• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The aspect of immersion, though it belongs to the formal structure of the contemplative attitude in general, acquires a more preeminent and literal meaning in religious contemplation. “Lo, to Thee surrendered, my whole heart is bowed, tranced as it beholds Thee, shrined within the cloud” (Hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas). To religious contemplation, the character of a bursting through towards valid and ultimate reality is specifically proper. Its clear presence in our consciousness may vary according to our disposition at the given moment and to the measure of grace which God imparts to us; but, as a formal aspect at least, the intentional reference to rising up towards the cœlum empyreum is never absent from religious contemplation.

The latter must necessarily fulfill the function of drawing us before the face of God and rendering us aware of His reality, for God Himself is here, the proper object of our contemplation. It is not needful therefore that we should in each case actually experience the beatifying gift of being thus touched by the world of ultimate reality; whereas, when creaturely essences are the object of our contemplation, such an actual experience is a condition for bursting through: past the formal object of our attention and toward ultimate reality as seen in God’s perspective. Yet, in religious contemplation, an express reference to the world of ultimate reality is necessarily present; and if a full joy-giving, blissful experience of that world is also granted us, we do not thereby enter an altogether new sphere, but merely intensify our experience of what has already been the object of our intentional direction. As regards the actualization of the experience proper, a variety of degrees is possible.

In discussing the contemplation of creaturely objects, we pointed out that there were two classic cases; in one form of contemplation, the higher world enters our life, embodying itself, as it were, in a supreme, condensed “now”; in the other, we emerge, we are transported, in a sense, from our life towards that higher world.

On the level of religious contemplation, the division reappears. The moment of the consecration of the Host (which eminently appeals to a basic contemplative attitude in the faithful) is the supreme archetype of such a “now,” representing the influx of the world of valid reality into our life. In a similar, though not an identical sense, the act of holy Communion also contains such a “now.” The other pole is exemplified by interior prayer, and the so-called prater of quiet—contemplation in the very strictest sense of the term. This constitutes the supreme archetype, not of a paramount “now,” but of our withdrawal from vital actuality (a plastic expression of that withdrawal is furnished by the word ecstasy, whose literal meaning is “stepping out”), our elevation into a region beyond time, our ascent to the plane of eternal validity.

Religious contemplation is possible only after we renounce sin

Our loving absorption in God, foreshadowing the beatific vision we are to be granted in Heaven, is the most perfect contemplation. In moments of reposing in God and experiencing His all-pervasive presence, of our loving adoration of God, we achieve in statu viae something like an anticipation of our status in eternity. Every created being, however, though in very different ways according to its metaphysical rank and value, can become a point of departure for religious contemplation as described above.

In order to find our way to religious contemplation, we must, before all else, have renounced everything that cannot be upheld before the face of Christ. We must be firmly resolved to part with “the world and its pomp,” and to shut out whatever offends God. “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).

We must abandon preoccupation with creaturely goods

Next, to find our way to religious contemplation, we must rid ourselves