Reflection from Fr. David: Types of Prayer (3) – Contemplation (Thomas P. Rausch)

Contemplative prayer is a prayer of loving attentiveness to God's mysterious presence, even though that presence is not directly experienced but known only in faith. The prayer the young Samuel learns from the priest Eli provides a model: "Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening" (1 Sam 3:9). While mental prayer involves the active use of our faculties of imagination and intellect, contemplative prayer is more quiet, receptive, and affective. It is a prayer of the heart, a focus, a quiet awareness of God's presence sensed deep within us or suggested by the silence and solitude of a natural vista-a grassy meadow under an infinite blue sky or the heavens at night filled with stars. Sometimes that presence moves us to pray affectively, praising, loving asking pardon. Thus, contemplation involves not so much the imagination or discursive reason as it does the heart.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who perhaps more than anyone else brought contemplation to the attention of contemporary men and women, describes it as a deepening of faith to the point where the union with God already given in our very nature is realized and experienced. It is not the result of some psychological trick but a genuine grace, something that comes as a gift and not as the result of our own use of special techniques. In his poetic language Merton describes contemplation as a door opening in the center of our being through which we seem to fall into an immense depth of silence and presence while our ordinary powers of thinking and imagination are stilled. It is at this point, when our natural faculties are quiet and in darkness and prayer becomes a simple awareness, that contemplation begins to shade into what spiritual writers describe as "infused" contemplation, the first stages of mystical prayer. The latter should not be associated with extraordinary phenomena such as voices, visions, and levitations. It is better understood as a heightening of contemplative prayer, in which a person enters into a more profound awareness of God's mysterious presence.

The Church has been enriched enormously by its spiritual teachers and its mystics, men and women like Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Jean Gerson, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis de Sales, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. Mysticism is very much part of the Catholic tradition. But contemplative prayer is not something limited to mystics or those living the monastic or religious life; it can be practiced by all Christians. Today many people find what is known as "centering" prayer a helpful preparation for contemplative prayer. Centering prayer can quiet the mind and imagination and focus one's awareness. The approach is simple; one sits quietly with the eyes closed and turns in faith toward God, ignoring the thoughts and images that continue to flow from the imagination. Many find it helpful to use a "sacred word" such as "Abba" or "Lord Jesus" to focus their attention. When the mind wanders off, one simply returns to the sacred word. Centering prayer is related to the ancient Eastern tradition variously known as Hesychasm (from the Greek hesychia, meaning "quiet" or "stillness") or the Jesus Prayer, a way of centering oneself by repeating over and over again "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me."