Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [62]
Religious contemplation simultaneously actualizes all the perfections of contemplation
Let us turn now to contemplation in the strictest sense of the term—to religious contemplation proper. The characteristics previously established, naturally, hold good here. When we face God in adoration and surrender, we again realize that relinquishment of the world of purposeful processes, that halt in our vital activities, and that restful immersion which are the marks of contemplation in general; only all this happens in a more perfect way.
But another important difference must be noted. Whereas in the contemplation of the created good, the different perfections of contemplation cannot be actualized simultaneously, they can be and are united in one in the contemplation of God. In our contemplative surrender to the absolute Person, we experience the light of His loving glance penetrating our soul and are conscious of His personal response to our loving surrender.
Thus, on the one hand, what we have called “I-thou contemplation” is fully present. And yet, on the other hand, that more particularly “contemplative” attitude of timeless tranquillity which we called “it-contemplation” appears in equal splendor. We may dwell in God with that absolute, changeless tranquillity which is alien to the precious, condensed supreme moments in the spiritual relationship between finite personal beings joined in mutual awareness of one another. God the omnipresent, who pervades all presentness, is also the eternal Being, towering above time in its entirety. He unites the concentrated actuality of the supreme moment to the timelessness of unaltered superactuality; He incarnates the abundance of all being and possesses all perfections of being. In Him the two specific aspects of contemplation which are mutually incompatible within the range of creaturely objects, here converge and become one.
Full surrender is possible only in religious contemplation
Moreover, religious I-thou contemplation differs essentially from the one which is possible towards a created person. Even in a purely formal sense, surrender to God is more properly possible than surrender to any created person. God alone can be an object of loving adoration. A unique form of subordination is implied therein—the only possible case of an absolute subordination, different from all relative surrender in kind and not merely in degree. There is further implied, however, an unconditional delivery of self: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit” (Ps. 30:6). In religious contemplation alone—which, whatever be the special mystery we are viewing, is always in essence subsidiary to the worship of God—is it possible for us to fling ourselves, so to speak, into the object of our contemplation with our entire being. Here alone can the consciousness be given us that not merely our love but our entire being is received; that we rest encompassed by our absolute Lord from whose hands we have issued forth, in whom our being rests, and who in holy Baptism has communicated to us a new supernatural life.
Religious contemplation presupposes a personal God
As a result, genuine religious contemplation is unimaginable in relation to a deity impersonally, pantheistically conceived. Not only would the idea an I-thou contemplation be meaningless; there would be no place either for the experience of resting securely in God’s arms—an experience that can be granted to us by an infinitely superior absolute Person only, never by the phantom of an impersonal force. Incidentally, the very concept of an impersonal absolute contains a self-contradiction, for any personal being is in essence superior to everything impersonal.
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