This is a post which could easily become a historical or academic investigation, mired down in details and minutiae. I want very much to resist that. Instead, what matters to me is capturing and presenting a basic intuition that I have regarding Christian contemplative experience. Of course, without any painstaking research attached to it, and perhaps with insufficient direct experience, this could remain more of a hypothesis than a fact. But that’s the risk I take here. It’s a risk I think I might, finally, just maybe, perhaps have earned the right to take—this actually being the two thousandth post on Contemplative in the Mud. At some point you have to venture some of your own views and intuitions!

Christian contemplation is a loving experience of God, based on our knowledge and thought of him, but which prolongs itself more into love, and the presence of love, rather than conceptual or detailed, imaginative mindscapes. But we don’t do it to ourselves. To travel this far, we are moved by the Holy Spirit. The experience of Christian contemplation is a guided one. In it, we are docile. The Spirit leads. This is why it is so often repeated in the tradition that contemplation is a particular activation of “the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

Now, tradition assigns a sevenfold nature to the Gifts: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, counsel, fortitude, fear of the Lord. The first two are indisputably contemplative in orientation, the latter three indisputably active; the middle group (knowledge, piety) tends to occupy a middle ground, and there is no consensus on its status as contemplative or active. The only four of these Gifts that pertain to the present hypothesis are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and piety.

Usually, the way Christian contemplation is described accords with the Gift of Wisdom. Contemplation is a loving wisdom. It sets matters marvelously in order, like all wisdom does. Its object is God, and it is lived closeness, intimacy, with God that rearranges us and puts our desires, indeed even our thoughts, knowledge, and imaginings, in order.

But I think this is too simplistic. This presentation might have worked so long as Christian contemplation was thought to be always and only a focused experience of the divine nature or the Trinitarian persons. The problem is, though, Christian contemplation is not a uniform thing. Yes, it always has the same basic form: knowledge and love of God, simplified away from specific manipulation of concepts and imagination, launched beyond into steadier moments of Person-to-person love. But there is still variety in what we recognize today as Christian contemplation.

I think—and I think it is especially the merit of Pope Francis to have insisted on this, though perhaps somewhat less systematically than myself—that Christian contemplation is of at least four kinds: contemplation of God in his nature and Persons, contemplation of Jesus and his historical mysteries, contemplation of Christ in others, and grateful contemplation of creation. It is not one monolithic thing. It’s more like a “genus” with some “subspecies.” Or perhaps there are analogical manifestations, and the experience isn’t univocal at all. Whatever the case, not all versions of Christian contemplation can have the same relationship to the Gift of Wisdom. If they did, wouldn’t they collapse into the same thing? And if the way the Spirit led us was entirely the same, why would it produce such a wide diversity of focal points of thought and desire?

Thus my hypothesis.

Quite simply, I think that contemplation of God in his nature or in the Trinitarian persons is exactly that activation by the Spirit of his Gift of Wisdom. In a focused moment, that’s exactly what we have. But at the same time, is that all that characterizes this kind of Christian contemplation? Perhaps not. If there is something additional there in the work of the Holy Spirit, it would probably be understanding. The Gift of Understanding pertains, on most accounts, to first principles. It’s about the simplest points of reference to explain anything. There are no simpler points of reference than God in himself and his Persons. So if any other Gift is subjacent to Wisdom here, characteristic of this type of contemplation, it must be, I think, Understanding.

When it comes to the contemplation of creation in grateful reference to the Creator, I’d say that Wisdom is still present. But so, too, must be the Gift of Knowledge. This latter mode by which the Spirit renders us docile and leads us is about creatures. In a very immediate, non-theoretical, applied-to-the-things-before-us-right-now sense, we know that these creatures are not God. That they have their own value, but that it is not the value of God: this is Knowledge. In the full use of the Gifts, this knowledge is supplemented by a pious awareness that creatures are our sisters and brothers. They have the same common origin as us; we have the same Father. This is why I have said before that Francis of Assisi, with his Canticle of the Sun (e.g., “brother Sun,” “sister Moon,” “sister Mother Earth”), is a great example of the Gift of Knowledge at work with Piety. But the aspect of creaturely fraternity is not necessary for grateful contemplation of God’s works. Since the starting point of grateful contemplation of creation is created things themselves, I’d suggest that Knowledge takes the lead, and Wisdom follows, somehow subalternated to Knowledge, even though Wisdom in itself, focused on God even more directly, is in some theoretical sense better or higher.

That settles the two extremes: God in himself, creation as nature. What about the persons in between natural things and their Creator?

I think that contemplation of Jesus and contemplation of Christ in others, especially the poor and oppressed, must be submitted to the same basic necessities as the two extremes. Since God is there, either by nature or by grace, we’re talking about Wisdom. Since created things are there, we need to rely on Knowledge. Perhaps, even if we think of Christological or ecclesiological specifics, and our minds focus on, but penetrate through greater love, the mysteries of the Incarnation as such, Understanding also will be at work. Then, some first principles might be part of the structure of our contemplation. They needn’t be, I don’t think, in order to fix a loving gaze on Jesus and the members of his Body today. But they could be. Similarly, consideration of human creatures as brothers and sisters may or may not be conscious; the Gift of Piety may or may not be in play. To know and love God in others, awareness of creaturely common origin is not strictly necessary, though obviously it can alternate with or interpenetrate that experience, too.

In other words, when contemplation extends to the mysteries of Jesus and to Christ continued in history, things are complex or complicated. It’s not just Wisdom. It’s not even just Wisdom and Knowledge. It could be a threefold or fourfold activation of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, maybe Piety. It might not make sense to think about what the Spirit has done in us without reference to all three or four. In any case, the balance between Wisdom and Knowledge would seem to be more on the former here, whereas in grateful contemplation of creation, it was the other way around. I’d suggest that changing the focus from non-personal beings to persons would go along with a shift from Knowledge-with-Wisdom to Wisdom-with-Knowledge.

In short, what I’ve tried to say can be summarized with a simple diagram or table. In it, I leave out any consideration of Piety, which in this context means any supplemental, non-necessary awareness of creaturely common origin in the same Father.

The common denominator is the Gift of Wisdom, but we are not talking about a uniform experience. Each Christian contemplative style or scheme—of God himself, of Jesus, of Christ in others, of creation—is distinct. The change in focus corresponds to a change in how the Spirit moves in us; the objective target changes, so does subjective side. This, at any rate, is my hypothesis for personal “research.” I think it helps make a lot of sense out of things. It preserves the common concern with the Gift of Wisdom for Christian contemplation. But it openly embraces the whole gamut of experience: contemplation of God himself, of Jesus, of Christ in others, and of creation, experienced in gratitude. And it embraces all this from within traditional understanding of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit itself.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned in this Season of Creation, it is to take all four types of Christian contemplation seriously, and to try, with whatever does remain in my power and preparation, to let them flow freely among one another, particularly with creation, contemplated in gratitude, as an anchor for the other three. The Wisdom that touches God in love and gratitude is like the lynchpin that allows us to swap in and out of contemplating the Creator, the gaze of Jesus for creation, and the vulnerable members of Christ today, while the ground itself is the earth, touched first with Knowledge. Precisely, I think, because Wisdom is the secondary, not primary, note in grateful contemplation of God’s creation, when the Spirit blows a little differently and leans into Wisdom as now the primary note, any of the other three Christian contemplations could emerge as what’s entered into, depending on the new preponderance of the Gifts of Knowledge and Understanding in a secondary role, and on our objects of thought (God, Jesus, others).

If my hypothesis makes sense, that is well. Far better still than understanding Christian contemplation is to do it—or rather, to have it be done in us.