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Contemplation

Related Topics: Inspirations | Meditation | Prayer

 

Contemplation and How it differs from Meditation

 

Treatise on the Love of God, 6:3. Contemplation is but a loving, artless, unremitting, mental preoccupation with the things of God.

 

Treatise on the Love of God, 6:4. Love demands knowledge, for we can never love the unknown; the more thorough does our knowledge of something good become, the deeper grows our love for it – as long as the emotion meets with no impediment.

 

Treatise on the Love of God, 6:5. Meditation is a reflection in great detail, point by point, on those things which are capable of touching our hearts; contemplation, however, takes a single concentrated look at what we love – a concentrated reflection that has greater energy, greater power to move the will.

 

Treatise on the Love of God, 6:6. Contemplation’s simple survey is made in one of these three ways…

 

Contemplation

Contemplation is simply the mind’s loving, undivided, permanent attention to the things of God.  When meditation produces devotion, it becomes contemplation. 

 

Loving recollection in Contemplation

The recollection I speak of is given by God Himself.  It is not within our power to have it when we will, nor does it depend on our own effort.  At His own pleasure God works in us.

 

Commentary on “Contemplation”

In his book The Love of God, St. Francis de Sales describes contemplation as being simply the mind’s loving, unmixed, permanent attention to the things of God. 

 

Little virtues prepare for contemplation of God

 

Letter to Madame de Chantal. Each one must love the virtues that are suitable to him, each according to his vocation.  The virtues of a widow are humility, contempt of the world and of oneself, and simplicity.  Her exercises are love of her abjection, the service of the poor and ill; her place, the foot of the Cross; her rank, the last; her glory, to be scorned; her crown must be her misery: these are small virtues.

 

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