In a manner of speaking it can be. However, in fact, it the singular moment in time when history is changed for all eternity, for the all powerful Father, has submitted his co-eternal son to face the darkness of sin, to break its chains and restore to mankind the dignity that was lost by Adam’s fall. In essence, the mystic is participating in Christ’s hour of triumph over sin. You cannot triumph over an enemy unless you look straight into his eyes.
My child, everyone can contemplate, but only very special souls are given the grace of sharing Christ’s triumph over sin in their lives. That is not a grace that we can earn, ask for or make happen. It is freely given by the Father only to select souls, to those souls who can tolerate it.
That being said, to contemplate first of all cultivate silence, interior silence. Speak not and think not of things that take away your peace. The problems of the world and of the Church are not your problems. Mother, never made them her problem. Her approach was radically different from our own. She saw what everyone else sees as problems, scandals, errors, evils and sins as a call. She paid very special attention, always asking God to allow her to hear what he wanted her to do and God told her. In the end, it was a call not to fix the world, but to heal the world, one person at a time.
I believe, that those of us who are here on these Traditionalist threads often miss this dimension of the Christian life. We try to fix what we perceive to be broken. Mother did not do that. She never made the poor less poor, the sick well, or kept the dying from death. The poor remained poor, the sick healed if it was God’s will, and the dying died. What she did was to find Jesus in all of those situations. How did she find him? By taking him there. She took Jesus into the chaos, though prayer, love, charity, trust, and above all, through obedience to the Church. She heard the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel and she lived it. When others were distressed, she took the words of St. Francis and applied them, “Make me an instrument of peace.”
If one observes the life of Mother Teresa she never spoke about charity, orthodoxy, rules, canons, Councils, rubrics and all the other things of which we speak. She found such conversations tedious and refused to engage in them. She, on the other hand, was charitable, was faithful, was obedient, was orthodox and was heroic in her practice of virtue, without engaging in nonsense discussions. That’s why you will never see a Missionary of Charity sister or Missionary of Charity brother on these forums or engaged in discussing the issue of the Church and the world.
Mother taught them to contemplate, to watch and see Jesus in every situation and to bring Jesus to every situation. While the rest of the Church and the world struggled and debated, Mother simply smiled and arched her eyebrows. She often said that she did not understand the problem. “It is all so simple. If God wants it, it will happen. If he does not want it, it will not happen.”
The true contemplative is one who can look at the world, the Church, and the problems to be found in both without making them a problem for himself or herself. Instead, he or she asks, “Where is God?” Then he pays attention to God. He see problems as windows to find God. He prays that he will not miss seeing God in every situation. To do this, one must embrace silence, charity, detachment, especially from one’s ideas and wishes so as to attach oneself to whatever Christ says through the Church.
This can certainly be achieved outside of the cloister. Many lay people have been contemplatives and reached great sanctify. One of my favorite lay contemplatives was Bl. Pierre Giorgio Frasatti.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
