Lectio
“It is impossible for this highest wisdom and language of God, which is contemplation, to be received in anything less than a spirit that is silent and detached from discursive knowledge and gratification. Isaiah speaks of it in these words: Whom will he teach knowledge and whom will God make understand the hearing? And Isaiah replies: Those that are weaned from the milk (that is from satisfaction) and drawn away from the breasts (from particular knowledge and apprehensions) [Is. 28:9].”
— St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love
Meditatio
Contemplation is a gift bestowed — a state of unearned grace, a mystery unfolded, a presence revealed. It is the Spirit ascending from within us to meet the Spirit descending upon us. Contemplation is the graced inner crucifixion of the false self, the graced resurrection of the true self, and the graced ascension of the whole self into God — God gifting Godself to us as our very experience of and communion with God beyond our self.
We cannot think, talk, will, or work our way into contemplation. Nor can we pray our way there with rigorous discipline or voluminous discursion or petition. Contemplation is an inner longing fulfilled, but even the longing itself is the gift, for we could not desire a state of graced contemplation were it not for the Spirit within us desiring it through us. Contemplation is God communing with God within us. We are merely the handmaid who says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38, NRSVCE).
And yet, not all who are called will hear or answer the call. Some will resist it, deny it, or meet it with outright scoffing. Even the people of God could not hear Isaiah — they mocked him as fit only to teach infants. But centuries later, John of the Cross, with a silent spirit and ears to hear, could find God’s contemplative invitation hidden even within their taunt. To be weaned from satisfaction. To be drawn from the breast of particular knowledge. This is not regression. This is the posture of the handmaid, a posture only grace can awaken, but which only consent can perfect.
Oratio
Upon A Violet
like a butterfly
landing upon a violet
floating in on a warm spring breeze
your grace comes to me
delicately
hesitantly
intent to consummate me
yet so easily undone
by anything but stillness
silence
a holy God-shaped womb
awaiting its bridegroom
and maker
grace receiving grace
Contemplatio
Where is God already hovering at the edges of your awareness, waiting not to be grasped but received?
Related Scripture
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
— Romans 8:26 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Cry From The Cross: God Longs for Us as We Long for God, which explores how the longing we feel for God is itself an echo of God’s infinite longing for us — and how that mutual desire is not absence but presence, not abandonment but the deepest form of communion.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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