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Hence, apart from the purely supernatural effect, the deepest transformation in our being issues from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which we participate per ipsum, cum ipso, et in ipso (through Him, with Him, and in Him) in Christ’s sacrifice.

We must never use values merely as a means for our transformation

An analogical power belongs to mental prayer and to the Divine Office. Mental prayer, again, should be undertaken not primarily for the sake of our transformation but in order to let God speak to us, to be touched by Him in our depths. This is even truer in regard to liturgical prayer, which we perform in response to the glory of God, by no means to utilize it for our transformation but because that response is due to God.

It is generally implicit in the character of these primordial agents of our transformation which we are here discussing that they must not be instrumentalized in the service of that transformation. The moment we enjoy a beautiful thing in order thereby to enrich our soul or love a person so as to derive therefrom an inward gain; or again, worse still, the moment we use liturgical prayer (as we might use some ascetical practice) as a means of our spiritual progress, we render these acts of response to value or surrender to God virtually invalid. And, along with their basic autonomous value, they also lose the faculty of a transforming influence upon our essence.

But notwithstanding the fact that we must never instrumentalize these attitudes of response and surrender by subordinating them to the purpose of our transformation, in their context all intentional reference to that transformation need not be so completely excluded as it has to be in the case of all moral actions in which we are directed to the realization of some concrete good—for instance, in actions which flow from love of our neighbor. In contemplation, the thematic aspect of our transformation—though it must never be accorded a primary place—may legitimately enter at several points.

Contemplation awakens in us a deep desire for transformation

First, all contemplative attention to God (and, by virtue of an analogical relationship, to all true values as such) involves a confrontation of one’s own self with God. We become aware of the immense distance that separates us from the holiness of God, as St. Peter did when he exclaimed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8), It dawns upon us that in order to be worthy of any contact with God, we ought to become thoroughly different from what we are. “Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and clean of heart” (Ps. 23:3-4).

Thus there awakens in us a longing for our transformation into Christ as a condition of the frui of God, of our contemplative union with God, the ultimate end of our desire and the enduring theme of our endeavor. In this spirit do we then pronounce the liturgical words preceding Holy Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”

Contemplative surrender to God is felt as a transformation

Secondly, we experience our contemplative surrender to God as an incorporation of our being in Him. Precisely in the measure in which God is the exclusive theme of our attention, we shall feel impelled to say with St. Peter, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: let us make here three tabernacles.” Similarly shall we be willing to say with St. Catherine of Siena: Che tu sia ed io non sia (“That Thou be, and I be not”).

Although our transformation in the sight of God does not assume the place of a primary aim, it is implied in the logic, as it were, of our elevation by God and our response to the divine attraction, and is thus inevitably woven into the fabric of our contemplative attention. It is not that we degrade the latter to a means of our transformation; but we are aware of its transforming effect, and in this secondary sense our transformation does play a thematic part, which is entirely