In praise of acquired contemplation

Spiritual Life, Fall 1998 by Paulits, Walter J

What is that darkness? It is sacramental, as is so much else in Christianity. It has the same function as the bread and wine in the Eucharist, or the water in Baptism, or the Oil in the Anointing of the Sick. It is a sign, a revelatory sign. It shows that something is present that is hidden. It is like a veil over a box, shutting it away from our sight and yet revealing its presence. It is like smoke so strong that it obscures a fire yet shows that the fire is there. Acquired contemplation sees the darkness. The next step determines whether the pray-er profits by the darkness or is frustrated by it.

The person can be frustrated by the darkness if he or she thinks it is nothing but an obstacle to vision. He struggles with it, tries to pass through and beyond it, strains to experience the God the darkness hides. In that daily struggle he might fall into the trap of "scripting" a God who is beyond all concepts and words: imagining him as perceptible and reacting, even with emotional tension, to what imagination creates. The imaging, however, is a stepping back into a type of meditation, and the emotions are the fruit of the lower faculties indulging themselves. Both these results are antithetical to acquired contemplation, let alone infused. The important point is that a pray-er who sees the darkness as an obstacle to be destroyed neutralizes acquired contemplation's richness.

God's Presence

In acquired contemplation, one does not have to curse the darkness. If the pray-er has the wisdom to see the sacramentality of the darkness and understand that it reveals what it conceals, then a lengthy stay in acquired contemplation need not be a misfortune. It can be a remarkable grace from God. Because if the pray-er is satisfied with not seeing or even experiencing God on earth, he can settle down to an awareness of God's Presence and find there a peace that nothing else in the world could ever give.

Presence is a powerful factor in our relational world. To know that my baby is in her crib in the next room is to be present to the baby without seeing her. It is to be affected by the baby in a way that changes my depths in ways not quantifiable but extraordinarily qualitative. The baby has made me a parent, and that new quality makes me into a person very different from what I was before I became a father or mother. To be "present to" is to pay attention to and be aware of. To be present to God is to return love to him for always being so intensely present to us. Again, "seeing" and "being present to" are not the same thing. Husbands and wives can be present to each even if one is on a train and the other is on a plane. We can be present to God without ever seeing him, and isn't not seeing him precisely a feature of our earthly existence?

Acquired contemplation's great richness lies in its exercise of a dark, tenacious, and certain faith. The pray-er plays no more games in attempts to experience God. What he wants is awareness of God's presence. If that awareness never spills over into feelings, he has no regrets. All he wants is God. If God gives him consolations, fine, but he does not seek them. He just wants God and what God wants to give him.