Contemplative prayer, rightly understood, is the normal development of the grace of baptism and the regular practice of Lectio Divina. It is the opening of mind and heart our whole being--to God beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Moved by God's sustaining grace, we open our awareness to God, who we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing--closer than consciousness itself. Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a relationship initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union.

Contemplation is distinguished by some authors into kataphatic and apophatic, sometimes also known as the via positiva, or "positive way," and the via negativa, or "negative way." This distinction, insofar as it suggests opposition between the two, is misleading. Kataphatic contemplation is rather a preparation for contemplation. It is the affective response to sacred symbols and a disciplined use of reason, imagination, memory, and emotion in order to assimilate the truths of faith and to develop a personal relationship with Christ. It includes such practices as visualization meditation and the veneration of icons.

Apophatic contemplation is a further stage in that relationship. It is resting in God beyond the exercise of particular acts, except to maintain a general loving attention to the divine presence. It can take different forms according to the different persons who receive this gift. It would be helpful to reserve the term "contemplation" to this type of prayer.

In this context, it is important to correct the serious misapprehension that apophatic contemplation consists in pondering the total unknowability of God. The "unknowability" of the apophatic path does not mean "pondering an unknowable God," but rather, not pondering at all--simply resting in God beyond our ordinary human faculties of thinking and feeling. Different faculties are involved, which do apprehend a God who is present, but on a more subtle level of awareness. Traditional Christian teaching has referred to these faculties as "the spiritual senses."

The "unknowing" of the rational intellect in apophatic contemplation is an important bridge in East/West dialogue because it allows us to form a common language of experience without which dialogue about the higher states of consciousness is virtually impossible. It is also a way home for many Christians who have gone, to the East in search of spiritual wisdom and who, upon hearing that there is a Christian contemplative tradition that knows something about experiencing God at a deeper level than our thoughts and feelings, have been able to return to the religion of their youth.

Along these lines, we might take note briefly of another source of confusion and controversy for the conternplative tradition, which comes from St. Teresa of Avila's teaching that one should never omit the thought of the sacred humanity of Christ no matter what state of contemplative prayer one has received. Since the whole essence of contemplative prayer is to move beyond thought, her teaching seems to call into question the legitimacy of apophatic contemplation as an appropriate practice for Christianity, and that is how it has sometimes been interpreted: to put the brakes on the natural transition from discursive meditation to contemplative prayer.

The development of a personal love of Christ is certainly at the heart of the Christian spiritual journey, but can this love be expressed only through thought? Teresa, who herself knew the contemplative terrain deeply and ecstatically, may have been reacting to certain exaggerations in her time--a distorted personal mysticism that loses touch with Christ's vision of the Kingdom as grounded in compassion for the suffering and the poor. In any case, methods of prayer that are not inspired by the gospel should not be confused with the normal development of one's relationship with Christ and the more intimate dimension that contemplative prayer initiates: resting in the divine presence beyond thoughts and feelings.

Since "the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit," as St. Paul says, we, too, as contemplative prayer grows, participate more fully in this movement of grace. The divine presence becomes a fullness that no longer requires the stepping-stones of thoughts, feeling, and particular acts; at least not habitually St. John of the Cross, a contemporary of St. Teresa and a fellow Doctor of the Church, in The Living Flame of Love (stanza 3, vv 26 to 59), describes the great harm that spiritual directors can inflict if they dissuade those who are called by the Spirit to the state of waiting upon God with loving attentiveness from following this attraction. Once faith has revealed the mystery of Christ's humanity, one's attention during prayer is absorbed by the presence of the divine Person who dwells within it. One returns to daily life with this transformed consciousness, manifesting the fruits of the Spirit and the Beatitudes.

Contemplative prayer enjoys an ancient and venerable history within Christianity. This form of prayer was first practiced and taught by the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, including Evagrius, John Cassian, and St. John Climacus, and has representatives in every age. In the patristic age: St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great in the West, and Pseudo-Dionysius and the Hesychasts in the East. In the Middle Ages: St. Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, and Guido the Carthusian; the Rhineland mystics including St. Hildegarde, St. Mechtilde, Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek, and Tauler; later the author of the Imitation of Christ and the English mystics of the fourteenth century such as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, and Julian of Norwich. After the Reformation: the Carmelites, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Threse of Lisieux; among the French school of spiritual writers, St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal, and Cardinal Berulle; among the Jesuits, Fathers De Caussade, Lallemont, and Surin; among the Benedictines, Dom Augustine Baker and Dom John Chapman; among modern Cistercians, Dom Vital Lehodey and Thomas Merton.

Over the centuries ways of cultivating contemplative prayer have been called by various names corresponding to the different forms they have taken. Thus we have Pure Prayer (Cassian), Prayer of Faith, Prayer of the Heart, Prayer of Simplicity, and Prayer of Simple Regard. In our time initiatives have been taken by religious orders, notably by the Jesuits and the Discalced Carmelites, to renew the contemplative orientation of their founders and to share their spirituality with lay persons. The Benedictine Dom John Main revived a method of cultivating contemplative prayer that he attributed to John Cassian. The method of Centering Prayer, based primarily on the fourteenth-century Cloud of Unknowing and the teaching of St. John of the Cross, is a further attempt to present the teaching of earlier times in an updated format and to put a certain order and regularity into it.

There are stages in the development of contemplation. St. Teresa describes them in The Interior Castle, beginning with the Fourth Mansion. St. John of the Cross also describes the development of contemplation and distinguishes two paths: the exuberant mysticism of St. Teresa and what he calls "the hidden ladder of faith." To him we owe a much clearer understanding of the important role of contemplative prayer in the development of faith, hope, and love. In his presentation of the spiritual journey, the faith that works through reasoning gradually grows in such a way that the usefulness of concepts and symbols disappears. Faith becomes purer and forms a stronger foundation for total trust in God and for the works of unconditional love.

All of this is more the work of the Spirit than that of the human person. In fact, growth in divine union carries with it the need to diminish our human activity and to learn to wait upon the Lord. It presupposes the gradual purification of the sense faculties in the night of sense and the spiritual faculties in the night of spirit. Thus, the essence of the contemplative path is not to be identified with psychological experiences of God, though these may occasionally occur. The essence of contemplation is the trusting and loving faith by which God both elevates the human person and purifies the conscious and unconscious obstacles in us that oppose the values of the gospel and the work of the Spirit. Contemplative prayer in the classic or strict sense of the term is "the narrow way that leads to life."

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Excerpted from Intimacy with God by Fr. Thomas Keating

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