What Is Contemplation?

In a prior article I explored the place of contemplative prayer in the founding documents of the BSC. It was written in anticipation of the season of Advent, which emphasizes a cessation of our own efforts and a quiet waiting upon God. In this article, I go to some of those who have written about contemplative prayer to ask, what is it? This is a very limited presentation. As always, I encourage you to primarily read the writings of our Founder who has written on this topic frequently. What follows in this article should be seen, not as a suggested reading list, but merely as some assistance in understanding the concept of contemplative prayer.
Henri Nouwen quotes the Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse, who said that “to pray is to descend with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of the Lord, everpresent, all-seeing, within you.” [1] This type of prayer, a resting in God, comes from Paul's idea of "praying without ceasing." [2] Nouwen points out that the "Greek word for rest is hesychia, and hesychasm is the term which refers to the spirituality of the desert. A hesychast is a man or a woman who seeks solitude and silence as the ways to unceasing prayer. The prayer of the hesychast is a prayer of rest.” [3]
Richard Foster has an excellent introductory chapter on prayer. He points out that all
forms of prayer need to be bathed in this resting in or waiting on God. Of intercession he says, "Listening to the Lord is the first thing, the second thing, and the third thing necessary for successful intercession." [4] Listening requires waiting and resting. Noise and external or internal activity mutes the voice of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of how impatient human beings are when it comes to God. Humans do not want to wait for answers. They want them now. Thus, they make up their own answers to their prayers. Since they no longer wait and listen for God's answer, they have their reward. Since they hear themselves, there is no reason for God to hear them. [5]
Prayer begins with an attentiveness to God alone. This centering of attention on God can occur only through coming to God "naked and empty." [6] This centering occurs in the heart, not the mind. This is why the heart is the organ of prayer. [7] Robert Wilken states that unlike the mind,

which is acquisitive, aggressive, critical, competitive, the distinctive mark of the heart is receptivity, openness, pliability -- it is a place to be filled, a thing to be ignited. The mind receives on its own terms, always filtering, discriminating, judging, but the heart is patient; it waits, watches, listens, making space for what it is to receive. The heart thrives on stillness and quiet and delights not in its own cleverness but in the presence of the beloved.[8]

Attentiveness of the heart is crucial to contemplative, waiting, resting prayer.
This attentiveness requires giving up the controls.[9] People look at prayer as something they run. What is needed is to "hand over the controls" to Christ and let him pray in them. This requires trust in the Father. In fact, trust in God and a willingness to wait on God are almost synonymous.

Prayer is communion with God. And what is the posture in prayer?
A simple gaze toward One who loves us unshakably -- this is contemplative prayer. It is absorption in loving God with our whole being -- not strenuously, but as a spontaneous response of the heart. Contemplative prayer is resting in God, allowing the Spirit to fill and move us as God wills. It is pure receptivity and adoration. It is quiet, tender, and sober, or playful, gentle, and joyous.[10]

Prayer is an inner Sabbath, a communing with God that is the gaze of love between the lover and the beloved.
The Practice of the Presence of God is a classic on the prayer of communion with God, a communion that includes resting in God and being attentive to God throughout daily activities. Brother Lawrence emphasizes the importance of faith in God. Believers must empty themselves so that God can do what he pleases in their lives. They must realize that God does not withhold his grace from those who earnestly seek him. Brother Lawrence refers to the practice of the presence of God as "an indistinct vision or a loving gaze, a sense of God . . . a waiting on God, a silent conversation with God, trust in God, the life and peace of the soul . . . ."[11]
Numerous authors on prayer speak of the role of the Holy Spirit in this resting, waiting
prayer of the heart. Richard Sibbes says that prayer is "incense kindled by the fire of the blessed Spirit of God."[12] God will not answer the prayers of those who trust in themselves and their techniques in prayer instead of the Spirit of God. Karl Barth once said that, "Unless the Holy Spirit is sighed for, cried for, prayed for, don't assume that He's present in our organization, in our theology, even in our ordinances."[13]
Thomas Merton stresses that "the activity of the Spirit within us becomes more and more important as we progress in the life of interior prayer."[14] It will always be true that the believer's own efforts in prayer are necessary and important. As believers journey further and further into interior prayer, though, their efforts will tend to reorient them away from their own efforts and toward the gracious work of God within them. These efforts will produce a different way of measuring and judging their prayers, a more directed and obedient cooperation with God's grace, "which implies first of all an increasingly attentive and receptive attitude toward the hidden action of the Holy Spirit."[15]
In The Fire of God, brother John Michael explores the various ways in which the Holy
Spirit works to purify lives and lead them even further into this life of God. Purification and purgation begins with the gracious action of God in the heart of the person who is resting and attentive.[16] I am not going into the depths of this book because all of us in formation are required to read it. I would suggest, however, that it is a good book to take off of the shelf if you have not read it for a number of years.
To summarize, those who have written on contemplative prayer speak often of resting in God or waiting on God. This form of prayer is a simple gaze of love. It is communion with God. The goal of the believer is the unceasing prayer of the heart that includes listening to the Lord and not trying to rush his answers. It includes attentiveness to God in the midst of daily activities. Resting in God requires centering on God and developing a posture toward God of waiting to receive what he offers. Waiting on God cannot happen until the believer gives up the controls and trusts God to answer their prayers and also pray in them through the Holy Spirit. This form of contemplative prayer cannot be developed in isolation from other disciplines, such as fasting and silence which are also great Advent practices, but articles on those disciplines must wait for another time. In my final article in this series we will look at what A Way of Life says about contemplative prayer.

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1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981), 59, quoting Timothy Ware, ed., The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 110.
2. 1 Thess. 5:17.
3. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 53.
4. Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978), 34.
5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: MacMillan Company, 1963), 182.
6. Benjamin Teitelbaum, “Prayer: The Art of Transcendence,” Epiphany 5, no. 3 (spring 1985): 19.
7. Robert Louis Wilken, “Prayer and the Work of God,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 11, no.3 (May-June 1998): 13.
8. Ibid.
9. Maria Boulding, “Prayer: The Real Relationship,” Weavings 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1990): 43.
10. Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 44.
11. Lawrence of the Resurrection, Brother, The Practice of the Presence of God, trans. John J. Delaney (New York: Image Books, 1977), 107.
12. Donald G. Bloesch, The Struggle of Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1980), 38, quoting Richard Sibbes, The Complete Words of Richard Sibbes, vol. 3, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart (Edinburgh: Nichol, 1862-64), 192.
13. Bloesch, 39, quoting Karl Barth, in Christian Life 40, no. 3 (1978): 25.
14. Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 41.
15. Ibid.
16. John Michael Talbot, The Fire of God (Eureka Springs, AR: Troubadour for the Lord, 1993).