Louisville Process Theology Network

Oneness By Contemplation

Jan 27, 2010

As many of our readers know, the works of Thomas Merton are especially moving to people of faith in Kentucky. Merton lived almost all of his adult life in the Trappist community at Gethsemane, his personal papers are housed today at Bellarmine University, and there is a historical marker about him located at 4th Street and Muhammad Ali Blvd in Louisville.



From Page 133:

?“Active contemplation means union with God in the activities of one?’s life. This is the normal way to contemplation for the great majority of Christians. They are ?‘hidden contemplatives?’ or ?… (in other words) ?‘masked contemplatives.?’ They abandon themselves to the will of God and keep in touch with the realities of the present moment; this is to say, the inner and spiritual realities, not the surface emotions and excitements ?…

They swim with the living stream of life, remaining in contact with God in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment and the task it brings. In this way, ordinary activities such as sweeping in the floor ?… can be enriched with a contemplative sense of the presence of God.

Being in touch with God this way is ?‘one of the simplest and most secure ways of living a life of prayer, and one of the safest.?’ Those who follow this way may achieve a high degree of sanctity; even greater perhaps than of those who are ?‘juridically?’ called to lives of contemplation?…

?‘Natural?’ contemplation is ?‘the intuition of divine things in and through the reflections of God in nature and in the symbols of revelation.?’ Such contemplation presupposes a long ascetic preparation that delivers one from attachment to exterior things and produces a purity of heart and a singleness of view that enables one to see straight into the nature of things as they are.

Natural contemplation is natural, not in its origin, but in its object. It is ?‘contemplation of the divine in nature, not contemplation of the divine by our natural powers?’?…

Theologia, or pure contemplation (what Merton had earlier called infused contemplation) is ?‘direct experiential?… contact with God beyond all thought, that is without the medium of concepts.?’ Since it brooks no medium between God and our inmost spirit, it is in this sense, direct contact with God.

Such direct contact with God is not a matter of spiritual effort or intellectual learning. It is identification with God by love, for it is love that constitutes in us the likeness of God. At the same time, it is a meeting with God in the darkness of unknowing.

This embrace in the darkness of unknowing is absolutely essential to pure contemplation because, with the elimination of concepts and images, the natural lights are put out. One knows God through one?’s ?‘own divinized subjectivity.?’?”