Salesian Literature

Chapter 3  :  Contemplation described – the first way it differs from meditation

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Contemplation, Theotimus, is but a loving, artless, unremitting, mental preoccupation with the things of God.  You will see what I mean more easily, if I compare it with meditation.

 

Prayer is called meditation until it succeeds in producing the honey of devotion; after that it is transformed into contemplation.  Just as bees roam the countryside, pilfering nectar here and there among the flowers, busily engaged on what they gather, because they enjoy its sweetness … so we meditate to win God’s love, after which we contemplate him, intent on his goodness, because love renders it sweet to us.

 

Our longing to gain God’s love causes us to meditate; love, when gained, leads to contemplation.  Love renders the charm of what we love so pleasing, our minds never tire of reflecting on it.

 

We very often start to eat in order to stimulate our appetites; once the appetite revives, however, we carry on eating to satisfy it.  We set out on the path of prayer by reflecting on God’s goodness in order to prompt our wills to love him; but once love is conceived in our hearts, we continue our reflections on that goodness so as to gratify our love – and only constant sight of what we love can appease us.

 

It comes to this: when love is wedded to meditation, it gives birth to contemplation; we meditate to awaken love, we contemplate because we love.  That is why I have described contemplation as a loving preoccupation – it is a child of love, and children always take their father’s name.

 

Once love has quickened us to the attentiveness of contemplation, that attentiveness gives rise to a greater, more fervent love, which is eventually crowned with perfection in the possession of what it loves.  Love causes us to thrill at the sight of our beloved – a vision that thrills us with charity.  It is an alternate motion from love to sight, from sight to love; while love – in virtue of some hidden power – increases the beauty of what we love, sight increases our love for it, the delight we take in it.  Love prompts the eyes to focus ever more intently on the beauty we love; sight impels the heart to love it ever more ardently.

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