Earlier this week, Vatican News ran a story saying that Pope Francis will, this year and in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee, open up a school of prayer:
The Pope himself, during this year, they announced, will set up a “School of Prayer.”
“This School,” Archbishop Fisichella explained, “will be a series of moments of encounter with specific groups of people to pray together and better understand the various forms of prayer: from thanksgiving to intercession; from contemplative prayer to the prayer of consolation; from adoration to supplication.”
Upon hearing this, what first struck my mind is that this is a brilliant idea. Immediately thereafter, I wondered how exactly it would be set up and what its regional imprint will be. Will it be Rome-based? Will it travel? Could people attend online? Following these questions, it occurred to me that this seems to be a very practical school. It sounds hands-on and interactive, which is obviously a necessary thing to grow in our Christian life of prayer.
Regardless, this is a story to watch closely as the year goes on. I am quite excited for where this “School of Prayer” heads.
In the meantime, though, I have started to think about what I have, for several years, considered to be a masterclass in prayer: Pope Francis’ 38 catecheses at the Wednesday General Audiences, from to May 6, 2020, to June 16, 2021. Starting with the mystery of prayer, moving through various Old Testament figures of prayer such as Abraham and David, then considering the prayer of Jesus, Mary, and the early Church, the series finally came to a series talks based on different kinds of prayer (e.g., intercession, praise, meditation). At the end, some more general themes like perseverance and the Paschal prayer of Christ rounded out the series.
In the middle the catecheses on various types of prayer, there is one on contemplative prayer (May 5, 2021). I thought I’d take a look at this in detail. This is a masterclass in explaining Christian contemplation in a short, generally accessible talk.
A contemplative dimension
The contemplative dimension of the human being — which is not yet contemplative prayer — is a bit like the “salt” of life: it gives flavour, it seasons our day. We can contemplate by gazing at the sun that rises in the morning, or at the trees that deck themselves out in spring green; we can contemplate by listening to music or to the sounds of the birds, reading a book, gazing at a work of art or at that masterpiece that is the human face…. When Carlo Maria Martini was sent to be Bishop of Milan, he entitled his first Pastoral Letter The contemplative dimension of life: the truth is that those who live in a large city, where everything — we might say — is artificial and where everything is functional, risk losing the capacity to contemplate. First of all to contemplate is not a way of doing, but a way of being. To be contemplative.
Pope Francis’ first paragraph tells us that there is something within us that marks one “dimension” in our being. It’s a contemplative dimension, and this is distinct from contemplation as a form of Christian prayer. This calls to mind the phrase “our God-given aesthetic and contemplative sense” (Querida Amazonia 56), which seems to express the Holy Father’s conviction that there is a capacity within us that is both contemplative and beauty-targeted, and thus that contemplation looks at the beauty of something.
There is nothing distinctly prayerful about our contemplative dimension, says the Pope in this catechesis. And the examples he gives bear that out. We can contemplate nature, our common home, in its various aspects. We can contemplate works of art. We can contemplate what we find in a human face. In each of these cases, it seems clear to me that Pope Francis is talking about things that we call beautiful or look at in an aesthetic experience. Without using the same words as in the apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia, he is expressing the same idea. The “contemplative dimension” is “our God-given aesthetic and contemplative sense.”
Looking at the examples the Pope gives, it is clear that being contemplative is not an “activity.” We are not active and doing things when we contemplate the sun, a book, or a face. We’re not exactly passive either. Care should likewise be taken to make it sound like we’re doing nothing. What is most characteristic of contemplation is that it describe a way of being. It expresses an attitude. It tells us about a dimension of our humanity that is engaged and realized, either at a specific time, or lying dormant and waiting for a new moment to regard the world contemplatively.
A matter of the heart
And being contemplative does not depend on the eyes, but on the heart. And here prayer enters into play as an act of faith and love, as the “breath” of our relationship with God. Prayer purifies the heart and, with it, it also sharpens our gaze, allowing it to grasp reality from another point of view. The Catechism describes this transformation of the heart, which prayer effects, by citing a famous testimony of the Holy Curé of Ars who said this: “Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. ‘I look at him and he looks at me’: this is what a certain peasant of Ars in the time of his holy curé used to say while praying before the tabernacle…. The light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2715). Everything comes from this: from a heart that feels that it is looked on with love. Then reality is contemplated with different eyes.
Pope Francis’ second paragraph focuses on where this “contemplative dimension” is situated. It is not about externals. It’s about the heart (cf. “not with the eye but with the heart,” in, e.g., Thérèse of Lisieux, Ms A, 47v). When we say “the heart,” this doesn’t mean the mind, but rather the whole person with all our inclinations. Among those inclinations when it comes to the contemplation that is prayer are that of faith, alongside that of love. Both are directional. Faith aims at the God who is trusted. Love does also.
The mention of faith alongside love is, I think, important. As I have commented before, I think that Pope Francis roots his idea of contemplation in Charles de Foucauld’s idea of prayer as knowing God (in faith) and loving him at the same time. This is why it makes our heart purer and also sharpens our understanding with the mind’s eye. It simplifies the two into one action. And when we know something and are drawn to it as an end to respect in itself, we appreciate its beauty. Thus, the ideas all come together. Contemplation is knowing and loving at once. Knowing and loving, while respecting the proper constitution of what or whom is known and loved, means appreciating beauty. These are, I think, the Holy Father’s implicit notions about contemplative prayer.
Subjectively speaking, it is important to remark that in the moment of contemplation, we have “a heart that feels that it is looked on with love.” There is a feeling of the unification of the two operations of knowledge and love in ourselves, and there is also knowledge that the same beauty-seeking, gentle, contemplative gaze is directed back at us by God.
Similarly, it is important to note that we don’t exceed boundaries or make the object of our loving gaze into a tool or a means to another end (cf. the word “functional” in the previous paragraph). God does not do that to us, and we do not do that to him. We have to respect the proper constitution of the thing or person contemplated. Amoris Laetitia goes to great lengths to clarify this in a lengthy meditation on “the aesthetic experience… which contemplates other persons as ends in themselves” (AL 127–129). With the contemplation that is prayer, i.e., contemplative gaze towards God, by faith and in the same Love that is his nature, we are definitely in the realm of Persons as ends in themselves.
Relative silence
“I look at him and he looks at me!”. It is like this: loving contemplation, typical of the most intimate prayer, does not need many words. A gaze is enough. It is enough to be convinced that our life is surrounded by an immense and faithful love that nothing can ever separate us from.
The third paragraph in this masterclass tells us that “the most intimate prayer” ends in contemplation, at least typically. It establishes that, while not necessarily required of everyone, it is a reasonable expectation or aspiration in general. Our own personal realities may get in the way. Our situation is complex. But of itself, intimate prayer with God leads in this direction.
The direction, notably, is relatively quiet. It needs few words. When we have enough knowledge or have done enough things together with another person, we don’t have a compulsion to constantly chatter or do something new. We can simply rest. And when the moment itself extends into an appreciation for the beauty of the person as an end in themselves, we would want to sit there in appreciation.
Jesus the contemplative
Jesus was a master of this gaze. His life never lacked the time, space, silence, the loving communion that allows one’s existence not to be devastated by the inevitable trials, but to maintain beauty intact. His secret was his relationship with his heavenly Father.
This paragraph stands out first for the fact that, in Jesus’ life, there was time for contemplative prayer and all the conditions that help to facilitate it. But on closer inspection, it says something else, too. It gives the game away. There’s that special particular word that, up until now, I have been introducing into the discussion: beauty.
Beauty is connected to contemplation. Of course, we already knew that. Querida Amazonia and Amoris Laetitia make that abundantly clear. But finally, in this catechesis, Pope Francis has smuggled the thought in by the back door. Ah yes, when Jesus keeps alive certain dispositions and often-helpful conditions for contemplative prayer with his Father, he manages “to maintain beauty intact.”
Transfiguration
Let us think about the Transfiguration. The Gospels place this episode at the critical point of Jesus’ mission when opposition and rejection were mounting all around him. Even among his disciples, many did not understand him and left him; one of the Twelve harboured traitorous thoughts. Jesus began to speak openly of the suffering and death that awaited him in Jerusalem. It is in this context that Jesus climbs up a high mountain with Peter, James and John. The Gospel of Mark says: “He was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them” (9:2-3). Right at the moment in which Jesus is not understood — they were going away, they were leaving him alone because they did not understand him — in this moment that he is misunderstood, just when everything seems to become blurred in a whirlwind of misunderstanding, that is where a divine light shines. It is the light of the Father’s love that fills the Son’s heart and transfigures his entire Person.
This paragraph connects Christian contemplation to the Transfiguration. This is, interestingly, also one of the directions taken in a papal book preface that was published last week. Reading the texts side by side could be illustrative.
Action and contemplation
Some spiritual masters of the past understood contemplation as opposed to action, and exalted those vocations that flee from the world and its problems to dedicate themselves entirely to prayer. In reality, in Jesus Christ, in his person and in the Gospel, there is no opposition between contemplation and action. No. In the Gospel and in Jesus there is no contradiction. This may have come from the influence of some Neoplatonic philosopher but it surely has to do with a dualism that is not part of the Christian message.
This is a paragraph dear to everything I’ve tried to write about on this blog. Action and contemplation are not opposed. As I’ve said recently, there’s no point trying to be more Catholic than the pope and more contemplative than a Carmelite. In one Christian life, both action and contemplation are possible. In fact, they feed into one another. They’re stuck in a positive feedback loop. More of one gives you more of the other, and the cycle continues in a spiral towards better and better realization of our human capacities and divine call. Contemplation is not just for the cloister. It’s also for the roads—these muddy roads.
Ecclesial value
There is only one great call in the Gospel, and it is that of following Jesus on the way of love. This is the summit and it is the centre of everything. In this sense, charity and contemplation are synonymous; they say the same thing. Saint John of the Cross believed that a small act of pure love is more useful to the Church than all the other works combined. What is born of prayer and not from the presumption of our ego, what is purified by humility, even if it is a hidden and silent act of love, is the greatest miracle that a Christian can perform. And this is the path of contemplative prayer: I look at him and he looks at me. This act of love in silent dialogue with Jesus does so much good for the Church.
At the end of the catechesis on Christian contemplative prayer, the Holy Father tells us that, in the final analysis, “charity and contemplation are synonymous; they say the same thing.” This makes sense if the contemplative gaze is a loving gaze, and the love with which we love is the very Love of God himself. In that case, contemplation and charity go together and speak the same words.
These last words show Pope Francis referencing John of the Cross. The Mystical Doctor says that the smallest bit of pure contemplative love is more useful to the Church than all works put together (Spiritual Canticle 29.2).[1] How can this, though, be true? How can a little bit of concentrated love in prayer do that much good for the Church? The answer lies, I suppose, in the “Church’s ‘heart burning with love’” (C’est la Confiance 41; cf. Thérèse of Lisieux, Ms B, 3v). Love is what the Heart pumps. If we love, just the tiniest bit, like Thérèse, who would be love in the heart of the Church (cf. CLC 39), then we will pump some of that blood, which goes to where it needs to go, by the supernatural workings of the Mystical Body and the Communion of Saints. This is a great mystery.
A masterclass—but just one of the many we could check out from the 38 catechesis in the 2020–2021 series on prayer, and this remains, of course, a good reason to pay attention to whatever the “School of Prayer” ends up being in the coming months, as we prepare for the coming Jubilee Year.
[1] The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 3rd ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2017), 587.
Contemplative in the Mud 
Excellent.