The Contemplative Life

The contemplative life is not one of cold study and consideration of eternal truth. It is not sheerly intellectual. It involves will and appetites; it includes love and attachment to what is studied. For the very intention to contemplate truth is an act of the will, and the contemplative person is led by all pertinent appetitive forces to love the work of contemplation andto repose happily in it.

The contemplative life, however, does consist essentially in the consideration of truth, and such consideration belongs to the intellect. The moral virtues (that is the will-virtues) dispose the soul for contemplation by curbingdistracting passions and by allaying the disturbance caused by outward occupation, but these virtues do not enter the essence of contemplation itself. We say, therefore, that the moral virtuesbelong dispositively but not essentially to thecontemplative life.

The contemplative life is not a kind of schedule of related acts; contemplation is one act. Still, the process of arriving at the truth to be contemplated involves, for man thewayfarer (that is, for man in his earthly life), a variety of acts. Thus, a man must grasp principles, and he must reason upon them toknow what is implied in them. The last and perfect act, after the full discovery of truth, is contemplation, the steady gazing upon truth. This is one act, not several.

Contemplation considers God; it dwells upon the supremeintelligible Truth. The perfect contemplation which beholds the divine essence in the beatific vision is not to be had this side of heaven. Here on earth, however, we can achieve imperfectcontemplation: “We see now through a glass in a dark manner” (I Cor. 13:12). Here we consider creatures in so faras they lead us to contemplate the Creator. Four things pertain, ina fixed order, to the contemplative life: (a) the disposing moralvirtues; (b) preparatory acts of attention, study, reasoning; (c)contemplation of divine effects, that is, of creatures which manifest God; (d) the contemplation of divine truth itself.

Since, in this life, we cannot gaze directly upon the divine essence, the highest degree of contemplation possible isthat which we find exemplified in the rapture of St. Paul (II Cor.12).

The operation of the intellect is called a movement. In contemplation, the intellect’s movement of fixing and focusing on a topic is called curved movement; the movement of reasoning or thinking a thing out in connected steps is called straight movement;the union of the two movements in a movement which combinesuniformity of gaze with progress through the various reasonedpoints, is called oblique movement.

There are in contemplation the delight of engaging in a suitable and congenial operation and the delight of knowing and gazing upon a beloved object. This spiritual delight surpasses all other human joys.

True contemplation is not interrupted for other sustained employments of the mind. It is continuous: perfectly soin its unchanging object, and truly so in the unabandoned purpose and effort of the contemplative person.