How Important It Is to Dwell on the Acts and Affections of the Will

(fe is so important to dwell and rest on the acts and affections of the will, and the saints and masters of spiritual life attach such value to this, that they say that this it is that makes a good and perfect prayer, and even what they call “contemplation,’’ when the man no longer seeks incentives to love by meditation, but rejoices in love found and desired and rests in it as in the term of his search and desire, saying with the spouse in the Canticles: I have found him whom my soul loveth, I have held him and will not let him go (Cant. iii. 4). And this is what there the same spouse says: I sleep, but my heart watcheth (Cant. v. 2); because in perfect prayer the understanding is, as it were, asleep, having given over reasoning and speculation, and the will is watching and melting away in love of the Spouse. And so pleased is the Bridegroom with this sleep of his spouse, that he gives orders that they are not to awaken her until she wishes. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the she-goats of the mountains and by the stags of the plains, that ye awaken not nor bring back to consciousness my beloved until she herself will (Cant. iii. 5). Thus meditation and all the other parts of prayer which they assign, are ordained and directed to this contemplation, and are as it were steps whereby we are to mount to it.

So says St. Augustine in the book that he calls the “Ladder of Paradise”: “Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer petitions, but contemplation relishes and enjoys what it has sought and asked for and found’—Lectio inquirit, meditatio invenit, oratio postulat, contemplatio degustat. And he quotes the saying of the Gospel: Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you (Matt. vii. 7). St. Augustine says: “Seek by reading, and you shall find by meditation; cry out by prayer, and it shall be opened to you by contemplation.” And so the saints remark, and Albertus Magnus says it, that this is the difference between the comtemplation of faithful Catholics and that of heathen philosophers—that the contemplation of philosophers is wholly directed to the perfection of the understanding by the knowledge of known truths, and so stops at the understanding, because that is its end to know and understand more and more; but the contemplation of Catholics and saints of which we now treat, does not stop at the understanding, but passes on to refresh and move the will and inflame and kindle it to the love of God, according to the saying of the spouse: My soul melted away when my beloved spoke (Cant. v.6). And St. Thomas has noted this well in treating of contemplation. He says that, though contemplation essentially lies in the understanding, yet its ultimate perfection is in the love and affection of the will. Thus the chief aim and end of our contemplation should be the affection of the will and the love of God.

Thus, says St. Augustine, Christ our Redeemer taught us in the Gospel when He said: When ye pray, do not speak much (Matt. vi. 7). St. Augustine says: It is one thing to speak much, and reason and conceive many things with the understanding, and another thing to dwell long on love and affections of the will. The first is a thing that we must try to get out of in prayer, consisting as it does of much speech and talk, whereas this business of prayer, says the saint, is not a business of many words. We do not deal with God in prayer by rhetoric or by abundant discourses and quips and conceits of happy thoughts and reasonings, but by tears and sighs coming from the heart, and this is according to what Prophet Jeremy says: Let not the pupil of thine eye be silent (Lam. ii. 18). St. Jerome says hereon: “It is the tongue that speaks; how can the pupils of the eyes speak?” He replies: “When we shed tears before God, it is then that the pupils of our eyes utter cries to God.” Though we do not speak with the tongue, we can cry to God with the heart, as St. Paul says: God hath sent the Spirit of his Son in your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal. iv.6). And in Exodus (xiv. 15) God said to Moses: Why dost thou cry to me? Moses had not spoken a word, but in his heart he was praying with such fervor and efficacy that God said to him: Why dost thou utter me these cries? In this way we ought to utter cries to God in prayer, with our eyes—Let not the pupil of thine eye be silent—with tears and groans and sighs and desires of the heart.