The Beginning of Contemplation
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One
Contemplation or Infused Prayer
John of the Cross says that contemplation, otherwise known as infused prayer, “Is nothing but a hidden, peaceful and loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love.” Dark Night 1, 10, 6
Contemplation is a direct intimate experience of the presence of God. Therefore, it is the closest thing in this life to the experience of God we will have in Heaven. So, contemplation is the beginning of Heaven on Earth.
Contemplation is not something that can be achieved by human effort. It is a gift from God when the soul is ready. Contemplation is called infused prayer because the soul receives it passively, just as one receives sunlight by doing no more than opening the shutters (Dark Night 1,10,6)
In contemplation, Jesus comes to us in a way that we can experience Him. We really get to do as the Scriptures say, “We taste and see how good the Lord is”
Two
Elijah
Contemplation doesn’t begin with fireworks and some glorious apparition of Jesus. It begins like the experience of Elijah and the still soft voice.
Remember the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19? He was being persecuted by the wicked Queen Jezebel so he fled for his life and he came to the mountain of God. There he went into the cave and spent the night in it. Then the word of Yahweh came to him saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, because the sons of Israel have deserted you, broken down your altars and put your prophets to the sword. I am the only one left, and they want to kill me.”
Then he was told, “Go out and stand on the mountain before Yahweh”. Then Yahweh himself passed by. There came a mighty wind, so strong it tore the mountains and shattered the rocks before Yahweh. But Yahweh was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake. But Yahweh was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire. But Yahweh was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice.
And when Elijah heard this, he covered his face with his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice came to him, which said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
This is why John of the Cross says that contemplation, “Is nothing but a hidden, peaceful and loving inflow of God. If it is given room, it will inflame the spirit with love.”
Three
The Road to Contemplation
John of the Cross says one of the biggest obstacles to ordinary people experiencing this direct experience of God in contemplation is that they don’t recognize how it begins and so they run off in the wrong direction looking for the wrong thing. Remember, God is not in the mighty wind or the earthquake or the massive fire.
Let me remind you of the normal progression of prayer and virtue that prepares for contemplation.
We start with vocal prayer, speaking to God with traditional prayers and talking to him from the heart. But then we want to hear what He has to say, and we want to develop a real friendship with him, so we begin to practice meditation or mental prayer, like we are here in the Rosary.
At the same time, we begin to see what a mess we are, how many vices and bad habits we have and so little virtue. So, we really commit to changing our way, acting like better people, and we even come to the point where we remove all the situations from our life that cause us to sin, all the near occasions of sin. We try to receive Jesus as often as we can in the Eucharist and to examine our conscience and go to confession every month.
And we just keep hammering away at this.
Four
The Beginning of Contemplation
So you are receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, doing daily meditation, reading or listening to the Word of God, reflecting or thinking about your life, seeing what a mess you are and really working on change by practicing a daily resolution and going to Confession regularly – and then something begins to happen…You start to lose the desire to read and think and try to figure everything out in your prayer. A real desire to just sit with God and do nothing begins to develop within you.
John of the Cross says this is when prayer simplifies into a loving attention (John of the Cross Ascent, 2, 14, 2-3).
He describes this as, “An inclination to remain alone and in quiet…If those in whom this occurs, know how to remain quiet they will soon in that unconcern and idleness delicately experience the interior nourishment.”
John says, “This food is the beginning of a contemplation that is dark and dry to the senses.”
Once a person has reached this habit of a general loving knowledge of God and self by means of mental prayer then they begin to desire to spend time with Jesus and Mary without talking or reading, without the effort to grow in knowledge or figure things (discursive meditation) but simply to remain alone with God in silence.
Teresa tells us to continue mental prayer until you lose the desire to read and acquire more knowledge. (Life 14) Then just be with God in calm, quiet, and stillness. Cf (Life 12:2,5)
At this stage in the game, prayer gets easier, it requires less of our effort because the soul begins to leave discursive meditation and enter the state where God does all the work.
Five
Don’t turn back
John says that at this stage God is bringing the soul from meditation to contemplation (Dark Night 1, 10,1) where the soul no longer has the desire to read think or work things out in meditation.
The real danger here is that God is coming to the soul in a very quiet almost sneaky way, no big fanfare here. It’s like when you are totally absorbed in some work and someone enters the room totally unnoticed. Now God won’t startle you, but he will enter the room, enter your soul, and you won’t notice.
What you will notice is that you’ve lost the desire to read or listen and think in meditation and then you might be tempted to think something is wrong with you or you’ve gotten lazy and you’ll try to double down on reading and thinking, applying more of your own effort – and this is counter-productive.
Listen to what John says here, “If there is no one to understand these persons, they either turn back and abandon the road or lose courage, or at least they hinder their own progress because of their excessive diligence in treading the path of discursive meditation. They fatigue and overwork themselves, thinking that they are failing because of their negligence or sins. Meditation is now useless for them because God is conducting them along another road, which is contemplation and is very different from the first, for the one road belongs to discursive meditation and the other is beyond the range of the imagination and discursive reflection.” Dark Night 1, 10, 2
“All that is required of them here is freedom of soul, that they liberate themselves from the impediment and fatigue of ideas and thoughts, and care not about thinking and meditating. They must be content simply with a loving and peaceful attentiveness to God, and live without the concern, without the effort…All these desires disquiet the soul and distract it from the peaceful, quiet, and sweet idleness of the contemplation that is being communicated to it.” Dark Night 1, 10, 4