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Contemplative surrender to God keeps us aware of His call that we be transformed

Thirdly, we may (and should) also perceive and keep aware of the call of God that reaches us from above in our contemplative state, and that refers to our transformation. Our glance proceeds thus naturally from God—or from the value that has spoken to us—to the subject of our striving for perfection.

All true contemplation is likely to engender, in an organic and almost self-evident fashion, specific good resolutions: one such, at least—the express decision to keep faithful to our upward course—is essentially inseparable from true contemplation as such. Our discernment of what may be justified in the face of Christ is sharpened anew; and our will turns away from everything repugnant to His most holy gaze.

In this sense, again, our transformation acquires a thematic significance as an adjunct to our every act of contemplative surrender.

We remain aware that contemplation and value-responses are sources of transformation

Finally, in the fourth place, in the general framework of our transformation in Christ we may take account of the moments of contemplative attention to God and to true values as the principal source from which issues the gift of our transformation. The measure of this secondary reference is scaled according to the various modes of contemplative attention.

One pole is represented by the Opus Dei—that is, liturgical prayer—in which the thematic role of our transformation is restricted to a minimum; the other pole is represented by our communion with created values, which admits of it to a comparatively high degree.

As regards our attention to created values and their frui in us, our consciousness of their mission in contributing to our transformation in Christ may be accorded a significant place. We are rightly aware that our experience of the beauty of nature and of great genuine art—provided that we are fully receptive to its radiation and let its voice pervade the depths of our being—cannot but make us better.

We should similarly take cognizance of the fact that our union in holy love with another person—a love-relationship rooted in Jesus—is certain to transform us and to bring us nearer to God. True, at the moment when our response to the object is actualized the essence of that object (with the value-power emanating from it) constitutes the only theme of our attention; but that does not prejudge the question as to what part the frui of created values is to play in our lives as such.

Contemplative delight in values is commendable

Many religious persons erroneously believe that in reference to created things no frui, no joyful immersion of one’s self in the essence of an object, as it were, is commendable; they hold the narrow view that no created object has any use for our eternal aim except in a purely instrumental sense, as a subordinate means of our pursuit irrespective of its intrinsic value. All frui of created values they subsume under the category of pleasures, and deem it less pleasing to God than any kind of neutral work (as the latter escapes the suspicion of being undertaken for its pleasurableness).

They take no account of the truth that the natural gifts of God, “the Father of all lights,” are assigned a function in our transformation in Christ; that, therefore, their frui is nothing in the nature of a frivolous diversion but, on the contrary, a valid task in conformity with the will of God. So afraid are they of losing sight of the ultimate goal that they leave unused one of the most important factors of its attainment. They fail to understand that on this plane a really effective uti (that is, a utilization of created things as directed to our eternal aim) presupposes a frui free from all concern about the uti.

All high created values can purify and transform us

The aim of our transformation in Christ itself compels us to accord an adequate place in our lives to our contemplative attention to the high created values which put us in a kind of contact with God and exercise an irreplaceable