Christian contemplation thrown into the muddy highways of the world : encouragement : experiences : resources
Yesterday, Pope Francis met with members of the Discalced Carmelite nuns and superiors who were gathered together with the purpose of revising their Constitutions. The remarks that he made are worth highlighting, at least in part. The Holy Father opens with a concern to “give greater impetus to the contemplative life” lived in the cloister …
Continue reading “Pope Francis’ Remarks on Contemplation to Discalced Carmelite Nuns”
Blessed John Soreth was a Carmelite of the fifteenth century who wrote an important commentary on the rule of that order. In it, he gives what I think is a good synthesis of a lot of pre-modern thought on Christian contemplation. I owe my knowledge of this summary to Saint Titus Brandsma: This treatment of …
Continue reading “John Soreth’s Three Loci of Contemplation in Perspective Today”
Today in Rome Pope Francis has canonized Elizabeth Catez, also known as Elizabeth of the Trinity, a discalced Carmelite nun who lived in Dijon almost contemporaneously with Thérèse in Lisieux. Of course, Elizabeth, who is a favourite of myself and I’m sure many others on this blog, has been a saint for a long time …
Regular readers may be familiar with the fact that this blog seems to ignore most issues in world politics, Catholic politics, world news, Catholic news, and so on. I don’t think this is unintentional. But at the same time, I have difficulty explaining what that intention is. I have always had a problem with major …
Continue reading “Keep the Positive and the Constructive in the Foreground”
Since the virtues find their ultimate perfection in the gifts, and the gifts reach their perfect actuation in contemplation, it results that contemplation is ordinary ‘way’ of sanctity and of habitually heroic virtue. An approved conclusion of the Carmelite (Teresian) Congress of Madrid (1923)
What is it about contemplation that defines it? It’s a simple view, above any particular reasoning or imagining, penetrating but perhaps dark, of a deep reality known deep inside us, not superficially. And that’s well and good. But is there a word for it in the Scriptures? The realities of contemplation variously appear in the …
Continue reading “To Stand Before the Face of the Living God”
In a footnote in one of Father Garrigou-Lagrange’s books (it doesn’t matter which one), he quotes a letter written to him by a novice mistress at a French Carmelite convent. She talks about practical experience with novices as regards meditation and contemplation; or, since contemplation coincides with the onset of Saint John of the Cross’ …
Older literature, especially in the Dominican and Carmelite schools, emphasized the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit to a degree that is not so common nowadays. What was the reason for emphasizing these Gifts? And what benefits and distinctions and general understandings can we draw from retreading that path? These are the questions that will …
Continue reading “The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Active and Contemplative Life”
I’m pretty sure this blog is a smorgasbord of contemplative life in the Church. So I checked: here are some of the major influences, by Congregation (or other): Benedictine: Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Raïssa Maritain (oblate) Carmelite: Teresa of Jesus, John of the Cross, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Elizabeth of …
Towards the end of last year, the International Theological Commission submitted a “study of the theme of the status of theology”: Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria. Early this year, after approval by William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the study was officially published. As in all things, the task of the Commission …
Continue reading “Theology in the Contemplative Life (Notes on an ITC Study)”
Contemplative in the Mud 