Some time ago, a reader wrote a comment about Pope Francis below one of my blog posts. The information was false and slanderous. Evidently, she had gotten her daily hysteria from one of the “news” outlets that has made it their task to, as the Holy Father has said, do “the work of the devil.” I don’t necessarily pay close attention to all the comments here, so it took quite some time before I saw it, but when did, I just deleted that part of her reply (leaving the rest intact), and wrote, “Sorry, we don’t culture-war against the Holy Father here. Comment deleted. Have a good day.” It occurs to me that I actually have quite a bit more to say than that.
In the past eight years, there has been a heart-wrenching ideological move in the Anglophone sphere, as well as in Italy, against the Pope. This isn’t a blog about Church politics, so I don’t get into the details of anything like that here. Nor is this a blog where Ignatian spirituality is dominant, so I don’t use much language on the discernment of spirits (though I have a growing appreciation for it). But if I am going to revive this blog, or let it be revived by God and readers, I think it is vitally important that I say something on this topic.
There are a few points that are immediately relevant to what this blog has always been about.
First, there is the matter of docility to the Spirit. The traditional Catholic view of contemplation, and I daresay the only one that makes any sense, is that Christian contemplation is a work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is actually not something we can produce, even with habitual grace in us. Contemplative prayer is a movement of the Spirit. In that sense, while we have to have used all the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and really want to use them as we can, when the Spirit seizes us, it is the gifts of the Holy Spirit—especially the more contemplative, less active ones of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding—that are predominant. All that is to say, in Christian contemplation, we are led. We’re not leading.
There is that great word in the First Letter of John: “those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 Jn 4:20 NRSV). Well, I think the principle goes to the specific matter of docility too. If you do not have docility to the work of the Spirit you can see, how can you have docility to the work of the Spirit that you can’t see? For anyone who is Catholic—the situation is obviously significantly different for non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians—the work of the Spirit that we can see is around the successor of Peter. There is, of course, a lot of work that is not visible. That’s indisputable, and it is, actually, the major life-giving source for the vast majority of people on this planet today and even vaster numbers of people who have existed before us. But for the Catholic, there is a life-giving spring that we can see. It makes no sense to want the Spirit to work contemplation in us and then shun docility to the Holy Father here in what he shows as his clear will and general intent for the Church. It is psychologically improbable, if not impossible, to leave intact the conditions for contemplative prayer while personally getting involved in setting fire to our docility to visible structures of the Church.
The second thing that I’d note is that, actually, there has been no pope who has put contemplation on the muddy roads of this world as effectively and forthrightly as Pope Francis. In fact, I daresay there is no pope who has ever had a more clear-sighted, revolutionary, illuminating, and far-reaching idea of what contemplation is, in all its varieties (not just on the road or in the mud). What Pope Francis is is first of all a spiritual theologian. He is plunged into different traditions of spirituality. And we have a pope who has given contemplation of Christ in others its due.
More particularly, I have, I think, started to show that it is actually the two most ideologically maligned documents of the Holy Father which are the most fruitful for contemplative life in the world. The apostolic exhortations that followed the synods on the family and the Amazon region, Amoris Laetitia and Querida Amazonia, are utter jewels of Christian spirituality, particularly contemplation of Christ in others. The fact of the matter is, these are, so far, the key documents of the magisterium for this site. If that bothers you because of ideological motivations surrounding Amoris Laetitia or the synod on Amazonia, then your spiritual life is going to struggle, even suffer. The Church is going to move forward with what Pope Francis has laid out regarding contemplation of Christ in others, but you’re going to dry up the well on your property. If this blog’s mission is true, then Amoris Laetitia and Querida Amazonia are key documents to get spiritual nourishment from. If your heart is poisoned against them, what next?
Finally, though, I would simply point out that contemplation (of God or of Christ in others) could only ever be with great difficulty and with stochastic intermittency compatible with an attachment to slander, particularly about the people God has given us to guide us and help us, or to rush to declare that the problem is with other people, not our own ideologically blinkered ability to understand. It is incompatible with being hyped up with anger. Now, this is quite different from the matter of justice, social justice particularly, towards the less fortunate. In fact, it is first of all Jesus in the person in need that is the subject of contemplation of Christ in others. We do get angry about lack of justice towards the needy, the downtrodden, and the excluded. And we can contemplate Christ in the oppressor when we connect this to our love which is “seeking ways to make him cease his oppression” and “stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others” (Fratelli Tutti 241). But this is at the antipodes of getting hyped up with anger directed at a person who has made it his program to contemplate Christ in others and centre the presence of Christ in the needy, the downtrodden, and the peripheries. It should be obvious, I would hope, that these are two roads that lead in two opposite directions.
I do, however, agree with some things that this reader said, and I would like to end with them: “Contemplation is the biggest spiritual weapon of the Church against Satan. God will always have contemplatives — either in houses or in the world.” And: “Much like hiding Christ in Nazareth from Herod, God hides contemplatives in the lowest places.” The thing is, though, that boisterous ideological screeching that targets a man who is, not only pope, but perhaps, after our Lord himself, history’s greatest promoter of contemplation of Christ in others, is definitely not the lowest place, nor the way to deal a blow to the evil spirit, who, in fact, would love for us to abandon docility as a lived value and to drown in such chaos.
Contemplative in the Mud 
Amen!
Thanks Ben!