We all know the phrase, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles 1:9). With Christian contemplation, it’s very much true. There’s nothing new to be had.

We don’t need to go searching for newfangled “methods” of prayer or meditation. We don’t need to get spiritual “feels” or those rapturous experiences reported about the great mystics. We don’t need anything big and seemingly marvellous like this.

We need only Christ. Christ is eternal and eternally new, and that is the only newness we need. God gave us Christ, says Saint John of the Cross, and so he has nothing else to give.

In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say. (Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, c. 22, n. 3)

Were we to ask for more than God’s everything, who is Christ,  then we would be impertinent. And we certainly wouldn’t get what we asked for. To ask for more than everything is silly, and that divine-human everything is waiting there for us.

Saint Teresa says something very similar:

We do not require extraordinary favours from the Lord before we can achieve this [union of wills with him]. He has given us all we need in giving us His Son to show us the way. (Interior Castle, V, c. 3)

Everything is there in Jesus, because Jesus is God and Jesus is himself the Way (Jn 14:6).

Those of us who are interested in reading the lives of the saints and the writings of mystics probably need to be reminded of this from time to time. ^^