“We are built for contemplation. This book is about cultivating the skills necessary for this subtlest, simplest, and most searching of the spiritual arts. Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower…”
Laird, Martin. Into the Silent Land : a Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. NY: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 1.
“Why are people so intent on refusing others the right to see a special value in a life apart from the world, a life dedicated to God in prayer ‘on the mountain alone’ when the New Testament itself repeatedly shows Christ retiring to solitary prayer which he himself loved? Certainly one can find God ‘in the world’ and in an active life but this is not the only way, any more than the monastic life is the only way. There are varieties of graces and vocations in the Church and these varieties must always be respected.”
Merton, Thomas. “The Monastic Renewal: Problems and Prospects.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, pages 397-398.
Comment: in this new year, may you know freedom to walk the path you’ve been called to travel
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.
“The great obstacle to contemplation is rigidity and prejudice. He who thinks he know what it is beforehand prevents himself from finding out the true nature of contemplation, since he is not able to ‘change his mind’ and accept something completely new. … And since most of us are rigid, attached to our own ideas, convinced of our own wisdom, proud of our own capacities, and committed to personal ambition, contemplation is a dangerous desire for any one of us. But if we really want to get free from these sins, the desire for contemplative freedom and for the experience of transcendent reality is likely to arise in us all by itself, unobserved. And it is likely to be satisfied almost before we know we have it. That is the way a genuine contemplative vocation is realized.”
Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, p. 117.
Comment: These lines are worth repeating: “…if we really want to get free from these sins, the desire for contemplative freedom and for the experience of transcendent reality is likely to arise in us all by itself, unobserved. And it is likely to be satisfied almost before we know we have it. That is the way a genuine contemplative vocation is realized.”
"Jesus, as disciple-maker, calls himself the Way, hodos [in Greek], a road. The road is something you can walk on; it gets you from here to there. Jesus is such a path. The passing from depth to depth on the way into his heart corresponds to a passing from depth to depth in our own heart, where ‘heart’ means the core of our existence, not just the seat of the affections. We can walk on this road which is Jesus first by petitioning him, then by studying him, later by imitating him, and by dialoguing with him. But after we have practiced these disciplines for some time, if we are to enter his heart, we must get into his own consciousness.
“… So, one must push deeper and deeper into Jesus and let him illuminate deeper and deeper levels of reality within oneself. Very strange things begin to happen as this effort progresses. … The human personality of Jesus expands and disappears as one enters more and more into the interior of his consciousness, and a complementary transformation takes place also in oneself as in a mirror image. What one is transcends what one does or what one says or what descriptive traits and qualities one has.”
Bruteau, Beatrice. Radical Optimism: Practical Spirituality in an Uncertain World. Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, 2002, pp. 94-95.
“A contemplative priest will have a deep and absorbing sense of union with Christ as priest and as offering in the Eucharistic sacrifice–so much so that his Mass will be going on within him not only when he is at the altar but when he is away from it, and at many different moments during the day.”
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 161.
This strikes me as quite congruent with the way we (some of us, anyway) say that contemplation is carried through one’s day, or that we can “pray without ceasing” by inhabiting the Jesus Prayer.
Quoting Paul VI in his homily in Nazareth on 5 January 1964: “The silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God’s inner wisdom and the counsel of true teachers. Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of silent prayer that is known only to 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. Thought 209. (p. 110)
"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!
“If your spiritual guides do not talk to you about dying, they are not good spiritual guides!” (p. 85)
Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.
Death, both physical and metaphorical, should find its way into our conversations, especially in spiritual circles, in Christian churches. There are both the death of the Old Adam in us, and the death of our bodies. Both are “real death.” Talking about either can make people feel uncomfortable, but it is so much better to have them out in the open than to hide them in the closet or under the bed.
“You cannot imagine a new space fully until you have been taken there. I make this point strongly to help you understand why almost all spiritual teachers tell you to ‘believe’ or ‘trust’ or ‘hold on.’ They are not just telling you to believe silly or irrational things. They are telling you to hold on until you can go on the further journey for yourself, and they are telling you that the whole spiritual journey is, in fact, for real–which you cannot possibly know yet.”
Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), page xxvii.
There were so, so many places along the Appalachian Trail which I’d read about for decades and had very clear pictures of in my mind that turned out–when I finally got there–to be nothing at all like I’d pictured them. The inner journey of the spiritual life has been surprising me like that. Heaven will no doubt turn out the same way.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 