Christian contemplation thrown into the muddy highways of the world : encouragement : experiences : resources
In prayer, different things can happen. We might engage in petition, thanksgiving, worship, adoration, liturgy, ejaculatory prayers – or also mental prayer, meditation and contemplation. There is this thing called meditation. We might form our own thoughts, starting from a consideration of the world and of nature, starting from reflecting on and absorbing a passage …
Continue reading “John of Ávila Teaches What to do about Meditation and Contemplation”
Nothing is more necessary for churchmen as mental prayer, which should precede, accompany, and follow all our actions. Saint Charles Borromeo
Today’s first reading at Mass (Latin Rite) includes Saint Paul’s reference to the freedom of the children of God. What does that mean? Surely there are many ways to approach the topic, such as Saint Augustine’s famous sentence: “Love, and do what you want.” Is there, however, a broad, encompassing view of different kinds of freedom and …
Above all, do not give up on the Bible. Continue to read it; but of course, if you find something blocks your understanding and makes you unable to see the extraordinary bending down to us in God’s pedagogy and divine goodness, pass it over. Look in the Bible for the encounter of two persons: one, …
Do not be distressed about having to stay in bed ill and not being able to meditate, for to endure the scourging of our Lord is no less a good than to meditate. No, it is undoubtedly better to be on the cross with the Lord than to be only looking at Him. Saint Francis …
With only the virtues, even though they be supernatural, man is like an apprentice who knows fairly well what he must do but does not have the skill to do it well. Consequently, the master who is teaching him must come along from time to time, take his hand, and direct it so that the …
I feel that there is no healthier nor more nourishing spiritual fare than the Sacred Scriptures and the Fathers [of the Church]. Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
The grace of the virtues and the gifts makes the just soul, as it were, an Aeolian harp which, under the breathing of the Holy Spirit, gives forth the most harmonious sounds, the sweetest as well as the most brilliant, the most piercing as well as the most solemn. As a new leitmotif, which at first is imperceptible and …
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’ …
How often is God anointing a contemplative soul with some very delicate unguent of loving knowledge, serene, peaceful, solitary, and far withdrawn from the senses and from what is imaginable… and then along comes a spiritual director who, like a blacksmith, knows no more than how to hammer and pound with the faculties! … One …
Contemplative in the Mud 