We have already recommended two methods which the soul can use during the
time of prayer private prayers and religious meditation. There are two others which
have an even greater claim to be called mental prayer because they are loftier ascents
of the soul to God.
These likewise have their source in charity. We have
seen how, in the case of those other methods, charity gives an impetus to the virtue
of religion which makes us pray or meditate in order to serve God. But here our
charity asserts itself more directly and admonishes us that we are servants of whom
God has made His friends. After that, it is satisfied with stimulating our faith
to behold the divine Friend in order to love Him better. This is a simpler, and
at the same time a higher, kind of prayer which deserves the name of "theological" prayer because
of the virtues which underlie it.
If I have preferred to call it contemplative meditation;
that is because these words have the advantage of showing clearly the transition
between religious meditation and mystical contemplation. Moreover, the term exactly
summarizes the article in which St. Thomas expounds the principles of this exercise
of the contemplative life. (1)
In my prayer of petition, in religious meditation,
I was pursuing a practical objective; I was occupied in a work of the active life;
I was doing something. I tried to improvise a little discourse, or I formulated
my requests to God, or else I reflected with a view to persuading myself to consecrate
all my activity to God, and I made resolutions to that end. A very meritorious work
indeed! But when the time for inactivity comes when it is the hour for sacred
repose - Vacate et videte - "Rest," says the Lord, "and look at Me." The hour of
prayer is an ideal moment for the contemplation of God. The true Dominican ought
to apply himself to it wholeheartedly, as befits the member of an Order which is
pre-eminently contemplative. Moreover, through this exercise of charity, the whole
of his religious and moral life will be radically perfected.
After the apparition in which Our Lord told St. Catherine
of Siena what she was and Who He is, there was another vision in which He gave
her a second injunction: “Daughter, think
of Me; if thou wilt do so, I will think of thee unceasingly. ...” “When she was talking to me privately about this
revelation," wrote Blessed Raymund of Capua, "the saint told me that the Lord had then ordered her to retain no
will of her own except the will that drew her to Him, and to exclude from her heart
every other consideration, because any care for herself, even for her spiritual
salvation, might hinder her from resting continually upon the thought of God. The
Master had added: ‘And I will think of thee,’ as if to say, ‘Daughter, be not troubled
about the salvation of thy body and soul I who have knowledge and power will think
of it and will provide for it; only apply thyself to think of Me in thy meditations;
in that lies thy perfection and thy final goal.’”
This is not the simple uplifting of the soul to God, which is the
preliminary to every prayer, properly so called: it is the application of the mind
to God an application both reiterated and penetrating. I am not just placing myself
in 'God's presence to persuade myself, by considering what He is and what I am,
to be submissive to Him, as in religious meditation. I am no longer at all concerned
with myself: I am concerned only with Him. My whole aim is to behold Him, to behold
Him because I love Him, and to behold Him in order to love Him still more.
If I think of creatures, if I observe the marvels
of the material universe, if my spirit seeks to roam in the world of ideas, if
I admire the still higher splendours encountered in holy souls in Heaven and on
earth, if I am conscious of what grace has been able to effect in my own soul, all
these things have been for me mere steps to lead me up to the divine Cause Who manifests
Himself in His works. The only object to which my thought ultimately ascends is
God, as He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ.
It is Jesus Christ, therefore, that I am considering,
our God made man. Jesus once alive on earth, now alive in Heaven and giving life
in the Church composed of His members scattered over the globe. I also consider
the Holy Trinity, the relations between the three Persons and the perfections of
the one Nature, as they have been revealed to me by Jesus.
When we have become like to the angels in Heaven,
this contemplation will be spontaneous and continuous in the eternal vision, face
to face. Here below, conditions are very different. Our spirit has to do much searching,
observing and reflecting: it must make distinctions and comparisons, and it must
go through a more or less lengthy course of reasoning before it can attain to a
brief and dim contemplation. These efforts, which will necessarily have been preceded
and facilitated by preparatory study or special reading, not to speak of prayer,
will all come under the category and heading of meditation. But by dint of
meditation, one gradually succeeds in simplifying all these mental processes so
that one can quickly rise to a contemplative glance. Once we have reached that
stage let us not waste time over preliminary considerations which have been useful
in the past, but which have served their turn. Let us rather endeavour to repeat
that loving gaze, to protect it by means of a familiar colloquy in which our soul
will freely express to God its sentiments, the affections that spring from its charity.
Hence the description "affective"
which is applied by many authors to this kind of prayer. Let us lift ourselves up
to that supreme act, an act which was not mentioned in treating of the preceding
devotions because it cannot be made the object of a desire, nor, consequently,
of a petition. It consists simply in rejoicing that God is perfect and infinitely
happy. Our divine friendship will make us find in that our purest bliss.
This form of devotion in the early stages deserves
its name of meditation better than its qualifying adjective "contemplative" because the reflections
require many efforts and much time. But it will soon prove a contemplation, rather
than a meditation, when once a little recollection becomes all that is necessary
to enable us to see God in some mystery with which our spirit has made itself familiar.
Those eager glances of faith which charity prompts,
and which actually increase our charity, may be repeated many times during the
course of the celebration of the divine mysteries which St. Thomas describes as
the principal work of the contemplative life. The whole liturgical Office with the
Mass as its centre constitutes, especially when it is chorally sung, the most favourable
possible occasion for the devotion we have been dealing with, and it is not surprising
that during the first centuries of the Order no need was experienced for the prescription
of a separate fixed hour of prayer for all the community. The Friars then delighted
in freely prolonging their liturgical worship by private individual prayer. Charity,
quickened in them by the celebration of the Office, inspired our ancient
Fathers to adopt this practice. We should be acting in full conformity with their
spirit if we were to choose, as a suitable moment for private devotion, the time
immediately following a Mass and Communion in which we had devoutly participated,
and if we took as our guide St. Thomas's Adoro
Te.
If our Blessed Father wished the choral Office to
be shortened in favour of study, if in those priories which are entirely consecrated
to the latter only one half hour of mental prayer is obligatory, that is because
study such as must be practised by true Dominicans is immediately directed, under
the impulse of charity, towards the acquisition of a better knowledge of God. Therefore
it forms an excellent preparation for contemplative meditation, and can even take
its place, because it readily leads up to those loving intuitions which form the
ultimate goal of both.
But it is more particularly in the evening, when the
close of day suggests the close of life, when the night's rest recalls that of Heaven,
that we seem naturally called to this more or less simplified contemplative meditation
which prepares, outlines and inaugurates our eternal occupation. May sleep find
us engaged in these great thoughts of eternity! Our Order, especially in its contemplative
branches, has always insisted very particularly upon this evening meditation and
upon this way of performing it.
NOTES:
(1) Ila Ilae, q. 180, a. 3.
Source: Joret, F-D, O.P. Dominican Life. London:
Sands & Co. Limited, 1937
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