One of the enduring legacies of the Second Vatican Council was its call to return to the Gospels and to biblical theology as the primary sources of Catholic spirituality. The Word of God in scripture and incarnate in Jesus Christ is the source of Christian contemplation. The Incarnation of the Word is the insertion of God into the human family and the insertion of the human family into God in the Person of Jesus Christ. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are together, in one nature, both the Ultimate Mystery and the Ultimate Reality. Their interior relationship of total giving and receiving is the divine life that Christ was sent to share with us.

The Fathers of the Church in their homilies frequently explained the scriptures from a contemplative perspective, or as it was called in those days, in the spiritual sense. The spiritual sense was understood to contain much more than an allegorical interpretation of a particular text. It was rather an insight into the inherent nature of the divinely inspired texts to reveal levels of meaning which the Spirit, by strengthening one’s faith through the Gifts of Wisdom and Understanding, enabled the Christian gradually to perceive.

The manifold Gifts of the Spirit were believed to come into full exercise through the regular practice of prayer and the growth of faith into contemplation with its progressive stages of development.

Meaning of the Term “Contemplation” in Christian Antiquity
For the first sixteen centuries of the Christian era, contemplation enjoyed a specific meaning. In recent centuries, the word has acquired other meanings and connotations.

To grasp the full import of this key word in Christian spirituality, it is necessary to know that it evolved out of two distinct sources: the Bible and Greek philosophy. To emphasize the experiential knowledge of God, the Greek Bible used the word gnosis to translate the Hebrew word da’ath, which implies a kind of knowledge involving the whole person, not just the intellect (e.g. Psalm 139:1–6).

St. Paul also used the word gnosis to refer to the knowledge of God proper to those who love Him. He constantly prayed for this intimate knowledge for his disciples as if it were an indispensable element for the complete development of Christian life (cf. Ephesians 3:14–21; Colossians 1:9).

The Greek Fathers, especially Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, borrowed from the Neoplatonists the term theoria. This originally meant the intellectual vision of truth which the Greek philosophers regarded as the supreme activity of the human person. While using this technical Greek term, the Fathers added the meaning of the Hebrew word da’ath, that is, the experiential knowledge that comes through love. The first writer to do this was the author of the Fourth Gospel (John 17:24). It was with this expanded understanding that theoria was later translated into the Latin word contemplatio and handed down to us by Christian tradition.

This tradition was summed up by St. Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century. He described contemplation as the knowledge of God that is impregnated with love. For Gregory, contemplation was both the fruit of reflecting on the Word of God in Scripture and a precious gift of God. He called it “resting in God.” In this “resting” the mind and heart are not so much seeking God, as beginning to experience, “to taste,” what they have been seeking. This state is not the suspension of all activity, but the reduction of many acts and reflections to a single act or thought to sustain one’s consent to God’s presence and action.

The understanding of contemplation as the knowledge of God based on the intimate experience of His presence remained throughout the Middle Ages. Ascetical disciplines (such as fasting, vigils, prolonged solitude, periods of silence, ascetical obedience, simplicity of lifestyle) and more spiritual disciplines (such as discursive meditation, affective prayer, veneration of icons, psalmody, chanting, rosary) always included contemplation as part of their Christ-centered goal.

Preparation for Contemplative Prayer
Lectio Divina is the most traditional way of cultivating contemplative prayer. It consists in listening to the texts of the Bible as if one were in conversation with God and He were suggesting the topics for discussion. Those who follow the method of lectio divina are cultivating the capacity to listen to the Word of God at ever deepening levels of attention. Spontaneous prayer is the normal response to their growing relationship with Christ, and the gift of contemplation is God’s normal response to them.

The reflective part, the pondering upon the words of the sacred text in lectio divina, is called meditatio, discursive meditation. The spontaneous movement of the will in response to these reflections is called oratio, affective prayer. As these reflections and particular acts of will simplify, one tends to resting in God or contemplatio, contemplation.

These three acts—discursive meditation, affective prayer and contemplation—might all take place during the same period of prayer. They are interwoven one into the other. One may listen to the Lord as if sharing a privileged interview and respond with one’s reflections, with acts of will, or with silence—with the rapt attention of contemplation. The practice of contemplative prayer is not an effort to make the mind a blank, but to move beyond discursive thinking and the multiplication of particular acts to the level of communing with God, which is a more intimate kind of exchange.

In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when two friends convey their sentiments without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each others presence without saying anything. Holding hands or a single word from time to time can maintain this deep communication.

This loving relationship points to the kind of interior silence that is being developed in contemplative prayer. The goal of contemplative prayer is not so much the emptiness of thoughts or conversation as the emptiness of self. In contemplative prayer, one ceases to multiply reflections and acts of the will. A different kind of knowledge rooted in love emerges in which the awareness of God’s presence supplants the awareness of one’s own presence and the inveterate tendency to reflect on oneself. The experience of God’s presence frees one from making oneself or one’s relationship with God the center of the universe. The language of the mystics must not be taken literally when they speak of emptiness or the void. Jesus practiced emptiness in becoming a human being, emptying himself of his prerogatives and the natural consequences of his divine dignity. The void does not mean void in the sense of nothing at all, but void in the sense of attachment to one’s own activity. One’s own reflections and acts of will are necessary preliminaries to getting acquainted with Christ, but have to be transcended if Christ is to share his most personal prayer to the Father which is characterized by total self-surrender.

Contemplative Prayer
Contemplative prayer, rightly understood, is the normal development of the grace of Baptism and the regular practice of lectio divina. It is the opening of mind and heart—our whole being to God beyond thoughts, words and emotions. Moved by God’s prevenient grace, we open our awareness to God whom we know by faith is within us, closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing—closer than consciousness itself. Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a relationship initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union.

Contemplation is distinguished by some authors into kataphatic and apophatic. This distinction, insofar as it suggests opposition between the two, is misleading. “Kataphatic contemplation” is rather the preparation for contemplation. It is the affective response to sacred symbols and a disciplined use of reason, imagination, memory and emotion in order to assimilate the truths of faith and to develop a personal relationship with Christ.

“Apophatic contemplation” is a further stage in that relationship. It is resting in God beyond the exercise of particular acts, except to maintain a general loving attention to the Divine Persons. It can take different forms according to the different persons who receive this gift. It would be helpful to reserve the term “contemplation” to this type of prayer.

The “unknowing” of the rational intellect in apophatic contemplation is sometimes called Negative Theology because it emphasizes the incomprehensibility of God. It is an important bridge in East/West dialogue without which dialogue about the higher states of consciousness is virtually unthinkable. It is also a way home for many Christians who have gone to the East in search of spiritual wisdom and who, upon hearing that there is a Christian contemplative tradition, have been able to return to the religion of their youth.

An Ancient Controversy
The development of the personal love of Christ, which for a Christian is the heart of the spiritual journey, has given rise to some misunderstandings in the history of contemplative prayer. There is a venerable controversy about the place of the sacred humanity in the transition from discursive meditation to contemplative prayer. St. Teresa of Avila is quoted as saying that we should never omit the thought of the sacred humanity no matter what state of contemplative prayer one may have received. This counsel has to be understood in the context of her whole teaching because it could be a serious obstacle in following the call of the Spirit to interior silence if taken too literally. St. John of the Cross in The Living Flame of Love, stanza III, verses 26–59, describes the great harm that spiritual directors can inflict if they dissuade those called by the Spirit to the state of waiting upon God with loving attentiveness from following this attraction.

St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross are both Doctors of the Church. Hence it is easy to understand how this controversy could arise among people sincerely seeking the truth. St. Teresa may have been reacting to certain exaggerations in her time. In any case, methods of prayer that are not inspired by the gospel should not be confused with the normal development of one’s relationship with Christ and the more intimate dimension that contemplative prayer initiates: resting in the divine presence beyond thoughts and feelings.

“The Spirit,” as Paul says, “prays within us with unspeakable groanings.” Groanings are not words or images. The Spirit transcends the interpretations of reason and emotion. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that everything we can say about God is only an analogy since God infinitely surpasses anything we can say or think of Him and that the act of a believer does not have a proposition about God as a term, but the reality of God Himself (II–II, 1,2). Commenting on the prophetic words of Isaiah to the Israelites: “to what have you likened me?” St. John of the Cross warns that if we have excessive reliance on concepts to go to God, we are likely to fall into human projections and the kind of image-making that God condemned with such force in the Old Testament.

In contemplative prayer, the humanity of Christ is not ignored but affirmed in the most positive and profound manner. Contemplation presupposes a living faith that the sacred humanity of Jesus contains the fullness of the Godhead. Christ leads us to the Father, but to the Father as he knows Him. In virtue of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection, we participate by grace in Christ’s divinity. We are invited to worship the Father in spirit and truth. This is to follow Christ into the bosom of the Father where, as the Eternal Son of God, he surrenders to the divine Source from whom he eternally emerges —and returns—in the love of the Holy Spirit.

Since “the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” as Paul says, we too, as contemplative prayer grows, participate more fully in this movement of grace. The divine presence becomes a fullness that no longer requires the stepping stones of particular acts, at least not habitually. Once faith has revealed the mystery of Christ’s humanity, one enters by a growing interaction of faith, hope and love into union with the divine Person who possesses it. Without in any way rejecting the details of Christ’s humanity, one’s attention during prayer is absorbed by the presence of the divine Person who dwells within it. One returns to daily life with this transformed consciousness, manifesting the fruits of the Spirit and the beatitudes. This point needs to be emphasized: contemplative prayer is the best preparation for action; its goal is to develop and stabilize the contemplative dimension of the gospel, which is to be guided by the manifold Gifts of the Spirit, especially the theological virtues, both in prayer and in action.

Witnesses of the Christian Contemplative Tradition
This form of prayer was first practiced and taught by the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Palestine and Syria including Evagrius, John Cassian and St. John Climacus, and has representatives in every age. In the Patristic age, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great in the West, and Pseudo-Dionysius and the Hesychasts in the East. In the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry and Guido the Carthusian; the Rhineland mystics including St . Hildegarde, St. Mechtilde, Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek and Tauler; later the author of the Imitatian of Christ and the English mystics of the 14th century such as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich. After the Reformation, the Carmelites St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese of Lisieux; among the French school of spiritual writers: St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal and Cardinal Berulle; among the Jesuits: Fathers De Caussade, Lallemont and Surin; among the Benedictines: Dom Augustine Baker and Dom John Chapman; among modern Cistercians: Dom Vital Lehodey and Thomas Merton.

Over the centuries ways of cultivating contemplative prayer have always been called by various names corresponding to the different forms they have taken. Thus we have Pure Prayer (Cassian), Prayer of Faith, Prayer of the Heart, Prayer of Simplicity and Prayer of Simple Regard. In our time a number of initiatives have been taken by various religious Orders, notably by the Jesuits and Discalced Carmelites, to renew the contemplative orientation of their founders and to share their spirituality with lay persons. The Benedictine Dom John Main revived a method of cultivating contemplative prayer which he attributed to John Cassian. The method of Centering Prayer, based on the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing and the teaching of St. John of the Cross, is a further attempt to present the teaching of earlier times in an updated format and to put a certain order and regularity into it.

Spiritual Guidance
A qualified spiritual guide is one who has a thorough conceptual background of the Christian contemplative tradition, good judgment and experience of contemplative prayer. Spiritual direction should address itself to where each person is. Beginners need concrete advice on how to get started in prayer, as well as instruction in the basic truths of faith in order to clarify their interpretation of their spiritual experiences.

Those who are advancing in contemplative prayer need a guide who has personal experience of passive purification. One who does not have experience of the trials of contemplation cannot communicate the kind of reassurance that such people need. That can only come from one who has been over the same path and can testify to its benefits.

Those who are approaching the transforming union where the difficulties are the most searching would be greatly helped by a spiritual friend and companion.

The Stages of Contemplation
There are stages in the development of contemplation. St. Teresa describes them in the Interior Castle beginning with the Fourth Mansion. St. John of the Cross also describes the development of contemplation and distinguishes two paths: the exuberant mysticism of St. Teresa and what he calls “the hidden ladder of faith.” To him we owe a much clearer understanding of the important role of contemplative prayer in the development of faith, hope and love. In his presentation of the spiritual journey, the faith that works through reasoning gradually grows in such a way that the usefulness of concepts and symbols disappears. Faith becomes purer and forms a stronger foundation for total trust in God and for the works of unconditional love. All of this is more the work of the Spirit than that of the human person. In fact, growth in divine union carries with it the need to diminish our human activity and to learn to wait upon the Lord. It presupposes the gradual purification of the sense faculties in the night of the sense and the spiritual faculties in the night of the spirit. Thus the essence of the contemplative path is not to be identified with psychological experiences of God, though these may occasionally occur. The essence of contemplation is the trusting and loving faith by which God elevates the human person and purifies the conscious and unconscious obstacles in us that oppose the values of the Gospel and the work of the Spirit. Contemplative prayer in the classic sense used in this article is “the narrow way that leads to life.”