Importance & Efficacy Of Contemplation

[thepiaheart]

Hello there, pax! Does anyone know of any more academic or theological or philosophical sources as to the importance & efficacy & "economy" of contemplative prayer? I'm trying to find some sources that I can share with my professors at a super secular & liberal university -- to answer the question of why anyone would choose the route of contemplation & total sacrifice as a means of accessing the entire world. Edith Stein has some great insight, but I'm looking for more. Thanks!

[Butterfly]

Hi!

I would look for resources from Hans Urs of Balthasar. I can remember that he wrote some very good of the importance of the contemplative prayer and that we can't find Christ in the face of the neighbour if we haven't find it yet in the contemplation. (we talked about it at university). I love also Rahner and his thoughts about the importance of contemplation.

I have read the contemplative exercises from Franz Jalics. He is a very good teacher for the contemplative Jesus-prayer but his book is a spiritual book, not a academical handbook, but maybe you get some good advises there.

Hope this helps.

Butterfly

 

 

[Chiquitunga]

there are a bunch of resources in this thread on the value of the cloistered contemplative life ~ http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/127340-help-need-resources-on-cloistered-life-for-parents

 

and the other day a priest mentioned this in his homily, which I had nearly forgotten about! ~ http://transfiguration.chartreux.org/Publications/05-Contemplatives_REV.pdf I have a hard copy of this somewhere, but can't find it. glad it's all online! :like:

[Catherine Therese]

Perhaps some of the Rhineland Mystics?  

[Pia Jesu]

Pope Emeritus Benedict has written beautifully on the subject...log on this Trappist-Cistercian website for

a brief synopsis:

http://www.calvaryabbey.com/id95.html

 

From the world of philosophy, Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" might be a compelling

point to begin the discussion.  For him love is the motivating force behind an individual's choice or move-

ment toward contemplation and a life of total self-sacrifice.

 

Good book...Provocations:  The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (Charles Moore, ed.)

 

[Pia Jesu]

I've raised the Early Thomas Merton banner before (re:  his Seeds of Contemplation)...but he echoes Kierkegaard

as he writes:

 

"The contemplative...is he who has risked his mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure

  trust, that is to say, in the surrender of our own poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if

  thinking made us exist.  The message of hope the contemplative offers you...is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and

  problems that surround God; but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present to you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you,

  and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons.  The contemplative has nothing to tell

  you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart,

  and risk the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you and with you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity

  to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations....the intimate union in the depths of your own heart, of God's spirit and your own secret

  inmost self, so that you and He are in all truth One Spirit."

                                                                                    ...from "A Letter on Contemplative Life" (The Monastic Journey  by Thomas Merton; pgs 222-223).

[Gabriela]

I was about to mention Merton. I think that, for an academic crowd, he's a good first step. Most academics have heard of him and know about his work on non-violence, so they're likely to receive him well.

[Catherine Therese]

*smacks head* I can't believe I didn't think of this before.

Josef Pieper!! 

 

A good one to start with is Happiness and Contemplation.