Documents

Recovering the Contemplative

Dimension
Fr. Paul Murray, OP

Talk to the General Chapter of the Dominican Order

(Providence, Rhode Island, July 2001)

At the moment of reception into the Order of

Preachers, each one of us was asked the
question: "What do you seek?", and we
Last update :
2001-07-23
replied: "The mercy of God and your mercy".
Finding myself here, this morning, at a General
Chapter's e-mail Chapter of the Order, about to speak to you on
the subject of contemplation, I am conscious,
as almost never before, of my own limitations,
and of my great need, therefore, for my
brothers' forbearance and compassion. I am still, God knows, a
mere novice in the life of prayer and contemplation. And this talk
is, I have no doubt, the most difficult I will ever be asked to give.
So I ask you straight out, my brothers, to have compassion on me,
and on my words, as I begin.

A great fidelity to the life of prayer and contemplation has been a

distinguishing mark of many of our best-known Dominican
preachers and saints. But, within the Church, at least until
recently, the Order has generally been noted more for its
intellectual prowess than for its contemplative zeal. Today,
however, all that is beginning to change. There are now widely
available, for example, more translations than ever before of the
writings of people like Johannes Tauler, Catherine of Siena, Henry
Suso, and Meister Eckhart. And St Thomas Aquinas, who was
always revered as a dogmatic theologian within the Church, is now
being regarded also, by many people, as a spiritual master.

So it would seem that, all of a sudden, we have an opportunity to

allow the contemplative dimension of our tradition to speak with a
profound and impressive authority to a new generation. But our
own immediate task, and no doubt the reason for this talk this
morning, is to allow that tradition to speak first of all to ourselves,
here and now, and to allow it to address not only our hearts and
our minds but also the way in which we live our lives as preachers.

Of course, all of us here are indebted to the witness of our own

Dominican contemplative sisters. I know I am more indebted than
I can say to the community of sisters at Siena Convent in
Droheda, Ireland. And some of you, if not all of you, will be aware
that a full acknowledgment of the sisters' contemplative witness
and support has already been given by Master Timothy in his most
recent letter to the Order.

Not all forms of contemplation, it has to be said, have been

affirmed by our Dominican forbears. In fact, in the Vitae Fratrum,
there has survived a vivid account of one unfortunate friar, who
very nearly lost his faith from too much "contemplation"! In similar
vein, Humbert of Romans, in his long treatise on preaching, openly
complains about those people whose "sole passion is for
contemplation". These men seek out, he says, "a hidden life of
quiet" or "a retired place for contemplation", and then refuse "to
respond to the summons to be useful to others by preaching".

It is worth noting here, in passing, that the word "contemplation",

in these early Dominican texts, does not possess the rather
esoteric and high mystical character which it would later acquire in
the sixteenth century. The word, it is true, can sometimes be
linked with the notions of recollection and retirement, but it tends
to have a much more plain and down-to-earth connotation. Often
it can mean, in fact, little more than a simple act of attention or
prayerful study. (In modern times, to add to the confusion, we
tend to use the word "contemplation" as a basic synonym for
prayer itself.)

Now obviously Humbert of Romans is not intending, in any way, to

set up as contraries to one another the life of prayer and the life of
preaching. "Since human effort can achieve nothing without the
help of God", he writes, "the most important thing of all for a
preacher is that he should have recourse to prayer". But the life of
prayer and contemplation, which Humbert of Romans and the
early Dominicans would recommend, the contemplation which is
the focus also of the present paper, is one which would compel us,
in Humbert's fine phrase, to "come out into the open", compel us,
that is, to set about the task of preaching.

To begin our reflections, I suggest we look first not to one of the

most famous texts from our tradition, but to a text by an
anonymous French Dominican of the thirteenth century. The
passage in question I found hidden away in a large biblical
commentary on The Book of Apoclapyse which for centuries had
been attributed to Aquinas. The work is now judged, however, to
have been composed by a Dominican équipe working at St Jacques
in Paris under the general supervision of the Dominican, Hugh of
St Cher, between the years 1240 to 1244. Although a major part
of the commentary makes for rather dull reading, certain pasages
in the work are composed with a clarity and force that remind one
at times of the work of the modern French contemplative, Simone
Weil. In one such passage our Dominican author notes that among
the things "a man ought to see in contemplation", and ought "to
write in the book of his heart", are "the needs of his neighbours":

He ought to see in contemplation what he would like to have done

for himself, if he were in such need, and how great is the
weakness of every human being...Understand from what you know
about yourself the condition of your neighbour. ("Intellige ex te
ipso quae sunt proximi tui.") And what you see in Christ and in the
world and in your neighbour, write that in your heart.

These lines are memorable for the compassionate attention they

give to the neighbour in the context of contemplation. But I would
like to think as well that their emphasis on true self-knowledge,
and their simple openness to Christ, to the neighbour, and to the
world, strike a distinctly Dominican note. The passage ends with a
simple but impressive reference to the task of preaching. We are
exhorted by our author first of all to understand ourselves and be
attentive to all that we see in the world around us and in our
neighbour, and to reflect deep within our hearts on the things that
we have observed. But then we are told to go out and preach:
"First see, then write, then send...What is needed first is study,
then reflection within the heart, and then preaching."

The remainder of my talk will be divided into three sections:

1. Contemplation: A Vision of Christ
2. Contemplation: A Vision of the World
3. Contemplation: A Vision of the Neighbour

Contemplation: A Vision of Christ

If you raise the subject of contemplation, for many people the first
name that comes to mind is that of the Spanish Carmelite and
mystic, St John of the Cross. But it is not the Carmelite John I
want to talk about here. Instead, I would like to consider, for a
moment, a much less known spiritual author, a man whose name,
by coincidence, was exactly the same as that of the celebrated
Juan de la Cruz. But this other John, this less known John of the
Cross, this other spiritual author of the sixteenth century, was in
fact a Dominican.

By the time Juan de la Cruz, the Dominican, published his major

work, the Diálogo, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the life
of prayer or contemplation had come to be regarded, in many
parts of Europe, as a rather daunting and highly specialized
activity. There was a real risk, therefore, that a whole generation
of people might begin to lose contact with the robust simplicity of
the Gospel, and might even cease to find encouragement in the
teaching of Christ himself concerning prayer. What I find
impressive about the work of Juan de la Cruz, the Dominican, is
the way he exposed, as exaggerated, the emphasis in that period
on the need for special interior experiences, and the way also in
which he defended simple vocal prayer, and underlined the
importance, in spiritual transformation, of the ordinary, everyday
struggle, on the part of the Christian, to live a life of virtue.
In his Diálogo, Juan de la Cruz was clearly determined to challenge
those among his contemporaries who, in their writings, tended to
exalt prayer almost beyond human reach, and who spoke of
contemplation in a decidedly elitist and exclusive spirit.
Accordingly, with the salt of the Gospel in his words - and with a
kind of sharp humour -
the Dominican asserted: "If indeed only contemplatives, in the
strict sense of the word, can attain to heaven, then, as for myself,
I would have to say what the Emperor Constantine replied to
Bishop Acesius, who had shown himself to be extremely rigid at
the Council of Nicea: 'Take your ladder, and climb up to heaven by
your own means if you're able' because the rest of us - we're
nothing but sinners"!

This sharp and vivid reply reminds me of a no less vivid and also
amusing comment made by an elderly Dominican of this Province
of St Joseph. He was affectionately known, I understand, as Father
"Buzz". He came from Memphis, Tennessee. On one occasion, not
feeling very well, he went to visit his doctor, who said to him: "I'm
afraid, Father, the best thing you can do now is to give up drinking
alcohol completely". To which the Dominican replied: "Doctor, I'm
not worthy of the best. What's the second best?"

Behind the invective or sharp humour of the Dominican, Juan de la

Cruz, there is an important statement being made. And it is this:
prayer or contemplation is not something that can be achieved by
mere human effort, however well-intentioned or however
strenuous. Prayer is a grace. It is a gift that lifts us beyond
anything we ourselves could ever attain by ascetic practice or by
meditative technique. Accordingly, communion with God, actual
friendship with God in prayer, although impossible even for the
strong, is something God himself can achieve for us in a second, if
he wishes. "Sometimes", a thirteenth century Dominican homily
makes bold to declare, "a man is in a state of damnation before he
begins his prayer, and before he is finished he is in a state of
salvation"!

The preacher of this homily, William Peraldus, in answer to the

question "why everyone ought to be glad to learn how to pray",
says something which we almost never hear stated three centuries
later. For, by that time, as I have already indicated, prayer in its
most authentic form, was generally thought to be something very
difficult to achieve. But Peraldus the Dominican states, without the
least hesitation or self-consciousness: "prayer is such an easy
job"!

This statement may, perhaps, sound naïve. But it draws its

authority, I believe, from the Gospel itself. For, is it not the case
that, in the Gospel, we are encouraged by Christ to pray with great
simplicity of heart and straightforwardness? When, over the years,
Dominicans have found themselves confronted with detailed
methods and techniques of meditation, and with long lists of
instructions of what to do in meditation, and what not to do, their
reaction has almost always been the same: they instinctively feel
that something has gone wrong.
The reaction of Bede Jarrett, for example, is typical. In one place
he notes, with real regret, how on occasion prayer can become
"reduced to hard and fast rules", and can be so "mapped-out and
regimented" that "it hardly seems at all to be the language of the
heart". When this happens, in the memorable words of Jarrett, "All
adventure has gone, all the personal touches, and all the
contemplation. We are too worried and harassed to think of God.
The instructions are so detailed and insistent that we forget what
we are trying to learn. As a consequence, we get bored and so no
doubt does God."

St Teresa of Avila, writing on one occasion on the subject of

prayer, makes quite a remarkable confession. She says that "some
books on the subject of prayer" that she was reading, encouraged
her to set aside, as a positive hindrance, "the thought of Christ's
humanity". Teresa tried to follow this path for a while, but she
soon realized that a prayer-life which excluded Christ was at least
as much mistaken as it was mystical! I mention these facts here,
because it is instructive to note the reaction of another Dominican
of the sixteenth century, the down-to-earth Thomist, Francisco de
Vitoria, to this sort of abstract mysticism. Vitoria writes:

There is a new kind of contemplation, which is practiced by the

monks these days, consisting of meditating on God and the
angels. They spend a long time in a state of elevation, thinking
nothing. This is, no doubt, very good, but I do not find much about
it in scripture, and it is, honestly, not what the saints recommend.
Genuine contemplation is reading the bible and the study of true
wisdom.

That last statement from Vitoria betrays, if I am not mistaken, the

direct influence of St Dominic. Dominic, as you know well, never
composed for his brethren any kind of devotional or spiritual text
or testament. He was a preacher first and last, not a writer. And
yet, even at this distance in time, there are available to us within
the tradition a surprising number of details concerning his way of
prayer and contemplation. One reason for this is Dominic's own
extraordinary temperament. He possessed an exuberance of
nature that, far from being suppressed by the life of prayer and
contemplation, seems in fact to have been wonderfully awakened
and released. He was a man, as Cardinal Villot once remarked,
"stupefyingly free". At prayer in particular he could hardly, it
seems, contain himself. Often he would cry out to God at the top
of his voice. As a result, even his private prayer was a kind of open
book to his brethren. At night, when he was alone in the church,
his voice would often be heard echoing throughout the entire
convent.

So Dominic prays with all that he is - body and soul. He prays

privately with intense and humble devotion. And, with that same
deep faith and profound emotion, he prays in public the prayer of
the Mass. Although the intensity of Dominic's faith and feeling may
be unusual, as well as the extraordinary length of his night vigils,
for the rest his prayer seems indistinguishable from that of any
ordinary devout Christian man or woman. His prayer is never in
any way esorteric. It is always simple, always ecclesial.
One of the great merits, in my view, of the Dominican
contemplative tradition is its dogged resistance to the esoteric
aura or spiritual glamour that tends to surround the subject of
contemplation. The well-known preacher in the English province,
the Northern Irishman Vincent McNabb, for example, with
characteristic good humour, liked now and again to bring the
subject of contemplation back down from the high clouds of
mysticism to the plain earth of Gospel truth. Concerning the
question of prayer, for example, as presented in the parable of the
Pharisee and the Publican, McNabb writes:

The Publican did not know he was justified. If you had asked him,
"Can you pray?" he would have said, "No, I cannot pray. I was
thinking of asking the Pharisee. He seems to know all about it. I
could only say I was a sinner. My past is so dreadful. I cannot
imagine myself praying. I am better at stealing."

In The Nine Ways of Prayer, we are afforded a glimpse of St

Dominic himself repeating the Publican's prayer while lying down
prostrate on the ground before God. "His heart", we are told,
"would be pricked with compunction, and he would blush at
himself and say, sometimes loudly enough for it actually to be
heard, the words from the Gospel, 'Lord, be merciful to me, a
sinner'."

Without exception I find that, in the prayer-lives of the Dominican

preachers I most admire, there is always something of that
common neediness, and that Gospel simplicity. When at prayer,
these preachers are not afraid to speak to God directly, as to a
friend. But always they return instinctively to the straightforward
Gospel prayer of petition. Here is Aquinas, for example:

I come before you as a sinner, O God, Source of all mercy. I am

unclean, I beseech you to cleanse me. O Sun of Justice, give sight
to a blind man...O King of Kings, clothe one who is destitute.
..............................................................................

Almighty, everlasting God you see that I am coming to the

sacrament of your only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. I come to it as
a sick man to the life-giving healer, as one unclean to the source
of mercy...as one who is poor and destitute to the Lord of heaven
and earth.

The words of this prayer are prayed in deep poverty of spirit. But
the prayer is said with utter confidence all the same. And why?
Because the words of the prayer are Gospel words, and because
Christ, the life-giving healer and source of mercy, is at its center.

Contemplation: A Vision of the World

In some religious traditions, the contemplative life implied an

almost complete turning away from the world, and in the case of
certain ascetic religious, of a rejection not only of their immediate
family and friends, but also of people in general, or at least those
who appeared to be dominated by weakness or by worldly passion.
Fortunately, however, the impulse towards contemplation in the
lives of our best-known Dominican preachers and saints, was
never characterized by that sort of rigid, judgmental attitude.

A good example, I think, of the Dominican approach, is that short

statement already quoted above by the anonymous Dominican
friar writing at St Jacques in Paris in the thirteenth century:
"Among the things a man ought to see in contemplation", he
wrote, "are the needs of his neighbours", and also "how great is
the weakness of every human being". So the authentic
contemplative in our tradition, the authentic apostle, does not call
down curses on the sinful world. But, instead, conscious of his or
her own weakness, and humbly identified, therefore, with the
world's need, the Dominican calls down a blessing.

In an unusually striking moment in The Dialogue of St Catherine of

Siena, the saint is asked by God the Father to lift up her eyes to
him so that he might demonstrate, in some way, the extent of his
passionate care for the whole world. "Look at my hand", the Father
says to her. When Catherine does this, she sees at once - and the
vision must have astonished her - the entire world being somehow
held up and enclosed in God's hand. Then, the Father says to her:
"My daughter, see now and know that no-one can be taken away
from me…They are mine. I created them and I love them ineffably.
And so, in spite of their wickedness, I will be merciful to them…and
I will grant what you have asked me with such love and sorrow".

What is immediately obvious from this account is that Catherine's

passionate devotion to the world does not spring simply from the
instinct of a generous heart. No - it is something grounded also in
a profound theological vision and understanding. And this fact
holds true for other Dominicans as well. The vision of Thomas
Aquinas, for example, has been characterized by the German
Thomist, Josef Pieper, as nothing less than a theologically-founded
"worldliness"! This statement may at first surprise us. But,
properly understood, a similar assertion can, I think, be made, not
only about Catherine's vision, but also about the vision of Dominic
himself.

My favourite image of St Dominic, is one

painted on wood, which can be seen in
Bologna. It records "the miracle of bread",
which, according to tradition, took place at
the convent of Santa Maria alla Mascerella.
In this medieval work, Dominic's
contemplative identity is indicated by the
black capuce over his head. But the man
we see before us is, first and last, "vir evangelicus", a man "in
personna Christi", surrounded by his brethren, and seated at a
table, a meal, which as well as recalling "the miracle of bread", at
once suggests a communal and liturgical life, a real eucharistic
fellowship. His look is one of extraordinary candour. And his
physical presence gives the impression of a man of robust
simplicity, a man entirely at ease with himself and with the world
around him. In all of medieval iconography, I can think of no other
religious painting or fresco in which a saint is shown, as here,
looking out at the world with such serene confidence and ease of
spirit.

One small detail worth noting is the way Dominic's right hand
takes hold of the bread so decisively, while his left hand, no less
firm and strong, holds on to the table. The Dominic of this
painting, like the Dominic of history, clearly possesses a very firm
and very vital hold on the immediate world around him.

That sense of openness to the world, is a marked characteristic of

many of the great Dominican preachers. "When I became a
Christian", noted Lacordaire, "I did not lose sight of the world".
And, in similar vein, in the century just past, Vincent McNabb
remarked once to some of his brethren: "The world is waiting for
those who love it...If you don't love men don't preach to them -
preach to yourself"!

On one occasion, deliberately taking to task those contemplatives,

some of them monks and priests, whose passion for the Absolute
tended to make them indifferent to the world, and to "the true
inwardness of things", to the fact that "things exist in themselves,
with their own proper nature and needs", Yves Congar sought to
highlight what he considered to be an important, if unexpected,
lay quality in the Dominican vision of Aquinas. In Congar's opinion,
someone who is "authentically lay", such as Aquinas, is "one for
whom, through the very work which God has entrusted to him, the
substance of things in themselves is real and interesting." Congar
strikes a similar note, in a letter written to a fellow Dominican in
1959. Expressing a certain disinterest in what he referred to as
"the distinction 'contemplative/active life'", Congar wrote:

If my God is the God of the Bible, the living God, the "I am, I was,
I am coming", then God is inseparable from the world and from
human beings…My action, then, consists in handing myself over to
my God, who allows me to be the link for his divine activity
regarding the world and other people. My relationship to God is
not that of a cultic act, which rises up from me to Him, but rather
that of a faith by which I hand myself over to the action of the
living God, communicating himself according to his plan, to the
world and to other human beings. I can only place myself faithfully
before God, and offer the fulness of my being and my resources so
that I can be there where God awaits me, the link between this
action of God and the world.

Reading this extract from Congar's letter I am immediately

reminded of one of the most remarkable visions of St Catherine of
Siena. In it, St Dominic appears precisely as a kind of "link"
between God's action and the world. Catherine reported to her
Dominican friend, Father Bartolomeo, that first of all she saw the
Son of God coming forth from the mouth of the Eternal Father.
And, then, to her amazement, she saw, emerging from the
Father's breast, "the most blessed Patriarch Dominic". In order to
"dispel her amazement" the Father then said to her: "Just as this
Son of mine, by nature…spoke out before the world…so too
Dominic, my son by adoption." The union between Dominic and
the Father, in this vision, could hardly be more intimate. But the
preacher is not seen here, in the usual mode of the contemplative,
turning away from the world towards God. Rather, with the Son of
God, Dominic is seen coming out from the One who, from the very
beginning, "so loved the world".

In Congar's terms, Dominic's only action has been to surrender

himself, with faith and hope, to the great, saving initiative of God.
"There is only one thing that is real", Congar writes, "one thing
that is true: to hand oneself over to God!" But Congar is also well
aware that, in the life of Dominic and the early friars, this handing
over of self, was never simply an individual act of will. It was
always a surrender that involved, on the part of the brethren, a
daily "following in the footsteps of their Saviour" - a radical and
free acceptance, therefore, of an evangelical way of life.

It is here, at this point, that we meet head on, as it were, some of

the most obvious and most concrete forms of the contemplative
dimension of our life: choir in common, for example, study, regular
observance, the following of the Rule of St Augustine, and the
discipline of silence. These particular religious exercises and
practices, represented for St Dominic a vital part of the evangelical
way of life. But preaching remained paramount always. We can, I
think, be grateful that, in recent decades, this message concerning
preaching has come home to the Order loud and clear.

But what of the forms of regular and contemplative life which,

ideally, should give support to preaching? Are we not, perhaps,
today in need of recovering faith in this aspect of our tradition?
Certainly we are not monks; but neither are we a secular institute.
Preaching is in itself, of course, a spiritual activity, even a
contemplative one. But, for St Dominic and the early friars,
speaking about God "de Deo" - the grace of preaching -
presupposes first speaking with God - "cum Deo" - the grace of
actual prayer or contemplation. In the apostolic life, adopted by
the friars, the ecstasy of service or attention to the neighbour, is
unthinkable without the ecstasy of prayer or attention to God, and
vice versa.

Obviously, in order to become a preacher, one does not have to be

a monk of the desert, or a master of mysticism, or even a saint.
But one does have to become, in Humbert of Roman's phrase, at
least "a pray-er first". One does have somehow to surrender
oneself to God, in prayer, with at least the humble ecstasy of hope.
"For", as St Catherine of Siena reminds us in The Dialogue, "one
cannot share what one does not have in oneself."

In the end, of course, what matters, is preaching. Christ did not

say to us: "Be still and contemplate". He commanded us to "go out
and preach". Nevertheless, it is worth remembering here that, for
the early friars, the grace of preaching, the surrender to God's
living Word, was always intimately linked with a communal life of
prayer and adoration, and with what Jordan of Saxony calls, in a
fine phrase, "apostolic observance".

The pattern of Dominican community life and community prayer

was, in Jordan's understanding, not some sort of external or
arbitrary discipline. Rather, Jordan saw it with enthusiasm as an
opportunity for us to experience, here and now in faith, Christ
risen among us. In a letter which he wrote to the brethren in Paris,
Jordan speaks of the need for each one of us to hold fast to the
bond of charity, and keep faith with the brethren. If we should fail
to do this, Jordan says, we risk an opportunity really to meet the
risen Christ. For "the man " who cuts himself off from the unity of
the brotherhood, "may from time to time feel some very slight and
fugitive consolation of the spirit." But, in the opinion of Jordan, "he
can never fully have sight of the Lord unless he is with the
disciples gathered in the house."

In the practice of prayer, both public and private, and in the task
of preaching, we discover, in medio ecclesiae, that Christ is now
living his life within us. He is our risen brother to whom we can
turn, and speak as with a friend. "Consider", St Thomas writes,
quoting Chrysostom, "what a joy is granted you, what a glory is
given you, to talk with God in your prayers, to converse with
Christ, asking for whatever you want, whatever you desire."

In contemplation, we turn our whole attention to God. But there is

something else as well. God's Word, though utterly transcendent in
its source, has come down into the world, and has taken
flesh."God", as Simone Weil once remarked, has to be on the side
of the subject." The initiative is always his. Accordingly, both in our
work and in our prayer, we come to realize that Christ is not just
the object of our regard. He is the Word alive within us, the friend
"in whom we live and move and have our being". And thus, we can
make bold to say, echoing the First Letter of St John: This is
contemplation - this is contemplative love - not so much that we
contemplate God, but that God has first contemplated us, and that
now in us, in some sense, and even through us, as part of the
mystery of his risen life in the Church, he contemplates the world.

More than fifty years ago, the French existentialist philosopher,

Albert Camus, was invited to give a talk to a Dominican
community in France at Latour-Maubourg. In his address, Camus
strongly encouraged the brethren to maintain their own Dominican
and Christian identity. "Dialogue is only possible", he remarked,
"between people who remain what they are, and who speak the
truth." Remain what you are. It sounds like something fairly
straightforward. But, as we know well, our identity as Dominicans,
with its fundamental evangelical simplicity, on the one hand, and
its great richness and variety of elements, on the other, is
something that can never be taken for granted. In any given age,
there is always the risk that some aspect of our identity will be lost
or forgotten or ignored. And, as a result, the task of preaching -
the main purpose of the Order - will suffer.

If there is one aspect or dimension of our life as Dominicans

which, in this age, is vulnerable to neglect, it is - I have no doubt -
the contemplative dimension. At the beginning of this talk, I
recalled the story of an early Dominican who almost lost his faith
through too much contemplation. Now I very much doubt if that
would happen today in the Order. If anything, we are more likely,
in this fast-speed, high-tech world, to lose our faith through too
much activity!

In this context, I find encouraging and challenging a comment

made in a late interview by Marie-Dominique Chenu. Living at
Saint Jacques in Paris, in the same convent as the frater
anonymus from the thirteenth century whom I quoted earlier,
Chenu discovered that what he saw in the world somehow
prompted him to contemplation. The world and the Word of God
should not, Chenu insisted, be separated. "Our priority is to go out
to the world. The world is the place where the Word of God takes
on meaning." These statements I think we understand today. They
are part of our received inheritance since the twentieth century,
and indeed since the thirteenth. But the comment from Chenu
which I find most interesting, concerns his own initial experience
of the Order, and the reason why he joined. "I had no intention of
entering", he tells us, "but I was impressed by the atmosphere of
the place." It was not, strictly speaking, a monastic atmosphere,
Chenu recalls, but one of contemplation all the same. And it was
"the contemplative atmosphere" that drew him. Not only that - the
brothers' devotion to study, and the general air of intense and
ascetic dedication, remained with Chenu for many years. "All
through my life", he said, "I have reaped the benefits of that
contemplative cadre."

The contemplative life itself, of course, receives attention from

Aquinas in the Summa. You remember I spoke, earlier in this
section, of the "lay spirit" in Aquinas - how he looked at the things
of this world with respect. But, in the Summa, when he discusses
the contemplative life, Aquinas emphasizes the importance of
giving attention also to what he calls "eternal things". He writes:
"The contemplative life consists in a certain liberty of spirit. Thus
Gregory says that the contemplative life produces a certain
freedom of mind, because it considers eternal things."

That "freedom of mind", which comes from contemplation, is not

something reserved only for enclosed contemplatives. As
preachers, in fact, we need that freedom more perhaps than
anyone. For, without it, we risk becoming prisoners of the spirit of
the age, and of the fashions of the age. And what we preach, in
the end, will not be the Word of God, but instead some word or
some ideology of our own. And that word, that message, will be of
little use to the world, even if we seem to be carrying it to the
furthest frontiers of human need. For really to "come out into the
open", we ourselves require, first of all, as the Gospel and our own
tradition remind us, to make a journey within."God", Eckhart says:
"is in, we are out. God is at home, we are abroad…'God leads the
just through narrow paths to the highway that they may come out
into the open '."

Contemplation: A Vision of the Neighbour

In traditional religious literature, the word "ecstasy" is often linked

with that of contemplation. But, nowadays, on the street, the word
means, of course, one thing and one thing only: a very potent and
very dangerous drug! Over the centuries, Dominicans have not
been shy to use the word on occasion when talking about prayer
or contemplation. But the following rather sharp and challenging
comment from Eckhart on the subject, is typical. He says: "If a
man were in an ecstasy, as St Paul was, and knew that some sick
man needed him to give him a bit of soup, I should think it far
better if you would abandon your ecstasy out of love and show
greater love in caring for the other in his need." "Love" - there it
is, that small Gospel word, that harbinger of the grace of
attention, that reminder to all of us of what contemplation -
Christian contemplation - really means!

One of the statements about St Dominic most often quoted is that

"he gave the day to his neighbours, and the night to God". It is a
telling statement, but in a way not strictly true. For, even after the
day was over, in the great silence and solitude of Dominic's long
night vigils, the neighbour was not forgotten. According to one of
the saint's contemporaries - Brother John of Bologna - Dominic,
after lengthy prayers, lying face down on the pavement of the
Church, would rise up, and perform two simple acts of homage.
First, within the Church, he would "visit each altar in turn…until
midnight". But then "he would go very quietly and visit the
sleeping brethren; and, if necessary, he would cover them up."

The way this account has been written down, one has the sense
that Dominic's reverence for the individual altars in the Church, is
somehow intimately related to his reverence and care for the
sleeping brethren. It is almost as if Dominic is acknowledging, first
of all, the presence of the sacred in the altars, and then - with no
less reverence - acknowledging that same presence in his own
brethren. I have always been struck by a phrase which Yves
Congar quoted many years ago from Nicolas Cabasilas. It reads:
"Among all visible creatures, human nature alone can truly be an
altar." Congar himself, in his book, The Mystery of the Temple,
makes bold to say: "Every Christian is entitled to the name of
'saint' and the title of 'temple'." And again, echoing that same
Pauline vision, the first Master after Dominic, Jordan of Saxony,
writing to a Dominican community of nuns, exclaimed: "The
temple of God is holy, and you are that temple; nor is there any
doubt but that the Lord is in his holy temple, dwelling within you."

Among all those, within the Dominican tradition, who have spoken
and written concerning the neighbour in contemplation, the most
outstanding in my view is St Catherine of Siena. On the very first
page of her Dialogue, we are told that "when she was at prayer,
lifted high in spirit", God revealed to her something of the mystery
and dignity of every human being. "Open your mind's eye", he
said to her, "and you will see the dignity and beauty of my
reasoning creature." Catherine obeys at once. But when she opens
the eye of her mind in prayer, she discovers not only a vision of
God, and a vision of herself in God as his image, but also a new
and compassionate vision and understanding of her neighbour. "
[S]he immediately feels compelled", Catherine writes, "to love her
neighbour as herself for she sees how supremely she herself is
loved by God, beholding herself in the wellspring of the sea of the
divine essence."
Contained in these few words of Catherine there is, I believe, a
profound yet simple truth: the source of her vision of the
neighbour and the cause of her deep respect for the individual
person, is her contemplative experience. What Catherine receives
in prayer and contemplation is what Dominic had received before
her - not simply the command from God to love her neighbour as
she had been loved, but an unforgettable insight beyond or
beneath the symptoms of human distress, a glimpse into the
hidden grace and dignity of each person. So deeply affected was
Catherine by this vision of the neighbour that she remarked on
one occasion to Raymond of Capua that if he could only see this
beauty - the inner, hidden beauty - of the individual person as she
saw it, he would be willing to suffer and die for it. "Oh Father...if
you were to see the beauty of the human soul, I am convinced
that you would willingly suffer death a hundred times, were it
possible, in order to bring a single soul to salvation. Nothing in this
world of sense around us can possibly compare in loveliness with a
human soul".

The assertion of a willingness to die a hundred times for the sake

of the neighbour, sounds extreme. But it is typical of Catherine. In
another place, Catherine writes: "Here I am, poor wretch, living in
my body, yet in desire constantly outside my body! Ah, good
gentle Jesus! I am dying and cannot die." That last phrase, "I am
dying and cannot die" Catherine repeats a number of times in her
letters. Two centuries later, the Carmelite mystic, St Teresa of
Avila, also uses the same phrase, but uses it in a very different
way from Catherine. True to her Carmelite vocation, Teresa's
whole attention is fixed, with deep longing, on Christ her Spouse.
Without him, the world holds little or no interest. And so, in one of
her poems, Teresa tells us that she is "dying" of great spiritual
pain - because she cannot "die" physically as yet, and be one with
Christ in heaven:

Straining to leave this life of woe,

With anguish sharp and deep I cry:
"I die because I do not die."

When Catherine uses the phrase, "I die because I cannot die", she
never uses it to express a desire to be out of this world. Of course,
like Teresa, Catherine longs to be with Christ. But her passion for
Christ compels her, as a Dominican, to want to serve the Body of
Christ, the Church, here and now in the world, and in any way she
can. Her anguish of longing comes from her awareness that all her
efforts are inevitably limited. She writes: "I am dying and cannot
die; I am bursting and cannot burst because of my desire for the
renewal of holy Church, for God's honour, and for everyone's
salvation".

The mysticism of Catherine of Siena, like that of Dominic, is an

ecclesial mysticism. It is a mysticism of service not a mysticism of
psychological enthusiasm. God is, of course, for both Catherine
and Dominic, always the primary focus of attention, but the
neighbour, and the neighbour's need, are never forgotten. When,
on one occasion, a group of hermits refused to abandon their
solitary life in the woods, even though their presence was badly
needed by the Church in Rome, Catherine wrote at once to them
with biting sarcasm: "Now really, the spiritual life is quite too
lightly held if it is lost by change of place. Apparently, God is an
acceptor of places, and is found only in a wood, and not elsewhere
in time of need!"

This outburst from Catherine does not mean that she had no
appreciation for the ordinary aids and supports necessary for the
contemplative life: solitude, for example, and recollection, and
silence. Silence in particular Catherine respected. But what she did
not approve of at all was the cowardly silence of certain ministers
of the Gospel who, in her opinion, ought to have been crying out
loud and clear on behalf of truth and justice. "Cry out as if you had
a million voices", she urged, "It is silence which kills the world".

Two centuries later, in a letter sent home to Spain by the

Dominican preacher, Bartolomé de Las Casas, we hear the same
note of urgency. The year was 1545. Already, with no small
courage, Bartolomé had discerned that his vocation was to become
a voice for those who had no voice. Being confronted daily by the
appalling degradation and torture of innocent people all around
him, he was determined to keep silent no longer. "I believe", he
wrote, "God wants me to fill heaven and earth, and the whole
earth anew, with cries, tears and groans."

Las Casas did not base the strength of his challenge on mere
emotion. Again and again we find the Dominican preacher
appealing in his writings to what he called the "intelligence of the
faith". According to Las Casas, the best way to arrive at Gospel
truth was "by commending oneself earnestly to God, and by
piercing very deeply - until one finds the foundations." It was at
this level of humble yet persistent meditation that Bartolomé
encountered not just the truth about God, but God himself, the
God of the Bible, the Father of Christ Jesus, the living God who, in
Bartolomé's own words, has "a very fresh and living memory of
the smallest and most forgotten."

By allowing himself to be exposed in this way to the face of Christ

crucified in the afflicted, Bartolomé was a true son of his father,
Dominic. For Dominic was a man possessed not only by a vision of
God, but also by a profound inner conviction of people's need. And
it was to the men and women of his own time, to his own
contemporaries, whose need he received almost like a wound in
prayer, it was to them Dominic was concerned to communicate all
that he had learned in contemplation.

At the very core of St Dominic's life, there was a profound

contemplative love of God - that first and last. But reading through
the very early accounts of Dominic's prayer-life, what also
immediately impresses, is the place that is accorded to others - to
the afflicted and oppressed - within the act of contemplation itself.
The "alii" - the others - are not simply the passive recipients of
Dominic's graced preaching. Even before the actual moment of
preaching, when St Dominic becomes a kind of channel of grace,
these people - the afflicted and oppressed - inhabit "the inmost
shrine of his compassion". They form part even of the
 "contemplata" in contemplata aliis tradere. Jordan of Saxony
writes:

God had given [Dominic] a special grace to weep for sinners and
for the afflicted and oppressed; he bore their distress in the inmost
shrine of his compassion, and the warm sympathy he felt for them
in his heart spilled over in the tears which flowed from his eyes.

In part, of course, this means simply that when he prays Dominic

remembers to intercede for those people he knows to be in need,
and for sinners especially. But there is something more - some
"special grace" to use Jordan's phrase. The wound of knowledge
that opens up Dominic's mind and heart in contemplation, allowing
him with an awesome unprotectedness to experience his
neighbour's pain and his neighbour's need, cannot be accounted
for simply by certain crowding memories of pain observed or by
his own natural sympathy. The apostolic wound Dominic receives,
which enables him to act and to preach, is a contemplative wound.

Conclusion

I remember, as a novice in the Order, putting a question about

contemplation to one of the priests in the house, a wonderful man
called Cahal Hutchinson. "What", I asked, "is the secret of
Dominican contemplation?" Father Cahal hesitated a moment. He
smiled at me. Then he said: "Brother Paul, never tell the
Carmelites or the Jesuits, but we have no secret other than the
Gospel secret!" "However", he went on, "as a Dominican, I can
reveal to you the two great laws of contemplation." Immediately,
with a novice enthusiasm, I took out my pen and paper. Cahal
said: "The first law is - pray. And the second law is - keep at it!"
Perhaps, my brothers, that's the first and the final word to be said
on the subject.

P.S. Due to our willingness to make vailable immediatly the text of this particular
conference, it was not possible for the author to include, as footnotes, the many
sources of his work. In particular, the author regrets not being able to acknowledge
his debt to the work of certain Dominican scholars. In time, however, the complet
text will be available in printed form.

Design & management : Fr. Yves Bériault, o.p.