One of the enduring legacies of the Second Vatican Council was its call to return to the gospels and to biblical theology as the primary sources of Catholic spirituality. The Word of God in Scripture and incarnate in Jesus Christ is the source of Christian contemplation. The Incarnation of the Word is the insertion of God into the human family and the insertion of the human family into God in the person of Jesus Christ. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are together, in one nature, both the Ultimate Mystery and the Ultimate Reality Their interior relationship of total giving and receiving is the divine life that Christ was sent to share with us.

The Fathers of the Church in their homilies frequently explained the Scriptures from a contemplative perspective, or, as it was called in those days, "in the spiritual sense." The spiritual sense was understood to contain much more than an allegorical interpretation of a particular text. It was rather an insight into the inherent nature of the divinely inspired texts that revealed levels of meaning that the Spirit, by strengthening one's faith through the gifts of wisdom and understanding, enabled the Christian gradually to perceive. The manifold gifts of the Spirit were believed to come into full exercise through the regular practice of prayer and the growth of faith into contemplation with its progressive stages of development.

For the first sixteen centuries of the Christian era, contemplation enjoyed a specific meaning. In recent centuries, the word has acquired other meanings and connotations.

To grasp the full import of this key word in Christian spirituality, it is necessary to know that it evolved out of two distinct sources, the Bible and Greek philosophy. To emphasize the experiential knowledge of God, the Greek Bible used the word gnosis to translate the Hebrew word da'ath, which implies a kind of knowledge involving the whole person, not just the intellect (e.g., Ps. 139:1-6).

St. Paul also used the word gnosis to refer to the knowledge of God proper to those who love God. He constantly prayed for this intimate knowledge for his disciples as if it were an indispensable element for the complete development of Christian life (see Eph. 3:14-21; Col. 1:9).

The Greek Fathers, especially Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, borrowed from the Neoplatonists the term theoria. This originally meant the intellectual vision of truth that the Greek philosophers regarded as the supreme activity of the human person. While using this technical Greek term, the Fathers, steeped in their own spiritual roots, incorporated the meaning of the Hebrew word da'ath; that is, the experiential knowledge that comes through love. It was with this expanded understanding that theoria was later translated into the Latin word contemplatio and handed down to us by Christian tradition.

This tradition was summed up by St. Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century. He described contemplation as "the knowledge ot God that is impregnated with love." For Gregory, contemplation was both the fruit of reflecting on the word of God in Scripture and a precious gift of God. He called it "resting in God." In this "resting" the mind and heart are not so much seeking God as beginning to experience, "to taste,° what they have been seeking. This state is not the suspension of all activity, but the reduction of many acts and reflections to a single act or thought to sustain one's consent to God's presence and action at the depths of one's being during the time of prayer.

The understanding of contemplation as the knowledge of God based on the intimate experience of God's presence remained throughout the Middle Ages. Ascetical disciplines (such as fasting, vigils, prolonged solitude, periods of silence, ascetical obedience, simplicity of lifestyle) and more spiritual disciplines (such as discursive meditation, affective prayer, veneration of icons, psalmody, chanting, the rosary) always included contemplation as part of their Christ-centered goal.

Lectio Divina is the most traditional way of cultivating contemplative prayer. A mainstay of Christian monastic practice from the earliest days, it consists in listening to the texts of the Bible as if one were in conversation with God and God were suggesting the topics for discussion. Those who follow the method of Lectio Divina are cultivating the capacity to listen to the word of God at ever deepening levels of attention. Spontaneous prayer is the normal response to their growing relationship with Christ, and the gift of contemplation is God's normal response to them.

The reflective part, the pondering on the words of the sacred text in Lectio Divina, is called meditatio, discursive meditation. The spontaneous movement of the will in response to these reflections is called oratio, affective prayer. As these reflections and particular acts of will simplify, one tends to resting in God or cantemplatio, contemplation.

These three acts--discursive meditation, affective prayer, and contemplation--might all take place during the same period of prayer. They are interwoven. One may listen to the Lord as if sharing a privileged interview and respond with one's reflections, with acts of will; or with silence--with the rapt attention of contemplation. The practice of contemplative prayer is not an effort to make the mind a blank; but to move beyond discursive thinking and affective prayer to the level of communing with God, which is a more intimate kind of exchange.

In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when the two friends convey their sentiments without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other's presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can maintain this deep communication.

This loving relationship points to the kind of interior silence that is being developed in contemplative prayer. The goal of contemplative prayer is not so much the emptiness of thoughts or conversation as the emptiness of self. In contemplative prayer we cease to multiply reflections and acts of the will. A different kind of knowledge rooted in love emerges in which the awareness of God's presence supplants the awareness of our own presence and the inveterate tendency to reflect on ourselves. The experience of God's presence frees us from making ourself or our relationship with God the center of the universe. The language of the mystics must not be taken literally when they speak of emptiness or the void. Jesus practiced emptiness in becoming a human being, emptying himself of his prerogatives and the natural consequences of his divine dignity. The void does not mean void in the sense of a vacuum, but void in the sense of attachment to our own activity. Our own reflections and acts of will are necessary preliminaries to getting acquainted with Christ, but have to be transcended if Christ is to share his most personal prayer to the Father, which is characterized by total self-surrender.*

Continued . . .

*Kenosis, or self-emptying as it is described in the powerful words of Philippians 2:5-10.

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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