Tag: contemplation

St Teresa of Avila on contemplative prayer

The Church gives us Teresa of Avila to lead us into the arms of Jesus. Fr. Matthew MacDonald expounds on some of the ideas given by Saint Teresa. He states,

“…we celebrate the feast of Saint Teresa of Avila, founder of the Discalced Carmelite Reform, mystic, and Doctor of the Church. Teresa’s life and spirituality are at the heart of the call that the Lord has placed upon our hearts – to live, light, and lead the way of contemplation for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Teresa of Avila, in her life and her teaching on prayer and contemplation, reminds me of the importance of allowing my entire life to abide in the true vine, Jesus Christ.

“Teresa lived during a time of great chaos in the Church and the world not unlike our own. The Protestant reformation was raging in Europe. Evangelization and colonization efforts were being launched by the Portuguese and the Spanish Empires in the Americas. Souls were falling left and right from the faith. Ignorance and corruption were in abundance. The joys and trials of her age and her own life offered Teresa motives for prayer, love, and sacrifice. It was in this desire for intimacy with Jesus that she became a branch of He who is the true vine (Cf. Jn 15:1). Teresa’s life and teachings would become an inexhaustible fountain of joy, intimacy, and salvation through the contemplative life that would become a bedrock in the mystical tradition of the life of the Church. How then did Teresa seek to bring souls to Christ? Through the spousal union of prayer and the sanctification of her soul. This divine intimacy and union with Christ was the desire of Teresa’s heart above all else and was the fuel behind the Discalced Carmelite reform:

Anyone who has not begun to pray, I beg, for the love of the Lord, not to miss so great a blessing. There is no place here for fear, but only desire. For even if a person fails to make progress, or to strive after perfection, so that he may merit the consolations and favors given to the perfect by God, yet he will gradually gain a knowledge of the road to Heaven. And if he perseveres, I hope in the mercy of God, whom no one has ever taken for a Friend without being rewarded; and mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but a friendly way of dealing, in which we often find ourselves talking in private with Him whom we know loves us. (Vol. I of Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers (Sheed & Ward, London, 1950) ch. 8, p. 50.)

“For Teresa, prayer begins and is fruitful by abiding in Jesus. It starts with vocal prayer and passes through the heart and our way of living our faith by means of meditation and contemplative recollection until it attains perfect loving union with Christ and with the Holy Trinity (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, “St. Teresa of Avila,” February 2, 2011).

“This call to prayer is at the heart of being a disciple of Jesus and is meant for everyone.  Teresa then goes on to describe how prayer grows in the normal life of faith:

Oh Lord of heaven and earth, how is it possible that even while in this mortal life one can enjoy you with so special a friendship?… May you be blessed, Lord, because we do not lose anything through your fault. Along how many paths, and how many ways, by how many methods you show us love! With trials, with a death so harsh, with torments, suffering offenses every day and then pardoning; and not only with these deeds do you show this love, but with words so capable of wounding the soul in love with you that you say to them in this Song of Songs and teach the soul what to say to you…My Lord, I do not ask you for anything else in life but that ‘you kiss me with the kiss of your mouth,’ and that you do so in such a way that although I may want withdraw from this friendship and union, my will may always, Lord my life, be subject to your will and not depart from it ( Meditations on the Song of Songs 3:14-15. Taken from Drink of the Stream: Prayers of Carmelites. Translated by Penny Hickey, OCDS (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002) 73-74.).

~Fr. Matthew C. MacDonald, homily for a Mass for the Feast of Saint Teresa of Avila for the Apostoli Viae Connecticut Chapter at Saint Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut, October 15, 2021.

Union with others

Union with others can only be realized by means of our progress in the spiritual life, and in the measure in which we turn away from all that is external in order to be united with God. A man in a state of grace is, indeed, a kind of world, at the center of which God never ceases to be and to act.

A Carthusian Monk
The Prayer of Love and Silence

Saint John of the Cross

Juan de la CruzToday, we mark the liturgical memorial of a magnificent saint (all saints are magnificent!), the 16th century Carmelite friar, John of the Cross.

A friend posted the following on contemplation:

“Contemplation is nothing less than a secret, peaceful and loving infusion from God. The road of contemplation is where God himself feeds and refreshes the soul directly, without the soul’s help or meditation.

There is a remarkable transformation of the heart’s desires as a result of surrendering to God in our soul’s center. Our desire and God’s desire now join in a consonance of desire.

The nature of love is to be united, linked up with and at one with the object of its love. Only love unites and cements the soul with God. The soul lives in that which it loves.

Prayer, by its nature, involves a sense of incompleteness and thus of longing in truth.

The more God wants to give us, the more He makes us desire–even to the point of leaving us empty in order to fill us with goods. Be careful that you do not lack the desire to be poor and in want.

In following Christ in the contemplative way, without laying down one’s own ground rules and conditions, we grow into dimensions of the reality of God’s love which lie beyond what we can comprehend, experience or place in any systematic order. We are stripped of all guarantees which are rooted in the self, and we begin to live on the faith, trust and love that we have for God. We now experience God more as he is–as sheer Mystery.

Prayer ultimately leads us to go beyond anything that can be known. We travel unknowing into an unknown land and we learn how to stay there, knowing naught.”

Pope Francis visits Camaldolese monastery

As one of the final events for the Year of Faith Pope Francis will have a “Pro Orantibus Day,” honoring the liturgical feast of of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Since 1953, today has been a day of prayer for those belonging to contemplative religious orders.  Pope Pius XII established this day to remind all the faithful of the indispensability of contemplative vocation for the health of the Church. It is also a day many of the Benedictine Oblates renew their oblation to their monastery.

Pope Francis called today “a good opportunity to thank the Lord for the gift of so many people who, in monasteries and hermitages, dedicate themselves to God in prayer and silent work.”

The Pope urged the faithful to give their spiritual and material support to these brothers and sisters “so that they can carry out their important mission.”

At Vespers, the Pope Francis will visit a Camaldolese monastery of cloistered nuns, Sant’Antonio abate, on the Aventine hill. Previous Roman Pontiffs have prayed at this monastery.

Here’s a VERY fascinating interview with Veronica Scarisbrick of Vatican Radio with one of the nuns (the radio link) at Sant’Antonio.

Listen to the interview, please. AND there’s another report here from Vatican Radio.

Rome Reports has a report here.

Contemplation AND ordinary experience praise God

I would say that it is very important in the contemplative life not to overemphasize the contemplation. If we constantly overemphasize those things to which access is inevitably quite rare, we overlook the ordinary authentic real experiences of everyday life as real things to enjoy, things to be happy about, things to praise God for.

But the ordinary realities of everyday life, the faith and love with which we live our normal human lives, provide the foundation on which we build those higher things. If there is no foundation, then we have nothing at all!

How can we relish the higher things of God if we cannot enjoy some simple little thing that comes along as a gift from Him!

Thomas Merton
Contemplation in a World of Action

Saint Bonaventure on mystical prayer

Bon4.jpg

One of the famous works of Saint Bonaventure’s is his Journey of the Mind to God. You see it in many places for those wanting a glimpse into this significant medieval thinker. It was in the Roman Divine Office of Readings. We always need an insight or two into contemplation, what it means, how it exists, and so forth. There is no exhausting one’s search into understanding mystical prayer.

I want you to listen to Veronica Scarisbrick’s interview with Franciscan Father Rick S. Martignetti who works in Rome and has authored of Saint Bonaventure’s Tree of Life: Theology of the Mystical Journey (Grottaferrata, 2004). It is a study of Bonaventure’s understanding on prayer and life in the paschal mystery. I found Scarisbrick’s interview both delightful and helpful.

Christ is both the way and the door. Christ is the staircase and the vehicle, like the throne of mercy over the Ark of the Covenant, and the mystery hidden from the ages. A man should turn his full attention to this throne of mercy, and should gaze at him hanging on the cross, full of faith, hope and charity, devoted, full of wonder and joy, marked by gratitude, and open to praise and jubilation. Then such a man will make with Christ a pasch, that is, a passing-over. Through the branches of the cross he will pass over the Red Sea, leaving Egypt and entering the desert. There he will taste the hidden manna, and rest with Christ in the sepulchre, as if he were dead to things outside. He will experience, as much as is possible for one who is still living, what was promised to the thief who hung beside Christ: Today you will be with me in paradise.

For this passover to be perfect, we must suspend all the operations of the mind and we must transform the peak of our affections, directing them to God alone. This is a sacred mystical experience. It cannot be comprehended by anyone unless he surrenders himself to it; nor can he surrender himself to it unless he longs for it; nor can he long for it unless the Holy Spirit, whom Christ sent into the world, should come and inflame his innermost soul. Hence the Apostle says that this mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit.

If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervour and glowing love. The fir is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, fired by Christ in the ardour of his loving passion. Only he understood this who said: My soul chose hanging and my bones death. Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God, for it is certainly true that: No man can look upon me and live.

Let us die, then, and enter into the darkness, silencing our anxieties, our passions and all the fantasies of our imagination. Let us pass over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father, so that, when the Father has shown himself to us, we can say with Philip: It is enough. We may hear with Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; and we can rejoice with David, saying: My flesh and my heart fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my heritage for ever. Blessed be the Lord for ever, and let all the people say: Amen. Amen!

(Cap. 7,1 2.4.6: Opera Omnia, 5, 312-313)

Private notes of Jorge Bergoglio from pre-conclave meetings published

Reading the notes from the pre-conclave meetings of the cardinals meeting in the General Congregation is not usual reading material for most people. One has to admit that it is interesting to know what the cardinals think and what they verbalize with regard to the life of the Church and the proposal for future ministry. Zenit.org published today the notes of Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis). Nothing really new except that now we know with better certainty the perspective of the made elected the Supreme Pontiff. The notes follow:


The archbishop of Havana says that a speech given by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) during the cardinals’ pre-conclave meetings was “masterful” and “clear.”


Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino spoke of Cardinal Bergoglio’s speech at a Mass on Saturday in Cuba, having returned home from his trip to Rome to bid farewell to Benedict, participate in the conclave, and welcome Francis.

Cardinal Ortega said that Cardinal Bergoglio gave him the handwritten notes of the speech, and the permission to share the contents.


“Allow me to let you know, almost as an absolute first fruit, the thought of the Holy Father Francis on the mission of the Church,” Cardinal Ortega said.

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The spirituality of Holy Saturday

There was a day when Nietzsche was right: God was dead, the Word was not heard in the world, the body was interred and the tomb sealed up, the soul descended into the bottomless abyss of Sheol.” This descent of Jesus into the kingdom of the dead “was part of his abasement even if (as St. John admits of the Cross) this supreme abasement is already surrounded by the thunderbolts of Easter night. In fact, did not the very descent to hell bring redemption to the souls there?” It prolonged in some manner the cry from the Cross: Why have you abandoned me? “Nobody could ever shout that cry from a deeper abyss than did he whose life was to be perpetually born of the Father.”

Descent into Hell Duccio.jpgBut there remains the imitation of Christ. There is a participation, not only sacramental, but contemplative in his mystery. There is an experience of the abandonment on the Cross and the descent into hell, and experience of the poena damni. There is the crushing feeling of the “ever greater dissimilarity” of God in the resemblance, however great, between him and the creature; there is the passage through death and darkness, the stepping through “the somber door”. In conformity to the mission he has received, the prayerful man then experiences the feeling that “God is dead for him”. And this is a gift of Christian grace — but one receives it unawares. The lived and felt faith, charity, and hope rise above the soul to an inaccessible place, to God. From then on it is “in nakedness, poverty and humiliation” that the soul cries out to him.

Those who have experienced such states afterwards, more often than not, in their humility, see nothing in them but a personal purification. True to his doctrine which refuses to separate charisms and gifts of the Holy Spirit, the ecclesial mission, and individual mysticism, von Balthasar discerns in it essentially this “Holy Saturday of contemplation” by which the Betrothed, in some chosen few of her members, is made to participate more closely in the redemption wrought by the Spouse. We have arrived at a time in history when human consciousness, enlarged and deepened by Christianity, inclines more and more to this interpretation.

The somber experience of Holy Saturday is the price to be paid for the dawn of the new spring of hope, this spring which has been “canonized in the rose garden of Lisieux”: “is it not the beginning of a new creation? The magic of Holy Saturday … Deep cave from which the water of life escapes.”

Reading so many passages where this theme is taken up, we discern a distress, a solitude, a night — of the quality, in fact, as that experienced by “the Heart of the world” — and we understand that a work that communicates so full a joy must have been conceived in that sorrow.

Cardinal Henri de Lubac on the work of Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar