Chapter XV: Of Contemplation

GOD created man to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him, and thus to gain eternal life. There is a close link between these three acts; and, taken together, they lead to union with God—to that union which, as we have already said, every creature gifted with intelligence ought constantly to have in view as his one great end and aim, in order to cooperate with God's designs in the creation of man. Love begets perfection in the service of God: "If you love me, keep my commandments;"¹ but love is itself the offspring of knowledge: "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth."² One of the severest reproaches our Lord ever spoke to His disciples was this: "So long a time have I been with you: and have you not known me?"³ A reproach too well deserved, for He had used every means to instruct them. When our Lord, who is the "Life Eternal" and the "Light of the world," appears in all His glory on the Day of Judgment He will have to make to many a similar reproach, for "The Light shone in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."⁴

We see from this what contemplation is meant to do in the spiritual life; it raises us to the knowledge of God. Every Christian while yet in this life is called to the contemplation of God. We find Adam gifted with a very high and sublime contemplation when he came forth from the hands of his Creator, and had he not sinned, this gift would have remained with him as the clear dawn of the light of glory. Even after the fall all the saints of the Old Testament come before us as great contemplatives; and lest we should be tempted to think that the time devoted to this exercise is wasted and useless, our Lord taught positively that those who choose a life of contemplation choose the better part.

St. Paul was evidently referring to contemplative souls when he said to the Corinthians: "But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."⁵ He thus assigned to contemplation its proper place in the work of our soul's perfection. The Fathers echo the teaching of the Apostles; to quote but one, St. Athanasius goes so far as to attribute the first sin to an interruption in the exercise of contemplation: "While the first man applied himself to God," he says, "and contemplated the Divinity, he turned his eyes away, and kept aloof from all corporeal things; but as soon as, yielding to the persuasion of the serpent, he ceased to think of God and to contemplate Him and began to apply himself to the consideration of himself, from that moment he let himself be carried away by the desire of earthly things, and he knew that he was naked, not so much by the want of garments as because he was deprived of the contemplation of divine things. Then he directed his mind to things opposed to the things of God, for he had no sooner abandoned the contemplation of his Creator than he fell down headlong into the inordinate desire of earthly things.”⁶

According to this teaching the life of our Lady, in order to be a most perfect life, such as it really was, could not have been other than a contemplative life, and this the Gospel narrative indicates in these words: “But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.”⁷ The Abbot of Cluny, St. Odilo, speaking of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said: “She gave herself up wholly to divine contemplation.”⁸ The Apostles established a separate order of deacons, that they might be able to give themselves to prayer as well as to the ministry of the word: “But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.”⁹ This of course did not exclude the deacons from contemplation, as the death of the glorious St. Stephen proves, preceded as it was by the admirable vision which he himself describes: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.”¹⁰ As to the Apostles they never allowed their heavy cares and solicitudes to withdraw them from their communings with God. St. Peter’s vision at the hour of Sext, at the very time of the vocation of the centurion Cornelius, and the avowal which St. Paul makes concerning the great revelations he received in his intimate communication with God, clearly show that these men of colossal holiness lived in the highest contemplation. St. Augustine, speaking of St. John, says: “He gazed fixedly upon the eternal Beauty.”¹¹ And when, by reason of his advanced age, he could no longer spread the kingdom of his Master by the ministry of apostolic preaching, the fruit of his contemplation became the treasure of the universal Church.

After the Apostles and the martyrs, contemplatives have always proved to be the strength and even the fecundity of the Church, the Bride of Christ. The admirable bloom of Christianity in the fourth century coincides with the period of the Fathers of the Desert. Cassian gives a full description of them, and shows how at that time contemplation had a privileged place in Christian society. They never lost sight of the end for which man was created; the principal interest of a baptized soul, said they, is to take the surest and most direct road for reaching God: "For what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?"¹² Deeply penetrated with this teaching, souls sacrificed everything that they might not be distracted from what appeared to them the one thing necessary. "Those," says the venerable Abbot of Saint Victor, "who place all their joy and happiness in the contemplation of divine things, punish themselves as for a kind of sacrilege, if they are withdrawn from it for an instant by involuntary thoughts and distractions. They weep for having turned their eyes away from their Creator and fixed them upon vile creatures, reproaching themselves as for an act of impiety. And although the eye of their heart turns with extreme eagerness to the splendour of divine light, they cannot tolerate these thoughts of earth which, like passing clouds, obscure the true light their soul is enjoying."¹³

Might we not take this as a description of those Cherubim, who "round about and within are full of eyes," whose sight, strong as the eagle's, can bear unceasingly and undazzled the splendour of the Divine Sun? Elsewhere Cassian is still more explicit, and, speaking of the one thing necessary, he says: "This one thing is the contemplation of God. We must esteem it above all the merits and virtues of the just; above all things, good and useful, yea, even great and admirable, that we have seen in St. Paul. Tin is a useful thing, but when compared to silver it appears vile; silver itself loses its brilliancy when compared with gold. . . . So, in like manner, the virtues of the saints are good and useful for this life and for the next, but when compared with divine contemplation they seem of little worth."¹⁴

We admit that the words of Cassian seem strong and perhaps exaggerated; but it is well to quote them in order to show that the ancient solitaries at least esteemed no sacrifice too hard that should enable them to attain the blessing of high contemplation, which is the preparation for, and advance towards the beatific vision.

It is important therefore to define clearly what contemplation is in the Christian sense of the word. Summing up what tradition says, we would call it a simple and amorous gazing upon God and His mysteries, aided by grace or the gifts of the Holy Ghost. St. Gregory the Great gives almost the same definition: "Contemplation," says this doctor, "is a pleasing and gentle act, which raises the soul above herself, makes her desire things divine, despise things earthly, and discover things the most hidden."¹⁵

Contemplation, in truth, does not always attain the height here described by St. Gregory, but none the less it is very different from simple thought or even meditation; for thought wanders here and there, has no fixed end, and consequently possesses little efficacy; it seems to us well represented by the rapid glance spoken of by St. James: "For he beheld himself, and presently forgot what manner of man he was.”¹⁶ As for meditation, it applies only with pain and effort to supernatural things; but contemplation ascends to them with ease, and steadily abides in them. An ancient author of the seventh century calls contemplation “a spiritual converse in which the senses have no part.”¹⁷

But in order to make these explanations better understood it will be well to introduce here an important distinction. Contemplation may be either ACQUIRED or INFUSED. It is acquired when the understanding, though helped by grace nevertheless acts in its own proper way, naturally and conformably to the ordinary rules of its working. Then God’s action and man’s action are combined; they act simultaneously. It is easy to understand that this kind of contemplation, since it is called acquired, is not above the reach of man when aided by ordinary grace.

But if the soul is raised above her habitual way of acting, if she is, as it were, passive in God’s hands and He makes her work according to His good pleasure, this contemplation is the work of God rather than of man: it is called INFUSED, given by God to the soul, and she has simply to receive it. All reasoning, all the ordinary discursive acts are then suppressed; God stirs the soul, and leaves her to maintain a steady attention, but this is so simple and tranquil that she seems to be receiving the action of God rather than to be herself acting. Benedict XIV, in his book “On the Canonization of Saints,” gives a very clear definition of infused contemplation. “Contemplation,” he says, “is a simple intellectual sight, accompanied by a sweet love of divine and revealed things proceeding from God, who applies the understanding to know and the will to love these divine things by filling the intellect with vivid light and the will with the flames of His love.”¹⁸

Contemplation, in its widest sense, has been excellently described by St. Denis, under the figure of a triple movement, circular, direct and oblique, by which he designates three operations of the human mind, all belonging to contemplation. After speaking of the angelic spirits he says: "The soul has also this triple movement: its circular movement consists in leaving all external things, in entering within itself, in gathering up its spiritual faculties and bringing them back to unity in such a manner that, enclosed as it were within a circle, its movements may no longer wander. Freed from external things, recollected within itself, brought back to perfect simplicity, closely united with the angelic spirits, so simple and so pure, guided by them as it were by the hand, together with them it loses itself in the Sovereign Beauty, in the good which is all perfect, incorruptible, without beginning and without end. The oblique movement of the soul consists in its reception according to the proportions of its being, of divine illustrations, not in a way purely intelligible and in unity, but under the form of reasonings and discourses and by many and various processes. Finally, the movement of the soul is direct, when instead of falling back upon itself, of entering into its inmost depth and its only centre—this we have said is the circular movement—it approaches external things, then using them as varied and complex symbols it raises itself by their means to a contemplation which is perfect in unity and purity.”¹⁹

The final end and only aim of these three movements is always to get back to the Eternal Truth, bringing all to God both within and without. Hence contemplation consists in living before the face of God, considered either in Himself or in what He has accomplished for the sake of man. It consists, moreover, in seeing and relishing these things in preference to all others, as the royal Psalmist invites us: "Come ye to Him, and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be confounded. . . . Taste, and see that the Lord is sweet."²⁰

Contemplation, therefore, is not a science that affects the understanding only; it is a turning of the whole soul, intellect and will together to behold the Divine Light; in its first degree it seems in a special manner to waken within us the gift of piety, under the form of tenderness of devotion more or less habitual, which would make us willingly say with St. Peter: "Lord, it is good for us to be here: if Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles."²¹ The soul has no more long reasoning; something tells her that her Lord is with her; she relishes Him, she enjoys Him; in a word, she experiences what is felt with one dearly loved. Without doubt this consolation that gladdens the soul is neither entirely sensible nor perfectly spiritual in acquired contemplation, but it is the first link of a mysterious chain which ends in heaven. The soul begins to find a special charm in the most well-known truths; they come before her in new lights which she wonders how she could have never seen before; and although she is not conscious of any extraordinary illumination, she finds in these same truths, which are at once ancient and new, a splendour hitherto unseen, and a sweetness that ravishes her.

Contemplation, like faith, has not abundant considerations. In proportion, as it becomes more elevated and perfect, its simplicity suppresses all reasoning; the soul becomes daily more supple under the influence of the Divine Spirit; she adapts herself to a mode of action altogether new, and she ends by seeing all things in God, that is in one; and she sees this one in all.

Nevertheless, man's contemplation is affected by his nature, and does not absolutely resemble that of the angels, who have not to free themselves from the servitude of the body and of the imagination and whose intelligence is gifted with admirable stability. Generally speaking man attains to contemplation only by long efforts and the use of many means; and it is on this account that we have spoken of the proximate and remote preparations, of the practice of virtue, of prayer and of meditation, because the degree of contemplation depends upon the purity of the soul. The darkness of our understanding, the malice of our will, the unruliness of our passions and senses, the images of sensible things that fill our mind, all form a very thick cloud which prevents us from seeing God by contemplation and from uniting ourselves to Him. The more we succeed in triumphing over these obstacles, in healing the wounds which original sin has opened in us and which our actual sins have still more enlarged and ulcerated, the more also will the path to contemplation be made straight before us; we mean that kind of contemplation which depends upon us: "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."²² As to INFUSED contemplation it is evident that it comes directly from God, and that no effort of ours can produce it; but as God is just, He does not leave our labours without reward. When, therefore, the way is cleared of all obstacles our Lord does not disappoint the creature whom He was the first to love; He invariably surpasses all her hopes.

St. Teresa shows the close link there is between the reform of self and the advance in contemplation: "A pretty way indeed to seek the love of God!" she says. "Some souls desire it in all its perfection and all at once, and yet they retain their affection for other things; they make no effort to excite within themselves holy desires, nor to rise above the things of earth, and yet with all that they presume to lay claim to spiritual consolations! Such a thing cannot possibly be, for reserves of this kind are incompatible with perfect love. Thus it is because we do not give ourselves totally and entirely as a gift to God that He does not give us all at once the treasure of perfect love.”²³

For charity is the beginning and the end of contemplation; this latter draws all its perfection from charity, and increases in proportion to the soul’s progress in that virtue: “The desire of contemplation proceeds from love of the object which is to be contemplated; for where the love is, there is the eye,” says the angelic Doctor.²⁴ St. Denis also traces the path which the soul must traverse in order to attain the highest contemplation: “It behoveth us to be led to God, as to the Principle of all good, by prayer, and then, approaching nearer and nearer to Him, to be initiated into the knowledge of those best gifts which are contained in Him. For he indeed is present to all things, but all things are not present to Him. But when we supplicate Him with holy prayers, that is, chaste and free from illusions, and with a tranquil mind prepared for divine union, then we become present to Him.”²⁵

St. Thomas thus comments on this passage: “To approach God three things are necessary. The first is that the heart be purified from all carnal and worldly affections which would captivate and chain it down to earth; this is chaste prayer. In the second place the mind must be divested of all low and darksome ideas which would hinder it from relishing spiritual things and from rising to God; this is having a tranquil mind and free from illusions. Finally, it is necessary that our will be constantly turned to God by ardent charity and devotion; this is having a heart prepared for divine union.”²⁶

From all this teaching it evidently results that contemplation, especially that kind which is above the reach of our efforts, is a grace much to be desired, and one that we must ask of God with perseverance and in all humility and reverence. The doing so can in no way be contradictory to what has been said already on the subject of aspiring after extraordinary ways. For it is always important, and we love to repeat it, to make a distinction in the diverse desires which we are allowed to foster for infused contemplation.

This kind of contemplation comprises graces of a double order: GRACES GRATUITOUSLY GIVEN, that is, extraordinary gifts accompanied with external manifestations; and SANCTIFYING GRACES which are the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, brought into activity by a special favour. The first mentioned are in no way to be desired; the second, on the contrary, are the object of a lawful desire: “Be emulous for the better gifts”;²⁷ provided that this desire is humble, duly moderated and accompanied by the practice of solid and of even heroic virtues. We ought to desire things for the sake of their perfection. Now contemplation is the act which best befits our intelligent nature and our character as children of God. To exercise our faculties in the knowledge and the love of Eternal Truth, to receive a special and exceptional communication of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, finally, to be united to God with our whole soul, is not this the bliss most of all to be desired here below? “Her conversation hath no bitterness, nor her company any tediousness.”²⁸ That most prudent virgin St. Teresa encouraged this ambition in her daughters; and, conformably with tradition and the practice of all holy persons, she exhorted them to persevere in those exercises and prayers which might draw down upon them the divine favours. Moreover, it is but following the counsel of the Holy Spirit Himself who inspired these words: "Let nothing hinder thee from praying always, and be not afraid to be justified even to death: for the reward of God continueth for ever."²⁹ Finally, our Lord Jesus Christ has sanctioned the desire of attaining habitual and perfect contemplation, which is the noble end of all the exercises of the contemplative life, by calling it "the better part," and declaring that it shall not be taken away from those who make it the object of their choice.

Footnotes

1. Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate (Joann., xiv, 15). ↩

2. Jam non dicam vos servos, quia servus nescit quid faciat dominus ejus (Joann., xv, 15). ↩

3. Tanto tempore vobiscum sum, et non cognovistis me? (Ibid., xiv, 9). ↩

4. Lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt (Joann., I, 5). ↩

5. Nos vero omnes revelata facie gloriam Domini speculantes, in eamdem imaginem transformamur a claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu (2 Cor., iii, 18). ↩

6. St. Athana., cont. Gent. init. ↩

7. Maria autem conservabat omnia verba hæc, conferens in corde suo (Luc. ii, 19). ↩

8. Se totam contulit divinæ contemplationi (Ser. x, Assumpt. B.M.V.). ↩

9. Nos vero orationi et ministerio verbi instantes erimus (Act., vi, 4). ↩

10. Video cœlos apertos, et Filium hominis stantem a dextris Dei (Ibid., vii, 56). ↩

11. Lucis æternæ fixis oculis contemplator (In Joann., Tract., xxx). ↩

12. Quid enim prodest homini, si mundum universum lucretur, animæ vero suæ detrimentum patiatur? (Matth., xvi, 26). ↩

13. Cassian, Coll., xxiii, cap. viii. ↩

14. Cassian, Coll., xxiii, cap. iii. ↩

15. S. Greg., lib. II, Homil. 2 in Ezech. ↩

16. Consideravit enim se, et statim oblitus est qualis fuerit (Jac. i, 24). ↩

17. Conversatio spiritualis est actio sine sensibus (S. Isaac, lib. de Cont. Mund., cap. xxix). ↩

18. De SS. Beatif. et Canon. liii, cap. xxvi, a. 7. ↩

19. Of the Divine Names, chap., iv, n. 9. ↩

20. Accedite ad eum, et illuminamini; et facies vestræ non confundentur. . . . Gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus (Ps., xxxiii, 6, 9). ↩

21. Bonum est nos hic esse; si vis, faciamus hic tria tabernacula (Matth., xvii, 4). ↩

22. Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt (Matth. v, 3). ↩

23. Life of St. Teresa, vol. I, chap. xi. ↩

24. Contemplationis desiderium procedit ex amore objecti: quia ubi amor, ibi oculus (In III. Sent. Dist. xxxv, art. 2). ↩

25. Of the Divine Names, chap, iii, n. 1. ↩

26. S. Thom, in lib. De Div. Nom., I, iii. ↩

27. Æmulamini charismata meliora (1 Cor., xii, 31). ↩

28. Non habet amaritudinem conversatio illius, nec tædium convictus illius (Sap., viii, 16). ↩

29. Non impediaris orare semper, et ne verearis usque ad mortem justificari: quoniam merces Dei manet in æternum (Eccli xviii, 22). ↩