Contemplation

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Peaceforhonks

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Just a simple question: What is contemplation? How to contemplate.

Thanks!
 
Well its not meditation where you would take Holy writing and ponder it. In the Franciscan sense contemplation is gazing in the heart of the crucified Christ which leads to the imitation of Christ. There are also some good books on this by St.John of the Cross and St.Teresa of Avila.
 
It is a simple gaze of faith towards God, with the stirrings of one’s soul and with a mind fixed on Him but without making active use of the imagination or the other mental faculties. We allow God to come to us, rather than initiating prayer ourselves through the medium of images, words and ideas.

To contemplate is to be still and know that God Is, not “how” or “why” He Is.
 
hi,
i am following threads…and this is the next sequence-as i noticed-aren’t you the other thread to inquire about love?
well, to extend a word of that other post-the Franscian thought…
i would say-my version is more Order of Strict Observerance, OSO, or trappist/ an order -as Father Thomas Merton was trappist…so…confirmed in Merton’s book–Divine love…
is central to contemplative prayer (odd that your other post suggest love for a boy friend) and indeed there are different types of love…to be in the presence of God is to know the love of God…
so you sit in church, and wait…for a just an improvement in silence,as the soul responds…so what do you wait for? an improvement-a small still voice/ now you don’t find that moment in the nervous fidget of the feet…
Oddly, what to take up with God is a prep before contemplative prayer…
“Hey Lord…how is love with my significant other similar to love with Thee?”
God might say…i am father, and brother…and counselor-and my love is always-always-returned…" while human love may risk not being returned…such confidence is prep for deeper prayer…when all things fade away-all worries, fears, images, memories, blights of darkness-your flights from people-contemplative prayer is above all-beyoind all distractions mystically placed on a 'shelf, ’ it is listening…
maybe you might sit a while near the place you put that note with a prayer on it?
in contemplative prayer, even notes disappear-in the waiting to listen…
 
See this article:

contemplativeoutreach.org/christian-contemplative-tradition
The Christian Contemplative Tradition
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Though it has acquired other meanings and connotations in recent centuries, the word contemplation had a specific meaning for the first 16 centuries of the Christian era. St. Gregory the Great summed up this meaning at the end of the 6th century as the knowledge of 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 referred to contemplation as “resting in God.” In this “resting,” the mind and heart are not so much seeking God, as beginning to experience 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 in order to sustain one’s consent to God’s presence and action.
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In this traditional understanding, contemplation, or contemplative prayer, is not something that can be achieved through will, but rather is God’s gift. It is the opening of mind and heart - one’s whole being - to God. Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation. It is a relationship initiated by God and leading, if one consents, to divine union.
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Christian Contemplatives and Contemplative Practices Throughout History
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Contemplative prayer is by no means a modern addition to Christianity. Contemplative Christian prayer has representatives in every age. A form of contemplative prayer was first practiced and taught by the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Palestine and Syria including Evagrius, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great in the West, and Pseudo-Dionysius and the Hesychasts in the East.
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In the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clarivaux, William of St. Thierry and Guigo the Carthusian represent the Christian contemplative tradition, as well as the Rhineland mystics, including St. Hildegard, St. Mechtilde, Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek and Tauler. Later, the author of The Imitation of Christ and the English mystics of the 14th century such as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, and Julian of Norwich became part of the Christian contemplative heritage.
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After the Reformation, the Carmelites of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese of Lisieux; the French school of spiritual writers, including St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal and Cardinal Berulle; the Jesuits, including fathers De Caussade, Lallemont and Surin; the Benedictines, like Dom Augustine Baker and Dom John Chapman, and modern Cistercians such as Dom Vital Lehodey and Thomas Merton, all cultivated practices in their lives that they believed led to the spiritual gift of contemplation.
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Contemplation, in the strictest sense of the word, is a pure gift of God and not a state which can be obtained through practice or effort on our part. as It cannot be merited but one can dispose oneself to receive this special gift from God.

Contemplation, as it is defined by Carmelites, is also known as infused contemplation - to keep it from being confused with other types of contemplative prayer methods such as active contemplation where the soul, aided by ordinary grace, works in the natural mode, reasoning and using one’s imagination to elicit affections in the will. Active contemplation demands thought and action and acts of will, the function of which is to awaken and prepare the mind, to turn the heart towards God.

Infused contemplation, on the other hand, is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by Him into the summit of the soul, giving it a direct and experiential contact with Him. It is an intuition of God born of pure love. It is a gift of God that absolutely transcends all the natural capacities of the soul and which no one can acquire by any effort of their own.

The Catechism has some information about Contemplation and contemplative prayer:

2710 The choice of the time and duration of the prayer arises from a determined will, revealing the secrets of the heart. One does not undertake contemplative prayer only when one has the time: one makes time for the Lord, with the firm determination not to give up, no matter what trials and dryness one may encounter. One cannot always meditate, but one can always enter into inner prayer, independently of the conditions of health, work, or emotional state. The heart is the place of this quest and encounter, in poverty and in faith. (2726)

2711 Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we “gather up” the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed. (1348, 2100)

2712 Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more.8 But he knows that the love he is returning is poured out by the Spirit in his heart, for everything is grace from God. Contemplative prayer is the poor and humble surrender to the loving will of the Father in ever deeper union with his beloved Son. (2822)

2713 Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gift, a grace; it can be accepted only in humility and poverty. Contemplative prayer is a covenant relationship established by God within our hearts.9 Contemplative prayer is a communion in which the Holy Trinity conforms man, the image of God, “to his likeness.” (2559)

2714 Contemplative prayer is also the pre-eminently intense time of prayer. In it the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit “that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith” and we may be “grounded in love.”10

2715 Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. “I look at him and he looks at me”: this is what a certain peasant of Ars in the time of his holy curé used to say while praying before the tabernacle. This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the “interior knowledge of our Lord,” the more to love him and follow him.11 (521)

2716 Contemplative prayer is hearing the Word of God. Far from being passive, such attentiveness is the obedience of faith, the unconditional acceptance of a servant, and the loving commitment of a child. It participates in the “Yes” of the Son become servant and the Fiat of God’s lowly handmaid. (494)

2717 Contemplative prayer is silence, the “symbol of the world to come”12 or “silent love.”13 Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the “outer” man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus. (533, 498)

2718 Contemplative prayer is a union with the prayer of Christ insofar as it makes us participate in his mystery. The mystery of Christ is celebrated by the Church in the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit makes it come alive in contemplative prayer so that our charity will manifest it in our acts.

2719 Contemplative prayer is a communion of love bearing Life for the multitude, to the extent that it consents to abide in the night of faith. The Paschal night of the Resurrection passes through the night of the agony and the tomb—the three intense moments of the Hour of Jesus which his Spirit (and not “the flesh [which] is weak”) brings to life in prayer. We must be willing to “keep watch with [him] one hour.”

2724 Contemplative prayer is the simple expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gaze of faith fixed on Jesus, an attentiveness to the Word of God, a silent love. It achieves real union with the prayer of Christ to the extent that it makes us share in his mystery.

There are some good articles on contemplation at ocarm.org if you care to poke around the Order’s website.
 
It can be noted that there is acquired contemplation…and infused contemplation.

And to confuse things (unintentionally) there are* various* authors and *various *schools who use term “contemplation” differently…in their writings (over the centuries)

(and I am meaning here even only those who writers and schools that do not depart from faithfulness to the Church or who are not Christians to begin with -the term gets used in various ways among them as well).

Though a basic outline that I use to explain things is that it can be said that there is acquired contemplation --which can be on a philosophical level (read Josef Pieper on “natural contempation”) or on the theological level …and there can be even the ordinary kind like that of a mother “contemplating” her sleeping child or our contemplating nature. These are a true contemplation.

And there can be “acquired contemplation” (that is “acquired” -reached by us -though of course grace is involved) in the sense of a kind of contemplation in prayer where things become more of a intuitive gaze (to look and to love ) etc (such as prayer of simplicity). (within which too God might begin to give infused contemplation as well)

And then there is “infused contemplation”…infused by God. Which also involves looking and loving. But is directly given by God - not by our acquiring such.

(and when I say looking and loving in either form- I do not mean only exterior looking…thought that can be the case…for such can quite often be quite interior)
 
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