabuco Canyon, Cal.: Source Books / Hermitage Books, 1994, p. 30.
“It is not easy to create this kind of space for attention to the deeper dynamics of the soul in God’s presence. There is nothing in Western culture or even in our religious subculture to support us in entering into these times for ‘unproductive’ being rather than frenetic doing.”
Barton, Ruth Haley. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006, p. 34.
“The Christian cannot fear silence because he is never alone. He is with God. He is in God. He is for God. In the silence, God gives me his eyes so as to contemplate him better. Christian hope is the foundation of the true silent search of the believer. Silence is not frightening; on the contrary, it is the assurance of meeting God.”
Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 230.
"Once a man has set foot on this way, there is no excuse for abandoning it, for to be actually on the way is to recognize without doubt or hesitation that only the way is fully real and that everything else is deception, except insofar as it may in some secret and hidden manner be connected with ‘the way.’
“Thus, far from wishing to abandon this way, the contemplative seeks only to travel farther and farther along it. This journey without maps leads him into rugged mountainous country where there are often mists and storms and where he is more and more alone. Yet at the same time, ascending the slopes in darkness, feeling more and more keenly his own emptiness, and with the winter wind blowing cruelly through his now tattered garments, he meets at times other travelers on the way, poor pilgrims as he is, and as solitary as he, belonging perhaps to other lands and other traditions. There are of course great differences between them, and yet they have much in common. Indeed, the Western contemplative can say that he feels himself much closer to the Zen monks of ancient Japan than to the busy and impatient men of the West, of his own country, who think in terms of money, power, publicity, machines, business, political advantage, military strategy–who seek, in a word, the triumphant affirmation of their own will, their own power, considered as the end for which they exist. Is not this perhaps the most foolish of all dreams, the most tenacious and damaging of illusions?”
Merton, Thomas. “The Contemplative Life in the Modern World.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 228.
This is just SO good! And I think that the person who seeks only to travel farther and farther along the way of contemplation may just be the person tending toward the suite of attributes listed by a friend of mine when he wrote (and I’m mashing together bits from two different letters of his) that the fruit of the Spirit is love – which, itself is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, nor rude – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Vaya con Dios!
“There is a world of difference between primarily need-based living and engaging in the transformative energy of communal life, just as between being isolated and separate–living in fear that we are or will be abandoned–and embracing the life-altering power of solitude intentionally engaged.”
Healey, Bede. “Psychological Investigations and Implications for Living Together Alone.” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002, p. 120.
“Therefore, be slow to speak and slow to go to those places where people speak, because in many words the spirit is poured out like water; by your amiability to all, purchase the right to frequent only a few whose society is profitable; avoid, even with these, the excessive familiarity which drags one down and away from one’s purpose; do not run after news that occupies the mind to no purpose; do not busy yourself with the sayings and doings of the world, that is with such as have no moral or intellectual bearing; avoid useless comings and goings which waste hours and fill the mind with wandering thoughts. These are the conditions of that sacred thing, quiet recollection.”
Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), p. 47.
"And it is unfortunate that even in communities whose observance is supposedly designed to favor contemplation there are elements which seriously frustrate it.
“The regular communal life is usually lived at the tempo of those who are active and extroverted. Impatient of interior subtleties and intolerant of all that does not bring tangible result, these good people want to know, at the end of the day, that they have done something in the service of God. Hence their life is geared to reassure them. The day is divided up into many exercises in which prayer is measured by the clock and by the exactitude with which the ceremonial is executed. Attention is concentrated on exterior performance.”
Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, p. 113. (Merton wrote this in 1959)
Merton was, of course, writing about monastic communities which – if you notice the date – had not even at that point been opened up by Vatican II. It seems to me that the same things could be said about Church-related colleges and about every local congregation: things are lived there “at the tempo of those who are active and extroverted” and not at the tempo of those who are contemplatives and introverted.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 